LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE LATE MISS MARY KINGSLEY ON THE BOERS.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] • think the following extract from a letter written. by may interest late Miss Mary Kingsley just before her death ay
interest your readers.—I am, Sir, &c., A.
" I shall as soon as possible leave South Africa and go back to West Africa, for I hate South Africa. The whole atmosphere seems reeking with lies; you can believe no one, and no one believes yon, and as a general rule this state of mind is safe and suited to the region. I do not like such regions, that is all. In West Africa there is left some honour, some trust in a mans word. I have now had, as the medical men would say, some three hundred Boers under observation.' They have for the most part been delirious, and talked their minds pretty freely, and it is certain, whatever their leaders may be, these men are simple—fools, from my individual point of view. They believe in the Old Testament in a way English people do not. They, the Boers, believe in it like the negro believes in his ju-ju. Well, the Old Testament code of honour is extremely bad, saving your presence, and the Old Testament view of the responsibility of the chosen people—i.e., in this case the Boers—to any other race is also very low. Their view is that Jehovah gave them the Transvaal as their Canaan. If you can understand such a state of mind, they are Jews, and everything promised by Jehovah is their private property. A more dangerous form of religion they could not have, for apart from it they have all the virtues of Dutchmen,—the tenacity of purpose, the independence of character, end if it be a virtue, the keen love of their own land. It is not their own if any one else, black or white, has a claim to power in it. It seems to me a mere waste of time to deal with a tender leniency towards the Boer's political feel. ings. It is no mortal use explaining to him the individual advan- tages he will have as a citizen of the British Empire. It is not his Empire, and he will take every concession you give him, profit by every advantage you give him, and use all his increased power to get back his own country for himself. The only thing to do with them is to so utterly defeat them that they will realise it is no mortal use their thinking they can in this generation regain their own land, and then educating the next generation out of Old Testamentism, which is a difficult thing to do, as you have Exeter Hall and Co. in your own camp ; indeed, South Africa will be an awful nuisance to the Empire for years. There is not a shadow of a doubt that every Colonist of Dutch descent is disloyal to the British Empire at heart. They hate the English Colonist population; they see the power of England, and believe in it more than the Transvaalers do, but they also believe in their power to humbug England, and those who will say they are in favour of annexation, &c., have all at the back of their minds a Dutch South Africa. But you know more about the whole affair than I do. Here am I stuck round this corner. Bound this corner come all the sympathisers with the Boer cause, not ostentatiously, one or so at a time, and they express the greatest admiration, &c., and you hear what they say—when the officer is not intruding his presence on them. It is the most curious mixture of absolute simple sincerity, canting humbug, and real good, noble intention on the part of the British officer and statesman. Pearls before swine are such things as freedom and political equality for all white men when given to men who don't believe in these things and who do believe in the Old Testament code, and when such concessions are given for the mere sake of gaining the trust and affection of the Dutch here— well, the British Empire is merely making a fool of itself."
[We have the greatest respect for everything written by Miss Mary Kingsley—one of the noblest and most just as well as one of the most truly patriotic of Englishwomen—but surely the fault is not in the Old Testament so much as in the Boers. When the seed fell in a better and wholly different soil, as it did in the Puritans of Old and of New England, the results were not a negation of honour and humanity, but the exact reverse. Cromwell, Milton, and Colonel Hutchinson were as unlike the typical Boer as it is possible to imagine. The true Puritans, the "men who called Milton friend," were steeped in Old Testamentism, but they were essentially chivalrous, high-minded gentlemen.—En. Spectator.]
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