Even liberty itself is bartered here."--_Goldsmith_.[5]
One notes the placid landscapes intersected by those still but
deep-flowing rivers and canals, scenes so conducive to mental
exercise--the Dutch patriot mourning over the transition of former
national prestige to present condition of decadence presaging complete
national submersion, but at the same time courageously employing his
fertile brain in devising far-reaching projects of remedy over distant
perspectives so as to stem that tide of decadence and declension and to
erect a firm barrier against that menace--to gain (by inspiration from
the titular genius of commerce and craft so conspicuous in that famed
art representation[6] exhibited in his Bourse) a dazzling prize for his
nation by one fell swoop and, so to say, with folded arms, just by
pitting against the English his almost forgotten and long-neglected
clan, the Boer nation, inciting them to usurp Great Britain in South
Africa, Holland sharing the spoils. See here the master mind exulting in
the conception, gestation, and birth of the Afrikaner Bond conspiracy;
note the Hollander patriot's glitter of satisfaction at the vista of
realizing the restoration of Holland to a position excelling its former
glory, of a moribund language revived to significance, and of witnessing
besides a sweet vendetta operated upon England, the old enemy and
despoiler of his nation, to compass the humiliation and disintegration
of the British Empire. Patience, dear reader; preserve judicial
composure. Evidence is following on the heels of the charge.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: This is of course not directed against the nation as a
whole. See also notice, page vi.]
[Footnote 6: Oil painting in the Amsterdam Exchange building
representing Mercurius.]
AFRIKANER BOND--OUTLINES AND PROGRAMME
The late Mr. Jan Brand, that noble President who was succeeded by Reitz
and now by Steyn in the presidency of the Orange Free State, appeared to
have had early intimations, or at least presages, as to the true nature
of the Afrikaner Bond, for during the early eighties that association
had yet posed as a harmless body, intended to preserve old Boer
traditions upon perfectly constitutional lines. President Brand and some
others then already suspected more, as the following incident will show.
In 1883 President Brand officially opened the new wagon-road bridge over
the Caledon River at Commissie drift, near Smithfield, Orange Free
State. Towards the conclusion of the ceremony, one of the other
speakers, Mr. Advocate Peeters, member of the Volksraad for Smithfield
district, in the course of his speech formally suggested that President
Brand should accept the leadership of the Orange Free State section of
the Afrikaner Bond. The President, addressing the burghers and all
present, replied in about the following terms: The proposal just then
made by Advocate Peeters had pained and offended him; the festive event
would be marred by that incident were it not that it afforded him the
opportunity, which he otherwise would have missed, of telling them all
what he thought of the Afrikaner Bond--that it was an evil thing; he
could not find terms strong enough to warn the people against its subtle
seductions. The Afrikaner Bond professed its objects to be peace and
harmony, but it really contained the pernicious seeds of division and
strife, to set up enmity between English Afrikaners and Boer Afrikaners.
He pointed out the sincerity of friendly relations on the part of
England towards both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics.
The peace which restored to the Transvaal its independence a few years
before was one big proof; his Government had many proofs of England's
good will, too. It suited both parties to maintain harmony--it behoved
every Afrikaner to be one-minded in friendly reciprocation. Through a
gracious Providence both Republics were prosperous and enjoyed
independence. All over the world the prosperity of States depended upon
good relations with their neighbours--this was especially so as regards
the Orange Free State. They knew what kind of bond the Bible enjoined.
It was the bond of peace and concord; and he concluded by declaring his
well-grounded fears that the Afrikaner Bond was a device of the devil
directed against the well-being of the entire Afrikaner nation. Instead
of being encouraged, it should, like the "Boete Bosch"[7] (_Xanthium
spinosum_, burr weed), be extirpated from the soil of South Africa.
MEMORANDA OF BOND PROGRAMME, EMANATING FROM HOLLAND (TRANSLATION FROM
GLEANINGS).
The Afrikaner Bond has as final object what is summed up in its motto of
"Afrika voor de Afrikaners."[8] The whole of South Africa belongs by
just right to the Afrikaner nation. It is the privilege and duty of
every Afrikaner to contribute all in his power towards the expulsion of
the English usurper. The States of South Africa to be federated in one
independent Republic.
The Afrikaner Bond prepares for this consummation.
Argument in justification:--
(_a_) The transfer of the Cape Colony to the British Government took
place by circumstances of _force majeure_ and without the consent of the
Dutch nation, who renounce all claim in favour of the Afrikaner or Boer
nation.
(_b_) Natal is territory which accrued to a contingent of the Boer
nation by purchase from the Zulu King, who received the consideration
agreed for.
(_c_) The British authorities expelled the rightful owners from Natal by
force of arms without just cause.
