The FatherlandMarshal SouthLorie A. Vanchena, The University of KansasEncoded byJanelle Fox2.36The University of KansasLawrence, KS2016Creative Commons license for electronic versionWorld War I American Immigrant PoetryUniversity of KansasDepartment of German StudiesMax Kade Center for German-American Studies1445 Jayhawk Blvd.Lawrence, KS 66045vanchena@ku.eduMarshalSouthThe “Emden”The FatherlandGeorge Sylvester ViereckNew York, NYThe Fatherland Corporation1914-12-16PrintWeekly1No. 1915294.5219
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English
THE “EMDEN”
Driven Ashore, Burning and Disabled, on the Keeling Cocos Islands, November 9, 1914
By Marshal South
THE page is closed. No more across the waste of boundless waters shall her gray hull rise.No longer shall her restless, pulsing screw furrow the sea lanes ’neath the tropic skies.No longer shall her smoke cloud drift and trail, hazy and lone across the water dun,Melting mysterious from dawn to dark. The page is closed; her last hot race is run.Her race is run. No more her three stacks rise in distant menace from the lone sea rim,The haunting terror of the open sea, an Ocean Ishmael, watchful, swift and grim.No more with reckless daring will she steam beneath the battery guns to seek her foe;No more the night shall hide her or the dawn reveal her clear against the sunrise glow.Her fight is done. She face o’erwhelming odds—four thousands tons and four-inch guns alone,Pitted against the warships of four powers—her speed the only friend to call her own.She fought the losing fight and fought it well; by all the rules of war she played the game.No stain nor blot nor coward action clings to dim the clean-cut record of her name.Her record ends. Upon the lonely isle, where gloom the palms against the setting sun—Upon the Keeling Cocos, gaunt she lies; her guns are still; her long lone fight is done.The sea birds wheel and skirl above her hull, the waves sob through her plates with every tide;Her buckled decks are scorched and scarred by fire; the shell holes gape along her riven side.The Emden! Be ye Teuton, Briton, Gaul—Rejoice ye in her fall or mourn her loss—The Teutons, an early Germanic tribe, here a reference to German speaking people.Know that the men who manned her guns werre men; like men until the end they held her courseNo coward corsair this! A gallant foe. A dauntless fighter. Though her flag be furled,The Emden, captain, officers and crew, stand worthy of the laurels of the world.—From the Los Angeles Times.