UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
 Buffy Sainte-Marie
 © Caleb Music-ASCAP

 I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in
 Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how
 the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.


 He's five feet two and he's six feet four
 He fights with missiles and with spears
 He's all of 31 and he's only 17
 He's been a soldier for a thousand years

 He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
 a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
 and he knows he shouldn't kill 
 and he knows he always will
 kill you for me my friend and me for you

 And he's fighting for Canada, 
 he's fighting for France,
 he's fighting for the USA,
 and he's fighting for the Russians 
 and he's fighting for Japan, 
 and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

 And he's fighting for Democracy
 and fighting for the Reds
 He says it's for the peace of all
 He's the one who must decide 
 who's to live and who's to die
 and he never sees the writing on the walls

 But without him how would Hitler have 
 condemned him at Dachau
 Without him Caesar would have stood alone
 He's the one who gives his body 
 as a weapon to a war
 and without him all this killing can't go on

 He's the universal soldier and he 
 really is to blame
 His orders come from far away no more
 They come from him, and you, and me
 and brothers can't you see
 this is not the way we put an end to war.