Chapter II: Part 2

We South Africans, Dutch and English alike, are a curious folk, strong, brave, with a terrible intensity and perseverance, but we are not a sharp people well versed in the movements of the speculative world. In a few years the entire wealth of South Africa, its mines of gold and diamonds, its coal fields, and even its most intractable lands, from the lovely Hex River Valley to Magaliesberg, had largely passed into the hands of a very small knot of speculators. In hardly any instances are they South Africans. That they were not South African-born would in itself matter less than nothing, had they thrown in their lot with us, if in sympathies, hopes, and fears they were one with us. They are not. It is not merely that the wealth which should have made us one of the richest peoples in the world has left us one of the poorest, and is exported to other countries, that it builds palaces in Park Lane, buys yachts in the Mediterranean, fills the bags of the croupiers at Monte Carlo, decks foreign women with jewels, while our citizens toil in poverty; this is a small matter. But those men are not of us! That South Africa we love whose great future is dearer to us than our own interests, in the thought of whose great and noble destiny lies the source of our patriotism and highest inspiration, for whose good in a far distant future we, Dutch and English alike, would sacrifice all in the present--this future is no more to them than the future of the Galapagos Islands. We are a hunting ground to them, a field for extracting wealth, for

BUILDING UP FAME AND FORTUNE;

nothing more. This matter does not touch the Transvaal alone; from the lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, north, and south, our lands are being taken from us, and passing into the hands of men who not only care nothing for South Africa, but apply the vast wealth they have drawn from South African soil in an attempt to corrupt our public life and put their own nominees into our parliaments, to grasp the reins of power, that their wealth may yet more increase. Is it strange that from the hearts of South Africans, English and Dutch alike, there is arising an exceedingly great and bitter cry: “We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage! The lands, the mineral wealth which should have been ours to build up the great Africa of the future has gone into strange hands! And they use the gold they gain out of us to enslave us; they strike at our hearts with a sword gilded with South African gold! While the gold and stones remained undiscovered in the bosom of our earth, it was saved up for us and for our grandchildren to build up the great future; it is going from us never to return; and when they have rifled our earth and picked the African bones bare as the vultures clear the carcass of their prey, they will leave us with the broken skeleton!”

I think there is no broad-minded and sympathetic man who can hear this cry without sympathy. The South African question is far other than the question: Shall one man possess twenty millions while his brother possesses none? It is one far deeper.

Nevertheless, there is another side to the question. Nations, like individuals, suffer, and must pay the price, yet more for their ignorance and stupidity than their wilful crimes. He who sits supine and intellectually inert, while great evils are being accomplished, sins wholly as much as he whose positive action produces them, and must pay the same price. The man at the helm who goes to sleep cannot blame the rock when the ship is thrown upon it, though it be torn asunder. He should have known the rock was there, and steered clear of it. It is perhaps natural

A GREAT BITTERNESS

should have arisen in our hearts towards the men who have disinherited us; but is it always just? Personally, and in private life, they may be far from being inhuman or unjust; they may be rich in such qualities; at most they remain men and brothers who differ in no way from the majority of us. We made certain laws and regulations; they took advantage of them for their own success; they have but pursued the universal laws of the business world, and of the struggle of competition. It was we who did not defend ourselves, and must take the consequences. As long as any of these men merely use the wealth they extract from Africa for their own pleasures and interest, we have not much to complain of, and must bear the fruit of our folly. The speculators who rule in Mashonaland were wiser than we; they ordained that 50 per cent of all gold mining profits should go to the government, and they retained all diamonds found as a government monopoly. We were not wise enough to do so, and the nation must suffer. But poverty is not the worst thing that can overtake an individual or a nation. In that harsh school the noblest lessons and the sturdiest virtues are learnt. The greatest nations, like the greatest individuals, have often been the poorest; and with wealth comes often what is more terrible than poverty--corruption. Not all the millionaires of Europe can prevent one man of genius being born in this land to illuminate it; not all the gold of Africa can keep us from being the bravest, freest nation on earth; no man living can shut out from our eyes the glories of our African sky, or kill one throb of our exultant joy in our great African plains; nor can all earth prevent us from growing into a great, free, wise people. The faults of the past we cannot undo; but

THE FUTURE IS OURS.

