The ghost of life: Men's first instinct

The jolly song called “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag” was written in 1915; we know it most for the chorus, which goes:

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.

While you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag, smile, boys, that’s the style!

What’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.

So, pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.

It’s got a great beat; you can march to it; top marks for bringing out volunteers to the trenches of Northern France.

So when Wilfrid Owen wrote his poem called “Smile, Smile, Smile” in 1918, that was the reference. But he threw a bucket of freezing, muddy water on all the cheerfulness. In the first three lines—mentioning the Mail newspaper and introducing the empty jollified promises of the commerce set—he set us up for the post-war frenzy of consumption and return to status quo ante bellum in terms of who profits and who pays. In every possible way.

In a week where we’re learning the details of the taxpayer-funded multi-billion dollar bailout for the airline industry (while carriers dodge issuing refunds for cancelled flights); discovering that UnitedHealthcare Corporation had a bonanza first quarter of this year (what with members being afraid or unable to see their physicians but UHC still collecting full premiums and also forcing providers to cut their reimbursement rates by 40%); finding out that while working and middle-class citizens are waiting an extra week or two for their $1200 “relief” check (which banks are authorized to seize for debts) while the Treasury Departments prints the Kleptocrat’s name on them but anyone making $1M or more is getting a grotesque tax break out of the trillion-dollar bill negotiated with that gargoyle Mnuchin—well, “Smile, Smile, Smile” seems just exactly appropriate.

Undeniably, it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow profit in someone’s direction, whether you're talking total war or global pandemic.

“Smile, Smile, Smile”

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned

Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)

And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.

Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;

“For,” said the paper, “when this war is done

The men's first instinct will be making homes.

Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,

It being certain war has just begun.

Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,—

The sons we offered might regret they died

If we got nothing lasting in their stead.

We must be solidly indemnified.

Though all be worthy Victory which all bought.

We rulers sitting in this ancient spot

Would wrong our very selves if we forgot

The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,

Who kept this nation in integrity.”

Nation?—The half-limbed readers did not chafe

But smiled at one another curiously

Like secret men who know their secret safe.

(This is the thing they know and never speak,

That England one by one had fled to France

Not many elsewhere now save under France).

Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,

And people in whose voice real feeling rings

Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.

Stick that in your old kit bag, at let’s see how much you feel like smiling, eh?