The Last Boer War

by H. Rider Haggard

To the Editor of the "Times."

Sir,—In your paper you have often commented on what you are pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do not change it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind tool of our farseeing and intelligent, President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambezi to the Cape. All the Afrikanders in Cape Colony have been working for years for this end, for they and we know the facts.

1. The actual value of gold in the Transvaal is at least 200,000 millions of pounds, and this fact is as well known to the Emperors of Germany and Russia as it is to us. You estimate the value of the gold at only 700 millions of pounds, or, at least, that is what you pretend to estimate it at. But Germany, Russia, and France do not desire you to get possession of this vast mass of gold, and so, after encouraging you to believe that they will not interfere in South Africa they will certainly do so, and very easily find a casus belli, and they will assist us directly and indirectly to drive you out of Africa.

2. We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the great peace party, will raise the question of expense, and this will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working classes, who will never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire, or even to preserve your existence as a nation.

3. We know from all the military authorities of the European and American continents that you exist as an independent Power merely on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor William can arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the earth. They can at any time starve you into surrender. You must yield in all things to the United States also, or your supply of corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working classes would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather than do that they would have civil war, and invite any foreign Power to assist them by invasion, for there is no patriotism in the working classes of England, Wales, or Ireland.

4. We know that your country has been more prosperous than any other country during the last fifty years (you have had no civil war like the Americans and French to tone up your nerves and strengthen your manliness), and consequently your able-bodied men will not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and they are deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in all the qualities that make good fighting men.

5. Your military officers we know to be merely pedantic scholars or frivolous society men, without any capacity for practical warfare with white men. The Afridis were more than a match for you, and your victory over the Sudanese was achieved because those poor people had not a rifle amongst them.

6. We know that your men, being the dregs of your people, are naturally feeble, and that they are also saturated with the most horrible sexual diseases, as all your Government returns plainly show, and that they cannot endure the hardships of war.

7. We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth-rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds whom you carefully nourish and preserve.

8. We know that nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials, military and naval, are suffering from kidney diseases, which weaken their courage and will-power and makes them shirk all responsibility as far as possible.