One of the most substantial mistakes, from a woman's point of observation, was undoubtedly the volunteer movement. It was like everlastingly rehearsing a funeral before the eyes of a lately bereaved parent. By the time peace was declared, people were so tired of martial law that they did not even care to read about it, and this mimic reproduction of a military occupation only served to irritate. It forced one to live those hateful days of war over again; and to make it still more vexatious it was principally the men who had done little during the campaign whose names became so prominent during sham fights; yet I am told that they proved as useless on the drill ground and at amateur warfare as they had done on active service. Majors, captains, and colonels, how plentiful they have been on the Rand these last few years, and what little claim they have to these titles! Officers in the T.M.R. or C.S.A.R.V. they are no doubt, but, when playtime is over, nothing more than clerks in some big store or traffic superintendents. I have heard it remarked that the volunteers formed a link between Dutch and English, but I also happened to hear that the Dutchmen joined the volunteers with a laugh up their sleeves at the chance of learning British methods of warfare, also at the chance of once more getting hold of a rifle and ammunition. Furthermore, it was a heavy expense to the country. Even volunteers are not mobilised for nothing, and armoured trains do not dash up and down the line without consuming coal and water and tearing up the road. It would have been better for the country if the money thrown away on the volunteers had been spent in firmly establishing the South African Constabulary, for in a country like the Transvaal the police force is an absolute necessity, while the volunteer system there is merely another word for recreation or inefficiency. Personally, among the many pictures which the weary sound of the bugles always brings back to me are two which perhaps I may be permitted to mention. The first, a squad of dusty soldiers coming slowly across the barren country, some toiling wearily on foot, others mounted on thin, halfstarved horses. With them a herd of wretched sheep and a few waggons drawn by lean oxen; leaner still the faces of the women and children peering out with red, tear-dimmed eyes from the waggons. A small column of soldiers is bringing in some Boer families to the concentration camps. Probably most of those women are still alive, and on a Sunday afternoon, as they listen to the bugling of the volunteers, the sound must recall that bitter period when they were obliged to accept the hospitality of their enemies, and they spit at their menkind for even venturing to whisper the word 'conciliation.' The second, a horse lying on the square of a Transvaal dorp. Every few minutes the dying animal raises its head and looks round in dumb appeal. The hardened troopers, however, go past unheeding, and before the sun has set in the cloudless sky away on the edge of the treeless plane, the tired life has flown. This picture is symbolical to me of the present position of the British in the Transvaal, and of those who have lately been expelled from that country. It is the English characteristic to suffer in silence. We lie down in patience, dogged and dumb we meet death, and those who ought to help us walk by unheeding. We English in South Africa are not asking for charity, but justice, for our right to work-to live. We do not even ask to be compensated for our ruined homes, though the Boer has been duly compensated for the home which he lost in his warfare against the British ! At this present time there are many old people, both at home and in South Africa, who, till recently, considered the future of their sons assured, and were preparing to end their own days in well-earned ease, but who now have to face the necessity of helping their children and grandchildren. Single women also are depriving themselves rather than see a brother or a sister want. It is hard on them, and hard also on the sons and brothers who, after many years of strenuous work, find that they have to depend on those who, according to the laws of nature, should be depending on them. Have we not a right to the land in which we have made our home, under the approval and protection of the Mother Country? Our children who were born yonder, and are now exiles with us, are sick with longing for it. More than we, they yearn for the peculiar glamour of that land, the magic buoyancy of the air, the mesmeric enchantment of the starry nights. Why should such power over our lives have been given to this narrowminded, egotistical people, with its deep-seated resentment against our race? It might well have been foreseen how they would use this power. I wonder if the Government at home realise to what an extent the Boers are unfit for the privileges they so gaily granted them. They want to close the country to every avenue of progress. Already the train service from towns like Port Elizabeth to the Rand has been reduced to three times a week. Already there is a whisper that the train service from Cape Town will be limited, and that soon there will be no regular mail from England. By degrees they will get back to the old days of trek oxen. The Boers do not want to encourage prospecting, because they do not want the prospector. If more wealth were to be discovered in the country it would mean more work. Like the dog in the manger they sit on gold reefs and growl at every man who wants to come and turn the wealth of the land to some account; they do not want it for themselves, but neither must anybody else have it. They are, moreover, indulging in a policy of petty revenge and spite. The men who fought against them are VOL. LXIV-No. 380 ЗА marked, and their sons will be marked after them. They do not care if by trampling on them they ruin the country; let it be ruined, providing they can rid the country of hated names. The spy, the fence-sitter, the camp-follower, the man who tried to serve both sides, may be allowed to remain a little longer, but those who took an active part against these self-styled elect of God must go. Ask a Dutchman straight if he is grateful to England for her recent unprecedented magnanimity, and