of such an organized programme during the past twenty years and more had
meant peace only, never a thought of conquest, as Ambassador Leyds so
innocently declared after failing to gain abroad the hoped-for support
for the monstrous Bond enormity.
The Afrikaner Bond leaders would have preferred the war to have been
deferred a little longer--preferably to a moment when England might be
embroiled elsewhere. It was also thought of importance that the
Transvaal should first realize the auriferous "underground rights"
situated around the Johannesburg mines, which Government asset was
expected to net at least fifty million pounds sterling. The sales had
already been advertised, and were in preparation when the outbreak of
the war intervened. Upon the word "ready," flashed from Bloemfontein,
followed at once the fateful Pretoria ultimatum. The proceeds of those
underground rights must now come in afterwards to defray the war bill.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: President Krüger's reference to that factory is well
known, styling it as one of the corner-stones of Boer independence.]
THE BOERS' NATIVE POLICY
Boer views regarding coloured peoples are those retained from Dutch
practices of a hundred and more years ago, when the Cape of Good Hope
still belonged to that nation. Servitude, if not absolute slavery, was
then generally recognised as the proper status for coloured aborigines,
and that principle of differentiation continues to be upheld and applied
in a modified form, it must be admitted, in all the Colonial possessions
of Holland. The authority for this stand is sought from ancient biblical
history, where the descendants of Ham appear marked out for servitude,
and from that basis it is interpreted that people so marked are not
designed for tuition or evangelization until after they have been
subjugated. According to such a doctrine the injunction to preach the
Gospel to every creature would be limited to civilized whites, and might
only be extended to such coloured peoples who have been fitted, as is
said, for the reception of the Christian faith by being placed under
the subserviency of whites, as their sponsors if not their actual
masters, and requiring mundane tuition and education as essential bases
to precede conversion.
For the refutation of such monstrous doctrines it may be urged that,
according to Scripture, savage as well as cultured peoples have a
consciousness of guilt towards the Divine Judge. The object of the
Gospel is to end the history of the culprit as such and to place him
upon a new standing--"the wind bloweth as it listeth": a new birth
operated by the acceptance of the Gospel proclamation addressed to every
creature, black as well as white. Growth and moral amendment properly
"follow" that spiritual birth; neither is conceivable before, except
purely human education, which is incapable of effecting a change, and in
fact tends only to fortify the natural man in his implacable hostility
against the newly implanted element, each lusting against the other.[12]
History records how the Spanish and other early explorers operated with
the aborigines in the regions discovered by them. The territories with
their inhabitants were declared possessions accruing to their respective
sovereigns, whose main policy was the exploitation of all the wealth
possible. The aborigines were dispossessed, treated as conquered
peoples, and forced to do the exploiting labour. No other results could
follow than the gradual diminution and final exhaustion of all the
wealth and the partial, if not total, extinction of the aboriginal
races.
What retribution overtook those nations is also on record. Those
enslaved peoples were forced to accept the religion of their conquerors.
Can true converts be made to order by constraint, motives of
self-interest, or by baptizing them _en bloc_? What else but deepest
aversion and mistrust could a religion inspire which is professed and
taught by a people who practise spoliation, murder, and other
descriptions of wickedness abhorrent even to a savage mind? The
aborigines would daily behold their own land and possessions enjoyed by
usurpers and "would be teachers," who subjected them besides to slavery
and abject misery. Could the religion of such teachers ever find favour
with their victims? How could doctrines of righteousness and love be
understood when so glaringly violated by their preceptors?
It presents a sad paradox to see that the Boers, who are in many
respects consistently religious and even exemplary, could uphold
principles which place coloured people out of caste, not only in regard
to political rights but also as to the common religious standing before
the Creator. It would be unjust to charge the Boers with actually
barbarous practices towards the natives--what they do enforce is their
submission to the condition of servants.
The Boer people ever chafed against the restraining action of the
British Government as to their practice of slavery, and they have not
hesitated either to exhibit their hostility to missionary enterprise.
