Part 25

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the cannon fodder come Along their way to Calais, (God help the hearth and home) They'll do his will who taught them, on the earth and on the waves, Till land and sea are festering with their unnumbered graves.

The garrison and barrack and the fortress give them vent; They sweep, a herd of winter wolves, upon the flying scent; For all their deeds of horror they are told that death atones, And their master's harvest cannot spring till he has sowed their bones.

Into beasts of prey he's turned them; when they show their teeth and growl. The lash is buried in their cheeks; they're slaughtered if they howl; To their bloody Lord of Battles must they only bend the knee, For hard as steel and fierce as hell should cannon fodder be.

Scourge and curses are their portion, pain and hunger without end, Till they hail the yell of shrapnel as the welcome of a friend; They drink and burn and rape and laugh to hear the women cry, And do the devil's work to-day, but on the morrow die.

Drift! Drift! Drift! the cannon fodder go Upon their way to Calais, (God feed the carrion crow.) They've done his will who taught them that the Germans shall be slaves, Till land and sea are festering with their unnumbered graves.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

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VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG AND TRUTH

"Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas" HORACE

"Good Faith unstained, and Truth all-unadorned"

Nuda veritas: it was Horace who in a famous Ode first presented the figure of Truth thus. And whom did he make her companions and sisters? They were three, and their names were "Modesty," "Fair Dealing," and "Good Faith." The four sisters do indeed go together in a quadruple alliance and entente, and when one is flouted or estranged, the others are alienated and become enemies too.

The Germans were believed to be--some few still believe them to be--a "truth-loving nation." They had a passion, we were told, for truth, for accuracy, for scientific exactness. Theirs might be a blunt and brutal frankness, but they were at least downright and truthful.

Well, they first flouted Modesty--they bragged and blustered, bluffed and "bounded." They could not keep it up. They had to act. Fair Dealing went by the board. Then Good Faith became impossible, for, as this very von Bethmann-Hollweg declared, "Necessity knew no law." Now they have forsaken Truth. They must deceive their own people. The "lie" has entered into their soul. Never was so systematic a use made of falsehoods small and great.

But Truth expelled is not powerless. Naked, she is still not weaponless. She has her little "periscope," her magic mirror, which shows the liar himself, as well as the world, what he is like. And she has another weapon, as those who know their "Paradise Lost" will remember:

"Bright Ithuriel's lance Truth kindling truth where'er it glance"

It is not shown here, for it is invisible, but none the less potent. With it Truth can indeed "shame the devil." She not only shows what the liar is like outside, but reveals his inner hideousness, and actual shape, for all to see.

There are many sayings about Truth, and they are all awkward for the liar. "Truth will out," said a witty English judge, "even in an affidavit." It will out, even in a German Chancellor's dementi.

The most famous is

"Magna est veritas et praevalet"

"Great is Truth and she prevails," in the end.

Yes, "She is on the path, and nothing will stop her." She started on the hills of the little but free republic of Switzerland; she is slowly traversing the plains of the vast free republic of America. Her last contest will be over the Germans themselves.

HERBERT WARREN.

"Truth is on the path and nothing will stay her."]

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VAN TROMP AND DE RUYTER

A generation ago a little clique of wise men at Oxford patted themselves on the back for having discovered "The Historical Method." But the common people of all countries have always known it. The names of the great dead are not forgotten, nor yet the great things for which they stood. There may be no strict liturgy for the ancestor worship of the West, but that worship is a simple fact, and it is a thing that timorous politicians would do well to remember. Here Raemaekers appeals to his countrymen to regard their past, to be worthy of the great seamen who took the Dutch fleet up the Medway, and lashed brooms to the mast-head of the ships that swept the sea clear of British enemies.

The Dutch were fighting for their liberty then. Great Britain is fighting for liberty in Europe to-day--and for Dutch liberty to boot. The enemy of all liberty uses Holland as a short cut whereby her pirates of the air can get more quickly to their murder work in England. Would the hero ancestors, of whom the Dutch so boast, have tolerated this indignity? The artist seer supplies the answer.

Note the mixture of the ghostly and the real in this vivid and vivacious drawing. But if it is easy to see through the faint outlines of the sailor spirits, it is easier for these gallant ghosts to see through the unrealities of their descendants' fears and hesitations. The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise and figures. Mark particularly Van Tromp's stiffened forefinger on his staff.