No one need be surprised that the South African Dominion is suffering a little from the "Nationalist" fever, a disease infesting many countries, in various degrees, and with time cured by the safe remedy of the sound common sense of the people. We know too much about it ourselves, after nearly eighty years of free responsible government, to wonder at the fact that a small minority of the Dutch South Africans—from the Boer element—is not yet fully reconciled with their lot under the British Crown. They apparently dream of Republicanism, in sullen recollection of a recent past which only some of the present generation still regret, but which the next will strive to cherish only as the stepping stone to their actual status so full of good promises for their future. The few South Africans suffering from this virus are almost exclusively recruited amongst the populations of the late Republics of South Africa. The people of the provinces of Natal and Cape Colony, with a long experience of British rule, have no faith in the "republican nationalism" desired by some, which does not in the least appeal to their good sense and their sound political foresight. Mr. Burton believes "that the instigators of the movement are looking for votes more than for anything else."
Mr. Burton, moreover, truly said:—
"It was part of the history of all countries that what was called "Nationalism" made a powerful appeal to the finer classes of young men. It was an admirable sentiment, but what was complained of in South Africa was that the sentiment was expended upon a wrong conception of "nationalism" and what nationhood should be. In South Africa it was restricted, it was sectional, and practically racial. The energy and activity displayed were being spent upon a mistaken cause."
Every word of this quotation applies with still greater force to the "nationalism" of the Province of Quebec.
Mr. Burton goes on saying:—
"It was the cause of South Africa first—as it should be—but it was more than that. It was South Africa first, last, and all the time, and South Africa alone. He and those who were associated with him could not accept that view. It would mean ruinous chaos in South Africa. They had obligations to Great Britain. It was not merely that they had received recognition from the beginning that their Constitutional cause was just. It was not merely that Great Britain in its relation with South Africa had been actuated by that beneficent influence which the British system of liberty effected under the sway of its flag throughout the world, but it was that the people of the Union realized the true inward significance of the struggle in which the Empire was engaged. They knew that the world's freedom was at stake, and with it their own. The people in South Africa had long ago awakened to this great fact, and they were realizing it more and more as the war went on. When he had spoken of putting "South Africa first" as the motto of a party he wished it to be understood that he and the people of South Africa generally accepted it, as every nation was bound to accept it. But they also realized that their future as a nation and their freedom as a nation were at stake, and that their interests were bound up with those of the British Empire.
"It was because they realized that fact that the Government of the Union had in these troublous times nailed its flag to the mast. It was the honourable course, the right course, and they had stuck to it through good report and ill report, and through much trial and sacrifice. His last message as representative of the Union Government was: Upon that attitude of the Union Government they might depend to the very last. They might be forced—he did not see any present prospect of it—to abandon office, but so long as they were in office they would adhere absolutely in the letter and in the spirit to the undertaking they had given and would continue in the path they had followed hitherto."
Sensible, truly political and patriotic, noble words, indeed. Are they not the complete expression of the powerful wave of enthusiasm which spread throughout the length and breadth of the whole British Dominions overseas, when, after exhausting to the last drop her efforts to maintain peace, Great Britain, in honour bound, threw her gallant sword in the balance in which the destinies of the world were to be weighed during the frightful years of the most terrific thundering storm ever witnessed by man?
How weighty those words are is evident. They are still more so by the fact that they positively and firmly express the views and sentiments of the two most trusted and illustrious leaders of the Boers, who, both of them, took a very prominent part in the South African war, as generals commanding the forces of the South African Republics: General Botha and General Smuts.
General Botha is, and has been for several years, the Prime Minister of the South African Dominion. General Smuts is minister of Defence in General Botha's Cabinet. He is the representative of the Government of the Union of South Africa in the Imperial War Cabinet. In June, 1917, he was, moreover, "invited to attend the meetings of the British War Cabinet during his stay in the British Isles."