The confiscation of Protestant mission sites in the Orange Free State is
one of the instances; another was exemplified in a raid perpetrated
about forty years ago by the Transvaal Boers upon the inoffensive
Bechuana tribe, whose chief and many of his people had accepted the
Christian faith through the teaching of Moffat, David Livingstone, and
other evangelists. The pretext for that raid was a lying report that
that Bechuana chief had bartered some 400 guns from traders to fight the
Boers with. The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of
those weapons. Despite the protestation of the chief and his people that
not more than eight guns had been bartered for hunting, which had later
proved true, a commando was sent against them under Commandant Paul
Krüger, now President Krüger. Many of the natives were slain, their
villages burnt, their cattle seized, and great numbers of the tribe
taken captive for distribution as servants among the Boer farmers in the
Transvaal. That raid was further signalized by the total destruction of
Moffat's mission station--church, school buildings, and industrial
shops. These, after being looted, were all consigned to the flames, as
also the missionary dwellings, among which was that of David
Livingstone, with his furniture, books, and belongings. There are
abundant records, besides that of the Bechuana nation, that barbarous
and idolatrous peoples are amenable to Christianity without the prior
influences of civilization or individual education, or that they should
be subjugated first, as the Boers would have it. What indeed is of
immense aid for moral and economic advancement is the operation of
civilized and liberal governmental authority, repressing slavery, under
which proprietary rights and justice are equally afforded to black and
white, and where the Gospel might have a free course without constraint
and without inducements of material advantages.
It seemed that such conditions were on the eve of eventuating for the
rescue and disenthralment of darkest Africa. This is what Moffat,
Livingstone, Coillard, and many other devoted servants of the Gospel had
prayed for all their lives, what has been and still is the burden of the
prayers (no doubt all inspired) of millions of Christians. The interior
is no more a blank on the map. Much is done for the suppression of
slavery. The whole continent is parcelled out among different nations,
who have assumed the task of civilizing their respective spheres. The
world's energy and capital stand available for the object, and it
appeared that many souls were being seriously aroused to the
responsibility of obeying the charge pronounced in Ezekiel xxxiii. 1-11.
But sinister influences have not failed in attempts to bar beneficent
dispensations. We have seen fanaticism resulting in the fierce revolt of
Mahdism in the north, and are now awaiting the issue of the war brought
on by Afrikaner Bondism in the south.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: Another has aptly illustrated the change by comparing such
a man's new condition to a hotel that has come under totally different
and perfectly new management and controlling proprietorship.]
ENGLAND'S NATIVE AND COLONIAL POLICY
Until the earlier parts of this nineteenth century England has been
conspicuous among other nations in tolerating slavery in some of her
possessions, and in permitting her people to engage in systematic
man-hunts, with the accompanying atrocities and horrors of a regular
slave trade. Manifestations of national abhorrence and condemnation of
that inhuman traffic and of slavery in general appeared during the first
quarter of this century. The nation hid its shame and contrition in acts
towards remedying its share of the evil committed. These took the shape
of expending some twenty million pounds sterling towards the
emancipation of slaves and various other costly measures to repress the
trade in human beings, and in proclaiming personal freedom for all
slaves in her dominions. The desire to do justice to coloured races was
further exemplified in the adoption, dating some fifty years back, of a
totally altered colonial and native policy. Up to then the practice
with all colonizing Powers had been to utilize their foreign dominions
as preserves for financial exploitation, involving the most crying
injustice to aborigines. The departure then effected consisted in a
policy of just laws instead, directed to ensure to those people
equitable treatment and a recognition of their rights to fixed property
and to a position before the law equal with that of white inhabitants.
The revenues produced by the Colonies were thenceforward all to be
devoted to the advancement of their own local prosperity. Free trade
followed that _régime_ of liberty and equity, and, as intended, such
Colonial dominions began to partake of the character and were
constituted off-shoots of the mother country, with a like status of
liberty and enjoying the benefit of British protection at the same time.
Many were the auguries that the experiment would result in political and
economic failure, but the good results to all concerned proved to be so
far-reaching as to startle even its most sanguine advocates. The
extension of privileges and rights operated upon the natives as a
magical incentive to labour and emulation for the improvement of their
economic condition; people who had before preferred an indolent,
semi-nomadic existence betook themselves more to agricultural and
sedentary habits, living in much greater comfort and steadily increasing
in wealth.
Civilization went on apace, and with it the moral improvement of the
aborigines, paving the way as well for the spread of Christianity. All
this was accompanied with an immense and ever-advancing expansion of
trade with England and the recognition of British prestige as a
successful colonizing power.
Numerous other principalities courted the privilege of coming under the
ægis of the English flag, their potentates and people readily submitting
to the abolition of practices which were not in accord with humane and
civilized usages and eager to share the benefits and advancement of
civilization which were enjoyed under British rule. In not a few
instances it was, however, not feasible to extend the protectorate so
coveted.
While other nations were engaged in wars during the past half-century,
England had opportunities to largely expand and consolidate her Colonial
dominions. At the same time British trade, industries and shipping
advanced with gigantic strides, and that nation has since gained the
foremost rank as a commercial and Colonial empire, governing over the
choicest portions of the globe some four hundred millions of loyal and
contented subjects, who enjoy liberty and a degree of prosperity
unequalled elsewhere as yet, the whole being protected by a navy which
constitutes England as champion on sea as well.
