The best for them is what we dream. Our little girls and boys
Must know the finest life can give of comforts and of joys.
They must be shielded well from woe and kept secure from care,
And if we could, upon our backs, their burdens we would bear.
And so once more we rise to-day to face the battle zone
That those who follow us may know the Flag that we have known.

Your dream and my dream is not that we shall live;
The greatest joys we hope to claim are those that we shall give.
We face the heat and strife of life, its battle and its toil
That those who follow us may know the best of freedom's soil.
And if we knew that by our death we'd keep that flag on high,
For your boy and my boy, how gladly we would die.



Soldierly


The glory of a soldier--and a soldier's not a saint--
Is the way he does his duty without grumbling or complaint;
His work's not always pleasant, but he does it rain or shine,
And he grabs a bit of glory when he's fighting in the line;
But the lesson that he teaches every day to me an' you
Is the way to do a duty that we do not like to do.

Any sort o' chap can whistle when his work is mostly fun;
A hundred want the pleasant jobs to every sturdy one
That'll grab the dreary duty an' the mean an' lowly task,