But when the men, who came penniless to our shores and have acquired millions out of our substance, are not content with their gains; when they seek to dye the South African soil which has received them with the blood of its citizens--when they seek her freedom--the matter is otherwise.

This is the problem, the main weight of which has fallen on the little South African Republic. It was that little ship which received the main blow when eighty thousand souls of all nationalities leaped aboard at once; and gallantly the taut little craft, if for a moment she shivered from stem to stern, has held on her course to shore, with all souls on board.

We put it, not to the man in the street, who, for lack of time or interest, may have given no thought to such matters, but to all statesmen, of whatever nationality, who have gone deeply into the problems of social structure and the practical science of government, and to all thinkers who have devoted time and study to the elucidation of social problems and the structure of societies and nations, whether the problem placed suddenly for solution before this little State does not exceed in complexity and difficulty that which it has almost ever been a necessity that the people of any country in the past or present should deal with? When we remember how gravely is discussed the arrival of a few hundred thousand Chinamen in America, who are soon lost in the vast bulk of the population, as a handful of chaff is lost in a bag of corn; when we recall the fact that the appearance in England of a few thousand labouring Polish and Russian Jews amidst a vast population, into which they will be absorbed in less than two generations forming good and leal English subjects, has been solemnly adverted upon as

A GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY,

and measures have been weightily discussed for forcibly excluding them, it will assuredly be clear, to all impartial and truth loving minds, that the problem which the Transvaal Republic has suddenly had to deal with is one of transcendent complexity and difficulty. We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, the sympathy which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path--and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large, impartial, truth-seeking spirit, in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?

We put it further to such intelligent minds as have impartially watched the action and endeavors of the little Republic in dealing with its great problems, whether, when all the many sides and complex conditions are considered, it has not manfully and wonderfully endeavored to solve them?

It is sometimes said that when one stands looking down from the edge of this hill at the great mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountains high, its mining chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kafirs, and its eighty thousand men and women, white or colored, of all nationalities gathered here in the space of a few years, on the spot where fifteen years ago the Boer’s son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer’s wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth. And it is wonderful; but, as we look at it, the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet--the marvelous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft, or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavored to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that

CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT

for statecraft and the organization and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the northeast of the continent of Europe, where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise, could have made it possible. We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus; but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. And, we do again repeat, that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them.

Let us take as an example one of the simplest elements of the question, the enfranchisement of the new arrivals. Even those of us, who with the present writer are sometimes denominated “the fanatics of the franchise,” who hold that that state is healthiest and strongest, in the majority of cases, in which every adult citizen, irrespective of sex or position, possesses a vote, base our assertion on the fact that each individual forming an integral part of the community has their all at stake in that community; that the woman’s stake is likely to be as large as the man’s, and the poor man’s as the rich; for each has only his all, his life; and that their devotion to its future good, and their concern in its health is likely to be equal; that the state gains by giving voice to all its integral parts. But the ground is cut from under our feet when a large mass of persons concerned are _not_ integral portions of the State, but merely temporarily connected with it, have no interest in its remote future, and only a commercial interest in its present. We may hold (and we personally very strongly hold) that the moment a stranger lands in a country, however ignorant he may be of its laws, usages, and interests, if he intends to remain permanently in it, and incorporates all his life and interest with it, he becomes an integral part of the State, and should as soon as possible be given the power of expressing his will through its legislature; but the

PRACTICAL AND OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY

at once arises of determining who, in an uncertain stream of strangers who suddenly flow into a land, _is_ so situated! I may go to Italy, accompanied by two friends; we may hire the same house between us (to use a homely illustration); there may be no external evidence of difference in our attitude; yet I may have determined to live and die in Italy; I may feel a most intense affection for its people and its institutions, and a great solicitude over its future. The first man who accompanies me may feel perfectly indifferent to land and people, and be there merely for health, leaving again as soon as it is restored. The second may be animated by an intense hatred of Italy and Italians; he not only may not wish well to the nation, but may desire to see it downtrodden by Austria, and its inhabitants destroyed. By enfranchising me the moment I arrived, the Italian nation would gain a faithful and devoted citizen, who would sacrifice all for her in time of danger, and devote thought in times of peace; in enfranchising immediately the second man, they would perform an act entirely negative and indifferent without loss or gain either way; in enfranchising the third man, they would perform an act of minor social suicide. Yet it would be impossible at once, and from any superficial study to discover our differences!

