A HISTORY CHAIR FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN ' COLLEGE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1
Sin,—To judge from certain volumes of South African " hietory " which have lately come under my notice, the Chair of History in the South African College will not be estab- lished a moment too soon. Two of these works especially— the one written in Dutch, the other in English—are well worth reading by those who wish to see how public opinion • was prepared in South Africa for the present conflict,"and from how great a danger the English Government and Lord Miler have rescued the Empire. The author of the first book is Mr. J. F. van Oordt, B.A., who at this present moment is an Examiner in Dutch in the School Elementary Examina- tions of our University, and also Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at the South African College. As a Pro- fessor he will naturally have some influence over the rising generation in South Africa. lie calls his book "Paul Kruger en de Opkomist van de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republish." Its whole object appears to be to exalt the prestige of the South African Republic and to aggravate the anti-British feeling in South Africa. Mr. Theo. Schreiner has excavated for me a few passages from this huge quarry of misstatement and misin- terpretation. But no selection of a few such passages will give much idea of the real influence and meaning of this per- nicious volume. Referring to the Dutch hatred for the English Government, he writes :—
"Let us Afrikanders be honest on this point; let us respect and honour individual English people; let us even give our sons and daughters in marriage to the beautiful and the manly of the English nation" [this is really very handsome of Mr. van Oordt]; "but let us allow no lying speech to flow from our lips by saying that we honour or love the English Government, for no single well-founded reason exists for so doing."
Again, dealing with the proposal that the Orange Free State should assist the Transvaal in 1881, he remarks :—
" There was one statesman in South Africa who saw only too clearly that if the war lasted another three months everything would be in a flame, and this was far from being the wish of cautious John Brand, who was persuaded that the time had not then arrived at which South Africa could tear itself loose from
ngland "- 'from which we naturally- infer that in Mr. van Oordt's opinion the time would at last come for that very desirable consummation. In the course of an impassioned rhapsody the same writer exclaims :—
"Shall sixty years of strife and perseverance have been in vain Has God in His Almighty power taken care of this people for so many years at the last to withdraw His grace and leave them to their fate ? We shudder at the thought. The benevolent power, she with the anchor, she who gives her name to the most Southern point of South Africa, she who is the blessed comforter and the companion of man from his very birth, sweet Hope there- upon takes her place at our left hand. Be not afraid; have no doubt, ye pusillanimouo ones ! Behind that veil is a superb building which bears the superscription :-
UNITED AND FREE SOUTH AFRICA.
,That building is erected with heavy, large stone, stones on which are engraved the deeds of great men, the heroes, the statesmen of your people ; and on more than one stone stands the name of a man, of him whose life you have described. For it is he more than any other who has assisted to erect the building ; his most -fervent wish is to see the building raised. Sweet Hope, we thank you for your comfort. Oh! that that building may really stand behind the veil of the future ! But he, the man who has expended on it so much energy, who is still working on it, his eye will probably never see the proud work completed. He will r,leep the eternal sleep. Tired of the heavy, trying strife, his head will sink to the pillow ; the wakeful eyes will be closed; in the death grip the strong hands will be paralysed; the fiery spirit will be benumbed; and cold and lifeless will be the mighty body. But his soul, with God's grace, shall return to its Creator ; and on arrival in the great Town, the voice of the eternal Judge shall sound clear and like a trumpet call, saying: Well Done Thou Good and Faithful Servant ! You Have Been Faithful In Little Things, I Will Make You Ruler In Great Things ; Go In and Rejoice In Our Lord !
May that be so."
This book, let me add, was published at Kaapstad and Amsterdam towards the end of 1898.
The second book to which I refer is by a Dr. J. C. Voigt, who describes himself as "of the Cape Colony Volunteer Ambulance Service in the Transvaal, 1881." It is in two large volumes, is written in English, and was published at the moment of the Bloemfontein Conference. It is entitled "Fifty Years of the History of the Republic in South Africa,"—a singular form of words, which leads one to think that the author hoped to write a concluding volume telling how the Republic at last embraced the whole of South Africa. It is rabidly anti-British through- out, and endeavours to do for the English reader what the former book effected for the Dutch. Here, again, it is difficult to select. Copia ipso nocet. Referring to an oration by Mrs. Smite at the time of the annexation of Natal, Dr. Voigt says :—" Her voice was feeble, but her words may yet some day make a grand refrain for the hymn of liberty of the Federal United South African Republic. She clearly saw what was coming—she predicted the future?' Very little room for England there would have been in Dr. Voigt's Federal United South African Republic. And we are still told that that ambition was a fable, invented by rabid Britons in South Africa and at home. The volume ends with a postscript, about the authorship of which I have my suspicions, and this ends in melo- drama:—" Hark, the bells are tolling their warning in the great echoing belfry of the Temple of History. Is it only a warning? Or are they sounding the death-knell of an Empire ? " Obviously the death-knell not of an Empire, but of detestable Kriigerism and of disloyal and impoesible ambi- tions. In such works as these the perversion of individual facts is nothing as compared with the misrepresentation of the whole trend and meaning of South African history. That history has yet to be written, for the voluminous works of Dr. Theal, our Colonial historiographer, lean too heavily on the Dutch side to be of any permanent value as an authentic and impartial record. I have drawn attention to the books mentioned in order to show the influences which were at work in South Africa just previous to the war, and to illustrate the magnitude of the danger from which the Empire has been happily preserved.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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