The Torpedo.
By Katharine Drayton Mayrant Simons, Jr.
Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea—
(Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)—speed, cunning, and certainty.
And mailèd Mars, he blest us—but his blessing was most to me!
For the swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar,
And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar,
But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the war god's avatar!
Mine is the brain of thinking steel man made to match his own,
To guard and guide the death disks packed in the war head's hammered cone,
To drive the cask of the thin air flask as the gyroscope has shown.
My brother, the gun, shrieks o'er the sea his curse from the covered deck,
My brother, the mine, lies sullen-dumb, agape for the dreadnought's wreck,
I glide on the breath of my mother, Death, and my goal is my only check!
More strong than the strength of armored ships is the firing pin's frail spark,
More sure than the helm of the mighty fleet are my rudders to their mark,
The faint foam fades from the bright screw blades—and I strike from the under dark!
Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea—
(Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)—speed, cunning, and certainty.
And mailèd Mars, he blest us—but his blessing was most to me!
"God Punish England, Brother"
A New Hymn of Germany's Gospel of Hatred
[From Public Opinion, London, Feb. 5, 1915.]
The amazing outburst of hatred against England in Germany is responsible for a new form of greeting which has displaced the conventional formulas of salutation and farewell: "God punish England!" ("Gott strafe England!") is the form of address, to which the reply is: "May God punish her!" ("Gott mög'es strafen!")
"This extraordinary formula," says The Mail, "which is now being used all over Germany, is celebrated in a set of verses by Herr Hochstetter in a recent number of the well-known German weekly, Lustige Blätter. In its way this poem is as remarkable as Herr Ernst Lissauer's famous 'Hymn of Hate.'"
Among the prayers at Bruges Cathedral on the Kaiser's birthday was this German chant of hate, "God Punish England!"