South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 19

[Sidenote: Antagonism to English Rule]

The English speaking inhabitants of the gold and diamond country of Africa are treated as hostiles by the Boers who were the first settlers and slaughtered the natives, and the English are held out of favor because they are so numerous and prosperous, and, it may be added, so superior in their intelligence and elevated in their purposes and resolute in their determinations, that the Boers must keep them disarmed and deny them the ballot and all consideration in local affairs. The English offense is that they have made the country flourish, have built cities in deserts, spanned rivers and penetrated mountains with roads of steel. These improvements may be bad for the peculiar civilization and hardy endowments of the Boers, but do not seem to vindicate the belligerent rancher in his ferocious antagonism to those who are leading in their day and generation those affairs that are working out the betterment of the race of man. There are boundaries that must be removed for the broad benefits of the general welfare of mankind that the forces of the age may overcome the most stubborn resistance to the triumphant processes by which civilization spreads abroad and acquires stability.

It is the semi-barbarous theory that gold and diamond hunters are offenders against liberty, that it is the holy duty of the Boers as cattle drivers and stalkers of game, to reduce intrusive English speaking people to a subordination down to the level of the native tribes, so that they may not become masters over the aristocracy of the African cowboys. What better t.i.tle is there anywhere for self-government than a people in the majority? This is most obvious where racial questions arise, and there is more and more declared the rights of men under the sanction and rule of the majority to govern themselves. A higher civilization, greater property and educational qualifications and the output of "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice,"

are incidental to and co-operate with majority government in South Africa. But all this on behalf of Boerdom is denied.

The English have possessed a great quant.i.ty of land in Africa, and they are justified by the establishment of comparative peace under stable form of government, by the increase of prosperity of the people, irrespective of race or previous condition of servitude or of shades of color. The ancient despotism at the Cape which was a prohibition of progress, for it was the tyranny of an absolute monopoly, has been swept away; and there has been growth in human liberty as well as augmentation of wealth and comfort, and there is white light on the dismal sh.o.r.es of the Dark Continent.

[Sidenote: English Government in South Africa]

It has been the English policy to form a federation of colonies pressing by steady and encouraged advancement of the sovereign rights of intelligent people, forming states in South Africa. The objection to this first urged is that the British have insisted upon the flag of the Empire over the movement. That flag has not prevented the wonderful growth of Australia, for that world newly risen from the seas has become of imperial proportions. Under that flag in this new world are more remarkable experiments undertaken, testing the theories of munic.i.p.al socialism and industrial unity than in any other part of the globe. Under the same flag the population of India has doubled. The inference is that it would not blast the bloom of Africa.

The racial complications on South Africa demand for the greatest good of the people at large (and we include in that phrase the greatest number of people) that the best form the rule of the land can take is that of British supremacy--this positively for an indefinite period of transition. It has been the British policy to set apart for natives a vast tract of good land, and that would seem to be better and more human than to devote them to extermination, unless they themselves insist upon exterminating others. In Natal over 500 miles of railroads have been constructed. These roads connect with harbors at Cape Town and Durban. The improvement of the country has turned out to the advantage of the military operations of the British. Good roads are a great help to a people, but, it must be admitted, they do favor the rapid movement of ma.s.ses of armed men in these days as they did in those of the Romans.

[Sidenote: A Few Telling Statistics]

Consider the simple statistics of the productions of the territory contested between the British and the Boers. The yield of the diamond mines in 1897 was valued at $21,676,776, and the gold of the White Water range region in 1899, if the output continued as in September, was closely estimated at $76,647,375, putting that territory at the head of the gold producing regions of the world. With order, security for industry and its varied fruits, fair play for men of all races, the gold yield by the Transvaal would speedily equal one hundred millions annually. It is the result of an investigation by the use of the drills and the chemistry of experts that there is a certainty in the soil of an amount of gold equal to 3,500 millions of dollars, and probably a great deal more; and this addition to the metal that is the world's standard of value in the greater commercial and military transactions would, according to the logic of all examples in history, be a guarantee of good times for those identified with all the productive industries in the shops and on the farms. The yield of diamonds will be equal to the demands of trade, whatever it is. The store of them in the soil about Kimberley seems to be inexhaustible.

It is these tremendous endowments of nature in the heart of South Africa that caused the immigration there, and has aroused the cupidity and excited the ambition of the Boers, causing them to array themselves against the growth of communities whose importance has been increasing so fast as to threaten the rule of the caste that has held the Transvaal with an iron hand.

