From the New York Tribune, April 25, 1914. By Vieux Moustache.
In days of old when knights were bold
And pure heroics were the fashion,
Men’s honor was not bought and sold,
And wars were waged with actual passion.
But nowadays we go to war
For motion-picture syndicators;
Our armies fight, our cannon roar
To furnish gold for speculators.
The public yearns for scenes of crime
And ceaselessly insists on thrillers,
And managers work overtime
Inventing new theater fillers.
And war is IT. It has the drop
On Cutey as a money-maker,
And even Bunny cannot cop
The cash like films of hell’s half-acre.
We read of Huerta and his crew
In scareheads terse and semi-Sapphic;
Of bloodstained Villa. Yet the two
Are puppets cinematographic.
Things are, alas, not what they seem,
And war, as I have tried to prove, is
No more a glory and a dream
But just an adjunct to the movies.