Remember Lidice

Lidice! Your streets are silent now;
You little town—whose crime was mercy-
Lie beneath the sun,
And only wisps of smoke arise to crown
The blackened desolation of the Hun.
The torch and gun are thru,
And never more shall children’s laughter ring
In simple mirth ;
Yet from your dying embers shall soar again,
A spark to flame in all the towns of earth!
The brutes who war on little towns forget
They bloom like stars in gardens of men’s hearts,
And those who wound them earn the awful debt
Of vengeance from a myriad counterparts.
They have forgot but time shall prove to them
There was a little town, called Bethlehem.
Lidice! Lidice ! Lidice !

JOHN HOOKS 1943