[Sidenote: A Plea Unworthy of Consideration]

The very plea of the Boers that the English speaking people are too numerous to trust with the right of suffrage and too rich to be allowed a share of self-government, and that the discovery and developments of mines of gold and diamonds, the most concentrated and attractive forms of the wealth of Nature, is unworthy not only of deference but of consideration. It is opposed to the spirit and substance of the surprising realizations of the century that have made it the most memorable epoch in the history of man in the appropriation of the resources of the earth he inherits. Never until now has mankind had the labor and capital, the courage, the machinery, the intelligence, or the tools provided by marvelous inventions--the conquering capacity to give the gigantic continent of Africa--nearly 12,000,000 square miles--into the hands of the people who need room for industry, thus making an addition to the good land available for the lucrative employment of countless millions through the coming ages.

[Sidenote: A Magnificent Project]

There is one people, and one only on earth, that has the ability and the purpose, the will and the force, the experience and the energy to make this gift to mankind, and that power is the British Empire.

Whatever the resources or the ambition or the faculties of other great nations, none with the exception of Great Britain is so situated as to make it possible to do this. British influence and territory, from the Cape of Good Hope to the mouth of the Nile, are interrupted by a s.p.a.ce less than 600 miles, and 480 miles of that are navigable water! The British have thousands of miles of railroad there now, and the work to pierce Africa with lines of steel, on the lines of longitude, is under way. Less than the cost of the war caused by the obstruction of English enterprise in Africa by the boorishness of the Boers would have completed a safe and magnificent highway from Cape Town to Alexandria.

After all, war will not stop, but will promote that project. The study of the war history will so advertise the marvels of Africa that the money will be found to build the road and its branches from the Mediterranean to the South Sea, and that speedily; and this will be recorded as one of the mightiest works of man--one that profoundly interests all nations and all races.

[Sidenote: England cannot Give up Africa]

England cannot afford to give up Egypt or South Africa, and, of course, will not do it, for there she fights for India, and for every form and feature of her imperialism. The world could not afford to have her give up Africa. If she was weak enough to be willing to do it, that weakness would mark her decline and declare her fall. The British Empire is the chosen instrument of Providence that rough-hews the ends of the earth, and that includes the conquest of Africa, for the sake of mankind. That Empire is the only one that has the enabling equipment to do the work, and the advancement will be the achievement of one of the proudest and most beneficent of all victories of men for man.

A great deal of the journalism of the world is wickedly and wretchedly wrong and extremely misleading in its treatment of this superb and lofty theme. The Boers have been cruelly deceived by interludes of feebleness displayed in the government of England, permitting a halting interference with the perpetuation of the policy that has made the British Empire what it is. It was this unfaithfulness that sacrificed Gordon at Khartoum. It is the same sort of moral malady, a choice of that which is inadequate, that would have surrendered the Philippines to an impostor and prevented the expansion of American commerce in Asia.

The Boers are men of strength and generously sustained with many virtues, but they have had the misfortune to be trained in narrow ways and are forced by deplorable circ.u.mstances of environment to fight for a cause without hope, for it is one that is against the courses of the stars and the irresistible currents of the forward movements of our generation--against the mastery of the world by man for man's own sake.

This awful war is the bitter fruit of a want of candor among the nations and the races that have enlightenment, and of the incapacity of the obstructionists in South Africa to resist the blandishments of the crude vanity and the criminality of the tyranny that is based upon the ignorance whose violent presumption sheds the blood of heroes, but may not change the majestic progress of the twentieth century, in which all the living nations and vital people, the Boers and the British, shall partic.i.p.ate--for it is duty and destiny.

[Sidenote: Opinions of the Canadians]

The substantial unanimity of the Colonial people in the support of the British Empire in a.s.serting the rights of British civilization in South Africa as imperative, is an impressive circ.u.mstance and shows the solidity of the people of English speech--when the intense advocacy of the independent nationality of Ireland is eliminated--in support of the African policy of the British government. In the Dominion the contention between the party of the Administration and that of the Opposition is whether the one or the other has been the more zealous and practical friends of the Empire. There is not as much diversity of opinion and heat of political friction in British Africa over the continuance of the colonial system, supplemented by conquest, if needful, in the African crisis of the Empire, as there is in the United States in applying to the Philippine Archipelago, the great principles of the fathers that the Republic shall grow continuously as the generations come and go. The people of the United States, however, can better afford to refrain from accepting the goods the G.o.ds have provided for them in Asiatic waters and for the expansion and cultivation of our commerce with Asia and the increase of our puissance on the Pacific--than England can to be balked, beaten and discredited in Africa, which is the land of the great hereafter of Europeans, next to Europe itself.

