1914- The Days of Hope by Lyn MacDonald

Author:Lyn MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241972199
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

‘Got mittens, have you?’ shouted a grinning Tommy in the caption to another popular cartoon, pointing his rifle at a quailing German soldier and adding as he pulled the trigger, ‘Well, here’s socks!’ It was thought to be a splendid joke and for a time the slang phrase giving the Germans socks had quite a vogue on the Home Front.

But, jokes apart, the idea of the Kaiser invoking God was too much to be borne with equanimity. On the first day of the Battle of Mons, the German Crown Prince, who commanded his father’s Fifth Army, had enjoyed a local success and thwarted a French counter-attack in the area around Verdun. The Kaiser’s fulsome telegram to his daughter-in-law had been published and was picked up by the world press. I rejoice with you in Wilhelm’s first victory. How magnificently God supported him! Coming on top of the news of disasters and atrocities this blasphemy aroused furious indignation. Feeling that no prose could do it justice, the versesmith Barry Pain dashed off a poem to slap the Kaiser down.

Led by Wilhem, as you tell,

God has done extremely well;

You with patronising nod

Show that you approve of God.

Kaiser, face a question new –

This – Does God approve of you?

Villages burned down to dust,

Torture, murder, bestial lust,

Filth too foul for printers’ ink,

Crimes from which the apes would shrink.

Strange the offerings that you press

On the God of Righteousness!

Impious braggart, you forget,

God is not your conscript yet.

You shall learn in dumb amaze

That His ways are not your ways,

That the mire through which you trod

Is not the high white road of God –

To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls,

We – fighting to the end – commend our souls.

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