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THE

SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS

Professor A. KUYPER d. d., ll. d.

Member of the Slatea- General of Holland.

Reprinted from the EEYUE DES DEUX MONDES for February 1900.

Translated and Prefaced

BY

A. E. ELETCHER.

Fourth. Edition,

LONDON

STOP THE WAR COMMITTEE

Clock House. Arundel Street. Strand W. C.

Il^TEODUCTIOI^.

Dr. Abraham Kuyper, the author of the following inasterfal criticism and review of South African allairs, is a great Dutchman whose opinions cannot but command the respectful attention of tlioughtful men ;,nd women in this country to whatever political party they may belong. Dr. Kuyper has won distinction as a scholar, a theologian, a journalist, and a statesman. He was born in 1837 and, after a brilliant career as a student at the University of Leyden, where he graduated D.D. in 1802 he became a famous preacher in Amsterdam. Jn 1880 he was appointed professor of Theology in the Free University of that city — a position which he still holds. His "Encyclopa'dia of Theology", has been translated into English and is well known to students of the science of religion on both sides the Atlantic. In 1898 the University of Princeton, U.S., conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL. D., and two years ago he was appointed to deliver the ''Stone Lectures". He was welcomed by the American people with remar- kable enthusiasm. "The Dutch Gladstone" was the title appropriately conferred upon him in the American press. Dr. Kuyper is also a brilliant journalist. He is President of the Dutch Press Association and in I8'.)7 his silver jubilee as editor of "De Standaard", one of the ablest and most intiuential daily papers in the Netherlands, was celebrated by friends and opponents alike in a manner worthy of his tine charac- ter, his great intellectual powers, and his far-reaching influence. It is however, as a Statesman that he has made his name familiar as household words to Dutchmen ail over the world. He is the leader of a great party in the States General and is a muster of parlia-

IV —

mentary eloquence and debate. He is a man of tireless industry and finds rest only, as Mr. Gladstone found it, "in change of occupation". He is a voluminous author and many of his books have been trans- lated into various languages. A distinguished Dutch journalist who is one of Dr. Kuyper's political opponents, has described him to me not only as a brilliant, but as a most lovable man, who has won the reverence of his friends and the respectful admiration of those who disagree with him. At Dr. Kuyper's own request I have undertaken the translation of his powerful article on the South African crisis which he recently contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes, which in the following pages is reproduced in English dress. I cannot claim to have done justice to it, and I am well aware that the force of the author's style and reasoning must have been weakened in the trans- lation, but I can only hope that while I cannot pretend to have preserved the charm of his style, I have made his meaning suffi- ciently clear.

Dr. Kuyper has long been an admirer of British institution, and the British people, and it is with manifest pain that after impartially investigating the causes which led to the present war, he has been forced to the conclusion that the Government in determining to settle the South African difficulty by force rather than by arbitration has dishonoured the best traditions of British Statesmanship.

A. E. Fletcher.

Great Holland near Colchester. May 25st 1900.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

The nineteenth century is drawing to its close. It opened with splendid promise for liberty, and demands for the restitution of violated rights. At first its high hopes were realized by the successful initiation of reforms which made for freedom. Why, now that it in about to pass away, should it be disgraced, almost at its last hour, by a war of agression, which nothing- can justify?

What magnificent hopes for the future had not the Conference at the Hague disclosed to the heart of the nations bowed under the ever increasing burden of military charges ! Instead of appeal to arms, arbitration was henceforth to settle international disputes ; and yet England to-day'England which was one of the most zealous participators in the Hague Conference, at the first menace of war gives it the kick and knows it no more !

Once more the Yuletide has sent forth the angelic message, ,, Peace on earth," even to where the natives gather at the humble chapels of our missionaries ; and, shocking as it may seem, these savages, while a mur-

1

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

clerons struggle is going on between Christians & Christians, are standing by to see whether the Chri- stians of Europe or the Christians of Africa will finally get the upper hand.

England has ever won for herself the glory ol l^eing the champion of the independence of weak and oppres- sed peoples ; yet yonder, in South- Africa, there are old men of seventy with their grandsons [of fourteen scram- bling all over the rocks to lie in wait for the Enghsh soldiers preparing to rob them of the freedom of their country.

A cry of distress has gone up, a cry of the conscience of Europe aroused not this time against the Turk but against the country of Burke & of Pitt, against the country which once prided itself on its inborn love of justice. Is it not a sad spectacle ? Has progress been arrested? Can it be that in the century about to be born we are going to retrogress?

I.

If we wish to thoroughly understand the causes, to trace clearly the origin of this unfortunate war, we must go back in history.

On two occasions in the course of the seventeenth century Holland made an effort to colonise extensively beyond the sea: in America in 162S, at the Cape in 1650; and both these colonies have fallen into the hands of the English, by an act of aggression. New- Yoik was occupied en pleine paix by Colonel Nicholson in the 3"ear 1646; the Cape was taken in 1806 by General Baird during the war between France and

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 3

England. Holland being the weaker power was forced to cede her American colony by the treat of Breda in 1667, and her colony at the Cape b}^ the convention of London, April IStii- 1S14.

The report to the effect that the Prince of Orange had mid the Cape was only a fabrication : the historical researches of M. Heeres have proved this. On the contrary his minister of Foreign affairs resisted to the last; but Lord Castlereagh opposed him with the formal declaration : "our resolution is taken ; it is for ns to judge what portion of your colonies, we think it expedient to keep and what portion w^e are willing to surrender" i).

The sum paid by Engeland w^as destined not to replenish the Prince's purse but to indemnif}^ the King of Sweden for the cession he had made of the Island of Guadeloupe, and for the construction of fortifications against France towards her Norfhern frontier. -) The colonists well understood this. The malicious explan- ation of a venal abandonment was whispered after- wards, but at the time of the cession all were still convinced that England had forced the hand of their mother-counby, and when a Prince of the House of Orange visited the Cape in 1S3S he was recerived by his old compatriots with frantic enthusiasm. In the occupation of the Cape in 1806 England saw, not a question of right, but w^hat it devolved upon Mr. Chamberlain later to christen with the name of "paramountcy." As she

') ^Verken van de Maalschdppij van Letto'kunde, 1896 — 97, pag. 09. -) Additional article of the convention of London, 1, 2 and 3. L.\GF..\IA^':^, Rccucil dcs TraUe.fi, etc., T/w Ilaijue iSoS, I, p. 34 — 38.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

had lost her rich American colonies, England felt the need of consolidating the conquests of the famous Hastings in India, and it seemed to her indispensable to secure a naval station at the Cape. Captain Robert Percival, — probably one of her agents i) — who, on a voyage of observation, visited the Cape in 1S03 did not hesitate to declare "that the mere possession of the harbours of the Cape would indeed be nearly sufficient to bring all enemies into our power 2)."

Meantime neither in America nor at the Cape had Eugland known how to win the sympathies other new subjects of Dutch extraction. Every effort at fusion between them and their new masters was defeated by the tenacity of the race from the Low Countries. Even to-day, after the lapse of two centuries, In America, the animosity of the people of Dutch origin against England continues as lively as ever. At a dinner in the first club in New-York I have listened to remarks made against the injustice and the violent methods of England such as have never been made either in Natal or at Pretoria, Although the Dutch in America have now almost lost the memory of their mother-tongue, they yet everywhere still as- sociate together in unions called Holland Societies. Their Dutch origin is to them as a title of nobility of which

^> The same captain visited in the same manner Ce_ylon which like the Cape was then a Dutch Colony and which England coveted. His report on Ceylon bares the identical title „Account of Ceylon."

2) '•Account of the Cape, p. 330. He adds: "These considerations of a large portion of our dominions are of themselves, independent of all others certainly sufficient to justify our attempt to take possession of the Cape." (P. 394.)

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

they are proud, and during the great war ofmdepen- dence they sealed with their blood their aversion for everything English. Now, the same kind of thing has happened at the Cape ^). Captain Percival himself testified in 1808: "An Englishman will be surprised at the aversion, and even the hatred which the Dutch seem to entertain towards us" ^).

It was the reaction from the rivalry of the two great naval powers of the seventeenth century — the struggle in which Holland had succumbed. Resent- ment against ^'perfidious Albion" had nowhere pene- trated the national spirit more profoundly than in the Netherlands; and England herself had rendered this resentment the more bitter by the highhanded manner in which she never ceased to apply to Holland the Vae victis principle. "Dutch'' and "double Dutch" are still, amongst the English populace, invidious expres- sions. Time indeed has softened these racial anti- pathies. In Holland it is true there are a few^ circles that are open to the charge even of Anglomania, but on the other hand a historian like Rogers in his "History of Holland" has frankly acknowledged not only that England was indebted to Holland for a large share of her civilization but also that England had very badly repayed this valuable service ^).

At the time when the Cape was annexed the rela- tions between the tw^o countries were still very strained, and Mr. Theal the well known historian of the

V) Chase, Ihstonj of Sotilh-Africa, p. 349.

-) Percival. p. 305.

•'i In the series: "The Slori/ of Un; Naliona"', the last page.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

Cape is bold enough to say that the Dutch colonists regarded the English as ,, arrogant above all other mor- tals, insatiable in the pursuit of wealth, regardless of the rights of others and viewing everything with an eye jaundiced by national prejudice" i). The aversion moreover was reciprocal. Captain Percival tells us that to the English the colonist appeared an "unsociable, inhospitable and boorish race, and their actions en- tirely guided by mercenary and interested motives'' "). On both sides there was exaggeration, no doubt, but in any case there is ample proofthat the two elements which were henceforth to be compelled to live together in South- Africa, took A^ery badly to a more intimate fusion. The national character of the English, in fact, differs fundamentally from that of the Dutch. Both have their qualities well defined, but between the two there is an absolute incompatibility. As regards outward display, prompt and energetic action, large conceptions and methodic organisation, the English are beyond con- tradiction superior; but the medal has a reverse side in their love of show, in their incapacity to observe well, and in their propensity to confound the idea of organisation with the effort for Anglicising everybody. The Dutchman on the contrary, is less enamoured of parade ; he is too slow in the development of his projects ; he leaves things alone, submits to impressions and contents himzelf too much with observing things with an attentive eye. But from the instant that his dormant energy is awakened he has always shown himzelf to be endowed with a perseve-

1) ''South- Africa", p. 116.

2) ''Account of the Cape'-, p. 223.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

ranee and a tenacity which nothing can shake. Neither the Spaniards in the sixteenth century nor the En- glish at the Cape ever comprehended this character based upon kitent energy. Because they in winter noticed only a tiny rivulet like a thread of frozen and harm- less water, they were not prepared for the powerful torrent that at springtime would rush down to over- How its bed as soon as the melting of the snow set in. Shortly after the occupation of the Cape in 1814 affairs between the colonists and their new masters began to give trouble. The farmers on the northern frontier of the colony, especially, refused to accomodate themselves to the new conditions. One of them a man named Bezuydenhout resisted single-handed a com- pany of soldiers. He was killed on the spot. His wife, gun in hand, vowed vengence. A disturbance broke out. Brought to a stand by a military force three times superior some of the rioters were taken and tried, and five of them were condemned to be hanged while the rest were compelled to assist at their execution. On March 9^^^ 1§}^ tlie gallows was erected on the top of a hill in the presence of a crowd of colonists ■uccompanied by their wives and children. Presently the five condemned men, strung up tot he same beam, swung together from side to side. They had alread}-^ lost consciousness when suddenly the beam came down with a crash. The five bodies lay upon the ground. The unhapp}^ men recovered animation. The crowd, seeing in this an act of divine clemency, im- plored with heart-rending appeals, the mercy of the English magistrate. But he, a man of a severity which

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS,

nothing could ruffle remained inexorable. The condemned men were again hung up and delivered over anew to the agonies of a still more frightful death. The on- lookers gave to the scene of this execution the name of Slachtersnek, which may be translated Slaughter's Hill. As English authors themselves admit, never has the memory of that horrible execution been eftaced from the minds of the Dutch farmers. "Remember Majuba!" has been the war-cry of the Scotch guards. "Do not forget Slachtersnek!" has remained throughout the century the vengeance cry of the outraged Boers.

n.

