Welterusten Mijnheer De President

The song addresses a president who can sleep safely while soldiers and civilians suffer far away. Its repeated, polite-sounding wish for a good night’s sleep is deeply ironic: the speaker urges him to forget the deaths, bombing, and human cost of war. As the lyrics develop, the sarcasm grows more openly accusatory, and the imagined victims appear in the president’s dreams to demand an answer.

Several images sharpen this criticism. The “beautiful white house” contrasts comfortable power with the soldiers’ loneliness “far from home.” “The longest end” is an idiom meaning to gain the advantage or win, suggesting that the president is focused on victory rather than lives. The bloody bayonets standing guard “for the glory” of the free West present patriotic language as a possible cover for violence.

The lyrics can be read as an anti-war protest and a challenge to leaders who distance themselves from the consequences of their decisions. The line about forgetting a commandment invokes moral responsibility, though the song does not spell out every judgment. Its ending is also pointed: the repeated “sleep well” sounds less like reassurance than a final, bitter accusation. The speaker imagines that the dead and those sickened by violence cannot simply be dismissed, even if the president chooses not to think about them.