As the Boer aspiration in regard to a united Dutch
South Africa and the expulsion of British influence is still re- garded in many quarters as a myth, it is worth while to draw attention to a passage in one of the letters of Mr. Van Kretschmar, the managing director of the Netherlands Railways, written on September 11th, 1899 :—" I grow con- stantly more and more certain that if it comes to a great war, however long it be delayed, England will stand alone, and this circumstance will make it all the more clearly evident that she is resolved on the arbitrary slaughter of Afrikanderdom. Nothing but good can come out of it to the Dutch race in this part of the world, although in the beginning it entails a heavy expenditure of life and money, The fall of England shall be the crown of the end of the nineteenth century. It is now nearly four years since I wrote to Heer Bake, after the Jameson Raid, that I looked forward to the end of the supremacy of the English in South Africa, and believed that we were drawing near its conclusion." Yet we are told that all the Boers and their friends desired was to be let alone, and that nothing was further from their thoughts than any notion of injuring England. The phrase about Afrikanderdom is curious. It so closely resembles the words which Mr. Molten sought to put into Lord Milner's mouth in Cape Town. One sees how useful it would have been to father that phrase on Lord Milner. It would have confirmed the legend so sedulously spread by the Boers that we were determined to crush Afrikanderdom.
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