TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR. THE war has been begun by the Boers, and in a manner which places the issue before the nation very clearly. We need not dwell upon the apparent insolence of the ultimatum, because we do not think that such insolence was intentional, but was merely due to want of knowledge on the part of those who drew it up. In effect the ultimatum says to the British Government :—' We mean to do what we like in our own country, and since it is evident from the tone of your despatches that you contest, that right, and are preparing to interfere with our internal affairs and to insist upon our treating the Outlanders in the way you think just and right, and not in the way we deem just and right, we give you notice that we shall consider your claim to interfere, unless it is instantly withdrawn, as a declaration of war.' Here, then, is a plain issue, and one which all South Africa and all England can understand. It is not worth while to dilate upon the effect of the ultimatum on the pro-Boer party here ; it so obviously cuts away the chief part of their case,—namely, that we have rushed the Boers into war, and have not given an opportunity for wiser counsels to prevail and for negotiations to be renewed on a better footing. We do not expect that the advocates of the Transvaal will openly accept this view of the case. They will, of course, continue to assert that we have hounded the Boers into war by our preparations, and that we have merely gained a tactical advantage over a simple people unaccustomed to the finesse of diplomacy. The country at large, however, will not, we think, adopt this view, but will recognise instead the hard facts of the situation. But while we say this let us say also that we think it most un- fair. as well as most injudicious, to talk as if the sup- porters of the Boers here were traitors and enemies of their country. They are nothing of the sort. They are foolish and misinformed if you will, but we admire their courage and conscientiousness in sticking up for an unpopular cause, and in daring to declare that they think the vast majority of their countrymen are in the wrong. To try to browbeat them into acquiescence by charges of want of patriotism is cruelly unjust. In the present case the majority are, we are convinced, in the right, but a time may come when the majority will be in the wrong, and it is essential to the moral health of the nation that we should most strictly and most scrupulously preserve the right of the minority to speak without fear or favour. If they are wise, however, the minority will keep a check upon their rhetoric, and not talk too loud and too wildly about " bloodguiltiness," about "a people fighting for their hearths and homes against the oppressor," about " liberty" and " tyranny," and about " the last stand of a simple and God-fearing people." Rhetoric of that kind does not convince. For sober and reasonable argu- ment there is always a place, and we, and those who think with us, will always respect and admire, if they cannot agree with, the conscientious expression of an unpopular view.
But though we make no complaint against the friends of the Boers for supporting men who are fighting against their own country if they believe their country to be in the wrong, we do think that a review of the conduct of the pro-Boer Press and of pro-Boer speakers during the past two months shows that a very considerable weight of responsibility rests upon them. And for this reason. They have misled the Transvaal by their writings and speeches into thinking that England was at heart with the Boers, and that the Government would not have the support of the nation. Again and again we were told in effect that the people of this country would never sanction the infamous policy of the Government, and it was asserted with the utmost vehemence that if the Government dragged the country into war their infamous action would be repudiated by a universal outburst of indignation ! No doubt those who used such expressions were not consciously trying to mislead. They were only using a rhetorical artifice, and did not stop to consider whether it could be borne out by the facts. But what was a rhetorical flourish in London, and was understood on both aides to be so, when telegraphed out to Pretoria bore a very different complexion. There it is was taken for hard fact. The Boers argued:—' Here are journals which are the papers of the people [out of England men do not realise that the Radical party has in no sort of way a monopoly of demo- cratic feeling], and they tell us that the people of England will never allow us to be tyrannised over by that bully Chamberlain. But the people are in the end supreme even in England. Therefore we may treat the warnings of the Government as empty threats.' We do not, of course, want to assert that the Boers would have given way had they not been imbued with these foolish notions by the rhetoric of our self-dubbed popular Press. In all probability they would in the end have proved just as unyielding, for they hold, if ever men did, that they have a right to do what they will with their own ; but we cannot doubt that the influence of the tall talk of the peace party here was all on the side of war, and against the better and saner influences existing, if dormant, in Pretoria. At any rate, we think it very possible that but for the false impression that the people of England, as contrasted with our wicked aristocracy and plutocracy, were against Mr. Chamberlain, the Orange Free State would not have committed its act of political suicide. We trust, then, that in the future the friends of the Boers, while quite properly exercising their right to denounce the misdeeds, as they conceive, of the nation, will hesitate before they adopt the artifice of speaking in the name of England. To do so can do no good, and might still do great harm, though to the Boers rather than to us.
We do not want to shout before we are out of the wood, but it is impossible, even though the first shot has not yet been fired, to shut out wholly from one's mind the considera- tion of what is to be done when the war is over. It would, of course, be most unwise to go into detail at the present moment, but one or two general propositions may, we think, be laid down which should be kept in view by the nation. To begin with, we must remember that the cry raised by Mr. Morley and others as to the terrible difficul- ties with which we shall be faced even after we have conquered the Transvaal, is based upon a delusion. Mr. Morley apparently forgets that after the war, and when the unhappy people who have been driven from their homes in Johannesburg have returned, the Transvaal will be one of the most British parts of South Africa. Mr. Morley talks as if the difficulty would be to maintain the Outlanders in the position of equality we have won for them. In reality the difficulty will be to arrange that the Boer minority shall have a reasonable amount of influence on the government of the country. Granted that we win, we shall, of course, as soon as the last sparks of war have been trodden out, begin to reorganise the State. We shall no doubt do that by ultimately establishing the freest possible form of self-government known to the Empire,—taking care, of course, that the Boers' rights as to representation and the concurrent use of their language are fully guarded and protected, for we are not going to turn the Boers into Outlanders. Our object is to estab- lish racial equality, not racial predominance. Perhaps the best way of ensuring that the Boers should suffer no disparity of treatment from the recently emancipated Outlanders would be to merge the Orange Free State with the Transvaal, and thus make the disparity of numbers in the case of the Dutch less conspicuous. But that is obviously a matter not to be decided offhand. All that we want to insist on is that, as far as the Transvaal is con. cerned, the talk about holding down an unwilling province by military rule, and forebodings as to our failure, are non- sense. Once give the Outlanders—remember it will be all the Outlanders, and not only those who came before 1893—votes and allow them arms, and there will be no more question of holding down a hostile province than there is in Natal. The Transvaal, in fact, will be another Natal. After the war is over there will, no doubt, be at once a flood of talk as to the unification of the various provinces of South Africa into one great Dominion. Un- questionably that is the ideal goal, the ultimate aspira- tion. Whether, however, it would be wise to force it on in a moment of crisis and reconstruction is a different matter. Personally we should say that so greatly to be desired a consummation ought not to be put in jeopardy by any action that might seem rash or hurried. To succeed federation must be really desired by all the constituent parts. We would therefore wait till the period of "reconstruction " had been got over in the State now governed by the Boers, in order that we might be sure that we had its authentic voice, not something spoken in heat or enthusiasm, and possibly to please the Imperial Government. The Imperial Government wants federation no doubt, but only if all South Africa wants it also,—for we want it not for our own sakes, but solely for the good of South Africa.
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