TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GARRISON OF SOUTH AFRICA.
IT is perhaps good for our people to have so little imagination, for the defect enables them to push straight on without considering consequences overmuch, but it is a little puzzling sometimes to those who desire to argue with them. Just now, for instance, they are dis- cussing the question of lenity versus severity as if the point at issue were legal, or, at best, involved a moral difficulty only. quite forgetting that the dispute affects as a governing factor the whole future administration of South Africa. Not one in ten of those who censure or up- hold our position seem to have asked themselves how, after the Republics have been absorbed, South Africa is to be garrisoned. That it must be garrisoned scarcely needs de- monstration. In so vast a dominion—the whole of it from Cape Town to the northern frontier of Rhodesia is eight times the size of France—ruled by white races so divided in feeling and aspiration. and peopled by black tribes so fierce and so uncivilised, there will be sporadic movements which, if neglected, may develop into formidable insurrec- tions. We must for many years after the pacification have the means of suppressing such movements sharply, rapidly, and without risk of the dangers which even temporary or accidental defeat would involve. In other words, we must for years to come either keep an army of fifty thousand men in South Africa, with a most unusual pro- portion of cavalry and artillery, both of them costly arms, or we must station there twenty thousand men as a reserve for emergencies, leaving defence in a usual way to a local mounted Militia. The former is a most expen- sive device, which if paid for out of local taxation will absorb the entire surplus upon which the British Govern- ment relies for the payment of compensations to loyalists —including the great mine-owners—and for relief to the British taxpayer. We shall not keep a British army of fifty thousand men seven thousand miles from our shores, with an unusual proportion of cavalry, and perfect means of transport in mobilised order, as if ready to march at an hour's notice, for less than five millions a year, and where is the money to come from ? The Colonists—mine- owners included—will not give it willingly when this excitement is over, and if the House of Commons provides it, the expense will be a constant source of irritating debate, will be reduced whenever a Radical Ministry is in power, and if the lean years come, as they must come in their turn, will be whittled away altogether. We could not keep up even the Indian Army but that India pays her own way, and even with that advantage we allowed it to dwindle until when the Mutiny arrived, and the Empire reeled, we had just eighteen thousand white men in the huge peninsula ready for battle. It is folly to lay don n a scheme so costly as part of the permanent policy of an Empire governed by a taxpaying democracy, ruling so many and such different and separated countries that it may at any moment be called upon for an army beyond seas, and so envied by its neighbours that it has always to face the chance of having to defend its very existence against the onslaught of some European coalition.
The difficulty, it must be remembered, is enormously increased by the fact that in South Africa the left arm of Great Britain is tied behind her back. Her people have the power of so conciliating inferior races that they can trust hundreds of thousands of their dark subjects with arms, that dark regiments volun- teer for their wars in scores, and that men from the bravest tribes in the world ride in from fields of battle but just lost to be their devoted soldiers in battles far away. An Afridi regiment, it is reported, is to garrison Wei-hai-wei. We could even in South Africa maintain and trust as soldiers fifty thousand Zulus, Basutos, and Kaffirs, while if we allowed the Sikhs, Ghoorkas, and Maoris who are anxious for the service to set sail we could place in South Africa a dark army more numerous than the white adults of the two Beer. Republics, and as obedient and orderly as any soldiers born within these islands. We refuse to avail ourselves of this unique instrument of power, and the refusal is right, but it throws, if we are to rely upon force alone, the whole burden of garrisoning a continent upon the fighting classes of these small islands, where there is no conscription. The alternative is a local Militia, and we know from American precedent and our experi- ence in Canada, Australia, and South Africa that it is a sufficient alternative ; in other words, that if we will provide the artillery and munitions, the Colonists will provide mounted infantry as good for battle as any soldiers, and in sufficient numbers. That is a reasonable plan, and one exceedingly beneficial to Colonists, who in a land of blacks must not for their own safety sink into the podded ease of English rural life ; but how is it to be carried out if one of the two races which make up the white population is to be treated as secretly disloyal ? To arm the Dutch while they are enemies is only to provide the means of insurrection, yet if we arm only the Colonists of British descent we shall not have a sufficient force, and shall have to entrust all practical power to that worst of governing instruments, a privileged military caste. We must trust all whites alike, or hold South Africa, like India, through an irresistible garrison ; and if our trust is not to be folly we must abstain from sowing amidst half the population the seeds of hereditary hatred by what is called a " just severity." Be it under- stood we are not discussing to-day, much less disputing, the justice of severity to rebels. We do not believe, like most of those around us, that rebellion is a venial moral offence, or deny for one moment that it is sometimes the duty of a merciful ruler to crush out resistance in blood. It was his duty in the Indian Mutiny. But we maintain most strongly that in the special circumstances of South Africa wise statesmen will postpone abstract justice to the necessity of inducing the two branches of the dominant caste to live together in amity, and that if we blister the memories of one of the two by. executions, confiscations, and disfranchisements, as we once did in Ireland, they will not so live. All nations except the British are vindictive, and it is because we lack that " strong quality," as we recently saw it described, that we are able to rule in quiet a fifth of the human race. Who hates Afridis here, though they killed heaps of our children just to give themselves excitement ? The policy which accepted the Highland clansmen after their in- vasion of England as soldiers of the Crown, may not have been just to the Lowlanders they harried, but it made of Scotland a united country, and of all Highlanders loyal subjects of the first descendant of Marjory Bruce who ever willingly spared a foe. But these are Dutchmen, not Highlanders, we shall be told, and, being Dutchmen, they will always continue to hate us. Will they ? Better ask the Bentincks or the Keppels for an opinion upon that very important subject. Those families seem to us fairly loyal ; but if their testimony is distrusted, take that of Americans as to the descendants of the Dutch- men who lost New York, and one of whom is at this moment Governor of the State.
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