“March of the Volunteers” was written in 1935 as part of the soundtrack for the film Children of Troubled Times (风云儿女), in the midst of the Century of Humiliation, a time when China had been ravaged by warlords and imperialist invaders, including the genocidal IJA. It was written by employees of a indie film studio that worked for free most of the time because they had almost no money and were being actively suppressed by the KMT. The Chinese Nation was in danger of being completely wiped out, so it absolutely was at its “greatest peril”. Sure sounds a whole lot more moving and stirring than the slaver drinking song, and it also has the bonus of not sounding like total shit

Funnily enough, it was finished in Japan.

This is on par with tone-policing Jewish poems from WWII.