But it may be asked us whether we do not see a possibility of our

hopes for the English race and its future falling to the earth; we

reply: "We do; we recognize that it is possible that we may not even

kill out the black races of Africa but that, a seething and ignorant

mass, they may live under us, at last infecting us and dragging us

down to themselves; we know it is possible that our conception of the

English race, as possessed of a vast fertilizing and liberating power

which shall spread from it till it permeates the whole race, may be

mistaken and the result of national egoism and mental refraction; we

know that the twentieth century, instead of being, as we dream, the

great blossoming time of the English race, as the fourth century before

Jesus was of the Greek, may be the century of our decay; that the

spread of the consciousness of the unity of all men and the importance

of their individual freedom may be not for us to spread but for some

other people; and that when we have shown the world how lucifer matches

can be made for one penny the gross by girls who work for three

shillings a week; and that, if you can make guns which discharge so

many bullets a minute, you can bring down so many unarmed black men

in a minute; and that, if a few men can gain a grant of the mineral

wealth of half a continent, they can buy mistresses, palaces, titles,

governments, and roll in gold as if it had been water--then our work

will be done. We know that this is possible, and I suppose there are

moments of horrible bitterness when to all of us it has seemed almost

more than possible."

If it be asked us: Even if our view be true and the function and

destiny of the English race be what we hope it, what after all is the

use of our striving to bring it nearer; may we not in our individual

action be mistaken, and, where we believe ourself to be helping a great

race to walk in the path which shall serve all humanity, we are simply

sacrificing ourselves to no purpose? we reply: "We know this. Under the

sea millions of insects work, and, as the ages pass, they raise at last

a bank that in time becomes an island on which great trees grow and

the sun shines. The work of no one insect is necessary to the growth;

the almost invisible speck of coral he makes may be broken off and

crushed to powder, and the work yet grows; but by just such an infinite

accretion of specks the island rises, and the wide instinct which

compels all to contribute their part builds at last the island.

"So we work, only _not_ quite unconsciously. If our individual addition

be worthless and be broken off--well--we are obeying the deepest

necessity of our being; we are working on in the only direction we know

of, and, unlike our fellow insects of the sea, we, where we work, have

dreams of the future land, not that will be, but that _may_ be--and

which we believe we are building."

A man far out at sea on a dark night, struggling with the waves in his

small boat, sees far away a light he thinks to be the harbour light and

strikes towards it; knowing he may be mistaken, and that long before

daybreak man and boat may be engulfed, he still strikes towards it,

labouring without certainty of ever reaching it but with unalterable

will and determination, because it is the only light he sees.

So we, realizing the possibility that we are mistaken, and knowing

the chances of failure, yet strike for what seems to us the largest

possibility open to our race and to ourselves as part of that race.

* * * * *

In the South Africa of to-day the three varieties of Englishmen, those

indifferent to the future of their race and those consciously labouring

for it, with opposing ideals and conceptions of the ends to be sought,

are working out, whether we will or no, the future of the land, and

dealing with the vast twentieth-century problem of the mixture and

government of mixed peoples; the verdict upon our solution of which

cannot be pronounced by the men of this age, but only by the future.

NOTE A

THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900).

The events of the last nine, and especially the last seven, years have

thrown a curious light upon two statements in Chapter I, written in

1892:

Firstly: the statement that the political division of South Africa

into separate and self-governing states are divisions "_of immense

importance and by all means to be preserved_."

Secondly: the statement that there does exist a subtle internal union

between all African states, which causes them to be, in spite of their

complex and mixed structure, in a profound sense, one, and makes it

impossible to attack and injure any one state without injuring all.

South Africa forms naturally one national and distinct entity, widely

dissevered from any other national entity, European or otherwise. It

may be said that Australia, Canada, and New Zealand contain also the

germs which will ultimately develop into distinct national entities;

and this is undoubtedly true. As no sane man supposes that an infant

will remain perpetually unweaned, or that a healthy sapling will not

ultimately form its own bark, so it is inevitable that all healthy

off-shoots from European peoples must ultimately form independent

nations. But the position of these young countries is not analogous

with that of South Africa; and as regards Australia, and especially New

Zealand, it is in some respects fundamentally unlike our own.

This difference lies in the groundwork of our national structure, and

must be manifest to anyone who has given a few years to the impartial

study of the problems which beset European races planted in new lands.

One is probably not very far from the truth in stating that, roughly

speaking, out of every thirty men and women born in Australia and

New Zealand, from twenty-five to twenty-eight will be found to be of

purely or almost purely English descent--using the word English as it

is popularly, though misleadingly, used to include Keltic Irishmen and

Scots.

In South Africa, from the Zambesi to the mouth of the Orange River,

southward to the sea, there are roughly calculated to be about

8,000,000 (eight millions) of souls. Now, out of this population,

about 800,000, roughly speaking, are whites, about 400,000 being

Dutch-Huguenot, about 260,000 British, and about 100,000 of other

European nationalities. As regards persons of unmixed English blood,

this is probably an over calculation, as a large number of persons

popularly passing as "English" in South Africa are of blended French,

Dutch, German and other extractions. But, accepting the persons of

Irish, Scottish and English descent even at 300,000, they comprise

about one-and-one-eighth of an Englishman in each thirty of the

population. Or, to put the matter in another and more obvious light:

Were to-morrow the entire population of purely or mainly British

descent to leave Australia and New Zealand, those lands would at once

be almost wholly depopulated. A few Maoris and quickly dwindling

Australian aborigines, with a handful of Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes or

Italians, and a sprinkling of Chinamen and other Asiatics, would be all

that would be left. Practically, the lands would have been transformed

into almost primeval solitudes. The working man, who forms the bulk

of all nations, would have disappeared, and with him the farmer, the

merchant, the professional man and the speculator. There would be no

Australia and no New Zealand in the social sense, were all men of

British descent suddenly to leave those lands.

In South Africa, on the other hand, a condition entirely the reverse

would be maintained. Were every man and woman of pure British descent

to disappear to-morrow, no vital diminution in the entire bulk of our

population would have taken place. The vast labouring classes who build

our roads and bridges, cultivate our fields, tend our flocks, perform

our domestic labour and work in our mines, would be left here almost

entirely untouched in the persons of our dark citizens, who form an

element in our population rapidly and always increasing, and of primary

importance. From the Malay fisherman, cab driver, or washerwoman,

to the Bantu herdsmen and mining hands and domestic servants, our

labouring class, save in the person of a few skilled overseers and

workmen, would still be here untouched. Our large white farming class

would be but little reduced, while more than half our professional

class, our doctors, lawyers, judges and civil servants would be left in

numbers amply sufficient for the needs of the country; and while, in

our seaport towns and mining centres, a large number of those engaged

in commerce and speculation would be gone, at least 100,000 Jews and

Europeans of all nationalities engaged in these occupations would still

be left, in addition to a good number of Dutch-Huguenot descended

inhabitants so employed.

An element of importance, indeed, would have been abstracted from

our complex communities, an element containing much of that which is

noblest and most valuable in our national life, and also much that

is sordid and unhealthy--but the South African people, the seed-beds

of the great South African nation of the future, would still remain,

as far as mere numbers are concerned, practically undiminished and

untouched. The removal of the Anglo-Saxon element would affect South

Africa as the sudden abstraction of its Jewish inhabitants of Great

Britain would affect that land. The nation would be left intact, though

an important and powerful element had disappeared.

In eighty years' time, when New Zealand and Australia are powerful

and independent nations, probably infinitely exceeding in health and

virility the inhabitants of the little islands in the North Sea, from

which the first white Australians and New Zealanders came, their

inhabitants will differ profoundly from the inhabitants of Ireland,

Scotland or England, in manners, in appearance, and in tastes, habits,

and political and social institutions. They will certainly no more

dream of having their policy of peace or war dictated to them nor their

governors forced upon them by any of the electors of Great Britain,

than a healthy and sane man of forty allows his great grandmother to

dictate to him the hour of his retiring or the way in which he shall

spend his pence (even now an Australian-born man may be distinguished

almost at once from an Englishman born in Britain, and a spirit of

independence and self-respect has grown not only in Canada, but in

Australia and New Zealand); yet the population of these countries

may quite possibly, even in eighty years' time, bear rather more

resemblance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to any other

folk.