THE GREAT SISTER REPUBLIC

across the water has met these difficulties by instituting a probationary residence of two years, after which by taking a solemn oath renouncing all allegiance to any foreign sovereign or land, more especially to the ruler of England and the English nation, and declaring their wish to live and die citizens of the United States, the new comers are, after a further residence of another three years, fully enfranchised, and become citizens of the American Republic. In this, as in many other cases, it would appear that the great Republic has struck on a wise and practical solution to a complex problem; and in this matter, as in many others, we, personally, should like to see the action of the great sister Republic followed. But thoughtful minds may suggest, on the other hand, that, while in America, at least at the present day, the newly enfranchised burgher receives but one-sixteen millionth of the State power and of governmental control on his enfranchisement, in a small state like the Transvaal each new burgher receives over eight hundred times that power in the government and control of the country, and that this makes a serious difference in the importance of making sure of the loyalty and sincerity of your citizen before you enfranchise him. We see this, and there is something to be said for it. It has been held by many sincerely desirous of arriving at a just and balanced conclusion, that, in a Republic situated as the Transvaal is, a longer residence and the votes of a certain proportion of the already enfranchised citizens are necessary before the vast rights conferred by citizenship in a small purely democratic State are granted. The terms for the enfranchisement for foreigners in England yield us no instructive analogy; for, in a country with an hereditary sovereign and an hereditary Upper House the enfranchised foreigner receives only a minute fraction of the power conferred on the elector in a pure democracy. The little Russian Jew who has a vote given him in London can never become the supreme head of the State, can never sit in or vote for members of the Upper House, and receives only the minute fractional power of voting for members of the Lower. It is

IN A PURE DEMOCRACY

where the people are the sovereign and represent in themselves the hereditary ruler, the hereditary Upper House, and the Lower House combined, that the personnel of each accredited citizen becomes all important. The greater the stability and immobility at one end of a State, the greater the mobility and instability which may be allowed at the other end, without endangering the stability of the State as a whole, or the healthy performance of its functions. Even on this comparatively small question of the franchise it is evident that the problem before the little Transvaal Republic is one of much complexity, and on which minds broadly liberal and sincerely desirous of attaining to the wisest and most humane and most enlightened judgment may sincerely differ.

Of those other and far more serious problems which the Republic faces in common with South Africa, there is no necessity here to speak further; the thoughtful mind may follow them out for itself. Time and experiment must be allowed for the balance of things to adjust themselves.

South Africa has need of more citizens leal and true. Whoever enters South Africa and desires to become one of us, to drink from our cup and sup from our platter, to mix his seed with ours and build up the South Africa of the future--him let us receive with open arms. From great mixtures of races spring great peoples. The scorned and oppressed Russian Jew, landing here to-day, vivified by our fresh South African breezes, may yet be the progenitor of the Spinoza and Maimonides of the great future South Africa, who shall lead the world in philosophy and thought. The pale German cobbler who with his wife and children lands to-day, so he stays with us and becomes one with us, may yet be the father of the greater Hans Sachs of Africa; and the half-starved Irish peasant become the forerunner of our future Burkes and William Porters. The rough Cornish miner, who is looking out with surprised eyes at our new South African world to-day, may yet give to us our greatest statesmen and noblest leader. The great African nation of the future will have its foundations laid on stones from many lands. Even to the Coolie and the Chinaman, so he comes among us, we personally should say: Stretch forth the hand of brotherhood. We may not desire him, we may not intentionally bring him among us, but, so he comes to remain with us, let South Africa be home to him.

