CONCLUSIONS
I have now dealt with the various vexed questions of the war, and have,
I hope, said enough to show that we have no reason to blush for our
soldiers, but only for those of their fellow-countrymen who have
traduced them. But there are a number of opponents of the war who have
never descended to such baseness, and who honestly hold that the war
might have been avoided, and also that we might, after it broke out,
have found some terms which the Boers could accept. At their back they
have all those amiable and goodhearted idealists who have not examined
the question very critically, but are oppressed by the fear that the
Empire is acting too roughly towards these pastoral republics. Such an
opinion is just as honest as, and infinitely more respectable than, that
of some journalists whose arrogance at the beginning of the war brought
shame upon us. There is no better representative of such views than Mr.
Methuen in his 'Peace or War,' an able and moderate statement. Let us
examine his conclusions, omitting the causes of the war, which have
already been treated at some length.
Mr. Methuen draws a close comparison between the situation and that of
the American Revolution. There are certainly points of resemblance--and
also of difference. Our cause was essentially unjust with the Americans
and essentially just with the Boers. We have the Empire at our back now.
We have the command of the seas. We are very wealthy. These are all new
and important factors.
The revolt of the Boer States against the British suzerainty is much
more like the revolt of the Southern States against the Government of
Washington. The situation here after Colenso was that of the North after
Bull's Run. Mr. Methuen has much to say of Boer bitterness, but was it
greater than Southern bitterness? That war was fought to a finish and we
see what has come of it. I do not claim that the parallel is exact, but
it is at least as nearly exact as that from which Mr. Methuen draws
such depressing conclusions. He has many gloomy remarks upon our
prospects, but it is in facing gloomy prospects with a high heart that a
nation proves that it is not yet degenerate. Better pay all the price
which he predicts than shrink for one instant from our task.
Mr. Methuen makes a good deal of the foolish and unchivalrous, even
brutal, way in which some individuals and some newspapers have spoken of
the enemy. I suppose there are few gentlemen who have not winced at such
remarks. But let Mr. Methuen glance at the continental press and see the
work of the supporters of the enemy. It will make him feel more
charitable towards his boorish fellow-countrymen. Or let him examine the
Dutch press in South Africa and see if all the abuse is on one side.
Here are some appreciations from the first letter of P.S. (of Colesburg)
in the 'Times':
'Your lazy, dirty, drunken, lower classes.'
'Your officers are pedantic scholars or frivolous society men.'
'The major part of your population consists of females, cripples,
epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of
all kinds.'
'Nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials are suffering from
kidney disease.'
'We will not be governed by a set of British curs.'
No great chivalry or consideration of the feelings of one's opponent
there! Here is a poem from the 'Volksstem' on August 26, 1899, weeks
before the war, describing the Boer programme. A translation runs thus:
'Then shall our ears with pleasure listen
To widow's wail and orphan's cry;
And shall we gird, as joyful witness,
The death-watch of your villainy.
'Then shall we massacre and butcher
You, and swallow glad your blood;
And count it "capital with interest"--
Villain's interest--sweet and good.
'And when the sun shall set in Heaven,
Dark with the clouds of steaming blood,
A ghastly, woeful, dying murmur
Will be the Briton's last salute.
'Then shall we start our jolly banquet,
And toast the first "the British blood."'
No doubt a decent Boer would be as ashamed of this as we are of some of
our Jingo papers. But even their leaders, Reitz, Steyn, and Kruger, have
allowed themselves to use language about the British which cannot,
fortunately, be matched upon our side.
Mr. Methuen is severe upon Lord Salisbury for the uncompromising nature
of his reply to the Presidents' overtures for peace in March 1900. But
what other practical course could he suggest? Is it not evident that if
independence were left to the Boers the war would have been without
result, since all the causes which led to it would be still open and
unsolved. On the morrow of such a peace we should be faced by the
Franchise question, the Uitlander question, and every other question for
the settling of which we have made such sacrifices. Is that a sane
policy? Is it even tenable on the grounds of humanity, since it is
perfectly clear that it must lead to another and a greater struggle in
the course of a few years? When the work was more than half done it
would have been madness to hold our hand.