In South Africa, on the other hand, in eighty years' time there will

also be a great and independent nation, but it will be unique. It will

be wholly unlike any other in the world. It will not be French or

Dutch, though a large proportion of the blood in the veins of its white

inhabitants will descend from these races; it will not be Russian nor

Jewish, though Russian Jews are plentiful here; it will not be German,

though German merchants, missionaries, doctors and agriculturists are

to be found in every corner of the country; it will not be Scotch nor

Irish, and assuredly it will not be English, though the blood of all

these nationalities, Keltic and Teutonic, will be blended in the veins

of the white South African of the future--it will be simply SOUTH

AFRICAN.

So also our vast dark South African race will not be wholly Negroid.

The blood of the brave Bantu folk may predominate, but it will be a

race largely blended of Asiatic and other peoples; there will be

strains of Dutch and French blood through the slave, of English blood

through the English soldiers, and the Malay, the Indian, and even the

Hottentot will have place in it. It will be simply the great _South

African Dark Race_, and assuredly _not_ English. These two great

blended varieties, dark and light, will form the South African nation

of the future, their two streams of life, keeping, it may be, racially

distinct for ages, but always interacting side by side and forming our

South African nation.

Our South African national structure in the future will not and cannot

be identical with that of any other people, our national origin being

so wholly unlike that of any other; our social polity must be developed

by ourselves through the interaction of our parts with one another and

in harmony with our complex needs. For good or evil, the South African

nation will be an absolutely new thing under the sun, perhaps, owing to

its mixture of races, possessing that strange vitality and originality

which appears to rise so often from the mixture of human varieties:

perhaps, in general human advance, ranking higher than other societies

more simply constructed; perhaps lower--according as we shall shape it:

but this, certainly--it will be a new social entity, with new problems,

new gifts, new failings, new accomplishments.

To-day, the different white elements of the South African nation are

already entering upon a stage of rapid combination; South Africans

whose ancestors were of English, French, German, Irish or Dutch

descent are so rapidly intermarrying that, not in eighty, but in sixty

years' time, if a man should pass through South Africa calling out for

Frenchmen, Englishmen, Dutchmen or Germans, he would hear hardly a

voice answer him; the reply will then be,--"_We are all South Africans

here_."

That we cannot be an English nation is certain; but in the past there

has appeared no reason why we should not ultimately be a nation bound

by ties of friendly feeling to England--as America might have been, had

England left her internal concerns untouched a hundred years ago; as

Australia and Canada may yet be, if she abstains from interfering with

their internal affairs and does not shoot down the men born on their

soil.

Personally, we have always desired that this should be so.

While it has always appeared that the first and most pressing care

of the far-seeing and balanced South African statesman must lie in

seeking to maintain the integrity and cultivate the individuality

and strengthen the internal organization of each of the separate

states, in order that each might have an individuality and an internal

organization strong enough to make local self-government a sufficient

counterpoise to the central power whenever federation was attempted;

while, on the other hand, the hardly, if at all, secondary obligation

upon the far-seeing South African statesman must lie in the direction

of labouring to produce such co-operation and friendliness between the

different South African states as might, at the end of another forty

or sixty years, find them in a position naturally and spontaneously

to federate upon equal terms: to federate, as in the case of the

Swiss cantons, where the different divisions are not necessarily of

one language or even race, but their geographical position and their

interest make them, as regards the outer world, essentially one people.

The federation we desired to see would then have been of a nature not

strong enough to produce the incalculable evils of an over-centralized

and universal government extending over a vast and diverse territory

and over large numbers of diverse peoples, while yet it would have been

strong enough to have united the different South Africa states against

external aggression, to preserve internal peace, and to have formed a

powerful central court for arbitration on all interstatal differences:

a national structure which would combine as largely as possible the

advantages of large and small states.

All nations, all those organized bodies of men which have contributed

greatly to the advance of humanity, have been organized in

comparatively small numbers, and have occupied geographically small

spaces. To this rule there appears to have been no exception in the

past; and its cause is to be found deep in the psychologic structure of

the human creature.

Greece, which has probably on the whole contributed more to the fund

total of the human race on earth, intellectually and spiritually

than any other individual folk, was, even were all its states taken

together, not so large as a minute fragment of South Africa. And even

Greece was only Greece and enabled to accomplish that which she did by

the intensely individual and autonomous development of minute separate

parts. Athens, which territorially and in numbers was hardly larger

than the Cape Peninsula, and Sparta, no larger than a small English

county, have yet left the whole world immortally richer for their

individual existences, in a manner which would not have been possible

had they been more merged under one rule or forced into a common form

of organization. The Jews, while that religion and literature were

developing which has transformed Europe and reacted on the whole

world, were but a small closely inter-bred tribe inhabiting a few

stony valleys and plains. Holland, when she took the lead for civil

and intellectual freedom, and won it, crushing to earth the unwieldy

bulk of the Spanish Empire, was a tiny folk buried among a handful of

sand-dunes in a remote corner of Europe, her whole territory so minute

it might be carved out of Russian or Chinese Empires to-day without

sensibly abridging them. England herself, when in Queen Elizabeth's

reign she had already produced that noble language which is one of

her greatest productions, and was developing those representative

institutions and that literature which are her pride, when she had

produced Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bacon, _that_ England possessed

neither an Ireland nor a Scotland nor any spot of earth beyond her

own borders, and her entire population was no greater than that which

to-day may be found diseased, ragged, and on the border of starvation,

inhabiting the back slums of a few of her great Imperial cities.

What humanity has attained in culture, in virtue, in freedom, in

knowledge, and in the fullest development of the individual, it

has owed to small, close, natural and spontaneous organizations

of men--small tribes, small states, and, oftenest, to mere cities

organized on a natural basis, with but a few miles of territory

beneath their walls, owning their sway. Great empires, which have

always originally sprung from such an individual, strong and

healthful, national organization, but which have finally begun

extending themselves by force over alien territories and over peoples

not organically and spontaneously or even geographically bound to

themselves, have always spelt decay and disease, not merely to

themselves as larger social organizations, but to the very individual

human creatures comprised within their bulky, unwieldy and unnatural

entities.

Rome, indeed, in the inflated and diseased days of her Imperial

expansion, produced a Marcus Aurelius, as an unpruned and dying rose

tree may produce one last gorgeous bloom; but, at the very time she

held within her city walls the vastest hybrid population which had ever

been gathered into one spot on earth, and her enervated limbs stretched

across the world, it is doubtful whether she contained one-tenth as

many individuals of civic virtue and intellectual and moral virility as

were once to be found within her when her body social consisted of the

small city on the seven hills and the plains and hills about it, which

a man might walk across in a day.

An empire based on force and controlled from a centre may indeed

best be likened to an individual, naturally healthy and virile, who

at a certain stage in his existence absorbes more nutriment than

he requires, and who lays on a vast mass of adipose tissue, more

especially abdominally, thus weighting the centres of life, leading

to disease in the extremities, and finally ending in the death of the

whole organism through heart failure.

Mere size and weight, whether in the world of animal organization or

social structure, is never necessarily indicative of vitality and

longevity. The antediluvian creatures, whose bones alone are now left

us in the earth's crust, infinitely exceeded in size any extant forms

of life, but have had to give place to the more concentrated birds and

beasts of our day, as the hippopotamus is to-day passing while the ant

and the man remain. No madness more complete can possess a human brain

than the conception that mere accretion in size and weight, whether

in the individual or national organism, is necessarily an increase in

strength or vitality, unless there be an increased interaction between

all parts and an increase in the central vitality. One jelly-like

tentacle of the deep sea octopus measures twelve feet, but the whole

creature is lower in the scale of life, and probably expends less

nervous force, than the bee or the humming bird. Increased size may,

under certain conditions, spell increased strength; it may also spell

death.

Had it been possible, for example, in the days of Charlemagne for one

central power permanently to crush the diverse individual nationalities

which Europe has tended to divide herself into; had England, France,

Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy been dominated over and crushed

by one central power, so that their individual course of evolution

along diverse lines had been stayed, and had they been forcibly bound

under one rule into one large organism; the loss to the human race on

earth would probably have been incalculable.

Europe during the last thousand years would probably not have

contributed much more to the sum total of human advance, in the

direction of freedom and many-sided intellectual growth, than the vast

Chinese Empire has contributed during the same period, or than the

Roman Empire contributed during the last long centuries of its bloated

existence.

The national organization, controlled from one point and comprising a

too vast multitude of humans, must, from that mere fact of size alone

and apart from any other defect, tend to become inert. Even supposing

free representative institutions universally to prevail, as they never

have in any empire, past or present--(for in the British Empire of

to-day a few million voters control the entire central government

of Great Britain, while in India alone there are over two hundred

millions of British subjects who have no representative institutions

whatever and who are dominated over by the central body of voters)--and

supposing each individual within a vast empire to be endowed with

a share in its government, the share of power and control would be

exceedingly minute and infinitesimal as regards the central power,

and the bulk of citizens would be, of necessity, so far removed from

that centre that that intensity of civic life and consciousness of

responsibility, which alone makes democratic government healthful, and

which exists easily in a small state or a tribe, where the government

is as it were under the eyes of all and where each individual tells

sensibly on the body politic, _cannot exist_.

