Donovan looks and sounds like Phil Ochs in this performance. At 19 years old, he is obviously already a very accomplished singer and guitarist and totally at ease on stage.
He is five feet two, and he's six feet four He fights with missiles and with spears He is all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen He's been a soldier for a thousand years He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain A Buddhist and a Babtist and a Jew And he knows, he shouldn't kill And he knows he always will Killing 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 U.S.A. And he's fighting for the Russians And he's fighting for Japan And he thinks we put an end to war this way And he's fighting for democracy He's 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 wall. But without him, how would Hilter have condemned them at La Val? Without him Caesar would have stood alone He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the 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 here and there, and you and me And brothers, can't you see? This is not the way we put the end to war Songwriters: Buffy Sainte Marie