Unselfish Devotion

Ye Concerts who plan for the welfare of Man and compose his occasional quarrels, Whom we properly deem to be teachers supreme in the sphere of Political Morals, May you win the renown that your efforts should crown and reward your assiduous labours In arranging the cares and embarrassed affairs that afflict your unfortunate neighbours!

Should a potentate go for his national foe, and, as soon as he's thoroughly licked him, Should he dare to demand a concession of land from his prostrate and paralyzed victim, It is then you arise and his arm you arrest when his harvest is ripe for the reaping, And a people oppressed may in confidence rest when it's safe in Diplomacy's keeping.

It is you who protest in a horrified tone at a hint of Integrity's danger, And the victor is shown that a Concert alone is of Law and of Fate the arranger: With a warlike display of your fleets in array and of Maxims (both empty and loaded) You establish it plain that his notions of gain are immoral and also exploded!

Let the blasphemous cry that it's done with an eye to your ultimate personal profit, That your chivalrous task is but worn as a mask till occasion allows you to doff it, Let the caviller say that the victim to-day is preserved from a final disaster, And is saved from the Japs that to-morrow perhaps he may furnish a meal for their master:

Yet I cannot believe that what Concerts achieve is by reasons ulterior dictated, I am perfectly sure that their motives are pure (by themselves it is frequently stated); By themselves we are taught that they never in thought could the Good with the Selfish commingle-- What they do is designed for the good of mankind with an eye that is simple and single!

For whomever--e.g., let us say the Chinee-- you have freed from the fear of invasion, Should he presently seem in a posture to be which is open to Moral Persuasion,-- How you take him in hand, a philanthropist band! how you toil to improve his condition, With a noble disdain of the trouble and pain of a wholly unselfish Partition!

For it grieves you, of course, when--ignoring the force which the doctrine of Mine and of Thine has-- E'en Integrity's self you must lay on the shelf (I allude, not to Europe's but China's)! Let detractors contend that your means and your end are the end and the means of the vulture-- Such an altruist plan must betoken the man who is bent on diffusion of culture.

Be it yours to assuage for inadequate wage our unseemly contentions and quarrels, Be it yours to maintain your respectable reign in the sphere of Political Morals; And, relying no more on the shedding of gore or the rule of torpedoes and sabres, Make beneficent plots for dividing in lots the domains of your paralyzed neighbours!