Surely there is no need for gloomy forebodings. The war has seemed long
to us who have endured it, but to our descendants it will probably seem
a very short time for the conquest of so huge a country and so stubborn
a foe. Our task is not endless. Four-fifths of the manhood of the
country is already in our hands, and the fifth remaining diminishes week
by week. Our mobility and efficiency increase. There is not the
slightest ground for Mr. Methuen's lament about the condition of the
Army. It is far fitter than when it began. It is mathematically certain
that a very few months must see the last commando hunted down. Meanwhile
civil life is gaining strength once more. Already the Orange River
Colony pays its own way, and the Transvaal is within measurable distance
of doing the same. Industries are waking up, and on the Rand the roar of
the stamps has replaced that of the cannon. Fifteen hundred of them will
soon be at work, and the refugees are returning at the rate of 400 a
week.
It is argued that the bitterness of this struggle will never die out,
but history has shown that it is the fights which are fought to an
absolute finish which leave the least rancour. Remember Lee's noble
words: 'We are a Christian people. We have fought this fight as long and
as well as we knew how. We have been defeated. For us, as a Christian
people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the
situation.' That is how a brave man accepts the judgment of the God of
battles. So it may at last be with the Boers. These prison camps and
concentration camps have at least brought them, men and women, in
contact with our people. Perhaps the memories left behind will not be
entirely bitter. Providence works in strange ways, and possibly the
seeds of reconciliation, may be planted even there.
As to the immediate future it is probable that the Transvaal, with the
rush of immigrants which prosperity will bring, will soon be, next to
Natal, the most British of the South African States. With Natal British,
Rhodesia British, the Transvaal British, the Cape half and half, and
only the Orange River Colony Dutch, the British would be assured of a
majority in a parliament of United South Africa. It would be well to
allow Natal to absorb the Vryheid district of the Transvaal.
It has occurred to me--a suggestion which I put forward with all
diffidence--that it would be a wise and practicable step to form a Boer
Reservation in the northern districts of the Transvaal (Watersberg and
Zoutpansberg). Let them live there as Basutos live in Basutoland, or
Indians in Indian territory, or the inhabitants of a protected state in
India. Guarantee them, as long as they remain peaceable under the
British flag, complete protection from the invasion of the miner or the
prospector. Let them live their own lives in their own way, with some
simple form of home rule of their own. The irreconcilable men who could
never rub shoulders with the British could find a home there, and the
British colonies would be all the stronger for the placing in quarantine
of those who might infect their neighbours with their own bitterness.
Such a State could not be a serious source of danger, since we could
control all the avenues by which arms could reach it. I am aware that
the Watersberg and the Zoutpansberg are not very desirable places of
residence, but the thing is voluntary and no man would need to go there
unless he wished. Without some such plan the Empire will have no
safety-valve in South Africa.
I cannot conclude this short review of the South African question
without some allusion to the attitude of continental nations during the
struggle. This has been in all cases correct upon the part of the
governments, and in nearly all cases incorrect upon the part of the
people. A few brave and clear-headed men, like Yves Guyot in France, and
M. Tallichet and M. Naville in Switzerland, have been our friends, or
rather the friends of truth; but the vast majority of all nations have
been carried away by that flood of prejudice and lies which has had its
source in a venal, or at best an ignorant, press. In this country the
people in the long run can always impose its will upon the Government,
and it has, I believe, come to some very definite conclusions which will
affect British foreign policy for many years to come.
Against France there is no great bitterness, for we feel that France has
never had much reason to look upon us in any light save that of an
enemy. For many years we have wished to be friendly, but the traditions
of centuries are not so easily forgotten. Besides, some of our
shortcomings are of recent date. Many of us were, and are, ashamed of
the absurd and hysterical outcry in this country over the Dreyfus case.
Are there no miscarriages of justice in the Empire? An expression of
opinion was permissible, but the wholesale national abuse has disarmed
us from resenting some equally immoderate criticism of our own character
and morals. To Russia also we can bear no grudge, for we know that there
is no real public opinion in that country, and that their press has no
means for forming first-hand conclusions. Besides, in this case also
there is a certain secular enmity which may account for a warped
judgment.