We must not however too closely identify the Boers, with the Dutch. In the month of January 1659 there disembarked at the Cape a group of French Huguenots numbering about 300 persons, followed afterwards by 17 Piedmontese families. ^)

1) Chase, mstory ofSnulli-Africa, p. 108. They left Texel hyihe Lang e- Maaiken and three other vessels. Chase gives the following official list of family names : Anthonarde, Avis ; — Basson, Bastions, Beaumons,. Benezat, Bota, Briet, Bruet; — Camper, Cellier, Corbonne, Coi-ban,, Claudon, Cordier, Carpenant, Couteau, Couvret, Crogne ; ~ Dailleau, Debuze, Debeurier, Du Plessy, Decabriere, Delporte. Deporte, DerueU Dumont, Dupre, Du Toit, Durant, Dubuisson ; — Extreux; — Fracha, Foury, Floret, Fraichaise, Furet; — Gauche. Grillon, Gardiol, Gounay,. Goviand, Grange ; — Hugot ; — Jacob, Joubert, Jourdan ; — Lanoy, Laporte, Laupretois, Le Clair, Le Clerq, Lefebvre, Le Grand, Lecrivent. Lombard, Longue ; — Maniel, Martinel, Mesnard, Madan, Malan ; — Nice, Norman, Nortie; — Passeman, Peron, Pinnares, Prevot, Pelanchon: — Rassimus, Retief, Rousse, Resne ; — Savoye (Jacques), Sellier; — Terre- blanche. Terrier, Tenayment, Terront ; — Vallete, Vaudray, Vanas, Valtre, Verbat, Villons, Yiviers, Vyol, Villion, Vivet, Viton, Yitroux, Verdette, Verdeau, Vyton. We gather from this list that the Joubert family belonged to the Huguenots.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

In 1827 three hundercl hed Germans establiseighty themselves in the Colony and after the Crimian War 2000 (xerman members of the foreign legion obtained extensive farms there ^). The Scotch themselves to a conside- rable number have mixed with the Boers by marriage. To ascertain approximately the proportion of these diver's elements I asked Dr. Muller, envoy and Consul- general of the Orange Free State at the Hague, to examine the list of electors of his country. I have thus ascertained that 68 per cent of the names were Dutch, 12 per cent French, 12^ per cent Scotch, 3^ per cent Germans and -3^ per cent Scandinavians, Italians, etc. The two great Generals Joubert and Cronje are ot French origin; President Kriiger and Mr. Reitz, the Secretary of State, are of German extraction: hence it appears that although the Dutch element so far predominates as to absorb the others, as regards language at least, the direct influence of the other nationalities over this complex and varied assemblage is far from being reduced to a negligible quantity. Those whom we call Africanders are distinguished amongst the Boers by that light shade of character which reveals their greater accessibility to English civilization inducing them to invite English farmers to make common cause with them against the mother country as Dutch and English did in America. The Boers it may be said on the contrary fear that the infiltration of English habits w^ould enfeeble their type. At the moment of danger however the claims of blood

*) Purvis and Biggs. Soidh- Africa, ]>. G5.

10 THE SODTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

have never proved false and the Africanders hav^e always pleaded the cause of their brothers beyond the Orange and the Vaal.

The name "Boer" means peasant but we should be deceiv^ed in comparing the Boers with the French peasants, the English farmers, or even the American settlers. It is for the most part a conquering race which has established itself amongst the Hottentots and the Bantus, as the Normans in the eleventh century planted themselves amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Abstaining from handicraft, they attend to their pro- perties comprising sometimes from two thousand to three thousand hectars, and raise horses and cattle. Bej^ond this the great business of their life is the chase including even deer-stalking. They are intrepid horsemen and exercise themselves unremittingly in the handling of arms. Without being cultured or rehned they display that natural sagacity which has always been the gift of pioneer nations at the begin- ning of their historical development. Hence their thirst for independence and their insatiable love of liberty, social and political. They have too tough a backbone to bow the head under anybodys yoke whoever it may be. Nowhere is there a public life more developed or more widely scattered. The Boer is par excellence the politician and military man combined. They have their own journal which .they not only read but study. Their organisation is thoroughly democratic. They themselves choose their President, their magistrates, their judges, and even their military officers whom they call Field Cornets and Commandants. Although

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN ClilSIS. 11

ignorant of all military discipline as it is nnderstood by European armies, they fight in perfectly homogeneous manner, each of them being an officer to himself and co-operating on his own initiative for the end which their cornet indicates.

Their religion thoroughly Calvinistic, is the very soul of their chivalrous existence and completely harmonises with it. The Old Testament, above all, has impressed them with the paramount value of fervent piety in the consolidation of the national strength. This explains why they open their councils of war with prayer, and march to battle singing the Psalms of David ; reviving thus the traditions of the armies of Grustavus-Adolphus, of the Huguenots, and of Cromwell. Through religious affinity, their well-defined predilection for Protestantism is no matter for astonishment in the descendants of the Gueux and the Huguenots, but it is not true that they exclude, for their opinions, Roman Catholics from all service under the State. Dr. Leyds has given me the names of several avowed Catholic functionaries of the South African Republic, i) When the English in 1814 took possession of the Cape they found a Catholic curate whom the Boers were tolerating but whom the English took care to drive away. 2) Their morality is above all suspicion. Liaisons with the negro women which have always been the disgrace and the scourge of colonising nations, are amongst the Boers absolutely unknown. Their married life is

1) It is known too that President Kruo-er on Auj^ust 20th 1899 proposed to the Volksraad a modification of article 31 of the constitution. 2j TiiEAi,, Soitth-A/rica, p. 139.

12 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

most pure and alcoholism has never seduced them. Their fecundity also is almost incredible. Families of fifteen children are not a very rare exception, and to have as many as ten is about the average. Add to this that their longevity equals that of the Kussians, and you will find the explanation for their truly surprising increase.

Captain Percival in 1804 found only 60,000 persons of their race. 0 In 1822 this number had increased to 111,451. In 1866 the whites at the Cape alone numbered not less than 187,439 persons 2) At present the population of European origin, according to the census of 1891, is 376,957 souls in Cape Colony alone, 3) 285,270 in the Transvaal, *) 77,716 in the Free State ^) 44415 in Natal, making a total of 784,358 souls. We must yet add to this figure the whites of Bechuanna- land, of Griqualand West, of Humpata ande specially the number raised sufliciently to express the continued increase since 1891. Calculating according to the proportions for the preceding decennial period, e) this increase would be at the rate of 2.60 per cent per annum, so that a total of 900,000 souls will be quickly reached. On this estimate the Boers may be put down at 520,000, the other nationalities together at 380,000.

^) Of which 15,000 were horsemen or men carrying arms. "Accoioit of the. Cape" p. 273.

-J Chase, p. Ill of the first a,ppendix.

•") The ^}v/?(s annual, p. 440. Slateuian^s yeariiook, 1899, p. 184. The Handbook, p. 223, puts the number at 337,000.

*) Slaats-alnianak, p. 30.

■5) Report by M. Aubert, inthe Moniteur officiel da toi)i))if'rce,iS^J6,i:).'J~.

6) Cape Argus p. 400-403.

THE SOUTll-Al'lUCAN CllISIS. 13

In any case as regards the Boers, who since 1S04 have moiuited up from 60,000 to more than half a milHon, the increase is without doubt extraordinary. 0 What makes this fact still more interesting is that fecundity is considered amongst the Boers as a l)le,ssing of the Almighty and that the wife-mother without a shadow of feuniiisme rejoices in her unquestioned predominance in family life and in social arrangements. Free from all desire of luxury the Boer women are almost exclusively devoted to their husbands and their children. They are strong and courageous. Without dishonouring their sex the}' handle the rifle and mount the horse like men. The enthusiasm of their national feeling often surpasses even that of their husbands ; and when in October war broke out, it was they who when the father hesitated and even refused, set on fire the hearts of their boys of fourteen and even thirteen years with an irresistible desire to go to the front. The English with some rare exceptions 2) have always painted the Boers for us as "exhibiting a most lament- able picture of laziness and stupidity" and their women as ''passing a lazy, dull, and inactive life"! But the

1,1 hi 1891 of a total of 1,527,244 representing the black and white population at the Cape correctly speaking '1<472,000 were natives of Africa, 27,689 natives of England, 6,648 of Scotland, 4,iS6 of Ireland, 6,549 ol German}', 899 of Russia, 866 of Holland, 696 of Sweden and Norway, 354 of France and 343 of Denmark. Official Handbook, p. 234.

-) 1 quote, outside Mr. Gladstone's followers, the names of Froude, Sir , George Gray, Selous, Gordon Gumming, J. C. Jlilner, and H. A. Bryce. Sir George Grey, holds up the Boer as a model of the civil and communal spirit. Ct. Purvis and Biggs, p. 55. Froude said: "No people on earth were less stupid." P. 115.

14 THK SOUTH-AFRICAN CPJSIS.

Boers invariably met these reproaches with : "Sir, you dont know the Cape", and the sad experience the English have had on the Modder River and at Colenso does not allow them to say that the Boers were wrong. Even after more than eighty 3^ears experience of them they do not yet know either the Cape or the Boers, as their defeats have well proved. The English only comprehend what has some likeness to themselves and for that reason they try to assimilate everybody to their type.

But the Boers remain obstinately refractory and are stubborn in their determination to remain absolu- tely inassimilable.

III.

It is not a well advised government which having installed itself in a conquered country does not make every eifort to respect as far as possible the suscepta- bilities and the customs of its new subjects. To this end any reasonable government will avoid all sudden changes in political and social organisations; it will study to make its yoke scarcely felt, and will strive to create the impression that ever3^thing is to go on as in the time of its predecessor. Above all it will enquire into the grievances of the peoi^le against the administration it has displaced and will do its best to win the hearts of the people by effectual remedies. England above any other nation ought to have learnt that lesson of administrative wisdom ; for it was impos- sible for her not to know that in dealing with colonistes

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 15

of a rival nationality she would have a difficult pass to get over. She did nothing of the kind. Quite on the contrary ; with arrogant presumption and selfconscious of the strength of her then undisputed power, she ruffled the Soers from the beginning and wounded them in their religion, in their sense of honour, and in their material interest ; and this was all done in the most mischievous manner. Purvis has frankly acknowledged that the history of "The British control of South- Africa is full of blunders consequent on the ignorance and prejudice of the Home government, i/' And Mr. Froude in his lectures does not hesitate to say that. ''We are merely reaping the harvest of seventy 3^ea]\s of mis- management." 2)

In their powerlessness to observe well, the English turned to their inner consciousness and evolved th& belief that in trying to Anglicise the old colonists as quickly as possible, they were becoming, in a high degree, their benefactors. On January l^t- 1825, eleven years after their official occupation of the colony, an imperial decree, taking effect in 1828, was issued to deprive the colonists of the use of their mother tongue in the courts of justice and in the conduct of public affairs. It is scarcely possible to conceive of a measure more irritating. At one blow the Boers saw themselves excluded from juries and deprived of their seats in public councils. Henceforth they were inelligible as judges; they were compelled to have recourse to English advocates, and to incur the heavy expense of trans-

1) p. 6. ^) p. 4.

IG THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CEISIS.

lation of evidence which the employment of interpreters involved. They felt exiled in their own country and ousted from all participation in public life. Even when Parliament was instituted in 1852 the same regime prevailed and the act of April 3^^!. stipulated "that all debates shall be conducted in the English language." It was only in 1882 that article 2 of the act of May 25*^^- conceded to the colonists the use of Dutch, i) To the primary injustice was soon added an interminable list of other grievances. An English missionary, Dr. Van der Kemp, laid a charge at Downing-Street against the Boers of having ill treated their slaves — of having tortured them and even assasinated several. A Boer woman, it was alleged, had even scalded a negro to death in boiling water. The Secretary for the Colonies ordered an inquiry. A Court w^ent on circuit through the whole country; more than a thousand witnesses were heard, and 58 Boers were summoned on the most dishonourable incriminations. After all this to-do, the judges on March 9^1^ 1816 were obliged to acquit all those who were accused of murder or of torture, and it was proved that the negro who was said to have been boiled alive, on coming in one day with frozen feet, simply in order to thaw them, had them put by his mistress in a foot-bath which was too hot. This general acquittal was certainty satisfactory for the Boers, but such humiliation before their slaves could not sweeten the cup of bitterness of which they had drunk.

We come now to the enfranchisement of the slaves

1) In the courts of justice the use of Dutch was not restored until 1884. See act of July 23th.. no. 21; art. 1st.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 17

in 1834. They numbered 40,000 and representing an average value of two thousand francs per head formed for most of the colonists the chief part of their small possessions. The Parliament of London which had promised compensation ought to have paid 80,000,000 trancs, but for the Cape it allowed only a million and a quarter pounds sterling and stipulated that it should be payable, not at the Cape, but inLonden, a stipu- lation which had the effect of compelling the Boers to sell their awards to English agents for a third ot their value. Consequently a small farmer who owned, say, a dozen .slaves received as compensation only 4600 francs instead of 24,000. Destitute of the means of paying their workmen, the Boers were then compelled to give up the greater part of their lands-, whilst the liberated slaves, dying of famine, took to vagabondage, stole the cattle of the colonists, and even attacked them in their homes. Widows especially suffered. Many ot them abandoned all they possessed and went to seek refuge in their families. The police, too few in number, were powerless to repress the lawlessness, notably on the frontier, so that the state of affairs became in- tolerable. Add to this that at the instigation of the missionaries of the Clapham sect in London -') all the courts, all the magistrates, took the part of the natives against the Boers. The roles were inverted : the negroes bullied the colonists while the latter humiliated before their former slaves scarcely dared lift up their heads. But exasperation soon brought matters to a crisis. The crisis culminated in 1835 — 38 in what is histori-

^) Chase, p. 335.

18 THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CEISIS.

cally known as the great trek. The Boer famihes in their thousands resolved to fly from their Egypt and its Pharaonic terrors and take their chance in the wide wilderness. Better to die in the struggle against the fates and against savages than to be further dis- graced by such an ignominy ! They yoked their cattle to their waggons, filled them with whatever they could carry, and with the Bible at their head, they descended into Natal, reached the Orange plateau and some of them even passed beyond the Vaal. In their encounters with the Zulus of Schaka under Dingaan and Moselekatsi they were severely tried, and more- over behind their enemies, they found the English missionaries as those ennemies councillors and leaders ; but . they were free ; they fought with a spirit and a heroism worthy of an Iliad, and after unheard-of sacri- fices they succeeded at last in founding their three small republics, in Natal, on the borders of the Orange River, and beyond the great Vaal.

