The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #83437   Message #2773907
Posted By: Young Buchan
26-Nov-09 - 03:00 AM
Thread Name: Songs of Strength & Determination
Subject: RE: Songs of Strength & Determination
Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers;
Arise ye criminals of want.
For reason in revolt has thundered
And at length ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions!
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll end forthwith the old conditions
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
The Internationale
Unites the human race.

Incidentally Decca Mitford called one volume of her autobiography A Fine Old Conflict and claimed it was because as a child her nanny took her for walks in Hyde Park where she heard the Internationale being sung, mishearing 'It is the final conflict' as 'It is a fine old conflict'. She spent much of her adult life in the CPUSA where they sing 'It is the final conflict Let each stand in his place', but in Britain the version above is invariably used (Then comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face). Which makes her childhood story sound rather improbable.