CHANTS
FOR THE
BOER
_By
JOAQUIN MILLER_
“_And whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle’s van,
The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man._”
San Francisco
The Whitaker & Ray Company
(Incorporated)
1900
Copyright, 1900
by
The Whitaker & Ray Company
(Incorporated)
CONTENTS.
TO THE BOERS.
TO YE FIGHTING LORDS OF LONDON TOWN.
MOTHER EGYPT.
ANGLO-SAXON ALLIANCE.
INDIA AND THE BOERS.
AT THE CALEND’S CLOSE.
AS IT IS WRITTEN.
TO OOM PAUL KRUGER.
USLAND TO THE BOERS.
THAT USSIAN OF USLAND.
FIGHT A BOY OF YOUR SIZE.
_For the right that needs assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the glory in the distance,
For the good that we can do._
Find here not one ill word for brave old England; my first, best
friends were English. But for her policy, her politicians, her
speculators, what man with a heart in him can but hate and abhor them?
England’s best friends to-day are those who deplore this assault on the
farmer Boers, so like ourselves a century back. Could any man be found
strong enough to stay her hand with sword or pen in this mad hour? That
man would deserve her lasting gratitude. This feeling of abhorrence
holds in England as well as here. Take for example the following from
her ablest thinker to a friend in Philadelphia:
“I rejoice that you and others are bent on showing that there are
some among us who think the national honor is not being enhanced by
putting down the weak. Would that age and ill health did not prevent
me from aiding.
“No one can deny that at the time of the Jameson Raid the aim of the
Outlanders and the raiders was to usurp the Transvaal Government,
and he must be willfully blind who does not see what the Outlanders
failed to do by bullets they hope presently to do by votes, and
only those who, while jealous of their own independence, regard
but little the independence of people who stand in their way, can
fail to sympathize with the Boers in their resistance to political
extinction.
“It is sad to see our Government backing those whose avowed policy
is expansion, which, less politely expressed, means aggression, for
which there is a still less polite word readily guessed. On behalf
of these, the big British Empire, weapon in hand, growls out to the
little Boer Republic, ‘Do as I bid you.’
“I have always thought that nobleness is shown in treating tenderly
those who are relatively feeble and even sacrificing on their behalf
something to which there is a just claim. But, if current opinion is
right, I must have been wrong.”
_Herbert Spencer._
CHANTS
FOR THE BOER
BY
JOAQUIN MILLER