You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The poet condemns spectators who cheer soldiers yet hide from the true horrors of war.
- In plain terms
- Crowds cheer soldiers but avoid the reality of war.
- What can you take from it?
- Expose the disconnect between public support and war's brutality.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Why do people prefer sanitized war narratives?
- How can we bridge the gap between support and understanding?
Another view
The poem may generalize all civilians as indifferent.
More from Siegfried Sassoon
I'd say - 'I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.' And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home an…
Permalink to quote #8 Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, - Those doomed, conscripted, un…
Permalink to quote #10 If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line of death.
Permalink to quote #7
Related quotes
We have a war going on - I have family in that war - yet we're talking about steroids. ... If everybody in the world got on steroids, we'll still lose more kid…
Carl EverettCarl Everett quote #8 One to destroy, is murder by the law; And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immorta…
Edward YoungEdward Young quote #22 The regular media caricature of Iraqi society is not even a parody. It is very common indeed to find mixed and intermarried families, and these loyalties and a…
Christopher HitchensChristopher Hitchens quote #80