The Full Text of “Who's for the Game?”
1Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
2The red crashing game of a fight?
3Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
4And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?
5Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?
6Who’ll give his country a hand?
7Who wants a turn to himself in the show?
8And who wants a seat in the stand?
9Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much –
10Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
11Who would much rather come back with a crutch
12Than lie low and be out of the fun?
13Come along, lads –
14But you’ll come on all right –
15For there’s only one course to pursue,
16Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
17And she’s looking and calling for you.
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“Who's for the Game?” Introduction
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"Who's for the Game" was written by the British poet Jessie Pope (1868-1941). Though it falls into the general category of First World War poetry, the poem doesn't deal directly with the experience of war. Instead, it is more of a call-to-arms, a targeted address to young men with the aim of getting them to enlist in the British Army. The poem was first published in a newspaper in 1915, before signing up to fight was made compulsory—and before the full horrors of WW1 had been revealed.
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“Who's for the Game?” Summary
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Which of you young men is up for the biggest game of your life—a bloody, violent game? Who'll fully commit to the task—and who will chicken out? Which man will eagerly anticipate the signal for action and help his country? Don't you want to be in the greatest show of all time? Or would you rather just sit and watch on the sidelines? Who out there knows that war isn't easy, but will sign up enthusiastically anyway? Who'd prefer to see some action, even if it means getting injured, rather than miss out on an adventure? Come on, boys, come on—you know that there's really only one choice here. Your country is drowning at war, and she needs you.
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“Who's for the Game?” Themes
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War, Bravery, and Patriotism
Jessie Pope’s “Who’s for the Game?” was published in a U.K. newspaper during World War I. Essentially, it asks its target audience—young men—whether they are brave enough to go and defend their country through armed conflict. The poem is not subtle: it is totally pro-war and by implication argues that people should love (and be willing to die for) their country. Anything less than that, the poem argues, is a form of cowardice.
There are essentially two types of people in this world, according to the poem: those who will lay themselves on the line for their country and those who are too scared to do so. The first group are presented as brave and heroic, while the latter are cowards, and the poem presents a series of direct questions that essentially ask the reader to choose which side they are on. Young men can either join in the “biggest” “game” ever, or “sit tight” and miss out. They can be part of the “show” by helping their country, or they can be a mere spectator and take a “seat in the stand.”
This juxtaposition builds a sense of war as something exciting and thrilling—which is genuinely what many people thought at the time of the poem’s composition, before the true horrors became clear. And the repeated use of rhetorical question is intended to make it hard to sit on the fence as a reader (at the time at least). It’s as though the poem won’t leave the reader alone until they answer whether they’re willing to fight for the country’s cause.
And while the poem does hint at potential injury in war, it avoids any gruesome details. Instead, war is portrayed more as a kind of inconvenience than something tragic and terrible—it might even be “fun” and like a “game.” So even if enlisting in the fight might mean returning “with a crutch”—as though it was some mere sporting injury—that’s about as bad as it will get. And though war won’t exactly be easy—it won’t be “a picnic”—it will be “fun.” Soldiers, then, won’t just miss out on helping their country, but on a good time as well.
To hammer home this appeal to young men, the poem ends by personifying the country itself. Britain is presented as a kind of damsel in distress, needing a heroic “lad” to come and save her. This, too, is meant to excite and entice—and to help build the case against anyone who isn’t patriotic or willing to fight. The poem then ends on the second-person pronoun “you,” evoking a famous advert that called for young men to enlist in the army. Pope repackages that advert’s slogan—“your country needs you”—and tries to create an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement in order to convince her readers that they ought to sign up.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Who's for the Game?”
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Lines 1-4
Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?Before reading through this poem, it's important to consider its context. It was published in a British newspaper early on in the First World War (1915). At that time, it was not yet compulsory for young British men to join the army—they still had a choice whether to volunteer or not. In hindsight Pope's poem, written before anyone knew the full extent of the horror and tragedy that was to spread its shadow over Europe, seems like a naive call-to-arms. It asks its target audience—young, able-bodied men and perhaps their family members too—to ask themselves if they possess the honor, integrity, and sense of duty to put their lives on the line for the good of their country.