All this national success and example of liberal government have had a
salutary influence upon the rest of the world in evoking wholesome
competition and emulation. But another and very untoward effect is that
widespread and deep-rooted envy and jealousy have also been aroused,
which on occasion are apt to develop into pretexts for actual hostility,
or hostile partisanship as is now the case.
What signalises the beneficent reign of Queen Victoria more than
anything else is the peculiarly devoted manner in which that august lady
has personally acquitted herself of her duty and responsibility in
regard to the elevation and rehabilitation of the hitherto socially
enslaved condition of womanhood in her Indian empire; for it is well
known how the philosophic religions of the East have been subtly adapted
for establishing the political and social pre-eminence of certain
classes of a population over its majority, at the same time dooming
womanhood generally to the lowest rank of drudges, perpetual contempt
and ignorance, refusing them education (as had been done in the case of
the Roman slaves)--specially despised if without a husband, and if a
widow, immolated at last upon her husband's funeral pyre.
Step by step, by means of strenuous and disinterested exertions,
employing prestige and encouragements, by legislation and otherwise, a
breach was effected which bids fair to break down that caste-fenced and
chained thraldom, and to raise over a hundred millions of her humble
subject sisters from unnatural degradation to occupy the honourable and
responsible rank assigned by the Creator to woman as man's social help,
meet for him, and to whom honour is due as to the weaker vessel.
Millions of women have already found emancipation and recognition of
their right position, to man's reciprocal joy and to the felicity of
their families. Their sons and daughters in turn now form armies to
complete the mission of liberty so zealously inaugurated by their
beloved Empress, their own peculiar star of India.
Maybe this and similar earnests evinced during that noble Queen's reign,
among which the shelter afforded to the Jewish people, will come into
remembrance in mitigation of visitations deserved by the nation for its
previous complicity in the hideous traffic in African souls of men.
It throws a light upon the credulity and simplicity of the bulk of the
poor deluded peasant Boers when, in the face of most genial rule and
almost an excess of liberty and privileges, Bond artifice could succeed
in conjuring up contrary notions, and to poison them into the monstrous
belief that they, the Boers, were an oppressed people, whose downfall
was designed by rapacious England, and that no other remedy existed for
preserving independence, religion and homes than to expel that wicked
English people from African soil. This is, then, what Bond artifice
effected in the absence of actual cause and in order to dissimulate its
own nefarious objects. It was the work of twenty years' sedulously
applied deception and calumnious machinations.
The Hollander coterie has at last succeeded in its ardently desired
purpose of pitting the Boer nation against England, and to bring about
the present war. What is even more astounding is the success of those
villainous artificers upon intelligent partisans of the Boer cause
outside of Africa and in England even.
OCCULT OPERATIONS AND AGENCIES
Will it be considered the mere fancy of enthusiasts, which admits the
thought of occult forces of a sinister kind set in array to overturn
beneficent dispensations, that the evil one, the father of lies, has
been active in all this marring of peace? Had that personage or evil
principle, if this term is more acceptable, not scored with his
malignant skill of deception 6,000 years ago, and been walking up and
down his domain ever since, intent upon undoing redemptive provisions
and counteracting all endeavours to ameliorate the miseries of humanity?
His malice would seem discernible against the Boer nation, the people
who continued in the simple faith which had been kept by their ancestors
despite the persecutions heaped upon them in France and by the oppressor
of Holland; he must have viewed with growing rage the designs of a
gracious Providence surrounding that very people with the blessings of
security and peace and accumulations of unparalleled riches, all
construable as in compensation for the sacrifices so willingly submitted
to by their forefathers and for their own fidelity to the faith. Would
he tamely brook that--and not bend on all his artifices to reverse those
provisions and to divert those rich dispensations in favour of his own
devotees instead, or else rather cause them to be devoured by wasting
war? He has so far succeeded in instigating the Boer nation to acts
which involve the forfeiture of their special heirlooms. He would also
thwart the programme of the world's nations for the civilization of
Central Africa, and would gratify his malice against the people to whom
is largely attributable the spread of governmental principles of equity
and liberty. He would seek to stamp with failure those hitherto
successful and self-rewarding methods, and so strike an effective blow
against their further adoption as being goody-goody, weak and
inefficient.
We see civilized humanity congested with over-population, excess of
energy and of production and suffering from a plethora of capital, the
entire condition rife on the one hand with prodigal waste and on the
other fraught with the cruel want of toiling and jostling millions
vainly fighting for space and the most modest means of
existence--conditions which presage an inevitable and universal crash
unless checked by a Malthusian or else by a beneficent and humane
remedy. We know the right remedy for at least staving off the impending
universal crisis lies in the manifold opportunities of creating outlets.