The people of the United States can put aside their sublime opportunity of gaining at a stroke advantages on the greater ocean of the globe, that any other people would consider it irrational and suicidal to abandon, and yet go on, though it would be a collapse of ambition for Americans to acquiesce in conservative stagnation instead of moving on ever westward. They have possessions on and in the Pacific, including the states of California, Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton, the territory of Alaska and the Aleutian, Hawaiian and Philippine Islands, greater than any other people. Why should they be bounded in enterprise in the way all the stars have led, any more than eastward whence comes the light of day? England can no more consent to give up Africa than yield India, Egypt, Malta, Gibraltar, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Wight. Indeed the greater growth of England's hereafter is in Africa, or the end of her greatness and the grave of her glory is there.

MURAT HALSTEAD.

CHAPTER I.

The Battle of Majuba Hill.

[Sidenote: Lord Rosebery's Reflections]

The Earl of Rosebery, under date of October 11, 1899, wrote that he could speak "without touching politics, for a situation had been created beyond party polemics, and it was needless to discuss how we could best have attained our simple and reasonable object of rescuing our fellow-countrymen in the Transvaal from intolerable conditions of subjection and injustice, and of securing equal rights for the white races in South Africa, for an ultimatum has been addressed to Great Britain by the South African Republic which is in itself a declaration of war."

Lord Rosebery continued that the people would close their ranks and relegate party controversy to a more convenient season, and there was in addition this to say: "Without attempting to judge the policy which concluded a peace after the reverse at Majuba Hill, I am bound to state my profound conviction that there is no conceivable Government in this country which could repeat it."

In a speech at Bath, unveiling the mural tablets to the Earl of Chatham and William Pitt, Mr. Gladstone's brilliant lieutenant and successor said of the Boer ultimatum, it was such as, he thought, the proudest empire in the world would have hesitated about sending. But since the commencement of the war the Boers had engaged in the strange policy of issuing decrees of annexation of British territory, which were, apparently, desirable additions to the Republic of the Transvaal.

[Sidenote: Lord Rosebery's Speech at Bath]

There had been a great misunderstanding about the Majuba Hill transaction. It was a mere skirmish, and concurrently with that there was an attempt on the part of the then Government to settle peaceably the issue in the Transvaal. Now, whatever they might think of the result of that attempt, the thing in itself was a sublime experiment. Mr. Gladstone, with his overpowering conviction of the might and power of England, thought that she could do things which other nations could not do, and, therefore, endeavored to treat with the Boers after the reverse which took place.

We knew how Mr. Gladstone's magnanimity was rewarded. He (Lord Rosebery) felt a deep misgiving at the time in respect to this course of policy, and his fears had been realized in the result. The Boers had regarded that magnanimity as a proof of weakness, and they rewarded Mr. Gladstone's magnanimity with a deliberate and constant encroachment on the terms of the settlement. Then there came the discovery of gold. If they might judge from all that they had read, the income secured by the discovery of gold produced great corruption in the Transvaal. The bill of salaries--public salaries in the Transvaal--amounted, on a calculation, to about 40 a head of the population, and it could not but be considered that that was a liberal allowance for the working of so simple a republican Government. The Jameson raid was not merely a deplorable incident from a diplomatic point of view, but it was also the symptom of a deplorable state of things. They might be quite certain that no English gentleman would have engaged in what might be called a filibustering raid had it not been for the strong cry of distress that proceeded from within the Transvaal.

But it was unfortunate from many points of view. In the first place, it gave the Transvaal Government very much the best of the argument. They had then a great grievance to complain of, and we in those circ.u.mstances could not urge those grievances of which our subjects had to complain. In the meantime, almost all the taxation of the country was drawn from our fellow-countrymen--the very people who were not subjects of the Transvaal. Our fellow-subjects combined in vain for the most elementary form of education. They were losing face, so to speak, in the eyes of the natives and of the world at large. And the most important element of all was beginning to attract attention--which was that with the money derived from the gold the Transvaal Government was gradually piling up a great military power, armed to the teeth.

That was a standing menace to to our dominion. If it had continued we should have had to consider whether we who rule so many nations were to become a subject nation in our turn in South Africa; and had we become a subject nation, or remained even in the position in which we were, it was scarcely possible to doubt that we should have lost South Africa itself.