Throughout the poem, the severity of war is played down—with conflict presented as something more like a game or a sport. This is an extended metaphor established by the title, which is also the first line of the poem. The poem uses frequent rhetorical questions—almost like an interrogation—to push its reader to decide whether they are up for the "fight" or, essentially, too much of a coward. The anaphora of "Who's/Who'll" adds to the poem's sense of urgency and insistence.
The extended sporting metaphor is appropriate in the sense that sport matches are often played between different countries—and here, for the British, the opponent is Germany. The caesura in the first line creates emphasis on this being the "biggest" game ever played, with the prize nothing less than control over the country's future (and the defense of other nations).
Line 2 describes the war as a "red crashing game of a fight," suggesting violence without giving any real sense of the terror that is to come—indeed, this almost sounds like modern-day sports commentary! Line 3 picks up on the sporting metaphor with "grip and tackle," two verbs associated with the popular game of rugby (a bit like American Football, but with fewer pauses). The first three lines make use of /a/ assonance, drawing a connection between "a" "game" being "played" and being "unafraid," subtly reinforcing the poem's argument that to do otherwise is an act of cowardice.
Line 4 then presents the alternative to joining up—"sit[ting] tight." This kind of juxtaposition takes place throughout the poem, usually following a pattern of three lines that talk up the supposedly fun side of war followed by one that suggests the utter boredom of staying at home. The poem's clear, steady rhyme scheme further adds to its predictability. The poem can be broken down into a series of quatrains, or four-line stanzas, that follow a simple ABAB rhyme pattern (here, "played" rhymes with "unafraid" and "fight" with "tight").
It's worth noting that many people—including young men—shared Pope's excitement towards the war. In 1914 (one year before this poem's initial publication), most Brits expected the war to be done by Christmas—and some people definitely did sign up out of a sense of adventure, unaware of the death, disease, and destruction that was to come.
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Lines 5-8
Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?
Who’ll give his country a hand?
Who wants a turn to himself in the show?
And who wants a seat in the stand?
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Lines 9-12
Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much –
Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
Who would much rather come back with a crutch
Than lie low and be out of the fun? -
Lines 13-17
Come along, lads –
But you’ll come on all right –
For there’s only one course to pursue,
Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
And she’s looking and calling for you.
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“Who's for the Game?” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
"Who's for the Game" uses alliteration sparingly. It first appears in line 8:
And who wants a seat in the stand?
The /s/ sound, or sibilance, evokes hissing and suggests the speaker sneering at those supposed cowards who'd rather sit in the sidelines than fight for their country. The alliteration of "lie low" in line 12 is also associated with cowardice. In both instances, the alliteration draws extra attention to these phrases—singling out those who won't heed the speakers call to fight.
Interestingly, the poem then uses a more subtle kind of alliteration to hammer home it's call for young men to join the army. Across the last five lines (or four if lines 13 and 14 are joined together, as they are in some printings of the poem), a forceful /k/ sound rings out loudly in "come," "course," "country," and "calling." These words are all key to the poem's overall argument—which could be paraphrased as "come on, lads, there's only one course, your country is calling for you because she needs you." These hard alliterating sounds add force to the argument, doubly effective because this section provides the emphatic answer to the earlier list of rhetorical questions.
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Anaphora
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Extended Metaphor
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Juxtaposition
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Personification
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Rhetorical Question
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“Who's for the Game?” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Toe the line
- Turn
- Shoulders
- Lads
- Up to her neck
Toe the line-
This means to go along with orders or instructions, here evoking a sense of duty and honor. It can also mean to be ready at the starting line in a race, implying the young men's eagerness to fight.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Who's for the Game?”
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Form
"Who's for the Game" is a formal poem, in keeping with Jessie Pope's poetry more generally.
There are two main ways to analyze the form here. Firstly, the poem can be thought of as having two main sections—the question section and the answer section. Lines 1-12 are all rhetorical questions presenting a choice between the excitement of war (characterized as a kind of sports game) and the boredom/cowardliness of non-participation. The concluding lines that follow the question section provide the poem's emphatic answer—there is "only one course to pursue," one legitimate answer to be given.
