In the Shadow of Death

by P. H. Kritzinger; R. D. Mc Donald

'E 'asn't got no papers of his own,
'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill 'e's shown.

Rudyard Kipling.

It is with reluctance we approach a subject on which in past years so much has been written, often falsely. Besides, it is certainly a most delicate matter to expatiate on the character of any individual or nation.

We are aware that some of our readers will read the remarks on this subject—Boer character—with considerable suspicion and distrust. They may argue that the writers, being of Dutch extraction themselves, are not likely to give an accurate and dispassionate estimate of the character of their own people. They may even fear that our national sentiments might influence and predominate over our judgment, and switch us off the track of strict impartiality. If there be such, we can only assure them that we have no intention whatsoever of eulogising and extolling the race with which we are connected by blood.

In the past the Boers, i.e., the Dutch element in the late Republics, have frequently been described, and as often maligned, by men who were perfect strangers to them; men who had not taken the least trouble to study their habits and character so as to arrive at a better understanding of the people they were trying to describe. Hence the various contradictory statements and representations of one and the same people. Alas! that they should ever have been the victims of so much cheap slander, that some men should have vied with one another in heaping insult and infamy on their heads, while others conjured up for themselves a fantastic and outrageous monster, and called that a Boer. We cannot expect that minds so inflamed and exasperated would do justice to the Boers. We feel convinced that their character can only be portrayed correctly and justly by men not animated by hostile sentiments towards them, but who, having been in touch with them have generously entered into their feelings and aspirations, and have looked at things from the Boer standpoint, as well as from their own; men who have had patience to bear with their infirmities; in a word, by men from their very midst—such and such only could do justice to their character.

Born and bred among the Dutch, associated with them all our lives, Dutch ourselves every inch—a fact in which we glory—our relations to the Boers, specially during the war, have afforded us excellent opportunities of making an ethnological study of them. During the war the Dutch population, more especially that portion of it which was directly connected with the struggle, passed through various phases and changes of life. Subjected to the most harassing circumstances, one saw them at their worst, but also at their best. Their virtues, as well as their vices, were fanned by the breath of war. Many a hidden virtue sparkled forth, as the dewdrop glistens in the beams of the rising sun. Many a slumbering vice and latent evil inclination found the regions of discord and strife a fruitful soil for development.

Now that hostilities have ceased, and the liberties of speech and the Press are extended once more, not only to such as were or are possessed of the bitterest of feelings towards the Dutch, but to all British subjects, we feel constrained to dissipate, if possible, some of the clouds of slander which encompassed the Boers before and during the war. Never in the history of nations has an honourable foe been more abused than the Boers. They have been misrepresented altogether to the world at large, and to the public in England in particular.

The war-Press, the platform, and even the pulpit, were all arrayed in martial order against them, and belched forth streams of abuse on two small states. A warm glow comes over our faces, and the blood begins to surge swiftly through our veins, as we recall some of the stinging expressions by which the Boers were stigmatised, and through which the mind of the English public was more and more inflamed, and all traces of sympathy with the Boers removed. We do not wish to enumerate these descriptive terms and phrases, for that would be raking up old scores. We would rather forget than remember unpleasant words and deeds.