Origin of the Anglo Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) by C. H. Thomas

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But why not agree to arbitration, it will be asked, that peaceable
method so strenuously appealed for by the Transvaal Government and
advocated by her partisans, to adjust all differences, of which the
suzerainty claim and the Uitlander question appeared to be the principal
ones? The reply is not that England was unwilling, but because the
Transvaal was insincere, and the request was a cover for shameless
duplicity, for, while it had been declared by the former that the claim
to suzerainty would be left in abeyance and that infractions of
convention which had been committed by the latter would be overlooked in
consideration of future friendly relations and co-operation, the
Transvaal Government in reality never for a moment meant to be content
with less than British overthrow and complete Boer supremacy in South
Africa, and efforts and intrigues were never relaxed, in concert with
the Bond, to compass those objects.

AFRIKANER BOND GUILT IN GRADATIONS

The promiscuous details and incidents, together with the circumstantial
and _prima facie_ evidence thus far adduced in arraigning the Afrikaner
Bond combination, point mostly to conditions existent before the war
broke out. We had the smoke before the conflagration--it is a wonder how
people could manage to ignore the menace. Now the war torch is over us
in its full luridness.

Ordinary fires, if not kindled, originate either from accident,
spontaneous combustion, or incendiarism. With war the origin may be
traced to similar causes either singly or in combination, or, when we
cannot hit the exact diagnosis, we explain it with a handy word and call
it evolution, as we may do in the case of the present Anglo-Boer
conflict.

We may for a moment review the material and then also the agencies and
incentives which operated that evolution against harmony and peace, and
to which the conflagration is due. We have noted the legal acquisition
of the Cape Colonies by Great Britain, the equally recognised occupation
under treaties with England of the two Boer Republics, the English and
Boer races in progress of friendly assimilation and in happy prosperity
all over South Africa. This was essentially the position in 1881, until
it became gradually marred by an invidious element. We have further
noted the declining condition of Holland, its moribund language, and
finally the prospects which South Africa presented for that nation's
restoration to powerful significance, the English factor only standing
in the way.

The next aspect brings out the marring manifestations: greed of land and
of conquest with the Pretoria-Bloemfontein combination; malignant
sedition in the Cape Colonies, urged by lust to participate more
directly in the wealth of gold and diamonds in the north and to share
general plunder--both categories of covetousness merged into one
purulent fester by men of conceited ambition, all cemented with
collusion, but the whole of it devised, engineered, and operated by the
most malignant agencies from Holland under the coaching of the evil one
himself.

The reader may be able to assess the degrees of guilt of each
category--of the Republican Boer aspirant for land, the Colonial Boer
rebel seeking his particular profit, the accomplices who for ambitious
ends lead the first two, and the insidious Hollander intriguers who
seduced and actuated all in order to seize the lion's share of the
spoliation.

To sum up, the respective rewards which lured them all are: Plunder for
the Boers and rebels, laurels and "fat" places for the Bond leaders, and
a substantial harvest for entire Holland, with paeans of praise for the
coterie and Dr. Leyds from a grateful people for successfully restoring
the good fortunes of the Dutch nation, and for effecting a retributive
vendetta upon England, all under world-wide, gloating acclaims of
gratified and vindictive jealousy.

The Hollander coterie may plead patriotism which pointed to the duty of
using the tempting opportunity presented in South Africa in saving
Holland from national submersion and political extinction by means of
the Boer nation, but against this stands the unparalleled vileness of
expedients and the treacherous deceptions employed to attain that
object. It involved the wholesale seduction of one section of that
nation into sedition and rebellion against a most beneficent and just
Government under which they prospered and enjoyed the highest
conceivable degree of liberty and even special privileges, and of
pitting the other section into hostility and war against a Power which
meant nothing else than peace and amity towards them, thus placing both
into a position of risk to forfeit all their prosperity, apart from the
inevitable horrors of a war evoked by their rapacious and murderous
Hollander malice.