“Be not unmindful to entertain strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unawares.”

* * * * *

We, English South Africans of to-day, who are truly South African, loving

THE LAND OF OUR BIRTH,

and men inhabiting it, yet bound by intense and loving ties, not only of intellectual affinity but of personal passion, to the home-land from which our parents came, and where the richest formative years of our life were passed, we stand to-day midway between these two great sections of South African folk, the old who have been here long and the new who have only come; between the home-land of our fathers and the love-land of our birth; and it would seem as though, through no advantage of wisdom or intellectual knowledge on our part, but simply as the result of the accident of our position and of our double affections, we are fitted to fulfil a certain function at the present day, to stand, as it were, as mediators and interpreters between those our position compels us to sympathize with and so understand, as they may not, perhaps, be able to understand each other.

Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position invests us with.

* * * * *

If it be asked, why at this especial moment we feel it incumbent on us not to maintain silence, and what that is which compels our action and speech, the answer may be given in one word--WAR!

The air of South Africa is

HEAVY WITH RUMORS;

inconceivable, improbable, we refuse to believe them; yet, again and again they return.

There are some things the mind refuses seriously to entertain, as the man who has long loved and revered his mother would refuse to accept the assertion of the first passer-by that there was any possibility of her raising up her hand to strike his wife or destroy his child. But much repetition may at last awaken doubt; and the man may begin to look out anxiously for further evidence.

* * * * *

We English South Africans are stunned; we are amazed; we say there can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to ask ourselves: “What means this unwonted tread of armed and hired soldiers on South African soil? Why are they here?” And the only answer that comes back to us, however remote and seemingly impossible is--WAR!

To-night we laugh at it, and to-morrow when we rise up it stands before us again, the ghastly doubt--war!--war, and in South Africa! War--between white men and white! _War!_--Why?--Whence is the cause?--For whom?--For what?--And the question gains no answer.

We fall to considering, who gains by war?

Has our race in Africa and our race in England interests so diverse that any calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon us, as war? Is any position possible, that could make necessary that mother and daughter must rise up in one horrible embrace, and rend, if it be possible, each other’s vitals?... Believing it impossible, we fall to considering, who is it gains by war?

There is peace to-day in the land; the two great white races, day by day, hour by hour, are blending their blood, and both are mixing with the stranger. No day passes but from the veins of some Dutch South African woman the English South African man’s child is being fed; not a week passes but the birth cry of the English South African woman’s child gives voice to the Dutchman’s offspring; not an hour passes but on farm, and in town and village, Dutch hearts are winding about English

AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH.

If the Angel of Death should spread his wings across the land and strike dead in one night every man and woman and child of either the Dutch or the English blood, leaving the other alive, the land would be a land of mourning. There would be not one household nor the heart of an African born man or woman that would not be weary with grief. We should weep the friends of our childhood, the companions of our early life, our grandchildren, our kindred, the souls who have loved us and whom we have loved. In destroying the one race he would have isolated the other. Time, the great healer of all differences, is blending us into a great mutual people, and love is moving faster than time. It is no growing hatred between Dutch and English South African born men and women that calls for war. On the lips of our babes we salute both races daily.

Then we look round through the political world, and we ask ourselves: What great and terrible and sudden crime has been committed, what reckless slaughter and torture of the innocents, that blood can alone wash out blood?

And we find none.

And still we look, asking what great and terrible difference has suddenly arisen, so mighty that the human intellect cannot solve it by means of peace, that the highest and noblest diplomacy falls powerless before it, and the wisdom and justice of humanity cannot reach it, save by the mother’s drawing a sword and planting it in the heart of the daughter?

We can find none.

And again, we ask ourselves

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

What is it for? Who is there that desires it? Do men shed streams of human blood as children cut off poppy-heads to see the white juice flow?

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

Not England! She has a great young nation’s heart to lose. She has a cable of fellowship which stretches across the seas to rupture. She has treaties to violate. She has the great traditions of her past to part with. Whoever plays to win, she loses.

