Classic Poem

These are the tricks that you devise to pay for hospitality,
You forge a hundred silly lies and state them as reality,
You know King Ferdinand's design discussed in far Bulgaria,
And what reserves are on the Rhine, their numbers in Bavaria,
Haig's last dispatches you have conned while still undried the ink of them,
You see the victor laurels donned before the soldiers think of them.
You tell the Tigris' rise in feet, and what the flood has meant to us.
How many pounds of maize or meat America has sent to us.
The next Nobel awards you know, and all the facts that guided them,
You give the winners' names although the Trust has not decided them.
Give up this foolish fashion pray, you get but small regard from it,
And if you grace my board to-day, remember " News" is barred from it.