Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/88

Bein' they haint no led, they make their bullets out of copper
An' shoot the darned things at us, which Caleb sez ain't proper;
He ses they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly
(Guess when he ketches 'em at thet, he'll hev to git up airly).
Thet our nation's bigger 'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger,
An' that it's all to make 'em free that we air pullin' trigger.
Thet Anglo-Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces,
An' thet idee's thet every man does just wat he damn pleases;
Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can,
I know thet 'every man' don't mean a nigger or a Mexican.

Read Dutchman for Mexican, and the sentiments of Hosea Bigelow are seen to be identical with those of our own Yellow Press and of 'British South Africa.'

The bankruptcy of national humour is, however, best exhibited in two convictions obstinately planted in the Jingo mind. The first is a general belief in the 'badness' of the Boer, of such sort that, when an inventive press produces any new specific but unsupported charge, as of shooting prisoners, poisoning wells, firing on ambulances, we know that it is true, because it is just the sort of thing 'the wicked Boer would do.'