Edith Matilda Thomas: The Flag

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

American writers on peace and against war

Women writers on peace and war

Edith Matilda Thomas: Air war: They are not humans.

Edith Matilda Thomas: The Altar of Moloch

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Edith Matilda Thomas
The Flag

There were three colors in the banner bright
On which the maidens stitched and stitched all day.
Their needles glanced, for with the morrow-light
Each saw her hero-lover march away.

Save one, the maidens stitched with fond, proud haste;
And her they chide: “Why do thy fingers lag?
Think but how fair will gleam by farm and waste
The red, the white, the blue, of their loved flag.”

The maiden lifted not her hands, her eyes:
“The red of flowing blood I see,” she said;
“The white of faces upturned to the skies,
The blue of heaven wide above the dead.”