We English South Africans are stunned; we are amazed; we say there can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to ask ourselves: “What means this unwonted tread of armed and hired soldiers[97] on South African soil? Why are they here?” And the only answer that comes back to us, however remote and seemingly impossible is—WAR!
To-night we laugh at it, and to-morrow when we rise up it stands before us again, the ghastly doubt—war!—war, and in South Africa! War—between white men and white! War!—Why?—Whence is the cause?—For whom?—For what?—And the question gains no answer.
We fall to considering, who gains by war?
Has our race in Africa and our race in England interests so diverse that any calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon us, as war? Is any position possible, that could make necessary that mother and daughter must rise up in one horrible embrace, and rend, if it be possible,[98] each other’s vitals?... Believing it impossible, we fall to considering, who is it gains by war?
There is peace to-day in the land; the two great white races, day by day, hour by hour, are blending their blood, and both are mixing with the stranger. No day passes but from the veins of some Dutch South African woman the English South African man’s child is being fed; not a week passes but the birth cry of the English South African woman’s child gives voice to the Dutchman’s offspring; not an hour passes but on farm, and in town and village, Dutch hearts are winding about English
AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH.
If the Angel of Death should spread his wings across the land and strike dead in one night every man and woman and child of either the Dutch or the English blood, leaving the other alive, the land would be a land of mourning. There would be not one household nor the heart of an African born man or woman that would not be weary with grief. We should weep the friends of our childhood, the companions of our early life, our grandchildren, our kindred, the souls who have loved us and whom we have loved. In destroying the one race he would have isolated the other. Time, the great healer of all differences, is blending us into a great mutual people, and love is moving faster than time. It is no growing hatred between Dutch and English South African born men and women that calls for war. On the lips of our babes we salute both races daily.
Then we look round through the political[100] world, and we ask ourselves: What great and terrible and sudden crime has been committed, what reckless slaughter and torture of the innocents, that blood can alone wash out blood?
And we find none.