The Bond scientists in Holland had fully persevered in their craftily
laid programme. After having succeeded in producing race hatred between
Boer and English, the next step had been to convince the Boer leaders
and the people of the inevitableness of a contest for ensuring the
supremacy of the Afrikaners, coupled with the absolute necessity of the
complete expulsion of the entire British element. As arguments were
adduced that the British element had proved itself unassimilable and
irreconcilable, its retention in South Africa would necessitate
continuous provisions to keep it in a state of subjection. The existence
of such conditions would be inconsistent and incompatible with the true
ideal liberty as intended for the whole of South Africa, and which must
be linked with all-round equality and fraternity. The presence of a
British factor would be an unsurmountable bar to that consummation,
hence the necessity of its total removal.

The Bond leaders are the next in guilt; with these the incentive is
principally ambition, which, by degrees, became mis-shaped into a
specious patriotism. It is known how an ardently desired object pursued
for a long period is apt to so monopolize and infatuate the mind as to
totally vitiate and pervert the sense of discernment between right and
wrong, both as to the legitimacy of the object and the means to be
employed for its attainment. As the realization remains deferred and the
efforts are increased, the object from being considered legitimate is by
degrees invested with merit, a halo of virtue is added to the aspect,
its pursuit is viewed as a duty by fair or by questionable means, the
end justifying the latter. All, it is said, is fair in love and warfare.
This diagnosis appears particularly applicable to President Krueger and
State Secretary F.W. Reitz, both men of sincere piety (perhaps also to
Mr. Schreiner), who would have abandoned their project and renounced and
repudiated the Afrikaner Bond if ever they had doubted its legitimacy of
principle. So also with most of the other Boer leaders and their clergy
too. The agencies must have been exceedingly subtle, and the jugglery
and artifice superhuman, to operate such processes of reasoning, such
deception and aberration in honest-minded and even godly persons.

As to the bulk of the Boer people, they are simply led by their chiefs
and superiors, in whom they repose unquestioning confidence. They go
unreasoningly with the stream of opinion under the firm belief that all
is divinely sanctioned, including rebellion and violence, and blindly
obey their call, considering their cause analogous to that of the Jews
of old, who were enjoined to spoil the Egyptians and then to pass over
and conquer their land of promise. No papal bull of indulgence ever
freed people's consciences more than the Boer people now feel in regard
to the warfare in which they are engaged.

RESUME

The Boers in the Cape Colonies have been prospering in a marked degree
since the British accession in 1814, enjoying ideal liberty and good
government upon perfect equality with the English colonists.

The people of the Orange Free State fared equally well under best
relations with the British Government up to the outbreak of the present
war.

In the Transvaal the Boers were more handicapped, being furthest removed
from profitable Cape connections, and having to cope with powerful
hostile tribes within their border. The most redoubtable, under
Secoecoenie, was subdued during the British occupation in 1878. Then
followed the short war of 1880, with the voluntary retrocession and
peace of January, 1881. All appeared to progress remarkably well for
about ten years after, until the irrational treatment by the Boers of
British subjects in the Transvaal furnished the first cause of
friction, and engendered at last the Johannesburg crisis with the
Jameson incursion, followed by four years' vain attempts on the part of
England to bring about satisfactory and peaceful relations.

The Afrikaner Bond had been inaugurated some thirty years ago, under the
mask of a constitutional organization, professing loyalty to England;
that body had succeeded in hiding its object, which was no less than the
expulsion from South Africa of all that is English, and which object was
brutally avowed since the outbreak of the war by declarations in the
Press and by incendiary speeches of Colonial Bond leaders and members of
the Cape Parliament.

The British Government did not view very seriously the information it
received regarding the Bond menace until the definite action of the
Transvaal Government partially opened its eyes prior to the Johannesburg
revolt. The hope was, however, still clung to in an undefined way that
patience and forbearance would yet overcome Boer prejudice and disperse
racial antipathies, and with characteristic self-confidence as well,
things were allowed to drift rather out of hand.

The two Republics had been _de facto_ allied some time before the
Johannesburg crisis in 1895. Both were then already provided with very
abundant armaments of up-to-date types, with equipments and preparations
far and away above any conceivable needs except indeed for a _coup
d'etat_ against British supremacy and to sustain a Colonial revolt.

