New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, No. 1 Part 19

*Slippery Strength of Stupidity.*

This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange, slippery strength, because it can be not only outside rules, but outside reason.

The man who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a great advantage in controversy, though the advantage breaks down when he tries to reduce it to simple addition, to chess--or to the game called war. It is the same about the stupidity of the one-sided kins.h.i.+p. The drunkard who is quite certain that a total stranger is his long-lost brother has a great advantage until it comes to matters of detail. "We must have chaos within," said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a dancing star."

In these slight notes I have suggested the princ.i.p.al strong points of the Prussian character--a failure in honor which almost amounts to a failure in memory; an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the other party is an ego, and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny and interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness, which can expand or contract without reference to reason or record--a potential infinity of excuses. If the English had been on the German side the German professors would have noted what irresistible energies had evolved the Teutons. As the English are on the other side, the German professors will say that these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved; or they will say they were just sufficiently evolved to show that they were not Teutons. Probably they will say both. But the truth is that all that they call evolution should rather be called evasion. They tell us they are opening windows of enlightenment and doors of progress. The truth is that they are breaking up the whole house of the human intellect that they may abscond in any direction. There is an ominous and almost monstrous parallel between the position of their overrated philosophers and of their comparatively underrated soldiers. For what their professors call roads of progress are really routes of escape.

*South Africa's Boers and Britons*

*By H. Rider Haggard.*

The heart of South Africa, Boer and Briton, is with England in this war.

Here and there you will find an individual who cherishes bitter and hostile memories, of which there has been an example in Mr. Beyers letter the other day, so effectually answered by Gen. Botha. But such instances, I believe, are so rare that really they are the exceptions which seem to prove the rule. Of course, it goes without saying that every person of English descent is heartily with the mother country, and I do not suppose it would be an overestimate to add that quite 80 per cent, of the Dutch are of the same way of thinking.

Still, there is a party among the South African Dutch that sees no necessity for the invasion of German Southwest Africa. This party overlooks the fact that the Germans have for long been preparing to invade them; also that if by any chance Germany should conquer in this war South Africa would be one of the first countries that they would seize.

In speaking of this I talk of what I understand, since for the last two and a half years it has been my duty to travel around the British Empire upon the service of his Majesty. In addition to South Africa, I have visited India, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and Canada. I have recently traveled throughout South Africa as a member of the Dominion's Royal Commission. It was my first visit there after the lapse of a whole generation, and I can only say that everywhere I have found the most intense loyalty and devotion to the old mother land. The empire is one and indivisible; together it will stand or together it will fall.

South Africa is united; it has forgotten its recent labor troubles. I answer "absolutely" all such things are past history, blown away and destroyed by this great wind of war. South Africa, down to its lowest Hottentot, has, I believe, but one object, to help England to win in this vast battle of the nations. Why, even the natives, as you may have noticed, are sending subscriptions from their scanty h.o.a.rds and praying to be allowed "to throw a few stones for the King." Did not Poutsma say as much the other day?

In the old days, of course, there were very strained relations between the English and Boers, which had their roots in foolish and inconsistent acts carried out by the Home Government, generally to forward party ends. I need not go into them because they are too long.

Then came the Boer war, which, as you know, proved a much bigger enterprise than the Home Government had antic.i.p.ated. It cost Britain 20,000 lives and 300,000,000 of English money before the Boers were finally subdued. Only about half a score of years have gone by since peace was declared. Within two or three years of that peace the British Government made up its mind to a very bold step and one which was viewed with grave doubts by many people--namely, to give full self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colonies.

*Astonished at Results.*

When I traveled through South Africa the other day this new Const.i.tution had been working for a few years, and I can only say that I was astonished at the results. Here and there in the remoter districts, it is true, some racial feeling still prevailed, but taken as a whole this seems absolutely to have died away. Briton and Boer have come together in a manner for which I believe I am right in saying there is no precedent in the history of the world, so shortly, at any rate, after a prolonged and bitter struggle to the death. I might give many instances, but I will only take one. At Pretoria I was asked to inspect a company of Boy Scouts, and there I found English and Dutch lads serving side by side with the utmost brotherhood. Again I met most of the men who had been leaders of the Boers in the war. One and all professed the greatest loyalty to England. Moreover, I am certain that this was not lip loyalty; it was from the heart. Especially was I impressed by that great man, Gen. Botha, with whom I had several conversations. I am convinced that at this moment the King has no truer or more faithful servant than Gen. Botha. Again and again did I hear from prominent South Africans of Dutch or Huguenot extraction that never more was there any chance of trouble between Boer and Briton.

