Alliance! And for what? With whom? She burned our Freedom’s Fane. She spat Vile venom on the sacred tomb Of Washington; the while she sat High throned, fat fed, and safe at home, And bade slaves hound and burn and slay, Just as in Africa to-day; Just as she would, will when she dare Send sword and torch and once again Make red the white rim of our main-- There’s mischief in the air! Alliance! Twice with sword and flame: Alliance! Thrice with craft and fraud: And now you come in Freedom’s name. In Freedom’s name? The name of God! Go to--the Boers. For shame, for shame! With wedge of gold you split us twain Then launched your bloodhounds on the main; But now, my Lords, so soft, so fair-- How long would this a-lie-ance last? Just long enough to tie Us fast-- Then music in the air! INDIA AND THE BOERS. _The Boers are a sober, industrious and most hospitable body of peasantry._--_DR. LIVINGSTONE._ You heard that song of the Jubilee! Ten thousand cannon took up the song, Ten million people came out to see, A surging, eager and anxious throng. And the great were glad as glad could be; Glad at Windsor, glad at Saint James, Glad of glory and of storied names, Generals, lords and gentlemen, Such as we never may see again, And ten thousand banners aflying! But up the Thames and down the Thames Bare, hungered babes lay crying, Poor, homeless men sat sighing; And far away, in fair Cathay, An Eden land but yesterday, Lay millions, starving, dying. Prone India! All her storied gems-- Those stolen gems that decked the Crown And glittered in those garment-hems, That Jubilee in London town-- Were not, and all her walls were down, Her plowshare eaten up with rust, Her peaceful people prone in dust, Her wells gone dry and drying. You ask how came these things to be? I turn you straight to historie; To generals, lords and gentlemen Who cut the dykes, blew down the walls And plowed the land with cannon-balls, Then sacked the ruined land and then-- Great London and the Jubilee, With lying banners aflying. Eight millions starved to death! You hear?[B] You heard the song of that Jubilee, And you might have heard, had you given ear, My generals, lords and gentlemen, From where the Ganges seeks the sea, Such wails between the notes, I fear, As you never had cared to hear again. The dead heaped down in the dried-up wells, The dead, like corn, in the fertile fields You had plowed and crossed with your cannon wheels, The dead in towns that were burning hells Because the water was under your heels! They thirsted! You drank at the Jubilee, My generals, lords and gentlemen, Drank as you hardly may come to when The final account of your deeds may be.