AUSTRIAN "STRAFE" SONGS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 143, 17 June 1916, Page 10

AUSTRIAN "STRAFE" SONGS

Ritter yon Drombowski, on© of Austria's best-known dramatists, has published a book of war verses, in which, in spite of his high sounding Polish name, he glorifies Germany and all her works. Only one poem has any interest for the English reader. It is entitled " England's Flag," and deals with certain occasions on which our ships a-re sJlagect to have coirunitteid outrages at sea while treacherously sailing under a foreign flag. Here is a prose rendering of some of the Ritter'is verses :—

" Gott strife Bn.gla.ftd.! This was the cry for revenge which ran through our land. .And God heard the cry and punished your cowardly shanw.

'.'The proud h'oii of England's cysat-of-itTiuß is led by a ring in his nose. Huclisters lead him. And England's flag, crowned^ with fanie, is nothing more than a. rirlicnlous and miserable

" Under foreign colours a, cowardly band of robbers hide themselves, pale and timid. Take my advice',• and decorsiij your masts with women's frocks or babies' wrappings.

"And so heaven has granted what we ha.vc a&Jsed. . Yen yourselres'.' hs.v© shamdessiy trodden m t-h? dust t'a? sign and token of your ■govtxk"-