Yet further, the inertness caused by mere excess of numbers under a

central rule is but one cause of the inefficacy and unhealthiness

of all vast empires. A central government, extending its sway over

widely severed and diverse parts of the earth's surface and therefore

over bodies of humans in diverse social and physical conditions, is

a yet more fertile source of social disease and of enervation and

deterioration to the individuals comprised in the body. The very fact,

that the government and institutions of a wide empire are exactly

suited to the wants of the original central dominant body, makes it

impossible that the same government and institutions should be equally

suited to peoples geographically remote and under socially diverse

conditions. Each shell-fish lives best and healthfully only in the

shell it has itself secreted; the cuttle-fish glides through the

sea better in its own coarse chalky shield than were it forced into

the most elaborate and gorgeous mantle that was ever developed by a

nautilus: and human institutions or governments are good or bad exactly

as shells are, not abstractedly, but as they harmonize with the wants

of the living creatures they are bound to. As even the hermit crab, who

makes his home in the shells he has not secreted, can only live and

develop on condition of his choosing his own shell; forced between the

pearled valves of an oyster or a mussel he will die miserably; so even

a noble and virile alien people, when compelled to adapt themselves to

the institutions and government developed with regard to the needs of

humans in other lands and under distinct conditions, is bound miserably

to decay if not to become extinct.

The central government of a vast empire, if it spreads its control over

diverse or unlike territories or peoples, spells death and disease to

them, not necessarily because it is evil in itself, but because it has

not been gradually and spontaneously evolved with regard to the needs

of the diverse units themselves. The better the shell fits the form of

the creature who secreted it, the more deadly it may be when forced

artificially over another.

Freedom and health for a folk desiring a tribal head is the right to

possess him and to live and die for him; for a people with republican

instincts is the right to republican institutions; for folk with an

inclination towards monarchy, a monarchical rule; national slavery is

the compulsory participation in alien institutions. Were an empire

based on force yet ruled entirely by a desire to govern for the benefit

of the subject nations and not for the subject powers (as none up to

the present has ever been), it would still be a disease-producing,

freedom-limiting institution; but, based as all empires up to the

present have been, on self interest, Imperialism spells the death of

all healthful human readjustments and developments.

Even where the parts of a large body social are _not_ held together by

merely external force, where a very great degree of real homogeneity

_does_ exist between all its parts, the evils of a much centralized

rule are always manifest. It may be questioned whether even France,

which is essentially one entity in many respects, has not suffered

during the last century, and does not owe many of her difficulties and

political perturbations, to that system of over-centralized control

and uniformity of local institutions introduced by Napoleon, which

has not left sufficient autonomy and self control to the really, in

many minor respects, distinct provinces of France; and it is more than

open to question whether Germany, almost compelled as she has been in

self defence to sacrifice the independence and individuality of her

component states during the last twenty years, has not intellectually

and morally lost almost as much as she would by foreign domination, by

her more centralized government: while in England the attempt forcibly

to incorporate Ireland with herself, and govern a closely allied yet

differing people, though divided only by a narrow strip of sea, has

resulted in centuries of social disease and suffering for Ireland and

of moral disease and instability for England.

Imperialism is the euphonious title of a deadly disease which under

certain conditions tends to afflict the human race on earth. It

increases in virulency in proportion as it is extended over more

distant spaces and more diverse multitudes, till it becomes at last the

death shroud of the nations.

It is undoubtedly true that the existence of more rapid means of

intercommunication have, during the last centuries, made possible the

existence of larger health aggregates than were possible in earlier

times, when the small tribe and the city with a few leagues of earth

about it formed invariably the largest national organization which was

compatible with full social health and the highest human development.

To-day, New York and San Francisco are in fact almost as close to each

other as Athens and Sparta were two thousand years ago; but even to-day

no vast social organism, large both as to numbers and geographical

extent, such as the United States of America, could possibly exist with

even tolerable healthfulness, were it not for the fact of the complete

internal autonomy, individual organization and strength of its separate

component states; and, above all, for the important and controlling

fact, _that the bond between the different states is not Imperial,

is not the domination of one central state over others, but an equal

confederacy of all_.

Had the United States of America been united on the Imperial basis of

one state dominating and guiding others, not even the more or less

homogeneous nature of its peoples, or the internal autonomy of its

separate states, could have kept its vast masses in even that condition

of social health and freedom in which we find them to-day.

And further, were the separate states of America not conterminous, but

widely scattered over the earth, that powerful and vital confederacy as

it now exists would be impossible. If New Hampshire were in America,

Maine in India, and Virginia in Northern Russia, the band which to-day

naturally and strongly unites them could not exist.

* * * * *

Few persons who have not given special study to the subject appear

to grasp adequately the extent of variation which mere geographical

division and the exposure to extremely unlike physical conditions

produces in human individuals and in human societies, demanding a

corresponding difference in government and institutions. Were two

infants removed from each other at birth, the one to be brought up

in Finland and the other in India, the mere climatic and physical

differences would, at the end of forty years, have rendered them highly

dissimilar both in physical constitutions and in many intellectual and

material wants, while their descendants at the end of six generations

would certainly represent distinct human varieties, for which distinct

laws and institutions would be requisite. The effects of geographical

severance, dissimilarities in climate and physical surroundings,

can never for a moment be lost sight of, in dealing with national

questions, without fatal results.

Even in the United States of America, in spite of its territorial

continuity and the more or less homogeneous nature of its mixed

population and the strongly autonomous structure of its separate

states, it is still almost open to question (though this is a matter

only to be dealt with by one who has long and closely studied the

constitution of the United States from within) whether the political

life of that vast mass of humanity might not be healthier, its

vitality greater, and the individuality of the separate citizens more

strengthened, if the whole were divided into two or even three federal

bodies instead of one. This at least is certain, that if ever America

be tempted to lay aside her great fundamental principle of Equal

Federation and geographical continuity, and to adopt in her corporate

capacity the principle of Imperial rule by dominating and subjecting

distant lands and alien peoples whom she does not absorb into her body

politic on equal terms, then she will have introduced into her national

life an element which will first morally, and finally materially,

disorganize her and in the end lead to the break-up of her great and at

present virile body politic; and the world will have to look elsewhere

for the most advanced type of social evolution.

Napoleon attempted to unite Europe by breaking down its states with

iron and re-cementing them with blood under the centralized control

of France. His attempt failed, as all Imperialistic attempts must

ultimately fail which seek to accomplish by force a union which can

only healthily come into being through internal necessity and the

gradual co-adaptation of ages. And if across the years the dim outline

of the Confederate States of Europe may already be seen looming by the

attentive eye, it is certain that not the Imperial nightmare, but the

noble dream of a free and equal union, will find its realization in

that confederacy.

* * * * *

If one turns further from the consideration of the separate states and

organizations as they exist to-day to the far wider inquiry, what is

the desirable and possible ultimate form of organization for the entire

human race? it has always appeared to us that there can be but one

answer.

Probably no powerful and far-seeing mind entertains as possible, and

still less regards as desirable were it possible, the existence in

the future of a world in which all the interesting and many-sided

varieties into which the human race has blossomed during its evolution

on earth are cut down and supplanted by any one single variety, more

particularly if that variety be not one to which the far-seeing

and powerful mind belongs! A Frenchized, Germanized, Russianized,

Englishized, Chineseized globe is a nightmare, perhaps only seriously

conceived of as a possible reality in the mind of the ignorant man in

the street of all nations, eaten up, as such minds are, by a stupendous

national egoism, such as might be entertained by an ant who believed

his noble ant heap would ultimately cover the whole globe. The ideal

of a one-nation-dominated globe can as little satisfy a broad human

intelligence as the ideal of a zoological garden populated solely by

hippopotami would satisfy a broadly scientific one.

To ourselves it has always appeared inevitable that, if continued

growth and development of the race are to be maintained, and humanity

to blossom into its fairest and most harmonious development possible

on earth, progress must always necessarily be along two lines. On the

other hand, not only must the independence and freedom of the separate

individuals advance, but the independence and individuality of each

human variety must continue to increase; while, on the one hand, a

certain broad sympathy, rising from an interchange of material and

intellectual benefits and a perception of the profound unity which

underlies all human diversity, must draw together the different human

varieties and races; as to-day the recognized bonds of the family

and the nation unite diverse individuals. As the loftiest form of

individual relationship is not the forcible bond which binds the slave

and the animal to its master, nor even the relation of individuals

identical in blood or character, but the noble companionship of persons

wholly distinct, equally free, equally independent, complementing by

their diversity each other's existence; so the ideal of international

and racial relationships is not one of subjection and dominance or of

identity, but of complementary interaction.

