"GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!"

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1915, Page 10

"GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!"

THE THOROUGHNESS OF GERMANY'S HATE PLAGUE. —— i 1 (By Edward Lyell Fox in the American Magazine). "Gott straf uns—wenn wir England schonen." (God punish us—if we spare England). That is the German pledge. It is the oath of a'nation—one nation against another. It is a sincere oath—appallingly sincere. They lutvc made for this hate a ritual. About it they have written their stories and poems and songs. I have read them, by Thoma, Emanuel and Scher. Their clever illustrators lave drawn it into their pictures. I lave seen them, by' Schulz, Heine, and Thon. Their singers, their actors, their preachers, have spread it through the nation. I have heard them, Berila, Bouna and Schmidt. It is a. wonderful hate, almost beautiful in its simple sincerity. They say they have one foe and one alone—England. Since England declared war this hate has been curdling. It has become now to Germany as a sacred thing. They are calling on the Almighty to punish England. They are He strike them if England they sp;»re—Gott Strafe England! A. translation of that is, God punish Kngland. But'that is merely translating the word*. Their implication is vast. They inply far more than mere punishment. They curdle every German breast. They produce a red prayer: God tear our unholy foe to tatters! "Oh, God, give us strength to rend the British Empire as we would rend aai old coat, aud cast it away! I have heard the three tenible words so many times that I have come to think of (hem as the sound by which I Bhall identify Cerinany—and *I have heard the grumble of her guns on her battle fronts: Gott Strafe England;! It is their morning salutation. It is never spoken with levity. I heard men exchange it as if they were pledging anew a solemn oath. I heard tlie waiters :n the Adlon sa,y it, each to the other. I heard it in jlunchen, when a custpmer came in a step to buy. I heard it in the hospitals at Glewitz, a wounded man muttered it to Dr. Sanders —and hia wound was from a Russian .fun! At Commines wjten, back from the trenches, the Bavarians awoke from their pile of straw, they pledged the day to Gott SltaSe England.' Perhaps the-, soldiers have been told to "say this, just as they have been | drilled to sing while on the martin. I do not knoxr. Ido know, though, that I have been all over Germany and all along her baitle fronts, east and west, and all over I have felt the bate. It matters not the time of day nor the puice; you can be in the cheapest cafe or in some drawing-room, of Berlin, at an offieers' mess or a flelid kifcphen, and you have but to rnerrliion the 'word England, and instantly it seemfe as though the Germans go mad. Now, one who has >»ot lfsfcd arnong jb/>*t 42Jrsisr tills war canapt^undKretaed

.his. Obviously there are reasons for such a condition. Whether they are just reasons or net is not for me to say. Let us see the German grievance, • the reason of this hatred. I shall quote the words of Major cvon Herwarth, one I of the Great General Staff, who, by the i way, both knows and loves America.

"Those Americans who do neither know nor understand Germany," says Major von Herwarth, "arc in the majority. They have, anyhow, little or no feeling for us. It is useless to cry about spilled milk. We cannot alter the fact that we are more or less disliked. That is a matter of taste, not of justice. But in the spirit of fairness, justice may be and ought to be given even to one who is disliked. Perhaps we Germans have been committing a grievous fault by never trying sufficiently to be understood abroad. The Press campaign against us, now livelier than ever, seems to be an implement of war. "England is jealous of our commerce. We do not have week-end parties. We work. We become too powerful in trade. We disturb the British peace of mind, therefore Britain must be rid of ( this distrubance. We saw with regret that our relations with England were becoming unsatisfactory. There was no rhyme or reason why we should not have come to a good solid understanding. We tried for it hard, but in vain. England turned to France and Russia, and, it was a remarkable coincidence that ever since the Triple Entente was complete our neighbors in the east and in the west adopted an attitude against us that grew more and more hostile. We knew that the struggle was coming and we were prepared. But, more than anything, we resent the British hypocrisy over the neutrality of Belgium—this from the nation that made her empire by go bib-ling up little countries all over the world! You sec, we cannot think of such things and remain calm. Germany is only one thousandth's part of the surface of the globe. Wc have worked hard on this soil and we live well. Aud by our hard work we are rivalling England's commerce, which means that we must go. That is, we simply must not exist as a powerful nation because England wants no powerful nation but herself." Now that opinion is as if Germany's seventy millions could speak; it breeds —Gott Strafe England! I saw the spirit of Germany.one Sun•lay nifeht, Berlin's night, at the Winter Gardens. Settled at our table on the Terrassc, we gazed out on the audience, three thousand people that night, three thousand extravagant men and women .seated in pleasure. Above, a canopied heaven gleamed with star lire, as false as a palace effect attempted in red and gold gaudiness, an over-decorated, pillared room with obsequious liveried ser vants. Three thousand men and women, the Berlin that last summer knew, open love-making, ogling, wine-buying! All around us on the Terrassc glasses clinked; a palish waiter brought two young girls to our table who smiled and then contemptuously went their way. The music struck up; you heard snatches of the "Puppchen" song. And slowly it began to appall mc; and I thought of that dreary eastern land where men burrowed like animals in the frozen ground, holding the Russian hordes at bay; and I

