Remembering

John Gilbert and Karl Dane in "The Big Parade" (1925)

[image courtesy The Eastman House]

Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers in "Wings" (1927)

[image courtesy Feminema]

"The War Film Speaks", Motion Picture, November 1914

[courtesy the MHDL]

I show you long lines of marching men

As in war's grim armor they go their way

To the battlefield, the fort and the fen,

And you clap your hands and you shout hurrah!

But pause for a moment, my friends out there,

Where safe you sit as my swift feet leap,

And think of the children that starve and stare

And the waiting women that work and weep.

Ah, know you already that war's wild hate

Has taken its toll of these marching lines,

That many a face with a smile elate

Lies ghastly now 'neath the border pines?

Yes, this laughing lad and that gaunt grandsire,

Who please your eye with their trim display,

May now be fighting 'mid hell's fierce fire,

Or breathing their last in the mad affray.

O mothers that look on your sons with pride,

O daughters that gaze on your fathers dear,

O maids that sit by a fond lover's side,

O wives that hover your husbands near,

Resolve in your hearts this horror must go

That brings to the world such awful dole,

This cheat called war with its pitiless woe

That wrings to the depths each human soul.

--Oscar H. Roesner