KAISER & CO.
Der Kaiser auf der Vaterland
Und Gott on high, all dings gommand,
Ve two, ach, don'd you understandt?
Meinself—und Gott.
He reigns in heafen, und always shall,
Und mein own embire don'd vas small;
Ein noble bair, I dink you call
Meinself—und Gott.
While some mens sing der power divine,
Mein soldiers sing der "Wacht am Rhein,"
Und drink der healt in Rhenish wein
Auf me—und Gott.
Dere's France dot swaggers all aroundt,
She ausgespieldt—she's no aggoundt,
To mooch ve dinks she don'd amoundt,
Meinself—und Gott.
She vill not dare to fight again,
But if she should, I'll show her blain,
Dot Elsass und (in French) Lorraine
Are mein—und Gott's.
Von Bismarck vas a man of might,
Und dought he vas glean oud auf sight,
But, ach! he vas nicht goot to fight
Mit me—und Gott.
Ve knock him like ein man auf straw,
Ve let him know whose vill vas law,
Und dot ve don'd vould standt his jaw,
Meinself—und Gott.
Ve send him oudt in big disgrace,
Ve giff him insuldt to his face,
Und put Caprivi in his place,
Meinself—und Gott.
Und ven Caprivi get svelled headt,
Ve very bromptly on him set,
Und toldt him to get up und get—
Meinself—und Gott.
Dere's grandma dinks she's nicht shmall beer,
Mit Boers und dings she interfere;
She'll learn none runs dis hemisphere
But me—und Gott.
She dinks, goot frau, some ships she's got,
Und soldiers mit der sgarlet coat,
Ach! we could knock dem—pouf! like dot,
Meinself—und Gott.
Dey say dat badly fooled I vas
At Betersburg by Nicholas,
Und dat I act shust like ein ass,
Und dupe, Herr Gott!
Veil, maybe yah und maybe nein,
Und maybe czar mit France gombine,
To take dem lands about der Rhein
From me—und Gott.
But dey may try dat leedle game,
Und make der breaks; but all der same,
Dey only vill ingrease der fame
Auf me—und Gott.
In dimes auf peace, brebared for wars,
I bear der helm und spear auf Mars,
Und care nicht for den dousandt czars,
Meinself—und Gott.
In short, I humor efery whim,
Mit aspect dark und visage grim,
Gott pulls mit me und I mit him—
Meinself—und Gott.
KAISER & CO.
The war which recently shook this planet and in whose backwash we are still struggling is habitually alluded to as the greatest in all history, but, so far as this country is concerned, the war with Spain, comparatively insignificant as it was, surpassed it in at least two respects: the World War inspired no poetry to equal William Vaughan Moody's "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," nor has it (to date) produced any sensation comparable with that which burst upon these United States on the night of April 21, 1899, when Captain Joseph Bullock Coghlan, of the cruiser Raleigh, rose at a banquet given in his honor at the Union League Club in New York, and recited "Hoch! der Kaiser."
The mists of the intervening years have dimmed the memory of that incident, and probably few of the younger generation ever heard of it; but it held column after column of frontpage space for days and days, rocked the country with mighty laughter, nearly involved us in a serious international complication, and brought forth frenzied frothings in the German-American press.
This last circumstance might have given thoughtful men to pause but for the comfortable theory every one had in those days that we were all loyal Americans, brothers living together in this land of plenty, ready to defend it against aggression from any quarter and to die for it if need be. Also there was another comfortable theory quite generally held that the Germans were a peaceful and home-loving race, thoroughly good-hearted and inoffensive, and that they were as much amused with their saber-rattling, shining-armored Kaiser as we were. Most of us looked upon the Kaiser as a joke; certainly few of us suspected that his people really regarded him as a demigod, and that many thousands of those people were even then living in the United States, under the protection of its laws and its flag.