The task of the Afrikaner Bond consists in:--
(_a_) Procuring the staunch adhesion and co-operation of every Afrikaner
and other real friend of the cause.
(_b_) To obtain the sympathy, the moral and effective aid of one or more
of the world's Powers.
The means to accomplish those tasks are:--
Personal persuasion, Press propaganda, legislation and diplomacy.
The direction of the application of those means is entrusted to a select
body of members eligible for their loyalty to the cause and their
abilities and position. That body will conduct such measures as need the
observance of special secrecy. Upon the rest of the members will
devolve activities of a general character under the direction of the
selected chiefs.
One of the indispensable requisites is the proper organization of an
effective fund, which is to be regularly sustained. Bond members will
aid each other in all relations of public life in preference to
non-members.
In the efforts of gaining adherents to the cause it is of importance to
distinguish three categories of persons--
(1) The class of Afrikaners who are to some extent deteriorated by
assimilative influences with the English race, whose restoration to
patriotism will need great efforts, discretion, and patience.
(2)The apparently unthinking and apathetic class, who prefer to relegate
all initiative to leaders whom they will loyally follow. This class is
the most numerous by far.
(3) The warmly patriotic class, including men gifted with intelligence,
energy, and speech, qualified as leaders and apt to exercise influence
over the rest.
Among those three classes many exist whose views and religious scruples
need to be corrected. Scripture abounds in proofs and salient analogies
applying to the situation and justifying our cause. In this, as well as
in other directions, the members who work in circulating written
propaganda will supply the correct and conclusive arguments accessible
to all.
Upon the basis of our just rights, the British Government, if not the
entire nation, is the usurping enemy of the Boer nation.
In dealing with an enemy it is justifiable to employ, besides force,
also means of a less open character, such as diplomacy and stratagem.
The greatest danger to Afrikanerdom is the English policy of Anglicizing
the Boer nation--to submerge it by the process of assimilation.
A distinct attitude of holding aloof from English influences is the only
remedy against that peril and for thwarting that insidious policy.
It is only such an attitude that will preserve the nation in its simple
faith and habits of morality, and provide safety against the dangers of
contamination and pernicious examples, with all their fateful
consequences to body and soul.
Let the Dutch language have the place of honour in schools and homes.
Let alliances of marriage with the English be stamped as unpatriotic.[9]
Let every Afrikaner see that he is at all times well armed with the
best possible weapons, and maintains the expert use of the rifle among
young and old, so as to be ready when duty calls and the time is ripe
for asserting the nation's rights and be rid of English thraldom.
Employ teachers only who are animated with truly patriotic sentiments.
Let it be well understood that English domination will also bring
religious intolerance and servitude, for it is only a very frail link
which separates the English State Church from actual Romanism, and its
proselytism _en bloc_ is only a matter of short time.
Equally repugnant and dangerous is England's policy towards the coloured
races, whom she aims, for the sake of industrial profit, at elevating to
equal rank with whites, in direct conflict with scriptural authority--a
policy which incites coloured people to rivalry with their superiors,
and can only end in common disaster.
Whilst remaining absolutely independent, the ties of blood relationship
and language point to Holland for a domestic base.
As to commerce, Germany, America, and other industrial nations could
more than fill the gap left by England, and such connections should be
cultivated as a potent means towards obtaining foreign support to our
cause and identification with it.
If the mineral wealth of the Transvaal and Orange Free State becomes
established--as appears certain from discoveries already made--England
will not rest until those are also hers.
The leopard will retain its spots. The independence of both Republics is
at stake on that account alone, with the risk that the rightful owners
of the land will become the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
usurpers.
There is no alternative hope for the peace and progress of South Africa
except by the total excision of the British ulcer.
Reliable signs are not wanting to show that our nation is designed by
Providence as the instrument for the recovery of its rights, and for the
chastisement of proud, perfidious Albion.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Literally "bush of fines" (fines imposed on landowners
where the burr weed was not eradicated).]
[Footnote 8: Africa for the African citizen or African-born whites.]
[Footnote 9: It is notorious that from about 1890 such marriages were
denounced from the Boer pulpits and on the occasions of the Independence
day anniversaries (16th December).]