But it is very different with Germany. Again and again in the world's
history we have been the friends and the allies of these people. It was
so in the days of Marlborough, in those of the Great Frederick, and in
those of Napoleon. When we could not help them with men we helped them
with money. Our fleet has crushed their enemies. And now, for the first
time in history, we have had a chance of seeing who were our friends in
Europe, and nowhere have we met more hatred and more slander than from
the German press and the German people. Their most respectable journals
have not hesitated to represent the British troops--troops every bit as
humane and as highly disciplined as their own--not only as committing
outrages on person and property, but even as murdering women and
children.
At first this unexpected phenomenon merely surprised the British people,
then it pained them, and, finally, after two years of it, it has roused
a deep and enduring anger in their minds. There is a rumour which crops
up from time to time, and which appears to have some foundation, that
there is a secret agreement by which the Triple Alliance can, under
certain circumstances, claim the use of the British fleet. There are,
probably, only a few men in Europe who know whether this is so or not.
But if it is, it would be only fair to denounce such a treaty as soon as
may be, for very many years must pass before it would be possible for
the public to forget and forgive the action of Germany. Nor can we
entirely exonerate the German Government, for we know the Germans to be
a well-disciplined people; and we cannot believe that Anglophobia could
have reached the point of mania without some official encouragement--or,
at least, in the face of any official discouragement.
The agitation reached its climax in the uproar over the reference which
Mr. Chamberlain made to the war of 1870 in his speech at Edinburgh. In
this speech Mr. Chamberlain very justly remarked that we could find
precedents for any severe measures which we might be compelled to take
against the guerillas, in the history of previous campaigns--those of
the French in Algiers, the Russians in the Caucasus, the Austrians in
Bosnia, and the Germans in France. Such a remark implied, of course, no
blame upon these respective countries, but pointed out the martial
precedents which justify such measures. It is true that the Germans in
France never found any reason to lay the country waste, for they were
never faced with a universal guerilla warfare as we have been, but they
gave the _franc-tireur_, or the man who was found cutting the wire of
the line, very short shrift; whereas we have never put to death a single
_bona-fide_ Boer for this offence. Possibly it was not that the Germans
were too severe, but that we were too lax. In any case, it is evident
that there was nothing offensive in the statement, and those who have
been well informed as to the doings of the British soldiers in the war
will know that any troops in the world might be proud to be classed with
them, either in valour or humanity.
But the agitators did not even trouble to ascertain the words which Mr.
Chamberlain had used--though they might have seen them in the original
on the table of the _Lesezimmer_ of the nearest hotel. On the strength
of a garbled report a tumult arose over the whole country and many
indignation meetings were held. Six hundred and eighty clergymen were
found whose hearts and heads were soft enough to be imposed upon by
absurd tales of British atrocities, and these reverend gentlemen
subscribed an insulting protest against them. The whole movement was so
obviously artificial--or at least based upon misapprehension--that it
excited as much amusement as anger in this country; but still the honour
of our Army is very dear to us, and the continued attacks upon it have
left an enduring feeling of resentment amongst us, which will not, and
should not, die away in this generation. It is not too much to say that
five years ago a complete defeat by Germany in a European war would have
certainly caused British intervention. Public sentiment and racial
affinity would never have allowed us to see her really go to the wall.
And now it is certain that in our lifetime no British guinea and no
soldier's life would under any circumstances be spent for such an end.
That is one strange result of the Boer war, and in the long run it is
possible that it may prove not the least important.
Yet some allowance must be made for people who for years have had only
one side of the question laid before them, and have had that one side
supported by every sort of malignant invention and misrepresentation.
Surely the day will come when truth will prevail, if only for the reason
that the sources of corruption will run dry. It is difficult to imagine
that any permanent policy can ever be upheld by falsehood. When that day
does come, and the nations of Europe see how they have been hoodwinked
and made tools of by a few artful and unscrupulous men, it is possible
that a tardy justice will be done to the dignity and inflexible
resolution which Great Britain has shown throughout. Until the dawn
breaks we can but go upon our way, looking neither to the right nor to
the left, but keeping our eyes fixed ever upon one great object--a South
Africa in which there shall never again be strife, and in which Boer and
Briton shall enjoy the same rights and the same liberties, with a common
law to shield them and a common love of their own fatherland to weld
them into one united nation.
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