The cruiser Raleigh, with Captain Coghlan in command, had belonged to Admiral Dewey's squadron which steamed into Manila Bay on the first of May, 1898, and sank the Spanish fleet. It had fired the first shot of the battle, and it was the first ship of that squadron to be sent home. A mighty welcome greeted it when it entered New York harbor, and on the evening of April 21, the Union League Club gave a banquet to its officers, headed by Captain Coghlan. It was an elaborate affair, with Elihu Root as toastmaster and Chauncey Depew as one of the speakers. There were many courses, a great popping of corks, and every one was very happy. Mr. Root made the first speech and then called upon Captain Coghlan. That gallant officer at first demurred on the ground that he had never made a speech and didn't know how, but at last he was prevailed upon to rise and tell the story of the battle. That story, of course, his hearers already knew, but what they did not know (since Admiral Dewey had kept it out of the dispatches) and heard for the first time was the story of the insolent behavior of the German squadron in Manila harbor, and its interference with Admiral Dewey's blockade orders. The climax of the tale, as reported in the papers next day, ran something like this:
The German squadron was in command of Admiral von Deiderick, and one night one of his staff officers, approaching the Olympia in a launch and refusing to stop when challenged, was fired upon and very nearly sunk. He climbed the Olympia's ladder in a state of excitement thoroughly Teutonic.
"How dare you fire upon us?" he demanded. "We fly the German flag!"
"Those flags can be bought anywhere for a dollar and a half a yard," retorted Dewey. "Go back and tell your admiral that the slightest infraction of any rule will mean but one thing—war! If your people are really ready for war with the United States, they can have it right now!"
"After that," Captain Coghlan added, "the Germans didn't breathe more than three times consecutively without asking permission."
Now, of course, this was after-dinner history rather than the sober article; it had a foundation in fact, but it was dressed up to suit the occasion—with the reference to the wholesale price of black, white and red bunting, for example. But it brought that audience to its feet with a wild roar of approval; there were three cheers for Captain Coghlan, and then everybody joined with acclamations in the toast to Admiral Dewey which Captain Coghlan proposed. Then the other officers gave short talks and then somebody at the speakers' table called upon Captain Coghlan to recite "Hoch! der Kaiser."
Again he demurred, saying it might give offense to some of the guests, but when everybody clapped and cheered and yelled for him to go ahead, he rose again and started on the soon-to-be-famous lines:
Der Kaiser auf der Vaterland
Und Gott on high, all dings gommand,
Ve two, ach, don'd you understandt?
Meinself—und Gott.
They were not famous then—very few of Captain Coghlan's audience had ever heard them before; and while they evoked roars of laughter, it was not until the poem appeared in the papers next day that its rare satirical quality was really appreciated. It was so unfamiliar that there was considerable confusion about it. Some of the papers said it was a song and that the captain had sung it—an aspersion which he indignantly denied. Nobody knew where it had come from. The Staats-Zeitung, in a boiling article, asserted that it "was composed by a Bowery bard as he lay before Manila," and gave this account of the incident:
"After Captain Coghlan, Dewey's nephew, Lieutenant Winder spoke, but he was interrupted by some Jewish persons who asked Captain Coghlan to sing the mocking song, 'Hoch! der Kaiser.' Captain Coghlan, he of the eyeglasses, who could not see a German warship a thousand yards, sang the stupid, jeering song—in the Union League Club, amid loud applause." And the Staats-Zeitung went on to denounce the captain as impudent and his stories as absurd and brutal. He had been disrespectful to the Kaiser!
It is worth noting that Captain Coghlan never retracted a word of his story, merely explaining that he had told it in order that justice might be done to Admiral Dewey, and that half the truth about the battle of Manila was not yet known to the American people. He added that he knew nothing about the poem, except that he had heard it in the East, where it had been very popular among the men of his ship. He was kept busy for a while explaining other things to the Navy Department, and the Navy Department was also busy explaining, and the country at large (with the Germanophile exceptions aforesaid) was very happy over the affair.
The day after the banquet, the German Ambassador, Dr. von Holleben, called on Secretary Hay at the State Department. What transpired was never disclosed, but the avowed attitude of the German Government was that it could not overlook so gross and public an affront to the Emperor. Two days later, a cablegram from Berlin stated that Secretary Hay had expressed to Dr. von Holleben his strong disapproval of Captain Coghlan's conduct. On April 27, Dr. von Holleben was received by President McKinley, who informed him that the Navy Department had administered a reprimand to Captain Coghlan, and Von Holleben expressed himself as satisfied. The German press was also satisfied, but ventured the hope that there would never be another such incident to jeopardize the kindly feelings of Germany toward the United States. The last reference to Captain Coghlan is in the papers of October 1, which tell of a second reception given in his honor at the Union League Club, at which he was warmly received.
The above facts have been gleaned from the public press. A letter to the Navy Department, asking for some information about the incident, brought the following remarkable response:
"A thorough search has been made of the official files of the department, including Admiral Coghlan's personal jacket, and no record whatever can be found of the incident of which you speak. I should have answered you before this, but we have been diligently trying to trace down some dim recollections of the incident as reported by some of the older persons in the Navy Department. I am sorry to say we have been able to find nothing, however."