I know it is alleged by some that this is because the Dutch feel that they have on the whole made a good bargain, having won absolute const.i.tutional liberty and the fullest powers of self-government, plus the protection of the British fleet. There may be something in this view, but I am sure that the feeling goes a great deal deeper than self-interest. Mutual respect has arisen between those who ten years ago were enemies fighting each other.

*Appeal to People's Imagination.*

Moreover, the Boer now knows a great deal more of the British Empire and what it means than he did then. Lastly, the supreme generosity evinced by Britain in giving their enemy of the day before every right and privilege that is owned by her other oversea dominions with whom she has never had a quarrel appeals deeply to the imagination of the Dutch people. Now, the world sees the results. Germany, which has miscalculated so much in connection with this war and the part that the British Empire would play in it, miscalculated nowhere more than it did in the case of South Africa. The German war lords hoped that India and Egypt would rise, they trusted that Canada and Australia would prove lukewarm, but they were certain that South Africa would seize the opportunity to rebel. How could it be otherwise, they thought, seeing that but yesterday she was at death grips with us. Then came the great surprise. Lo and behold! instead of rebelling, South Africa promptly cabled to England saying that every British soldier might be withdrawn from her sh.o.r.es, and, further, that the burghers of the land would themselves undertake the conquest of the German possessions of Southwest Africa for the Crown. They are doing so at this moment. I believe that today there is no British soldier left at the Cape, and I know that now a great force is moving on Southwest Africa furnished by Boer and Briton alike. Can the history of the world tell us of any parallel case to this--that a country conquered within a dozen years should not only need no garrison, but by its own free will undertake war against the enemies of its late victor? Surely this is something of which Britain may feel proud.

*Deep Distrust of Germany.*

Now, some of your readers may ask: "Why is it? How did this miracle, for it is little less, happen?" My answer is that it has been caused first by a supreme and glorious trust in the justice and generosity of England, which knows how to rule colonies as no other nation has done in the history of the earth, and secondly by a deep distrust of Germany. To my own knowledge, Germany has been intriguing in South Africa for the last quarter of a century. I remember, I suppose it must be almost twenty years ago, sending to the late Mr. Chamberlain, who was then Colonial Secretary, information to this effect which reached me from undoubted sources in South Africa. Again, not long ago, I was shown a doc.u.ment which was found among the papers of the Zulu Prince Dinizulu, son of King Cetewayo, who died the other day. It was concluded between himself and Germans, and under it the poor man had practically sold his country nominally to a German firm, but doubtless to more powerful persons behind. In short, there is no question that for many years Germany has had its eye upon South Africa as a desirable field of settlement for its subjects under the German and not the British flag.

Now, the Boers are perfectly well acquainted with this fact and have no wish to exchange the beneficent rule of Britain for that of Potsdam, the King Log of George V. for the King Stork of Kaiser Wilhelm.

You ask me if I think that the Boers are likely to succeed in their attack on Southwest Africa, where it must be remembered that the Germans have a very formidable force; indeed, I have been told, I do not know with what accuracy, that they have acc.u.mulated there the vast a.r.s.enal of war material that was obviously intended to be used on some future occasion in the invasion of the Cape. I answer: "Certainly, they will succeed, though not easily." Remember what stock these Boers come from.

They are descendants of the men who withstood and beat Alva in the sixteenth century.

*Botha of Huguenot Descent.*

I happen to be well acquainted with that period of history. I wrote a story called "Lysbeth" concerning it, and to do this I found it necessary not only to visit Holland on several occasions, but to read all the contemporary records. In the light of the information which I thus obtained, I state positively that the world has no record of a more glorious and heroic struggle than that made by the Dutch against all the power of Spain. Well, the Boers are descended from these men and women (for both fought). Also, they include a very large dash of some of the best blood of Europe, namely, that of the Huguenots. For instance, Botha himself is of Huguenot descent. It is impossible for a person like myself, who have that same blood in me, to talk with him for five minutes without becoming aware of his origin. Long before he told me so I knew that he was in part a Frenchman. Men so great are not easily conquered, as we know to our cost. Why, it took quite 250,000 soldiers and three years of strenuous guerrilla warfare to enable Britain to defeat 40,000 or 50,000 Dutch farmers. Therefore I have personally not the least fear of the ultimate result of the campaign against Southwest Africa.

