Love and Hate

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 315, 6 July 1945, Page 9

Love and Hate

NE of 3YL’s recent literary readings was entitled "A Chant of Love for England," written by a certain Mr. Cone and spoken by Henry Ainley. The interesting thing about this piece, not mentioned in the broadcast, but quite clear from internal evidence, was that it was intended as a reply to the notorious German ditty of World War I, the "Hymn of Hate." I have never been able to discobver how popular the latter was in the Germany of its day, but its remarkable lack of literary merit, together with the natural reaction of the English people to such an address, made it a never-failing source of humour. Perhaps the best example is that from a 1915 Punch. During one of the odd Christmas truces of the trench war, a German shouted across to the British to know if they would like some carol singing. Sentry: "Noa! Sing us soomthing foonny--sing us the ‘Ymn of ’Ate.’" But a better joke was that which befell the memory of Ernest Lissauer, the author, under Hitler. It was condemned and proscribed because of the imperfectly Aryan quality of Herr Lissauer’s corpuscles. In view of all this, Mr. Cone’s opus hardly has a chance. If you set out to write a serious reply to something treated as a pure joke, you are in grave danger of being regarded in the same light. Not that Lissauer’s Hymn does not achieve something of the heavy malevolence characteristic of the less likeable elements of German thought, and sagt haps it isn’t altogether funny.