PACIFIC POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN
During the period of, say, twenty-five years after the inception of the
Afrikaner Bond, and while its organization and development were secretly
kept at full pace with occurring events, the British Government
consistently and openly pursued the policy of bringing about the
unification of South Africa. Mr. Froude, a speaker of rare gifts, was
sent to lecture upon the topic: this was in about 1873. The Colonial
Governor, Sir Bartle Frere, strenuously advocated that union. The lines
suggested were a general federation under one protective flag,
self-government in the Colonies, and the continuance of uncurtailed
autonomic independence in the two Republics. The benefits which such a
coalition promised to all concerned in South Africa are obvious. It
would guarantee harmony between the two white races without involving
the least sacrifice of liberty with any party--it simply meant
coincident peace, prosperity and security, and would relieve England of
a considerable burden of anxiety. The scheme promised to find all-round
acceptance, but, unaccountably, except to Bond men, its greatest
opponents were the Cape Colonial Boers. It was, however, confidently
hoped that, with patience, opposition and indifference would be
overcome, and in view of this no opportunity was lost to prove England's
loyal sincerity by genial treatment, by conciliating the various
interests, and gratifying the wishes of the Boer communities, and so to
ensure the desideratum of complete _rapprochement_ between the white
races.
Conferences were convened with the objects of coming to agreements for
the establishment of a general South African Customs Union, and for
adjusting railway tariffs upon fair bases and a more reliable permanency
of rates suggesting reciprocal terms advantageous to the Republics.
These efforts also proved fruitless through similar opposition.
The Afrikaner Bond party, as the reader will understand, had ranged
itself against all such attempts, whilst successfully masking its own
object all the time.
Other differences, which, with a friendly and united spirit, were
capable of easy adjustment, were welcomed by that party as grist to its
mill in order to widen the gulf and to increase the tension.
Besides the chagrin over the failure of its peace policy, the British
Cabinet had finally to admit itself confronted with a very real and
ominous national peril, face to face with the South African Medusa,
Afrikanerdom, defying Great Britain in preconcerted aggression and
revolt. That apparition was all the more startlingly disquieting because
of the suddenness with which the magnitude of the menace and its wide
perspectives had begun to expand into clearer view. It was interesting
to note how the English ministry responded to the call upon its
fortitude; the terrifying apparition did not seem to petrify that body
of men, despite the galling handicapping consequences through the
opposition of part of the nation, which was indeed tantamount to
encouraging South African rebels and usurpers.
BOND PRESS PROPAGANDA--SECRET SERVICE--TRADE RIVALRIES
The Bond leaders in Holland and South Africa had at an early stage acted
upon Stuart Mill's recognised saying, "that conviction in a cause is of
more potent avail than mere interest in it." Among those leaders there
was no lack of men of erudition and of psychological science, than whom
no one knew better the prime importance of ensuring uniformity of
convictions among the Boers and their partisans, and that the public
mind needs to be framed and trained so as to view the Boer cause as just
and that of the English as odiously wicked. They knew how indispensable
the Press is for attaining those objects, how journalism is capable of
plausibly representing black as white and to convince people so--that,
in fact, it is on occasion an agency of persuasion more potent than
armies are. Its needs are unscrupulous pens and ample payments. For
money is the sinews of journalism as well as of war, whether the
projectiles be charged with lyddite or with lies, whether it is bullets
or throwing dust into people's eyes.
We have seen how a few articles (for which a leading French paper
received £100,000) were instrumental in enabling the Panama Canal Co. to
swindle the French public of forty million pounds sterling, and more
recently, where through Press agency it became feasible to a combination
of Jesuitism and militarism to seduce by far the greater portion of the
noble French nation into frenzied agitation and anti-Semitic excesses,
and load the entire people with almost ineffaceable guilt in the matter
of that unfortunate Dreyfus. In its Press campaign the Afrikaner Bond
employed several leading Colonial organs--the Bloemfontein _Express_,
the Pretoria _Volksstem_, the _Standard and Diggers' News_ of
Johannesburg, and numerous papers of note abroad as well. These were
coached, in the usual masterly manner, sophisticating and perverting
truth. Whenever a lull occurred in treating one or other of the more
salient questions, those South African papers would invariably
contain--especially in their Dutch columns--aspersive articles, coupled
with invective comments to prejudice the Boer mind and to reawaken
anti-English sentiments. It is notable as a proof that the Bond party
lacked all occasions for recriminations, so that those papers had to
resort for material for their vituperation to distorted incidents of
Transvaal history prior to the peace of 1881. There would, for example,
be dished up falsely rendered and dramatically coloured and perverted
selections, such as the treacherous massacre of Retief's party in 1838,
averring that the Zulu king, Dingaan, had been incited thereto by the
British authorities; tragic descriptions of events, coupled with the
massacres by Zulu impis soon after at Weenen and Blaauwkrantz, averred
also to have taken place at the instance of the English Government, and
ever and anon references and full tragic descriptions of the
Slachtersnek execution in 1816, omitting to state that the Boer culprits
were hanged after fair and open trial and conviction by a "Boer" jury
for high treason in conspiring with Kaffirs against the Government,
which crime had led to bloodshed, and that their relatives had been
ordered to witness the execution because they had been abettors and
privy to the crime.
