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THE following letter was written by Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner
(Olive Schreiner) in October, 1908, in reply to twelve questions submitted to
her by the Editor of the
On February 9, 1909, the National Convention for the Union of the four South African Colonies, after four months' deliberation at Durban and Cape Town, published a draft of the suggested Constitution (printed here in
The opinion of a South African authority of such high repute as Olive Schreiner cannot fail to be of interest at this time, and it will be seen that on several capital matters (the Native Question, Federation, the Seat of Government, to mention the principal) her views differ from the draft Constitution. And wise as that is, and widely as it has been praised, there is still time and room for beneficial alteration in the respects mentioned. The fate of the native question alone involves the fate of South Africa, possibly the fate of the British Empire; and it is before all things imperative that the rights and liberties of the native shall be fully safeguarded.
But it is principally in the belief that the general principles of sound and honourable government herein expressed will have importance and value when the Unification or Federation of the South African States has long passed into history, that this letter is now presented to the English public, by special arrangement with the author.
DEAR SIR,—In answer to the questions on Closer Union you sent me—many of them seem to me almost unanswerable till the large, underlying principles of our future structure have been determined. Under a system of Federation one would require to give one answer; under Unification another: with a liberal franchise one answer; with restricted, another.
As far as possible I will try briefly to reply.
I. What subjects in your opinion ought to be discussed at the National Convention?
All those broad principles which will determine what the nature of our future
social
II. What form of Closer Union do you favour—Federation or Unification; and for what reasons?
FEDERATION.
Firstly: Because all history teaches that in small States there tends, other
things equal, to be more personal freedom, more individuality, and a higher
social vitality than in large. I believe a body of small, highly organised
social units self-governing, but uniting together for the furtherance of certain
great common aims, to be the highest form of social organisation yet evolved
by
Secondly: Because a vast territory, highly diversified in its physical features, in the nature of its populations, and the history and traditions of their past, does not lend itself healthily to centralised government.
Thirdly: Because a huge territory like South Africa, divided into a number of strongly organised and individualised though confederate States, will present a far greater obstacle to the undue dominance of any interest, class, or individual than the same territory under a unified and centralised government. The special danger of centralised democratic States is always the tendency to fall a prey to the tyranny of sections, of large interests, or of strong individuals. The walls of each self-governing State are so many barricades, each one of which must be broken down before any oppressive over-domination can absolutely succeed; and, behind any one of which a successful resistance may take place when others have fallen. In short, it makes for freedom. I think even the short history of South Africa in the past throws light on this.
Fourthly: Because I hold that our continued division into States will tend to
produce a finer type of citizen. I believe that were there two large
territories, both situated exactly as South Africa is to-day, and that one
adopted a completely unified form of government, while the other formed a
confederacy of largely autonomous States, that at the end of fifty, and, yet
more, of one hundred years, the last would be found not merely to possess a more
self-governing people imbued with a more strongly civic spirit, but that the
general intellectual vigour and initiative would be found higher; that it would
be found to have produced a larger number of remarkable men and women, even in
the non-political realms of art, literature, and science. If in the fifteenth
century it had been possible to break down permanently the walls of the European
States and weld them into one State, with one form of laws, one Government, and
one set of institutions, I believe the progress of the human race would have
been stayed. The wonderful rate of evolution among the peoples of Europe during
the last six hundred years has largely depended on their being divided into a
Men, like sheep, soon lose their individuality when congregated in too large masses under uniform conditions. It is hard to catch six sheep scattered about on a large plain; but three thousand massed in one uniform flock can be driven by one boy to the shambles.
Fifthly: I am in favour of Federation in opposition to Unification because it is
in the
A great Frenchman, perhaps the most noted genius who in modern times has given his thought to the study of State growths, expressed the view in the early days of the North American Republic, that the centrifugal forces would probably ultimately prove too strong, and the several States sever themselves from the centre. Time has proved that even he was wrong; and it would seem likely that wherever confederate States are geographically united, once the federation formed, the danger to be feared is rather the continual growth of the central power. Switzerland and other countries illustrate this.
It is quite possible that in one hundred or even fifty years we shall form one centralised State; but that is a wholly different matter from starting with one.
