TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO FIGHT ABOUT ?
IF we fight, what are we going to fight about ? That is the question which is raised by Sir William Harcourt in his Tredegar speech, and that too is the question which our correspondent, " An Irishman," asks in effect in the striking letter which we publish in another column. That this question ought to be asked and satisfactorily answered by every thinking man in the nation before we plunge into the whirlpool of war no one will venture to deny. Though we do not agree with him, Sir William Harcourt asks the question and attempts to answer it in the spirit of true statesmanship. He does not merely try to make points against the other side, but treats the matter on a higher plane. Above all, he makes alternative. suggestions, and says what he considers ought to be done,--is not merely content with negative vituperation. We shall not, however, attempt to deal with Sir William Harcourt's speech in detail, but, instead, shall try to set forth what, if unhappily war comes, are the reasons and the grounds for drawing the sword. In the first place, let us say clearly that this country will not fight, and will not profess to fight, in order to force the Boers to use the word " suzerainty." As Sir Alfred Milner has said, there is no need to use the word. We cannot, as Sir William Harcourt agrees, allow the Boers' claim that they are a sovereign and independent State, and we must repel that claim if it is forced upon us. But even if we believe that the condition of suzerainty or superiority exists, we do not wish to force a particular word down the throat of the Republic. We are content with the thing, and want no more acknowledgment of it than is to be found in the Convention of 1884. We are not, then, going to fight for the word "suzerainty." Again, we are not going to fight merely on the issue-of the franchise. We have persistently urged upon then Boers the necessity for an extension of the franchise, not because we claim the right to dictate the details of their Suffrage Law, but in order to avoid the exercise of a much greater and more imperious right which lies behind. We have so persistently insisted upon the emancipation of the Outlanders because that emancipation, and that alone, can prevent our making a far graver claim to interfere in the legislation and administration of the Republic. The franchise proposals were put forward in order to avoid recourse to demands much more likely to prove unbearable to the Beers. We shall not fight about the franchise, then, but upon what lies behind it. We have asked that the franchise should be granted in order that the many and great grievances of the Outlanders— grievances which are admitted by Sir William Harcourt, and indeed by every one outside the Transvaal— might be remedied by methods which would not only involve the minimum of direct interference with the independence of the Republic, but would immensely strengthen its position. If those proposals are finally rejected, we must insist at once and peremptorily that the grievances of the Outlanders shall be put an end to. In a word, if we fight, we shall be fighting to protect our own flesh and blood who have made their homes in the Transvaal, who have been treated as white men are treated in no part of the British Empire, and who have appealed to us for aid. We cannot say to them : 'Why should we help you ; why did you go and settle in a country that did not want you?' for we expressly granted the right of autonomy to " the inhabitants " of the Trans- vaal, and not merely to the Boers ; and stipulated that the Transvaal should remain open for all time to all white immigrants. and that those white immigrants should be well treated. It is true that we made this stipulation in so slovenly a way that we did not secure the full rights of citizenship to the immigrants on reasonable terms, but our intention was clear enough. If, then, we were now to say to the Outlanders : ' Why did you intrude where you were not wanted ? ' they could reply : • You your- selves insisted that we should be secured the rights of entry into, and of living in, the Transvaal ; you were a party to the invitation to us to settle here ; how, then, can you tell us that we are intruders ?' To say, therefore, that British subjects have forfeited their right to help and protection from the Mother4and by going to the Transvaal is absurd. But it is urged by those who agree with "'An Irishman " that we cannot honourably protect our subjects in the Transvaal 'because we pledged ourselves not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Republic. We trust that we shall always be sensitive to the charge of dishonourable conduct made against our country, and we honour our correspondent for his. scrupulosity and solicitude in the matter, though we think him wrong. To be conscientiously mistaken in the name of honour is, at least, a noble fault. To show the nature of this mistake we would ask one question. Can it be urged that our pledge not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Tra,usvaal, an admittedly dependent State, places our subjects when living in that State out- side the help and protection of their own country, and that we can do nothing to help them against injustice, though we could help them if they lived in France ? If that, were so, the position of a British subject in the Transvaal would be the most miserable in the world. He would be unable to obtain the rights of citizenship in the country of his adoption, and yet be would be unable to make any appeal for help to the country of which he was still nominally a subject. He would, in fact, be a sort of out- - • law,—a man without any helper or protector. But such a result as this is utterly impossible, and must make those who are disturbed by the question of - honour see that • their position is untenable. They must surely shrink from such consequences as these, and must admit that we have, at least, the same rights of protecting our own citizens in the Transvaal as we have in • absolutely in- ' dependent nations. No doubt the assurance 'that we would not interfere in the Transvaal's internal affairs should make us refuse to take up grievances which we should not have a right to take up in the case of a foreign Power, but beyond that the assurance cannot go. In a. word, we can, without any breach of our word, protect and - succour our subjects in the Transvaal provided they are oppressed and unfairly treated. We made no pledge to tolerate wrong and injustice.