This gives the poem a forceful ending that intensifies its pressure on the reader—particularly the young male reader at the time—to sign up to the British army and fight in the First World War.
The other way of view this poem is as four quatrains—indeed, sometimes the poem is published this way (and may have been published this way originally). This would mean that lines 13 and 14 as written here would form one line ("Come along, lads – But you’ll come on all right –"), maintaining an ABAB rhyme scheme throughout the poem. The similar division between question and answer would still apply. In either case, the steadiness of the poem's form reflects the confidence of its speaker anbd message.
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Meter
"Who's for the Game?" mostly uses anapests throughout. This means most feet follow an unstressed-unstressed-stressed, da-da-DUM, rhythm. This echoes another very famous poem about war: "The Destruction of Sennacherib" by Lord Byron. The anapests evoke the sensation of galloping horses, imbuing the poem with energy and forward momentum
The poem has regular substitutions, however. A number of the lines, for example, start with an extra stressed syllable—like the first line:
Who’s | for the game, | the big- | gest that’s played,
This line also substitutes an iamb for the anapest in the third foot ("the big").
Generally speaking, the poem alternates four-beat lines (tetrameter) with three-beat lines (trimeter). The second line is an example of the latter (the first foot here is another iamb, however):
The red | crashing game | of a fight?
Notice how the meter, already established by the second line, demands that "crashing" is unstressed (while the first syllable would normally be stressed). The meter, then, is complicated on a technical level in terms of scansion—there are numerous plausible ways of scanning it. But, it sounds very simple when read out loud. Try it!
This simplicity gives the poem two important attributes. Firstly, as noted above, it gives the poem a forward momentum that makes its argument—that young men should join the army—all the more forceful. The poem also has a playful, almost nursery-rhyme sound to it. This makes the poem easier to memorize, perhaps useful for what is essentially a piece of propaganda.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Who's for the Game?" has a regular rhyme scheme throughout. Put simply, it's just alternating rhyme:
ABAB
There's a new set of rhymes every four lines (the poem also neatly divides into four quatrains if line 13 and 14 are counted as one line, as they are in some versions). The main effect is to give the poem a breezy, almost casual tone. In fact, it even sounds a bit like a nursery rhyme.
Overall, this supports the poem's argument that war is nothing to be afraid of—it's just like taking part in some kind of sports match. Indeed, the playfulness of the rhymes conveys the way that—according to the poem—war is actually "fun"!
Accordingly, most critics feel that this poem doesn't give much, if any, sense of the realities of war—and that this particular rhyme scheme seems incongruous with the subject. That said, it's worth remembering that the target audience is young men reading newspapers in 1915—not necessarily poetry lovers. Accordingly, the rhymes also give the poem a sense of forceful persuasiveness—which is, after all, what the poem is aiming for.
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“Who's for the Game?” Speaker
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There is no specified speaker in this poem. Essentially, the voice reads like informal propaganda, constructing an argument imploring the reader to join the army. The poem asks question after question, juxtaposing the supposed excitement and fun of going to war with the mundane cowardice of staying behind.
Through these repeated rhetorical questions, the poem becomes almost like an interrogation—with the speaker being asked what is essentially the same question again and again. The speaker tries to persuade the poem's target audience—young British men in 1915 (and their families perhaps)—that they'd be a fool to miss out on going to war. They try to repackage war through metaphor, making out to be more like a sports match than real danger. In line 14, the poem uses the colloquial term, "lads," to appeal directly to its target to its demographic.
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“Who's for the Game?” Setting
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The first thing to note about the setting here is that, though the poem is classed as First World War poetry, it's manifestly not set on the battlefield. That is, the poem makes no attempt to capture the real horrors of war—the horrific onslaught on the senses, the psychological trauma, injury, and death. While the poem was published early on in the war—before the true tragedy had fully unfolded—it doesn't make any attempt to engage with accounts of earlier wars either (e.g. the Boer War).
