It may be that the Boers do cling to old-fashioned ideas somewhat more tenaciously than they ought to do; but they cannot possibly interfere with capitalists uniting to build up-to-date hotels on the most salubrious and scenic sites in Cape Colony, and beautifying their neighbourhoods with shade trees and gardens, so that the thousands of invalids who throng the watering-places and hydros of Europe, endure the snows of Davos, and the winter of the Engadine, might be tempted to try the Karroo of the Colony. They did not interfere with John D. Logan when he bought 100,000 acres of the Karroo at Matjesfontein and proceeded to turn it to remunerative account. They do not object to private companies or individuals making irrigation works, or planting groves, which thrive so wonderfully; and as Cape Colony has been British for over ninety years, it is rather hard that the Boers should bear all the blame.
Now the Cape Government may well plead guilty to having left many things undone which they ought to have done. I sincerely believe that the time will come when the climate, which has the quality of making old men young, and the consumptive strong, will become universally known and appreciated; but to attract invalids from the crowded Riviera and Switzerland, visitors must not be lodged in third-rate hotels, near noisy tram-lines, and fed on tinned meats.
I was about concluding this preface, when a South African appeared at my house and drew my attention to the Scriptural quotation in my Johannesburg letter—“It is expedient that one man should die for many,” and begged me to make my meaning clear. I read the paragraph over again, and as I see that to a wilfully contentious mind it might be construed into a meaning very different to what I intended, I will try to make it clearer.
Certain Johannesburgers at the Club had related to us the story of the various efforts they had made to obtain their political rights, and the reforms which were needed to work their mines profitably; and after they had finished, I replied that everyone was well aware of the demonstrations, mass-meetings, speeches, petitions to Kruger, menaces, Jameson’s Raid, and so on, and they themselves had just informed me how often they had yielded to bribery of officials, and yet withal they confessed they were not a whit further advanced. Their position had not been bettered, but was somewhat worse. “The corrective of it all,” I said, “seems to me to lie in the Scriptural verse, ‘it is expedient that one man should die for many.’ There is a vast mass of sympathy in England with you, but it is inert and inactive. To make that sympathy a living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest, that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove that you have a cause for which you are willing to suffer, even to the death. You say that you can do nothing without arms. You do not need any arms that I see. If you fight with weapons, you will be overcome, and I do not think your defeat will excite great sympathy. But if it be true that the impositions on you are intolerable, your taxes heavy, the claims of Government extortionate, and the demands excessive, why submit to them? It seems to me that if you were all united in the determination to pay no more of these claims, taxes and bribes, and folded your arms and dared them to do their worst, that Kruger must either yield or proceed to compulsion of some kind. He would probably confiscate your property, or put you in prison or banish you. Whatever he does that is violent and tyrannical will cause such an explosion of opinion that will prove to you all that England does not forget her children. No cause was ever won without suffering, and I am afraid that your cause, however good it may be, cannot be won without sacrifice and suffering of some kind. The leader of any movement is sure to be the object of a tyrant’s hate, and the leader or leaders of your cause ought not to venture in it without being prepared to suffer and endure whatever ills may follow.”
Having explained the Scriptural quotation at the request of others, I now proceed to be more definite in my own behalf with regard to the statement in the same letter, that “we cannot interfere until we know what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing.”
A gentleman present said that, during his recent visit to London, an English statesman asked him, “What would be the effect of sending 30,000 British troops to the Transvaal.” Whereupon he answered that he would be the first man who would take up his rifle against them.
This gentleman was an Englishman by birth. He had been the loudest and the most eloquent against the British Government for their disregard of the rights guaranteed by the Convention of 1884, he knew as well as anyone present the tenour of the despatches that had been exchanged between the British Government and the Transvaal Republic, and was perfectly acquainted with the patient and continuous efforts the Colonial Office had made to obtain a just consideration for the grievances of the Uitlanders. It was obvious to us that, if a British statesman had asked such a question, it must have been with the view of knowing—if diplomacy failed—what result would follow the final attempt to induce Kruger to listen to reason. From the shock this declaration from such a prominent Uitlander gave me and a colleague of mine, we understood what the feelings of the statesman referred to must have been, and we had no option left than to suppose the Uitlanders, despite all their clamour and affected indignation against the Transvaal Government, would prefer the Colonial Office to continue writing despatches than to take coercive measures. It must be an immense relief to Englishmen all over the country, as well as it was to me, to know that we were not expected to be at the trouble and cost of sending troops, and we may all feel sure that as despatch-writing is considered to be so efficacious, the Colonial Office will not begrudge the labour nor spare expense in stationery.
At any rate, seeing that the Uitlanders have told us frankly what to expect if we resort to force for their assistance, it is too obvious that nothing more can be done by our Government further than courteous diplomacy permits—until the united voice and the united action of the whole body of the Uitlanders certify to us in what other way England can serve them.
Henry M. Stanley.
London, January 28th, 1898.