Volume 2 — To Certain German Professors of Chemics

[From Punch, May 5, 1915.]

When you observed how brightly other tutors

Inspired the yearning heart of Youth;

How from their lips, like Pilsen's foaming pewters,

It sucked the fount of German Truth;

There, in your Kaiserlich laboratory,

"We, too," you said, "will find a task to do,

And so contribute something to the glory

Of God and William Two.

"Bring forth the stink-pots. Such a foul aroma

By arts divine shall be evoked

As will to leeward cause a state of coma

And leave the enemy blind and choked;

By gifts of culture we will work such ravages

With our superbly patriotic smells

As would confound with shame those half-baked savages,

The poisoners of wells."

Good! You have more than matched the rival pastors

That tute a credulous Fatherland;

And we admit that you are proved our masters

When there is dirty work in hand;

But in your lore I notice one hiatus:

Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot—

You've no corrosive in your apparatus

Can out that damnéd spot!

O.S.