"Prisoners to a foe inhuman, Oh, but our hearts rebel;
Defenceless victims ye are, in claws of spite a prey.
* * * * * * *
Nor trouble we just Heaven that quick revenge be done
On Satan's chamberlains highseated in Berlin;
Their reek floats round the world on all lands neath the sun:
Tho' in craven Germany was no man found, not one
With spirit enough to cry Shame!—Nay but on such sin
Follows Perdition eternal ... and it has begun."
The Poet Laureate, in "The Times," November 4th, 1918.
"The letter [of reconciliation from Oxford Professors, etc., 'to their fellows in Germany'] is written ... with the recognition that we have both of us been provoked to 'animosities' which we desire to put aside ... The commonest objection was that the action was 'premature'—my own feeling being that of shame for having vainly waited so long in deference to political complications, and that shame was intolerably increasing ... It is undiscerning not to see that at a critical moment of extreme tension they [the German Professors] allowed their passion to get the better of them."
The Poet Laureate, in "The Times," October 27th, 1920.
[The author of the following lines fears that he has failed to do full justice to the metrical purity of the Master's craftsmanship.]
Such people as lacked the leisure to peruse
My scripture, one-and-a-quarter columns long
In The Times, may like me, as having the gift of song,
To prosodise succinctly my private views.
Did I cry Shame! in November, 1918,
On those who never cried Shame! on the lords of hell?
Rather the shame is mine who delayed to clean
My soul of a wrong that grew intolerable.
What if our German colleagues, our brothers-in-lore,