SONNET ON THE BELGIAN EXPATRIATION.

By THOMAS HARDY.

[From King Albert’s Book.]

    I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes
      Arrived one Autumn morning with their bells,
      To hoist them on the towers and citadels
    Of my own country, that the musical rhymes

    Rung by them into space at measured times
      Amid the market’s daily stir and stress,
      And the night’s empty starlit silentness,
    Might solace souls of this and kindred climes.

    Then I awoke; and, lo, before me stood
    The visioned ones, but pale and full of fear;
    From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend,

    No carillons in their train.  Vicissitude
    Had left these tinkling to the invaders’ ear,
    And ravaged street, and smoldering gable-end.

War Correspondence

A Month of German Submarine War

By Vice Admiral Kirchhoff of the German Navy

Under the heading, “A Month of U-Boat War,” Vice Admiral Kirchhoff of the German Navy discusses the German submarine warfare against merchant shipping in its first month.  The article, appearing in the Hamburger Framdenblatt of March 19, 1915, is reproduced: 

On March 18 a month had passed since the beginning of our sharp procedure against our worst foe.  We can in every way be satisfied with the results achieved in the meantime!  In spite of all “steps” taken before and thereafter, the English have everywhere had important losses to show at sea—­some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—­so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the “German bluff.”

On the new and greater “war zone” established by us, our submarines have known how to work bravely, and have been able, for instance, to operate successfully on a single morning on the east coast, in the Channel, and in the Irish Sea.  We have heard of many losses of our opponents, and on the other hand of the subjugation of only two of our brave U-boats.  Ceaselessly they are active on the coasts of Albion; shipping is paralyzed at some points; steamship companies—­including also many neutral ones—­have suspended their sailings; in short, our threat of a more acute condition of war “with all means at hand” has been fully fulfilled.

The “peaceful shipping,” too, has taken notice of it and adjusted itself according to our instructions.  The official objections of neutrals have died away without effect; throughout the world we have already been given right; the shipping circles of the neutral States are in great part holding entirely back.  The empty threats that floated over to us from across the Channel, that the captured crews of German submarines will be treated differently than other prisoners—­yes, as plain pirates and sea robbers—­those are nothing but an insignificant ebullition of British “moral insanity.”  They are a part of the hypocritical cant without which, somehow, Great Britain cannot get along.  If Great Britain should act in accordance with it, however, then we shall know what we, for our part, have to do!