Out on the veldt, far from the wife and home he loves so well, he stands,
our country's bold, unyielding foe. And even as he stands he knows that the
finger of Fate has written his own and his country's doom in letters large
and deep on the walls of time. Yet, with unblenching brow, he waits the
falling of the thunderbolt, a calm, grand figure, fit to live in history's
pages when every memory of meaner men has passed into oblivion, M.T. Steyn,
President of the shattered Free State of South Africa. Around this man the
human jackals howl to try with lying lips to foul his memory. Yet, as a
rock, age after age, throws back with contemptuous strength the waves that
break against its base, so every action of his manly life gives the lie to
tales which cowards tell.
He is our foe, no stabber in the dark, moving with stealthy steps amidst
professions of pretended peace, but in the open, where the gaze of God and
man can rest upon him, he stands, defiant, though undone. He staked his
country's freedom, his earthly happiness, and his high position in the
great game of war; staked all that mortal man holds dear; staked it for
what? For love of gain! May he who spawned that lie to stir our people's
hearts to boundless wrath against this falling man live to repent in
sackcloth and in tears the evil deed so done. . . . Staked it for what? To
feed his own ambition! I tell you no; the undercurrent which brought forth
the deed sprang from a nobler and a higher source. His country stood
pledged in time of peace to help in time of war a sister State, and when
the bond fell due he honoured it, though none knew better than this noble
man that when he loosed the dogs of war he crossed a lion's path.
Now he is tottering to his fall, amidst the ruins of a crumbling State,
forsaken by the Powers that egged him on with covert promises of armed
support, abandoned to the tender mercies of his foes by those on whose
behalf he drew the sword. Yet, even now, the dauntless spirit of the man
rises above the wreckage of disaster. A little band of heroes ring him
round. Though every man in all that fearless few is England's foe, yet we,
who boast the Vikings' blood in every vein, can we not honour them? So did
our forefathers stand round Harold when Norman William trod with armed heel
on English soil. So stood our fathers when Blucher's laggard step hung back
from Waterloo. Are we not great enough to look with pride upon a gallant
foe? Or has our nation fallen from its high estate, has chivalry departed
from our blood, and left us nothing but the dregs which go to make a nation
of hucksters? If so, then let us leave the battlefields to better men, and
train our children solely for the market-place. But these are idle words,
born of the spleen which such a thought engenders. Full well I know the
temper of our people, terrible in their wrath, but swift to see the
nobleness in those who face them boldly.
And these be noble men, my masters. They rally round their chief, as you
and yours would rally round a British leader if foreign hordes swept with
resistless might over England's historic soil. All that they loved they've
lost, and nothing now remains to them but honour and a patriot's grave; and
in the grim game of war it is our stern task to give them what they seek--a
soldier's death beneath the doomed flag which, in their stubborn pride,
they will never forsake. But even whilst we hem them round with bristling
bayonets, ready for the last dread act in this red drama, let us pay them
the tribute due to all brave men; for he who gives his life to guard a
cause he holds most dear is worthy of our admiration, though he be ten
thousand times our foe. What should we think of men who, left to guard the
Kentish fields, threw down their arms and sued for peace to any leader of
an invading host because our cause seemed lost? Should we not curse them as
a craven crowd, and teach our lisping babes to mock their memory? Would any
fair-faced girl in all the British Isles wed any man who would not fight
until the sinews slackened with slaying in defence of the homeland? If so,
they are not fashioned of the metal of which their granddames were made.
And what we honour as the prince of virtues in a Briton shall we condemn as
vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a
lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the
weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal
lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle
singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers
with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from
whose ranks our greatest fighters and thinkers spring, will not endorse
that cry. No, not though every slanderous throat shall shriek until they
cannot wail an octave higher.
It is not from such great men as Roberts that we hear these pitiful tales
concerning those who give us battle. He who has been a man of war from
childhood to old age would never stoop to soil his manly lips to woo the
fleeting favours of a mob, and he has proved himself as wise in council as
upon the death-strewn fields of war. So wise, so brave, so loyal to his
word, that even those whom he, at his country's call, has had to crush,
lift their hats reverently at the mention of his name, because he wears
upon his hero soul the white flower of a blameless life. Would Kitchener,
whose dread name strikes terror to the heart of every burgher, would he
befoul his foeman's fame? I tell you no, though whilst a foe remains in
arms he strikes with all a giant's force and spares not; but when the blow
has fallen, he of all men would preserve his enemies' fair fame intact. So
it should be whilst those who stand in arms against our country and our
country's flag refuse the terms we offer. We should make war so terrible
that every enemy should dread the sound of British bugles as they would
dread the trump of doom. When once the country's voice has called for war,
then war should sweep with resistless might over land and sea, until sweet
peace should seem a boon to be desired above all earthly things by those
who stand in arms against us. If Steyn and those who with heroic hearts
hedge him round refuse to bow to destiny and the God of Battles, then he
and they must fall before the bayonets of our soldiery as growing corn
falls before the sickle of the reaper. But even in their fall they can
claim as their heaven-born heritage our nation's deepest admiration for
their dauntless devotion to their love of country, home, and kindred. And
we will but add laurels to the renown our soldiers have won if we, with
unsparing hand, mete out to them the praises due to manly foes. Ours be the
task to slay them where they stand; not ours the task to rob them of the
glory they have won.
LOUIS BOTHA,
COMMANDANT-GENERAL OF THE
BOER ARMY.