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

Not Africa! The great young nation, quickening to-day to its first consciousness of life, to be torn and rent, and bear upon its limb, into its fully ripened manhood, the marks of the wounds--wounds from a mother’s hands!

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

Not the great woman whose eighty years to-night completes,[C] who would carry with her to her grave the remembrance of the longest reign and the purest; who would have that when the nations gather round her bier, the whisper should go round, “That was a mother’s hand; it struck no child.”

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

Not the brave English soldier; there are no laurels for them here. The dying lad with hands fresh from the plough; the old man tottering to the grave, who seizes up the gun to die with it; the simple farmer who as he falls hears yet his wife’s last whisper, “For freedom and our land!” and dies hearing it--these men can bind no laurels on a soldier’s brow! They may be shot, not conquered--fame rests with them. Go, gallant soldiers and defend the shores of that small island that we love; there are no laurels for you here!

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

Not we the Africans, whose hearts are knit to England. We love all. Each hired soldier’s bullet that strikes down a South African, does more; it finds a billet here in our hearts. It takes one African’s life--in another it kills that which will never live again.

WHO GAINS BY WAR?

There are some who _think_ they gain! In the background we catch sight of misty figures; we know the old tread; we hear the rustle of paper, passing from hand to hand, and we know the fall of gold; it is an old familiar sound in Africa; we know it now! There are some who _think_ they gain! Will they gain?

* * * * *

But it may be said, “What matter who goads England on, or in whose cause she undertakes war against Africans; this at least is certain, she can win. We have the ships, we have the men, we have the money.”

We answer, “Yes, might generally conquers--for a time at least.” The greatest empire upon earth, on which the sun never sets, with its five hundred million subjects, may rise up in its full majesty of power and glory, and crush thirty thousand farmers. It may not be a victory, but at least it will be a slaughter. We ought to win. We have the ships, we have the men, and we have the money. May there not be something else we need? The Swiss had it when they fought with Austria; the three hundred had it at Thermopylae, although not a man was saved; it goes to make a victory. Is it worth fighting if we have not got it?

I suppose there is no man who to-day loves his country who has not perceived that in the life of the nation, as in the life of the individual, the hour of external success may be the hour of irrevocable failure, and that the hour of death, whether to nations or individuals, is often the hour of immortality. When William the Silent, with his little band of Dutchmen, rose up to face the whole Empire of Spain, I think there is no man who does not recognize that the hour of their greatest victory was not when they had conquered Spain, and hurled backward the greatest Empire of the world to meet its slow imperial death; it was the hour when that little band stood alone with the waters over their homes,

FACING DEATH AND DESPAIR,

and stood, facing it. It is that hour that has made Holland immortal, and her history the property of all human hearts.