With this in mind, then, it's worth considering why the poem might not let on fully about the reality of war. Perhaps it's merely that the author didn't know about them, or maybe it's because the poem has one real aim. Published in a newspaper, it's a direct call-to-arms to young man asking—and pressuring—them to sign up for the war. Accordingly, the poem presents armed conflict as more of a sports game than a battle of life and death. Through its direct and persistent questioning, the poem can also be thought of as set in the gap between text and reader—a gap that it tries to narrow as much as possible through its interrogation-like tone.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Who's for the Game?”
Literary Context
"Who's for the Game" was published early on in the First World War, which ran from 1914 to 1918. Pope's poem is a direct appeal to the British public, asking young men—"lads"—to enlist in the army and go off to war. As with many of Pope's poems, it was first published in a national newspaper—Pope published frequently in papers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. The poem was subsequently published in Pope's second collection of war poems, titled simply More War Poems (the first was War Poems). Her poems were popular at the time of initial publication, tapping into an early and sincere enthusiasm for the war, which many people thought would be over quickly.
Of course, the war was not over quickly—and was full of unspeakable horror and tragedy. Accordingly, Pope's war poetry appeared less and less relevant, to the point that nowadays it seems glib and flippant. Indeed, it is often taught in schools as an example of a First World War poem that specifically doesn't deal in the realities of war.
To best observe this distinction, readers should compare Pope's work with war poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Pope perhaps shares more in common with the similarly jingoistic Rupert Brooke. Brooke's "The Soldier," for example, reads with a similar patriotic tone.
Pope did, however, have an important role in perhaps the most famous WWI poem, Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." This vital poem reflects on the lies told to young soldiers during the war—that it is somehow "sweet and right to die for your country." The poem was in part inspired—or negatively inspired—by Pope's newspaper poems, and was even dedicated to her in an early draft (a dedication that was deleted before publication).
Historical Context
In 1915, it still was not yet compulsory for young British men to join the war effort. Instead, the British strategy was instead to appeal top the consciences of the target demographic through advertising and information (and propaganda). Indeed, this poem certainly echoes the tone of one of the most famous war posters of all time, which featured the figure of Lord Kitchener, the secretary of State for War, pointing at the viewer and telling them "your country needs you."
Pope's poem strikes a similarly direct tone. It's also worth noting that this was published in a newspaper, the dominant media format of the age (well before television or smartphones!). Newspapers thus played an integral role in shaping national attitudes to the war—and Pope's apparent enthusiasm for the conflict was not out of step with much of the early response more broadly.
The First World War was described with the term "the war to end all wars"—a phrase that of course turned out to be tragically inaccurate with the onset of World War II. Around 16 million people died directly in WWI, with many more perishing in the great flu outbreaks and genocides (for example, the Armenian Genocide) that followed.
The war began with the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, who was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which ruled a large section of central and Eastern Europe at the time). The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, wished to see an end to Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Previously arranged allegiances soon brought Germany and Russia into opposition, and before too long this conflict pulled the other countries of Europe into the war as well. In 1915, the Germans sank a British passenger ship called the Lusitania, killing many civilians. Among other reasons, this event drew the United States into the conflict as well.
Pope's portrayal of war in this poem was so far off the mark as to be rather humorous if it weren't so tragic. Life for soldiers was not one of "fun" and excitement, but terror and trauma. The war finally ended on November 11, 1918, with the surrender of Germany.
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More “Who's for the Game?” Resources
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External Resources
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Jessie Pope in the 21st Century — A BBC article about Pope's current reputation, particularly in the way her work is taught in British schools.
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The Poetry of World War I — A valuable resource from the Poetry Foundation covering a range of WWI poets.
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Pope at the British Library — An interesting article about Pope's poetry.
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Lord Kitchener's Pointing Finger — Information about a poster used in Britain to recruit young men into the army during WWI.
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Wilfred Owen's Response — The text of one of the greatest of all war poems, Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." Owen wrote this poem in part as a response to and furious refutation to writers who glorified war—writers like Jessie Pope.
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