SETTLERS FOR SOUTH AFRICA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have taken in the Spectator for many years, and have observed your advocacy of encouraging men now fight- ing our battles in South Africa to settle therein after the war with approval. In your review of Mr. Hobson's " The War in South Africa, &c." I find the following sentence : "How to get a loyal population on to the land is, of course, the great problem." Mr. Hobson maintains, as I understand your reviewer, that the look-out in this respect is not worth considering for our people, though it is sufficient for the Boers. Mr. Courtney (and I presume the peace party gener- ally agree with him) asserts that the Boers will always be in a majority in South Africa. Upon this belief they base their claim for letting them have their own way in govern- ment and social questions. Is this really their conviction, or is the wish father to the thought? What on earth is to prevent suitable persons from our midst colonising South Africa as they have done in Canada and Australia? I know that some of those who have gone out this year as volunteers mean to take up land and settle. Men of business aver that shoals of British men will go out under British rule, if they are properly encouraged, not to exhaust the gold mines, but to turn the veldt into a land of plenty, by irrigation, easy terms of obtaining and paying for land, good communica- tions, and all the other resources which our authorities can exercise to make the settlers feel that their presence in sufficient and increasing numbers will benefit those who go, and solve the relations between the two white races in the interests of true progress and civilisation. " We seek no goldfields, we seek no territory," was the motto of Lord Salisbury before, or at the beginning of the war. Now that the issue of the conflict will soon, it is hoped, place both goldfields and territory in our hands, the former will certainly be worked according to the greed of human nature, and the latter should be developed as a permanent home for our teeming population, united with the old country in the strongest ties of language, civil liberty, and fair dealing. It will be a discredit to our history if we do not absorb the Boer element, or, at least, by the very force of numbers show them a more excellent way. Not only the British flag but the
British methods of government must prevail, and only a majority of our race living in South Africa, and not merely making fortunes and returning, can accomplish the great aim of our Empire,—the good of all who belong to it. Settle- ment, not mere gold-hunting, is to be encouraged in all
possible ways.—I am, Sir, &ea AnoLo-SAXON.
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