Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
- Alfred Edward Housman
Poem published in the London Times in 1917 on the anniversary of the Battle of Ypres, Belgium, in which the British Expeditionary Force was nearly wiped out. Readers may be shocked to learn that the British Force was referred to as a mercenary army by other nations because it was professional, whereas the armies of France, Russia and Germany were conscripts.