Column left, through the sunken road! 
      Keep in touch as you move by feel! 
    Empty rifles—­no need to load—­
      Night work’s close work, stick to steel!

    Wait for shadows and watch the clouds,
      When it’s moonshine, down you go! 
    Quiet, quiet, as men in shrouds,
      Cats a-prowl in the dark go slow.

    Curse you, there, did you have to fall? 
      Damn your feet and your blind-bat eyes! 
    Caught in the open, caught—­that’s all! 
      Searchlights! slaughter—­we meant surprise!

    Shrapnel fire a bit too low—­
      Gets us though on the ricochet! 
    Open order and in we go,
      Steel, cold steel, and we’ll make ’em pay.

    God above, not there to win? 
      Left, while my men go on to die! 
    Take them in, Sergeant, take them in! 
      Go on, fellows, good luck—­good-bye!

A New Poland

By Gustave Herve

Gustave Herve, author of the article translated below, which appears in a recent number of his paper, La Guerre Sociale—­suppressed, it is reported, by the French authorities—­has been described as “the man who fights all France.”  He is 44 years old, and has spent one-fourth of his life in prison, on account of Socialistic articles against the French flag and Government.  He used to continue writing such articles from prison and thus get his sentences lengthened.

Herve has always opposed everything savoring of militarism and conquest.  From his article on Poland it will be seen that, although he says nothing anti-French or antagonistic to the Allies in general, he desires a Russian triumph over Germany not for his own sake, but as a preliminary to a reconstruction of the Polish Nation out of the lands wrested from Poland by Russia, Germany, and Austria.

In spite of its vagueness, the Grand Duke Nicholas’s proclamation justifies the most sanguine hopes.  This has been recognized not only by all the Poles whom it has reached, those of Russian Poland, and the three million Polish refugees who live in America, but moreover, all the Allies have interpreted it as a genuine promise that Poland would be territorially and politically reconstructed.

What would it be right to include in a reconstructed Poland, if the great principle of nationality is to be respected?

First, such a Poland would naturally include all of the Russian Poland of today—­by that I mean all the districts where Poles are in a large majority.  This forms a preliminary nucleus of 12,000,000 inhabitants, among whom are about 2,000,000 Jews.  This great proportion of Jews is accounted for by the fact that Poland is in the zone where Jews are allowed to live in Russia.