TEE MORALITY OF THIS WAR.
THERE is one argument against this war which the Boers themselves do not use, except occasionally for effect, but which weighs heavily with many worthy Englishmen. It is a shame, they say, for a great Empire to go to war with a, little State, and one inhabited by men of simple tastes, agricultural habits, and great confidence in God. The argument is a kindly and well-meaning one, but we think we can show that it lacks foundation, both in fact and in morality. As a fact, the great Empire is not using its greatness against the littleness of the Transvaal ; is not, that is, overwhelming its enemy by the mass of its troops, as Germany, for instance, would if it invaded Holland. The Boers are all trained to fight in their way, which for the defence of a region like theirs is a very good way ; they have expended their great resources for years in accumulating military stores; they have built forts where they would ; and their numbers will be at least equal to those of their opponents. They themselves consider themselves by far the stronger side, and boast openly that they will destroy any force sent against them. They are justified in this boast by all their past experience, nor are the British military chiefs free from anxiety, or at all disposed to regard the war as a military promenade. It is true that the Empire can repeat its efforts in a way that the Republic cannot, but it is by no means certain that the repetition will be con- venient, or on a scale which will render resistance hopeless or too exhausting. On the Boers, at all events, that, fear makes no impression, for they trust in their local allies, and confidently hope to make of all South Africa a Dutch Republic. The argument of size is a purely rhetorical one, and even if it were true it would be meaningless. Smallness is no apology for injustice, and the ground of war is that the Boers are treating Englishmen unjustly, and unjustly claiming from the Empire in- dependence when they were only promised autonomy, and that only on conditions which they have evaded. There can be no superiority in strength equal to that of the police when arresting suspected offenders, but would Sir William Harcourt argue that the guardians of the law must wait till the offenders become as numerous as themselves ? To say that we have no case is good reason- ing, but to say that we are not to establish it in the only way which, until the world is federated, can be open to us, is mere rhetoric. Then as to character. The Boers, at best, are so many Squire Westerns, and if Squire Western had been placed among heaps of black subjects with no rights, not even that of walking on the pavement, and if be could have taxed his white neighbours for his own benefit without appeal, and if he had believed that those neighbours were at once bad and dangerous, Squire Western would have become a tyrannically oppressive man. Nobody questions the special hatred of the blacks for the Boers, provoked by innumerable wrongs, and many observers believe that if the British were unhappily defeated and the independence of the Trans- vaal fully acknowledged, the Boers would at once, possibly under colourable forms, or even in open defiance of European ideas, re-establish slavery. Nor are they much less oppressive to white guests, as we showed last week. The Boers are said to be "simple," but they grasp all the money they can get at least as readily as Englishmen, and their" piety" when examined resolves itself into a confidence that God is on their side. We daresay it is sincere, but so is the same confidence among Mussulmans, and we did not hesitate on that account to attack the Khalifa, who was weaker in arma- ments than President Kruger, who had precisely the same title to his territories, namely, conquest from inferior tribes, and who marched up to our cannon with a "full assurance," as Cromwell would have called it, which had in it something sublime. We do not see the alleged superiority of the Boer character, and we do see that if the real moral problem of South Africa—the black problem—is to be solved it must be by Englishmen, who in India govern absolutely, but will allow no Indian to be struck except as part of the discipline of prisons. No one can contend that the Boers have made, or are likely to make, any real contribution to the discovery of the best method of ruling an inferior race when it has to live side by side with one which is its superior.
And, finally, we are told by the moralists that even if we win the struggle, there will remain a race hatred of the deepest kind, leading possibly to insurrection, more probably to sullen enmity, on the part of a most valuable section of the community. All we can say is that if that hatred is generated we must bear with it patiently as with any other political obstacle, removing it slowly by just and. equal treatment, and especially by the equality of vote which the Boers now refuse, and by the most rigid abstinence from insult and ridicule,—which, however, have not prevented Alsatians from being devoted Frenchmen. As a matter of fact, however, we do not believe the hatred will be more bitter than it is, or that it will survive treat- ment at once honorific and just. Race hatred intensified by shocking oppression in past generations has survived in Ireland, among races both of which are white, and in Poland, because the conquering race feels it so deeply, or its irritating variant, race contempt ; but it has died away in Brittany, it has no existence in Switzerland, and in America the descendants of Dutch Patroons, who were shamefully wronged as to their property, are the most patriotic of Americans, and may give the next President to the United States. Race hatred, unless revived every moment by difference of colour, is an evil luxury which, if the victors are free from it, the vanquished soon learn to forego. We are not much hated by those among us who by origin are Germans (Mr. Goschen), Dutch (Lord Reay), or French (Mr. Labouchere), who swarm in our markets, in our factories, in our Army: and in our very Legislature. Germans, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen have not been de- feated, you say ; but since when has respect for valour been a source of the enmity of race ? At this moment one-half the Continental dislike of the Jew arises from the fact that the Jew when cruelly oppressed retreats instead of fighting, and the Boer dislike for the British would be far less, instead of more, if we had won Majuba, Hill.
The real thing we have to consider from the moral side is not the comparative strength of the two contestants, or their eomparative virtues and defects, but the justice of our cause and the fairness of our ultimate intentions. On the former subject we said enough last week, on the latter we have only to say that we are bound to give Boers the treatment we are asking for ourselves. Does anybody doubt that we shall ? Does anybody, that is, seriously believe that we shall arrange taxes so as to fall specially on Boers, that we shall refuse them the right to bear arms, that we shall so organise the police that it is brutal to them but not to us, that we shall make Judges dismissible because they show a disposition to be im- partial, or that we shall deny their claim to be eligible for the Premiership or any other office ? If we do any of those things—all of which the Boers have done— we shall have undergone a strange modification of character, for we do none of them in Cape Colony, or in Ceylon, or in New York, in all of which places English • residents were once subjects of the Dutch. As to property, name the British possession where the stranger or the native is specially singled out to bear the burden of taxa- tion. We have faults in plenty, and a foible, a peculiar calm arrogance, which earns us more hatred than them all, but even our subjects acknowledge that if the Englishman is a beast, as the Rugby boy said of the present Arch- bishop, "he is a just beast."
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