On the occasion of the Jameson incursion the Orange Free State promptly
appeared near the scene with best equipped mounted Boer commandoes and
artillery to assist the Transvaal if needed.

Before 1881 and some time subsequently there had been continued progress
towards the assimilation of the English and Boer races in South Africa.
This was marred by Afrikaner Bond doctrines and intrigues proceeding
from a Hollander coterie, the formula being "Afrika voor de
Afrikaners"--the aims including the usurpation of British authority in
the Colonies, supremacy of the Boer nation under one great Republican
federation, and an affiliated status with Holland which should restore
that people, all to the prejudice of England, to a political and
economic significance and power surpassing its former epoch of European
and Colonial eminence. As to the incentives to the Boer nation, these
were principally the plunder of capital investments and land conquests,
which the people had learnt to consider legitimate and in fact
incumbent as a duty to themselves and descendants.

The means employed in that conspiracy were a subtle, so to say, occult
propaganda to seduce a simple people to false convictions, to induce the
creation of gigantic armaments, a secret service employing at a vast
cost journalism, emissaries, and agencies, to gain partisans and allies
outside South Africa, the Transvaal mint to coin the sinews of war from
the appropriation of the mines and their output, the dynamite factory
(that Bond corner-stone for manufacturing ammunition[11]), a system of
immigration from Holland towards supplanting the English factor and to
introduce auxiliaries. Other such means were: laws for admitting
auxiliaries to immediate full burgher rights and privilege to carry
arms, from which Uitlanders were rigorously excluded, the rabid campaign
proscribing the English language and fostering High Dutch instead (which
was much less understood by the entire Boer people, and much harder for
them to learn than English). To the above list of devices came the
exhaustive efforts to obtain an independent seaport for the Transvaal,
first at St. Lucia Bay, then at Delagoa Bay (ostensibly with a German
syndicate, and since by subsidizing Portugal or suborning Portuguese
notables and officials).

The climax of duplicity is reached when it is averred that the pursuit
of such an organized programme during the past twenty years and more had
meant peace only, never a thought of conquest, as Ambassador Leyds so
innocently declared after failing to gain abroad the hoped-for support
for the monstrous Bond enormity.

The Afrikaner Bond leaders would have preferred the war to have been
deferred a little longer--preferably to a moment when England might be
embroiled elsewhere. It was also thought of importance that the
Transvaal should first realize the auriferous "underground rights"
situated around the Johannesburg mines, which Government asset was
expected to net at least fifty million pounds sterling. The sales had
already been advertised, and were in preparation when the outbreak of
the war intervened. Upon the word "ready," flashed from Bloemfontein,
followed at once the fateful Pretoria ultimatum. The proceeds of those
underground rights must now come in afterwards to defray the war bill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: President Krueger's reference to that factory is well
known, styling it as one of the corner-stones of Boer independence.]

THE BOERS' NATIVE POLICY

Boer views regarding coloured peoples are those retained from Dutch
practices of a hundred and more years ago, when the Cape of Good Hope
still belonged to that nation. Servitude, if not absolute slavery, was
then generally recognised as the proper status for coloured aborigines,
and that principle of differentiation continues to be upheld and applied
in a modified form, it must be admitted, in all the Colonial possessions
of Holland. The authority for this stand is sought from ancient biblical
history, where the descendants of Ham appear marked out for servitude,
and from that basis it is interpreted that people so marked are not
designed for tuition or evangelization until after they have been
subjugated. According to such a doctrine the injunction to preach the
Gospel to every creature would be limited to civilized whites, and might
only be extended to such coloured peoples who have been fitted, as is
said, for the reception of the Christian faith by being placed under
the subserviency of whites, as their sponsors if not their actual
masters, and requiring mundane tuition and education as essential bases
to precede conversion.

