III.
A BOER ON BOER DESIGNS.
I reprint here a letter published in The Times of 14th October 1899, together with a prefatory note added by the editor of that journal. This epistle seems to me worthy of the study of thinking men. Much of it, most of it indeed, is mere brutal vapouring, false in its facts, false in its deductions; remarkable only for the livid hues of hate with which it is coloured. Yet in this vile concoction, the work evidently of a half-educated member of the Cape Dutch party, or perhaps of an Afrikander Irishman of the stamp of the late notorious Fenian Aylward, appear statements built upon a basis of truth which we should do well to lay to heart. I allude principally to the question of our food supply and to the possible behaviour of the electorate in the event of a great war under pressure of want and high prices. (See paragraph 3 of the letter of "P. S.") In a very different work, "A Farmer's Year," pages 179 and 380, I have attempted to treat of this great matter which elsewhere has been dealt with also by others more able and perhaps better qualified. Until it is reasonably certain that under any circumstances which we can conceive the price of food stuffs will not be raised to a prohibitive point, it can never be said that the future of Great Britain is assured beyond all probable doubt. When will this problem receive the attention it deserves at the hands of our Governments and of those over whom they rule?
We have received the following letter, appropriately headed "Boer Ignorance." The writer bears a well-known Dutch name, and gives as his late address the name of a well-known town in a Dutch district of Cape Colony:—
To the Editor of the "Times."
Sir,—In your paper you have often commented on what you are pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do not change it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind tool of our farseeing and intelligent, President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambezi to the Cape. All the Afrikanders in Cape Colony have been working for years for this end, for they and we know the facts.
1. The actual value of gold in the Transvaal is at least 200,000 millions of pounds, and this fact is as well known to the Emperors of Germany and Russia as it is to us. You estimate the value of the gold at only 700 millions of pounds, or, at least, that is what you pretend to estimate it at. But Germany, Russia, and France do not desire you to get possession of this vast mass of gold, and so, after encouraging you to believe that they will not interfere in South Africa they will certainly do so, and very easily find a casus belli, and they will assist us directly and indirectly to drive you out of Africa.
2. We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the great peace party, will raise the question of expense, and this will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working classes, who will never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire, or even to preserve your existence as a nation.
3. We know from all the military authorities of the European and American continents that you exist as an independent Power merely on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor William can arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the earth. They can at any time starve you into surrender. You must yield in all things to the United States also, or your supply of corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working classes would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather than do that they would have civil war, and invite any foreign Power to assist them by invasion, for there is no patriotism in the working classes of England, Wales, or Ireland.
4. We know that your country has been more prosperous than any other country during the last fifty years (you have had no civil war like the Americans and French to tone up your nerves and strengthen your manliness), and consequently your able-bodied men will not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and they are deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in all the qualities that make good fighting men.
5. Your military officers we know to be merely pedantic scholars or frivolous society men, without any capacity for practical warfare with white men. The Afridis were more than a match for you, and your victory over the Sudanese was achieved because those poor people had not a rifle amongst them.
6. We know that your men, being the dregs of your people, are naturally feeble, and that they are also saturated with the most horrible sexual diseases, as all your Government returns plainly show, and that they cannot endure the hardships of war.
7. We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth-rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds whom you carefully nourish and preserve.
8. We know that nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials, military and naval, are suffering from kidney diseases, which weaken their courage and will-power and makes them shirk all responsibility as far as possible.
9. We know that your Navy is big, but we know that it is not powerful, and that it is honeycombed with disloyalty—as witness the theft of the signal-books, the assaults on officers, the desertions, and the wilful injury of the boilers and machinery, which all the vigilance of the officers is powerless to prevent.
10. We know that the Conservative Government is a mere sham, and that it largely reduced the strength of the British artillery in 1888-89. And we know that it does nor dare now to call out the Militia for training, nor to mobilise the Fleet, nor to give sufficient grants to the Line and Volunteers for ammunition to enable them to become good marksmen and efficient soldiers. We know that British soldiers and sailors are immensely inferior as marksmen, not only to Germans, French, and Americans, but also to Japanese, Afridis, Chilians, Peruvians, Belgians, and Russians.
11. We know that no British Government dares to propose any form of compulsory military or naval training, for the British people would rather be invaded, conquered, and governed by Germans, Russians, or Frenchmen than be compelled to serve their own Government.
12. We Boers know that we will not be governed by a set of British curs, but that we will drive you out of Africa altogether, and the other manly nations which have compulsory military service—the armed manhood of Europe—will very quickly divide all your other possessions between them.
Talk no more of the ignorance of the Boers or Cape Dutch; a few days more will prove your ignorance of the British position, and in a short space of time you and your Queen will be imploring the good offices of the great German Emperor to deliver you from your disasters, for your humiliations are not yet complete.
For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and your yoke at the same instant, and 300,000 Dutch heroes will trample you under foot.
We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you have got it.—Yours, &c.,
P. S.
October 12.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London
Footnotes
- [1]
- In 1881, when the Convention was being discussed, President Kruger was asked by our representative what treatment would be given to British subjects in the Transvaal. He said, "All strangers have now, and will always have, equal rights and privileges to the Burghers of the Transvaal."—Quotation from Speech of Mr. J. Chamberlain, June 26, 1899.
- [2]
- See the very remarkable letter of the Boer "P.S." to the Times of October 14th, printed as Appendix III. to this book, p. 241.
- [3]
- Since the above was written, in the swift march of events, the Transvaal has despatched its "ultimatum," perhaps the most egregious document ever addressed to a great Power by a petty State. In effect it is a declaration of war, and hostilities have now commenced with the destruction by the Boers of an armoured train at Kraaipan, and the capture or slaying of its escort.
- H. R. H.
- 14th October 1899.
- [4]
- The italics are my own.—Author.
- [5]
- One of the famous Triumvirate.
- [6]
- I have taken the liberty to quote all these extracts exactly as they stand in the original, instead of weaving their substance into my narrative, in order that I may not be accused, as so often happens to authors who write upon this subject, of having presented a garbled version of the truth. The original of every extract is to be found in blue-books presented to Parliament. I have thought it best to confine myself to these, and avoid repeating stories of cruelties and slavery, however well authenticated, that have come to my knowledge privately such stories being always more or less open to suspicion.
- [7]
- Now Sir Marshall Clarke, Special Commissioner for Basutoland.
- [8]
- The English flag was during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria formally buried by a large crowd of Englishmen and loyal natives.
- [9]
- It is customary in South African volunteer forces to allow the members to elect their own officers, provided the men elected are such as the Government approves. This is done, so that the corps may not afterwards be able to declare that they have no confidence in their officers in action, or to grumble at their treatment by them.
- [10]
- In Blue-Book No. (C. 2866) of September 1881, which is descriptive of various events connected with the Boer rising, is published, as an appendix, a despatch from Sir Garnet Wolseley, dated October 1879. This despatch declares the writer's opinion that the Boer discontent a on the increase. Its publication thus—apropos des bottes—nearly two years after it was written, is rather an amusing incident. It certainly gives one the idea that Sir Garnet Wolseley, fearing that his reputation for infallibility might be attacked by scoffers for not having foreseen the Boer rebellion, and perhaps uneasily conscious of other despatches very different in tenor and subsequent in date: and, mindful of the withdrawal of the cavalry regiment by his advice, had caused it to be tacked on to the Blue-Book as a documentary "I told you so," and a proof that, whoever else was blinded, he foresaw. It contains, however, the following remarkably true passage:—"Even were it not impossible, for many other reasons, to contemplate a withdrawal of our authority from the Transvaal, the position of insecurity in which we should leave this loyal and important section of the community (the English inhabitants), by exposing them to the certain retaliation of the Boers, would constitute, in my opinion, an insuperable obstacle to retrocession. Subjected to the same danger, moreover, would be those of the Boers, whose superior intelligence and courageous character has rendered them loyal to our Government"
- As the Government took the trouble to republish the despatch, it is a pity that they did not think fit to pay more attention to its contents.
- [11]
- Colonel Winsloe, however, being short of provisions, was beguiled by the fraudulent representations and acts of the Boer commander into surrendering the fort at Potchefstroom daring the armistice.
- [12]
- The following extract is clipped from a recent issue of the Transvaal Advertiser. It describes the present condition of Pretoria:—
- "The streets grown over with rank vegetation; the water-furrows uncleaned and unattended, emitting offensive and unhealthy stenches; the houses showing evident signs of dilapidation and decay; the side paths, in many places, dangerous to pedestrians—in fact, everything the eye can rest upon indicates the downfall which has overtaken this once prosperous city. The visitor can, if he be so minded, betake himself to the outskirts and suburbs, where he will perceive the same sad evidences of neglect, public grounds unattended, roads uncared for, mills and other public works crumbling into ruin. These palpable signs of decay most strongly impress him. A blight seems to have come over this lately fair and prosperous town. Rapidly it is becoming a 'deserted village,' a 'city of the dead.'"
- [13]
- I beg to refer any reader interested in this matter to the letter of "Transvaal" to the Standard, which I have republished in the Appendix to this book.
- [14]
- [C. 3659], 1883.
- [15]
- [C. 3841], 1884, p 148.
- [16]
- [C. 4645], 1886, p. 64.
- [17]
- Ibid. p. 70.
- [18]
- By the Dutch party I mean the anti-Imperial and retrogressive party. It must be remembered that many of the now educated and progressive Boers do not belong to this.
- [19]
- The occupation of Rhodesia has now made it impossible for the Boers to trek out of reach of the English and their flag.—H. R. H.
- [20]
- I understand that the treaty which we have concluded with Amatongaland (where, by the way, it is said a new harbour has been discovered) binds the authorities of that country not to cede territory to any other Power. But there is nothing in such a treaty to prevent, say Portugal or the Boers, from taking possession of the land by force of arms. Were the country annexed to the Crown, or a British Protectorate established, they would not dare to do this.
- Note.—This has since been done.—H. R. H.
- [21]
- Buskes was afterwards forced to deliver up the ring.
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.
The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.