It may be said, “But what has England to fear in a campaign with a country like Africa? Can she not send out a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand men and walk over the land? She can sweep it by mere numbers.” We answer yes--she might do it. Might generally conquers; not always. (I have seen a little _muur kat_ attacked by a mastiff, the first joint of whose leg it did not reach. I have seen it taken in the dog’s mouth, so that hardly any part of it was visible, and thought the creature was dead. But it fastened its tiny teeth inside the dog’s throat, and the mastiff dropped it, and, mauled and wounded and covered with gore and saliva, I saw it creep back into its hole in the red African earth.) But might generally conquers, and there is no doubt that England might send out sixty or a hundred thousand hired soldiers to South Africa, and they could bombard our towns and destroy our villages; they could shoot down men in the prime of life, and old men and boys, till there was hardly a kopje in the country without its stain of blood, and the Karoo bushes grew up greener on the spot where men from the midlands, who had come to help their fellows, fell, never to go home. I suppose it would be quite possible for the soldiers to shoot all male South Africans who appeared in arms against them. It might not be easy, a great many might fall, but a great Empire could always import more to take their places; _we_ could not import more, because it would be our husbands and sons and fathers who were falling, and when they were done we could not produce more. Then the war would be over. There would not be a house in Africa--where African-born men and women lived--without its mourners, from Sea Point to the Limpopo; but South Africa would be pacified--as Cromwell pacified Ireland three centuries ago, and she has been being pacified ever since! As Virginia was pacified in 1677; its handful of men and women in defence of their freedom were soon silenced by hired soldiers. “I care that for the power of England,” said “a notorious and wicked rebel” called Sarah Drummond, as she took a small stick and broke it and lay it on the ground. A few months later her husband and all the men with him were made prisoners, and the war was over. “I am glad to see you,” said Berkely, the English Governor, “I have long wished to meet you; you will be hanged in half an hour!” and he was hanged and twenty-one others with him, and Virginia was pacified. But a few generations later in that State of Virginia was born George Washington, and on the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the battle of Lexington--“Where once the embattled farmers stood, and fired a shot, heard round the world,”--and the greatest crime and the greatest folly of England’s career was completed. England acknowledges it now. A hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand imported soldiers might walk over South Africa; it would not be an easy walk; but it could be done. Then from east and west and north and south would come men of pure English blood to stand beside the boys they had played with at school and the friends they had loved; and a great despairing cry would rise from the heart of Africa. But we are still few. When the war was over the imported soldiers might leave the land--not all; some must be left to keep the remaining people down. There would be quiet in the land. South Africa would rise up silently, and count her dead, and bury them. She would know the places where she found them. South Africa would be peaceful. There would be silence, the silence of a long exhaustion--but not peace! Have the dead no voices? In a thousand farm houses black robed women would hold memory of the count, and outside under African stones would lie the African men to whom South African women gave birth under our blue sky. There would be silence, but no peace.

You say that all the fighting men in arms might have been shot. Yes, but what of the women? If there were left but five thousand pregnant South African-born women, and all the rest of their people destroyed, those women would breed up again a race like to the first.

OH, LION-HEART OF THE NORTH,

do you not recognize your own lineage in these whelps of the South? We cannot live if we are not free!

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who lay under the stones (who will not be English then nor Dutch, but only Africans), will say, as they pass those heaps: “There lie our fathers, or great-grandfathers who died in the first great War of Independence,” and the descendants of the men who lay there will be the aristocracy of Africa. Men will count back to them and say: My father or my great-grandfather lay in one of those graves. We shall know no more of Dutch or English then, we shall know only one great African people. And _we_? We, the South Africans of to-day, who are still English, who have been proud to do the smallest good so it might bring honor to England, who have vowed our vows on the honor of Englishmen, and by the faith of Englishmen--what of _us_?

What of us? We, too, have had our vision of Empire. We have seen as in a dream the Empire of England as a great banyan tree; silently with the falling of the dew and the dropping of the rain it has extended itself; its branches have drooped down and rooted themselves in the earth; in it all the fowl of Heaven have taken refuge, and under its shade all the beasts of the field have lain down to rest. Can we change it for an upas tree, whose leaves distill poison and which spells death to those who have lain down in peace under its shadow?

You have no right to take our dream from us; you have no right to kill our faith! Of all the sins England will sin if she makes war on South Africa, the greatest will be towards us.

Of what importance is the honor and faith we have given her? You say, we are but few! Yes, we are few; but all the gold of Witwatersrand would not buy one throb of that love and devotion we have given her.

Do not think that when imported soldiers walk across South African plains to take the lives of South African men and women, that it is only African sand and African bushes that are cracking beneath their tread: at each step they are breaking the fibres, invisible as air, but strong as steel, which bind the hearts of South Africans to England. Once broken they can never be made whole again; they are living things; broken, they will be dead. Each bullet which a soldier sends to the heart of a South African to take his life, wakes up another who did not know he was an African. You will not kill us with your Lee-Metfords: you will make us. There are men who do not know they love a Dutchman; but the first three hundred that fall, they will know it.

Do not say, “But you are English, you have nothing to fear: we have no war with you!”

There are hundreds of us, men and women, who have loved England; we would have given our lives for her; but, rather than strike down one South African man fighting for freedom, we would take this right hand and hold it in the fire, till nothing was left of it but a charred and blackened bone.

