FOR WHAT?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 4, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 27.

The battle before Ladysmith has continued two days and still is in progress. The loss of life on both sides already has been very considerable.—Press despatch.

The life-tide is flowing, the red river runs, And Northland and Southland now weep for their sons; By African hillocks the corpses are strewn, Where bullets have whistled their dolorous tune; There is never a palace but woe may be there; There is never a hovel but 'waiteth despair, And mothers are weeping for those who come not— Just God of the nations, for what?—for what?

Is there ever a rood of the African earth That is worth these, the bravest and noblest of birth? Is there ever a diamond yet lost in the mine Worth blood that has flowed like a river of wine? Let heart-broken mothers in anguish reply, Give heed to the answer outborne on a sigh; Give heed, ye of title, who scheme and who plot— Just God of the nations, for what?—for what?

The corpses that African kopjes bestrew, Each beareth a curse, O ye plotters, for you. No wail from the stricken who languish and die But a stern malediction is heard in that cry. The red ground is covered with dying and dead, But a voice yet arises from blood that ye shed, A voice that shall answer your uttermost plot, O planners and schemers—for what?—for what?

Just God of the nations, somehow and somewhere, Thou knowest man's sorrow and heedest his care; Before Thee the ways of the plotters are vain; Thou knowest how paltry the thing they would gain, And how red is its price. O, then, by the blood That has stained Afric's plains with its dark crimson flood, Be not the sad voice of our travail forgot, While life-ties are sundered—for what?—for what?