So we, realizing the possibility that we are mistaken, and knowing the chances of failure, yet strike for what seems to us the largest possibility open to our race and to ourselves as part of that race.
In the South Africa of to-day the three varieties of Englishmen, those indifferent to the future of their race and those consciously labouring for it, with opposing ideals and conceptions of the ends to be sought, are working out, whether we will or no, the future of the land, and dealing with the vast twentieth-century problem of the mixture and government of mixed peoples; the verdict upon our solution of which cannot be pronounced by the men of this age, but only by the future.
NOTE A
THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900).
The events of the last nine, and especially the last seven, years have thrown a curious light upon two statements in Chapter I, written in 1892:
Firstly: the statement that the political division of South Africa into separate and self-governing states are divisions "of immense importance and by all means to be preserved."
Secondly: the statement that there does exist a subtle internal union between all African states, which causes them to be, in spite of their complex and mixed structure, in a profound sense, one, and makes it impossible to attack and injure any one state without injuring all.
South Africa forms naturally one national and distinct entity, widely dissevered from any other national entity, European or otherwise. It may be said that Australia, Canada, and New Zealand contain also the germs which will ultimately develop into distinct national entities; and this is undoubtedly true. As no sane man supposes that an infant will remain perpetually unweaned, or that a healthy sapling will not ultimately form its own bark, so it is inevitable that all healthy off-shoots from European peoples must ultimately form independent nations. But the position of these young countries is not analogous with that of South Africa; and as regards Australia, and especially New Zealand, it is in some respects fundamentally unlike our own.
This difference lies in the groundwork of our national structure, and must be manifest to anyone who has given a few years to the impartial study of the problems which beset European races planted in new lands.