It came upon the air with accent shrill
Betokening a danger newly found.
It kept our nerves a-tingle with the thrill,
Of quickly finding shelter underground.
By God! The pain it gives me as it shrieks,
It turns my stomach o'er and o'er again,
And as the lightning raider fastly streaks,
Across the vault of heaven, O, my brain!
The balloon barrage sets a trap for him.
The anti-aircraft guns would blow to hell
These legions of the damned from old Berlin,
Could they but reach his plane with shot and shell.
He seeks to smash us up and break our will.
He tries to undermine our purpose grim,
Which vows to carry on the battle till
He's beaten us or we've put paid to him.
He fights to make us slaves, we for the right
To live our lives, be free in thought and deed
The hordes of evil in their blackest might
Come in the guise of this vain German breed.
We prate a lot of progress in our time,
About the upward march of Man we rave,
From sub-human we've tried to reach sublime,
When all we've done is get from cave to cave.
We've touched the heights and reached the depths of space,
We've conquered this old earth from Pole to Pole,
And now the pride of all the human race
Must like the humble rat go seek his hole.
The all-cIear sounds its rasping noise again,
Some welter in a mess of mud and gore,
O God! I feel that hellish, loathsome pain!
Come out you rats and look like man once more.
August, 1940.
H. L. BULLOCK.
From The Times, August 31, 1940
Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., who died on May 7th, aged 81, directed that his remains should be cremated and the ashes thrown into the sea somewhere off Land’s End. "I desire this because although I love England very dearly and consider this lovely island the best spot in the world, I am convinced internationalist, and like to feel I am just a tiny part of universal life which will one day break down all the divisions of creed or speech and economic barriers, and make mankind one great eternal unit both in life and death."