1914 and All That

Had they all read Malthus
Those who sent men off to war?
Trying to keep the numbers down,
To lose the surplus in the glaur
Of Flanders fields,
In attack after futile attack?
Smiling as they waved them off,
Knowing they would not come back?
Charging horses onto barbed wire,
Or marching men into machine-gun fire
Dressed in fancy clothes?
Had they foreseen unemployment,
Revolution and disorder,
And chosen instead a mass interment?
Marched them off in battle order,
To their nice new cemeteries?

See the faces of royal cousins,
Like as peas in inbred pods,
Sitting in their palaces,
Untroubled by the dreadful odds
The hapless proles faced at the front.

In ancient times kings led their armies,
Ventured onto bloody fields,
Swung the battle-axe themselves,
Relied upon their strength to yield
The fruits of victory.
By 1914 that was over,
They lived their lives in fields of clover,
Rather than in mud and blood.
Those were left to lesser mortals.

I've been reading a collection of poetry created to commemorate the centenary of

the Great War, and felt moved to write one myself.

'glaur' is a Scotch word for 'very thick mud'.