Then England was guilty of the gre?ot wrong of reclaiming them as British subjects. We know the old English theory that the quality of a subject of the Queen cannot be annulled. ^^Nemo exuere potest patriamr Troops were disembarked at Durban, others invaded the Orange j^lateau. In July 1847 the Boers were defeated near Durban, and on August 29tii 1S48 at Boomplaats on the Orange River. In spite of their protestations the ''Sovereignty of the Orange River" and Natal wei'e incorporated by proclamation with the British Empire. It is thus that England drove to despair these intrepid colonists.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CEISIS. 19

England had humiliated them before their slaves, and exposed them to cruel lawlessness as fugitives chased from the hearths of their ancestors. But instead of revolting, they submitted themselves, their wives and their children, to all the horrors of an exodus, all the atrocities of an unequal struggle with the natives. And now that they saw the hour approaching, when they were to gather the fruit of all their sufferings, Pharaoh, as they said, rushed after them in pursuit. With the help of a theory of international right which since 1870 England herself has had to abandon, she imposed on them the ten times accursed yoke of English supremacy.

That was a state of things which could not last long. A native rising threatened to harass the English even in Cape Colony. Other statesmen of more liberal views were installed at Downing Street. The Governor of the Cape Sir Harry Smith, himself, recognised the necessity of putting an end to political agression, and a new era began. Natal remaine(^ an English colony but England retired from the Orange River and from the Vaal, and it was thus that the indepen- dence of the Transvaal was recognised by the Sand River convention January 17^1^ 1S52, and the indepen- dence of the Free State by the convention of Bloem- fontein Feb. 22th i854.

Why then have not the ideas of justice and equity which inspired these two treaties continued to guide the councils of Downing Street? Had such been the case England would have been safeguarded bij sincere and grateful allies and everybody would have applauded

20 THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS.

her. The kwown Boer President Mr. Brandt declared very plainly: ''Your friends and your allies we are willing to be: but your subjects, never." ^) Unhappily England has not wished for that. These treaties have both been violated: That of Bloemfontein by the judicial robbery of Kimberley ; that of the Sand-River by the arbitrary annexation of 1877.

It would only be right, however, to acknowledge that the motive which actuated the English in the earlier period of their dealings with the Boers was still amenable to the moral code. Though not free from ambition it yet betraj^ed nothing of that brutal egoism and passionate materialism of which Mr. Cham- berlain has since become the rabid apostle. Scarcely mindful of the real claims of their old colonists the English piqued themselves on being the defenders of the supposed rights of the natives. Deceived by reports from their* missionaries, little worthy of belief, and led astray by a sentimental love for primitive man, after the fashion of that time, most of them, Deists as well as Christians, were convinced that the Boers illtreated the blacks and that the English had received a divine mission to protect them. It was the time of the Aborigines Protection Societies so eloquently stig- matised by Edmund Burke. Little satisfied with the moral, social and political condition of contemporary society, Liberalism at the end of the last century believed that it must seek for its ideal, not amongst

1) Froude p. 43.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CEISIS. 21

civilized men, but in the haunts of the ''noble savage" whose simple and nomadic life had become the subject of idyllic interest. Robinson Crusoe's man Friday was the vogue, and ever}' form of oppression of native races beyond the sea was regarded as high treason against humanity. Thus the Deists in the political world, through their Aborigines societies, assumed the attitude of the black man's protectors, while in the religious sphere the Christians by their Missionary societies gave themselves out to be his benefactors. The occupation of the Cape offered them the first favourable occasion for realising their ideals. The Hottentot was the veritable child of nature whom they had made their idol, and therefore the Boer who held him in bondage loomed before their heated imagination as the marked enemy of the human race. That this opinion was without foundation is now admitted by Englishmen themselves. Mr. Theal tells us "the Aborigines of South Africa were savages of a very low type, to the eye of an European the most un- attractive in any part of the world, living in idleness and filthiness undescribable". They pitilessly massacred the Bushmen to be massacred by them in their turn, and both alike were constantly exposed to the continual butcheries of the Bantus. As they w^ere but a very small number in the midst of these savage tribes the Boers were compelled to take effective measures for safeguarding their families, and they introduced a system of slavery, copied, it is true, from the system adopted by the English in their American Colonies, but greatly modified: "The testimony of every one,

22 THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS.

competent to form a correct opinion, concurred, that in no other part of the world was bondage so light." ^) ^'No slaves", writes Mr. Fronde, had less to complain of than those at the Cape" ^}. And Captain Percival himself, the great calumniator of the Boers, wrote in 1804: ''It must be allowed that in general the slaves are well treated." ^) "In London howewer we are in the habit" — it is still Mr. Froude who speaks — "of attributing all the virtues to the natives and every injustice to the Boers" ^) Mr. Purvis is constantly compelled to declare "That the Government exaggerated their love for the slaves while they trampled underfoot the rights of the colonists" ^). Dr. Colenso also, the great Bishop of Natal, when he had corrected his judgment on the spot in 1880, in a letter to Mr. F. W. Chesson, bore the following testiaiony on behalf of the Boers which is worthy of b^ing remembered. "My conviction is that the Boers have been most shamefully treated, that they have acted admirably, restrained by wise leaders, and have done their utmost to avoid bloodshed. And as to their treatment of the natives, have the Boers done anything so horrible, as we, killing hundreds of women and children by dynamite in the caves of Indomo?" ^)

I do not deny that the Boers have been sometimes too severe or that the}^ have committed excesses; but the fact remains, as we have seen, that the famous official enquiry of 1816, resulted in their favour ; and in any case whatever can be placed to the

1) Theal pp. 1, 4, 181. ^) p. 11. 3) p. 283. *) p. 15. s) ]x 8. ^) The life of John Williani Colenso, If pp. 533 and 519.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 23

charge of the jBoers has been surpassed by what the original Engh'sh colonist's have permitted in similar circumstances. The eloquent pleading of M^"^- Beecher Stowe for the American slaves under their original English masters has not yet l)een forgotten. In the wars which the English have constantly provoked with the Kaffirs Colenso reminds us that as many as 10,000 Zulus have been killed in a single battle ^).

The manner in which they treated the envoys of Lobengula is a disgrace to the Chartered Company. The havoc created by the British bombs of lyddite and dumb-dumb bullets in the recent conquest of the Soudan staggers the imagination. Official documents quoted in Colenso's biography show us that in the wars with the American Indians General Sir Geoffrey Armherst did not hesitate to give an order to Colonel Bouquet to destribute smallpox blankets amongst them and to employ mas'tiffs to devour them. His own words were: "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as by every other method, that can serve to extirpate their execrable race, even by hunting them down by dogs" -).

Needless to say I do not dream of imputing these monstrocities to the Ensrlis character. I am convinced

^) Again in the Wleshadeuer Tagehlall count Marillac asserts that in 1873 when he visited the Cape an English officer who had taken part in the war which the Englisli waged with Guiqua tribes in 1875 — 80 told him that a colonel had given the order: To take the copOcrs to thf rear, that is to say, that all the Kaffir prisoners were to be shot behind a hill.

2) p. 690. The original of these letters may be found in the British Museum among the Bouquet papers, No. 21. 634.

24 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

that there is not a humane man in London who would not condemn them as abominable. But what I venture to maintain is that with these sombre pages in their own history the English have not sufficiently meditated the parable of the mobe and the beam before setting themselves up, at this time ot day, as accusers of the Boers. It is quite clear also that English missionaries like Dr. van der Kemp, Dr. Philips and Mr. Read who were indefatigable instigators of the anti-Boer movement, and in their methodist zeal treated the Calvinism of the Boers as hypsocrisy, and incessantly excited the Cape Government and the native chiefs against them, had never been honoured much in their circles. Too often in British settlements the missionaries have constituted themselves political pioneers rather than ambassadors of Christ, and the system — the Glenelg system — which they tried to apply at the Cape miscarried deplorably i). The Boers know too well that they have had no worse enemies than these gentlemen in clerical uniform and have endeavoured to keep them at a distance.

The Boers are not sentimental but men of practical genius. They understood that the Hottentots and the Bantus were an inferior race and that to put them on a footing of equality with the whites, in their families, in society, and in politics, would be simply folly. They have understood, further, the danger of mixed liaisons and to save their sons from this scourge, they have inculcated the idea that to have carnal intercourse with the Kaffir women is to commit

1) Theal, p. 126.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRICIS. , 25

incest. But on the other hand they have treated their slaves as good children; they have habituated them to w^ork; have softened their manners; and in South Africa you will hnd no man more skilful in dealing with the natives than a Boer pratriarch. Neither in the Free State nor in the Transvaal has the presence of the natives on the Boer farms raised the shghtest difhculty, and the most conclusive proof of the excellent relations existing between the Boers and their black servants is found in the fact that throughout the country there has been no sign of the least distur- bance even now when all the male population has crossed the frontier, and women and children are left with the Kaffirs on widely scattered and isolated farms. The Boers regard with ill-favour, not Missions, but English Missions of which they have preserved too painful memories. A Swiss missionary reports from the Transvaal: "The Boers themselves ask for Evan- gelists for the natives established amongst them i)." At Pretoria the Kaffirs have two Ohurches with their own pastors'. And a German missionary relates how General Joubert, returning from his expedition against the cruel chief Mpefo, visited the mission station and expressed his pleasure at finding amongst the Kaffirs Christians and worshippers of the same God whom his ovv^n people worshipped. ^) I ma}^ add that the Boers have always looked in the

1) huUetln de la mission romande. May 1899, p. 371.

2) Beiiiner Missionsberichte, Oct. 1899, p. 34G. The reformed church contained already in 1890 twenty eight missionaries, among.st the natives See Afiikaunder StualsdhnauKk, 1892, p. 71.

26 THE SOUTH-AFRIKAN CRISIS.

face the difficulty of the colour question wich the English have persistently kept out of view. The Blacks are increasing in South Africa to an extent which may well give cause for uneasiness. Of old they had massa- cres amongst themselves every autumn. But now they have ceased to be nomads; they multiply from 3^ear te year, and ere long their numbers will reach a figure which will become menacing for the whites whether Boers or English. A gradual extinction such as that which has almost destroyed the American Indians, is not at all likely to take place in South Africa. In 1805 there were in Cape Colony 60,000 Blacks, Javanese included; i) now they number 1150,337 2) The Basutos number 250,000. In Bechuanaland the native population is estimated at 250,000. ^) In the Transvaal they number 763,225. *). In the Free State there are 128,787. Finally in Natal there are 459,283, without counting 50,000 Indians, ■') so that we have a total of from three to four millions of Blacks against 748,536 Whites. The figures for 1891 are wanting, but we gather from some returns that the increase has gone on since then. Already these Blacks so far as they are Christianised have entred into relations with their coloured brethren of America. A coloured Methodist bishop has been appointed president of a kind of Negro council in Africa. And, do not believe that the Christianising of these blacks has obliterated

1) Aitton History of South Africa p. 196.

2) Official Handbook p. 233.

■") Statesniayis Yearbool; pp. 180, '182. 1) Staats-aJmanak p. 53. 5) Cape Argus p. 403.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. , 27

their racial passion. During my tour in America, last year, I had confidential conversations with men-of- colour of all conditions, and I brought away with me the conviction that conquest over the white man remains and always will remain their chimerical ideal. They believe that Abel was black and that the sign of the curse which God put upon Cain was that he certainly became white. Moreover the violent scene at Wilmington in 189S afforded another proof that between Blacks and Whites there will never be lasting reconciliation. And if, sooner or later, the struggle of extermination between Whites and Blacks breaks out afresh in South-Africa all the responsibility for it will fall upon Mr. Chamberlain and his Jingo journahsts who quite impertinently and with a presumption more than fool-hardy, have stirred up between the rival races a hatred whose livid flame, when it is too late they will try in vain to put out.

It would be entirely te mistake the restless fana- ticism of the Jingos both at the Cape and in London to suppose that they could ever have given what in their own language they finely call a "fair chance'' to the just and conciliatory tendencies wdiicli had inspired the treaties of the Sand River (1852) and of Bloemfontein (1854). These treaties recognised absolu- tely, and without any restriction, even with respect to foreign policy, the independence of the South African Republic and the Free State, the former of which

28 THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS.

equals in area the whole of Great Britain (308600 Kilometres against 314628); and the latter Bavaria Wurtemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and Alsace- Lorraine put together (1 38070 kilometres against 1 250.97. i) Downing Street was resigned and peace reigned from the Cape to the Zambesi for a score of years. Unhappily during that period public spirit in England underwent a complete change. Every moral consideration was set aside. The promptings of a selfish and aggressive materialism became predominant, and although England was bound by solemn tieaties which she could not go beyond without open violation of good faith, she did not hesitate to do so. The diamonds of Kimberley sparkled in the Free State with a too seductive bril- liancy, and the goldmines of the Rand became the misfortune of the Transvaal. 2)

In 1867 the "South African", a diamond which had become famous, was sold for £ 500 sterling. A Kaffir chief, named Waterboer, backed by Mr. Arnot, set up a claim to the territory where these precious stones had been found, and in 1871 Mr. Burkley in fla- grant violation of the treaty of Bloemfontein, annexed the whole of the rich district of Kimberley. On Jul}^ 13th. 1876 President Brandt was forced to sign in London a convention which, in consideration of a payment of £ 90,000 sterhng, ceded the territory the

^) The budgets for 1897 showed that the revenues raised were for the Transvaal 160 millions and for the Free State 26 million francs — Transvaal Slaats-almanak 1899 p. 59. Official Handbook of te Capep. ibO.

") Young Husband himself admits: "The disturbing factor has been the wealth of the Transvaal." P. 161.

THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS. 29

value of whose annual product of diamonds amounted to £ 4,000,000. To this first cynical violation of duly acquired rights England added, on April 12 1877, a still more scandalous rupture of her engagements by the foolhardy annexation of the whole of the Trans- vaal. Sir Theophilus Shepstone at the head of a small army entered Pretoria. To save appearances he con- sulted some merchants and their emploj-e's and contenting himself with this fraudulent plebiscite, he annihilated at one blow the result of all the sacrifices which the Boers had consummated in order to win their independence. Once more the fate of the natives served as pretext. Bat the game had its by-play. Two years later the English themselves had to go to war with them and massacred 10.000 men, women, and children, i)

Meantime, dumfoundered by such audacity the Boers could not dream of active resistence. They believed the affair to be a bold stroke taken at his own initiative by the Governor at the Cape; and trusting to the respectful confidence which they still had in Queen Victoria they decided, in 1877, to send a depu- tation to London. How they were deceived ! The welcome accorded them was more than cold. A second deputation which set out from Pretoria 1878 was treated in a fashion almost offensive. Sir Bartle Frere at the Cape declared, bluntly "the Transvaal is English and must remain English", and Wolseley haughtily added that the sun would dissappear from the Hea-

^) CoLENSO p, 519. It was in this war with the Zulus that Prince Louis Napoleon met his death.

30 THE SOUTHAFRICAN CRISIS.

vens, and the Vaal go back to its source, before the Transvaal would be given back to the Boers. ') Bad luck came of his braggadocia. Twelve months after the tri- colour, with its band of green, was hoisted at Heidelberg; Kruger, Pretorius and Joubert were appointed a triumvirate invested with discretionary power, and by their proclamation the exasperated Boers, redeclared their independence protesting in the name of the thrice-holy Gfod against the perfidy of England. General Colley hastened from Natal with his Scotch regiments, but was defeated and killed at Majuba Feb. 27th 18S1. Orders were dispatched from London to conclude an armistice. And not too soon! for already the commando's of the Free State were preparing to make a descend into Natal. 2)

Preliminary negotiations were concluded at Langs Nek, and on Aug. S^d the convention was signed at Pretoria which restored to the Transvaal its autonomy, but unfortunately under the suzerainty of the Queen of England.

That convention however could but be of short duration. The Boers refused to agree to the suzerainty. After what had happened half-measures could only inspire them with inexpressible mistrust. A new depu- tation consisting of Kruger, du Toit, and Smit em- barked for London to obtain a radical mondification

') Aitton, pp. 292—293. To the honour of Mr. Froude I wish to state that he declared in 1880 : "The Transvaal in spite of the prejudi- ces about the Britsh flag, I still hope that we shall restore it to its lawful owners.''

2) Du Flessis. The Transvaal Boer spreakUuj for himself, p. IIQ^

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. , 31

of the Treaty. This time they had the good fortune to be received in the capital in a spirit of concihation, and although Lord Derby, goaded by the opposition, especiall}^ in the House of Lords, was obliged to save appearances, he signed on Feb. 27^^^ 1884 the famous Convention of London by which the Suzerainty was virtually abolished and the South African Republic recognised as an entirely free and independent State, the interference of England being restricted solely to one point, namely, that treaties with foreign powers, excepting the Free State, after being drawn up, should be subject to the veto of England i). It was Mr. Gladstone who, himself of Calvinistic confession, and therefore able to understand the Boers, poured the oil of his idealism over the troubled waters of the prejudged colonies, and once more, as in 1852 — 1854, the sun of peace smiled over South Africa.

But Jiugoism was not disarmed and presently met with a trusty ally in the capitalism of the Rhodes, the Beits and the Barnatos. The discovery of gold mines was an- nounced. A band of adventurers squat tered on the Rand and Johannesburg became the centre of opposition to the government of Pretoria. They formed themselves in 1892 into a revolutionary committee under the name of "The National Union.,, Later they assumed the title of the ''South African League". To retire from a poor State ! Tha.t was possible ; but to leave to the Boers the unheard of treasures of the Hand ! That

^) Recued ijtineral des Iraites, de MAP,TE^'^:;, continue par Hopf, 2e serie t. X d. 184.

32 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

would be pure folly. Already Dr. Jameson was pre- paring his raid at Mafeking under the protection of the Minister of the Cape, and in 1895 he carried out his operations. Mr. Chamberlain has never been able to clear himself of a certain complicity i) in this villainy. Although the Boers soon took satisfaction of their invaders, and the German Emperor issued his famous dispatch, and the whole world rang with praises of the clemency of the Boers towards their captured enemies, President Kruger was too experienced a man not to feel that the fate of the Transvaal was decided by the Jingoes in London. With the indemnity of two millions unpaid ; the guilty parties set at liberty after a short detention; Rhodes retained as a member of the Privy Council; the Parliamentary enquiry suddenly stopped at the moment when decisive evidence ought to have been produced — all this left no doubt that a plot was being hatched that would not be abandoned. And while on his part Mr. Kruger, as a farseeing statesman, began to augment his artillery, to provide munitions of all kinds, and concluded March 17^11 1897 the treaty of alliance with the Free State, Mr. Chamberlain on his part deliberately opened the criminal negotiations which have resulted in the present war.

I believe that he was sincere when on Oct. 18^^^ he declared in the Lower House that he had not sought the war. The threat of war was no doubt enough for him; if Mr. Kruger had allowed himself

^) See the despatches i^uhlished in I' I ndependance Be/ge of Jan. 6h 1900.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 33

to be SO far intimidated as to accept all Mr. Cham- berlain's demands, peace would have been preferable to him. But the end he pursued was as clear as day. By the threat of a military occupation he wished to compel the Transvaal to be dictated to from Downing Street as to the conditions of naturalisation and enfranchisement, to the end that the Uitlanders should be given the opportunity of supplanting the Boers and in this way of Anglicising the Repubhc without strik- ing a blow.

Unhappily for him, his adversary, of whom Bismarck said that no statesman in Europe surpassed him in sagacity and sound judgement, did not fall into this trap. He prolonged negotiations in order to thoroughly sound the projects of Mr. Chamberlain and to give proof before all Europe of his own conciliatory inten- tions. But from the moment that he had in his hand undeniable proofs that Mr. Chamberlain was decoying him, and seeking to gain time in order to surprise him with a superior force, he flung at him the accu- sation of coveting Naboth's vineyard, and sent an ultimatum to London. This ultimatum Mr. Chamber- lain received as a trump card in his game. It would now be clear that it was he who was the man of peace ! because it was Mr. Kruger who had forced Great Britain into war ! And then the English army set out en route for its military promenade to Pretoria. But outside Mr. Chamberlain's following no one was the dupe of this inversion of the roles. Ever3^where on the continent public opinion and the Press well understood that for the Transvaal to have waited

3

34 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS,

patiently until the aggressor had finished sharpening his weapons would have been tantamount to committing suicide, and when we saw the English soldiers enter Pretoria as captives and the best English generals beaten repeatedly by the much despised Boers, the heart of the nations throbbed to the sentiment of justice. It was indeed to the God of justice that the Boers had appealed : They liad not been confounded.

VI.

By what pretexts has it been attempted to cover the effrontery of such negotiations as I have de- scribed ? They may be divided into three categories ; first the great questions of the Suzerainty and the fran- chise to which I shall revert later on ; secondly the special grievances associated with the name of Lom- bard, Edgar and the Amphitheatre ; lastly the aUeged oligarchic corruption of the Boer government.

To begin our examination of these charges with the last mentioned, I certainly do not dream of holding up the Boer government as a model. The political system of the Boers is defective in several respects. Their constitution, modifiable by a simple resolution of the first Volksraad, is wanting in stability. The Admini- stration of the finances leaves much to be desired. The relations between the legislative and judiciary powers give rise to observations wdiich we cannot qualify by conjectures. But let us be just. Has a govern- ment ever before been face to face with the task of organising a country under conditions so diflficnlt ?

THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS. 35

Since the convention of London not more than fifteen years passed away before peace was disturbed. Though numbering less than a 100,000 the Boers were scatt- ered over an area as wide as that of the whole of Italy, They were burdened with a native population five times more numerous. Education and mental culture were wanting. The governor of the Cape harassed them w^ith incessant recriminations. They had at the same time to administer the protectorate of Swaziland and, to crown all, the discovery of the goldmines, and the accumulating wealth of a cosmo- politan immigration, dissarranged all their machinery of government. All had to be regulated at once — the railway service, the telegraph, national defence, mines, education. And to accomplish that immense task Presi- dent Kruger was not able to find among the Boers men of technical capacity. We see, however, by the example of the Free State what the Boers can do when left at peace and unhampered in their development. At Bloemfontein the educational institutions are already superior to those at the Cape. Have not the Boers also given proof of their genius for organisation in the foundation of the small republics of Humpata, of Stella, of Gozen, and of Vryheid? And w^hat are they re- proached for in the Transvaal ? Because they have not clearly drawn up a constitution in writing ? But England has never had one and does not dream of giving herself one. The absolute power of the Volksraad? But the English Parliament which, if the crown does not interpose its veto, is bound by no superior power, glories in its omnipotence. Is the charge of infamy to

36 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

be preferred because the chief justice of the superior court in the Transvaal was deposed ? But in the United States in 1839 President Johnson got over the difficulty by reducing to nine the members of the supreme court and procured a complacent majority of a sort ^). But the government of the Boers is an oligarchy ? Yet every citizen is an elector. The members of Par- liament sit for only four years. Every person employed in remunerative public service is inelligible for the Volksraad. Every elector can officially lodge complaints even against the President. 2) Moreover there is trial by jury. Every functionary, judge, or local officer is elected by his fellow citizens, and all the citizens of the Republic, on the other hand, nominate the President and even the Commander-in-chief. Truly, the English must take strange liberties with logic to make their definition of oligarchy accord with all this.

-This is not all. The Leonards and their set tell us that at Johannesberg the imposts surpass pro- portionally the amount paid in every other State, but they forget to add that a white workman gets in that same town 25 francs a day which proves that the value of money differs there entirely from what it is in London or Edinburgh. Thus their grievance is based upon comparison of tw^o quan- tities which cannot be compared together. And as to the nine-tenths share which the Uitlanders pay to the public treasury the English must permit us to remind them of two things ; first that the Uitlanders are

1) Bryce The America)) Co)n)})o>tiveallh I. p. 367 . 2) Constit. 1896. a. 42, 73.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 37

exempt from all military service, and that it is more serious for the Boers to pay with their lives and the lives of their sons, than it is for the millionaires of the gold mines, to disburse a small percentage of their enormous dividends. Secondly, that no one invited them to the Transvaal, that they went of their own accord and that if they pay to the Transvaal millions of francs the}' take out of it millions of pounds. Thus, for example, in 1S9S when they had paid the Trans- vaal 140 millions of francs they exported from the Transvaal five hundred millions in gold. Further, while at the Cape the imposts on commodities are 15 per cent, in the Transvaal they are only 10 per cent. Moreover, love for the Transvaal has never entered their metallised hearts. Once the mines are exhausted they will disappear like vultures from the battle field. It is true they sent to London their monster petition signed wdth 21,684 names, but is it not known that President Kruger furnished to Sir Alfred Milner during the conference at Bloemfontein proofs, attested upon oath, that a host of these signa- tures were bogus ones; that we must deduct some five thousand names of women who could possess no right to vote ; and that the government of Pretoria was able to oppose to the 15000 signatures which proved to be bona fide a declaration of confidence signed by 23,000 Uitlanders amongst wdiom were found a good number of Englishmen? i). Of the surplus neither the Russians, nor the riermans (numbering

1) Livre Vert, VI, 1899, p. 15.— Livre Bleu, July 1899, p. 21,22. Acts o Parliament, p. 1277.

38 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN ClilSIS.

2862), nor the Americans (615) i) nor the subjects of any other nation have laid any complaint. The dis- contented faction reigned only amongst the English ; and when war was declared, as we have seen, strong men of every nationality came forward to take arms to defend the Republic against the English invasion.

Let us now examine the grievances under the second category; the Edgar, the Lombard, and the amphi, theatre case. These three cases are merely police affronts. On Dec, IS^^^ 1898 an English subject named Forster was violently assaulted by Edgar. The police came up and as Edgar had taken refuge in his house, Sergeant Jones entered to arrest him. Edgar then assaulted him, striking him a violent blow with a dangerous instrument, and Jones in self-defence fired at Edgar and killed him. Placed on trial before a jury by order of the Procurator the policeman was acquitted. These are the facts which Mr. Chamberlain so far exaggerated as to describe them: "The most striking recent instance of arbitrary action by officials and of support of such actions by the courts". 2) Well! Well- examine the police reports of London and Paris and surely entries of blunders of like character will not fail you. Or, better still, inform yourself of what passed in CpJifor- nia at the time of the discovery of gold in that State, or of what is going on at the present time in Klondyke and judge for yourselves of the value of this' 'Edgar case" !

Lombard also was a policeman of Johannesberg- of the same rank as Jones and a little brusk in his

1) Census. Sanitaiy committee of Johannesljurg, p. IX. "] Green-Book, p. 19.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 39

his methods. A series of charges of all sorts of outrages against men and women was lodged against him, charges which Mr, Chamberlain has had carefully inserted at full length in his Blue Books. But when and where were these charges made? Not before the court at Johannesburg but at the house of the British agent at Pretoria and a whole month after the alleged outrages had taken place. The government of Pretoria forthwith entrusted three persons of distinction with an enquiry into the prisoner's conduct. During long journeys this commission listened to all the complainants and their witnesses : and the result was that complain- ants and witnesses were all found to have been guilty of every kind of infringement of the law, but that the policeman Loaibard, although rough in his manners, had never committed the least outrage. The only reproach remaining to his charge was that he had served search-warrants during the night and without special mandate.