Sic transit! Or perhaps Captain Coghlan was not reprimanded, after all!
But neither Wilhelm II, nor the German Ambassador, nor Secretary Hay, nor the Navy Department, nor all of them combined could suppress "Hoch! der Kaiser." That masterpiece had been lifted suddenly into immortality. It had found a fit interpreter at a supremely fit moment, and its fame was secure. Yet nobody knew the name of its author, or where it had first appeared. It was just one of those fugitive poems, those nameless orphans, which drift through the columns of the press, their origin shrouded in mystery, and which gradually fade from sight unless preserved for posterity by some such accident as had befallen this one.
Rodney Blake, which was a pseudonym used by William Montgomery Clemens, included it in a collection of After-dinner Verse, and for a while he was credited with being its author. Then somebody claimed that it had been written by a wandering newspaperman named A. M. R. Gordon; but presently it was discovered that that, too, was a pseudonym. But it was the pseudonym of the real author, Alexander Macgregor Rose, and the whole story at last came out of Montreal, Canada, where Rose had written the poem during the last year of his life, and where he had died.
It is an everlasting pity that "Hoch! der Kaiser" does not belong to American literature, but it was written by a Scotchman, and first appeared in the columns of the Montreal Daily Herald.
Alexander Macgregor Rose was born in the village of Tomantoul, South Banffshire, Scotland, on August 7, 1846. After attending the village school, he went to the grammar school at Aberdeen, where in 1863 he gained the Macpherson bursary of twenty pounds. He entered the University of Aberdeen the same year, and finished his arts course in the spring of 1867. During the next three years he was classical master at boarding schools in different parts of England, and in 1870 was appointed master of the Free Church school at Gairlock, Rosshire. Soon afterwards he began the study of divinity, and in 1875 was licensed as a minister. His reputation seems to have been excellent, for almost immediately, on September 9, 1875, he was ordained as minister of the Free Church of Evie and Randall, at Orkney.
Up to this point his life reads like a chapter out of the biography of any eminent Scotsman: an orderly progress, through school and college, to the natural and inevitable haven of the church; studious and laborious years leading to the ministry at the age of twenty-nine—a good age, neither so young as to be foolish, nor so old as to feel oneself slipping behind in the battle of life; a position respected and influential, assuring a comfortable livelihood, and thoroughly congenial to one of scholarly tastes. So the future of the Reverend Alexander Macgregor Rose seemed to stretch fair and straight before him, along a predestined and thoroughly Presbyterian path.
But four years later he cast all this aside, changed his name to Gordon, forswore the ministry, and became a wanderer upon the face of the earth.
No one knew why—at least no one in America. In Orkney, of course, the affair created an immense sensation, as any scandal connected with the church was certain to do; but Rose never referred to it, and the friends whom he made over here had to content themselves with guesses. All of them, naturally, were tinged with romance. It was variously suggested that a woman had betrayed him, that doubt had assailed him, that his wife had deserted him. It was evident enough that, whatever the tragedy, it had shaken him to the depths, for he fled not only from his home, but from his profession and from all the old, ordered habits of his life. During the twenty years that remained to him, he was never once to find safe harbor and be at rest.
The reality had no romance about it. Dr. Oliver Dryer, the present pastor of the United Free Church of Evie, Orkney, tells the story quite simply:
"I have only been about three and a half years minister of Evie," he writes, "so that I can give no personal evidence. But the memory of Mr. Rose is quite fresh to many of my congregation. They speak very highly of him. He had great gifts, literary and poetic, and was a powerful and energetic preacher, but he had one serious fault—he was a victim of intemperance—and that to such an extent that on several occasions he suffered from delirium tremens. For this cause he was sent to America, and I know nothing further concerning him."
It is not quite fair to say that he changed his name. What he actually did was to add Gordon to his own name. Thereafter he was known as A. M. R. Gordon, but it would have required a master mind indeed to identify the wandering newspaperman of that name with Alexander Macgregor Rose, erstwhile minister of the Free Kirk of Evie and Randall!
It was for America that Rose sailed when he turned his back on Scotland. He reached these shores in June, 1879, and at once began the series of wanderings which was to last until his death. He found a natural haven in newspaper work, which was not then the extremely serious profession it has since become. Newspapermen were rather expected to be eccentric and bohemian, and many of them, especially in the smaller cities, drank to excess. The history of American journalism in those days is filled with escapades which would not be tolerated now, any more than a drunkard, however gifted, would be tolerated on the staff.
