There are some among us who never will understand the English spirit. In
the early days of the war an excellent friend of mine used to find a great
source of despair in "Tipperary." What hope was there for a country whose
soldiers went to battle singing "Tipperary" against a foe who came on
singing "Ein' feste Burg"? Put that way, I was bound to confess that the
case looked black against us. It seemed "all Lombard Street to a China
orange," as the tag of other days would put it. It is true that, for a
music-hall song, "Tipperary" was unusually fresh and original. Contrast it
with the maudlin "Keep the home fires burning," which holds the field
to-day, and it touches great art. I never hear it even now on the street
organ without a certain pleasure--a pleasure mingled with pain, for its
happy lilt comes weighted with the tremendous emotions of those
unforgettable days. It is like a butterfly caught in a tornado, a catch of
song in the throat of death.

But it was only a music-hall song after all, and to put it in competition
with Luther's mighty hymn would be like putting a pop-gun against a 12-inch
howitzer. The thunder of Luther's hymn has come down through four
centuries, and it will go on echoing through the centuries till the end of
time. It is like the march of the elements to battle, like the heaving of
mountains and the surge of oceans. In nothing else is the sense of Power so
embodied in the pulse of song. And the words are as formidable as the tune.
Carlyle caught their massive, rugged strength in his great translation:

A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'ertaken....

Yes, on the face of it, it seemed a poor lookout for "Tipperary" against