The Amphitheatre case is still more ridiculous. The South African League wished one day to hold a meeting in the Amphitheatre and informed the State Procurator, through Mr. Wyberghe, that they wished not to be troubled with the presence of the police. Conformably to this desire the Procurator telegraphed to the police at Johannesburg to refrain from putting in an appearance. Scarcely had the meeting begun when the opponents of the League invaded the Hall; a scuffle issued and the stewards who kept watch at the door could not separate the combatants quickly enough. Hence, complaints to London that the government of

40

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

the Transvaal had proved itself powerless to protect British subjects 0; and the whole capitahsts press at the Cape thrashed out this ''gross case" against the Boers, and Mr. Chamberlain by means of his Blue Books brought all these recriminations and all these journalistic tirades, before the Areopagus of Parliament. It was thus that public opinion, to his own liking, was created and that the country was prepared for a war of brigandage. Oh! but, it may be said, this was not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal; this was simply keeping watch for the complete protection of British subjects, or rather the good apostles of Johannesburg who having first said to the Transvaal magistrates "Allow us to dispense with your police," afterwards, when their meeting came to blows, complained bitterly that the police had not protected them 2). But what is this row in the amphitheatre at Johannesburg compared with the disgraceful scene in Trafalgar Square, in London even ? There remains the charge of corruption. Strange indeed! The Volksraad was corrupt! and yet war is made on the Transvaal because the Volksraad deter- mined not to do what the capitalists desired. There is a formal contradiction here and one of the proposi- tions excludes the other.

VII.

Coming to the other serious grievance arising out

^) Green Book pp. 19 and -20.

") Cf. Een eeuiv van onrecht, p. 48 (ed. Dordrecht). An English edition has been published at Baltimore by M. van der Hoogt.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CEISIS. 41

of the conditions of naturalisation and the right to vote deduced from them, we must take care to avoid mixing up two questions essentially different, one of which turns on the intrinsic value of the Transvaal law, and the other on the right of intervention which England has wished to arrogate to herself.

As to the last poiiit it is an established principle of international law, admitted by the masters of that science, that every Sovereign State has full right to lay down tor itself the conditions under which the stranger within its gates shall be admitted to citizenship. It is acknowledged that the State, even under the regime of these general conditions, always exercises the absolute right to grant or to refuse naturalisation to such or such individual. It is no less certain that every independent State has the absolute right to determine for itself the political responsibilities of the accorded naturalisation ') France alone is giving hospitality to 1,320,211 foreigners of whom 465,800 are Belgians and 286,042 Italians, but neither the King of the Belgians nor the King of Italy has ever pretented to claim political rights for these subjects, or to pester France with their "good counsels" with a view to the modification other law of naturalisation. England who has always molested the Transvaal on the subject of her 23,000 soi-disant oppressed-subjects has never sent a word to Paris in favour of the

') Cf. Dr. Caun, ''Das Ri'lcltntjczelz n'uer Eriverbuntj der SlaalsaiKjeho- rhjkeU 2nd. edit., Berlin, 1896, and seci. — Cf. Dr. Ullmann, Das VollierrechI, 2nd. edit., 1898, p. 233 and seq. — Dr. H. Rivikr, Lehrbuch des VOlkem'chlla, 2nd. edit., 1899, p. 194 et seq.

42

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

40,000 British subjects living in France. Mr. Cham- berlain himself in his despatch of Feb. 4tii 1896 declared: ^'Since the Convention of 188 4 Her Majesty's Government recognises the South African Republic as a free and independent Government as regards all its internal affairs, not touched by the Convention" i).

But the Convention of Londan, by Article 14, only claimed for persons of other nationalities, l«t i-jg^t of residence; 2"^ right to own property; 3id right to trade; and ith the right not to be subjected to special imposts. Consequently, according to Mr. Chamberlain's own words, every intervention for securing political rights for the Uitlanders was interdicted. I am well aware that in order to get over this difficulty Mr. Chamberlain propped himself up with a declaration made by President Kruger during the negotiations at Langs Nek in 1881, that "no difference would be made between Boers and Englishmen". But what was the import of that declaration? It is impossible to exactly detine it. And moreover as such a declaration was not inserted either in the preliminaries or in the Treaty itself has it acquired the force of law ? How could a declaration by Mr. Kruger bind the Volksraad which as the supreme power approved only the articles of the Convention ?

Further how can a verbal declaration made during the discussion over the preliminaries of the Convention of 1881 be regarded as binding after the Convention itself was abolished and replaced by that of 1884?

') Green-Book, p. 14.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 43

And as for the personal good faith of Mr. Kruger, how can his declaration of 1881 be binding upon him under circumstances entirely changed in 1898? In 1881 it was only a question of a few hundred Englishmen. In 1898 it was the question of a deluge of them. It is clear then that Mr. Chamberlain by making the Queen in her speech from the throne publicly accuse Mr. Kruger of having broken his promises, was guilty of misconduct which cannot be qualified, while by inter- vening on behalf of his clients for a five years franchise, and even for a redistribution of seats, he violated the Convention of London, without needing to give to that Convention another impoit than that which he had himself attributed to it. Nevertheless, already in the month of August, he became rash enough to support his illegal intervention with open menace, while he declared that the English Clovernment "Having taking in hand the demands of the Uitlanders, is resolved if necessary to press them by force, i)"

It is evident however that to thrust aside the sophisms of Mr. Chamberlain we need not yet assume that the Transvaal law was not wrong. To judge of the intrinsic value of that law, we must have recourse to the study of electoral rights where the circumstances are similar, and to the study of principles of natura- lisation under heterogeneous conditions. What Eng- land demanded, we remember, was the concession of the complete, not the lesser naturalisation ; for from the outset the end she pursued was to secure for the

1) Blue Book, c. 7521, p. 45.

44 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

Uitlanders electoral rights and eligibility for the first Volksraad. Now, what are the conditioDS to which this right is subject, for example, in Belgium ? Article 2 of the law of August 6th 1881 provides that to obtain full naturalisation a widower or celibate must have attained his fiftieth A^ear and given proof of a continuous residence oi fifteen years. Married foreig- ners and those who are fathers of families can be enfranchised at the age of 25 and after an uninterrupted residence of ten years ^). Roumania requires a resi- dence of ten 3^ears continuously after the application is made ^). The Boers, on the contrary, were satisfied with a residence of 3 years in the Free State ^), and in the South African Republic 2 full years ^). Mark, then, their want of civilization ! Later, without doubt, in the face of a restless cosmopolitan invasion the Transvaal demanded a residence for 14 years, but, even this latter figure is below that of the Belgian Law; and at the Bloem- fontein conference Mr. Kruger did not hesitate to reduce these fourteen years to seven 5), a proposition which was accepted by the Volksraad and even made retrospective, Let us now see what England herself did in this matter.

It is quite true that paragraph 7 of the bill of May 12*^1 1870 provided for the possibility of obtaining civic rights after a residence of 5 years, but the same paragraph

1) Law of June 26th, art. 8, hb.

2) Law of -1866, 1884, 51 .

2) Constitution section 1 . Art . 1 . D. ^) Wet van 1890, n. 5, Art. 1 d. '") Green book, n. 4, 1899, p. 30.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 45

gives to the Secretary of State an absolute right without appeal and without explanation to veto the application even after the completion of that period i). The article, in fact, says expressly that the Secretary of State: "May, with or without assigning any reason, give or withhold a certificate as he thinks most con- ducive to the public good, and no appeal shall lie from this decision,, -). It is truly unfortunate that Mr. Kruger did not know at Bloemfontein, the text of that article. He could have copied it and thus have check-mated Sir Alfred Milner. Yet b}^ English procedure a foreigner obtains only the lesser naturalisation. To be eligible for Parliament 3"0u must have a special law pas- sed 3). In the period from 1875 to 1878 full naturalisation in England was granted to only three persons. It follows therefore that at Bloemfontein England wished to force the Transvaal . to give far greater privileges to the Uitlanders than she herself grants to foreigners resi- dent in Great Britain. And when Mr. Chamberlain boasted that in Cape Colony the citizens of Dutch origin are placed on the same footing as those of English extraction, he strangely inverted the facts. At the Cape it is not the English who have natura- lised the Boers, but the Boers, who, being the earlier settlers in the colony, afterwards received the English. The additional stipulations of the Transvaal law are the same as those which we meet with everywhere. The foreigner must enjoy his own personal liberty.

') Naturalisation Act, 1870. Victoria, 33. Art. 2.

'^) Statutes p. 119.

3) Bill () Aug. 1844. Vict. c. GO cf. Cordogan, p. 181, note.

46 THE SOUTH-AFRICA>' CRISIS.

He must possess the means of subsistence. He must be of good moral character. He must affirm his intention of becoming a citizen of the State. Lastly he must take the oath of loyalty. The only questionable con- dition is that which requires him when naturalized to renounce his former souvereign, a condition which, in practice however, is allowed to lapse. But even in imposing this somewhat objectionable condition the Transvaal gives no proof of its barbarism, for it is, as we know, a condition simply adopted from the model American constitution. ^) It appears then that while the Transvaal adopted the normal conditions analogous to those of the European States, it even sur- passed them by large and liberal resolutions requir- ing only a residence of 2 years for enfranchisement instead of 5, 10, 7, and even 15 years as in England, France, and Belgium.

But after the discovery of the mines all comparison ceases, and Olive Schreiner has well shown that to understand the embarrassment of the government of Pretoria in presence of the unforeseen rush of adven- tures, we must imagine that some fine day 40,000,000 of Russians and Germans have made an eruption into England to exploit the mines of Wales and Scotland, and to send home the produce of them. Face to face with that eminently dangerous situation it was beyond all doubt the duty of the Yolksraad to be watchful for the preservation of their common vealth. The swamping of the commonwealth bv these outlanders was never

i| Revised Stotides of the Untied States, 2nd. Edit., 1876, tit. 30.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 47

admissible — the idea of adoption into a /arhily being still existent and destined to remain always as the directing principle of all naturalisation. The vigorous measures which the Volksraad then took were entirel}' justified. Every European government under similar circumstances would have adopted still more draconic methods. And the fact that the Volksraad ventured im- mediately to lower the franchise quaUfication from four- teen to seven years, only explains itself by the experience that those who really intended to remain, were in a short time metamorphosized into Boer citizens and had made common cause with them against England, while the majority of the population of adventurers, having no other intention than to turn their backs on the Transvaal as soon as their fortunes were made, cared very little for a naturalisation which submitted those who bene- fitted by it to military service.

Xote moreover that in Natal where the English find themselves overcrowded with Indian coolies they are the first to wish to exclude the "off'-comes,, from all control in local affairs and even to stop their immigration. Mr. Younghusband tells us indeed that the cry "loose from England" appears to them preferable to the danger of being supplanted by the strangers i). Again, to form a thoroughly sound judgment on this question it is well to observe, that all naturalisation detaches subjects from the nation to which they belong to incorporate them with another nation of which they should become adopted sons. What then are we

1) p. 161.

48

THE SOUTfl-APBICAN CRISIS.

to think of a government which insists upon hastening on facihties for naturalising elsewhere its own subjects? It is as if a mother wishing to get rid of her own children, tried to force some of them on to an adopter. Then it is clear that every action of any government for forcing another State to naturalise its subjects is either against nature or against sense.

VIII.

We have now to consider the suzerainty question. Suzerainty may l)e either organic or mechanical. Organic suzerainty is such as existed under Feudalism ; a mechan- ical suzerainty is an affair of contract. The liefje- State is in a position of inferiority and of vassalage under a prince; the State bound by contract or treaty is in a condition of perfect independence and equality except as regards the stipulations which the contract imposes upon it For the liege State, therefore, which is held in fealty by its lord, everything is done in the name of the suzerainty, that suzerainty being the unfailing source of its subjection: for the State bound by contract, the name is nothing and may be ommitted, the only source of its dependence being the stipulations of the treaty.

This distinction being made, nothing is easier than to show that the suzerainty mentioned in the Conven- tion of 1881 is of the mechanical Vm^ and has nothing to do either with vassalage or with the principle of fealty. In his dispatch of March 31st issi Lord Kimberley acknowledged it in these words: "The term has been chosen as most conveniently describing superiority over a State, possessing independent rights

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 49

of government, subject to reservations with reference to certain specified matters'^', and on Oct. 19tiil899 Mr. Chamberlain dechxred : "Surely no one has ever argued Suzerainty was otherwise than defined by the articles of the Convention . . . Lord Kimberley's definition is the definition we always accepted" i). Hence the only suzerainty in question is one depending exclusively upon the stipulations of the Convention. As for the 'name of Suzerainty, Sir Alfred Milner admitted that it is "a question of etymology rather than of politics" 2) ; And Mr. Chamberlain in his speech of Oct. 19*^ 1899 went still farther and declared: "I do not care a brass button which of those words you choose. You may €all it Abracadabra if you like, provided you keep the substance". When in the Convention of 1884 the "specified matters" were restricted to article 4, Lord Derby declared in the House of Lords that things remained in statu quo and that if the name suzerainty had beenommitted "we have kept the substance of it 3)". It is clearly proved then that in 1881 \h%'-'- substance of the suzerainty" was included and expressed in the stipulations of the divers articles of the Convention of that year, and that it passed unaltered, though condensed into the single article 4, in the Convention of 1884, that is to say, that it consists now in the veto of England upon all treaties made by the Transvaal with foreign powers. But the government of the Transvaal having declared on several occasions and in the most solemn manner

1) Acts of I'arliament, p. '278.