I went as a lad as Secretary to the Governor of Natal. That was in 1875.

Subsequently I accompanied Sir Theophilus Shepstone, one of the greatest men that ever lived in South Africa, on his famous mission to the Transvaal. I am now, I believe, the only survivor of that mission, and certainly the only man who knows all the inner political history of that event. Afterward I held office in the Transvaal, and was in the country during all the disastrous period of the first Boer war. For instance, I dined with Gen. Colley the night before he started on his ill-fated expedition. I think there were thirteen of us present at that historical dinner. Within a few weeks six or eight of these were dead, including Colley himself, killed in the fight of Majuba, of which I heard the guns. Of those present at that dinner party there now survive only Lady Colley, my wife, and myself.

*Felt Like Rip Van Winkle.*

After this I left Africa, and more than thirty years went by before I returned as a commissioner in the service of the Crown. It was a very extraordinary experience; indeed, I felt like a new Rip Van Winkle, for nearly all my old chiefs and colleagues were dead, and another generation had arisen. I can only say that I was deeply touched by the reception which I received throughout the country. It was with strange feelings that almost on the very spot where I helped to read the proclamation of annexation of the Transvaal, in 1877, and with my own hands hoisted the British flag over the land, I listened to my health being proposed by the Dutch Chief Justice of the Transvaal territory, once more a part of the British Empire. Such was my greeting everywhere.

Three and thirty years before I had left the sh.o.r.es of Africa, believing that soon or late the British power was doomed to failure and probably to extinction there. When I left them again, six months ago, it was with the glad knowledge that, by the united wish of the inhabitants of South Africa, it was re-established, never again to pa.s.s away. It is a wonderful thing for a man in his own lifetime to see a country pa.s.s through so many vicissitudes, and in the end to appear in the face of the world no longer as England's enemy, but as a const.i.tuent part of the great British Empire, one of her best friends and supporters, glorying in her flag, which now floats from Cape Agalhas to the Zambesi, and soon will float over those contingent regions that have been seized by the mailed fist of Germany.

*Capt. Mark Haggard's Death in Battle*

_To the Editor of The [London] Times_:

Sir: In various papers throughout England has appeared a letter, or part of a letter, written by Private C. Derry of the Second Battalion, Welsh Regiment. It concerns the fall of my much-loved nephew, Capt. Mark Haggard, of the same regiment, on Sept. 13 in the battle of the Aisne.

Since this letter has been published and, vivid, pathetic, and pride-inspiring as it is, does not tell all the tale, I have been requested, on behalf of Mark's mother, young widow, and other members of our family, to give the rest of it as it was collected by them from the lips of Lieut. Somerset, who lay wounded by him when he died. Therefore I send this supplementary account to you in the hope that the other journals which have printed the first part of the story will copy it from your columns.

It seems that after he had given the order to fix bayonets, as told by Private Derry, my nephew charged the German Maxims at the head of his company, he and his soldier servant outrunning the other men. Arrived at the Maxim in front of him, with the rifle which he was using as Derry describes, he shot and killed

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERHART HAUPTMANN

_See Page_ 175]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LUDWIG FULDA.

_See Page 180_ ]

the three soldiers who were serving it, and then was seen "fighting and laying out" the Germans with the b.u.t.t end of his empty gun, "laughing"

as he did so, until he fell mortally wounded in the body and was carried away by his servant.

His patient and heroic end is told by Private Derry, and I imagine that the exhortation to "Stick it, Wels.h.!.+" which from time to time he uttered in his agony, will not soon be forgotten in his regiment. Of that end we who mourn him can only say in the simple words of Derry's letter, that he "died as he had lived--an officer and a gentleman."

Perhaps it would not be inappropriate to add as a thought of consolation to those throughout the land who day by day see their loved ones thus devoured by the waste of war, that of a truth these do not vainly die.

Not only are they crowned with fame, but by the n.o.ble manner of their end they give the lie to Bernhardi and his school, who tell us that we English are an effete and worn-out people, befogged with mean ideals; lost in selfishness and the l.u.s.t of wealth and comfort. Moreover, the history of these deeds of theirs will surely be as a beacon to those destined to carry on the traditions of our race in that new England which shall arise when the cause of freedom for which we must fight and die has prevailed--to fall no more.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

Ditchingham, Norfolk, Oct. 9.