﻿Masters Made An Awful Mess, Let’s Can ‘em 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
The ruling rakes of Europe were going to unite the world with inter-marrige and sex appeal. 
There! I’ve got it all in the first short paragraph and that’s the beauty of flash writing. You trot out your “big barney” in the first few lines and the reader won’t have to read further; he can throw the paper away and consider the nickel well spent. 
Kaiser Bill’s relatives are fighting all over the landscape of Europe, Africa and Asia—on the sea, in the sea and air. 
Kaiser Bill was begat, indirectly, from Pete the Great and was part Bolshevik; Germany nurtured him and he begat sons, and so forth. His other relatives were not idle nights, and there was ruling class timber aplenty, from Brass Tooth Bill to Slew Foot Biff. 
Just as the ruling class had almost accomplished a closed corporation of royal blood, Germany double-crossed them and handed Hohenzollern a crosscut saw and introduced him to a pile of elm that splits hard as hell—and him with only with one good arm. 
Then rose Hitler from his paperhanging and put the run on all royal blood he could find. What I mean, he made ‘em gallop and, like as not, full many a buxom queen will be looking for a job peeling potatoes while her royal consort pushes a truck in the freight house of the Orient, Occidental By. They’ve got crown blisters as it is and a few foot blisters won’t hurt ‘em. 

Emancipation, now as ever, lies in the workers’ One Big Union. 
Workers raise their “horns” on hands, 
Bosses on their seats; 
Bosses rave for loot and lands 
Workers cry for eats! 
Shelly must have written that lyric? 

The masters have made an awful mess of things!