For the refutation of such monstrous doctrines it may be urged that,
according to Scripture, savage as well as cultured peoples have a
consciousness of guilt towards the Divine Judge. The object of the
Gospel is to end the history of the culprit as such and to place him
upon a new standing--"the wind bloweth as it listeth": a new birth
operated by the acceptance of the Gospel proclamation addressed to every
creature, black as well as white. Growth and moral amendment properly
"follow" that spiritual birth; neither is conceivable before, except
purely human education, which is incapable of effecting a change, and in
fact tends only to fortify the natural man in his implacable hostility
against the newly implanted element, each lusting against the other.[12]

History records how the Spanish and other early explorers operated with
the aborigines in the regions discovered by them. The territories with
their inhabitants were declared possessions accruing to their respective
sovereigns, whose main policy was the exploitation of all the wealth
possible. The aborigines were dispossessed, treated as conquered
peoples, and forced to do the exploiting labour. No other results could
follow than the gradual diminution and final exhaustion of all the
wealth and the partial, if not total, extinction of the aboriginal
races.

What retribution overtook those nations is also on record. Those
enslaved peoples were forced to accept the religion of their conquerors.
Can true converts be made to order by constraint, motives of
self-interest, or by baptizing them _en bloc_? What else but deepest
aversion and mistrust could a religion inspire which is professed and
taught by a people who practise spoliation, murder, and other
descriptions of wickedness abhorrent even to a savage mind? The
aborigines would daily behold their own land and possessions enjoyed by
usurpers and "would be teachers," who subjected them besides to slavery
and abject misery. Could the religion of such teachers ever find favour
with their victims? How could doctrines of righteousness and love be
understood when so glaringly violated by their preceptors?

It presents a sad paradox to see that the Boers, who are in many
respects consistently religious and even exemplary, could uphold
principles which place coloured people out of caste, not only in regard
to political rights but also as to the common religious standing before
the Creator. It would be unjust to charge the Boers with actually
barbarous practices towards the natives--what they do enforce is their
submission to the condition of servants.

The Boer people ever chafed against the restraining action of the
British Government as to their practice of slavery, and they have not
hesitated either to exhibit their hostility to missionary enterprise.
The confiscation of Protestant mission sites in the Orange Free State is
one of the instances; another was exemplified in a raid perpetrated
about forty years ago by the Transvaal Boers upon the inoffensive
Bechuana tribe, whose chief and many of his people had accepted the
Christian faith through the teaching of Moffat, David Livingstone, and
other evangelists. The pretext for that raid was a lying report that
that Bechuana chief had bartered some 400 guns from traders to fight the
Boers with. The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of
those weapons. Despite the protestation of the chief and his people that
not more than eight guns had been bartered for hunting, which had later
proved true, a commando was sent against them under Commandant Paul
Krueger, now President Krueger. Many of the natives were slain, their
villages burnt, their cattle seized, and great numbers of the tribe
taken captive for distribution as servants among the Boer farmers in the
Transvaal. That raid was further signalized by the total destruction of
Moffat's mission station--church, school buildings, and industrial
shops. These, after being looted, were all consigned to the flames, as
also the missionary dwellings, among which was that of David
Livingstone, with his furniture, books, and belongings. There are
abundant records, besides that of the Bechuana nation, that barbarous
and idolatrous peoples are amenable to Christianity without the prior
influences of civilization or individual education, or that they should
be subjugated first, as the Boers would have it. What indeed is of
immense aid for moral and economic advancement is the operation of
civilized and liberal governmental authority, repressing slavery, under
which proprietary rights and justice are equally afforded to black and
white, and where the Gospel might have a free course without constraint
and without inducements of material advantages.

It seemed that such conditions were on the eve of eventuating for the
rescue and disenthralment of darkest Africa. This is what Moffat,
Livingstone, Coillard, and many other devoted servants of the Gospel had
prayed for all their lives, what has been and still is the burden of the
prayers (no doubt all inspired) of millions of Christians. The interior
is no more a blank on the map. Much is done for the suppression of
slavery. The whole continent is parcelled out among different nations,
who have assumed the task of civilizing their respective spheres. The
world's energy and capital stand available for the object, and it
appeared that many souls were being seriously aroused to the
responsibility of obeying the charge pronounced in Ezekiel xxxiii. 1-11.
But sinister influences have not failed in attempts to bar beneficent
dispensations. We have seen fanaticism resulting in the fierce revolt of
Mahdism in the north, and are now awaiting the issue of the war brought
on by Afrikaner Bondism in the south.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Another has aptly illustrated the change by comparing such
a man's new condition to a hotel that has come under totally different
and perfectly new management and controlling proprietorship.]