The ultimate chant of the human race on earth is not to be conceived

of as a monotone chanted on one note by one form of humanity alone,

but rather a choral symphony chanted by all races and all nations in

diverse tones on different notes in one grand complex harmony. The

vision of the Hebrew prophet when he cried out that the lamb and the

wolf should yet lie down together and the weaned child put its hand

in the cockatrice's den is the negation of the desire that the lion,

having consumed the lamb, should lie alone switching his tail on his

sand heap, and the cockatrice, having stung the young child to death,

should peer forth from the door of its den on a landscape he had

rendered desolate. Not in the extermination of earth's varied races,

or the dominance of any one over all, or the annihilation of those

complexities and varieties in humanity which form its beauty, not in

a universal Imperial rule, but in a free and equal federation of all,

lies the ultimate goal of humanity, which, being reached, alone can its

fairest proportion be attained.

It is difficult to believe that the first twenty-five years of

the twentieth century will have passed away before that wave of

exploitation and destruction, vomited forth by the nations of

Europe, led by England in her drunken orgie of Imperialism, based

on capitalism, and which now threatens to sweep across the earth,

disrupting and destroying its peoples and their individuality, will

have met with the command, "Hereto shalt thou come and no further!" and

the drenched peoples of earth, after their blood bath, shall again lift

up their heads.

Already, to-day, he who notes keenly may feel faintly and from afar the

first suck-in which is ultimately to withdraw that wave and leave the

deluged and devastated earth to pursue its own slow complex path of

progress.

* * * * *

To anyone holding this view with regard to the ultimate development of

humanity at large, one and only one attitude is possible in dealing

with the problems and questions concerning our own smaller South

African world. For one holding the view, it is impossible to regard

with other than sympathy each of our South African states, or to desire

anything but their strength and development, while at the same time he

desires a growing bond of sympathy and fellowship between all.

For myself, I have never been able to regard other than with deep

well-wishing the different political organisms into which South Africa

has more or less spontaneously divided itself; and have been compelled

to desire to see them each rather strengthened and individualized

than dominated and crushed by, or even merged into, another. I have

not only desired that the Free State and Transvaal might each grow

into strong, highly organized social entities, but one is compelled

to desire (though at present without much hope of realization) that

such small native states as Basutoland or even Pondoland might be

left for fifty or sixty years to pursue their own internal course of

evolution, and so enabling some of our native folk to attain to a

fuller and more natural development than is possible if they are all

forced into the vortex of our so-called modern material civilization.

I have regretted the annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony,

and should deeply regret the amalgamation of Mashona and Matabeleland

with any other African state, or the merging of Natal and the Cape

Colony into one; believing all these territories are quite large enough

ultimately to form healthy units: and I have been quite unable to go

with the monopolists and speculators in the past, who have desired

for their own reasons that English influence should be eliminated.

I have no more desired its elimination than I have regretted the

existence of the Germans in Damaraland or the Portuguese on the east

coast, believing that by the complexity of our elements was produced

a healthy friction, preventing that dominance of any one central,

overbearing power, which is the death of true freedom. I have never

desired for my birthland that all interstatal lines should be broken

down and the whole welded into one uniform mass with only a shadow of

self-government in its separate parts: an ideal so dear to the heart of

the autocrat in all ages, whether capitalist or military despot, who

recognizes in each strong interstatal line or conservative institution

a kind of embankment resisting his central despotism. Rather, if the

truth be told, I have nourished with regard to England's part in South

Africa a very lofty ambition. I have desired that my motherland might

play a very high part, such as perhaps some great people may in the

future play in the world's history at large. I have dreamed that it was

possible for the influence of England always to make itself felt as a

freeing, co-ordinating element among our varying states and peoples, an

element which made for the strengthening and protecting of all weaker

and smaller states and peoples; I have dreamed that England, desiring

nothing for herself, might be able to hold the balance between all

our states and peoples; I have desired for her an Empire, an eternal

Empire, not based on force but on the reverence and faith of all

peoples struggling for freedom throughout the earth. I have dreamed

that when, in forty or sixty years' time, South Africa, its states

grown internally strong enough, healthfully and without sacrificing

their different systems of internal self-government to federate,

federated, took her place beside the world's other large national

entities, though the majority of her inhabitants could never be English

in descent, and South Africa would be a nation as independent and

self-controlling as America or France, that yet a peculiarly close and

tender bond might for ever bind her to England.

Among human relationships there is one which, though not common,

perhaps few beings have been so fortunate as not once to have seen

realized, and which constitutes one of the bravest and fairest in the

whole domain of human fellowships. It is the bond which exists between

a large and generous woman, who, through marriage having thrown into

her hands children not her own by blood, yet through all their infancy

and early childhood guards and labours for as her own, asking nothing

for herself, giving all: desiring not to use her power for her own

ends, not favouring those of her own blood unduly, but seeking to aid

those in her power to attain most successfully to the freedom and

independence of adult life.

Those who have been so fortunate as at least once to have seen a woman

so nobly using her powers will also have seen her rewarded by a love

and devotion from the children not her own yet greater than that which

is often given to a mother by the children of the blood.

Such is the bond I have dreamed should permanently bind England to

South Africa.

One has indeed desired that a bond of good fellowship should bind all

nations to our own young nation at the South. We, here, guarded by

the vast expanses of our southern seas on every hand, with our wild,

tempestuous and rocky coasts and our few and easily guarded harbours,

are indeed singularly well situated by nature, when once internally

united, for living in peace and freedom, untouched by foreign strife.

But I, at least, have deeply desired that, with the men and women

in the little Island in the North, a peculiarly tender bond should

unite us; rising from the memory of great benefits conferred, without

self-seeking, when the people of Great Africa were small and young, and

England old and strong.

Even ten years ago it seemed to me not wholly unreasonable to hope that

this ambition might yet be realized.

True, there had been in the past even then terrible and grievous

mistakes on the part of England; the step-mother of the South African

people was, one knew, a step-mother with a not quite certain temper;

but when one remembered that England had in the past sent out to South

Africa such men as Sir George Grey, that fresh from Ireland came Sir

William Porter, and that in spite of astonishing occasional aberrations

there had frequently been a tendency on the part of the ruling power

in England to make for a course of rectitude in South Africa, I do not

think that dream was wholly unjustifiable, or that one who dreamed

it need necessarily have been deemed a madman. Even ten years ago it

still seemed within the range of possibility that, when the time came

for the official separation between England and South Africa (as it

must come between all lands and the old peoples on the other side of

the globe; as it will come to Australia and New Zealand and Canada),

that when that time came, little as was England's share in the blood of

South Africa, there might yet be a tough cable of affection stretching

across the six thousand miles of sea, and binding the hearts of South

Africans, Dutch, English, German, French or African in origin, to the

hearts of the people in the little Isles of the North.

To-day, England has made the realization of that dream an impossibility.

The first deadly blow was struck at its attainment when, by the

instalment of the Chartered Company and the lending of her flag and

her sword to a handful of wealthy or aristocratic speculators, she, by

condoning their actions towards the African native in Matabeleland and

more especially in Mashonaland, made it clear to the intelligent native

all over South Africa that from England, under the capitalist control,

and under the flag of England, when held aloft by speculators there is

nothing to be looked for: that tenderer were the mercies to be hoped

for from the roughest Boer or African-English Colonist than from the

foreign speculators who acted in England's name.

A little later, by countenancing the Raid made upon a European South

African state by the same corporation, England, through condonation

of their conduct by princelings and politicians, made it clear to

the bulk of the white Africans also that, however true to nobler and

older traditions might be the hearts of a large section of the English

people, the Union Jack was now fallen into the hands of those who had

made it dangerous to the peace of Africa; that the flag we had loved as

the flag of freedom was become a "Commercial Asset" and waved over the

heads of marauders.

I think this struck the death-blow to the noblest possibilities of the

English Empire over the hearts of South Africans; but there was even

then hope left.

To-day (writing in the last months of the year 1900), guided by the

hands of the same men, England is attempting to crush the independence

of our two Republican states. Whether for a time she will succeed or

not is still a matter of doubt. But that she has committed suicide in

South Africa is a matter for no doubt.