Louis Botha, who has cut so deep a mark in the pages of history, is only a
young man yet, being about seven-and-thirty years of age. He is a "fine
figure of a man," standing in the neighbourhood of six feet in his boots.
His face is handsome, intellectual, and determined; his expression kindly
and compassionate. The razor never touches his face, but his brown beard is
always neatly trimmed, for the young Commandant-General is particular in
regard to his personal appearance in a manly way, though in no respect
foppish. He is now, and always has been, an excellent athlete, a good rifle
shot, and a first-class horseman; not given at any time to indoor pastimes
over much, though fond of a quiet game of whist. He was born in Natal, of
Dutch parents, and married to Miss Emmett, a relative of Robert Emmett, the
Irish Revolutionist. Young Botha was educated at Greytown, and though a
good, sound commercial scholar, he gave no evidence in his schoolboy days
of what was in him. No one who knew him then would have dreamed that before
he was forty years of age he would be the foremost soldier of his country.
His folk were moderately well off, but the adventurous spirit of the future
general sent him inland from Natal when a large number of Natal and Free
State Boers enlisted under the flag of General Lucas Meyer, who was bent
upon making war upon a powerful negro tribe in the neighbourhood of
Vryheid. During the fighting young Botha was his general's right-hand man,
displaying even at that early age a cool, level head and a stout heart.
When the Boers were firmly settled upon the land Vryheid was declared a
Republic, and Lucas Meyer was elected first President. But the new Republic
lasted only about three years, and was then, by mutual consent, merged into
Transvaal territory, and both Lucas Meyer and Louis Botha were elected
members of the Volksraad. Louis Botha retained his seat right up to the
time hostilities broke out between Great Britain and the Republics under
Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn.
During the many stormy scenes which preceded the actual declaration of war
Louis Botha proved that he possessed the coolest and most level head in the
Volksraad. He opposed the war, and, with prophetic eye, foresaw the awful
devastation of his country which would follow in the footsteps of the
British army. But when the time came, and his country was irretrievably
pledged to war, he was not the man to hang back. He was one of those who
had much to lose and little indeed to gain by taking up arms against us,
for, by honest industry, he had become a wealthy farmer and stockbreeder.
At the first call to arms he threw aside his senatorial duties, and took up
his rifle, rejoining his old commando at Vryheid as commandant under
General Lucas Meyer. It is said that at the battle of Dundee General Meyer,
feeling convinced that the God of Battles had decided against him and his
forces, decided to surrender to the British, but Louis Botha fiercely
combated his general's decision, and point-blank refused to throw down his
arms or counsel his men to do so. What followed all the world knows, and
Botha went up very high in the estimation of the better class of fighting
burghers. At the Tugela, before the first big battle took place, General
Meyer was taken ill, and had to retire to Pretoria, and Louis Botha was
then elected assistant-general, and the planning of the battle was left
entirely to him.
It was a terribly responsible position to place so young a man in, for he
was face to face with the then Commander-in-Chief of the British army, Sir
Redvers Buller, a general of dauntless determination and undoubted ability.
Experience, men, and all the munitions of war were in favour of the British
general; but the awful nature of the country was upon the side of the newly
fledged Boer leader, and he made terrible use of it. The day of Colenso,
when Sir Redvers Buller received his first decisive check, will not soon be
forgotten in the annals of our Army. A man of weaker fibre than the British
leader would have been daunted by the disasters of that day, for there he
lost ten guns and a large number of men. But Buller carried in his blood
all the old grit of our race, and the heavier the check the more his soul
was set upon ultimate victory. I have been over that battle ground, and
have looked at the positions taken up by Louis Botha. They were chosen with
consummate skill, born of a thorough knowledge of the nature of the country
and inherent generalship.
I have looked at the country Sir Redvers Buller had to pass through to get
at his wise and skilful adversary. The man who dared make the attempt that
Buller made must have had nerves of steel, and a soul that would not blench
if ordered to storm the very gates of Hades. The worst fighting ground that
I saw in all the Free State was but a mockery of war compared to the ground
around Colenso, and I have seen some terrible places in the Free State. But
a man has to see the ground Buller fought in to realise the magnitude of
the task the Empire set him at the beginning of the war. Great as Lord
Roberts is, I doubt if he would have done more than Buller did under the
same circumstances.
That battle of Colenso made young Louis Botha famous, and from that hour
the eyes of the burghers were turned towards him as the one man fit to lead
them. At Spion Kop, when the Boer leader, Schalk Burger, vacated the
splendid position he had been ordered to take up, Louis Botha's genius
grasped the mighty import of the situation, and he at once realised that
Schalk Burger had blundered terribly, and it was he who retook those
positions with such disastrous consequences to our forces. His fame spread
far and near, and his name became a thing to conjure with. When the
Commandant-General of the Boer Army, General Joubert, lay dying, he was
asked who was the best man to fill his place. And he, the grey veteran, did
not hesitate for a second, but with his dying breath gasped out the name of
Louis Botha. The Boer Government promptly appointed him to the position,
and from that day to this he has been the paramount military power in the
Boer lines. He is not the only one of his line fighting under the Transvaal
flag. There are four other brothers in the field, one of whom, Christian
Botha, is now a general, and a good fighter. As a soldier Louis Botha has
proved himself a foeman worthy the steel of any of our generals; as a man
his worst enemy can say nothing derogatory concerning him, for in all his
actions he has borne himself like a gentleman. He is generous and courteous
in the hour of victory, stout-hearted and self-reliant in the time of
disaster--just the type of soldier that a great nation like ours knows how
to esteem, even though he is an enemy in arms against us.