BEYOND THE LIMIT.
[The German General Staff declares that for air-warfare there are still lacking international laws of any kind.]
When Peace lured the Powers to her House at the Hague
With promises specious and welcome though vague
Of a time when the terrors of war should lie hid
And the leopard fall headlong in love with the kid,
She drew up a set of Utopian rules
For the guidance of all the best bellicose schools.
Among the more notable schemes that she planned
She fashioned them bounds to their methods on land,
Taught the whole of them, too, how humane they could be
If a scrap should occur, as it might, on the sea—
In a word, pruned the pinions of war everywhere
Save the one place that war could fly into—the air.
But the Hun, he forswore what he vowed at her shrine,
And behaved like a fiend on the soil and the brine;
Then he turned to his Zepps, and remarked, "I can fly,
And she never laid down any law for the sky;
Here's a chance for some real dirty work to be done;"
And he did it by simply out-Hunning the Hun.