The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

“You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done?...I bade one of my officers procure for me as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants in South Africa on both sides, and of the actual position of the opposing forces. With the figures before me, I worked out what I considered to be the best plan of campaign under the circumstances, and submitted it to my General Staff for their criticism. Then I despatched it to England, and that document, likewise, is among the State papers at Windsor Castle, awaiting the severely impartial verdict of history.” —The Kaiser, in the Daily Telegraph of October 28, 1908.

“The Kaiser told Mr. Hale that King Edward had been hounding and humiliating him for two years, and he was exasperated; that Germany was the paramount power in Europe, and England was trying to neutralize her power; that he (the Emperor) held France in the hollow of his hand, and Russia was of no account since the Japanese War.

“That if a pan-European war were inevitable the sooner it came the better, because he was now ready, and was tired of the suspense; that Great Britain had been a decadent nation ever since her victory over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, because her cause was unrighteous and ungodly, and Divine judgment was bound eventually to overtake the powerful nation that waged such a war; that the Anglo-Japanese alliance was an iniquitous alliance against all the white races. England was proving absolutely her faithlessness as a Christian nation.”

—New York World, November 22, 1908.

280

“Why will you never trust me? What do my actions say?
When your generals flagged and loitered, when your African wealth was at stake,
I sent for the facts and the figures—devoted the best of a day
To settling for Roberts and Buller the road that their troops should take.

“In the archives of Windsor Castle you will find my maps and my plans.
History will do me justice: the ages that come will show
That my heart was one with England's, one if ever a man's
Strong heart beat for England, in that dread ‘Black Week’ of her woe.

“Yes: I am getting indignant. Too long your papers have sneered
And I lose at last all patience. I bubble and boil and chafe.
When Russia and France were plotting, it was I who interfered:
And I wired to Windsor Castle, to tell them England was safe.

281

“My ships for the far Pacific with purest friendly intent
I am scheming and building and fitting. Who knows what Japan may say
With her guns to the old-world nations, the Powers of the Continent?
The thunder of German broadsides may change the fate of a fray.”

So he declared, the Kaiser. But then to the West he turned
And he spoke in the ear of the writer, the Yankee editor, Hale.
And these are the thoughts he uttered, a lesson for all concerned,
And once for all with a vengeance the Kaiser lifted the veil.

“Hounded, pestered and flouted by England's Monarch, I feel
That the moment is ripe for decision. If war in the end must be
I would rather suspense were over, I am ready to draw the steel:

282

I believe in the Zeppelin air-ship, though England trusts in the sea.

“If all the nations in fury arise and collide and ignite
All that I ask for reward of putting the match to the flame
Will be Egypt, poor little Egypt: this, and the mad delight
Of feeling myself a war-god, a giant force in the game.

“Bismarck humbled the Frenchmen. What if a greater thing
Looms and rises before me—to prison no Emperor now
But to darken the splendour of England, to hunt and humble a King?
To chase and harry the hunter, to steal from the topmost bough?

“What was the glory of Bismarck, compared to the glory of him
Who, seeing the Transvaal farmers by England oppressed, downtrod,
Shall arise as a Priest and a Prophet, majestic, immaculate, grim,
The sword, the revolver and rifle, the scourge and the dagger of God?”

283

So in the month of November, with double and petulant tongue,
On an Englishman, then on a Yankee, the Kaiser foisted his freaks.
And this was the nations' comment, the judgment of old and of young:
“Listen and learn from the Kaiser. Believe not a word that he speaks.”

December, 1908.