Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
It was somewhat risky to do so, as the place was full of English inhabitants, and of Afrikanders who did not favour our cause. In fact, I was surrounded by men who would have been only too pleased to do me an injury. I said farewell to Kroonstad at ten o'clock that night, and was carried to Rhenosterriviersbrug, thirty-four miles from Kroonstad, by the last train that left the town.
"The patriotic Boers of South Africa still dream of the day when the two Republics of the Orange and the Transvaal, at first connected by a common customs union, will be consolidated in a single 'African Holland, possibly even in a broader confederacy, comprising all the Afrikanders from the Cape of Good Hope to the Zambesi.
It would be a great misfortune, he added, if the Orange Free State, which had not only lost its property and the lives of many of its burghers but also even its very independence, in the defence of the sister Republic, should now be abandoned by that Republic; that then all confidence in one another and all co-operation between Afrikanders would come to an end for ever: and that, under such circumstances, it would be too much to expect that the African nation should ever be able to rise again.
The military authorities were entirely unacquainted with the character and mannerisms of the Boers, and were advised in this connection by so-called "Cape" or "English" Afrikanders, who bear an ineradicable hatred to the Boers, and who always did their utmost to cause the prisoners to be treated with humiliation and contempt.
There is one point, however, upon which they in common with nearly all the enlightened Afrikanders throughout South Africa may be adjudged to have fallen short in their duty; it is this, that whilst nine times out of ten they divide upon sound principles, they will not follow that policy to a conclusion; for upon the tenth occasion they will subordinate principle and, at the call of one who may use it unscrupulously, will rally upon race lines alone.
There was a general chorus of 'Yaw, yaw, yaw, and grunts of amusement. 'You English, said a well-dressed man, 'die for your country: we Afrikanders live for ours. I said, 'Surely you don't think you will win this war? 'Oh, yes; we will win all right this time, just the same as before. 'But it is not the same as before. Gladstone is dead, they are determined at home.
We knew also, that the Afrikanders, although devoid of all military discipline, had the idea of independence deeply rooted in their hearts, and that they were worthy to exist as a Free Nation under a Republican form of Government. I shall not enter upon all that happened at that meeting.
The selection of educated and intelligent Afrikanders, sincerely desirous of purifying the administration, for such responsible offices as those of State Secretary and State Attorney, was gratefully welcomed by the Uitlander community, who believed that only through the influence of such men consistently and determinedly exerted could a peaceful solution of many difficult questions be found.
We should have sent our forces far into the Cape Colony to get help from our brothers in a war that had been forced upon us by England. The Colonial Afrikanders never had the opportunity of standing by us, because we did not supply them with the necessary ammunition or stretch out our hands towards them.
'I don't know what we poor Afrikanders have done that England won't let us be a nation. I would have replied that I remembered having heard something about 'driving the English into the sea, but I have been over this ground before in every sense, and knew the futility of any discussion. Indeed, when the debate is being conducted with shells, bullets, and bayonets, words are feeble weapons.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking