Famous Single Poems
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
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