Recruiting – Reviewed

Ewart Alan Mackintosh

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 out 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.

Go and help to swell the names
In the casualty lists.
Help to make a column’s stuff
For the blasted journalists.

Help to keep them nice and safe
From the wicked German foe.
Don’t let him come over here!
‘Lads, you’re wanted – out you go.’

* * * * *
There’s a better word than that,
Lads, and can’t you hear it come
From a million men that call
You to share their martyrdom.

Leave the harlots still to sing
Comic songs about the Hun,
Leave the fat old men to say
Now we’ve got them on the run.

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.

You shall learn what men can do
If you will but pay the price,
Learn the gaiety and strength
In the gallant sacrifice.

Take your risk of life and death
Underneath the open sky.
Live clean or go out quick –
Lads, you’re wanted. Come and die.

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Analysis

“Recruiting” is angry. It doesn’t plead, mourn, or persuade—it just tears into the recruitment machine, the people who feed it, and the lies they spread. It has no patience for war dressed up as duty and honor. It spits on the posters, the speeches, the songs, the fake heroics. It doesn’t even dignify war with tragedy—just strips it down to the truth.

It begins with an image familiar in wartime Britain: a recruitment poster. Lads, you’re wanted, go and help. But the poem doesn’t focus on the words—it focuses on the hands that wrote them. Who decided these men should go? Not soldiers. Not the ones who will die. That crack in the message widens: those pushing for war are never the ones who pay its price.

The poem then attacks them directly. Fat civilians sit safely at home, pretending they wish they could fight while thanking God they’re over forty-one. They admire soldiers from a distance, but it’s all a lie. They enjoy war as long as it’s others dying. The poem doesn’t just criticize them—it hates them.

Girls with feathers, vulgar songs. They hand out white feathers, shaming men into enlisting. They sing recruitment songs, wrapping war in cheap patriotism. But the soldiers already know what war is. God—and don’t we damned well know / How the message ought to read? The truth is simple: they are wanted only to replace the dead. Shiver in the morning dew, waiting to kill and be killed. That is the only promise war keeps.

It doesn’t stop there. The poem keeps peeling back the layers, exposing the machine that turns war into a spectacle. These young men aren’t just fighting; they are a column’s stuff / For the blasted journalists. Their deaths will become headlines, statistics, forgotten names. They are not being protected. They are the protection—the ones who die so others don’t have to.

Then comes the shift. The asterisks mark a pause, a breath before something new. The first half is rage—sarcastic, mocking, furious. But the second half speaks in another voice.

Now, the call to war comes from the dead themselves. A million men that call / You to share their martyrdom. They do not promise victory or ease. They only tell the truth. Here, the poem does something dangerous. It has spent so much time tearing down propaganda, but now it offers something almost like a reason to fight. Better twenty honest years / Than their dull three score and ten. A short, full life over a long, empty one. War, it suggests, at least offers something real. A chance to be among honest men. A chance to learn what sacrifice means.

And here is the contradiction. The poem exposes everything—the false patriotism, the hypocrisy of those who send others to die, the way war is sold as something noble when it is just slaughter. But it does not tell young men to refuse. It does not say stay home. Instead, it tells them: if you go, at least you will know the truth. At least you will stand among men who understand what is real.

The final lines are the hardest blow. Take your risk of life and death / Underneath the open sky. War is a gamble. There is no safety. Live clean or go out quick. Fight and hold onto whatever discipline you can, or die. Those are the only choices.

And then the final words. Lads, you’re wanted. Come and die. The same message as the recruitment posters—stripped of illusion. No duty, no noble cause, no promise of honor. Just death. That is all war asks of them.

And yet—the poem does not say don’t go. That is its final contradiction. It has no respect for those who push war from a distance, no patience for cowards who make speeches and write songs while staying safe. It rips apart the idea that war is heroic, but it also has no sympathy for those who refuse to fight. It offers no alternative. It does not pretend there is a way out. It only says: this is war. If you go, you will die. But at least you will know what that means.

The structure makes the message even sharper. The first half is fast, cutting, mocking. The second half is slower, heavier, like the voice of someone who has already accepted death. At first, the poem sneers. By the end, it has stopped laughing. It has stopped arguing. It has simply laid out the truth.

“Recruiting” is not about heroism, patriotism, or duty. It is about stripping everything down until only reality remains. It hates those who treat war lightly, who glorify it without paying its price. It exposes every lie. And then, at the end, it refuses to say there is another choice. It does not comfort or inspire. It just says: if you go, you will die. And if you don’t, you will live knowing others have died in your place.

There is no answer. No escape. Just the truth.

Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash