Hypocrisy of English charges of corruption against the government of the Transvaal—Comparison of Kruger with the Rand capitalists—Personnel of the Transvaal executive—Sketches of Kruger, Joubert, Reitz, Cronje, Kock, Wolmarans, and Burger —Nobility of Boer character—Testimony of Mr. Froude.
The charges made against Mr. Kruger's Government—against what Mr. Chamberlain called a " foreign State " in 1896— were many and various. They may, however, be included in the dual allegation of "corrupt" and "incompetent." What the incompetence or even corruption of a " foreign State" had to do with the duties of a British Colonial Secretary, is not a question that appeared to trouble the minds of English critics. Yet, it is safe to say that, had Prance been guilty of the same responsible relationship as England with the Jameson Raid, and had the French Minister for the Colonies assumed the rights of intervention and of minatory advice claimed after that Raid by Mr. Chamberlain under the Convention of 1884, English opinion would have been unanimous in calling such intermeddling both unjustifiable and wrong.
In any case it would be asked, whether the charges of corruption and of incompetence were really true, or were but allegations founded upon a distortion of facts and an interested manipulation of circumstances creating suspicion but inconclusive in proof. Judgment would not be pronounced without the evidence of some sup-porting testimony, as is the rule with Englishmen when England is herself the judge of both her own and her adversary's case.
Men do not develop dishonest practises when in power, without some previous disposition or record which predisposes them to such an immoral misuse of authority. The honor of a high official position, the responsibilities of national duty, and the satisfaction of a great ambition are the rewards which follow from legitimate political success, and these, among, undegenerate peoples, supply all-sufficient incentives for seeking political power. What is there in Mr. Kruger's career to sustain the theory of a corrupt misuse of the position to which his people had twice elected him? He has spent his life, not in money making, but in the noble task of making a nation. Even his enemies bear evidence to his bravery; to his strong, if rugged, qualities as a leader; to his indomitable will and persistency of purpose, in this great task. Such a task or achievement would not be considered the ambition of a depraved nature or of an ignoble mind—if pursued, say, against French or German or Russian policy. Why, then, should it mean a low and mercenary motive only when England's Imperial interests are alone concerned?
Mr. Kruger's home in Pretoria was an ordinary cottage in one of the city's secondary streets. There were neither costly furnishings within nor expensive display in the outside appearance of the Presidential residence. It would, probably, not compare in structural show or costliness with the house of Lord Salisbury's head gatekeeper at Hatfield. I can assert from actual observation and comparison that the difference between the President's home and the mansions built in Johannesburg by his chief traducers—the former penniless upstarts who made .rapid fortunes under Mr. Kruger's, Government—was as striking as that between an average bank clerk's dwelling and a squire's lordly hall in England. All the external evidences usually denoting wealth were wanting in the life, private and Presidential, of Mr. Kruger.
But it is alleged that he has accumulated great riches, whereas he was poor not many years ago. Here, again, is an instance of insinuation, and not a matter of established fact. But, even if true, why should it follow that such wealth was dubiously acquired? Mr. Alfred Beit was a clerk earning weekly wages in Hamburg, not many years ago. Mr. Cecil Rhodes possessed no riches when he exchanged the climate of England for that of the Kimberley region of South Africa. Members of the precious "Reform Committee" of Johannesburg were able to pay fines of £25,000 to the Transvaal Government, in expiation of a crime of high treason, and this after but a few years' sojourn on the Band, tho they each and all arrived there in search of fortune with the proverbial shilling. Most of these persons are now multi-millionaires. All of them are welcomed into the highest London society; some of them being admitted, it is said, even to the companionship of British Royalty.
The gold of the Transvaal, which has made millionaires of Mr. Kruger's bitterest enemies, has also, doubtless, enriched the President and many of his friends. Mr. Kruger sold a farm, named Geduld, near Boxburg, in 1898, for £120,000. It is now worth millions to the purchasers. He divided the greater portion of the proceeds of this sale among his numerous children, gave certain sums to churches, and loaned £40,000 to the Transvaal Treasury on the very eve of the war—not a penny of which has yet been paid back. When leaving Lourenzo Marquez for Europe, in 1900, he took with him a sum of only £4,000.