Moreover there were hundreds and hundreds of such men who had no fixed abode, but wandered from place to place as fancy moved, holding a job as long as they liked it, or until they were fired, and then moving on to hunt for another one. Usually they had no difficulty in finding it, for the paper across the street or at least in the next town had almost certainly just lost a man in the same way. Walt Mason has told the story in some recently published reminiscences of his own early years.
A most interesting bit of newspaper history could be written about these men, and about the all-pervasive genus of tramp-printer which infested the land at the same epoch. Rarely was the country newspaper office without one or two tramp printers, drooping their pendulous noses above the cases as they threw in the type which the foreman had permitted to accumulate against their arrival. There was always some work for them to do; but the linotype killed the tramp printer, just as the realization that drink and genius do not necessarily go together gradually killed off these vagrant knights of the pencil.
It was a journalist of this sort that Rose became, wandering up and down across America for more than twenty years, never staying long in any place. Only a vague record of this period has survived. For a couple of years he edited three papers in what was then Washington Territory, and for eight months he was a reporter in Victoria, B. C. He drifted down to San Francisco, the natural haven of the derelict, and found the town so attractive that he remained four years, most of the time as sporting editor of one of the papers. His thorough and unusual education must have stood him in good stead, giving him a vast advantage over the ordinary run of reporters, and he probably had no difficulty in holding a job as long as he really wanted to.
In a letter to a friend dated November 9, 1896, Rose refers to his roving life, and adds: "I simply could not remain in one place, and I have wandered all over the North American continent, from Quebec to Vancouver, and from Mexico to Alaska."
Finally he started to walk across the continent from the Pacific coast, stopping to work whenever he ran out of money, and then starting on again. The year 1895 found him in Toronto, Canada, and there he had a severe attack of typhoid fever. His convalescence was slow, but as soon as he was able to take the road he started on again, and got as far as Montreal on what proved to be his last journey. At Montreal he was given a position on the staff of the Gazette, but after a few months moved over to the Herald.
During the years of his wanderings Rose had cultivated the knack of writing humorous and topical verses—a feature which most papers welcomed and which probably enabled him to escape the more arduous side of a reporter's duties. Legend has it that many such poems from his pencil went the rounds of the press, but if any have survived they are among those waifs and strays usually grouped together at the back of anthologies and marked "Unidentified." The Reverend Dr. Dryer speaks of his high poetic gifts. Perhaps in Scotland there still may be some poems associated with his name; in America there is only one.
The city editor of the Herald turned to Rose one day in 1897, after one of the characteristic outbursts of the German Emperor, and said, "Gordon, give us some verses about the Kaiser." An hour later Rose turned in a set of sixteen stanzas entitled "Kaiser & Co." They were published the same day, but through some mistake on the part of the make-up man, only half of them appeared in the first edition of the paper. Rose noticed the mistake and in the later editions the complete poem appeared, but it was the first edition which got into the mails, and so, when the poem was copied by other papers, it was only eight stanzas long. The version which accompanies this article is the complete poem, as Rose wrote it.
While copied here and there, laughed over a little, and eventually re-christened "Hoch! der Kaiser," the poem created no great sensation and might even have dropped out of sight, as so many other fugitive poems have done, but for the sudden shove into the limelight which Captain Coghlan gave it two years after it was written.
One day in the early part of May, 1898, the body of an unknown man was picked up on the streets of Montreal and taken to Notre Dame hospital. There he was found to be suffering from something which was diagnosed as paralysis of the brain. Nothing could be done for him, and he died on the tenth of May without regaining consciousness. There was no clue to his identity, no inquiry had been made for him, and, as was usual in such cases, the body was set aside for dissection.
Meanwhile one of Rose's friends, a merchant at whose shop Rose had been in the habit of stopping almost every day, had been searching for him. The search led finally to the hospital, where the body was discovered, rescued and given burial. Among his papers was found a memorandum directing that, in case of his death, a lawyer by the name of Rose, living in Aberdeen, Scotland, be notified. This was done, and the Scotch lawyer proved to be Rose's son. He came to Montreal at once, reimbursed Rose's friend for the expenses of the funeral, and told the story of his father's life, much as it has been set down here.
So Alexander Macgregor Rose never knew that his name was to survive as the author of one famous poem. Perhaps he would have preferred that it die with him!