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The Boer Government posed as innocent; the designs of the Afrikaner Bond were not even suspected its ranks, in sympathy with those delusions sped on filling up faster than ever, and the father of lies was scoring another very sensible triumph.
It was then, about thirty years ago, that a well-informed, influential and unscrupulous coterie in Holland devised the fell projects which developed into that potential association since known as the Afrikaner Bond.
We have seen fanaticism resulting in the fierce revolt of Mahdism in the north, and are now awaiting the issue of the war brought on by Afrikaner Bondism in the south.
The President, addressing the burghers and all present, replied in about the following terms: The proposal just then made by Advocate Peeters had pained and offended him; the festive event would be marred by that incident were it not that it afforded him the opportunity, which he otherwise would have missed, of telling them all what he thought of the Afrikaner Bond that it was an evil thing; he could not find terms strong enough to warn the people against its subtle seductions.
My brain was a medley of Scripture precedents, and I was determined that no safeguard should be wanting. We yoked the oxen again and drove the ploughs over the site of the grove. It was rough ploughing, for the place was thick with bits of stone from the tower, but the slow Afrikaner oxen plodded on, and sometime in the afternoon the work was finished.
The men received full burghership as a rule soon after arrival, exempt from the formalities and probation prescribed by law. Holland being the locality of the inception, I may say the ingestion, of the Afrikaner Bond, one's thoughts are apt to retrace, by way of contrast, that little nation's creditable past.
Every Boer has since been more than ever so persuaded, the conviction fanning the fervour of patriotism and stimulating his eagerness to resist the would-be ravishers of his country. Considering, on the other hand, that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations.
"Is his father a Kauffmann?" "What the divil is a Kauffmann?" the major asked impatiently. "Is it a merchant you mean?" "Ah, a merchant. One who trades with the Afrikaner?" "The same." Von Baumser took a bulky pocket-book from his inside pocket, and scanned a long list of names therein. "Ah, it is the same," he cried at last triumphantly, shutting up the book and replacing it.
Bond patriotism was not long subjected to the strain of individual contributions and unpaid performances. When the Transvaal revenues advanced with such giant strides the Afrikaner Bond leaders in that State contrived arrangements by which the financial requirements were supplied from State receipts. Nor was the least compunction felt in doing so.
The Afrikaner Bond professed its objects to be peace and harmony, but it really contained the pernicious seeds of division and strife, to set up enmity between English Afrikaners and Boer Afrikaners. He pointed out the sincerity of friendly relations on the part of England towards both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics.
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