Other Boers sold rich farms; the land of the Witwatersrand, now known to have covered the richest gold-reefs in the whole world, was owned by burghers, and was purchased from them by more fortunate speculators. Possibly Mr. Kruger has invested some of his money well and wisely. Rumor asserts that the late Queen Victoria's savings were similarly set aside. The President's salary was £7,000 a year, while his mode of living, simple and economical in keeping with his whole career, would not draw upon more than one-tenth of that salary annually. Here there is another evident source of accumulating wealth, which, when taken into account with the income already referred to, would explain the possession of riches, but of wealth fairly and honorably obtained in his own country.
The capitalists who had flocked to Johannesburg, and the upstart rich who had made rapid fortunes there, were not the masters of the statesmen and politicians of the little Africander nation. They could neither have laws made to suit their own interests and schemes, nor purchase a single seat in the Volksraad. They had tried and failed. [In 1894 they (the capitalists) so far departed from their attitude of abstention as to give money to be used as an electioneering fund for the reform of the Raad. The Raad of 1895 was their experiment. The failure of the experiment was complete. No session in Transvaal history was more clearly disastrous to the interests of justice and good government than the session of 1895. During this session revolution was for the first time commonly talked of. During this session the capitalists came to the determination to espouse the popular cause, and from that moment revolution was inevitable." (The " Times" History of the War, Vol. I., p. 148)] Neither President Kruger, nor his Government, nor the Boer Legislature could be bribed or bought. Here was a state of things which could not be tolerated. England was dominated by landlords and money-mongers; America by Trusts; the Continent of Europe by Stock Exchanges and the Rothschilds; Australia by the Banks. But, the Transvaal was owned and ruled for Land and People! This was opposed to all " enlightened progress," the "welfare of humanity," and "true civilization"; and, therefore, " Down with the reactionary Boer! " became the watchword of that ardent champion of civil and religious liberty, the capitalist millionaire.
The Government of the Transvaal could have had the enthusiastic help and " loyalty" of the Echstein-Beit-Barnato combination of Band " Reformers " at any time, if money were the sole and corrupt aim of its Administration. Obtainable bribes were there by the million, if sought for. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice could have been got by the President and the members of his Executive, if they had only consented to accommodate the machinery of Transvaal rule and laws to the requirements of the capitalist kings who controlled the Rand with a treasury of gold. These mine exploiters ruled the virtuous English Uitlanders completely and absolutely; purchased their leaders, "kept" their press, and subsidized their British loyalty, both in the " Reform " movement, and in the getting up of the precious petition to the Queen. These Anglicized German Jews did all this easily, and, as a matter of capitalistic business and policy, with the English population of Johannesburg and district. But they failed, in every attempt, to purchase, bribe, or exploit the Boer Executive.
It was pointed to, as a conclusive proof of Boer oppression in the taxation of Uitlanders, that a Transvaal revenue of £200,000, before the development of the Rand mines began, mounted to three or four million afterward. This is a sample of the arguments and of the " evidence " put forward by the paid traducers of the Republic to justify a war. But, if "evidence" of this kind and character proves " corruption " against one set of persons, it must stand for the same measure of moral guilt in others.
