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Show RIDER HAGGARD 01 BOER WAR BELIEVES THE BURGHEES ARE OVERRATED AS SOLDIERS. !- .: ' " ' ' '' The Conflict Was Inevitable Fundamental Funda-mental Cause Is Old Racial Prejudice Preju-dice Between English and Dutch. . Rider Haggard thinks the Boer war wag inevitable. Of the fighting abilities abili-ties of the. Boer, he has about the same opinion that Americans hold as to the Spaniards, our late enemies, that' is, that their best fight is put up behind intrenchments. These, opinions, however, how-ever, he expressed before an Irish and an English regiment and a battery surrendered sur-rendered to the despised Boers. Mr. Haggard has had ample Importunities Impor-tunities for forming his judgment. ' He is one of the few survivors, now onlv three or -four in number, of the party that accompanied Sir T'heopholis Shep-ctone Shep-ctone on his mission to the Transvaal which resulted in the annexation of that country on April 12, 1877. ' Sir. Haggard says: "The fundamental cause of the war is the old racial jealousy jeal-ousy between the English and the Dutch., We treated the Dutch badly in the Cape by traducing their characters charac-ters and being philanthropic at their expense in the matter of the release of the slaves, when a great part of the compensation money never reached their pockets. That, however, is about all we. have to blame ourselves for, except ex-cept in alio wing-;. them to set up independent inde-pendent republics beyond the Vaal. . "The immediate clauses of the- war come from the contempt -of the up-country up-country Boer, for the British power, which is made use of by the ambitious wirepullers of. the Dutch party to forward for-ward their secret scheme of driving the English flag out. of South Africa and establishing a great-Dutch republic from the Zambesi to the Cape. The now declared offensive and defensive alliance of the Free State with the Transvaal, and their determination to make common cause against us unmasks un-masks the whole conspiracy. But all this has become .purely academical, since we have to deal now with war, and not with its causes, which war has been forced upon us by the Boers. , "I think that the war which, we have to right a hateful war, in my opinion comes upon us as a kind of judgment. because in 1S81 we cruelly deserted the loyalists Boer, English and Kaffir in the Transvaal. The Boers, . whatever their faults, would hava been incapable of such conduct, and they could not understand it in us. They put it down to fear, and from that moment have waited for an opportunity to drive us out-of South Africa. "We reserved e'qual rights to all the inhabitants of the Transvaal territory. It was the last rag with which we covered cov-ered the nakedness of our surrender. But where are those rights today? Piece by piece, under the name of law and without it.-.they have. been filched away and repudiated, until now the man who is called an Outlander,. and who ought to have exactly the same full privileges privi-leges as any burgher in the country, because the convention guaranteed theim, has no more rights than a Zanzibar Zan-zibar siave. "The unpopularity of the Outlanders in England is accounted for in 'two ways. The British public has never heard anything heroic about them, nothing that appeals to the national pride; their tale is a tale of complaints and fiights. This is not their fault, or at any rate the fault of thfe mass of them; it is- their .' misfortune, which, however, undoubtedly has .oroduced an effect upon the public "mind. ' Tne second sec-ond reason is that the man in the. street thinks of an Outlander a a.' millionaire, million-aire, with a palace in Park lane and half a county of deer forest; as' a per-too, per-too, on whose account we;-are going to spend millions .of money, and 'nobody knows how many lives cf brave' men in order that he, without riskinga finger fin-ger or a halfpenny beyond his. income tax, ' may. see his kingly '. revenues doubled and trebled. Of -course, the judgment 'is unjust, as, to begin with, not one Outlander in 5,000 'is a" millionaire, million-aire, or ever will become .one." "The real thing is whether' England is or is not going to remain' .dominant ; n R.-mtli Af7-irn A c m-on tho Rnorc arl mit, the real fight is a fight . for the flag of England. I think that the government gov-ernment deserves great credit, knowing know-ing what they must expect, .for the determined de-termined way in "Which they are1 facing the situation. How can the war be popular pop-ular among a people of whom a great proportion entirely misunderstand . the real issues and believe, with the liberal forwards, that it is waged to increase the wealth of a few millionaire' Outlanders? Out-landers? . .