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