The End of the Trek.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7534, 7 May 1903, Page 7

The End of the Trek.

(London Daily Mail.)

The great trek of the Peacemaker, the Moathlodi, the Man Who sets things straight, is finished. As the night of the twenty-fifth of February—it was just sixty-one days after the historic landing at Durban—came down over tne mountain and the bay at the other end of the wide white-gleaming stretch of foam which the pounding screws were flinging out astern, the landward scent; was just like any augur might have made of it according to his fancy or his politics. The night mist had fallen on the waters and above it lay the long .line of electric lights stretching from Wynberg on the left to Sea Point on the right, and in the middle of it, like the central star of a diamond necklace, shone the glow of Capetown. A few scattered gems twinkled away up towards the Kloof, and then came the black looming mass of the Tablecloth. Above this a dun-red band of light linked east with west. Then came blackness again for a space, and above all shone the clear, star-studded firma munt, with the Cross floating- high up toward the zenith.

Truly a night sky of varied omens and signs of good and evil purport which since then have been read anxiously and in many moods in farm and dorp and city throughout the wide land through which the Peacemaker has tickked, setting things more ot less straight according to his own strength and the good or evil will of those to whom are spoke the words of his wisdom.

SEEN IN PERSPECTIVE

But now the screws have ground the waters of the Atlantic'through some seventy-five degrees of latitude. The cheers are growing fainter in our ears, and the listening crowds and the flattering flags till lately seen too close for true proportion and perspective, may now be viewed with juster, and more critical vision. Truth to tell, they do not look quite so imposing now, seen across these many leagues of water, and the keener oars of memory are beginning to detect not a few false notes in the choruses of acclamations, which but lately seemed to ring so true.

It is not that the man himself is less. It is only because we are looking at him through the • other end of the telescope, which, by the way, is not a bad way of looking at men and tilings when you form a fairly just estimate of their' magnitude and importance. So, too, with his oratory, " most dangerous of the gifts of the immortal gods," as a wise man once called it. "When the stream was flowing we watched the sweep of its flood and listened to the rhythm of its music.. We had no time to explore the backwaters and to take note of the dry places which it left unfertilised. "tfow we can do both, and in assessing the account, let us begin, as is only just, with the credit side.

A great work has been done. Of that there can be no doubt, even in the minds of those- who cursed the mission in their hearts while perforce they blessed it with their lips. And yet it is not here so much a question of its greatness as of its completeness. For the first time since there was a Britain Beyond the Seas responsibility in tho flesh has crossed those seas to sco with its own eyes, and hear with its own ears and for the first time since Britain began her conquering march of Empire a war-maker has m his own person become a peace maker.

THE HAND THAT GRIPPED

A people scant in numbers, but warlike, proud, suspicious, stiffnecked and aloof, has been fought to a finish and in the hour of its defeat has been treated with a generosity so strangely great that ignorance has taken it for weakness, whether of hand or heart' ; and, rather as conqueror rhan conquered has bodily demanded that it shall be mad»

more generous still. It vras a position that needed a- clear eye to sec and a strong hand to grip. Happily for the permanence of tho Pax Britarmica it was quickly mado the hand had gripped, when, after that historic indaba in the Raadzaal at Pretoria, the Boer leaders confessed to each other,though not wittingly to the world, that here at least was a British statesman who knew his own.mind and that of his King and people —no haggling politician bent on a bargain that would win for him a little cheap applause as once- was done at the cost of blood and shame under the shadow of Majuba, but a man of straight-flung words and few, who spoke from the judgment seat rather than in the market place.

And this has been the salient feature of the whole work as well as of the worker's way of doing it—the ever-increasing purpose which consistently grew with widening knowledge and tightening grasp. and the tireless industry which indicated the determination of inflexible will. Those who have felt the force of it have told me that not all his eloquence or h s pitilessly persuading logic impressed the men whom he went out to bring over to the side of the Empire half as much as this one all-convincing fact. "I have come here to learn," he said, when he made his first announcement of policy after the J-.snoheon at the Marine Hotel in Durban. " I have come here in a. spirit of friendship, of conciliation, but also a spirit of firmness." As he said this the heavens themselves thundered their applause, as they did many a time after. and from that moment all South Africa began to learn what manner of man was carrying its destinies in his hand.

A REVELATION.

From that moment the learner began to be the teacher. Indeed, it is not too much to say that to the majority of the citizens of the late Republics tho tour of the Peacemaker has been little less than a revelation. It has brought them from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, and put them face to face with the things that are. For this reason alone wo have good reason to take heart of grace and hope that the gospel of peace and loyalty which he took with him to Africa may not be altogether as the seed which fell on stony ground.

The Peacemaker has done his work to the utmost of human ability, but the results do not lie with him. They will be evolved out of the slow working of of the Boer intellect clogged by its two-hundred-year-old ignorance, its almost invincible suspicion, and its often self-deceiving slimness. "Don't be too sanguine ail at once. C'Waacht een beitje'\ said Jan Hofmeyer to me the morning we sailed, " they have not done shouting yet. The Dutchman takes timo to think—and, remember, he has had British promises made to him before." There was a twinkle in the keen old eyes as ho spoke, which said a good deal more than his words. There, for the present, the results of the trek must remain—on the knees of the gods and in the minds of the Dutch whose memories, be it not forgotten, go back beyond '36, the year of tho great betrayal. They are waiting for England to make good the words of her Imperial spokesman.

" I come back to you in a spirit of hopefulness, nay, even in a spirit of confidence," he said on Saturday at Southampton. The words where an echo of that first definite pronouncement of policy in Durban whose promise since then has been so well fulfilled. THE RIGHTS OF THE LOYALISTS. But there are others besides the Dutch who are waiting in South Africa for Britain to fulfil her plighted word ; men who, never counting the cost of devotion, risked everything and lost much to keep half a Continent for the Motherland while she made her all too tardy preparations for conquest I, who have followed the Peacemaker through every mile of the great trek, whould be the last to sound a note that would jar on the harmony of the chorus which has welcomed him home from the fields of his well won triumphs. Still, it is the plain duty of him who has seen to say that which his eyes have shown him. The Peacemaker has made peace between the conquerors and the conquered.- For the sake of the most precious of all our Imperial heritages—the loyalty and devotion of the gallant sons of the daughter nations—let him see to it that, having set the house of the whilom enemy in order, ho does not leave our friends and helpers homeless.

It is a great and a good work to make friends of your enemies. It is the worst of statesmanship to make potential enemies of your friends. Surely no man can believe to-day that Moathlodi will leave this grievous tangle in the warp and woof of Empire unstraightened out. Yet as this is done or left undone so will the augurs who never err read the omens of the last South Afcican sky that Joseph Chamberlain looked upon.