It was not an easy matter to discover in Johannesburg what were the incomes of the leaders of the British Uitlanders when they first entered the Transvaal. It would have been a task akin to that of searching for the Highlander's breeks. These men soon became enormously rich; not under British, but under Boer rule. They were the accusers of the Government whose country and laws had enabled this wealth to be quickly and easily accumulated. Is it, then, to be contended that great riches, realized in a short time by mere exploiters, are a right and legitimate gain, and that the Government of the country, which, as steward for the State, was the virtual owner of the most valuable gold mines in the world, was not to benefit by the development of these mines? That was the Band doctrine; the belief of the Echsteins, Wernhers, Beits, Barnatos, Phillipses, Goretzes, Neumanns, Rouillots, Eplers, Scholtzes, Birkenruths, Strakoshes, Solomons, Markses, Langermans, Albus, Goldmanns, Brakhauses, Morkels, Steylers, Lilienfelds, Nourses, Joels, Abrahams, Herchhorns, Ninds, Michaelises, Breitmeyers, Haarhoffs, Langes, Orpens, Raynhams, Harrises, Mosenthals, Bernheims, Dreyfusses, Peisers, Sutroes, Bonasses, Becks, Josephs, Anhaeussers, Grimmers, and Wybergs; and of the other "Englishmen" and "Reformers" who, with Mr. Cecil Rhodes, have succeeded in enforcing that doctrine by the arbitrament of war—at a cost to the British people of over £150,000,000 in taxes, and 30,000 lives.
The revenue of the Republic grew economically, as the wealth of the Transvaal was developed; as happens in every other country. It would have grown in similar proportions had Englishmen been its rulers; and it increased more legitimately under Boer administration than did the huge fortunes of the hostile strangers who had arrived almost penniless on the Band.
THE TRANSVAAL EXECUTIVE
The Transvaal Executive preliminary to and during the early stages of the war, consisted of:
President S. J. Paulus Kruger
Commandant-General Piet J. Joubert
State Secretary F. W. Reitz
General Piet A. Cronje
Johannes Hermanus Michael Kock
Jacob Martin Wolmarans
Schalk William Burger
Of Mr. Kruger the world has formed its estimate, and it is not an unfavorable one outside of the British Empire. Like all men who are accounted great, he has his admirers and enemies, his laudatory eulogists and envenomed detractors. Had he struggled for a political lifetime against any other power than that of England, and had fought and damaged the military prestige of any other Empire as he has that of Great Britain, his present foes and vilifiers would have exhausted the English language in terms of unstinted praise, and would have ranked him in history as a fit com-, peer of Hampden, Washington, or Lincoln. But he has fought England and humiliated her military pride, and he is, instead, a corrupt, cunning, hypocritical, and semi-savage foeman!
All who wish to err on the side of charity and of justice, rather than on the opposite side of injustice and malignity in their judgment of him, will accept the patriotic rather than the meaner estimate of the man. It is undoubtedly the more consistent with his whole career and character, and more in keeping with the view which unprejudiced minds have formed of him.
Mr. Kruger is and has always been a sincerely religions man.
All fair testimony on this point goes to establish this fact. His religious scruples have told, not once but often, against his own cause during this war. No stronger proof than this could be found in support of the general Boer belief in the piety of their President.
When in the summer of 1899 it became evident that Mr. Chamberlain's diplomacy was making directly for war, some European officers of high repute offered to have one or two British transports, conveying British troops to South Africa, attacked by torpedo boats at certain points on the voyage. The plans were submitted to competent opinion, and were found to be perfectly feasible. The proposal was laid in due course before President Kruger, and instantly and emphatically rejected as " barbarous and unchristian."
During the earlier stages of the siege of Ladysmith, a plan for using dynamite in the task of forcing the British garrison out its entrenchments was put before Joubert, and discussed between himself and Kruger. Both condemned and rejected the scheme as " unchristian." No hypocrites would have harbored such objections. An unscrupulous politician, making an insincere profession and use of religion, would have had no more objection to the employment of torpedoes and the use of dynamite, under the circumstances, than English generals had to lyddite shells, and to the burning of De Wet's, and Botha's, and De la Rey's farms, and to the " concentration camps" for Boer women and children, as " civilized " methods of warfare. Whatever may be the ultimate judgment of Englishmen upon this old man's Bible reading and religious sincerity, many of his friends and admirers who know of his active interference, on Biblical and Scriptural grounds, with certain plans of younger Boer generals less scrupulous than himself and Joubert, will assign to President Kruger a part responsibility with the dead Commandant-General for the initial blunders of the Boer campaign.
