The English battle hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers” (1865) was often parodied during World War I, on both sides of the Atlantic. In “Joe Soap’s Army” (c. 1915), it was made to express the gallows humor of the trenches (“marching without fear” rhymed with “our old commander, safely in the rear”). In “Christians at War”—the most controversial American example—its original assertion that Christ “leads against the foe” is ridiculed as hypocrisy. Should “gentle Jesus” really bless our dynamite?
First published in Solidarity, the official organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, on December 4, 1915, “Christians at War” was widely reprinted and was subsequently used against the union in court on several occasions as evidence of its anti-American extremism. Its author, John F. Kendrick of Chicago, remains relatively obscure, but his experience as a veteran of the Spanish-American War surely shaped his attitudes; he later wrote a wartime memoir, “The Mid-Summer Picnic of ’98,” intended as a “slap against those who don’t understand that a short campaign in a short war can be deadly.”
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Duty’s way is plain:
Slay your Christian neighbors,
Or by them be slain,
Pulpiteers are spouting
Effervescent swill.
God above is calling you
To rob and rape and kill.
All your acts are sanctified
By The Lamb on high;
If you love The Holy Ghost,
Go murder, pray and die.
Onward, Christian soldiers,
Rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus
Bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel,
Folks who do not speak your tongue
Deserve the curse of God.
Smash the doors of every home,
Pretty maidens seize;
Use your might and sacred right
To treat them as you please.
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Eat and drink your fill;
Rob with bloody fingers,
Christ O.K.’s the bill,
Steal the farmers’ savings,
Take their grain and meat;
Even though the children starve,
The Saviour’s bums must eat.
Burn the peasants’ cottages,
Orphans leave bereft;
In Jehovah’s holy name
Wreak ruin right and left.
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Drench the land with gore;
Mercy is a weakness
All the gods abhor.
Bayonet the babies,
Jab the mothers, too;
Hoist The Cross of Calvary
To hallow all you do.
File your bullets’ noses flat,
Poison every well;
God decrees your “enemies”
Must all go plumb to hell.
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Blighting all you meet,
Trampling human freedom
Under pious feet.
Praise The Lord whose dollar-sign
Dupes his favored race!
Make the foreign trash respect
Your bullion brand of grace.
Trust in mock salvation,
Serve as pirates’ tools;
History will say of you:
“That pack of g— d— fools.”