Should she succeed in carrying out the speculators' dream of breaking

down all the interstatal lines which have stood out as so many small

ramparts behind which freedom could hide and which broke into parts

the wave of capitalist aggression as it swept on; should England by

forcible means, succeed, violently and against their will, in combining

to-day all South African states under one central foreign government

and forcing them prematurely into a national union, she may indeed form

the United States of South Africa forty years sooner than they would

spontaneously have been formed--but it will not be for herself.

England should clearly understand: It is not for herself that she is

to-day attempting violently and by force to push open the rose of the

South Africa national existence before its time. She will never wear it.

We have not desired it should be forced thus. A flower pushed

artificially open by coarse fingers always has something ragged in its

appearance; its bloom is never so fair and harmonious as one that has

opened spontaneously under the influence of sun and air. We regret

the premature and violent opening of our South African rose. But, let

England mark this well; it is not for herself that she has torn and

forced it: it will never bloom on her bosom.

Among all the elements connected with our complex South African world,

England has had most to gain by its division into separate states.

She has had more influence in South Africa than in Australia or New

Zealand or Canada, simply because of its strongly politically divided

structure. Once break up these parts and cement them thoroughly with

human blood, shed on the battlefield and the scaffold, into one solid

whole, and South Africa can stand alone: it will have passed suddenly

amid the heat and anguish of battle and martyrdom through adolescence

on to manhood.

Should England succeed for a time in crushing the two Republics,

and, by means of keeping a hundred thousand armed men always on the

soil, and, through blood and fire, succeed in holding them down for

a moment, or should she not succeed--she has equally brought half a

century nearer the time when she will have in South Africa not the

hoof of one war horse, not the foot of one of her soldiers shall she

be able to land on South Africa's shores. Fate has allowed England to

make her choice between forming a fostering and sheltering element to

our national germ, to remain for ever bound by ties of affection and

gratitude to the great nation which in the future must rise from our

blended peoples, or being the dominator and oppressor of an hour: then

to depart for ever.

The lower element in the English nation has chosen, and by that choice

she and we must now abide.

Out of the whitened bones of the English soldiers who have fallen

bravely fighting in South Africa fate is rearing up a great cairn,

beneath which lie buried for ever the noblest possibilities of the

English people.

The regeneration of nations, as of individuals, is possible, and for

the English people there may still be a great and noble future, a

future which shall produce in the little Island of the North men worthy

to be successors to the noblest of her sons of the past. She may still

walk in the path of freedom and humanity, though she can no more lead;

but it can only be when, after mighty and agonizing social upheavals,

she has reorganized her own social structure.

What ails the race to-day in the little Island of the North is that

there has been an irruption of the lower and more sordid elements in

her body politic over its entire surface, where they have formed as it

were an upper crust: as over some green land there might be a physical

eruption of scoriæ and sulphurous lava forming a crust over what had

been once green fields and fruitful plains. Never, till the healthier

strata within the nation have arisen and cracked up and thrown off the

plutocratic crust which has caked over its national existence, will

vigour and health be restored to it.

The future may have a great task in store for that little Island of the

North we once loved so and towards which our hearts still call; she may

yet lead the world by showing how a community may so reorganize and

reshape itself that it may pass from death to life. But she will now

have to move along her own path; we on ours--till, it may be, across

the ages, we meet again, in the free confederacy of all the world's

peoples.

A terrible and irrevocable "Might have been" has been written by fate

over the possibilities of England in South Africa.

The little vessel of the North Sea may still be sound, but, while her

sails are manned and her rudder guided as they are to-day, she drifts

towards the rocks. It may be that after the shock she will recover

herself and re-man her vessel: for

Her timbers yet are sound,

And she may float again!

It may be that her flag washed from its stain will be no more a

"Commercial Asset," and that it may yet float free in the air, the

banner of freedom, peace and justice of our dreams--

Our glorious Semper Eadem,

The banner of our pride!

--but while it remains in the hand of those who hold it to-day she can

but follow the march of humanity, from its rear.

While England is given over to the hands of a plutocracy, she cannot

lead or guide other nations on the path towards freedom.

We are trying to save ourselves: let her try to save herself.

NOTE B

THE VALUE OF HUMAN VARIETIES (1901)

When chapter III was first published several years ago as an article in

an English review, slight and perfunctory as is its manner of dealing

with the vast question of the intermingling of distinct human breeds,

I was surprised at the number of letters I received from every part of

the world, written by persons themselves of mixed varieties. It was as

though the passing reference to a subject seldom dealt with had removed

a valve, allowing free utterance to much pent-up feeling. Had these

letters not been confidential, and therefore unpublishable, they would

have formed an invaluable commentary on the article.

"Why," writes in effect a cultured and intellectual man of mingled

race, the son of an English planter and a pure Negro woman in the

West Indies, but who had received a university training in Europe,

"Why should I have anything to do with that dark race which I hate

and loathe and despise, and not cling wholly to that white race which

I love and admire?" And yet he adds later, "There are moments of

bitterness when I feel I could break wholly with my father's people and

throw my lot in with my mother's, and live for them and with them. They

would not despise me. And yet the shrinking from them is too intense."

The first of these sentences throws a strong light on the mental

attitude from which arise the mingled sorrows and wrongs of the man of

dark and light blood at the present day, and which rises, as we have

said, not so much from the manner in which other men regard him as from

the attitude he assumes towards one part of himself; while the last

sentence indicates perhaps the only manner in which the inter-breeding

of widely distinct varieties might, even at the present day, become a

matter of great gain to humanity, were those of mingled blood large and

strong enough to expend themselves rather in aiding and leading the

weaker than in seeking to identify themselves with the, for the moment,

stronger of their two parent races.

Without exception the writers, from whatever part of the world,

understood from how profoundly sympathetic a standpoint their condition

had been considered. It was therefore the more surprising when one

Englishman in South Africa stated that the paper was intended as an

attack on the men of mingled colour.

So far from this being the case, it has always appeared to me that no

element in our complex South African community is under so deep an

obligation to any other as is the white man racially to the Half-caste.

The obligation to cultivate and aid him to overcome the difficulties

of his position appears to me morally imperative, and, if possible,

more so than in the case of the pure-bred natives. From my earliest

childhood a curious and almost painful sympathy has attracted me toward

this sad son of man, from the time when, hardly more than an infant,

I first heard pure-blooded Bantu servants laugh scornfully at their

half-coloured fellows; and yet more when I noted men and women of

refinement and culture insulted and made to shrink within themselves by

those immeasurably their intellectual inferiors, but who had no trace

of the blood of the African race.

To-day the question of the mixture of totally distinct human breeds

is one which practically touches South Africa as but a few other

countries. In the century which is coming it will be the world's

question. Already to-day the swift means of inter-communication and the

exploitation of Asia and Africa by European speculators and politicians

are breaking down all those walls which for ages have kept man of

distinct breeds more or less geographically distinct, and which through

the æons of the past have made possible that slow differentiation of

the different branches of humanity into stable and fixed varieties.

Before the twentieth century is half over, the Mongolian, the Aryan,

and the African will be found everywhere inhabiting the same laps

of earth and forming parts of the same bodies politic. The Chinaman

will be found in every land, the European will have interfiltrated

throughout Africa, and the question, which to-day is a practical

question for South Africa and a few other countries, will be the master

question of the race.

Is it possible, and, if possible, desirable, that the different

distinct human breeds, whom it has taken nature countless ages to

elaborate in her workshop and turn out in stable form, should, when

living side by side as parts of the same social organism, remain

distinct?

Is the race of man on earth, in the future, as in the present, to

consist of distinct types, or is the whole body of humanity to become

racially one fused uniform mass?

To these questions of so weighty an import to humanity, only the ages

that are coming can yield an adequate answer; but they are undoubtedly

questions of master import to the race.

This one thing at least is certain--that the conviction that it is

undesirable that any two distinct human breeds should mingle does not

necessarily imply superiority or inferiority in either.

In my kennels I may have greyhounds and mastiffs, poodles and lap-dogs,

bulldogs, St. Bernards. Because I desire to keep them distinct I do not

therefore hold one breed as superior to the other. My greyhound may not

be more interesting and valuable than my puppy lap-dog, or the poodle

than the bull. Each may have his own charm and purpose, and if I refuse

to mingle them recklessly, it is not because I value any so little,

but all so much. It may indeed be said that by mingling my greyhounds

with my bulldogs I might at last hit upon a new creature having virtues

possessed by neither parent form. This also is true. But shall I move

carelessly where my varieties are each so fair and desirable in my eyes

in their own way?

