Untitled

Evening Star, Issue 12883, 4 August 1906, Page 6

Thk attention of the people of the British Empire is again concentrated Th e upon South Africa. That

Transraal country of many blacks and Constitution. few whites, of sparse eettle-

menfc and largo lmreproductive industries, of arid landscape and inhospitable bujh, occupies a larger space in the consultations of Imperial statesmen a.nd in the conversation of the Anglo-Saxon world than do the prosperous and growing nations of Canada and Australasia. Nor it the reason hard to seek. South Africa is the keystone of the Empire. The Power that holds Cape Colony and the contiguous territory can direct the destinies of the Southern Hemisphere, and maintain uninterrupted communication between the Motherland in the, far north and her remotest oversea possessions. Hence the future of the Transvaal ajid Orangia Colonies ceases to be a question in which only the rights and claims of a few Dutch farmers and a few hundred mine-own rs are involved. It is infinitely more momentous, and is fraught with immeasurably greater results. The policy which the Imperial Government propose at this hour to decide is one that may, quite conceivably, spell disaster to the British in Africa, and ruin to the British elsewhere. We are apparently once more at a crisis in our history where and when the chances of doing the wrong thing are. equally as certain as tho>e of doing the right. Boer and Briton are again, face to face, and the odds seem favorable to the former. Both nations have met and fought in the past, when, no matter what the outcome of the military campaign has been, time has invariably left the Boer in a position either to dictate terms or to command obedience. There are several cau6C for this result, but the chief was to be found in the fact that the conquest of Southern Africa was attempted a century too late. The methods of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century were not the methods of the men of the last thirty years. In South Africa there was a white race in possession, and the instincts of the British Democracy would have revolted against the introduction of a form of colonisation built on the ruined homes and slaughtered bodies of the first settlers. Hence a policy of what has been variously termed "pusillanimity" and "white feather" and "scuttle." Great Britain swallowed the affront of Majuba, and refused to countenance the irregular agitation that culminated in the Jameson Raid. She honestly believed that the Beer did not resent British suzerainty, and that he would concede equal rights and fair play to British subjects. ' The Boer, under the Kruger regime, hardly lived up to this ideal, and a series of intolerable restrictions and high-handed acta of administration were crowned by the issue of an ultimatum in the early days of October, 1899. It was then, and for the first time, that the Empire realised what a hostile and foreign South Africa meant to her future unity and prestige. The last act in the Boer War was the Vereeniging Settlement in 1902, by which the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies were formally recognised by the Boor leaders as being under King Edward's lawful authority, whilst the Boer people on their part were assured fair treatment. Then came the tug of war. The Boers, it was alleged, through their associations and unions, at once sought to gain by clamor what they had lost by the sword. Three part.es, representing respectively the British, the Boer, and the Afrikander, emerged from the chaos, under tho designations of Progressive, Het Volk, and Responsible Government. The first include the mineowners, the ablest among the publici-ta, and the strongly pro-British sections; the second embrace the old Dutch and Boer elements ; and the third are similar to what we understand by the term colonists. Thev arc for the most part the eons of British and otliex pweotago, "who, though born in. Africa^

remain loyal to the Flag. In numbers and consistent sentiment the Boers rank first; in influence, wealth,/and enterprise the Progressives arc the superior; and the Responsible Government, or Colonial National Political -Association, who may be regarded as the Moderates-, constitute, numerically and politically, a sort of halfway house between the extremists. As far as the outside world and the British Press, are concerned, the Progressives speak with authority that enables them to put- their case convincingly before the masses of the people at Homo and in the colonies. It is well, however, to remember that even in Johannesburg there are many who do not bow the knee to Baal. Mr Solomon, president of the Responsible Government Association, speaking in that city on June 20, said:

Sir Percy FitzPatrick, according to a recent speech of his, was endeavoring to undo Lord Selborne'a work of reconciHaimn - -? f u * succeeded, South Africa would, in Sir Percy's own words, be the cunse of the Empire. Het Volk had renounced their demand for a population basis of representation with a view to assisting Sir West Ridgcway's Committee, and he appealed to the Progressives to accept the Committee's proposals and thus put an end to the misery. The Association's work was completed, and it was intended to form an association with a wider scope and with a moderate policy.

Sir Percy, who will be .best remembered as the author of ' The Transvaal from Within,' has not seen fit to accede to Mr Solomon's appeal, but has carried his propaganda and his work right into the heart of the British electorates. In eloquent and passionate terms he warns tho Imperial Government, the colonies, and tho subjects of the King throughout the Empire that a Constitution based on manhood suffrage means Boer domination, and therefore the ultimate loss of South Africa to Britain. Unfortunately for Sir Percy, a new factor has come into play in the Transvaal since his first successful pleadings on behalf of British -supremacy. Tens of thousands of Chinese coolies have been introduced into the Rand mines, and whatever be our opinion as to the juslice and wisdom of that importation, this, at least,' is certain, and muii be taken into account by every member of the South African Progressive party: the rank and fi!o of the British and colonial electorates are intensely opposed to and bitterly indignant at it. How deep this antipathy is and how luridly it has colored the whole South African question Sir Percy FitzPatrick has probably now learned. It is unfortunate for hirn and his friends that it should bo so, but the open hostility of largo numbers of our fellow subjects, who were at one time enthusiastic loyalists, to everything South African, is due not to any real change in sentiment, but to disgust at what is held to be a breach of faith and a scandal. We believe that were it not for this Chinese quastion there would be no sign of coldness in tho colonies and no senous indifference in Great Britain to the necessity of strengthening and safeguarding the Imperial authority. But coolie labor has beyond doubt obscured the view of hundreds of members of Parliament and hundreds of thousands of electors to the serious peril of the more vital question of British supremacy.

Such, we think, may be accepted as a skeleton outline of the present stato.. of parties in the Transvaal, and, hasty and imperfect though it be, it will sufficiently indicato the gravity and tho greatness of the responsibility that rests upon Sir H. Camptell-Barinerman's Ministry. It is proposed to grant a Constitution under which all power may be restored to lie hands of the men whom Great Britain spent £150,000,000 and sacrificed 20,C00 lives to subduo. How near this possibility is Mr Winston Churchill, in his announcement of the Government's decisions, has now yet forth. The fate of a probable British majority would depend upon the votes of " two or three," and it would bo "a godsend," he declared, if a Coalition .Government, as oppo ed to a pro-British or a pro-Boer Administration, were to come into being. The population figures are dangerously siiggestivo as to the probable results of a General Election at the beginning of next year. There are 53,017 British white adults'over twenty-one years of age and 53,106 Dutch, but, we imagine, under the division of seats proposed in the Government scheme there will be a clear British majority in the new Parliament. Mr Balfour and Mr Lyttelton, both competent critics, have, we regret taken a despondent view, the ex-Premier being especially scathing in the terms of his denunciation of what he called "an unprecedented, audacious, and reckless experiment." Lord Milner says the Government's scheme is to " precipitately risk placing the "whole Executive, power in the hands of " men who were totally unfit for it"; and Mr W. T. Stead states that the Boers, with the help of their British sympathisers, will be able to command a permanent majority. We cannot, with our imperfect information and in the absence of first-hand knowledge, pronounce judgment on Mr Balfour's predictions. They may be baseless or true in every detail; but we cannot deny that the risk is there. The questions, therefore, are : Can the Boer be trusted? Is he honestly determined to work out his destiny along British lines, and will he loyally accept the inevitable and cease from thoughts of war?