2) Blue Book, c. 950, 7, p. 6. ^) Acts of Parliament p '^77, a.

50 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

that it respected this right of veto there was no diffe- rence or coUision possible if both parties to the treat}:^ had been honest in their deahngs. Over the Transvaal England had a certain supremacy, a supremacy which took its origin from a bilateral convention, the sub- stance of which was defined by article 4, and that substance, the South African Republic acknow^ledged without reticence or evasion.

We arrive at the same conclusion in following the reasoning to which Downing Street has accustomed us. There the}^ are fond of saying that the Queen who from 1877 was sovereign of the Transvaal ceded in 18S1 a portion of her right of sovereignty. Granted ! but in any case what she retained was nothing more than what was expressly stipulated for in the articles of the Con- vention of 1881. And as in 1884, she ceded anew the greater part of the rights which she had reserved in 1881, it is perfectly evident that now all that remains to her of her former rights is the veto in art. 4 of the Convention of 1884; neither more nor less. That was not the point of view of Mr. Kruger who, like most of us, has always stigmatised the occupation of 1877 as a violation of the treaty of the Sand Iliver. But we come back to . the same point. The supremacy over the Transvaal that England under her treaty- obligations can only make valid consists exclusively of her right of veto, a right which the Transvaal has never contested.

Mr. Chamberlain, on the contrary, has desperately clung, not to the definition, but to a wide conception of suzerainty in order to deduce from it a species of

THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS. 51

(jeimral dependenvi/. Thus he writes: "The cardinal fact for me.... is supremacy, predominance, preponde- rance, paramountcy, call it what you will O-" 'i'his idea of "paramount power" haunts him ; he washes to forcibly introduce it under the label of "suzerainty'' as defined in 1881, and he has pretended that from that time the Transvaal was compelled to recognise the suzerainty in a general sense. Scarcely had the Transvaal given a sign of resistence when the regi- ments at Aldershot received the order to embark.

To these ridiculous pretentions the Boers smartly replied in the sound and crushing defence prepared by Dr. Leyds. In Europe, in America, even in Africa, all who speak with authority on international law have come forward en masse to give thQ coup de^r dee ioMx. Chamberlain and his rodomontades. I cite M. Arthur Desjardins, of the Institute of France; Professor West- lake, of the University of Cambridge; Professor Yan der Vlugt, of the University of Ley den ; M. Despagnet, of the University of Bordeaux ; Professor de Louter of the University of Utrecht; Dr. Whiteley, in the American Forum ; Dr. Farelley of the Cape, etc. To sustain the argu- ment of the Secretary for the Colonies, no specialist has presented himself. On the contrary thej^ have made fine fun of his theory "du double preambule", as if Lord Derby himself had not "knocked the teeth out of the argument" when he remitted his proposal to Mr. Kruger. It is appropriate to recall the fact that the Cape Government in its dispatch of Feb. 27^iil884

') Acts of Parliament, p. 277a.

52 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

announcing to President Steyn the conclusion of the new convention added that the position of the Transvaal would thereafter be on an equality with that of the Free State excepting only with regard to the veto ^). I produce the official declaration of Lord Derby of Febr. 15tii 18S4 : 'Tour Government will be left free to govern the country without inter- ference and to conduct its diplomatic intercourse, and to shape its foreign policy, subject only to the requirement in the fourth article." We must abide by the formula in which, on July 28*^^^ 1884, the deputation communicated the terms of the Con- vention to the Volksraad, a formula adopted with the knowledge of England and accepted on her part without protest 2). We assert that during the whole time which elapsed before 1898 England never breathed a word about the suzerainty in her interminable correspondence. Finally it must be observed that the right of the Transvaal to declare war, even against England, has never been contested ^), and that England exchanged the exequaturs of the consulat agents in London and at Pretoria.

Seeing thus all the fine scaffolding of his argument collapse, Mr. Chamberlain did not dare to put forward the question of the "Protectorate". The indisputable fact that the Transvaal since 1894 had exercised, with the consent of England, the protectorate over

') Yellow book of the Orange Free State p. 9. 2) Blue Book, c. 950, 7, no. 4 and p. 8. ^) Stead Are vte tn the Right, p. 22.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. 53

Zwaziland prevented him O- To protect the Protector ! that would have been too absurd; but as for his "paramountcy" he did not desist from urging it. England was a great power, the Boer States were small republics included in her territory. England was fully justified, therefore, in considering these small States as coming within her sphere of influence. Even over the Free State she put forward her pretentions 2). As the six Great Powers endeavour to exercise a certain hegemony over States of second and third rank in Europe, England ought to assume an analogous headship over all South Africa! But this was to forget that such a supremacy could only exist by force never by right. With the exception of Mr. Lorimer, 3) all jurists are unanimous in maintaining as a principle of international law the e([uality of States between themselves. Thus M. Rivier says distinctly.

But the Convention of 1884 giving him no other right than that of veto, as defined in article 4, Mr. Cham- berlain always found himself driven into a corner. As with individuals so with States supremacy can only be admitted de facto by the superiority of moral, intellectual, or physical power. But can it be said that in Africa England has given proof of her moral superiority by her repeated violation of treaties, or of intellectual superiority in her diplomatic disputes with

') Convention of'Dec. 10th. ■1894. See KocK, Conventies en tr((ctaten, p,6i.

2) Acts of Parliament p. 278.

») Institutes of the Law of Nations I, p. 47 17039.

54

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

Mr. Kruger, or even of physical superiority on the Tugela or at Modder-Rivier ? It seems that we must still be doubtful when an Englishman hinself admits, as we have seen, that: "We are merely reaping the harvest of seventy years of mismanagement i)."

IX.

Weary of these paltry shifts and of this diplomatic chicanery public opinion in England, in the more enlightened circles, turned round and pleaded the civi- lising mission of Great Britain, The Boer regime belonged to the worst period of the middle ages, and it was the duty incumbent upon England to replace it with her up-to-date civilization! Here however we must pause for a moment. Has civilization the right to propogate itself by war ? Does the fact that another people is found to be in a state of inferior civilization constitute a justa perduellionis causa? Moreover there is civilization and civilization. Doubtless the English of Johannesburg wear clothes of a superior cut. Their social customs are in some respects a servile imitation of high-life. They are more expeit in the exact sciences. Their libraries are full of all sorts of bad novels. As a result, drinking bars have multiplied at Johan- nesburg. Prostitution was become a scandal. Free fights are the fashion. A ruffianly mob constantly menaces the public security. All the rowdyism of the sea-port reigns there. This is not, I

^) Froude p. 4.

THE SOUTH-ArRICAN CRISIS.

think, the kind oi civilization whose blessings the morahsts of London wish to spread amongst a people whom Mr. Gibson Bowles described, even in the English Parliament, as "A sturdy, brave, simple, Godfearing people." 0-

Certainly the civiUzation which one meets with in the better circles of London is very superior to that of the Boers, but in respect of national morals the Boers yield the palm to no European nation. Again, how can we disregard the connection always existing between the form of civilization and climate, nature of the country, and habitual occupations which everywhere exercise their influence? What a difference there is between Montenegro and Italy, and even in Italy between the great cities and the valleys of the Alps ! The Boers have already made astonishing progress and they will still advance. Who then has the right to impose upon them methods of enUgUened development? Hothouse xjlants do not thrive on mountain ranges; and what would the Boers have gained if a forced process of evolution had endowed them with vices which their character would not have been strong enough to resist? I do not apprehend that their development has by any means been too slow: I fear, on the contrary, that it is going on too quickly.

But, in any case, to win over a people to your civiUzation you must preach to them by example and that is precisely what England has not done, either in her diplomatic struggle at Pretoria and Bloemfontein

1) Acts of Parliament 189'J p. 776.

•^•5 THE SOUTH-AJEICAN CRISIS.

or, lam grieved to say. on the field of battle. Without a scrupulous respect for acquired rights and without sincerity above all suspicion eveiy civilization breaks down. But England has violated the treaties of Bloem- fontein and the Sand River and, by an unjustitiable interpretation, has tried to escape from the Conven- tion of London. More, one of the most imiwrtant resolutions of the Volksraad was inserted in the Bine Blook, not as it appeared in the official journal, but as it was reported in the Press (of July 29*^ 1899). In the Blue Book text the essential words : ''with complete franchi-sed rights'' were suppressed »). It was this omission which Dr. Clarke called ihe lying misrepresent tation of the text in the Bine Book 2). Even the des- patch of President Steyn of Sep. 27 tb was mutilated in the Blue Book by the omission of 29 lines in five different paragraphs ^j. Worse still, in his last dispatch but one Mr. Kniger, subject to three conditions, offered naturalisation after five years residence, and in his additional propositions went beyond the overtures of Sir Alfred Milner at Bloemfontein. Had this proposal been accepted the war would have been prevented. Mr. Chamberiain replied in a despatch which every- body, including Mr. Kruger himself; believed to be an absolute refiisal. Yet on Oct. 19th Mr. Cham- berlain declared in the House of Commones that his answer had been a "qualified acceptance", and added

') Acts of Parliament, p. 777. 2) Ibid.

^) Compare the two texts in the BufF Book and the Blue Book. It will be found in "VF«r againsl War" by Mr. Stead, p. 36.

THE SOUTH-AFEICAN CRISIS. •)/

that the disagreement was only over a bare tenth of the proposed terms i). According to Mr. Chamberlain he wished to say "I accept", but he said it in such a way that everj^body understood him to mean quite the contrar3\ When he saw that Mr. Kruger, like everybody else, was the dupe of his ambiguity, he did not protest but kept quiet: and knowing that the effect of this misap- prehension would pi-ovoke the w^ar, he w^ent speechi- fying in the North of England to rouse the popular passion against Mr. Kruger. So much for diplomRtic veracity !

As to the conduct of the war I pass over in silence the fact that the Red Cross has been fired on. That is done by both sides, not of deliberate purpose, but through the accident of fog and distance. At a range of 3,000 or 4,000 metres it is difficult to distinguish the red Hag and the direction of bombs is uncertain. But there is another matter. The Government of Pre- toria have served the consuls with a formal complaint to the effect that the Red Cross had been abused to secure the safe conduct of an armoured train sent to repair the railway. Dr. Kakebeeke has declared, in an autograph letter, that he had seen with his own eyes at the Battle of Elands Laagte, English lancers stab several Boers who lay w^ounded or who had thrown down their arms -). Mr. P. R. Kock, adjudant to the general of that name, published in the Statidard and Diggers News of Nov. 4*^1 a declaration, made on oath, that he found General Kock wounded in the

1) Acts of Parliament, p. 290.

-) yieuwe Rollenlainsche Courant of Dec. 18th.

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

left arm by a dum-clum bullet, and quite naked except for hi8 shirt; and that the General affirmed that during the night an English soldier had taken all his effects aud all his clothes, and had thus left him in his anguish. Mr. Stead in his War against War relates that an English soldier, G. Gavin of the King's Royal Rifles, himself saw another soldier of the Dublin Fuseliers thrust his sabre up to the hilt nito the body of a prisoner who had surrendered. Further, all letters from the wounded and captive men of the Dutch corps which have been published in our journals attest that the Lancers especially were infiiriated at "Elands Laagte, and that almost all the wounded a,nd prisoners were robbed of their purses, their watches, and their keepsakes. But, I am convinced that the English War-Office reproves these inhumanities and that in England every humane man loathes them : but I ask again is it thus that the propaganda of superior civilization can be conducted ? The prisoners at Pretoria, I understand from Mr. Churchill, have been unanimous in acknowledging that the Boers treated the wounded and prisoners in a manner beyond reproach, and the English generals have admitted that they conduct the war in a chivalrous spirit.

Arbitration is the mot cTordre of modern civilisation. Well, Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn have always adhered to it. It was admitted in principle, though with restrictions, in the Convention of London. It was adopted in 1885 in the affair of the coolies. Mr. Kruger presented to Sir Alfred Milner, during the Conference at Bloemfontein, a scheme of arbitration elaborated

^0 THE SOUTH- AFRICAN CRISIS. 'J-

ill several articles. It Avas England who declined it. "Suzerainty cannot admit of arbitration!" she cont- ended. The interpretation of the Convention was to be binding on one side only and, if need be, would be laid down by force. As if, even under the Cham- berlain system, arbitration between masters and w^ork- men was not the rule! On which side here again is civihsation most advanced?

I recall the scene in Trafalgar Square where a ministerial rabble assembled en masse; and with all sorts of menaces threatened the friends of peace, pelted them with rotten eggs, and prevented them from speaking. Do yon imagine the impression which the report of that scandal made at Pretoria was very edifying? Have not the Boers been told that liberty of speech is the most sacred privilege of modern civih- sation ? The press has everywhere been considered as the great motive force of the progressive movement. And in its best days the English press marched at the head of the whole journalistic phalanx. But what is to be said of it since the beginning of the last jingo campaign? The Westminster Gazette alone holds to its principles. The Editor-in-chief of 2he Daily Chronicle, because he could not side with the jingos, has had to send in his resignation. No difference of opinion can. be tolerated. From the press to the telegraph is not a far cry. And what is the use that the War Oftice has made of the telegraph? All the despatches have been mutilated and defeats changed into victories. The smallest advantages gained in insignihcant skirmishes have been inflated into important

^^ THE SOUTH-AfRICAN CRISIS.

Victories; the losses of the enemy exaggerated: the losses of the English minimised, while the censorship at Aden has isolated the South African Republics from their own agents, if not from foreign Governments and from the whole world. I know a distinguished family in Am- sterdam whose married daughter was dangerously ill at Pretoria. No message from her reached them, and the parents were left in the most heartrending uncertainty. But what the doctors of the Transvaal (they num. ber 250) fear above all is an invasion of syphilitic maladies which prevail to a very alarming extent in the English army of India. Lord George Hamilton in the House of Commons, Jan 25th. 1S97, himself went so far as to say: "The total number of admis- sions to hospital of cases of venereal disease amongst the Indian troops rose in 1895 to 522 per 1000- and the number of men out of service, owing to these maladies, was 46 per thousand per day." The Trans- vaal doctors are aware of this: and that is why though they are indifferent to the pest at Lorenzo Marques, they dread above all things the venereal infection which the troops from India carry about with them. What do the moralists of London think of this? Are the Boers so very wrong when they refuse to accept, otherwise than sous benefice d'inventaire, the civilisation which England promises to South Africa?

X.

How are we to solve the enigma of England's present position? Surely it is playing with words to

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Gl

charge the glorious nation, which throughout the century has been hberal and progressive above all others, with the crime of this absolutely iniquitous war — a war of rapine and conquest which can only have futile results. In several respects that nation, in my opinion, is not surpassed by any other. If I were not a Dutchman I should like to be one of her sons. As a rule her veracity is above all suspicion. She has an innate sense of duty and of right. Her constitu- tional institutions have been imitated all the world over. Nowhere will you find self-respect more finely developed. Her literature, though inferior from a merely artistic point of view, glows with a conception of life altogether serious, healthy, and profound. Even in the style of her fashions and in the care of the body, she exhibits a character of dignity which compels respect. Her philanthropy knows no bounds; her morality is above the average; and as regards religious activity she marches at the head of all other nations. How is it, then, that such a nation can have come to such a fall ? The solution of the enigma must be found in the magic charm of the word Imperialism taken in a national sense, quite different from the personal Imperialism of an Alexander the Great or a Naix)leon. At one time only until now has the pheno- menon of national imperialism been observed in history, namely in the Coesarisraf of the Romans. The same pheno- menon now reappears in the mania of Anglo-Saxon jingoism. The analogies between the two are really striking. At Rome as in London there was the strictest regard for the rights of the citizens and at the same

fi9

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ti me a want of respect amounting to disdain for the rights of other people ■). The aim of the iron will of Rome was to dominate all the known world by her land forces; the -'Rule Britannia" people hold it for a political axiom that they are to dominate the whole globe by their fleet. The Roman proconsuls like the Jingiish High Commissioners granted to the conquered nations the fullest measure of self-government on the one condition formulated by Mr. Chamberlain on Oct. 19.1. ..that we shall have the right to use force to compel submission to our will." 2)

Then as now, there were two sorts of cofonies. At Rome they were called Senatm and I„>peralorie. In London they are called Self^Governing and Crown colonies At Rome imperialism concentrated in the lofty Idea of the Civh Bomanu, whom, were he the sornest of adventurers, the whole power of the empire had to protect; in London Mr. Chamberlain makes ms eloquent plea for the i^rrVi./. .«^_,W, the idol before whom all the flags of the fleet and of the army must tup- Ihe Am sacra fames drew all the gold of the world to Rome, with the result that, even in the time of the Republic, an upstart Crasus could amass a capital of 8.3 mlhons. a Lucullus could display his magnificence at his four-thousand pound dinners and, in the time ot the Caesars, the Emperor spend 600,000 francs upon roses^ England we have the unheard- of luxury of

I'lJ^l T" ,™' !" '''"* "^ ■""' countrymen were treated see N6vember, p. 263. " '"'^^ ^'" ^^— -""--^ t. Ill,

-) Acts of parliament, ^^. 263, 299.

THK SOUTH-AFUICAN CRISIS.

the upper ten thousand, the Beits, the Barnato's and the Rhodes amass incalculable fortunes, and a minister of the Crown imys insane prices for his orchids. At Rome, Cicero employed all his eloquence against the crimes of a Vanes; in London the worthy successors of Burke fulminate against an imperialist jingoism which galls their conscience. At Rome the air was i-ent with the cry „Vare, Vare, redde mihi legiones meas!", and in her' palace at Windsor the Enghsh Queen bursted into tears over the losses which the des- cendants of the herods of Teutoburgerwald ha in- liicted upon her guards. Yes, this Imperialism is an obsession. It worms itself into the heart of the nation from the moment that the last opponent that troubles it bends undei- its blows, thus opening eveiy land road to the eagles of its army, as formerly for Rome, and every sea route to the flag of its fleet, as for England after Trafalgar. So long as the last opponent continues to resist, he will always be, in spitel of you, the alty of your conscience, which, by the forces at its com- mand, constrains you to respect for right. But once the last rival is brought to his knees, your love of right remains alone and must, without any external support, suffice for itself. If then, at this psychological moment, the conscience of the nation betrays itself, the danger is that it will precipitate itself from the highest idealism into the most vulgar cynicism. Stron- ger by land or by sea than any other nation, and even than all other nations, combined, its unlimited power unconsciously suggests to it the dream of universal power, and the history of Tyre may be repeated when God

64 THE SOUT-AFRICAN CRISIS.

addressed it b}^ the voice of Ezekiel (xxviii : 4 — 9) : "With thy wisdom and with thine understand- ing thou hast gotten thee riches, and 'hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures. By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches. Therefore thus saith the Lord God : 'Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God' behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations, and th}^ shall draw their swords against the beauty of th}^ wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas. . Wilt thou say before him that slayeth thee, 'I am God?' But thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee." This Imperialism, further, submerges more and more the national idea under an oecumenical conception, and, in return, it tries to assimilate the whole world to its national type, it permits, it even encourages, every social movement to the most distant point of the peripher}^, provided it remains the centre of such movement. Urbi et orbi becomes, the tacit title of its decisions, and ever}^ time its supremacy runs the risk of being disputed, the Machiavellian principle of Salus reipublicae suprema lex esto stifles in the mass of the nation its holiest aspirations. Lord George Hamilton did not fear to vaunt the patriotism of those who rendered abortive the Jameson inquiry, ^'because they had behaved as Englishmen always do

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when English interests are at stake." ') In other words because they had sacrificed right to the glory of their country! This Imperiahsm glides, unperceived as a streptococus, into the blood of the crowd, poisons it, and overcomes its conscience. The first man you meet begins to feel himself a person of importance from the mere fact that he carries in his veins the blood of his nation. All feel themselves lifted up, exalted, glorified. The greatness, the power of their country, must be turned to account for their own greatness, for the welfare of their family, for the increase of their fortune. Once the barrier of right is down, in politics, there is no more reason why the moral barrier should stand in the way of their advance to the bait of the treasure. Then the fatal descent begins to show itself. The capitalists no longer conceal their arrogance. Even in the ranks of the nobles, impoverished by the decline of rents or incumbered with gambling debts, they put out the corrupting bait of their greed. The electoral machine falls under their influence. The Press gives way. Public opinion allows itself to be gained over. Statesman even feel themselves led by the bridle. And the lamentable consequence is accentuated every time yet another of the most robust convictions is seen to pass to the enemy. Opt'iuu corruptio pessima.

The fact that the English character in its essence is endowed with such an inherent and noble potent- iality would only render more deplorable its decadence. "The higher the seat," as the proverb says, ''the

^) stead, Ave ive in the righl :' P. 66.

66 * THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

deeper the fall." By the fall of England, human progress would lose one of its finest instruments. We cannot do without this England, which has been noble, proud, and Christian, and which may become so again. And it is for this reason that well-disposed people throughout Europe, the best minds throughout the world, are at one and the same time grieved and indignant at the wild and distressing spectacle that England persists in forcing upon us by this war of conquest, one of the most iniquitous in the history of the ninetheenth century.

Fortunately, the future of England is not yet deter- mined. All our prayers are that she will retrieve herself. Her reverses might become her salvation. Already one of her Archbishops has raised the voice of repentance and humiliation. A group of eminent men, giving evidence of a moral com-age that commands our most sincere admiration and is inspired by the better traditions of Gladstone — the Morleys, the Harcourts, the Courtneys, the Steads, the Clarks, the Laboucheres, the Harrisons, and so many more — are vigilantly guarding the most sacred treasures of their nation, and disputing every inch of the ground with the Jingoes ; and they are raising their voices so loud that soon their voce damantis in deserio will reach the Highlands of Scotland. All possibility of a composition is not yet excluded. The fall of Mr. Chamberlain would give the signal of salvation. And if a Cabinet of more discretion, abandoning all idea of vengeance, and caring nothing for military susceptibilities, offered to confederated South Africa its full independence,

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS. <)7

reserving only the Eastern part of Cape Colony proper and some indispensable points on the coast, perhaps England might still change a formidable enemy into an unequalled ally. But let there be no delay. Now is the supreme moment. England must come to her- self again, aud renounce her dream of Imperialism ; otherwise, Imperialism will eventually destroy her, as it destroyed ancient Rome.

XI.

There must be no mistake, however: the fear that England w411 not draw back from the fatal descent is far from being chimerical. The danger lies in the indifference to moral principles and in the insufficiency of the Christian movement. Mr. Fairfield put it well: '^ Without being a moralist, I nevertheless maintain that morality and Imperialism cannot go together." ') And, three years back, Mr. Chamberlain himself still acknowledged it : "To make war on the Boers in order to wrest from them the desired reforms would be unwise and immoral." -) The cause of this incompatibility is evident. Morality imposes before every thing unalterable respect for the rights of another, and Imperialism cannot do its dismal work without disregarding such rights. To save appearances, then, there is needed a conception of right which takes away its stability, its objective character, and its inviolable holiness, by ren- dering it so variable that it bends at your will. Now,

h Stead, Tlu- SrauiUd, p. 20. 2) Speech, May 8, 18%.

68 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

this is the very thing tiiat the opinion of to-day tends to do with it. So long as moral principle and the prin- ciple of right sought their point of support in God and in Revelation, they were clothed with an objective character, and imposed upon us an authority before which nations as well as individuals had only to bend. But all is changed since the moment when Schleier- macher, among the Protestants, placed all our theolo- gical knowledge, including that of moralitj^, under the empire of subjectivism. Martensen, the Danish Luthe- ran bishop, drew from that the indisputable inference, when he said that "what is permitted or prohibited in the point of view of morality can only be indivi- dually determined i)."

It is well known how this theory has been strained to dispense statesmen of the stamp of Bismarck from all obligation to "bourgeois" morality ; and Imperiahsm declares itself content with it. The moment that right ceases to be a barrier that compels you to stop, and is changed into a piece of theatrical scenery that every actor moves about according to the needs of his performance. Imperialism, even the most extra- vagant, has a perfectly free hand. It matters little in that case how the stage is arranged. The practical statesman who likes to flout every theory will take what suits him where he finds it, and will so manage to carr}'' out his j)rojects without any care for the rights of others. An earnest theorist like Mr. Mac Kinley explains to you, at Omaha,

1) Etik, i. 580.

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69

in his celebrated speech on "Duty and Destiny", that ever}'' powerful nation ought to foresee the mission that God has reserved for it and to order its duties according to the exigencies of the end to be attained. Others, docile adepts of transforniism, will tell you that Qtilit}' is the sole directing force that ought to guide us, and that, without any hxed rule, right evolves from one form into another, like cellular tissue, simply by chance utility, changing from reptile to bird/

I am aware that Mr. Spencer has severely censured the dubious dealings of Mr. Chamberlain; I praise him for it; and yet I do not hesitate to impress the opinion I have formed on mature reflection, that he and his school, by applying the Darwinism of Nature to Psychology and Ethics, after a theory that M. Th. Ribot has most ably expounded to us, have, through weakening the fixed character of right, levelled the main obstacle that Imperialism would encounter in its triumphal progress, A very well known and disting- uished clergyman, Mr. R. S. de Convey Laffan, has furnished us with the indisputable proof, by his letter of December '29. 1S99, published in the Indi'penclance BeUjii of January 15. The terms, "individualist egoism" and "social egoism", which he is fond of using, yield superabundant proof that he adheres to the theory of Mr. Spencer's Data. Now, what is his reasoning? He leaves on one side the question of right ; he admits that the cause of the Boers may be just, but, even on that supposition, he maintains "that neither on "the part of the English people nor on the part of

70 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

the British Empire is there a moral error." Quite on the contrary, this frightful war has drowned the individualist egoism in a sort of national egoism. And this, according to him, is moral progress. "Whether "the English people be mistaken or not mistaken as "to the causes of the war", it is all the same to him. It is enough for him that the awakened patriotism marks an advance towards the ideal, and that the English people is penetrated "with belief in the mis- sion that Clod has entrusted to their country". And it is by eliminating in this way all question of right and of justice that this English clergyman speaks of "work- ing for the accomplishment of the Master's praj^er: Our Father, which art in Heaven, Thy Kingdom come!" To my mind, this is an execrable blasphemy. But what ground for surprise remains?

