Are these our Heroes pictured each by each?
We fondly deemed that where our English speech
Sounded, there English hearts, of mould humane.
Justice would strengthen, cruelty restrain.
And is it all a figment of false pride?
_Such_ horrors do our vaunting annals hide
Beneath a world of words, like flowers that wave
In tropic swamps o'er a malarious grave?

These are the questions which perforce intrude
As the long tale of horror coarse and crude,
Rolls out its sickening chapters one by one.
What will the verdict be when all is done?
Conflicting counsels in loud chorus rise,
"Hush the thing up!" the knowing cynic cries,
"Arm not our chuckling enemies at gaze
With charnel dust to foul our brightest bays!
Let the dead past bury its tainted dead,
Lest aliens at our 'heroes' wag the head."
"Shocking! wails out the sentimentalist.
Believe no tale unpleasant, scorn to list
To slanderous charges on the British name!
That brutish baseness, or that sordid shame
Can touch 'our gallant fellows,' is a thing
Incredible. Do not our poets sing,
Our pressmen praise in dithyrambic prose,
The 'lads' who win our worlds and face our foes?
Who never, save to human pity, yield
One step in wilderness or battlefield!"