While the _Hymn of Hate_ was at the zenith of its glory, some genius whose name, unfortunately, will be lost to posterity, invented _Gott strafe England!_ (God punish England) as the most patriotic form of greeting which one German could exchange with another. Friends meeting in the suburban trains or street-cars, or in the streets, no longer lifted their hats as usual and said _Guten Morgen_. They shook hands solemnly and exclaimed _Gott strafe England_! When they parted at night, it was not _Guten Abend_, but _Gott strafe England_! Then they began stamping it--with a rubber-stamp which was sold by the thousand for the purpose--on their letters to correspondents at home and abroad. It was even adopted, now and then, as an epitaph for a fallen soldier, whose relatives would end up the customary obituary in the advertising columns of the newspapers with _Gott strafe England_. Now postcards blossomed forth with the new national motto. Scarf-pins made their appearance in the windows of cheap-jewelry stores, inscribed _Gott strafe England_! The legend was reproduced in a score of different designs on cuff-links, brooches, and even wedding-rings, while hardly a schoolchild was without a badge or button emblazoned with the Fatherland’s holiest war prayer. Handkerchiefs were embroidered with it, pocket-knives had it enameled on their handles, and many a _Liebesgabe_ to a dear one in the trenches went forth with a pair of black-white-red braces imprinted _Gott strafe England_! On a medal which doubtless decorated thousands of German breasts--a sample reached England--was engraved: "Give us this day our daily bread; England would take it from us. God punish her!" Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who was beaten by Sir John French’s "contemptible little army" at Neuve Chapelle and Artois, placed Royal approval on the _Gott strafe England_ cult in his notorious battle-order in the winter campaign to "annihilate the British arch-foe in front of us at any and all cost." Englishmen, and especially English soldiers, perhaps measured the _Gott strafe England_ sentiment at below its real value as a German fighting asset when they decided to treat it as a joke. That was the spirit, at any rate, which animated a group of young Eton men at the front, who sent a postcard to the Headmaster of their historic school rival reading: _Gott strafe Harrow_! And on April Fool’s day British Tommies across a certain meadow of death in Flanders expelled from a mine-thrower something which looked murderously like a bomb. When it bounced in front of the German lines, and bounced again, without exploding, a "Boche" ventured out of the trenches and picked it up. He found it was a football, and on it was inscribed: April Fool! _Gott strafe England!_ [Illustration: "A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD AT THEIR MORNING HATE--From _London Punch_"]