George Herbert Clarke, ed. (1873–1953). A Treasury of War Poetry. 1917.
Barry Pain
The Kaiser and God
L
God has done extremely well;
You with patronizing nod
Show that you approve of God.
Kaiser, face a question new—
This—does God approve of you?
Your first page of war adorn;
We on fouler things must look
Who read further in that book,
Where you did in time of war
All that you in peace forswore,
Where you, barbarously wise,
Bade your soldiers terrorize,
Women screen your firing line.
Villages burned down to dust,
Torture, murder, bestial lust,
Filth too foul for printer’s ink,
Crime from which the apes would shrink—
Strange the offerings that you press
On the God of Righteousness!
Sons or friends who serve your State,
Not that Iron Cross bestow,
But a cross of wood, and so—
So remind the world that you
Have made Calvary anew.
Look upon your hands, and there
Let that deep and awful stain
From the blood of children slain
Burn your very soul with shame,
Till you dare not breathe that Name
That now you glibly advertise—
God as one of your allies.
God is not your conscript yet;
You shall learn in dumb amaze
That His ways are not your ways,
That the mire through which you trod
Is not the high white road of God.
We, fighting to the end, commend our souls.