when he stood before the Lords of Council in England, giving evidence,
striving, fighting, to save America for England. Browbeaten, flouted,
jeered at by the courtiers, his words hurled back at him as lies, he
stood there fighting for England. England recognizes now that it was
he who tried to save an Empire for her; and that the men who flouted
and browbeat him, lost it. There is nothing more pathetic than the way
in which Americans who loved England, Washington and Franklin, strove
to keep the maiden vessel moored close to the mother’s side, bound by
the bonds of love and sympathy, that alone could bind them. Their hands
were beaten down, bruised and bleeding, wounded by the very men they
came to save, till they let go the mother ship and drifted away on
their own great imperial course across the seas of time.
England knows now what those men strove to do for her, and the names of
Washington and Franklin will ever stand high in honor where the English
tongue is spoken. The names of Hutchinson, and North, and Grafton are
not forgotten also; it might be well for them if they were!
Do not say to us: “You are Englishmen; when the war is over, you can
wrap the mantle of our imperial glory round you and walk about boasting
that the victory is yours.”
We could never wrap that mantle round us again. We have worn it with
pride. We could never wear it then. There would be blood upon it, and
the blood would be our brothers’.
We put it to the men of England. In that day where should we be found;
we who have to maintain English honor in the South? Judge for us, and
by your judgment we will abide. Remember, we are Englishmen!
* * * * *
Looking around to-day along the somewhat over-clouded horizon of South
African life, one figure strikes the eye, new to the circle of our
existence here; and we eye it with something of that hope and sympathy
with which a man is bound to view the new and unknown, which may be of
vast possible good and beauty.
What have we in this man, who represents English honor and English
wisdom in South Africa? To a certain extent we know.
We have a man honorable in the relations of personal life, loyal to
friend, and above all charm of gold; wise with the knowledge of books
and men; a man who could not violate a promise or strike in the dark.
This we know we have, and it is much to know this; but what have we
more?
The man of whom South Africa has need to-day to sustain England’s honor
and her Empire of the future, is a man who must possess more than the
knowledge and wisdom of the intellect.
When a woman rules a household with none but the children of her own
body in it, her task is easy; let her obey nature and she will not
fail. But the woman who finds herself in a large strange household,
where children and step-children are blended, and where all have passed
the stage of childhood and have entered on that stage of adolescence
where coercion can no more avail, but where sympathy and comprehension
are the more needed, that woman has need of large and rare qualities
springing more from the heart than from the head. She who can win the
love of her strange household in its adolescence will keep its loyalty
and sympathy when adult years are reached and will be rich indeed.