Finally: I am in favour of Federation,
III. (a) If you favour Federation, please state briefly; what powers should be given to the Central Parliament and what retained by the local parliaments?
I think all powers should be retained by the local parliaments, except those touching a few large matters common to all, i.e. railways, posts, telegraphs, external coast defence, customs, and inter-statal and external trade relations generally, etc. The all-important and really primary function of a Federal Government, the arrangement of our relations with foreign States, our Central Government cannot be called upon to fulfil, while England maintains her control over us.
(b) How the revenue of your Colony should be allocated as between the central and local parliaments?
This is a matter to be worked out, when once the nation has determined on the general outcome of the relation between the States and Federal Government. The way in which the revenue should be treated must depend largely on what the functions of the Central Government were.
(c) How such questions as Asiatics, natives, railways, and debts should be dealt with?
This question is too important and intricate for brief discussion.
IV. How many members should there be in each of the Houses of Parliament?
That would necessarily depend on the extent of their duties. Under a system of Unification, four or five times the number would be required, which would be adequate under a system of Federation.
V. What should be the basis of representation?
It should be in no respect narrower than that now existing in any of our States. I hold, it should be adult franchise, with a high educational test. This would tell heavily against the natives, most of whom the educational test would exclude. I therefore think that, where natives are still living in large masses, under a tribal tenure, some arrangement should be made for their electing a certain if small number of direct representatives to the Federal Parliament; but all natives not still living under tribal tenure would of course come under the ordinary law for all citizens. I am in favour of an educational test, mainly because it may serve as a stimulus in the direction of education to both the poor whites and natives.
It has been suggested that the voters' roll as at present existing in each State should be taken as the basis of representation for the Federal Parliament. This would have this one immense advantage, that the more retrogressive States, with a narrow electoral basis, would be almost compelled to enlarge it, in order to obtain their adequate share of representation in the Central Parliament.
VI. Would you favour the equal representation of States in the Upper House? If so, for what reason?
Certainly: the reason being that it would help to equalise the smaller with the larger States, which might otherwise be completely wiped out.
VII. Are you in favour of single-member constituencies; or do you consider it advisable to adopt some system of proportional representation?
Yes, proportional representation.
VIII. Should any attempt be made at the Convention of assimilating the franchise conditions in the different Colonies?
Only in the direction of endeavouring to induce the more retrogressive sections to widen their base. It would bode ill for the future of our Confederacy if its preliminary action were to be an endeavour to deliberalise any State. Finally, I think the decision must be left with the States themselves.
IX. Do you consider the Convention should deal with the question of the representation of Asiatics, natives, and coloured people, or should it leave this matter for settlement by the future Parliament of South Africa? If you are of opinion the matter should be dealt with by the National Convention, please state on what lines.
I think this, like all other root questions, should be most fully discussed by
the Convention, and the result of that discussion most fully and frankly placed
before the nation. I am of opinion that where the Federal franchise is
concerned, no distinction of race or colour should be made between South
Africans. All persons born in the country or permanently resident here should be
one in the eye of the State. I am, and have always been, strongly opposed to the
importation of Asiatic or other labourers to undersell the labour of the
permanent inhabitants of the land. I regard it as criminal on two wholly
distinct counts: and I have always held that, whether as a speculator or a
seeker-for-health, when a man temporarily enters a country for a limited number
of
X. Should the delegates of the Transvaal and the O.R.C. insist on special conditions as regards the working of the railways, or should they allow the railways to be handed over to the control of the future Parliament of South Africa unconditionally? If not, what conditions should they insist upon?
I think such important financial questions, like all others of importance, should be fully discussed and permanently settled before we enter into any form of Union. For this reason: If when the Central Parliament meets the inland States have an immensely preponderating influence, they may, unless matters are firmly fixed beforehand, bring in legislation of such a nature that, had the inhabitants of the coast towns known it was coming, they would never have entered into the Union; the same thing reversed might take place, if the seaboard interests by combining had a preponderating vote. It would be too late then to demur. There would be no course open but secession, with possible civil war.
The Eastern Province taal has a saying: “Trouw is nie paere koop!” (“Marriage
is
XI. It has been suggested that if the question of the capital is decided by the National Convention there will be grave danger that the delegates of Colonies other than that where the seat of Government is to be will be unfairly prejudiced on their return, and that in this way the cause of Union itself may be prejudiced. What is your opinion?
The suggestion referred to in your question has rather a sinister aspect. Does it
not rather seem to suggest that the people of South Africa should buy a pig in a
poke; or rather that the pig should be kept carefully hidden in the bag till it
is too late for the people to object to buying it? The matter of the capital is
certainly one which should be fully discussed by the Convention, and the opinion
and vote of its members known, as a guide to the public. In a country situated
as South Africa is it is not a small question, and is one of those which should
be finally decided before the Union is entered
I believe the capital should be built in a small, neutral territory and entirely
anew. Most of our old towns in South Africa are rich in local traditions, sacred
and treasured by the men who in their own persons, or those of their
forefathers, raised them. It is impossible for the Pretorian or Bloemfonteiner
to feel to Grahamstown as the descendant of the British settler feels, whose
forefathers built it, as it were, out of their own sinew and fibre, as it is for
the Grahamstown man to see in Pretoria and Bloemfontein what the men see who
have shed their blood
An even deeper objection to all the existing State capitals is that they all represent or lie near great centres of commercial or financial activity, and the feeling that these might gain undue power from the neighbourhood of the Central Government would form an unnecessary point of friction.
In its own territory, under its own laws, a city in which every South African was equally a citizen and at home, it might come to be much more to us nationally than merely the spot where the delegates we had elected met to deliberate. It might become for us the material embodiment of that ideal of South African unity that is slowly shaping itself within us; an all-man's-land, where we might more easily forget our racial differences; our God's acre, on which we were all equal and united.
Even from the stand of architecture, we might make it the point of a new
departure, in a direction purely South African in the best sense. The grotesque
and hideous towns and public buildings which at the cost of
By excluding from it as far as possible all unnecessary manufacturing and commercial activities, and all elements that antagonise men, and making it as far as possible the centre of those which unite, raising here our great Federal libraries, museums, and art galleries, and holding here our literary and scientific congresses and inter-statal sports, it might as the time passed become, in a far more than the merely political sense, the centre of our united national life, and an object of legitimate pride to us all.
The question of expense has been raised; but I much doubt whether the adaptations and changes necessary in any town which became the capital would not ultimately cost quite as much without the same large benefits. The new wine should go into the new bottle; and there should be nothing in the new capital to recall the divisions of the past.
XII. Should an attempt be made at the outset to include the whole of South Africa (that is, Rhodesia, Basutoland, Swaziland, Bechuanaland Protectorate, and Nyassaland, as well as the four self-governing Colonies) in the scheme of Closer Union?
Ultimately, no doubt, these territories will become part of the Union; but as matters would have to move very slowly, and with due regard to the rights of all concerned, on the part of those having the care of those rights, and the matter being a very intricate and important one, I should say decidedly no.
You have said you would be glad to have my view on any other matters affecting the Union. There are some points on which I should care to make some suggestions.
Firstly, as to COST.
It has lately been continually rung into the ear of the man in the street, who up
to the present has not given much study to the, to him, often entirely new
problems suggested by the talk of Closer Union, that if
Neither statement seems to me true.
The depression from which we are now suffering is largely the aftermath of the war, and of that reckless indulgence in building and other speculations which followed it.
The men whose farms and property were destroyed may have by this time rebuilt
their houses, they may have almost as many sheep, half as many cattle, and
one-third as many horses as they had before; but their income during the last
years has gone to restore these things, and we must still feel the loss of the
accumulated capital they would otherwise have had to expend. Closer Union can no
more restore this to us, nor unbuild the unnecessary houses and harbour works,
or other constructions in which our wealth has been lost, than it can make one
Karroo bush strike its roots ten inches deeper,
As to the statement that Unification will be cheaper than Federation, and that taxation will be diminished under Closer Union, I doubt it. I believe ultimately either Unification or Federation will cost the country as a whole more than the present system; change is always expensive; and that Unification, under which expensive new local councils would have to be set up and endless revolutionary changes made, would be more expensive than Federation; even were Federation to cost more [which I do not for a moment believe it would] merely as a training school for our citizens, bringing the duties and rights of self-government close to them, I believe we should find it pay.
We South Africans have many faults, but
Secondly, as to HASTE.
There seems to be to-day, on the part of some persons, a feverish, and, in its hurry and precipitation, a most un-South-African haste to see Unification accomplished instantly, and they are unwilling to examine difficulties or brook delays.
We have seen the same feverish anxiety,
You cannot hurry South Africa, and any attempt to do so may in the long run make
history repeat itself. One of the ablest members of the Cape Parliament,
speaking on Closer Union in the House of Assembly, instanced the rapid
Federation of the United States of America as indicating that there was no cause
why we should not as rapidly combine. He left out of consideration entirely the
fact that America federated under the guns of the enemy! There are times in the
life of nations, as of individuals, when conditions so cataclysmic overtake us
that the changes which under ordinary conditions could only have required years
to take place are accomplished in months, weeks, or even hours. A vessel with
first, second, and third-class passengers on board might sail for months without
their ever coming near each
The ease with which Australia entered on Closer Union is often instanced for our
example. But nothing could be more misleading. Not only has Australia an almost
completely homogeneous population, being inhabited mainly by men of one race,
speech, one language, and of one tradition, but it is comparatively new. The
moss had already grown green on the thatched roofs of Western Province
farmhouses, and oak trees generations old had met over them, when Australia was
still untrodden by white men; and even when our British settlers landed, and the
treks began to go to the northern lands, Australia had hardly begun her history;
and among our vast native populations we have social institutions simple in
form, but
The difference between Australia and South Africa in this matter is the difference between two men setting out to make a garden: the one out of twenty acres of smooth meadow land, the other out of twenty acres of karroo, with kopjes, rocks, sluits, and ant-heaps on its surface. All the first man would have to do would be to run a steam-roller over the ground to level its small inequalities, to take out a foot rule and draw a plan—here a wall, there a flower-bed, and there a row of trees, and, giving it to the workman, order the plan to be carried out.
For the other man the problem would be far different; if he attempted to move a
steam-roller over it, the steam-roller would be broken; if he tried to lay it
out by rule of thumb, everywhere he would meet with obstacles; there would be no
way for him but carefully to study it yard by yard: up this kopje a road might
be built and a rockery made, across that sluit a bridge must be thrown, here
flower-beds could be laid, and in the sandy hollows great trees might be
Further, in the case of the United States, Canada, and Australia, what was attempted and accomplished was never Unification, but Federation. I can recall no case in the history of the world where a body of distinct States, some of them with long histories, and all with marked characteristics, have suddenly determined to do away with the laws, privileges, and traditions which gave them their individuality. Tyrannous conquest has often done it; but the change is too sudden to be healthy. Even a wide form of Federation is difficult enough of accomplishment; and the assertion that it would be quite possible for the South African States in the course of a few months to break up their organisms successfully and healthily to become a unified State, so far from being statesmanlike, appears to me childish.
This nervous and anxious hurry to attain
By compelling two horses to put their heads into the same nosebag, do you of
necessity put them on better terms with one another? May not the mere forced
It is sometimes said that we must hurry on Closer Union because it will prevent war from ever taking place among South Africans again. But surely all history teaches us that the bitterest and most bloody wars of modern times have not always been those between unallied States, but exactly those between peoples who were united, and where one party felt the union to be unequal and not for their advantage! Not only the American War of Independence, when America strove and succeeded in breaking herself free from union with England, or the great American war of North and South, and innumerable others, show this; but the civil wars within completely unified States themselves, such as France, where a class or party feel themselves oppressed or drawn into a union of which they have not fully understood the terms, exemplifies this. The external bond between individuals or States, where it is not the expression of a subtler internal union, so far from promoting harmony, is the inevitable cause of conflict, and possibly bloodshed.
It may be said that human life is short, and it is natural that those who have laboured and thought over this subject of Closer Union should be anxious to see it finally completed!
I take it we are not little children building sand-houses on the seashore, anxious to have them completed, the last tower shaped, and the seaweed stuck in to crown it before our nurses come to call us home to tea! If we are doing anything, we are attempting to raise a structure that will stand the test of the ages, and if we should not be the men to lay on the last coping-stone, amid a blare of trumpets, shouts of applause, and showers of titles—if quietly and almost unrecognised we have been able by our labour to ensure that one foundation-stone shall be laid a little deeper and stronger than would otherwise have been, and that the work should stand a little better the test of centuries—I do not know what more we should ask.
It is not he who puts on the last stone and ties the flag to the roof, but he who lays the foundations deep and well, who is the masterbuilder of work that is for time.
“Without haste, but without rest,” said the great German.
“Wacht een bietje; alles zal recht komen” (“Wait a little; everything will come right”), said the old South African President.
These, it seems to me, are the mottoes which should guide us in seeking to aid the growth of that United South Africa, the outline of which is now shadowing itself in the thoughts of our people.
Thirdly, as to SIZE.
One hears to-day often the statement, even from thoughtful persons, that we are upon the eve of making a “great nation”; the context showing the word “great” is not used merely in its sense of size, as it might be used of an agglutination of seaweeds, or a long row of sand-hills, but in its loftier sense to indicate something exalted and desirable in human life; and the statement is even sometimes so made that it would almost seem to indicate that a company of able, well-intentioned men sitting round a table might almost instantaneously manufacture this “great” nation as a carpenter might an arm-chair.
Such statements seem to be not merely
Leaving aside the fact that a nation cannot be manufactured, that it exists and
grows from its own roots, or it does not—and that though powerful individuals
may accelerate its growth or tend it in certain directions for good or evil,
they cannot create it—the serious objection to the statement lies in the fact
that it suggests the idea that by the mere agglutination of units into a larger
political union something lofty and desirable must necessarily arise. But a
nation because the length of its territory is five thousand miles and its
population proportionate is of no necessity greater, in the loftier sense, than
one whose length is only one thousand and its population proportionate, than a
man weighing 350 pounds—perhaps with a feeble heart, an atrophied brain, and a
distended abdomen—is of necessity in at all a more desirable condition than the
man who weighs 120 pounds, who may have every organ sound and every function
active: every inch such a man adds to his bulk may be to his damnation; and it
may be so also with a nation.
Unlike as the physical conditions, the populations, and the problems of the
different parts of South Africa are, there are still certain great underlying
conditions making for unity everywhere, though in widely different
proportions—all the same racial elements, white-man, black-man, and brown-man;
almost everywhere there is the same clear, white sunlight, and a certain subtle
conformity in the physical features of the country which we recognise as South
African; and, diverse as our people, our land, and our
Of the degrading and devitalising conceptions which can lay hold of the soul of an individual or a nation, the most purely destructive is the conception that the highest good to be attained is the continual accumulation of material possessions. And those who preach to us, whether intentionally or in the light-heartedness of careless speech, the doctrine that we can attain by the mere welding of our States into one huge political whole to true national greatness, are distilling into the cup of thought of a young nation drops of poison.
Unless the foundations be laid in justice
Fourthly, as to the NATIVE QUESTION.
I hold this to be the root question in South Africa; and as is our wisdom in dealing with it, so will be our future.
No exact census exists of the population of South Africa, but it is roughly calculated that there are about nine millions of inhabitants, eight million of dark men and one million of white.
The white race consists mainly of two varieties, of rather mixed European
descent, but both largely Teutonic, and though partly divided at the present
moment by traditions and the use of two forms of speech, the Taal and the
English, they are so essentially one in blood and character that within two
generations they will be inextricably blended by inter-marriage and common
interests, as would, indeed, long ago have been the case had it not been for
external interference. They constitute, therefore, no great problem for the
future, though at the present moment their differences loom large. Our vast,
dark
They are the makers of our wealth, the great basic rock on which our State is founded —our vast labouring class.
Every great nation of the past or present has contributed something to the sum
total of things beautiful, good, or useful, possessed by humanity: therein
largely lies its greatness. We in South Africa can never hope exactly to repeat
the records of the past. We can never hope, like Greece, to give to the world
its noblest plastic art; we can never hope, like Rome, to shape the legal
institutions of half the world; the chief glory of England, that wherever she
goes, whether she will or not, and even against her will, she spreads broadcast
among the nations the seeds of self-governing institutions—may never be ours.
