For a year past it had been impossible to continue, and yet the Africander people had with wonderful endurance continued to stand firm. Not easily had they been induced to see that the struggle was a hopeless one, and when at last they were compelled by the overwhelming force of circumstances to give up the contest, they did not sink down paralysed to the earth, as if they no longer retained any self-respect; but they made themselves felt for the last time, by a resolution which will take rank in history as one of the great manifestos, which will be valued according to its true worth by future generations, better than we can value it to-day.

The Boers had sacrificed everything. They had seen their houses given as a prey to the flames. They had seen their property destroyed. They had seen their cattle driven away in large numbers, and their sheep done to death in heaps of tens of thousands. They had shed their blood like water. Everything, everything, they had offered up for freedom and independence. Nay, more than this had they laid on the altar. They saw that for the great cause their mothers, their wives, their daughters, their sisters, had suffered hunger, had been carried away, had died by thousands in the camps, that they had been ill-treated, insulted and slandered, and violated ... they had drunk of the cup to its last bitter dregs.

Could they do more? It was already too much. They had made the greatest sacrifice that could be demanded, and they had made it in a materialistic age, in which gold exercises a tyrannic influence, and much that is noble is trodden down under its remorseless heel. In these times, when many believe no more in such a thing as a pure love for Liberty, a love that can lead a man to the performance of sublime deeds; in these times, when men contemn the ideal, and speak with pity of noble aspirations, as being illusions or puerilities;—in these times, a drama had been acted before the eyes of the whole world by a people that could still sacrifice all for a great and holy ideal. Still in these times of unbelief there had been seen the heads of two States openly calling upon the name of God, and the world had seen a nation that could carry on war believing in God. And had these ideals now been rudely dragged through the mud by the bitter result? Had the faith of the People been in vain? Had that People appealed to God, and had He declared Himself against them?

Let no man say this!

God has formed the Africander nation in this great struggle. It has not been exterminated; its language has not been destroyed. The might of the enemy has overwhelmed it, has gone over it like a mighty wave, but Africander sentiment still exists. No weapon can bend that will, no violence can suppress that spirit! The Africander nation remains an indestructible element in the British Empire. Let no man say that God has not heard the prayer of the Africander nation. Many have not been able to understand the will of God, and have been overthrown by the insulting question, "Where is now your God?" but I say again, let no man assert that God has not heard the prayer of the Africander people. He who has eyes to see can see that the Africander race has been more firmly welded together by the glowing heat of this struggle, and our People will be held together chiefly by those who passed through the greatest heat of the fire—our mothers. For it was they who suffered most; it was they who made the greatest sacrifices. Words fail me when I endeavour to speak of the women and of what they had to endure. I have found them in their burnt-down dwellings, in stables, and in waggon-houses. I have endeavoured to speak words of encouragement and consolation to them when I met them in the veld, fleeing before the enemy. I have seen them almost unrecognisable, tanned by sun and wind, and seen how thinly they were often clad. I have sat with them at their meals, in the burnt houses or on the ground in the veld, and when I thought of their scanty food it was as if the morsel in my mouth had grown too large, and I could not swallow it. And never did I hear them complain. They were ever ready to bear every burden, to make every sacrifice, if only the Independence of the People were not lost. It is they who will hold our People together.

It is because we have such mothers that we look into the future with courage, and feel that, although we now are under the British Empire, and as subjects of that Empire will bear ourselves peaceably, yet our own nationality will ever be something great and sacred to us. And we shall always consider it the greatest honour still to be known as Africanders.

Thus God has heard our prayer.

CHAPTER VI
EXIT

"Here we stand at the grave of the two Republics," said Acting President Burger when the resolution had been taken by the meeting. There was a great silence while he spoke. "For us," he continued, "there remains much to be done, and we must devote ourselves to it. Although we can no longer do so in the official capacities we have heretofore held, let us not draw back our hands from doing what is our duty. Let us pray God to lead us, and to show us how we can keep our People together. Of the unfaithful ones also we must be mindful. We may not cast out that portion of our People; let us learn to forgive and to forget."

That evening, shortly before eleven o'clock, both the Governments were back at Pretoria. With the utmost haste they were conducted to the house of Lord Kitchener.