God placed the Russian peasant
Under the Great White Czar;
God put the Prussian worker
Beneath the Lord of War.
But he sent the English gentleman,
The perfect English gentleman
God's own good English gentleman,
To make us what we are.

Our fathers once were freemen,
And as freemen wont to toil,
To reap the fruitful harvest,
And to gather golden spoil
But the greedy, grasping gentlemen,
The land-engrossing gentlemen,
The honest English gentlemen,
They stole away the soil.

They drove us from our villages
By force and fraud and stealth,
They drove us into factories,
They robbed us of our health.
But the cotton-spinning gentlemen,
The coal-mine, shipyard gentlemen,
Stock-broking, banking gentlemen,
They gathered wondrous wealth.

We toil to make them prosperous,
We fight to make them great;
But we know how they have robbed us,
We bide our time and wait:
While the fat, well-living gentlemen,
The easy, well-bred gentlemen,
The thoughtless, careless gentlemen,
Forget that slaves can hate.

The patient Russian peasant
Has overthrown his Czar;
The patient Prussian worker
Has smashed his Lord of War.
And soon — ah! soon, our gentlemen,
Our proud, all-powerful gentlemen,
Our God-damned English gentlemen,
Shall find out what we are.