-; ; - "In my opinion, it is a dreadful war, and no success can make it otherwise, because of the legaey'o'f hatred which it must leave behind it. How many generations must .gp by'before the Eoer child ceases to be taught by its mother to hate the Englishman! "The war was ' unavoidable; we are paying for 1881. .. "I believe that, ff generals could only be got to understand it, the Boers could ! be conquered without any advance at ! all by sitting still around their boundaries, bound-aries, fighting: the fight of the "sit I down,' as the Zulus call it. If Sir George Colley would have sat still in 1SS1 it was the general opinion that the I Eoers would have melted away without a blow being struck. The Botr will not keep long in the field -at one time. His cry is always 'Huis-toe!' (home). He will not wait in the veld for an indefinite indefi-nite period. I think him overrated as a soldier. . Since the game has gone he does not shoot as his father did. There is no man on earth so cautious of his i own life as the Eoeri He has always I been reported to be so fond of fighting, j but few people understand his idea ot fighting. It is to sit in a laager or behind rocks himself and shoot men in the open. This 'is' what he did at Bronker's Spruit. Laing's Nek and at Ingogo; indeed. Bronker's Spuit was nothing but a massacre, where unprepared unpre-pared British soldiers were shot down by Boers who already had pegged their distances carefully. . That is what they did also in all the Kaffir wars; the Boers in laager received the assault j of numbers of brave but unarmed Kaf- I firs, whom they beat of with their elephant ele-phant guns with little loss of life to themselves. With .the single exception of the Weenen masacre by the Zulus, which was not a fight, they never lost any great number, and then the victims, vic-tims, for the most part, were women and children. The only occassion when they met English soldiers in the open, under the command of Sir Harry Smith, at Boomplatz, they were at once signally defeated. "Majuba stands by itself. When the Eoers saw Sir George Colley's force upon the top of the mountain they in-spanned in-spanned their wagons for flight; then by an, afterthought they sent the reconnaissance recon-naissance of about "eighty men up the hill. These men, who were' gradually reinforced by others until they may have reached a total of 300. finding that not a bullet touched them, all passing over their heads, went on until they got near the brow, whereupon the British lied. I talked afterward to one of the three Boers whom we hit upon that occassion. He showed me the groove along his temple where the" bullet had grazed him. 'The rooibatjes nearly did it for me, mynheer,' he said. 'but Alle- machter, I paid Jthem out. I sat upon a stone and shot them as they ran down the hill, roling them over, net as die bocke (just like buck): het was j alle lecker' (it was very nice). That same man said to me, 'But I bear no malice; in future, if an Englishman touches his hat to me I shall acknowl-elge acknowl-elge it.' After that I came to the conclusion con-clusion that the Transvaal border was no place for Englishmen. "The natives," Mr. Haggard thinks, "probably will attack their ancient j enemies, the Boers, unless we can prevent pre-vent them.' They hate the Boers, and with gocd reason. It was their hatred of the Boers, for instance, that cost us I the Zulu war; and I remember at the I time the difficulty that Sir Melmoth i Osborn had in preventing them from attacking the Dutch in the course of the 1SS1 rebellion. "White must stand against black. The Boers and ourselves are of common com-mon stock that is the sad part of this I struggle. We cannot see their wives and children put to- the assegai. -It seems posisble that the end of all this miserable business will be that we shall have to fight native races, such as cur old friends and allies, the Swa-zis, Swa-zis, who, contrary to our solemn; promise, prom-ise, as defined by the convention, we have abandoned to the Eoers, in order to prevent them from fighting our enemies. ene-mies. "If we are to stay in South Africa, we must rule In South Africa: it is a case of govern or go. And if we go, then goodby to the prestige of Great Britain throughout the world." , |
