TWO SIDES OF WAR

Grantland Rice was a famous American sportswriter during the first half of the twentieth century. It was Rice who, in his poem ALUMNUS FOOTBALL, wrote,

“For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the Game."

Rice, however, wrote many more poems. One I found particularly poignant and sobering. It is called, TWO SIDES OF WAR.

Two Sides of War

All wars are planned by older men

In council rooms apart,

Who call for greater armament

And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field

Where golden dreams turn gray,

How very young the faces were

Where all the dead men lay.

Portly and solemn in their pride,

The elders cast their vote

For this or that, or something else,

That sounds the martial note.

But where their sightless eyes stare out

Beyond life's vanished toys,

I've noticed nearly all the dead

Were hardly more than boys.

~Grantland Rice