“And she said, ‘Yes, and only a little while ago, when Rhodes was licking the dust off the Boers’ feet that he might keep them from suspecting while he got ready this affair, then you attacked both Rhodes and the Bond (The Afrikander Bond, the organised Dutch political party, through whom Mr. Rhodes worked, and by whom he was backed.) for trying to pass a Bill for flogging the niggers, and we lost fifty pounds we might have got for the church?’ And he said, ‘My wife, cannot God be worshipped as well under the dome of the heaven He made as in a golden palace? Shall a man keep silence, when he sees oppression, to earn money for God? If I have defended the black man when I believed him to be wronged, shall I not also defend the white man, my flesh-brother? Shall we speak when one man is wronged and not when it is another?’
“And she said, ‘Yes, but you have your family and yourself to think of! Why are you always in opposition to the people who could do something for us? You are only loved by the poor. If it is necessary for you to attack some one, why don’t you attack the Jews for killing Christ, or Herod, or Pontius Pilate; why don’t you leave alone the men who are in power today, and who with their money can crush you!’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, those Jews, and Herod, and Pontius Pilate are long dead. If I should preach of them now, would it help them? Would it save one living thing from their clutches? The past is dead, it lives only for us to learn from. The present, the present only, is ours to work in, and the future ours to create. Is all the gold of Johannesburg or are all the diamonds in Kimberley worth, that one Christian man should fall by the hand of his fellows—aye, or one heathen brother?’
“And she answered, ‘Oh, that is all very well. If you were a really eloquent preacher, and could draw hundreds of men about you, and in time form a great party with you at its head, I shouldn’t mind what you said. But you, with your little figure and your little voice, who will ever follow you? You will be left all alone; that is all the good that will ever come to you through it.’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, have I not waited and watched and hoped that they who are nobler and stronger than I, all over this land, would lift up their voices and speak—and there is only a deadly silence? Here and there one has dared to speak aloud; but the rest whisper behind the hand; one says, ‘My son has a post, he would lose it if I spoke loud’; and another says, ‘I have a promise of land’; and another, ‘I am socially intimate with these men, and should lose my social standing if I let my voice be heard.’ Oh my wife, our land, our goodly land, which we had hoped would be free and strong among the peoples of earth, is rotten and honeycombed with the tyranny of gold! We who had hoped to stand first in the Anglo-Saxon sisterhood for justice and freedom, are not even fit to stand last. Do I not know only too bitterly how weak is my voice; and that that which I can do is as nothing: but shall I remain silent? Shall the glow-worm refuse to give its light, because it is not a star set up on high; shall the broken stick refuse to burn and warm one frozen man’s hands, because it is not a beacon-light flaming across the earth? Ever a voice is behind my shoulder, that whispers to me—‘Why break your head against a stone wall? Leave this work to the greater and larger men of your people; they who will do it better than you can do it! Why break your heart when life could be so fair to you?’ But, oh my wife, the strong men are silent! and shall I not speak, though I know my power is as nothing?’
“He laid his head upon his hands.
“And she said, ‘I cannot understand you. When I come home and tell you that this man drinks, or that that woman has got into trouble, you always answer me, ‘Wife, what business is it of ours if so be that we cannot help them?’ A little innocent gossip offends you; and you go to visit people and treat them as your friends, into whose house I would not go. Yet when the richest and strongest men in the land, who could crush you with their money, as a boy crushes a fly between his finger and thumb, take a certain course, you stand and oppose them.’
“And he said, ‘My wife, with the sins of the private man, what have I to do, if so be I have not led him into them? Am I guilty? I have enough to do looking after my own sins. The sin that a man sins against himself is his alone, not mine; the sin that a man sins against his fellows is his and theirs, not mine: but the sins that a man sins, in that he is taken up by the hands of a people and set up on high, and whose hand they have armed with their sword, whose power to strike is their power—his sins are theirs; there is no man so small in the whole nation that he dares say, ‘I have no responsibility for this man’s action.’ We armed him, we raised him, we strengthened him, and the evil he accomplishes is more ours than his. If this man’s end in South Africa should be accomplished, and the day should come when, from the Zambezi to the sea, white man should fly at white man’s throat, and every man’s heart burn with bitterness against his fellow, and the land be bathed with blood as rain—shall I then dare to pray, who have now feared to speak? Do not think I wish for punishment upon these men. Let them take the millions they have wrung out of this land, and go to the lands of their birth, and live in wealth, luxury, and joy; but let them leave this land they have tortured and ruined. Let them keep the money they have made here; we may be the poorer for it; but they cannot then crush our freedom with it. Shall I ask my God Sunday by Sunday to brood across the land, and bind all its children’s hearts in a close-knit fellowship;—yet, when I see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all, shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who have been.’
“And she said, ‘I have heard it said that it was our duty to sacrifice ourselves for the men and women living in the world at the same time as ourselves; but I never before heard that we had to sacrifice ourselves for people that are not born. What are they to you? You will be dust, and lying in your grave, before that time comes. If you believe in God,’ she said, ‘why cannot you leave it to Him to bring good out of all this evil? Does He need YOU to be made a martyr of? or will the world be lost without YOU?’
“He said, ‘Wife, if my right hand be in a fire, shall I not pull it out? Shall I say, ‘God may bring good out of this evil,’ and let it burn? That Unknown that lies beyond us we know of no otherwise than through its manifestation in our own hearts; it works no otherwise upon the sons of men than through man. And shall I feel no bond binding me to the men to come, and desire no good or beauty for them—I, who am what I am, and enjoy what I enjoy, because for countless ages in the past men have lived and laboured, who lived not for themselves alone, and counted no costs? Would the great statue, the great poem, the great reform ever be accomplished, if men counted the cost and created for their own lives alone? And no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. You cannot tell me not to love the men who shall be after me; a soft voice within me, I know not what, cries out ever, ‘Live for them as for your own children.’ When in the circle of my own small life all is dark, and I despair, hope springs up in me when I remember that something nobler and fairer may spring up in the spot where I now stand.’