TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SITUATION IN SOUTH AFRICA.
IN spite of the alarmist telegrams from South Africa as to the so-called invasion of the Colony—it is absurd to dignify a raid with that name—and in spite of a certain danger as to the food supplies owing to the attacks on the lines of communication, we cannot profess to feel alarmed or even depressed. On the contrary, we see one or two new signs which are distinctly hopeful. In the first place, we note the movement that is taking place among a certain section of the Boers in favour of peace. Possibly there is a certain amount of " slimness " in their action ; but even if there is, and if they are thinking chiefly of gaining time, the fact of their overtures is significant. Still better is the news that the Dutch farmers are not joining the raiders, and that in many districts the presence of the commandos is distinctly disliked. Beat of all are the enthusiasm and pluck with which the British and loyalist portions of the population have met the crisis and joined the various corps which are now being organised. We have always felt that as the war was primarily waged to deliver South Africa from the dominance of the slave-driving Boer oligarchy, and to keep South Africa a free nation in a free Empire, the greater the part taken in it by the South Africans the better. No doubt there have been difficulties hitherto, as it would not have been wise to inflame Dutch feeling in the Colony. Now, however, that the Colony has been actually raided, the British Colonists can defend their own country without scruple. In doing so they help to prove bow absurd is the notion that we are fighting the Boers from selfish motives, and that at best the fight is one which does not concern the ordinary South African. In truth, it concerns him as much as it concerned the ordinary Pennsylvanian or New Englander to see that half the American Continent did not fall under the dominance of the Southern slave-owners.
We are not inclined to talk about what is to be done after the war till the war is really over. A letter entitled " A Golden Bridge " which we publish elsewhere suggests, however, such important action connected with the post-bellunt settlement that we cannot refrain from a certain amount of comment. Our correspondent is con- cerned with the fact that the Boer farmers who are now in arms against us have heavily mortgaged their farms. He points out that directly the war is over the mort. gagees, unable to obtain the interest duo to them, will in a great many cases foreclose, and that the owners will thereupon become landless men. He therefore desires that a moratorium should be proclaimed, and that for the next three years the mortgagees should not be allowed to exercise their legal rights. We cannot say that we see any grounds in law, in natural equity. or in public expediency for adopting such a course. The Boers must of course be treated with the strictest and most absolute justice, but we cannot see why they should receive more than justice. They plunged into the war with their eyes open, and cannot, we hold, be relieved of the consequences at the expense of other people. After all, the man who lends money has rights as well as the man who borrows. The mortgagees did not want the Boers to take the field, and so risk the property in which they were often as much, perhaps sometimes more, deeply interested than the mortgagors, and we cannot see why they should be despoiled in order to set the Boers on their legs again. If the Boers had won they would not, we are inclined to think, have behaved with very great tenderness to the mortgagees, and we do not see, therefore, that there should be so violent an inter- ference with the rights of the lenders as is here proposed. The mortgagees in their own interests will not, of course, be unnecessarily harsh. We do not imagine that they greatly covet the possession of unfilled farms, and we entirely disbelieve that they will foreclose on political grounds. They will, however, almost certainly suffer a heavy loss, and we do not see why the law should increase these losses in the manner proposed. But perhaps it may be said that even if a moratorium is not proclaimed, the State, in order to save from ruin those of the Boers who will be in danger of foreclosure, should lend the farmers money at a low rate of interest. and so enable 'them to meet their pressing liabilities. Here again, though we have no desire to be vindictive, we cannot think that the Boer has any special claim for help. The Boer cannot, of course, be allowed to starve, but we do not see that we are called upon to put him back into the position of a gentleman farmer conducting his farm with black serf labour but never working himself, for that was the state of things before the war. The Southern planter was not artificially restored by the United States Government after the War of Secession, and we do not see why the Boer should be. He was not a peasant farmer, but a rural aristocrat, and his position was economically unsound. Curiously enough, to pursue the analogy, just as the state of things in the Souther n States was economically on the verge of ruin, so was the state of things in the Transvaal. Boer farming in the Trans- vaal was largely a "kept" industry, and as practised could not have existed without help from the State. Again, there can only be a certain amount of money employed by the British Government in helping to repair the fortunes of those ruined by the war, for the pocket of the taxpayer is not Fortunatus's purse. Now it seems to us that the first charge on this necessarily limited fund should be the poorer Outlanders, who have been ruined by the war. People sometimes talk as if Johannesburg and the Rand were peopled entirely by millionaires with palaces in Park Lane already half built. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the population, as in every city in the world, consisted of men who had to work bard for a living at various businesses. Thousands of these men have been absolutely ruined by the war, and through no fault of their own. If money is to be advanced to any set of people to set them up again in life, it should surely be to victims of Boer pride and oppression. Their case is a very hard one. They are ruined financially, their homes have been broken up, and many of them have been injured in health. When, and if, they get back to Johannesburg to start business again, they will very likely be beaten in the competition by active new arrivals from Europe who are full of energy, and have brought with them a supply of capital for stocking a, shop or starting a business. But if the poor and broken Outlander has the first claim to help, it is the Colonials and non-professional soldiers generally who have the second. There are plenty of loyal men from the Colony, from Natal, from various other Colonies, and from England who have been fighting hard in the war, and who when it is over will have no good billet to go back to. Surely these are the men who ought first to be set up on farms by State aid. As we have said, we do not want to be vindictive, but we ought not to desert our own people and the men who have stood by us through so much, in order to act with sentimental generosity towards the Boers. Unless and until we have behaved generously and justly to our own friends and their claims are fully satisfied, all money spent to restock the farms of the Boers or to pay off their debts will be spent at the expense of the men who helped us in our need. And the loyalists will not ignore the fact, but will not unnaturally make the comment that it evidently pays better to fight against Britain than for her. No ; let us help our own people first, and if there is any immediate need on the part of the Boers, it can and will come to them from that fund of £7.000,000 which Mr. Kruger lodged in Europe. The Boer in distress is chargeable in the first place on that hoard, not on the British taxpayer.