It may be that the ideal human creature, for whom the centuries wait,

may yet be found a human, half Chinaman, half Aryan, or African-Aryan

and Mongolian blend: but the more valuable and rare each human breed

is, the more does one shrink from destroying it where all is so dark.

Vandals may in a few hours wreck the Gothic cathedral which it was the

work of countless generations to raise; and the rare and multiform

human varieties, which it has taken nature countless millenniums to

elaborate and fix in her workshop, and which add so greatly to the

variety and charm of earth, may in a few generations be destroyed for

ever. It is ill destroying the artistic work of man or nature till we

know that from its destruction we are able to rear up something more

worthy.

The lap-dog who lies upon my knee, the mastiff who guards my house,

are both so wholly desirable that I desire to see neither of them

extinguished. Shall we value our human varieties less than my dogs?

Yet probably, and I should say more than probably, where nature herself

obliterates the distinction of race, and allows a mighty and permanent

affection between man and woman to cross its limits of race, then I

should be inclined to say nature herself gives a sanction which may set

the lesser utilities at defiance and consecrates the union of distinct

breeds; but without so mighty a permit it is perhaps well that we who

are but children in this matter, and cannot see farther than our hands

can reach, should pause and move with caution. For the future of the

race on earth is bound up in this matter.

NOTE C

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BOER (1899)

I have been asked to write an account on the domestic life of the South

African Boer. If the term "Boer" be used to signify, as it sometimes

is, the entire population of South Africa which is descended from the

early Dutch settlers of two or three hundred years ago, and of the

French Huguenots, who, driven from their native land in the seventeenth

century, landed in South Africa and mingled their blood with that of

the earlier settlers, the task would not be an easier one than to write

a description of the domestic life of the whole American people. For

the Africanders, as the Dutch-French-Huguenots descendants now call

themselves, are not at the present day less complex and many-graded

than the Americans themselves. In our cities and towns they form a

large proportion of our most cultured and brilliant citizens, whose

domestic life differs not at all from that of other cultured South

Africans, English, French, or Germans in descent. Many of our most

brilliant lawyers and able politicians and professional men are of this

race: and year by year the names both of men and women of this race

increasingly fill our lists of successful university students.

If, however, the term "Boer" be taken, as it should be, to signify

only that portion of the race who have remained farmers (the word

"Boer" literally means a farmer), and who in the outlying districts

of the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, Natal, and the Transvaal,

have preserved unchanged the language, manners and ideas of their

forefathers of the seventeenth century, then the task is far more easy.

For this wonderful and virile folk--driven into the wilds of Africa a

couple of centuries ago--are not merely dominated in their domestic

and in their public life by old ideals and methods, but a strange

uniformity exists everywhere.

Whether we find the primitive Boer on the wide grass plains of the

Transvaal and the Free State, the Karoo plains of central and western

Cape Colony, or the bush lands nearer the coast, in appearance, ideas,

and, above all, in habits and the arrangement of his domestic life, a

complete and unique conformity exists.

The typical South African Boer lives on his own land, a farm, covering

a stretch of country; it may be six, twelve, eighteen or more miles

in length. On the spot where his homestead now stands, it may be that

a few generations ago his grandfather or great-grandfather, on his

first journey into the wilds in search of a new home, drew up his great

ox-wagon beside some slowly oozing fountain, or on the banks of some

stream with inexhaustible pools, which had never yet been visited by

the foot of white man, and determined here to fix his home. He called

the place perhaps "Jakals' Fontein," from the number of jackals which

came down to drink or watch for prey the first night; "Wilde Kats

Draai," from the wild cat they killed next day; or "Ti'er Kloof,"

from the huge tiger-leopard killed in the ravine beyond the fountain;

and there, after a longer or shorter struggle with wild beasts or

poisoned-arrow-shooting Bushmen, he built his house and kraals, and

settled himself and his descendants.

Here, as the years passed, and leopard, lion, and wild dog became

exterminated, and the wild bucks on whose flesh in early days he lived

became more rare, he raised his little square or oblong house of rough

stones or unburnt bricks; behind his house, surrounded by walls of

rough stone or high-piled branches of the mimosa thorn, he built his

kraals (or enclosures for the stock to sleep in at night), which were

always placed very close to the house, that they might be more easily

protected from wild beasts or savages.

By-and-by he generally built a dam, larger or smaller, as the case

might be, for catching the rain-water, which in rainy seasons floods

the plains, or which might be fed by his fountain if strong enough.

Here his stock came to drink at evening; and if the supply of water

were large enough, he often enclosed a small patch of land below the

dam with a stone wall, planted a few fig and peach trees, and made a

small garden.

Behind the house was built a large brick oven, often whitewashed on the

outside, where the good wife (who in earlier days had had to content

herself with a hollowed-out antheap as an oven) might bake her bread.

Behind the house was raised a large wagon-house, open on the side from

which least rain came, where the great ox-wagon and cart, if there were

one, might stand sheltered from sun and rain; and then the typical Boer

homestead, as we know it, and as it exists to the present day, was

complete.

As sons and daughters grew up and married, additional rooms were

often built on for them, to the old farm-house, or small houses were

built near, or at a few miles' distance on the same farm, where at

some other fountain the stock was watered. But in each case the new

homestead repeated the features of the old.

If one travel across some great African plain to-day, the hoofs of

one's horse sinking step by step into the red sand, or crunching the

gravel on some rocky ridge, far off across the plain one may mark some

distant flat-topped table mountains rising up against the sky on the

horizon; but for the rest, a vast, silent, undulating plain, broken,

it may be, by small hillocks, or "kopjes," of iron-stones, stretches

about one everywhere. After travelling five or six miles further, one

may discern, at the foot of some distant kopje, a small white or dark

speck; as one approaches nearer the practised eye perceives it is a

homestead.

As one approaches yet nearer along the sandy wagon-track, slowly all

the details of the place become clear--the house, the dam, almost or

quite dry, if it be the end of a long, thirsty season, the little

patch of dark green contrasting with the miles of red-brown veld about

it, the wagon-house, and the great dark square patches, which are the

kraals. And yet, so clear is the air, making objects distinctly visible

at a long distance, one may ride on for an hour before the road, which

has led straight as an arrow across the plain, takes a little turn, and

the farmhouse is reached.

If it be the middle of a hot summer's afternoon a great stillness will

reign about the place; not a soul will be seen stirring; the doors

and the wooden shutters of the windows will be closed; a few hens may

be scratching about in the red sand on the shady side of the house,

and a couple of large Boer dogs will rise slowly from the shadow of

the wagon house, and come toward you silently, with their heads down.

If a coloured servant should appear from the back of the house, or a

little face peep from behind the oven, it will be well to call to them

to call off the dogs, for the African Boer dog is a peculiar species

of mastiff, with a touch of the bull-dog, celebrated for his silent

savageness.

After the dogs have been called off, the servant or child will go into

the house to rouse the master of the house, who, with the rest of the

family, is still taking his afternoon siesta, made necessary to all

by the intense heat of summer and by the early rising, which is the

invariable rule on an African farm. Presently the upper half of the

door opens, and then the lower, and the master of the house appears,

his eyes a little blinded by the glare of the afternoon sun after the

cool darkness of the house.

He will step down from the low, raised stone platform before the door,

and come to meet you--a tall, powerful man of over six feet in height,

large-boned and massive, with large hands and feet, a long brown beard,

and keen, steady, somewhat deep-set eyes. He will extend his hand to

you with the greatest courtesy, inquire your name, and whether you do

not wish to off-saddle, and will call a servant to take your horse.

When you have entered the house with him, you will find yourself in

a square room, large as compared with the whole size of the house.

The floor is generally earth--soil forming the huge antheaps which

cover the plains being generally taken for this purpose, which, damped

with water, and well pounded down, forms an exceedingly hard floor.

In the centre of the room is a bare square table, neatly finished

off, but often of home construction, having been made by the father

or grandfather of the present owner. Round the sides of the room are

arranged some chairs and a long wooden sofa of the same make, the

seats of which are formed, not of cane, but of thin thongs of leather

interlaced.

At one side of the room against the wall stands a small square table.

On it stands the great coffee-urn, and the work of the house-mother.

Beside it, in her elbow-chair, in which she has hastily seated herself

to welcome the stranger, she herself sits, dressed in black, often with

a little black shawl across her shoulders, and a white handkerchief

round her throat.

At her feet is a little square wooden stove, with a hollow inside, in

which may be put a small brazier of live coals in cold weather, the

heat arising through small ornamental holes cut in the wood of the top.

Exactly such wooden stoves may be seen in the paintings of Flemish

interiors by the old Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries.