Of General Joubert it is unnecessary to write in defense or in praise. Even English testimony to his chivalry and humanity— now that he is dead—is on record. He has earned the reluctant praise of his enemies, and their appreciation of his personal qualities and military capacity relieves his friends of the task of establishing his claim to a high and honorable reputation which is not denied by his foes.
State Secretary Reitz is an intense Boer Nationalist, a man of refinement and culture, a scholar and a poet. His popularity among the race to which he belongs has been shown in his presidency of the Free State, in the occupancy of the judicial bench, and, later, in the post in which it was his duty, ably assisted by the brilliant young Attorney-General, Mr. Smuts, now a gallant and successful Boer officer in the field, to enter the lists in diplomatic fencing with Sir Alfred Milner and Mr. Chamberlain. No impartial reader of the documents which followed the British Colonial Secretary's despatches in prompt and brilliant sequence of argument and refutation, in the correspondence which preceded the war,' can fail to see the evidence of a virile intellect and of a master of a trenchant, controversial style in the presentation of the Transvaal case. Mr. Reitz clearly and conclusively upheld the justice of his cause, while pitilessly exposing the accusations and shuffling statements of the English Colonial Secretary.
At the outbreak of the war, Mr. Reitz's salary was £3,000. Soon after hostilities began—to be more accurate, on October 17, 1899—a decree of the Executive Council reduced all official salaries as follows: Salaries of £500, 35 per cent.; from £600 to £700, 40 percent.; and in like proportion up to salaries of £1,000; £1,000 to £1,200, 00 per cent.; £1,500 to £2,000, 70 per cent.; £2,000 to £3,000, 75 per cent.; salaries of £3,000 and above, 80 per cent.
All these sweeping reductions affected every member of the Executive and every official of the Government, from the President downward; the higher paid officers being called upon to sacrifice most in proportion to salary.
When Mrs. Reitz and her large family had to leave Pretoria on the entry therein of the British, her husband's whole financial resources could provide her only £300 with which to reach Holland. Mr. Reitz remained behind with the fighting burghers, and is sharing with them to-day the perils and privations of a "no surrender" courage and consistency in patriotic defense of Boer independence.
Reference has been made to the poetic taste and tendencies of Secretary Reitz. The first of the following parodies is said to be from his pen; I know, as a matter of fact, that he is the author of the second:
PROGRESSIONAL
(Dedicated to Mr. Mudyard Pipling)
Gods of the Jingo—Brass and Gold,
Lords of the world by " Right Divine,"
Under whose baneful sway they hold
Dominion over " Mine and Thine."
Such Lords as these have made them rotten,
They have forgotten—they have forgotten.
The Nigger or the Chinee dies,
The Gladstones and the Pitts depart;
But " Bigger Englanders " arise
To teach the world the Raiders' art.
Such Lords as these have made them rotten,
They have forgotten—they have forgotten.
They've " got the Gold, the Ships, the Men,"
And are the Masters of To-morrow;
And so mankind shall see again
The days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
These are the Lords that made them rotten,
They have forgotten—they have forgotten.
Drunken with lust of Power and Pelf,
They hold nor man nor God in awe,
But care for naught but only Self,
And cent, per cent.'s their only Law.
These are their Lords, for they are rotten.
They have forgotten—they have forgotten.
THE WEARING OP THE GREEN
(Pretoria, 17th March, 1900)
They tell me that good honest Pat,
By favor of the Queen,
Has got the right—as well he might—
To wearing of the Green.
Ah, Patrick Atkins, how your breast
Must swell with pride and joy
To think that Mr. Chamberlain
Has found his Irish boy!
Did we not hear, only last year,
That on St. Patrick's Day
Denis Malone in "gaol" was thrown,
And docked of all his pay,
Because—oh dreadful to relate—
This " Soldier of the Queen "
Had with unblushing impudence
Been wearing of the Green?
Now this great change is very strange,
And sure it's puzzling quite,
That what was wrong for centuries long
Should now at last be right!
And that the Dublin Fusiliers
By all may now be seen
Without the fear of punishment
A-wearing of the Green.
But if you say, now tell me pray,
What may this difference "mane"?
Listen to me and you will see
The matter is quite plain.
It means that Paddy now has got
This "favor" from the Queen,
Becase—and that's a fact—becase
He is—so very green!
General Piet Cronje is a prisoner in St. Helena. The world of military criticism has spoken its verdict on his courage and genius in the defensive combats which led up to his surrender at Paardeberg. Even English Jingo malignity has been silenced in his regard since he has written his name in more enduring characters in military history than any of the English generals who fought himself and his 4,000 famished farmers with 40,000 British soldiers and 100 guns.
General Kock, Secretary of the Executive Council, fought and lost the battle of Elandslaagte with 800 Boers against four times that number of British. He was one of the noblest types of living burgher freemen, and received at the hands of his sorrowing fellow-citizens in Pretoria funeral honors as great as those which marked the obsequies of General Joubert. Before the war Mr. Koek was popular alike with British residents and the ordinary citizens of the Transvaal, and has left an absolutely stainless record as a heritage to his family and the Boer nation.
It is notoriously known throughout Afrikanderdom that, as the handsome and stately looking Boer general lay wounded at Elandslaagte, after having made a gallant fight against overwhelming odds, he was stripped of his clothes and robbed of his watch and money, and left for over ten hours unattended on the battle-field.
Mr. Wolmarans was chosen five times in succession as non-official member of the Transvaal Executive Council. He is a Knight Commander of the Order of Orange Nassau. No charges have been made by the virtuous Johannesburg "Reformers" against this colleague of Oom Paul's in the government of the Republic. He is at present in Holland, as one of the Boer Delegates to Europe.
General Schalk Burger has fought in the war from its outbreak to the present hour. He has not been as successful in the field as other Boer generals, but he has shirked no duty or danger, and, tho Vice-President of the Republic, he has acted throughout the campaign in the spirit of a common burgher.
In the absence of Mr. Kruger in Europe, General Schalk Burger is the acting President of the Transvaal Republic.
These seven men were the Executive Council, or Government, of the South African Republic when war was declared. It was against their administration and country that the Echstein-Beit combination of Band capitalists, in conjunction with the Chamber-lain-Milner jingoism, engineered the war. How this administration faced the mighty conflict into which its members were driven, is now matter of history.
Of these members, two out of the seven have given their lives for the Republic in the war. General Cronje is a prisoner in St. Helena. Mr. Reitz and General Schalk Burger are with the commandoes still in the field, while Mr. Wolmarans is in Europe.
Paul Kruger is in exile, and doomed to die there, after learning of the death of two of his sons on the field of battle, and of two more being prisoners of war. He was far removed from the devoted partner of his life, in their old age, and her death in Pretoria, separated from husband and children, is a subject which touches every true man's heart too closely for contemplation.
Thus lives, homes, children, and wealth have been sacrificed by the members of that Government which an ignoble gang of money-mongers calumniated in a reptile Band and Cape Town press; but one will search in vain to find among the foemen of the Transvaal Executive in the field a single name of those who paid for the, Jameson Raid, and who have succeeded in making the British taxpayer pay for the war which promises to be the successful supplement to that sordid and calculated crime.
Of the manly race who were ruled by Mr. Kruger's Government the world now needs to be told very little. They have made themselves the best-known people on earth, by their splendid patriotism, signal valor in the field, and a spirit of self-sacrificing devotion to National freedom without a single parallel in the story of man-kind's struggles for liberty. They have lifted themselves by their deeds high above the racial level to which English calumny tried to lower them in the ranks of civilized nationhood. And, as the Boer people have been raised in universal esteem by the testimony of deeds nobly done, and of sufferings bravely borne during the last three years, the national character, the moral standards, and the military reputation of their unscrupulous foes have sunk correspondingly in the opinion of every civilized community outside of British shores.
