THE ARMAGEDDIAD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 4157, 7 February 1916, Page 5

THE ARMAGEDDIAD.

The German idol is a great blonde brute, ' , With pickelhaube, bayonet, and StibrG Whose destiny it is to hack and shoot, And when he covets something from his neighbor To trample on him with a Hessian boot—— . A god not found in Goethe or in Weber, Or Humperdinck and all that generation Which fluorished before Germans were a nation. Those were the days when Germany was mystical, But Treitschke has put Kant quite out of date, ' And Nietzsche, savage, mad, and egotistical, Has wiped Idealism off the slate. Her present creed, which I might call Mailed-fistical, " Is, in a word, that Germany is grea And that by force or fraud, sooner or later, She means to be considerably greater.

It is a good enough religion when You are in a position to enforce it; But has this serious flaw, that other men Are frequently unwilling to endorse it; . And though the sword is mightier than the pen When adequately backed with foot and horse, it May sometimes happen that you 11 meet defiance From irritated neighbors in alliance.

This is exactly what the Germans did— • . . They swaggered round so much m 'shining metal, That though their neighbors did as they were bid At first, the habit soon began to nettle, Until all Europe cried, “We must g©t rid _ ■ Of this aggressive Super-man, and settle— \ Merely to live and, not from any malice— The hash of Mr. Deutschland über Alios.”