O God, Who heareth always, the Truth, though lips be still,
Whose vision seeth always, though human eyes may fill,
Whose love no man can bias, Whose heart no hate can find,
Send down Your words of wisdom for the healing of mankind.

The truth is plainly written, and yet they have not read;
(For lo, the fields of Europe are mounded with their dead;)
The light that cannot darken, though all the suns go out,
Still shines along the heavens above the broken rout.

Your voice is drowned in shouting to their poor mortal ears;
The Love is quite forgotten that makes an end of fears;
They scoff at those who whisper of days when wars will cease,
While battle smoke rolls upward about the Prince of Peace.

Never since Jesus taught us has Truth been in such plight —
So many dull of hearing, so many blind of sight,
So many who are mocking the sermon of Thy Son,
In ignorance declaring it is Thy will is done.

We built ten thousand temples with ornaments of gold,
And therein prayed Jehovah for one shepherd and one fold,
Chaunted litanies for mercy, whined the words that David wrote —
Then sudden sought God's blessing as we cut our neighbor's throat.

Oh, I fear that human nature is a falcon on a leash,
Its hood is but convention and its prey the dove of peace,
For we kill for lust of killing once the mask is torn away,
Though nineteen hundred years have been teaching us to pray.

And this is how they taught us in the days of James and John:
Put up your carnal weapons and rest no more upon
The bitter sword of vengeance and the broken shield of might,
But let the Captain lead you down the peaceful paths of Right.

Are we Christians — are we Christians when we disobey commands;
When our hearts roar with murder and the blood dyes our hands;
When 'tis bayonets down the valley and guns along the hill,
And the chorus of ten million throats is Kill — Kill — Kill?

The Philistines were soldiers, and the mighty man of Gath
Relied upon his armor and the spirit of his wrath.
How frail a shell is armor and wrath how vain a thing
When out there comes against you young David and his sling!

But this is all forgotten in the grandeur of the cause;
And what but scraps of paper the old Mosaic laws,
Treaties, codes and councils and the fellowship of kings
When avarice is loosened and glory beats its wings!

A million talk of courage, and burnish up their arms;
A million prate of duty, and burn their brothers farms;
A million shout of honor, while twenty million more
Go marching, marching, marching to the slaughter pens of war.

And all of us are crying on the good Lord day and night:
" O God of peace and mercy, guide our armies in the fight;
Give us power, give us glory, give us victory complete —
A land of smoking ruins and a nation at our feet. "

For all of us are fighting with right upon our side:
No matter what the motive, they will tell you each has died
In the sacred cause of " freedom " when a fierce barbaric foe
Would spin this old earth backward a thousand years or so.

When will we learn the lesson we're all the sons of God —
One faith, one aim, one Father, one Heaven and one sod?
Must Mars hurl down his cohorts to teach us we are kin,
To weld a shattered people by a fiercer foe than sin?

God knows we've foes aplenty, implacable and cruel,
To make allies of all men of every race and school;
To bind us fast together beneath one heart and head,
For the healing of the nations and the raising of the dead.

We called those peasants brothers just a little time ago;
But someone had a dream to keep, a selfish dream, and so
We have crushed the little flowers that we'd watered with such care,
And scattered in our gardens the seeds of hate and fear.

Though the frontier's walled with cannon the men behind the guns
Must still remain our brothers, as they remain God's sons:
And some day, not so far off, when we break this bitter curse,
We shall see them as aforetime, neither better men nor worse.

Oh, the Britishers are singing in the trenches in the night;
The German bands are playing as their soldiers march to fight;
And " Fatherland, My Fatherland " to Teuton ears must seem
Just as sweet as " Rule, Britannia, " or " The Wearin' of the Green. "

I saw a soldier lying beside a shattered gun,
His fingers in the clover, his face turned to the sun;
They had stripped him of his jacket, and of course we could not tell
If he were prince or peasant, or on which side he fell.

There's no romance in murder, there's no delight in death;
The glory of adventure goes out with the last breath;
And a dead man in the clover is just as cruel a sight
As the victim of a dagger on a lonely street at night.

Strip off the fighting uniforms, discard the flapping flags,
The crosses and dispatches, the medals, clasps and rags,
And make each fellow equal as are the dead when laid
Ten thousand to the acre beneath a peasant's spade.

For so we all are fighting in the common war of life,
Who are crossing swords with evil in uncompromising strife;
Seeking not for price nor plunder nor gratitude nor gain,
But a little more of laughter and a little less of pain.

Some day the Turks and Russians will be marching side by side;
The Uhlans and the Cossacks will close together ride;
Britishers and Belgians, Austrians and French
Will join in the same chorus as they level up the trench.

We will hear no more of battles and boundaries and lands,
But we'll camp about that City that was never made by hands,
Where there's neither Jew nor Gentile, color, creed nor clan,
But the Love that reigns eternal in the brotherhood of Man.