But the great national parts are not exhausted; and there lies before us
The problem of the twentieth century will not be a repetition of those of the nineteenth or those which went before it. The walls dividing continents are breaking down; everywhere European, Asiatic and African will interlard. The world on which the twenty-first century will open its eyes will be one widely different from that which the twentieth sees at its awaking. And the problem which this century will have to solve is the accomplishment of this interaction of distinct human varieties on the largest and most beneficent lines, making for the development of humanity as a whole, and carried out in a manner consonant with modern ideals and modern social wants. It will not always be the European who forms the upper layer; but in its essentials the problem will be everywhere the same.
We in South Africa are one of the first peoples in the modern world, and under
the new moral and material conditions of civilisation, to be brought face to
face with this
I have said we to-day have to face the problem in its acutest form; but we have also exceptional advantages for solving it.
In our small, to-day dominant, European element we have the descendants of some
of the most virile of the northern races, races which, at least for themselves,
have always loved freedom and justice; in our vast Bantu element we possess one
of the finest breeds
In our small, permanent, and largely South African born, Asiatic population we have a section of people sober, industrious, and intelligent, rich with those deep staying-powers which have made many Asiatic peoples so persistent, and often dominant, in the past and present. Even in the most disorganised element of our population, often without definite race or social traditions, I believe that careful study will show it to compare favourably, and often most favourably, with analogous classes in Europe (and I speak from a wide personal knowledge of those European classes).
This is the material from which our nation must be shaped; and we, the small and for the moment absolutely dominant white aristocracy on whom the main weight of duty of social reconstruction rests, have reason to be thankful it is what it is.
If by entering on a long and difficult course of strictly just and humane
treatment, as between man and man, we can bind our dark races to us through
their sense of justice
But if we fail in this?—If, blinded by the
For a time such a policy may pay us admirably both as to labour and lands; we may
work gold mines where the natives' corn now stands, and the dream of a labourer
at two-pence a day which has haunted the waking
Even in the commercial sense, will it pay us in the direction of manufacture and trade, if, when the labouring classes of other countries are steadily increasing in skill and intelligence, ours remain in the mass mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, without initiative or knowledge? Will it even pay us to have him robbed of his muscular strength and virility by a sudden change to unhealthy conditions of life? Considered as a mere engine of labour, is not his muscle one of our commercial assets? If we doctor him with our canteens and cheap wines, and immerse him in city-slum life, will he even as a machine of labour remain what he is?
Are we to spend all our national existence with a large, dark shadow looming always in the background—a shadow-which-we-fear?
I would not willingly appeal to the lowest motives of self-interest, yet it may
be permitted to say this: As long as the population of South Africa is united,
and the conditions of warfare remain what they are, we need
But what if we are not united? What if, when the day comes, as it must, when hostile fleets—perhaps not European—gather round our shores, and the vast bulk of our inhabitants should cast eyes of indifference, perhaps of hope, towards them? Having no share in the life of our State, being bound to us by no ties of sympathy, having nothing to lose, might not the stranger even appear in the guise of a deliverer, and every bush hide a possible guide, and the bulk of the men and women in our land whisper, “It is no business of ours; let them fight it out”?
As long as nine-tenths of our community have no permanent stake in the land, and no right or share in our government, can we ever feel safe? Can we ever know peace?
One dissatisfied man or woman who feel themselves wronged is a point of weakness in a community; but when this condition animates the vast majority of the inhabitants of a State, there is a crack down the entire height of the social structure. In times of peace it may be covered over by whitewash and plaster, and one may profess that all is well; but when the time of conflict and storm comes, that is where the social structure will give way.
But a far more subtle and inevitable form of evil must ultimately overtake us. It is ordained by the laws of human life that a Nemesis should follow the subjection and use, purely for purposes of their own, of any race by another which lives among them. Spain fell before it in America; Rome felt it; it has dogged the feet of all conquering races. In the end the subjected people write their features on the face of the conquerors.
We cannot hope ultimately to equal the men of our own race living in more wholly
enlightened and humanised communities, if our existence is passed among millions
of non-free subjected peoples. The physical labour we despise and refuse because
they
It was recently reported in one of our Houses of Legislature, in a speech by one of our leading men, that once when discussing the question of the light and dark races with a Bantu, the latter had said: “When you do well to us, you do well to yourselves.”
