Volume 99 — BETWEEN THE QUICK AND THE DEAD.

The Appeal's to Justice! Justice lendeth ear Unstirred by favour, unseduced by fear; And they who Justice love must check the thrill Of natural shame, and listen, and be still. These wrangling tales of horror shake the heart With pitiful disgust. Oh, glorious part For British manhood, much bepraised, to play In that dark land late touched by culture's day! 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!" Meanwhile, with troubled eyes and straining hands, Silent, attentive, thoughtful, Justice stands. To her alone let the appeal be made. Heroes, or merely tools of huckstering Trade, Men brave, though fallible, or sordid brutes, Let all be heard. Since each to each imputes Unmeasured baseness, somewhere the black stain Must surely rest. The dead speak not, the slain Have not a voice, save such as that which spoke From ABEL's blood. Green laurels, or the stroke Of shame's swift scourge? There's the alternative Before the lifted eyes of those who live. One fain would see the grass unstained that waves In the dark Afric waste o'er those two graves. To Justice the protagonist makes appeal. Justice would wish him smirchless as her steel, But stands with steadfast eyes and unbowed head Silent—betwixt the Living and the Dead!