["The municipality of Rothausen has decided to present to the collection of metal which is being made in Germany its monument of Kaiser WILLIAM THE FIRST."—Reuter.]
Heavy is Armageddon's price
And loud the call to sacrifice;
All stuff composed of likely metals—
Door-knockers, hairpins, cans and kettles—
Into the War's insatiate melting-pot
Has to be shot.
That was a hard and bitter blow
When first your church-bells had to go—
Those saintly bells that rang carillons
While in the maw of happy millions
Pure joy and gratitude to Heaven thrilled
For babies killed.
It hurt your Christian hearts to melt
A source of faith so keenly felt;
And now (worse sacrilege than that) you
Propose to take yon regal statue,
That godlike effigy, and make a gun
Of WILLIAM ONE!
What will He say when you reduce
His Relative to cannon-juice?
The prospect must be pretty rotten
If thus the Never-To-Be-Forgotten
Is treated, like the corpses of your friends,
For useful ends.
I hear the ALL-HIGHEST mutter, "Ha!
They're liquefying Grandpapa!
The nation's needs, that grow acuter,
Count sacred things as so much pewter;
Even my holy crown may go some day
Down the red way!"
O.S.
LE SÉNÉGALAIS.
Samédou Kieta sat up in bed with a child's primer open before him. "M—A," he spelled. Then, after an incredibly long time of patient puzzling, "M—A—MA. Oui, MA. Y a bon!" and embraced the whole ward in one wide white grin before turning to the next syllable, "M—A—N." Once more the puzzled frown on the black face, once more the whispered hints from neighbouring beds, once more the triumph of perseverance, "M—A—N—MAN!" He was just enjoying his success and chanting his pidgin-French paean of happiness, "Y a bon! Y a bon!" when Soeur Antoinette paused by his bed. "Très bien, Sidi," she said, "mais il faut les mettre ensemble," and with her white finger she guided his black one back to the first syllable.
Here was difficulty indeed! He knew all right that M—A—N was MAN, but what was M—A? And when, after intense effort, he re-discovered that M—A spelled MA, it was only to find that he had forgotten what M—A—N spelled. At last the other wounded could contain themselves no longer, and the ward was filled with laughing shouts of "Maman!" in which Samédou joined most happily.
Presently the English nurse passed the negro's bed, and he at once turned to another branch of learning. "Good morning," he said, and, when she smiled back a greeting to him, he added, "T'ank you," and looked proudly round him at his fellow-patients as who should say, "See how we understand one another, she and I!"
During a sojourn of many months in the hospital Samédou invariably met the sufferings he was called upon to endure with an uncomplaining fortitude, which might have seemed due to insensibility had not the staff had ample proof that his silence was the silence of a fine courage. On one occasion a set of photographs of the hospital was in preparation, and when the salle de pansements had to be taken the photographer decided that the best lay figure for his mise-en-scène would be a black man, as a striking contrast to the white raiment of the staff. So Samédou was carried in on a stretcher and laid upon the table. Unfortunately the surgeons and nurses were so occupied with the business of placing things in the best light that no one realised that the poor Senegalese did not understand the purpose of the preparations, and when the English nurse was called to take up her position she noticed the hands of Samédou Kieta clutching the sides of the table and his black eyes rolling in a sea of white.
She at once ran to the nearest ward. "Quelqu'un voudrait bien me prêter une photographie?" she asked, and a dozen eager hands offered her the treasured groups of la famille. Taking one at random she returned to Samédou and held it before his eyes. "Nous aussi," she said, "toi, moi, le Major, l'infirmier."