he will prevaricate. His eyes will grow shifty, he will twiddle his thumbs and with forced laugh he will exclaim, Man! If there is one thing I admire, it's the way you English can make pals with us. I feel right knocked into a heap by it.' He lays a slight emphasis on the words 'you English,' it is an emphasis of contempt, for to him this policy of conciliation is the policy of fear. They are afraid of us,' is what the Boer really thinks on the subject. They don't want to set us against them again; they only won by a fluke; just wait and see what we will do next time.' Then he looks up at the Union Jack floating in the sky, and wishes in his heart that next time was come. We all know the old proverb about setting a beggar on horseback; to-day in the Transvaal the beggar is sitting on horseback with a long sjambok in his hand, and his late enemy lies beneath his horse's feet. Is there no one who will dare to interfere? This is the Transvaal to-day. A land of cruel want, where the wind comes laden not only with dust, but with the sobs and wails of a despairing people, who find themselves being literally trodden down to the level of Kaffirs. It is a land of emptiness, of bankrupt sales and growing desolation. There are gold reefs and tin fields crying for development, but it is of no avail for the prospector or the miner to go to the Transvaal in search of employment. There are miles and miles of uncultivated land waiting for the plough, but it is useless for young Britishers to go out there to settle and farm. For the land, with all that is in it or upon it, belongs to the white Boer, who will cringe and beg and steal and fight, but must not work. He promised his great-grandfather that he would never work, for it is a disgrace; and he must do everything in the same way that his greatgrandfather did; and he must never allow himself or his children to be led astray by modern ways, which are the invention of the devil. We did not feel very uneasy about ourselves when we first heard the word 'retrenchment,' for my husband, though still in the very prime of life, had been for twenty-three years on the fixed establishment of the Civil Service; but as time dragged on we began to grow anxious. By degrees men were signalled out and numbered among those to go who should have been quite safe, according to the promises made in the early days of electioneering. Even then we did our best to believe in the good intentions of our new allies, for no one likes to suspect that pledges can be so quickly forgotten, promises so easily broken. The words anxiety' and 'suspense' were nothing new to me, for I had sat in Bloemfontein for over two months before war was declared with my boxes ready packed, waiting the verdict to leave; but this was worse. Day after day I remained at the house watching for my husband's return from town, and day after day he arrived with the same sentence on his lips: No news yet, but I believe I am all right.' Some days he would come back with a tantalising report of a better billet and higher pay; other afternoons he would be disturbed by hints that all salaries were to be reduced, and that the very necessary local and marriage allowances were to be stopped. This would mean an evening of futile calculations and useless resolutions, which would always end in the decision that it would be madness to make any move until we were quite certain. In fact, it was fully twelve months before we learnt what our fate was to be, and until two weeks prior to knowing it my husband was still hearing that same old sentence, 'You are all right.' In addition to the fact that he had been in the Civil Service for so many years he held letters from imperial officers, given to him during the war, to the effect that he was to lose none of his past service or privileges; but it was now questioned whether the letters of military officers given during the heat of war were in any way binding; and on the strength of a small clause in the Cape Civil Service rules and regulations, whereby a man can be placed on temporary pension, he was shoved aside on the retrenched list. He wished to appeal, as, according to the rules and regulations, an appeal is permissible, but this was curtly refused him. He was told that as he was only placed on 'temporary pension,' no discussion could be entered into on the subject of how he had been treated. As temporary pension' meant an income not quite a quarter of what his salary had been and no chance of re-establishment, and as in the Transvaal there was now to be no progress, and therefore no work, and especially no fair play, the outlook was hopeless. We sold our furniture at a complete loss and started home with our five children, the youngest only six months old. Needless to say, I could afford no nurse. For the second time we were refugees, but now, with how much more desperate prospects! Home we came to London to swell the ranks of ill-used British subjects clamouring for employment, which employment is encouragingly promised us over here, but is somehow like the tail lamp of a train, always vanishing round some far curve. Indeed, to use another metaphor, one feels inclined to cry out with the famous Alice, Jam yesterday! Jam to-morrow! but never jam to-day.' It is very easy for those in affluent circumstances to say 'wait,' but what suffering this waiting means to some! The problem of trying to make the limited amount in the bank last for an unlimited time is at present the only reward of those who served their country a few years ago. Reward! I hear an indignant voice cry, 'Loyalty should need no reward.' Granted, but why should it be punished? Our case is typical of numberless others. There are, of course, isolated instances of Britishers' who fought for the Empire during the war, who are still holding their positions in South Africa, and much is made of this fact. The reason why they swim when others sink is, however, neither far to seek nor satisfactory when found. Either they have married Dutch girls with influential Boer relations, or else they are themselves only English on the father's side, and in manner and thought are as thoroughly Dutch as the mothers who bore them. EMILY OLIVIA CAROLIN. The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake |