nothing more. This matter does not touch the Transvaal alone; from the
lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, north, and south, our lands are
being taken from us, and passing into the hands of men who not only
care nothing for South Africa, but apply the vast wealth they have
drawn from South African soil in an attempt to corrupt our public life
and put their own nominees into our parliaments, to grasp the reins of
power, that their wealth may yet more increase. Is it strange that from
the hearts of South Africans, English and Dutch alike, there is arising
an exceedingly great and bitter cry: “We have sold our birthright for
a mess of pottage! The lands, the mineral wealth which should have been
ours to build up the great Africa of the future has gone into strange
hands! And they use the gold they gain out of us to enslave us; they
strike at our hearts with a sword gilded with South African gold! While
the gold and stones remained undiscovered in the bosom of our earth,
it was saved up for us and for our grandchildren to build up the great
future; it is going from us never to return; and when they have rifled
our earth and picked the African bones bare as the vultures clear the
carcass of their prey, they will leave us with the broken skeleton!”
I think there is no broad-minded and sympathetic man who can hear this
cry without sympathy. The South African question is far other than
the question: Shall one man possess twenty millions while his brother
possesses none? It is one far deeper.
Nevertheless, there is another side to the question. Nations, like
individuals, suffer, and must pay the price, yet more for their
ignorance and stupidity than their wilful crimes. He who sits supine
and intellectually inert, while great evils are being accomplished,
sins wholly as much as he whose positive action produces them, and must
pay the same price. The man at the helm who goes to sleep cannot blame
the rock when the ship is thrown upon it, though it be torn asunder. He
should have known the rock was there, and steered clear of it. It is
perhaps natural