Giving his impressions of the Boers in an interview with a reporter of a London paper ('' The Evening News," December 1, 1884), the late Mr. Froude, the English historian, expressed himself as follows:
" First of all, I must tell you that I think very highly of the Boers. I found them in every instance to be honest, truthful, and God-fearing. Uncorrupted by our liberal civilization, they are content as quiet husbandmen to till the soil in South Africa, to raise cattle; in fact, to earn their living rather by hard work than by overreaching their neighbors, while bringing up their families in pious fashion. Morning and evening, servants and sojourners assemble with the family to hear a chapter in the Bible read, and in the prayer that follows this, all join devoutly enough. In all my experience no Boer ever lied to me or prevaricated in any smallest particular.
"I wish I could say as much for our own countrymen in that quarter of the globe. The English settlers in South Africa appeared to me as miserable a set of good-for-nothings as ever I met. Given over body and soul to cants, wedded to humbugs, and averse from truth and honest labor, they could prate of their Attorneys-General, and become eloquent in regard to their ' constitootion'; but in all real faculty and manhood they compared badly with the Dutchmen."
There are no complex qualities in the Boer people. In one sense there is some truth in the saying of their enemies, that they are wanting in " civilization." They arc; but it is in the " civilization " with which we are familiar in Anglo-Saxon countries—that of a godless culture, of refined vice, of divorce courts and immorality, of drunkenness and prostitution. The Boer is very backward in these modern customs, and is altogether lacking in the accomplishments which can conceal the worst appetites of an educated animalism beneath a simulated regard for propriety and religion.
The 130,000 men, women, and children of the Transvaal who were not afraid to fight the British Empire could not be nurtured on such a " civilization." They are the products of a hardy stock, made tougher and stronger in body and mind by the unique environment of their existence. The Boer is neither emotional nor magnetic in his temperament. He is deliberate in thought and in action and rarely influenced by passion; cool and calculating in all his acts, whether making a bargain in a market or a laager on a battle-field; rough in speech and manner, but capable of developed refinement when the training of education brings into play the latent mental forces of a robust and nimble intellect.
The Boers have a stronger attachment to land and the life which its ownership requires than any other civilized race. They possess that pride of personal independence which comes from a conscious lordship of the soil. They have not had to go through the social servitude of a rent-tenancy before reaching the natural dignity of a proprietor. The Boer is a land-owning democrat, owing no homage to any man or class, and feeling in his social independence and burghership of a free Republic that sense of equality and love of freedom which are the inherited and acquired national sentiment of his race. He has all the strong natural traits of a people reared away from the many debilitating influences of city life. He is abstemious when young, loyal to the obligations of marriage, affectionately attached to parents, devoted to the duties of domestic life, and naturally disposed to the social virtue of hospitality.
The Boer woman has all these natural virtues in even greater degree. She is strong in mind and body, and proud of her fidelity to the noblest functions of motherhood in the rearing of children, while being religious, chaste, and intensely patriotic. The Boer mother looks upon the English as the enemies of her race, and believes that no degradation could be greater for her children than the position of paid soldier for her son or of house-servant for her daughter under British rule.
Their experiences of British dealings with South Africa have tended to make the Boers unsociable towards other races. The English are to them the exemplars of modern ways and ideas. They see drunkenness and immorality following in the footsteps of their power, whether in its inroads upon Dutch life or communities, or in its effects upon native races. They look upon the English as mammonized, godless, and unscrupulous, and consider that their example and customs are destructive of that moral manliness which the Boer mother inculcates in her children as the true guardian of their country's religion and of its independence.
The average Boer is a man of strong physique, above the European build, sinewy in structure, and capable of almost any endurance. His out-of-door daily existence; his personal pride in the management of a horse and in the use of a rifle; the acquired alertness of movement and accuracy of eyesight which are bred of his veldt life, with its varied herding, hunting, and health-giving occupations, have all combined to mold the men who have fought the best fight for freedom of which human history gives us a record. They are to-day showing the world, by their capacity and their measureless sacrifices for liberty, their preeminent claim over the British to the permanent and paramount right of nationhood in South Africa. And this right their virile and prolific land-loving race are yet destined, by the laws of fitness and of nature, to vindicate and enjoy.