Books teaching the history of South Africa were adapted for school use
wherein denunciations against the English appear in almost every
chapter. Poetry in the vernacular Dutch and pamphlets teeming with like
burdens and calumnies also did their share in inspiring race hatred.
Pro-Boer journalism in England and elsewhere abroad had assumed such
dimensions, especially during the past decade, as to bring the Secret
Service expenditure on that head during recent years to over £100,000
per annum. Dr. Leyds, the Transvaal ambassador, now (December, 1899) in
Europe, is known to some to have with him some £250,000 to defray Press
expenditure, etc., apart from the millions to which he is authorized to
engage his Government in diplomatic projects, such as procuring allies,
or to create embroilments and diversions to the prejudice of England.
To sum up the success achieved by anti-English propaganda, we find the
Boer nation, from the Zambesi to the Cape, unanimous in convictions as
to their fancied claims, their own absolute innocence, and the
immeasurable guilt of the British Government, abetted by
capitalism--guilt which cries to heaven for retribution; and those
convictions take with each man the form of a resolute patriotism wherein
mingled fanaticism and religious fervour in their cause form a
powerfully sustaining part.
Partisanship outside of Africa counts by millions of individuals and
entire peoples; with these it is not so much conviction, but rather
persuasion induced by political hatred and the souring effects of
jealousy and unsuccessful rivalry. This feature is, of course, most
accentuated in Holland, where, with the eyes set upon the loaves and
fishes in South Africa, that nation has for some time been "publicly
praying" for Boer victory over England. These are instances of mere
interest in lieu of genuine convictions. In England the spectacle is
more varied. There we see interest where there are paid agencies, and
persuasion more or less pronounced induced by political party spirit and
also by real convictions. It is in regard to the latter category where
perverted journalism triumphs most and stabs deepest, where men of
honour and patriotism have adopted views which clash against public
interest, and convictions which torture their own minds with grief and
shame under the supposed idea of England's unjust attitude towards the
Boer people, assuming that a Government majority allows itself to be
actuated by base motives.
Is it not attributable in a large proportion to misguided as well as to
venal journalism that the Boer cause has so heavily scored?
Was all this not manifest in the divisions of England's counsels, in the
hampered progress of her diplomacy, her fateful hesitancy and delay in
providing appropriate preventive and protective measures in South
Africa?
And as regards the tenacity of those convictions, it is with them as it
is in plant life. The longer a tree is in maturing, the harder is it to
uproot it.
The activities of Bond propaganda have been in continuance for many
years, and the prejudices fostered so long are correspondingly
deep-rooted.
Bond patriotism was not long subjected to the strain of individual
contributions and unpaid performances. When the Transvaal revenues
advanced with such giant strides the Afrikaner Bond leaders in that
State contrived arrangements by which the financial requirements were
supplied from State receipts. Nor was the least compunction felt in
doing so. Was the revenue of the State not chiefly derived from the
Uitlander element--from Uitlander investments, which all throve from the
nation's own buried gold wealth? No scruples existed to provide from
those sources the armaments and all else needed for the common cause of
conquest.
A secret service fund of some £40,000 per year only was placed upon the
budget list. But this amount was vastly exceeded by the growing
requirements of the Afrikaner Bond for expenditure in South Africa
alone. It was easily contrived to divert, _sub rosa_, large State
receipts to supply the remaining financial needs. Among these figured,
besides the heavy outlays in journalism abroad, gratuities, etc., a
large bill also for secret agencies, spies, and the like.
The entire expenditure was under the direction of a few only of the
trusted leaders and audited by the chiefs, all being kept otherwise
undivulged.
The Transvaal thus became the treasury as well as the arsenal of the
entire Afrikaner Bond.
Hundreds of agents were in constant employ in the Cape Colonies and
Natal suborning the Boer colonists; many of them occupied positions in
various branches of the Colonial Government, and were able to supply
information upon any subject and even to influence elections.
There were numerous permanent agents drawing large emoluments in Europe
also, and emissaries to different places abroad, some touring in
America, England, and the Continent, as the Rev. Mr. Bosman did
recently, and also the P.M.G., Isaac van Alphen.
Much energy and money were also devoted to electioneering campaigns, as
had notoriously been done in the Cape Colony towards bringing in a Bond
majority. Large sums are spent in the diplomatic arena in Holland to
propitiate foreign statesmen, soliciting sympathy, and in coquettings
for Transvaal allies. One of these attempts that failed had been with
Germany. It would appear that some progress had been feasible some years
ago in temporarily luring Emperor William to favour a Holland-Transvaal
combination, but when that sovereign had at last penetrated the infamous
business that lay behind it all, he, as a true "_Bayard_" promptly
washed his hands clean of it, preferring to forego obvious brilliant
advantages for his people than to sully Germany's fair fame in a
connection amounting to no less than abetting a foul conspiracy.