(_With acknowledgments to a cartoon by Mr. WILL DYSON._)
[In a Munich paper Herr GANGHOFER recites the following
remark of the KAISER'S, whose special journalistic confidant
he is said to be:--"To possess Kultur means to have the deepest
conscientiousness and the highest morality. My Germans possess that."]
'Tis enough that we know you have said it;
We feel that the facts correspond
With your speech as a Person of credit,
Whose word is as good as his bond;
Who are we that our critics should quarrel
With the flattering doctrine you preach--
That the German, in all that is moral,
Is an absolute peach?
But the puzzle grows odder and odder:
If your people are spotless of blame,
Being perfectly sound cannon-fodder,
Then whose is the fault and the shame?
If it's just from a deep sense of duty
That they prey upon woman and priest,
And their minds are a model of Beauty,
Then who is the Beast?
For a Beast is at work in this matter;
We have seen--and the traces endure--
The red blood of the innocent spatter
The print of his horrible spoor;
On their snouts, like the lovers of Circe--
Your men that are changed into swine--
The Mark of the Beast-without-mercy
Is set for a sign.
You have posed (next to God) as the pillar
That steadies the fabric of State,
Whence issues the brave baby-killer
Supplied with his hymnal of hate;
Once known for a chivalrous knight, he
Now hogs with the Gadarene herd;
Since it can't be the other Almighty,
How _has_ it occurred?
When at last they begin to be weary
Of sluicing their virtues in slime,
And they put the embarrassing query:--
"Who turned us to brutes of the prime?
Full of culture and most conscientious,
Who made us a bestial crew?
Who pounded the poisons that drench us?"--
I wouldn't be you.