The good wife politely extends her hand to you, asks you to be seated,

and you take your place on the wooden sofa. Except the tables and

chairs, the room contains little or nothing. On the wall may be a rough

gun-rack, containing half a dozen guns, from the old clumsy flint-lock

gun of a century ago--which may have brought down many an elephant and

lion in the old days and defended the lives of wives and children--to

the most elegant modern Mauser or Martini-Henry. But the guns are more

often kept in the bedroom, on the wall near the head of the bed.

One thing, however, is never missing. Either in a little closed window

with a crochet cloth thrown over it, on the housemother's little table,

on the centre table, or in a little cupboard in the wall, is always to

be found the great family Bible. It holds a place altogether unique

in the economy of the Boer life. It is not alone that on its front

pages are to be found solemnly inscribed the names of the ancestors,

the births, deaths, or marriages of his children, and often a brief

record of the date of the most momentous events in his own or his

family's history; it is not alone that for generations this book has

represented the sole tie between his solitary and often nomadic family

and the intellectual life of culture of mankind; it is not alone that

any culture or knowledge he possesses, other than that gained from

the material world about him, has been all spelled out of its pages,

but the visible external volume forms the Lares and Penates of his

household, the sacred central point.

It is treated with respect; no other book is ever laid upon it; it

is opened reverentially; it is carried wherever he wanders; it is

consulted not merely as a moral, but also a material guide. The pages

are solemnly opened and the finger brought down upon a passage, which

is spelled out, and recovery or death of a child, and even such matters

as the whereabouts of lost cattle, are believed to be indicated by its

contents; as Enoch Arden's wife believed, when she brought her finger

down on the passage about the palm-tree, that it indicated Enoch's

death.

After we have been seated for a few moments the other members of the

family will troop in, one by one, and shake hands, and seat themselves

on the chairs round the room; nine or ten children between the ages of

eighteen and two years, and perhaps a married son and daughter-in-law,

and an old grandmother, who has her own elbow-chair near the window.

For the Boer ideal of family life is patriarchal, and two or three

generations are often housed under one roof. Presently the eldest

daughter makes coffee in the urn, a little Kaffir maid bringing in a

small, brazier of live coals to place under it. Then coffee is poured

out in cups, or basins, and handed round to each person.

By the time the coffee has been drunk, the afternoon is beginning to

grow old; the heat is rapidly lessening, and the soft evening breeze

beginning to stir the air. The farmer lights his pipe, and invites you

to fill yours from his large tobacco-bag, made of cony's skin or little

kid's. Then he invites you to accompany him to the kraals, towards

which from different points on the plain the flocks may already be seen

tending. Then comes the busy and delightful hour--sunset on an African

farm. Everywhere there is bustle and stir; in the cow-kraals the calves

are bleating and putting their noses through the gate to get through to

their mothers as they are being milked; and one by one, the sheep and

the goats are being counted in at the gates of the great kraals.

The Kaffir maids are busy preparing the churn for the fresh milk,

and lighting the kitchen fire for supper. The children are romping

outside, inspired by the cool evening wind; even the old grandmother

seats herself on the back doorstep to watch the stir, and to see the

pink sunset slowly deepen into grey as the night comes down. The dark

gathers quickly, and soon the whole family are again gathered in the

great front room.

On really old-fashioned farms a little Kaffir maid then comes in with

a small tub of hot water and a cloth, and washes the feet of old and

young, after which the family sit down to the evening meal, generally

composed of boiled mutton, bread, and coffee. After supper, it is

not long before the whole family retire for the night into the small

bedrooms opening to the right and left of the sitting-room, and by

eight o'clock often the whole household is in bed and asleep, the old

Boer dog, stealing softly round the house, being the only creature

moving, and the occasional bleating of sheep and goats being the only

sounds that break the stillness.

At half-past three or four the next morning, however, you will be early

aroused by the sound of bustling and movement. Every one is getting

up. The Kaffir maid has already made the fire, and by the time you

enter the sitting-room the eldest daughter is already pouring out

coffee at the little table, by the light of a candle, although the grey

dawn-light is already creeping in at the door.

As soon as he has had his coffee, the Boer with his sons goes out to

the kraals to let out the stock. Long before the sun rises the flocks

are already wending their way across the plain to their different

pastures, with their Kaffir herdsmen behind them.

Then if you be the typical African traveller, anxious to get on his way

before the heat of the day rises, you will have another cup of coffee,

and bidding good-bye to your hosts, by the time the sun rises you will

be already on your way across the plain, and the farm-house with its

kraals and dam be already but a small speck behind you.

NOTE D

OUR WASTE LAND IN MASHONALAND (1891)

At the present day it is by no means uncommon for men to spend the

greater part of their lives and large stores of wealth in a sometimes

futile search for the scattered fragments of antiquity. A few broken

Greek marbles, or Nineveh mud tablets, or battered leaves of Egyptian

papyrus, are considered an ample return for half a lifetime of labour

and the expenditure of thousands. We are apt to regard with a scorn not

unmixed with malevolence the men of a bygone age who allowed treasure

of so priceless a value to humanity to be wantonly destroyed.

Yet, at the present day in South Africa, a destruction of materials far

more priceless and irrevocable goes on in our midst in the full light

of our nineteenth-century humanitarian culture. It is possible that in

the course of time a new Phidias may arise in our midst, and produce

statues comparable to, if not identical with, those of the old world,

and the learning and lore of the old Egyptians and Chaldeans lost in

their destroyed mud tablets or papyrus leaves may yet be re-evolved

from the human brain; but there is a reckless and callous destruction

now going on in our midst of that which can by no conceivable

possibility be restored to humanity when once it is destroyed from

the surface of the globe. Future generations will probably regard as

intelligent and wise benefactors of their race the men who burnt the

Library in Alexandria, and destroyed the Parthenon at Athens, when they

are compared, in certain aspects, with the inhabitants of Southern

Africa and the modern world.

For the moment we are so entirely bent on advancing the claims of

a material civilization, which we are inclined to regard as the

all-in-all of life, that more subtle, if equally practical, and

important considerations are apt to be forgotten.

This view is forced on us when we consider the reckless and entirely

wanton destruction of the one form of production for which the

African continent, and more especially its southern portions, stands

pre-eminent among the world's divisions--our astonishing fauna.

From gorilla and grey parrot on the east coast, and chimpanzee on

the west, to the endless varieties of antelope and pachydermatous

quadrupeds which at one time overran the south, no part in the globe

has been within the memory of man, and even still is, so rich in

beautiful and rare forms of sub-human life; no other presents the same

vast field for scientific research.

How quickly this condition of things is passing away the most rapid

glance at the present condition of South Africa will show. Hardly

a year passes away without some rare and interesting form of life

becoming extinct. The hippopotami, elephants, and antelopes which

once grazed on the shores of Table Bay have for a century not been

seen there, and the vast herds which covered our up-country plains in

the memory of those living have absolutely been extinguished, leaving

nothing behind but a few horns and skins, the few last wandering

individuals, who in the natural course of things will be exterminated

within the next few years. Before the middle of the twentieth century

is reached (probably much sooner) the rifle, the railway train and the

plough will so entirely have modified the conditions of existence that

not only all forms of life indigenous to Southern, but to Central and

Tropical Africa will have passed away.

From a sentimental and emotional standpoint this is to be regretted,

but there are deeper interests than the merely emotional and poetical

at stake. In an age when the study of a single small, deep-sea creature

of a form intermediate between the vertebrate and invertebrate orders

has thrown a flood of light on our biological knowledge, and when the

discovery of a few fossilized hoofs has helped to revolutionize our

view of vital phenomena; when even the man in the street, perceiving

the practical advantages which science has conferred on him, has

ceased to jeer, and regards it with a certain vague, if unreasoning,

respect, it is not necessary to dwell at length on the fact that the

loss of these multitudinous forms of life, by crippling and limiting

the field of scientific study, must inflict a direct and serious loss

on human knowledge and progress. But perhaps it is only the man more

or less interested in the results of scientific research who can fully

appreciate the importance of preserving for the future all forms of

natural life, from the lion and crocodile to the humblest wood-dove and

fly.

Some years back, finding it necessary to gain what information was

obtainable with regard to the domestic and social habits of the higher

apes, we found that all the information to be obtained from the latest

works on the subject amounted to little more than _nil_; and that for

a personal inspection of these creatures in their natural state three

distinct journeys into separate and most inaccessible parts of the

globe would be necessary.

