To Certain German Professors of Chemics
[From Punch, May 5, 1915.]
When you observed how brightly other tutors
Inspired the yearning heart of Youth;
How from their lips, like Pilsen's foaming pewters,
It sucked the fount of German Truth;
There, in your Kaiserlich laboratory,
"We, too," you said, "will find a task to do,
And so contribute something to the glory
Of God and William Two.
"Bring forth the stink-pots. Such a foul aroma
By arts divine shall be evoked
As will to leeward cause a state of coma
And leave the enemy blind and choked;
By gifts of culture we will work such ravages
With our superbly patriotic smells
As would confound with shame those half-baked savages,
The poisoners of wells."
Good! You have more than matched the rival pastors
That tute a credulous Fatherland;
And we admit that you are proved our masters
When there is dirty work in hand;
But in your lore I notice one hiatus:
Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot—
You've no corrosive in your apparatus
Can out that damnéd spot!
O.S.
Seven Days of War East and West
Fighting of the Second Week in May on French and Russian Fronts.
[By a Military Expert of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
The sinking of the Lusitania has, for the week ended May 15, so completely absorbed the attention of the press and the interest of the public that the military operations themselves have not received the notice that otherwise would have been awarded them. The sinking of this ship, with the delicate diplomatic situation between Germany and the United States which the act brought about, is not a military or naval operation as such, and comments on it have no place in this column. At the same time there is an indirect effect of the drowning of hundreds of British citizens which will have a very direct bearing on Britain's military strength and policy.
The British public is notably hard to stir, are slow to act, and almost always underrate their adversary. In almost every war, from 1775 down to and including the South African war, England, with a self-assurance that could only be based on ignorance of true conditions, has started with only a small force, and it has been only when this force has been defeated and used up that the realization of the true needs of the situation has dawned. Then, and then only, has recruiting been possible at a pace commensurate with the necessity.
In the Boer war, for example, every one in England, official and civilian, believed that 30,000 men would be more than enough to defeat the South African burghers. Yet ten times 30,000 British soldiers were operating in the Transvaal and Orange Free State before the war ended.
In the present conflict Lord Kitchener himself admits that there are many times the number of British soldiers in France than was thought would be necessary when war was declared. And even up to May 6 the British public was not thoroughly aroused. Many of the peasants in the back counties hardly believed the war was a reality. Recruiting was slow, there was but little enthusiasm, and Lord Haldane's thinly veiled hint that a draft might soon become necessary was almost unnoticed.
But the sinking of the Lusitania has brought the war home to England as nothing else has or could have done, and all England is aflame with a bitterness against Germany which is already increasing the flow of recruits and cannot but add to the fighting efficiency of the men now at the front. The effect will be far-reaching throughout the British Empire, and will do much to solve the problem which faced the organizers of Great Britain's forces of how to get sufficient volunteers to swell the volume of the French expeditionary force and to replace the casualties.
To turn to the direct military operations in the various theatres of war, no week since last Fall has witnessed more important activities or offensive movements conducted on such a scale. On both western and eastern fronts truly momentous actions involving great numbers of men have been under way, and though not yet concluded, have advanced so far as to give a reasonable basis for estimating the results.