New York Times Current History The European War, February, 1915 Part 30

Schuss wider Schuss, und Stoss um Stoss.

Wir kampfen den Kampf mit Bronze und Stahl Und schliessen Frieden irgend einmal, Dich werden wir Ha.s.sen mit langem Ha.s.s, Wir werden nicht la.s.sen von unserem Ha.s.s, Ha.s.s zu Wa.s.ser und Ha.s.s zu Land, Ha.s.s des Hauptes und Ha.s.s der Hand, Ha.s.s der Hammer und Ha.s.s der Kronen, Drosselnder Ha.s.s von siebzig Millionen, Sie lieben vereint, sie ha.s.sen vereint, Sie alle haben nur einen Feind: _ENGLAND!_

[Following is a translation of the song by Barbara Henderson, appearing in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 15, 1914:]

French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot!

We love them not, we hate them not, We hold the Weichsel and Vosges gate.

We have but one and only hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone.

He is known to you all, he is known to you all, He crouches behind the dark gray flood, Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall, Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood.

Come, let us stand at the Judgment Place, An oath to swear to, face to face, An oath of bronze no wind can shake, An oath for our sons and their sons to take.

Come, hear the word, repeat the word, Throughout the Fatherland make it heard.

We will never forego our hate, We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_

In the Captain's Mess, in the banquet hall, Sat feasting the officers, one and all, Like a sabre blow, like the swing of a sail, One seized his gla.s.s and held high to hail; Sharp-snapped like the stroke of a rudder's play, Spoke three words only: "To the Day!"

Whose gla.s.s this fate?

They had all but a single hate.

Who was thus known?

They had one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_

Take you the folk of the Earth in pay, With bars of gold your ramparts lay, Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow, Ye reckon well, but not well enough now.

French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot, We fight the battle with bronze and steel, And the time that is coming Peace will seal.

You we will hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate by water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, Hate of seventy millions choking down.

We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone-- _ENGLAND!_

This poem, according to the Tagliche Rundschau, has already had the fate of every folksong--the version of it that was circulated among the Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on the piano.

As can be seen, therefore, the popularity of the song and its sentiment is by no means confined to Bavaria. It extends throughout the entire empire.

Of hundreds of voices in the press, let us mention only one. Councilor of Justice Eschenbach of Berlin, in the Neue Gesellschaftliche Korrespondenz writes:

To honor our immortal heroes of Tsing-tau, and for the eternal shame and reproach of the scoundrel nations, j.a.pan and England, I propose the following: Let the entire German press scorn in the next fourteen days to permit the words "Englishmen" or "j.a.panese" to appear in its columns and before the eyes of our people and of the entire civilized world; but instead, and invariably, let the word "Morder" (murderers) be used for "Englishmen" and the word "Raubmorder" (highway a.s.sa.s.sins) for "j.a.panese." For no other name will there be hereafter among us for these greatest scoundrels of history.

Thereby care will be taken both for the present throughout the world as far as the German language is heard and the results of the German spirit are known, and also for future historians, that the proper point of view shall be given throughout eternity for the condemnation of these murderous gangs accursed of G.o.d.

How different is the att.i.tude of the Germans toward the French!

From a trench on the Aisne the following was written to the Heidelberger Zeitung:

Four hundred meters from where we lie, likewise intrenched, lie these wretched Englishmen, toward whom our people feel a holy fury, while they regard the battle with the Frenchmen, on the other hand, rather as a member of a university student corps regards an honorable duel. I, too, am entirely of that view.

The well-known psychologist, Prof. W. h.e.l.lpach of Karlsruhe, writes to the Berliner Tageblatt from the field:

The German soldier, too, does not hate the French people.

Indeed, no one hates it. That is one of the most amazing phenomena of this war--our inner relation to France. Daily and hourly we hear words of disgust concerning the Russians, see gestures of hatred against the Britons--but toward France there is expressed amid all purely warlike antagonism a sort of sympathy resembling almost a smiling love for a naughty child which one feels obliged to punish because it has been guilty of stupid but very serious misbehavior.

We must force France to its knees--perhaps more completely than any of our other foes--but every one seems to hope that after this, after this last lesson, France will come to her senses and conclude a real peace with her German neighbor.

Even among the common men in our ranks there has developed almost plant like a certain realization of a common duty of these two nations, a feeling of certain virtues which they, complementing one another, can preserve only by co-operation.

