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1899–1902
(Boer War)
LET us admit it fairly, as a business people should, | |
| We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good. | |
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| Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain, | |
| But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again, | |
| Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite. | 5 |
| We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right! | |
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| This was not bestowèd us under the trees, nor yet in the shade of a tent, | |
| But swingingly, over eleven degrees of a bare brown continent. | |
| From Lamberts to Delagoa Bay, and from Pietersburg to Sutherland, | |
| Fell the phenomenal lesson we learned—with a fulness accorded no other land. | 10 |
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| It was our fault, and our very great fault, and not the judgment of Heaven. | |
| We made an Army in our own image, on an island nine by seven, | |
| Which faithfully mirrored its makers’ ideals, equipment, and mental attitude— | |
| And so we got our lesson: and we ought to accept it with gratitude. | |
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| We have spent two hundred million pounds to prove the fact once more, | 15 |
| That horses are quicker than men afoot, since two and two make four; | |
| And horses have four legs, and men have two legs, and two into four goes twice, | |
| And nothing over except our lesson—and very cheap at the price. | |
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| For remember (this our children shall know: we are too near for that knowledge) | |
| Not our mere astonied camps, but Council and Creed and College— | 20 |
| All the obese, unchallenged old things that stifle and overlie us— | |
| Have felt the effects of the lesson we got—an advantage no money could buy us! | |
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| Then let us develop this marvellous asset which we alone command, | |
| And which, it may subsequently transpire, will be worth as much as the Rand. | |
| Let us approach this pivotal fact in a humble yet hopeful mood— | 25 |
| We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good! | |
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| It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use. | |
| We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse. | |
| So the more we work and the less we talk the better results we shall get— | |
| We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet! | 30 |
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