I know of no more graphic image in the history of the world than

THE FIGURE OF FRANKLIN

when he stood before the Lords of Council in England, giving evidence, striving, fighting, to save America for England. Browbeaten, flouted, jeered at by the courtiers, his words hurled back at him as lies, he stood there fighting for England. England recognizes now that it was he who tried to save an Empire for her; and that the men who flouted and browbeat him, lost it. There is nothing more pathetic than the way in which Americans who loved England, Washington and Franklin, strove to keep the maiden vessel moored close to the mother’s side, bound by the bonds of love and sympathy, that alone could bind them. Their hands were beaten down, bruised and bleeding, wounded by the very men they came to save, till they let go the mother ship and drifted away on their own great imperial course across the seas of time.

England knows now what those men strove to do for her, and the names of Washington and Franklin will ever stand high in honor where the English tongue is spoken. The names of Hutchinson, and North, and Grafton are not forgotten also; it might be well for them if they were!

Do not say to us: “You are Englishmen; when the war is over, you can wrap the mantle of our imperial glory round you and walk about boasting that the victory is yours.”

We could never wrap that mantle round us again. We have worn it with pride. We could never wear it then. There would be blood upon it, and the blood would be our brothers’.

We put it to the men of England. In that day where should we be found; we who have to maintain English honor in the South? Judge for us, and by your judgment we will abide. Remember, we are Englishmen!

* * * * *

Looking around to-day along the somewhat over-clouded horizon of South African life, one figure strikes the eye, new to the circle of our existence here; and we eye it with something of that hope and sympathy with which a man is bound to view the new and unknown, which may be of vast possible good and beauty.

What have we in this man, who represents English honor and English wisdom in South Africa? To a certain extent we know.

We have a man honorable in the relations of personal life, loyal to friend, and above all charm of gold; wise with the knowledge of books and men; a man who could not violate a promise or strike in the dark. This we know we have, and it is much to know this; but what have we more?

The man of whom South Africa has need to-day to sustain England’s honor and her Empire of the future, is a man who must possess more than the knowledge and wisdom of the intellect.

When a woman rules a household with none but the children of her own body in it, her task is easy; let her obey nature and she will not fail. But the woman who finds herself in a large strange household, where children and step-children are blended, and where all have passed the stage of childhood and have entered on that stage of adolescence where coercion can no more avail, but where sympathy and comprehension are the more needed, that woman has need of large and rare qualities springing more from the heart than from the head. She who can win the love of her strange household in its adolescence will keep its loyalty and sympathy when adult years are reached and will be rich indeed.

There have been Englishmen in Africa who had those qualities. Will

THIS NEW ENGLISHMAN OF OURS

evince them and save an Empire for England and heal South Africa’s wounds? Are we asking too much when we turn our eyes with hope to him?

Further off also, across the sea we look with hope. The last of the race of great statesmen was not put into the ground with the old man of Hawarden; the great breed of Chatham and Burke is not extinct; the hour must surely bring forth the man.

We look further yet with confidence, from the individual to the great heart of England, the people. The great fierce freedom-loving heart of England is not dead yet. Under a thin veneer of gold we still hear it beat. Behind the shrivelled and puny English Hyde who cries only “gold,” rises the great English Jekyll, who cries louder yet “Justice and honor.” We appeal to him; history shall not repeat itself.

Nearer home, we turn to one whom all South Africans are proud of, and we would say to Paul Kruger, “Great old man, first but not last of South Africa’s great line of rulers, you have shown us you could fight for freedom; show us you can win peace. On the foot of that great statue which in the future the men and women of South Africa will raise to you let this stand written: ‘This man loved freedom, and fought for it; but his heart was large; he could forget injuries and deal generously.’”

And to our fellow Dutch South Africans, whom we have learnt to love so much during the time of stress and danger, we would say: “Brothers, you have shown the world that you know how to fight; show it you know how to govern; forget the past; in that Great Book which you have taken for your guide in life, turn to Leviticus, and read there in the 19th chapter, 34th verse: ‘But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’”

Be strong, be fearless, be patient.