[Sidenote: The Sting of Majuba Hill]

Nothing has happened showing more distinctly than Lord Rosebery's utterance, the sting that has rankled in England of the unfortunate campaign that closed in the surrender at Majuba Hill; and the history of that event, with the influential circ.u.mstances before and after, has been obscured rather than cleared by the strenuous spirit of controversy on both sides. Every point is contested except the defeat of the British. The Boers claim that 120 of their riflemen a.s.sailed the British soldiers and made prisoners of them, though they were 600 strong. The British version is that they were caught in an untenable position and overwhelming forces, outnumbering them four to one, were their a.s.sailants. There is bitter feeling in the British Army on the relative responsibilities of disaster, and the reinforcements sent from England, arriving at Cape Town soon after the battle were in a desperate state of dissatisfaction with the peacemaking that followed, and felt themselves not only aggrieved but insulted.

[Sidenote: The Gordon Highlanders at Majuba Hill]

A despatch from Bombay about the embarkation to take part in the present Boer and British war of the Gordon Highlanders, contained the following: "The stern, grim Highlanders were curiously quiet. Every Englishman who saw them knew the reason. The Gordons are one of the finest regiments in the army. They have a splendid fighting record. But in the last Boer war a strong detachment of the Second Battery broke and turned on the b.l.o.o.d.y hill of Majuba. It was an inexplicable occurrence, for the men were bronzed veterans who had just fought their way through Afghanistan and made the famous march with Lord Roberts from Kabul to Kandahar. The regiment has brooded over the stain for nineteen years. No man has ever dared to mention Majuba before a Gordon Highlander.

Everyone who saw them embark this morning knew what their rigid faces portended. Their chance had come. This time there would be no mistake.

Highlanders have long memories and the 'Gay Gordons' are in the mood to allow themselves to be hewn to pieces rather than take a single step backward before the Boers or any other foe."

[Sidenote: An Eyewitness About Majuba Hill]

John Boyd of Galt, who was of the Gordon Highlanders Regiment for 21 years, regards this as a "foul aspersion." He says of his old regiment:

"Its reputation can dispense with both personality and egotism. Its deeds speak for themselves, and at Majuba Hill the bonnie Gordons upheld their honor and glory. I was there, and I know that I speak truth. As distinctly as if the events took place yesterday, I remember all that occurred on that awful night, when 121 Gordon Highlanders braved thousands of enemies in ambush.

I am not exaggerating. Hundreds of Boers were concealed on the hill, while 2000 lay hidden across the nek, and pitted against such overwhelming odds were 100 Highlanders, and barely 300 other troops.

"And the writer of that London dispatch says that we 'broke and turned'; that, in short, we retreated. Let me tell you that of the 121 Gordons, 60 were killed or wounded, and 27 were taken prisoners. And these men who fought against fate, yet who--I solemnly declare--stood their ground to the last, are accused of showing the white feather. Dead men tell no tales, nor can they defend themselves from such calumnies. But how, I ask, could they play the craven when one-half were stark and stiff, dying, as they had lived, for their country? And of the handful who escaped the Boers and their bullets all were on the hill when morning broke. I was one, with a wounded comrade at my side.

"I am not in the habit of talking of what I have or have not done, nor do I proclaim from the housetops the Gordons' enviable past. But I was with them at Majuba Hill; in spirit I am with them now; and the man who says that the Ninety-second ever disgraced its colors or its Queen, does the regiment a grievous wrong, and himself a greater one."

The claims of Great Britain to sovereignty in the Orange Free State were withdrawn in 1854, and this seemed to give additional force to the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, and that, it must be admitted, was in a sense a mistake, because it was done under the impression that the Boers really desired it. That was evidently an error when the time came for the fulfillment of the policy, but what amount of demagogy occurred in the meantime to change the sentiments of the ruling cla.s.s of the Transvaal is a matter of doubt; and there are other difficulties that do not necessarily enter into the consideration of the subject.

[Sidenote: Proclamation of President Steyn]

The proclamation of President Steyn of the Orange Free State entering unreservedly into an alliance, defensive and offensive, with the Transvaal Boers, states with vehemence the principles contended for and the att.i.tude a.s.sumed in antagonism with the British during the present conflict. President Steyn said that the Orange Free State was bound "with the sister republic not only by ties of blood, of sympathy and of common interests, but also by formal treaty, which has been necessitated by circ.u.mstances.

This treaty demands of us that we a.s.sist her if she should be unjustly attacked, which we unfortunately for a long time have had too much reason to expect;" and President Steyn added:

[Sidenote: What the Proclamation Charges]

"Our own unfortunate experiences in the past have also made it sufficiently clear to us that we cannot rely on the most solemn promises and agreements of Great Britain when she has at her helm a Government prepared to trample on treaties, to look for feigned pretext for every violation of good faith by her committed.