In the last resort, then, we are going- to fight in order to get justice done to the Outlanders. That, curiously enough, is how the man in the street is answer- . ing the question, and that must be . the result of a critical analysis of the situation. It remains, of course, to consider whether the grievances of the Out- landers can fairly be said to be so grave that, if other means have failed, they must be righted by:war. We . hold that they are sufficiently grave. It is difficult in the space at our disposal to set forth those grievances in . detail, but some idea of the manner in which the Boers , carry on their government may be drawn from the letter , from Johannesburg, signed " E. J. W.," which is to be found in another column. Still stronger proOf of what ., the Outlanders have to submit to mar be seen in the latest. Blue-book and in the account of the prosecution of Mr Nicholls for treason. A worse story of the use of tyran- nical police methods we have never seen.. But we cannot now go on enumerating the grievances of the Outlanders. . We will only say that we hold them to be quite enough . to justify us in extending to the Outlanders the help they seek. But we shall be told—' Bad as the treatment of the Outlanders is, you would never dream of helping them by • . forCe if they lived in Germany or France.' To which we would reply that if there was a great city of British subjects within the dominions of a foreign Power; and they had a, right to settle there and yet were treated as the Outlanders are treated, we hold that we should not shrink from getting them better treatment, even by the use of force. Of course, all these things are a question of degree, and if we were not strong enough to invade the foreign Power in question we should have, we suppose, to submit. Given, however, similar circumstances, and provided that we were not called upon to send an army of thirty thousand men to face one of two million, we should certainly deal with the Power in question as we are now dealing with the Boers. We absolutely repudiate the suggestion that we have no right to protect our subjects if they choose to leave our shores. Provided that his complaints are sound, and that it is within our power to protect him, we hold that no British citizen, if his cause is good and his plaint reasonably pressed, should plead in vain for protection. We would not, of course, force any country to receive our people, but if they do receive them they must treat them fairly.
We do not often agree with Mr. Morley as regards the present crisis, but in one of his recent speeches he went, unconsciously perhaps, to the very heart of the question. He pleaded for equality between the races in South Africa, and for giving predominance to neither. We ask no more. Our desire is to see complete equality between the races as it exists in the Cape, and to prevent the ascend- ency of Dutch over English and English over Dutch. But, unfortunately, that is what we have not got in a great part of South Africa. There is equality where the British flag flies, but in the Transvaal one race is kept beneath the feet of the other race, and the race that is under is the British. But if one race is kept unarmed and in political servitude while the other race is armed and in enjoyment of a power which it uses to maintain a sub- servient Judiciary and a jealous and oppressive, if not indeed corrupt, Administration, what chance is there of peace in South Africa based on equality between the races ? The air is infected by the quarrel at Johannesburg, and who can say that the Boers have gone the right way to put an end to that quarrel ? We are not, then, afraid of answering the question, What are you going to fight for ?' We are going to fight to prevent the oppression of the Outlanders by the Boers, and to put a stop to the ascendency of one race over the other which is ruining South Africa. No doubt a few reckless and " heady " speakers have talked about putting the Boers into their proper place, but no one seriously believes that if we con- quer the Transvaal we shall for .a moment dream of turning the Boers into Outlanders. We shall at once in- troduce the most absolute equality between the races, and shall allow the. white inhabitants, and not merely a fraction of them, to decide as to what form of self- government they prefer. The notion of our fighting for an ascendency of the kind the Boers have been exercising is a delirious dream. True, sixty years ago we tried to claim a racial ascendency for the Boers, but we repented long since. Then, as Sir William Harcourt well pointed out, the Boers taught us the lesson that, it seems, we must reteach them now. Like the Outlanders, they asked for independent Courts, for the use of their own language, and for the right to be represented in the Government. We refused, and have paid the penalty in two genera- tions of unrest in South Africa. Now when the Outlanders ask the same rights, and now that we are wiser and have the power to prevent a. great wrong, are we to be so weak and so foolish as to turn away from a plain but painful duty ? Assuredly no. We shall be misjudged, we shall be reviled as tyrants and oppressors, but if we hold fast to the plain issue set forth by the Boers before the great Trek, and refuse to admit that what was right then can be wrong now, we shall come through our present difficulties with safety and honour. Our guiding light must be the estab- lishment of race equality throughout South Africa, and our refusal to tolerate racial ascendency because it is Dutch and not English. Such an inversion of truth and justice, though it may be backed by the arguments of those who are guided by sentiment rather than by reason, must be banished from the minds of all who wish to deal wisely and.well with the momentous issues at present before the nation.
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