ENGLAND'S NATIVE AND COLONIAL POLICY

Until the earlier parts of this nineteenth century England has been
conspicuous among other nations in tolerating slavery in some of her
possessions, and in permitting her people to engage in systematic
man-hunts, with the accompanying atrocities and horrors of a regular
slave trade. Manifestations of national abhorrence and condemnation of
that inhuman traffic and of slavery in general appeared during the first
quarter of this century. The nation hid its shame and contrition in acts
towards remedying its share of the evil committed. These took the shape
of expending some twenty million pounds sterling towards the
emancipation of slaves and various other costly measures to repress the
trade in human beings, and in proclaiming personal freedom for all
slaves in her dominions. The desire to do justice to coloured races was
further exemplified in the adoption, dating some fifty years back, of a
totally altered colonial and native policy. Up to then the practice
with all colonizing Powers had been to utilize their foreign dominions
as preserves for financial exploitation, involving the most crying
injustice to aborigines. The departure then effected consisted in a
policy of just laws instead, directed to ensure to those people
equitable treatment and a recognition of their rights to fixed property
and to a position before the law equal with that of white inhabitants.
The revenues produced by the Colonies were thenceforward all to be
devoted to the advancement of their own local prosperity. Free trade
followed that _regime_ of liberty and equity, and, as intended, such
Colonial dominions began to partake of the character and were
constituted off-shoots of the mother country, with a like status of
liberty and enjoying the benefit of British protection at the same time.
Many were the auguries that the experiment would result in political and
economic failure, but the good results to all concerned proved to be so
far-reaching as to startle even its most sanguine advocates. The
extension of privileges and rights operated upon the natives as a
magical incentive to labour and emulation for the improvement of their
economic condition; people who had before preferred an indolent,
semi-nomadic existence betook themselves more to agricultural and
sedentary habits, living in much greater comfort and steadily increasing
in wealth.

Civilization went on apace, and with it the moral improvement of the
aborigines, paving the way as well for the spread of Christianity. All
this was accompanied with an immense and ever-advancing expansion of
trade with England and the recognition of British prestige as a
successful colonizing power.

Numerous other principalities courted the privilege of coming under the
aegis of the English flag, their potentates and people readily submitting
to the abolition of practices which were not in accord with humane and
civilized usages and eager to share the benefits and advancement of
civilization which were enjoyed under British rule. In not a few
instances it was, however, not feasible to extend the protectorate so
coveted.

While other nations were engaged in wars during the past half-century,
England had opportunities to largely expand and consolidate her Colonial
dominions. At the same time British trade, industries and shipping
advanced with gigantic strides, and that nation has since gained the
foremost rank as a commercial and Colonial empire, governing over the
choicest portions of the globe some four hundred millions of loyal and
contented subjects, who enjoy liberty and a degree of prosperity
unequalled elsewhere as yet, the whole being protected by a navy which
constitutes England as champion on sea as well.

All this national success and example of liberal government have had a
salutary influence upon the rest of the world in evoking wholesome
competition and emulation. But another and very untoward effect is that
widespread and deep-rooted envy and jealousy have also been aroused,
which on occasion are apt to develop into pretexts for actual hostility,
or hostile partisanship as is now the case.

What signalises the beneficent reign of Queen Victoria more than
anything else is the peculiarly devoted manner in which that august lady
has personally acquitted herself of her duty and responsibility in
regard to the elevation and rehabilitation of the hitherto socially
enslaved condition of womanhood in her Indian empire; for it is well
known how the philosophic religions of the East have been subtly adapted
for establishing the political and social pre-eminence of certain
classes of a population over its majority, at the same time dooming
womanhood generally to the lowest rank of drudges, perpetual contempt
and ignorance, refusing them education (as had been done in the case of
the Roman slaves)--specially despised if without a husband, and if a
widow, immolated at last upon her husband's funeral pyre.

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