Alexander Macgregor Rose

“ This last circumstance might have given thoughtful men to pause but for the comfortable theory every one had in those days that we were all loyal Americans, brothers living together in this land of plenty, ready to defend it against aggression from any quarter and to die for it if need be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The version which accompanies this article is the complete poem, as Rose wrote it.
While copied here and there, laughed over a little, and eventually re-christened "Hoch! der Kaiser," the poem created no great sensation and might even have dropped out of sight, as so many other fugitive poems have done, but for the sudden shove into the limelight which Captain Coghlan gave it two years after it was written.
One day in the early part of May, 1898, the body of an unknown man was picked up on the streets of Montreal and taken to Notre Dame hospital. ”

“ Moreover there were hundreds and hundreds of such men who had no fixed abode, but wandered from place to place as fancy moved, holding a job as long as they liked it, or until they were fired, and then moving on to hunt for another one. ”

“ Two days later, a cablegram from Berlin stated that Secretary Hay had expressed to Dr. von Holleben his strong disapproval of Captain Coghlan's conduct. On April 27, Dr. von Holleben was received by President McKinley, who informed him that the Navy Department had administered a reprimand to Captain Coghlan, and Von Holleben expressed himself as satisfied. The German press was also satisfied, but ventured the hope that there would never be another such incident to jeopardize the kindly feelings of Germany toward the United States. ”

“ Perhaps in Scotland there still may be some poems associated with his name; in America there is only one.
The city editor of the Herald turned to Rose one day in 1897, after one of the characteristic outbursts of the German Emperor, and said, "Gordon, give us some verses about the Kaiser." ”

“ But it was the pseudonym of the real author, Alexander Macgregor Rose, and the whole story at last came out of Montreal, Canada, where Rose had written the poem during the last year of his life, and where he had died.
It is an everlasting pity that "Hoch! der Kaiser" does not belong to American literature, but it was written by a Scotchman, and first appeared in the columns of the Montreal Daily Herald.
Alexander Macgregor Rose was born in the village of Tomantoul, South Banffshire, Scotland, on August 7, 1846. ”