This poem, according to the Tägliche Rundschau, has already had the fate of every folksong—the version of it that was circulated among the Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on the piano.
As can be seen, therefore, the popularity of the song and its sentiment is by no means confined to Bavaria. It extends throughout the entire empire. Of hundreds of voices in the press, let us mention only one. Councilor of Justice Eschenbach of Berlin, in the Neue Gesellschaftliche Korrespondenz writes:
To honor our immortal heroes of Tsing-tau, and for the eternal shame and reproach of the scoundrel nations, Japan and England, I propose the following: Let the entire German press scorn in the next fourteen days to permit the words "Englishmen" or "Japanese" to appear in its columns and before the eyes of our people and of the entire civilized world; but instead, and invariably, let the word "Mörder" (murderers) be used for "Englishmen" and the word "Raubmörder" (highway assassins) for "Japanese." For no other name will there be hereafter among us for these greatest scoundrels of history. Thereby care will be taken both for the present throughout the world as far as the German language is heard and the results of the German spirit are known, and also for future historians, that the proper point of view shall be given throughout eternity for the condemnation of these murderous gangs accursed of God.
How different is the attitude of the Germans toward the French!
From a trench on the Aisne the following was written to the Heidelberger Zeitung:
Four hundred meters from where we lie, likewise intrenched, lie these wretched Englishmen, toward whom our people feel a holy fury, while they regard the battle with the Frenchmen, on the other hand, rather as a member of a university student corps regards an honorable duel. I, too, am entirely of that view.
The well-known psychologist, Prof. W. Hellpach of Karlsruhe, writes to the Berliner Tageblatt from the field:
The German soldier, too, does not hate the French people. Indeed, no one hates it. That is one of the most amazing phenomena of this war—our inner relation to France. Daily and hourly we hear words of disgust concerning the Russians, see gestures of hatred against the Britons—but toward France there is expressed amid all purely warlike antagonism a sort of sympathy resembling almost a smiling love for a naughty child which one feels obliged to punish because it has been guilty of stupid but very serious misbehavior.
We must force France to its knees—perhaps more completely than any of our other foes—but every one seems to hope that after this, after this last lesson, France will come to her senses and conclude a real peace with her German neighbor. Even among the common men in our ranks there has developed almost plant like a certain realization of a common duty of these two nations, a feeling of certain virtues which they, complementing one another, can preserve only by co-operation. But for the cultured ones among us, the idea of a hereditary feud has given way to a clear consciousness that there is a middle European Continental culture, supported by German, Austrian, and French genius in common, and that the preservation, development, and continuation thereof as against a hasty and superficial Anglization must be the task of the future. All, all now learn through experience that this matter with France is a woe of civilization (kulturjammer), and that now at last it is going to change, that it could change, if—
In the same newspaper the Berlin National Economist, Prof. Werner Sombart, writes: