To the Editor of the ‘Cape Times‘
Sir,-There are many old residents in South Africa who could relate conversations similar to that which appears in your issue of to-day between Mr. Theo. Schreiner and Mr. Reitz, although to the majority of our British fellow-colonists the inner teaching of the Bond propaganda has come as a surprise only recently, because when they heard seditious harangues by Bond members at meetings of farmers’ associations and among other local coteries, they attached little importance to it, as at the time they had not the means of knowing how widespread and far-reaching was the evil There is one paragraph, however, in Mr. Schreiner’s letter of which I disapprove, because he gives the accused the benefit of a doubt where no doubt need exist. He says, ‘Although I have been obliged in this record of an historic reminiscence to mention the Afrikander Bond, I do not wish to be supposed to be attacking that body as it exists in the Cape Colony at the present time, or to accuse it of backing Mr. Reitz up in his declaration of war against the British Empire.
Its leaders claim that it and they are loyal to England. So be it! My object is to show that, not the British Government, but the Republics - led by Kruger, Reitz, Steyn, and their co-workers - have been steadily marching on towards this war, and consciously plotting for it, ever since the ‘magnanimous’ retrocession of the Transvaal by England, and even before the Witwatersrand Gold-fields were discovered.’
Now, sir, those who have watched the movement in country districts more closely than Mr. Schreiner probably has done, maintain that the Bond wire pullers in Cape Town are at the bottom of the whole business. Years ago there were young farmers (Dutch as well as English) who quietly withdrew from the Bond, giving as their reason that its objects were treasonable. At a later period men began to discover that the organization was dropping its more fiery political creed, and was settling down to do useful work in the farmers’ interests generally. But never was anything more clear than that the head-centre and his coadjutors found that they had been going a little too fast. Accordingly the order went out that in future milk must be the food for babes in treason, and that the strong meat must be reserved for the older conspirators. To this day the leopard has not changed his spots, and he never will. Reitz and company would never have been heard of outside their own villages, had they not chanced to be on the spot where the Bond armoury and treasure chest were started out of the earnings of a peaceful industrial population. Had the dear Bond friends of the farmer transferred their energy from political agitations to the fostering of agricultural pursuits, the Cape Colony would not to-day have to import the bulk of its food from over sea, while the value of its produce shipments would have doubled.
I am, etc.,
Briton.
Cape Town, November 6,1899.
