and men inhabiting it, yet bound by intense and loving ties, not only
of intellectual affinity but of personal passion, to the home-land
from which our parents came, and where the richest formative years
of our life were passed, we stand to-day midway between these two
great sections of South African folk, the old who have been here long
and the new who have only come; between the home-land of our fathers
and the love-land of our birth; and it would seem as though, through
no advantage of wisdom or intellectual knowledge on our part, but
simply as the result of the accident of our position and of our double
affections, we are fitted to fulfil a certain function at the present
day, to stand, as it were, as mediators and interpreters between those
our position compels us to sympathize with and so understand, as they
may not, perhaps, be able to understand each other.
Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is
essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for
the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but
exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position
invests us with.
* * * * *
If it be asked, why at this especial moment we feel it incumbent on us
not to maintain silence, and what that is which compels our action and
speech, the answer may be given in one word--WAR!