But it may be said that, if not as a matter of right and justice, yet as a matter of political expediency, we must grant a moratorium, lend money to the Boers, and gener- ally reinstate them on their farms and help them to go on as before. If not, we shall be told, they will .prove an element of confusion and unrest throughout the country. We cannot agree. We believe that the artificially rein- stated and coddled Boer will prove quite as great an element of danger as the landless Boer,—tiiat is, the Boer forced for the first time in his life to buckle to and do an honest day's work for himself and his family. The Boers at present would feel no gratitude for help given them by the British. Some would regard it as an act of justice ustice wrung even from the wicked by the moral superiority of the Boers. Others would see in it merely an act of fear. They would argue that no one who did not dread his enemy would treat him- so, and instead of re- solving to settle down and accept the citizenship of the Empire, they would be filled with new hopes for a Dutch South Africa. We do not blame them for this temper. Rather we admire their splendid tenacity, but we must be on our guard against it, though we admire it. It must not be supposed, however, that if we do not artificially pre- serve the Boers as idle gentlemen farmers, therefore they will perish of hunger. In the first place, as we have said above, the extreme cases, if not helped by us, can and will be helped from the vast hoard which Mr. Kruger and the Kruger ring have invested in Europe. That fund would be sufficient to stock every ruined Boer farm twice over. Of course, as long as help is possible from England, not a penny of it will be used to help individual Boers, but if and when we are seen to be obdurate, it will find its way by secret channels to South Africa` Next, the Boer will not starve because he can, if forced to do so, do what every other Colonist does,—turn to and work. And this process of working will be extremely good for him. While he is engaged in making his own living he will be obliged to see and know something of the world and other men, and will learn in the process not to hate the British more, but less. He will, that is, cease to belong to a class apart, and will tend to amalgamate with the rest of the population. But though we would leave the Boer to lie on the bed he has made for himself, we would do all that is possible to help and to educate the Boer children and to make them into worthy citizens. Needless to say, we do not desire to make any attempt to prejudice them against their own race, to stamp out their language, or even to turn them from their hatred of the British. That is a matter for themselves, and they should be as free as they like to cherish the sense of injury. What we would do is to educate them in a way which would fit them for modern life, which would civilise them, and inspire them with higher civic ideals than that of bullying the black s and despising the British.
We shall be told that our policy is cruel and harsh, and so it may appear if superficially examined. In reality, and if looked at fairly and squarely, it is simply a proposal to let things take their course after the war —to treat the Boers with the most absolute justice, and the most scru- pulous respect for their rights, but not to attempt out of a mistaken sentimentality to maintain by artificial props, and at the expense of worthier objects, the conditions which have hitherto prevailed in the Transvaal. Let the Boer have justice, but let us clear our minds of cant in dealing with him. It is cant to talk as if he specially, and more than other classes, deserved our pity at the close of the war. It is cant to pretend that he will be grateful or will be conciliated by being shown a sentimental consideration which he will fully realise is only shown at the expense of other people. It is cant to pretend that the life led on the Boer farms was a state of things so idyllic and so sound morally and economically that we ought to make a great effort to prevent it coining to an end. Let the Boer have strict justice, but do not let us be so sentimental that we cannot endure to see him learn like other and better men before him in the school of adversity. If the Boers had chosen nine months ago to make peace and to stop the war, it might have been wise to have done a great deal more to conciliate them,—to let them down easily. They chose to reject all idea of conciliation, to press any advantage they had as far as possible, and to do us as deadly injury as they could before they yielded. Let them abide by the choice, and accept the consequences of the kind of struggle which they have deliberately adopted.
Our last word is, let us trust Sir Alfred Milner and his advisers on the spot in dealing with the Boers after the war. They are not the least likely to act with undue harshness. What is to be dreaded is not harshness, but an unreasoning wave of sentiment arising here which may force the hands of our administrators on the spot,—a wave of sentiment which is certain to be exploited by the clever and watchful Dutch leaders in South Africa, who are already more than a match for the Britisher in all and every form of negotiation.
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