'Lads, you're wanted, go and help',

On the railway carriage wall

Stuck the poster, and I thought

Of the hands that penned the call.

Fat civilians wishing they

'Could go and fight the Hun'.

Can't you see them thanking God

That they're over forty-one?

Girls with feathers, vulgar songs -

Washy verse on England's need -

God - and don't we damned well know

How the message ought to read.

'Lads, you're wanted! over there',

Shiver in the morning dew,

More poor devils like yourselves

Waiting to be killed by you.

Better twenty honest years

Than their dull three score and ten.

Lads, you're wanted. Come and learn

To live and die with honest men.

Written by a soldier, E.A. Mackintosh, shortly before he was killed in action in 1917. It was not published until after the war