Darwinism intentionally avoids every influence of a teleological principle, thus stopping in advance the very end and object essential to the conception of right. Given up to the arbitrariness of individualism, subordinated to utility, and a prey to the caprices of chance, it is volatilised into a fog that eludes the grasp. This school, moreover, discovers in the "struggle for life" the directing principle of its move- ment, and thence deduces the brutal conclusion that the weak are predestined by fate to succuml) before the stronger. It will be difficult for you, then, to escape from the logic of Nietzsche, which appeals to the stronger to put the quickest possible end to the futilities of the weak in order to accelerate the march of humanity towards progress. Between this

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CUISI>.

and the piojects of Imperialism with the equivocal expedients it employs for their realisation there is scarcely any perceptible distance. And who, then, w^onld venture to deny that, in the circles where evolutionism is cultivated, men's minds are easily enough disposed to bend? In the German "Golden Book", Dr. Kothnagel has clearly established this proposition: "In the sciences, in the domain of Nature, the progress of our century has been surprising; but, in the point of view^ of ethics, its beginning w^as superior to its end." i)

England especiall}^ runs the risk of being drawn away by this disturbing element from moral fixity. Ethical weakening branches in two directions, in accor- dance with the double beaten track of human sin, the more despotic empire of sensuality, and the empire of pride; and there can be no doubt to which side the English character inclines : "to tight ever3^bod3^ and to take everything" is the vulgar expression of the arro- gant feeling that wants to soar above all. In colonial affairs, this tendency lays itself more open to remark by the indisputable preeminence of the English fleet, by the superiority of every white race, and b}' the presumption that the English, the colonisers par exce/- lence, are the great benefactors of the countries be^'ond sea. However, and without wishing to deny that the settlements of Australia and New Zealand may be taken as models, M. Tilon's article in the Revue des Deux Mondes of November 15., and Mr. Robert Buchanan's

1) Das fjold)ie Baclt ties Deulsclien V'otkii,and des JalirliKuderla eiuli'.p.G'S.

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article in the Contemporary Review, raise too well foun- ded doubts as to the advantages of the English suprem- macy in India, The plague and the famine prevailing there appear to give substance to this apprehension. But, in any case, one sees that the respect for right runs special risk of becoming weakened in a colonising nation, once the conception of evolutionary, and so even variable, right is installed in the minds of those unscrupulous adventurers who pride themselves on hoisting the English flag in the very remotest corners of Asia and Africa.

Unfortunately, the Christian movement in England puts no check on this tendency of men's minds. On the contrary, it encourages it. The dogma of justifi- cation, that impassable rampart for the defence even of every principle of right, is absorbed in sanctifica- tion. The lesson of the old Covenanter, "to be bhnd to the issue, but to have one's eye fixed on the com- mandment," is forgotten even in Scotland. More and more are people in the habit of identifying the British, Empire with the Kingdom of God, and of Anglica- nising even Christ himself. "God has raised up and so widely extended the British Empire, and always with it British Christianism. Real Imperialism sees in every fresh territory an expansion of the glorious oppor- tunities of spreading the gospel of England's Christ." ^) And even, at a recent Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh, the audience did not refrain from warmly applauding a Minister of the Gospel

1) Greater Britain Messenger, July-August, 1899, biz. 319, 323.

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who exclaimed: ''What Africa needs is a Christian civilisation. The present war is a part of the price that must be paid for the attainment of this end. Such, then, is the light in which this war must be regarded, so as to have neither regrets nor any doubts as to its necessity and justice." *) This is how a church that has strayed from the path lulls the consciences of men, and how a Methodism in its one-sided passion for salvation ends b}^ sanctifying, in view of the sacred end, the most censurable means. Such language turns your stomach, and rouses you to anger against those ministers of the Gospel who betray the God of justice. It enables you to understand how an iniquitous exag- geration has spoken of the three P's. — Pecksniff, Pirate, Pharisee. But, instead of yielding yourself to such excesses, be careful to remember that is was again and always the same Methodism of Dr. Philips that in 1835 provoked the great Exodus, and which, now, after a whole century of miscarriages, lends the spur to the Imperialism of Mr. Chamberlain and covers with the name of Jesus Christ the most flagrant vio- lation of right, as well as the rapacity of the gold- bugs of the Chartered-Company.

It is indeed under this Christian show of Imperi- alism the worst danger lurks. It is these methodists — with the best intentions in the w^orld, I am satisfied, but unfortunately astray from the true path — who, by the open violation of acquired rights and by all the atrocities of a war of extermination, believe them-

1) Foie el Fie, Paris, Dec. 19. 1899, p. 383.

74 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

selves charged, by the grace of God, to go and bring their Anglo-Christian civilisation to the Boers of South Africa. And the doctrine that prevails among the Boers — nameh', Calvinism — is the doctrine that has been the glor}' and the greatness of the Scots. They hear the Boers again pray in the fervent tone that rendered the prayer of the Covenanter all powerful, and sing the same psalms as were the war song of their ancestors in their struggle against absolutism. But themselves, they prefer to stay at home. It is the Queen, with her nobility, that makes war, and the people fill the treasury to enable them to enrol mercenaries. Down there in South Africa, it is a whole people — fathers, sons, and grandsons — who, in the name of Cod, pour out their blood for their country, and are capable of displaying a moral force which holds the world in suspense. The Boers do not boast, they do not call their defeats victories, they treat their enemies well, they care for the English wounded like good Samaritans, and their generals, when the}^ harangue these citizens, urge them, never to place confidence in the infallibility of their rifles, but always to put their trust onh' in God. Churchill himself, an escaped prisoner, acknow- ledged that an "unseen power" protected their com- mandos.

Above all, consider well the brotherly faithfulness of the men of the Free State, under their eminent President, Mr. Steyn. The}^ could have stood apart. The English quarrel with the Transvaal had nothing to do with them. From the point of view of the

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world, their non-intervention could have been justified. But no; they declined to take up that position. They determined, as good Christians, to go to the aid of their threatened brethren, and the whole of the male population quitted their country to oppose the English invasion. Cain w^ould have asked: ''Am I my brother's keeper?" But they risked, for their brethren, their own and their children's lives. Unique example in our century, as a Swiss newspaper remarked, of a disinterested faithfulness, of an unsurpassable sacrifice, for the maintenance of justice! Take the balance, and place in the right scale the completely Christian heroism of those Boers, and in the left scale the intrigues of capitalism, the bragging of the imperialists, and the aberration of those Christian methodists. On which side will the balance incline? And, in conclusion, to know that these English christians are sincere and serious people, and that this noble English people would curse all these projects of iniquit}- if the bandage fell froui their eyes, but to see how the Jingoes draw the bandage tighter and tighter — is it not a distressing reality which is turning into a frightful tragedy? A tragedy which we, disinterested spectators, witness with profound grief and profound humiliation.

XII.

What will be the chhioirment of this tragedy? Here I scrupulously refrain from all conjecture as to the issue of the militar}' operations in progress.

76 TRE SOUTH- AFRICAN CAISIS.

No one could forecast it. It depends on occurrences so fortuitous, on eventualities so uncertain, that it eludes all prediction, even by the most competent observer. All that one is in a position tO' say is, that, if England do not recover herself, the struggle will be desperate, bloody, and prolonged. With their ov^n forces alone, the two Republics could not measure themselves with the power of England, supported by her auxiliary troops from Canada and Australia. The Boers altogether would hardly fill one suburb of London. If the elephant puts out all his powers to corner the goat that vexes him, trample him under foot, and toss him in the air, he will always have some chance of success; and if Great Britain shrinks from no sacrifice, in men, in reputation, or in intrests, it is not impossible that she will succeed, after a long and costly war, in crushing momentarily her valiant opponents.

Still, the first auguries have not been favourable, and history addresses to her its warnings. Greece, small as she was, was not overpowered by the Persians. Switzerland managed to escape from the deadly eml^race of Austria. The "Beggars" (Gueux) of Holland succeeded in resisting, for eight}" years, the crushing power of Spain; and the Boers have the blood of the "Beggars" in their veins. Besides, the}^^ are well armed. They fight on their own ground, ground that they know thoroughly, and that is exceptionally advantageous for defence. They form an army of mounted infantry, mobile and alert, such as exists nowhere else. Their tactics and their strategy call forth the admiration

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of the European staffs. Especially, it is neither for the capitalists of a Chartered Company nor for a poli- tical force of pararaountcy that they risk their lives, but for existence itself and for the independence of their country.

Fro arts et focis ! They know that the conscience of the whole of Europe is on their side, and they feel inspired by the rightness of their cause. They are not mercenaries who curse and swear and bluster, but fathers of families who pray ; and, with common accord, they have lifted their buckler in the name of the God of justice. With such a moral force, cannon has rarely had the best of it.

But suppose that General Lord Roberts succeeds in forcing the passes of the Drakenberg and of Spytfontein, that Bloemfontein is occupied, and that siege is laid to Pretoria, it is then, surely, that the difficulties of the English, far from being ended, would only be commencing. They would require an army of 50,000 men at least, merely to secure the communication with their base of operations at Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and Durban. Their convoys would be con- stantly harassed, their army of investment would be subjected to alarm day and night by the Boers, buzzing in swarms about their camp. Soon, as at Lady- smith and Modder River, the besiegers, caught between two fires, would become the besieged, and, although their cavalry might then render them exellent service in keeping at a distance the bands of guerillas, they would experience the greatest embarrassment in pre- serving their horses from the diseases of the country

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and in finding fodder for them. Even the boldest tacticians avow that there are distances and elementary forces v^hich defy all human strength. Napoleon has experienced this in Russia, and even after the capture of Pretoria, the Vaal could become for Lord Roberts what the Beresina was for the victorious Emperor. Remember the strenuous words of Mr. Kruger: "When they succeed in overthrowing us. the world will be astonished at the human blood which it will cost."

Further, the army of the English is yet to be formed. Their best regunents are already engaged. What they are transporting at present has only a very inferior military value, and once the conquest is achieved, they will require an army of occupation much in excess of the troops now at their disposal. Hitherto, according to the principle of Cromwell, the programme of England has always been the largest fleet and the smallest army sufficient for this heavy task ; she will therefore have to change her system, and then her home policy would be found to be at stake. Already there are arising, in the constituencies, divergencies of opinion sharpW defined. The old guard of Mr. Gladstone does not ground its arms ; the Irish are in open opposition ; the syaipathies of Wales are very doubtful; soon the enormous cost will frighten the lower middle class, and when to all this is joined the profound aversion of every Englishmen to com- pulsory service, the ministerial majority might very quickly be scattered. The popularity of Mr. Cham- berlain might very well be eclipsed.

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Add also the dangers ot external complications, which are far from being chimerical, and which oblige England to go on indefinitely increasing her fleet, so as not to be at the mercy of a combination of the Continental fleets. France awakened by the sad affair of Fashoda, is fllling her dockyards with new vessels in course of construction, more and more persuaded that a political course that would place her indefinitely at the discretion of England, w^ould end in national bankruptcy. Russia is doubling her fleet. Germany is going to treble hers. The sympathies of Ital}' have been galled in Cliina. In America the fall of Mr. Mc. Kinley and the rise of Mr. Bryan would bring down the whole scaffolding of the Anglo-Saxon alliance. Would England then, deprived of every ally, reduced to the most complete isolation, be able to face the whole world ? Certainly a farsighted states- man, Lord Salisbury, before embarking on this great war, wisel}^ attempted to come to an arrangement wich Russia in China, with Germany in Africa and Samoa, and with France in Northern Africa : he wished to make a clean sheet of the pending questions that might embarrass him, and he knew besides that the next exhibition would trammel all immediate action on the part of France. Never- theless, there is no lack of sensitive points. In Afghanistan, in Persia, in Egypt, everywhere, there is conflict of interests. In every corner of the earth, the combustibles are heaped up. The least spark may cause the outburst of the conflagration that has been threatening us since 1870. Hence those projects of

80 THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS.

alliance which are in the air and which indisputably all tend to converge against this insular power which, in its self-sufficiency, has galled the sympathies of all the nations without gaining over any of them.

But suppose England surmounts all these difficulties, that her cool temper succeeds in avoiding all these rocks, that her moral conscience does not awake, and that the taxpayer does not become tired of throwing every time a more considerable part of his savings into the insatiable gulf of South-Africa, even then England would not be at the end of her troubles. Behind her in Africa she would have sown the seeds of a deep rancour, of an unspeakable repugnance, of an indistructible race-hatred, and these seeds would shoot up. The determination of the Boers is un- shakable. Never will they be voluntary subjects of England. Subdued b}^ brutal force, every morning and every evening their prayers would rise to the God of their fathers to implore deliverance from the yoke which they would persist in cursing in their hearts. On the first opportunity that should offer, they would resume the struggle. In the first war that should burst on England, they would be the devoted allies of her enemy. Read and re-read their manifesto "A Century of Injustice", and each line will convince 3^ou that their tenacity will never be overcome.

There is the wound from which England, unless she repent, will bleed for a whole century. In order to put down the Boers by the brutal force of numbers, it would be necessary for her to extirpate them and to sweep them off the face of the earth. Then, indeed. South-

tHE SOUTH AFRICAN CRISIS. 81

Africa would belong to the English alone .... and ol tlie negroes.

Hut, as the mere idea of such a crime would horrify them, and does not for a moment enter into their projects, let them know that to persevere in the beaten track of violence would undoubtedly be the presage of the beginning of the end of the greatness of England in point of power. Perhaps she would succeed in disarming the people ; she will never destroy the fecundity of the B(ter w^oman. In less than a cen- tury, from their former numbers of G0,000, the Boers, thanks to this marvellous fecundity, have grown to half a million. In the coming century, they will reach, three, four, live millions, and South- Africa will be theirs.

The wife of general Joubert, who accompanied him into the thick of battle, is the perfect type of this Boer woman whose fecundity passes all forecast, and who will be able to inspire into all her children the national spirit. So long as the lioness of the Trans- vaal, surrounded by her young lions, shall roar against England fi-om the heights of Drakenberg, never will the Boer be definitively subdued.

KUYPER.

Amsterdam, January 15*'' 1900.

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