This seems to me to sum up the philosophy of the whole matter. The dark man is the child the gods have given us in South Africa for our curse or our blessing; we shall rise with him, and we shall also sink with him.
To-day we in South Africa stand at the parting of the ways; and there is no man
and no woman, however small and without influence their voice may be, and though
themselves devoid of citizen rights, who, believing that the future of South
Africa depends on our taking in this matter the
Lastly, if I were asked what in South Africa is our great need at the present moment, I should answer, “Great men to lead us.”
In an ordinary household, where a woman brings up the children she herself has
borne, who share her blood and to whom her instincts bind her, she needs no
exceptionally great or rare qualities to rear her children and govern her house
in harmony. But if a woman, having children born of her own body, should marry a
man already having children by another wife, and they two should again have
children of their own, and even receive into their family one or two children by
adoption, then, to make her work a success, that woman would require altogether
wider and more exceptional gifts. The animal instinct which binds us to what is
ours by blood would not suffice; and unless carefully watched and controlled
might totally unfit her for the work she had to do. She would need not merely
those high intellectual powers which enable us to
So the man fitted to be the national leader of a great heterogeneous people requires certain qualities not asked for in the leaders, even the great leaders, of a homogeneous race. Our call in South Africa to-day is not for a Cavour or a Talleyrand, nor even at the moment for a William Wallace or a Robert Bruce. The man who should help to guide us toward the path of true union and a beneficent organisation must be more than the great party leader, the keen diplomatist, far-seeing politician, or even the renowned soldier. He may be some of these, but he must be much more.
He must be a man able to understand,
It is said that when centuries ago a great Hollander died the little children
cried for him in the streets. When our national leader dies, the hearts of a
complex people will put
What South Africa calls for to-day is no hero or saint or impossible figment of the mind—simply for a man with a clear head and a large heart, organically incapable of self-seeking or racial prejudice.
We have all known men of this type in private life; they are found in all races; the list of the Roman Emperors was not without them; they have appeared in the history of almost every people; they have even trodden our South African earth in the little history of our past, though they played smaller parts.
The name of one man will suggest itself to every one. Holding the somewhat invidious delegated power of an English Governor at a time of particular difficulty, he bound equally the heart of the Boer, the Bantu, and the Englishman to him.
Nearly twenty years ago, when I attended the opening of the railway in Bloemfontein, at a gathering where most present were Dutch, men remembered him, and though he had been so long gone from us a message of greeting was sent to this man over the seas; and, it is said, that when a South African of Dutch blood, who has since been branded as the most bitter of the opponents of British rule, was asked to stand for the Presidency of the Dutch Republic, of which he afterwards became President, that before accepting he wrote asking this Englishman, then a private citizen, to stand, as in that case he would himself withdraw. So do the hearts of great men unite peoples.
The States and territories of South Africa will ultimately combine in some form of union. It is inevitable; no man can stay it.
If among those things which fate still holds hidden from us in the hollow of her
hand there be such a man, or such men, loving justice and freedom, not only for
themselves or their own race, but for all their fellow-countrymen, and able to
imbue us with their own larger conception of the national life, and lead us
towards it, then I
Russia's Message: The True World Import of the Revolution. By WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING. With 50 Illustrations and an Index. Royal 8vo, 476 pages. Cloth gilt, gilt top, 12s. 6d. nett.
A study of the history and significance of the agitation in Russia, at once ‘a revolution, a reformation, and a renaissance.’ ‘Russia,’ thinks Mr. Walling, ‘has to offer the world something far greater even than a better and truer social philosophy or a larger conception and feeling about life; she is raising a new goal for all human endeavour.’
“The present volume is not, like so many recent books on Russia, a funeral march over a revolution that has been, but an overture and a prophecy concerning a revolution that is to come. Mr. Walling can give good ground for the hope that is in him. He has spent a considerable time in Russia, has mixed with the leaders of all parties, has accumulated a vast store of information, and possesses the deeper knowledge that springs from sympathy. His book indeed is a book of faith in Russia's destiny. It may be something of a partisan statement, but it is well informed, idealistic, and absorbing.”—