We would say to you in the words of the wise dead President of the Free State which have become the symbol of South Africa, “_Wacht een beetje, alles zal recht kom._” (Wait a little, all will come right.)

On our great African flag let us emblazon these words, never to take them down, “FREEDOM, JUSTICE, LOVE”; great are the two first, but without the last they are not complete.

Olive Schreiner,
2 Primrose Terrace,
Berea Estate,
Johannesburg,
June, 1899. South African Republic.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Ondergedrukt--oppressed.

[B] Trekked--moved, traveled.

[C] Written on 24th May, 1899.

HISTORY OF BOHEMIA,

by Robert H. Vickers,

8vo, Cloth with map and illustrations, $3.50

Endorsed by the Bohemians of America, through their national
organization, as the most complete, accurate, and sympathetic
narrative of their country’s history in English.

In the compilation of his stirring narrative Mr. Vickers has availed himself largely of material derived from native sources, and he deserves the thanks of English-reading students for having compressed so much substance into a single book.--_The Nation._

Mr. Vickers has rendered a great service to Bohemia in this work, and has evidently spared no pains to make it valuable.--_Boston Herald._

As a contribution to general historical literature, Mr. Vickers’ volume is an important event.--_Chicago Evening Post._

Robert H. Vickers has rendered a lasting service to the Bohemian residents in America. * * * The body of the work bears every evidence of being a thorough and valuable contribution to Bohemian history. It is a work which fills a field hitherto altogether unoccupied.--_Chicago Evening Journal._

CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO.

HISTORY OF PERU,

by Clements R. Markham,

C.B., F.R.S., F.S.A., President Hakluyt Society, President Royal
Geographical Society, and author of “Cuzco and Lima,” “Peru and
India,” etc.

8vo, cloth, with maps and illustrations, $2.50.

The highest authority on Peruvian history.--_The Critic._

Mr. Markham has done his work well, and with ardent love for his subject. The country is a favorite one with him, and has furnished him with matter for three monographs before the present history. In a necessarily limited space he has given the leading facts, and taken a comprehensive view from the earliest time, down almost to the current year. Not the least interesting portions are the brief but strongly individual sketches of some of the remarkable men who have figured in the annals of Peru. In a few virile paragraphs he presents the more famous generals, viceroys, presidents and patriots. The book is well equipped with maps, abounds with pictures, and has an appendix rich in its statistics and important documents.--_The Literary World._

Mr. Markham is thoroughly at home with his subject. He possesses a strong, graphic style eminently suited to it, and the amount of information that he has managed to crowd into the space at his disposal is simply marvelous.--_New Orleans Picayune._

CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO.

HISTORY OF CHILE,

by Anson Uriel Hancock,

Author of “Old Abraham Jackson,” “Coitlan, A Tale of the Inca World,”
etc.

8vo, Cloth, with map and illustrations, $2.50

It has been Mr. Hancock’s endeavour to give a “complete short history and picture of Chile in a single volume.” We may congratulate him on having achieved his design. Mr. Hancock’s virtues are those of painstaking chronicler. And he has those virtues in full quantity. Not that the author is without dramatic power. The concluding chapters of this valuable book on the ethnology, geology, agriculture, communications, and resources of Chile are of great interest.--_London Saturday Review._

Within the compass of less than 500 octavo pages the author gives a succinct and rapid narrative of the history of Chile, its institutions, the character of its people, and its present conditions, resources and outlook. He has made a painstaking examination of authorities, and has preserved a due sense of proportion.--_Boston Journal._

It is on the period between the years 1830 and 1880, however, that the interest of the reader will concentrate itself, and recognizing this fact Mr. Hancock has spared no pains in rendering this part of the work the most brilliant and authentic. It is in every respect a thoroughly readable and accurate work, dealing with the history of a country which promises to be of much greater importance among the nations of the earth.--_Philadelphia Item._

CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

End of Project Gutenberg's The South African Question, by Olive Schreiner