But for the cultured ones among us, the idea of a hereditary feud has given way to a clear consciousness that there is a middle European Continental culture, supported by German, Austrian, and French genius in common, and that the preservation, development, and continuation thereof as against a hasty and superficial Anglization must be the task of the future. All, all now learn through experience that this matter with France is a woe of civilization (kulturjammer), and that now at last it is going to change, that it could change, if--

In the same newspaper the Berlin National Economist, Prof. Werner Sombart, writes:

Against France we probably experience the least aversion or hatred. At bottom we have really nothing "against the Frenchmen," but they have a great deal against us. But we find them, in spite of their fanatical hatred of the Germans (which we honor and respect) chivalrous antagonists, who in their wrath of battle are certainly quite our peers; and in them, we find, there is far more force and will for victory than we were in the beginning wont to believe. They die for their fatherland, and their final reason for fighting is after all an ideal one, the faith in the glory and greatness of a super-individual, the self-sacrifice to a whole that is higher than the personal. Thus, at least, does that France stand opposed to us, that is fighting for its existence in the trenches along the Aisne.

With the rabble that shouts "a bas la guerre" in Paris, we need reckon just as little as with the rather doubtful citizens that const.i.tute the immediate Government of France and whose heroism seems to show great rents these days. Yes, for the heroic race of Frenchmen we feel almost a sort of pity, as with a n.o.ble wild game of the forest, wounded unto death. And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue from its anguish of death and still grasps at it, as a drowning man grasps at a wisp of straw. Don Quixote still remains the "n.o.ble knight" for whom--if he appears in the age of firearms--we still fire three salvos of honor over his grave.

And then, when we mention the word "France," there arise all the memories of the imperishable cultural values which its people have given to us. I believe that there are many, very many among us, who in their hearts hope that there may once again be something like a co-operative understanding and journeying together of Germans and Frenchmen, even if in a distant future which the youngest among us will probably not live to see--an agreement which through a union of German and French elements of culture will promise vast achievements for the purposes of humanity. In the last a.n.a.lysis--for that has in these very days been more frequently expressed--these two nations belong together; they are of equal worth, of equal spirit, of equal fineness, and yet so different that they can give each other infinitely much.

Just as has the hate against England, so has this friends.h.i.+p for France found poetic expression. In the Hamburger Kriegsblatt we read a poem by Wilhelm Hohne, the final stanza of which reads:

Ma pauvre France! Wann siehst du es ein Da.s.s all deine Bundnisse Trug und Schein?

Was meinst du, warst du mit dem vereint, Der dich niederringt heute--ein ehrlicher Feind!

Auf "Deutsche Treue" da konntest du zahlen!

Mit uns im Bund konnt'st der Welt du befehlen.

Dem Briten, dem Russen, dem Asiaten!

Deutschland hat nie einen Freund verraten!

(Translation.)

Ma pauvre France, when wilt thou see That all thy allies are cheating thee?

What, though if thou with him wouldst go Who now overwhelms thee--an honest foe!

On German faith thou couldst reckon sure; With us, thou couldst rule the world secure, The Briton, the Russian, the Asian, bend.

Germany has never betrayed a friend!

[Ill.u.s.tration: decoration]

ANSWERING THE "CHANT OF HATE."

By BEATRICE M. BARRY.

French and Russian, they matter not, For England only your wrath is hot; But little Belgium is so small You never mentioned her at all-- Or did her graveyards, yawning deep, Whisper that silence was discreet?

For Belgium is waste! Ay, Belgium is waste!

She welters in the blood of her sons, And the ruins that fill the little place Speak of the vengeance of the Huns.

"Come, let us stand at the Judgment place,"

German and Belgian, face to face.

What can you say? What can you do?

What will history say of you?

For even the Hun can only say That little Belgium lay in his way.

Is there no reckoning you must pay?

What of the Justice of that "Day"?

Belgium one voice--Belgium one cry Shrieking her wrongs, inflicted by _GERMANY!_

In her ruined homesteads, her trampled fields, You have taken your toll, you have set your seal; Her women are homeless, her men are dead, Her children pitifully cry for bread; Perchance they will drink with you--"To the Day!"

Let each man construe it as he may.

What shall it be?

They, too, have but one enemy; Whose work is this?

Belgium has but one word to hiss-- _GERMANY!_