thought of that desolation in the west, where\amid the black ruin 9 of villages more Germans held off more hostile hordes, and almost as in a dream you looked about at the gaudy decorations, the gaudy crowd; aud the irony of it gripped tight. War!—and this was a Berlin night. . . . But that was before I knew their spirit. Little bells jingled, the audience left the promenades and settled in their seats, the well-fed, well-wined audience, in which you had come to believe no big emotion was possible. The lights went out; the spangled canopy of sky seemed a little less unreal; the curtains were drawn; a performer appeared, bowing, on the stage. His name has passed me; but I can still hear his voice. He began a scene from "Othello," the scene where lago lies. And then dramatically he stopped and in a moment you were struck dumb with the dramatic value of that pause; and then again he spoke, but the words were not ShaXe3peare's: French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot. A murmur was audible . You were conscious that all about you people had moved. 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 forgo our hate. We love all, but a single hate— We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe, and one alone— ENGLAND! With every word you had felt the gathering tenseness, and now it broke. You heard fists crashing on table tops, the pounding of feet—"Audi!" "Audi!" "Jawohl!" You sensed the awful vitalness of it; as by a miracle those three thousand people had changed. Pleasure had fled. I saw that, in the drawn lace of the man at the next table; a smiling girl sought to pat his hand; roughly he iluvw her aside. The actor was speaking again. Hate by water and hale 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, Wc have one foe, and one alone— And the actor paused, and his three thousand hearers flung back at him the word, uttered it with a sour savagery that must have curdled their hearts, shrieked that word, flushed women and men jumped to their feet, beside themselves all, thundering all, in a single hoarse burst—••ENGLAND!" You shivered. Thereafter the three , thousand meant something more than j followers of pleasure, although you know it was pleasure alone which had brought them there. But later, when two hui'- [ oons took the stage and the audience tousled, and the buffoons went the way !

of the wings, and the audience lost itself in the sensuality of "art," scantily drap- , ed, posing women, you began to doubt if that outcry had been real; if, maybe, you had over-estimated the sincerity of the cry against England, or if it might not be the actor and the wine hia hearers had. drunk. And for a few days thereafter I was in doubt; until—of a night when I stood on ihe Potsdam station waiting for a hospital train to come in. As the train crept into the great station, as a wounded thing might creep to shelter, I entered a car. On each scat a form covedcr with clean blankets lay its length, and on the floor between, another was spread out. There Wi.s little air in the compartment I heard a man on the floor give a low moan, and then his whole body twitched. Feet sounded in the passage and two ■ stretcher-bearers came to take him I away. I heard him moaning until they I must have left the car. The man on the seat at my left was sleeping—sleeping, ' you thought, the sleep of drugs—but the j other soldier was awake. He wanted j to know the latest news: Had they j taken Paris? His wound, he explained, | was a trifle, just two shrapnel balls in his leg. He would soon he well again. j And while I waited for those silent I men with the stretchers, I listened to I the man with the Russian shrapnel in ' his leg. From him I would get the truth; I from him I would learn how men sicken with war, that the outburst in the Winj ter Garden and that among the ranks of the recruits were shallow, ami that hate dies in travail. "Yes," he was saying, "a month, perhaps, and then I'll be all right again." "And you'll pay your score with the Russians ?" I asked, lie moved the blanket in a gesture. "Xo, Hiudeulmrg will have crushed litem by then.'.' And he seemed to brighten. "I'll be sent west, 1 guess, I'll get my chance at the English," "Your chance?" 1 echoed. "Do vou all want to light the English';" "My brother," he said sluwlv, "was killed by I hem. My wife has 'written ! me of it. She has been told that they surrendered and then lived, those English who killed my brother," and his voice grew bitter. "They all cheat and lie. even fighting." And as I looked at his poor helpless . body, unable to stand on its torn leg, as I in his tired bloodshot eyes I saw the j hate Hint burned deep, I knew then why the poet had sung his hymn, for Hate of the hammer, and hate of the crown, Hate of seventy millions, choking I down, ' is truth. j It is true, this Gott Strafe England, pitifully true. When I left Berlin in | March, they had gone in their hatred to oven further lengths. They had published a book, "Gott Strafe England!" with a cover showing John Bull and his money bag being roasted in hell. You ! know the Red Cross stamps, that you buy at Christmas time to paste on the 1 back of your letters? They are selling 1 hate stamps in Germany, and are sealing i their letters with them. They read, "Gott Strafe England!" They arc red and ! black stamps, and the colouring means

something. The black is for hate and the red is for blood. And they greet each other 'm the morning, the men of Berlin with these words of hatred on their lips. They pass it through the day, and on the battlefields it is a salutation. I walked through the front line trenches in Arras. I saw cut in the dirt wall the legend of hate—Gott Strafe England. "I thought the French were in Arras?" I asked the soldier. "Are there any Englishmen with them?" "Xo," he said, "hut that does not matter. You see, the French are England's fools and the Russians are England's fools and we have no quarrel with them. We only feel sorry for them for being fools. But England wo hate,"—and ho forgot we were talking in English,—"und, by Gott, we smash her!"