TRANSVAAL.

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 August 1901, Page 1

TRANSVAAL.

THE BASER KIND OF BOER

I (By Edgar Wallace, in the Daily Mail.)

STANDERTON, June 8. One of the idiosyncrasies of English temperament is the desire to find fault with work well done because it has not been done better. However satisfied we are with the results of a battle, our satisfaction is invariably tempered by the length of our casualty list, while on the other hand, if we by any chance effect » movement with little or no loss to ourselves, the doubt will probably occur in the minds of nine out of ten intelligent critics,; "Would not this movement of General Blank's have been even more prolific in results had he , moved with less caution?" After all, it is only a superficial criticism ; the thing that men who open their morning papers in the train snap across the carriage to one another. In their innermost; hearts they know we are doing our best out here—that we don't throw away our lives to get our names into the paper, or crawl on our hands and knees across the veldt to avoid casualties. I say all this, because I do not know how you will accept the VlakfonteinNaauwpoort fight, accounts of which I •have cabled you. IT WAS A VICTORY. I was near Pietersburg, about 200 miles away from the scene of the fight, when it occurred, and by the greatest luck in the world I heard of it within a couple of hours. As fast as a joggling, rattling, South-Eastem-likc goods train could carry me I was on my way back to Krugersdorp' & few hours afterwards. Until I got to Krugersdorp I was not certain whether we were to call this last affair of ours a disaster or a great victory, and a victory in spite of our heavy causalty list. Not only did we drive off an enemy outnumbering us by three to'one, but by the splendid dash of our infantry we have established the irrefutable, fact that, in spite of 20 months' hard fighting and tedious trekking, and the" lugubrious viewa of the Times correspondent notwithstanding, the. old hands are just as fit and just as keen as ever. And it was a moral victory also. Abandoning the old methods of dropping the butfcend of a rifle on the wounded soldier's face, when there was none to see the villainy, the Boer has; done his bloody work ,in.the light of day, within sight of, a dozen eye-witnesses, and the stories we have hardly dared to hint, lest you thought we had grown hysterical, we can now tell without fear of. ridicule. The Boers murder wounded men. Yes, the gentle, bucolic Boer, who was forced to take up the rifle, purchased for him a dozen years before by a paternal Government, to guard the independence of his country, may be placed in the same category as the Matabele, the Mashona, the Dervish, the Afridi, and with every other savage race with whom Britain has waged war. And the soldier who is stricken down on»the field is no more certain that his life will be spared by his brother Boer than he was that brother Fussy would pass him by. " A FREQUENT INCIDENT. You will say that the Boers have not consistently killed off our wounded. Indeed, there are instances where they have treated our men very well. That is so; under Commandant fie la. Rey's eye these atrocities would never have been committed, and the wounded soldier within-j view of that, or any other Boer commandant of his order of intelligence, would have been as safe as any Christian who sought sanctuary at the feet of Li Hung Chang. • The murdering of the wounded has been a common feature of the war, but except in one .or two cases we have had none other than circumstantial evidence: Oh the day of the sortie from Kimberley half a dozen m«n swore that the wounded who fell with Scott-Turner had been deliberately murdered, and similar instances have dome to light during the campaign. What does this prove? It proves the truth of a statement that has been made before, and proves it'better than the amount of alj-

stracfc reasoning would do—the Boer is half a savage. I make this statement dispassionately, without-feeling any greater resentment towards the Boer than I should were I describing the cat as half a tiger. He is a savage not from wickedness, nor from any criminal effort, only just because, like Dr Watt's dog, it is his nature to. Three stages marked the advance of primitive man from absolute savagery to civilisation, the "finding," the "raising," and the "making" stages. At present the Boer ia but in the "finding." As primitive man learned first to _ find and kill animals for his consumption, and then ■with the first glimmerings of intellect reasoned that it would not oe at all a bad idea, if 'he herded or stored some of the findings, and so became a cattle farmer, so did the voortrekker turn from pothunting to herding, and there he has stuck. EXPLAINING HIS SAVAGERY. The average Boer is a cattle farmer pure and simple, very few have learned to produce from the land for the_ market, and consequently the aboriginal is further advanced economically than he, for the | native raises a considerable crop, having reached the second stage, and his success in the third being merely a- matter for education and time to- assure. I am speaking now of the Transvaal and Orange Eiver Colony Boers, since one industry in the Cape Colony thrives languidly, as the wine farmers of the Western Province will tell you. The Boer does not "raise" for the market; indeed1, he even depends on the native crops for his own meagre requirements, and by this fact alon^ he umst take second place to the native in the standard of economic utility, since the jKaflir can, apart from other sources, sustain an independent existence, that is, he can live by his own winnings from the, The Krugerian regime is all to blame for this, not only for the ignorance and unintelligence of the Boers in the two Republics, but for the conservatism which 'made the burgher of the Cape .Colony re[ject any attempt to..educate.'bin*. The Transvaal gave the lead; it made the pace of progress. The dogmatism of its orthoidox educational methods was the faith of the Free State, and the unassailable creed of the Africander. As fast as the South African Republic moved along, the road 'that leads to enlightenment, and a wider and more comprehensive view of life and men, so fast did the Free State and the Cape Colony move. Only, unfortunately, the Transvaal did not move at all, and the rest of Dutch Africa remained cor- ' respondingly stagnant. No attempt was made by the Krugerian Government —no honest attempt—Ito bring light to the enlightened. No effort was made to educate the burghers to a knowledge of their possibilities. They did not realise the potenI tialities with which an accident of fortune i had endowed them. t The discovery of gold at Johannesburg might have been for them the gift of the gods had a. wise and honest Administration been theirs. The finding of gold1, and the consequent influx of capital and people into the country might have brought about a social revolution, making the farmer a real factor in the development of Somth Africa. Indeed, the gold discovery was the very challenge of Fate. STATE-AIDED BURGHERS. But the existence of the Krugerian regime rested solely on the ignorance of ! the farmer, and the Boer; instead of being encouraged to produce, was offered every inducement, to stagnate. A price was put on his indolence. Hs ■was told times without number that, so long as his' vote was given in the right ! direction, the State would see that he did | not want. He was taught to look upon ' the Uitlander as the tfoosy whose gulden esrgs were to save him from worrying about | tfie future. President Kruger's system of ! teaching soon resulted in a very fine crop of State aided "poor burghers." What was farcically termed the agricultural com; munity of the Transvaal was in reality a j voting community. A. man was not valued because he enriched the land, or be--1 cause he improved the breed of cattle, or because lir seriously attempted towards the amelioration of the farming classes, but because he was a voting unit; he could be depended on to return to Parliament some

one-who would legislate to the Uitlandcrs' discomfort —and incidentally to the Boer's advantige. Kruger crippled the farmer— or rather, with all the innate cunning that characterised his rale, ,he assisted the farmer to cripple himself. So much has been written on the system, by which the Pretorian oligarchy was upheld that I have only touched on this aspect, and that to adduce.a reason for tho many otherwise inexplicable exhibitions of savagery which have from time to time "staggered humanity." Education is not necessarily an elementary knowledge of the arts; it is the cognisance and appreciation of humanity—its laws, its emotions, its boundless possibilities. And Kruger has stifled the Boers' education in its birth, and the (Javah of his well-thumbed Testament shall judge him by his opportunities.