[From notes taken by a Brilish airman while engaged in hovering over the Kaiser's headquarters at ———. The name of the place is excised because the Press Bureau Authorities do not wish the Kaiser to be informed of his own whereabouts.]
Now let an awful silence hold the field,
And everybody else's mouth be sealed;
For lo! your Kaiser (sound the warning gong!)
Prepares to loose his clarion lips in song.
In time of War the poet gets his chance,
When even wingless Pegasi will prance;
Yet We, whose pinions oft outsoared the crow's,
Have hitherto confined Ourself to prose.
But who shall doubt that We could sing as well as
That warrior-bard Tyrtaeus, late of Hellas,
Who woke the Spartans up with words and chorus
Twenty-six centuries B.U. (Before Us)?
Also, since Truth is near allied to Beauty,
We are convinced that We shall prove more fluty
Than certain British scribes whom We have read
(Recently published by The Bodley Head).
Well, then, it is Our purpose to inflame
Our soldiers' arteries with lust of fame;
To give them something in the lyric line
That shall be tantamount to fumes of wine,
Yet not too heady, like the champagne (sweet)
That lately left them dormant in the street,
So that the British, coming up just then,
Took them for swine and not for gentlemen.
Rather we look to brace them, soul and limb,
With something in the nature of a hymn,
Which they may chant, assisted by the band,
While working backwards to the Fatherland.
Put to the air of Deutschland über alles
Or else to one of Our own sacred ballets,
The lilt of it should leave their hearts so fiery
That at at the finish they would make enquiry—
"What would our Attila to-day have done?"
And, crying "Havoc!" go and play the Hun.
For there are some cathedrals standing yet,
And heavy is the task to Culture set,
Ere We may lay aside the holy rod
Made to chastise the foes of Us and God.
And now that We are fairly in the vein
Let Us proceed to build the lofty strain.
Ho! bid the Muse to enter and salute.
The burnished toe of Our Imperial boot!
Hush! guns! and, ye howitzers, cease your fire!
We, William, are about to sound the lyre!
Note.—Unfortunately the actual composition of which this is the preface has been censored, as likely to have a disintegrating effect upon the discipline of our forces at the front.
The Two Voices.
It was Mr. Will Crooks, the well-known Labour member, who asked the Chairman if the House might sing 'God Save the King,' and when Mr. Crooks started it in his deep bass voice everyone stood up and joined in the singing."—Westminster Gazette.
"Moreover, Mr. Crooks had pitched the tune a little too high, and it seemed for a moment that he with his rich high tenor voice would have to sing the anthem as a solo."—Daily Chronicle.
Most Allgracious Sir,—Now that I have finished writing my sermon for next Sunday I can find time for a little quiet sound thinking by way of a change. I can say quite seriously that I am tired to death of writing and preaching sermons. It is not permitted, highly honoured Emperor, that in my sermon I say anything displeasing to your Imperial self. I must not remind you that you are a man like other men, a man liable to weakness and error, swayed by temper, capable, since your position gives you power, of trampling on the on the rights of others in a moment of passion, of confounding justice with your own desires and for an inspiration from Heaven itself. No, I must not say all this or any of it, but, on the contrary, I must describe you to yourself and your family and the chosen intimates who flatter you beyond even my power to flatter, I must describe you, I say, as the Lord's anointed, as the vicegerent of God on earth, as being raised by God's favour above all human foibles, in short, as being supremely right and just whenever your faults and your injustice cry aloud for the divine punishment. Even if you were a thoroughly good and sensible man, totus teres atque rotundus, instead of being a bundle of caprice and prejudice, the task would be difficult. As it is, it is unpleasant and ought to be impossible. My sermons exist to prove that I have attempted it with such courage as I could command, although in these conditions courage is only another name for the cowardly compliance that causes a man to detest himself and to take a low view of human nature.
At any rate I have done my best for you. How many times have I not bidden the faithful to fall down before you and worship you? Have I not proved from Holy Scripture that your lightest word is spoken, not by you, but by the Almighty; that you, in fact, are something higher and better in bones and flesh and blood and brains than anything that mere ordinary mortals can pretend to be? I can see you nodding your head in Imperial approval when such phrases came from me, and all the time I knew in my heart that the God of whom you were thinking, and to whose intimacy you pretended, was not the God under whom a Christian minister takes service, but a being formed after the image of a Prussian drill-sergeant who wears a pointed helmet and a turned-up moustache.
Sir, I have my doubts as to this fearful war in which we are engaged. You entered upon it, you say, to carry out your treaty obligations to Austria. Treaties, no doubt, are sacred things. But why, then, was not the treaty obligation to Belgium as sacred as that with Austria? Was it because Belgium was weak and (as you thought) defenceless that you invaded her country, slaughtered her people, and sacked her towns? Was this the reason for the foul treatment of Louvain? And is it agreeable, do you think, to the Almighty that the glorious Cathedral of Rheims should be bombarded and ruined even by German shells?
When the years have rolled on and you shall have been called away to render an account of what you did on on earth, for what reasons will you be remembered amongst men? Not because you established justice and did good deeds—or even great ones—for your people, but because you plunged the world in war in order to feed your vanity, and laid waste Belgium and shattered the Cathedral of Rheims. Truly a shining memory.
Yours, in all humility,
Dryander.
