With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem;
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The captives of our bow and spear
Are cheap, alas, as we are dear!
There is a world of meaning in those half-sad, half-smiling lines, and
many an hour-long discourse might fail to throw more lurid light on one
of the strangest historical problems in the world. The flower of
England's manhood must needs go; and our most brilliant scholars, our
boldest riders, our most perfect specimens of physical humanity drop
like rabbits to the fire of half-naked savages! The bright boy, the hero
of school and college, the brisk, active officer, passes away into
obscurity. The mother weeps--perhaps some one nearer and dearer than all
is stricken: but the dead Englishman's name vanishes from memory like a
fleck of haze on the side of the valley where he sleeps. England--cold,
inexorable, indifferent--has other sons to take the dead man's place and
perhaps share his obscurity; and the doomed host of fair gallant youths
moves forward ever in serried, fearless lines towards the shadows. That
is what it costs to be a mighty nation.
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