do you not recognize your own lineage in these whelps of the South? We
cannot live if we are not free!
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who lay under the
stones (who will not be English then nor Dutch, but only Africans),
will say, as they pass those heaps: “There lie our fathers, or
great-grandfathers who died in the first great War of Independence,”
and the descendants of the men who lay there will be the aristocracy
of Africa. Men will count back to them and say: My father or my
great-grandfather lay in one of those graves. We shall know no more of
Dutch or English then, we shall know only one great African people. And
_we_? We, the South Africans of to-day, who are still English, who have
been proud to do the smallest good so it might bring honor to England,
who have vowed our vows on the honor of Englishmen, and by the faith
of Englishmen--what of _us_?
What of us? We, too, have had our vision of Empire. We have seen as in
a dream the Empire of England as a great banyan tree; silently with the
falling of the dew and the dropping of the rain it has extended itself;
its branches have drooped down and rooted themselves in the earth; in
it all the fowl of Heaven have taken refuge, and under its shade all
the beasts of the field have lain down to rest. Can we change it for an
upas tree, whose leaves distill poison and which spells death to those
who have lain down in peace under its shadow?
You have no right to take our dream from us; you have no right to kill
our faith! Of all the sins England will sin if she makes war on South
Africa, the greatest will be towards us.
Of what importance is the honor and faith we have given her? You say,
we are but few! Yes, we are few; but all the gold of Witwatersrand
would not buy one throb of that love and devotion we have given her.
Do not think that when imported soldiers walk across South African
plains to take the lives of South African men and women, that it is
only African sand and African bushes that are cracking beneath their
tread: at each step they are breaking the fibres, invisible as air, but
strong as steel, which bind the hearts of South Africans to England.
Once broken they can never be made whole again; they are living
things; broken, they will be dead. Each bullet which a soldier sends
to the heart of a South African to take his life, wakes up another
who did not know he was an African. You will not kill us with your
Lee-Metfords: you will make us. There are men who do not know they love
a Dutchman; but the first three hundred that fall, they will know it.
Do not say, “But you are English, you have nothing to fear: we have no
war with you!”
There are hundreds of us, men and women, who have loved England; we
would have given our lives for her; but, rather than strike down one
South African man fighting for freedom, we would take this right hand
and hold it in the fire, till nothing was left of it but a charred and
blackened bone.