These exist to the full in the vast fallow regions of Africa, and in the
scope for industries and commerce in Asia and elsewhere. Each
well-devised colonizing scheme, every railway built, and every other new
investment would afford improved employment and relieve the general
strain; every true convert gained by the spread of Christianity would
become an obedient and reliable unit towards the menaced stability of
authorized Governments. We see capital impelled to vast enterprises, as
it were by secret forces;[13] we are aware of the activity of nations
singly and in co-operation in promoting and sustaining such projects.
All those efforts and outlets would serve as safety-valves for the
discontent of the ill-provided masses, and their success would render
them governable at a lesser cost, and even admit the reduction of
standing armies and other objects treated by the recent Peace Conference
at the Hague. The essential thing, indeed, is peace, and that in turn
would consolidate security and progress. But the enemy is interested
exactly the other way. His ascendancy is coincident, not with the
mitigation of the conditions of human existence, but in accentuating the
misery of the masses, driving them to desperation and to embrace illogic
and deceptive maxims of socialism and violent anarchy. It is with those
forces that he intends to uproot and usurp divinely instituted authority
expressly set up to repress evil and to protect person and property. He
wants by licence and not liberty to hasten the advent of that murderous
political power prophetically depicted with the statue standing upon
feet of clay and iron: supreme authority vested in the world's
proletariat in unstable and uncohesive union with militarism, Satan
himself the actual lawless animator.[14] As to the scope for outlets in
the East, it is more restricted to industries and commerce, but those
enterprises, however brilliantly promising, are fraught with the risks
incidental to hostile rivalries and political complications, while in
Africa the openings are at least as vast and inviting immigration on a
huge scale as well, but all with much greater security, inasmuch as the
spheres of operation are definitely apportioned to various nations, and
where in the nature of things the success of each would be promoted by
joint-solidarity, and thus afford a guarantee for the peaceable and
prosperous development of the whole continent. Our common enemy would
fain frustrate it all with his Afrikaner Bond device, and then finally
gloat over the accomplished ruin of his deluded Boer victims.
Africa has for some thousands of years been the enemy's favourite and
undisturbed haunt for his gory orgies, for the hecatombs of millions of
immolated victims each year, the teeming recruiting preserve for his
contingents.
Is he likely to surrender it all to an invading beneficent operation?
Will he not rather continue a most determined and desperate resistance
and oppose the most advanced of his subtle devices? The malignant power
of his agencies is ever and anon manifest--if restrained in one
direction his sway is doubly asserted in another. While the Boer war is
proceeding a diversion upon a large scale is being effected in Asia
which may result in deferring progress in Africa, or history may be
brought to repeat itself by the production of some African Attila or
Grenseric or a Saladin or another Moselikatse or Mahdi, whose
overrunning hordes will efface all the good work thus far done and
restore conditions in accord with his murderous sway, whilst at the same
time revelling over the ominous developments looming in Europe and
America for the production of giant strikes and other imminent
socialistic outbursts which could all be prevented, or at least staved
off for a long time, if the existing immense spheres for civilizing
outlets could only be peaceably utilized.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: One of those enterprises is the railway which is to
connect the Cape with Cairo.]
[Footnote 14: Pro-Boer Propaganda is persisting in designating England
as answering to that prophetic image destined to signal destruction.]
RELIGION
The old voortrekkers who emigrated from the Cape Colony all belonged to
the Dutch Reformed Protestant persuasion. With very little learning, the
Bible, catechism, and the orthodox "psalm and hymn-book" constituted
their sole means for building up their faith. The scope of their
education was likewise limited to these simple aids during their
chequered wanderings for nearly twenty years, proving ample, however, in
preserving themselves and children from the tendencies of receding into
barbarism. The Bible was the recognised reference and guide in private
and public affairs, and it is so still. It is, indeed, notable with what
wisdom and prudence those simple people managed to frame their treaties
with native potentates, their conventions with the Portuguese and the
British Governments, and, finally, in compiling their own constitutions.
Their experiences teem with incidents of extreme sufferings, dangers,
and reverses, and also with many signal deliverances, which all
operated in deepening religious fervour and dependence upon the
Almighty.
Their vicissitudes led them to make analogous comparisons with ancient
Jewish history. This practice resulted in some erroneous conceptions,
notably in regard to their relations with aborigines and general native
policy, as referred to in previous chapters. It also imperceptibly
fostered sentiments confounding legality with grace, and the by-product
of that subtle corrupting leaven which is apt to see a splint in the eye
of another whilst unmindful of the beam in one's own.