Responding to my post about the De Maistre Drones, Larry Houghteling, a reader, directs me to this poem of A. E. Housman. Seems appropriate for our “all-volunteer army.” 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.