We then proceeded to study the few isolated specimens to be found in

the Zoological Gardens of Europe. We found a few crestfallen looking

animals, transported at an immense cost from tropical Africa or

elsewhere, necessarily confined in small, comparatively dark cells,

kept alive by a continual expenditure of coal and artificial heat, and

then rarely saved from consumption, and requiring the constant care

and attention of an able-bodied man; they resembled as little, seated

on their heaps of straw and coughing, the creature in its natural and

active social condition amidst the sunshine of a tropical forest, as

a mummy represents an ancient Egyptian. After a vast expenditure of

money, less was to be learnt from them than might be gained with regard

to a troop of South African baboons when watched for a few hours from

behind the stones of a kopje.

Considering these things, the conclusion inevitably forces itself upon

us that our position with regard to the study of animal life is yet

far from an ideal one. With one-third the expenditure of energy and

money which goes to form our half-dozen small zoological collections

in Europe, a vast preserve for wild animals immeasurably superior

to anything which exists for scientific ends might be formed and

maintained in any tropical or sub-tropical country. Our small existing

collections may serve to bring curious specimens under the eyes of

scientific men, and subserve certain useful purposes; but for many

forms of study they are absolutely futile, and as a means of keeping

in existence specimens which would otherwise become extinct, they have

no claim to consideration. The ideal zoological garden would be a vast

tract of country in some tropical or subtropical region, where all

creatures but those habituated to extreme cold would freely exist in a

state of nature, limited only by mutual struggle; it should be a tract

diversified, if possible, by swamp, forest, and hills, and divided

as far as might be by natural features from the surrounding country;

and where no such barriers existed it should be as far as possible

artificially cut off. It should contain not merely the creatures

indigenous to the country, but should serve as a receptacle for those

which could not elsewhere be preserved from extinction. It should

form, so to speak, a vast natural preserve, existing not primarily

for the purposes of the sportsman, but of science, and in which the

rifle should be almost unknown. In connection with this might in time

spring up large zoological gardens in the narrower sense of the term,

where isolated specimens might be immured for the purposes of certain

studies; but for many years its far more important function would be

simply the keeping in existence a large number of forms of animal life

which would else become annihilated. Wildly Utopian as this scheme

appears at first sight, consideration will show it is not beyond the

range of feasibility, though beset with difficulty. The first, and for

many years the most insuperable, difficulty has lain in the fact that

no such tract as was necessary was obtainable anywhere. The existence

of a strong, civilized government would be necessary to guarantee its

retention for the desired purpose, and where a civilized government

exists, there, as a rule, is a more or less dense population. The

individual, as a rule, precedes the government, and apart from the

fact that land then becomes too precious to be appropriated for such a

purpose, both the land and the fauna have, as a rule, become so much

modified and destroyed that it would take half a century to reproduce

natural conditions. Such considerations have made in the past the whole

scheme appear purely Utopian.

At the present moment, however, there exists in South Africa, by a

rare and exceptional combination of circumstances, a condition which

removes it from the realm of the purely ideal to that of the remotely

practical. The sudden and unprecedented movement of the north-east of

Southern Africa, where a powerful and well-organized form of civilized

government is rapidly establishing itself in a vast territory, sparsely

inhabited by natives, and as yet little, or at all, by Europeans, and

where certain low-lying tracts are not at the present moment fitted for

immediate occupation or for ordinary cultivation, and will certainly

not be so used till the immense tracts of salubrious and valuable

land about them have been fully utilized, yields a possibility of

the realization of this plan, which has not occurred before and will

probably not occur again. Were a large tract of this country granted

or bought at a nominal price, and freedom from intrusion guaranteed,

and were the interests of scientific Europe and America aroused and

directed to this matter, and a body of scientific men and practical

travellers formed for the direction and management of the scheme, it

might pass into the region of the practical and obtainable. Innumerable

as the smaller difficulties of detail would be, they would probably not

be insurmountable. Such a subsidiary difficulty, for instance, would

rise from the fact that such a preserve should not border anywhere upon

a densely populated tract of country, and that it would be necessary to

leave a belt of country some miles in width around it, to be inhabited

on exceptional conditions. Were the interest of scientific Europe and

America fully aroused, and the feasibility of the scheme proved, money

would not be the thing wanting for its completion.

The sum now expended in warming the cell of one anthropoid ape in

Europe would build a stone wall a mile long in Mashonaland, and did

the contributions take the form of donations giving the donors a

permanent interest in the scheme and its management they might be

largely increased. Apart entirely from the noblest scientific aspect,

the undertaking might in the end prove itself successful in the purely

commercial sense. Not only would the existence of such a preserve

serve in time, as the creatures became extinct elsewhere, to attract

scientific visitors to the land; but (curious as such an idea now

appears, in a country, where for years our struggle has been to obtain

an initial control over the animal and vegetable productions of Nature,

and where all artificial productions are naturally valued at something

above their real worth) it is possible that the mere animals themselves

might, in the course of sixty or eighty years, prove as lucrative a

source of wealth to the scientific body to which they belonged as if

the original capital had been invested in gold mines or corn fields.

It is difficult at the present moment to realize that in a generation

and a half, when streams of immigration have swept east and west, north

and south, across the continent, the tusks of an elephant, the skin

of an antelope, or the body of a giraffe, or a live lion, may possess

a purely commercial value, which would cause them to equal in worth a

handful of Kimberley diamonds or a claim at Johannesburg. Apart from

the always increasing interest which would attach scientifically to

such a preserve of primitive forms, the vulgar curiosity which to-day

runs after the lion-van and stands gaping at the Zoological Gardens

on a Saturday afternoon, would find its gratification in the products

of the tract; and it is not impossible that in a future generation,

if the crude thirst for destruction remains unslaked in human nature,

Nimrods may be found who would gladly expend much of their superfluous

wealth in paying for attaining to the blissful consciousness of

having destroyed the life of a creature of whose kind only a few

score exist in the world. It may be objected that were such a scheme

workable, and however remotely a possible success, it would long since

in a commercial age have been grasped and carried out. But a scheme

whose monetary success cannot be looked for during the limits of a

lifetime is not one which presents seductive allurements to the purely

commercial investor. It is a scheme peculiarly fitted to be worked out

in the interests of science, which are practically indestructible and

in the presence of which a thousand years are but as one day.

In Central and Southern Africa to-day primitive nature is making its

last stand on the surface of the globe. It is here or nowhere that a

minute relic of it must be retained for the civilized world of the

future. If it be possible for any plan to be matured and carried

out for the preserving of our fauna, it will undoubtedly be regarded

by men of the future as action along that obvious, practical, and

rational line which it was impossible for us to avoid seeing, and

much as we should regard the action of men who had saved for us the

treasures of antiquity in sealed chest and buried chambers. If no such

plan is maturable and workable during the next fifty years, science

will permanently have lost great possibilities, and South Africa that

which constitutes its greatest attraction. It is certainly not by

persistently following in the steps of other divisions of the globe,

but by resolutely grasping our own opportunities and striking out her

own paths, that Africa can ever attain to her rightful position among

the world's divisions.

At the present moment in the low-lying districts of Mashonaland, which

till all the vast salubrious and productive tracts about them have been

fully peopled and cultivated, will lie waste, we have one of the last,

and probably the best, opportunities which will ever occur of finding

a field in which we may preserve our rare and wonderful fauna. But to

be successfully carried out the scheme should be worked on a colossal

scale, and by the international interaction of all interested in

science; our preserve should be the World's Zoological Garden.

_Printed in Great Britain by_

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS

LONDON AND WOKING

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Inconsistencies in hyphenation and punctuation have not been

corrected.

TRANSCRIBER'S CORRECTIONS

page original text correction

33 is neither forest nor scrubb. is neither forest nor scrub.

54 into an incohate trading firm into an inchoate trading firm

56 nations should co-exist. nations should not co-exist.

92 the inacessible height the inaccessible height

121 the Spaniard or Enligshman, the Spaniard or Englishman,

126 the asthetic and intellectual the æsthetic and intellectual

152 the story of the fightng the story of the fighting

157 wherein out attitude differs wherein our attitude differs

192 a close intellectual fellowhip. a close intellectual fellowship.

201 and ill-important share and all-important share

236 the exception of Piet Retieff, the exception of Piet Retief,

267 than years have ever been, than yours have ever been,

268 tea which Talmi women tea which Tamil women

280 hopelessly cripple the arm; hopelessly cripple the army;

290 at midday in a vast plane at midday in a vast plain

321 the modern ninetenth-century the modern nineteenth-century

350 a part which follow after a part which follows after

362 and the bust of Skakespeare and the bust of Shakespeare

382 the English nation has chosem, the English nation has chosen,