BLACK . AND WHITE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.'
SIR,—I am wondering what your reviewer can possibly have meant by saying in his review of my book, Tice Anatonzy of African Misery, that I repeat the " old cry" or " half-truth " that " the emigrant Boers quitted the Old Colony as a protest against slavery."
Sympathetically as I dealt with the Boers' grievances, I did not impute to them quite so much virtue as that. You cannot have meant " as a protest against the abolition of slavery," because I do not say that, or anything to that effect, either. My few brief sentences of historical summary were condensed direct from Theal. They are, I believe, accurate, and they are entirely uncontroversial. Either way their " half-truth " would not affect the argument of my book. May I ask your reviewer to withdraw his misstate. ment ? My reference to " Kitchen Kaffir " was a transfer of a very explicit and earnest criticism made by the late Maurice Evans, in his Black and White in South-East Africa" : a book I had been led by South Africans to regard as reliable.
Every statement I make in my book is based either, as in this case, on those of South African witnesses, or on official records : but one cannot append a reference note to every
[Our reviewer will reply next week.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
