On the other hand, were we called upon at the present day to mention the names of two public men who might be counted always to make their stand and raise their voice where any action of injustice or repression towards the native was concerned, we should give the names of two men of purely Boer extraction, with no drop of English blood in their veins. If during the coming century South Africa is to be preserved from that doom which we sometimessee hovering in the dim future before her; if her native races are to be transformed from dumb brooding enemies, borne within her bosom, to citizens who shall be the joy and strength of her commonwealth, it will not be through the action of Dutchmen or Englishmen alone; but of brave souls irrespective of all descent—"God's-Dutchman" and "God's-Englishman"—hand in hand.The Boer will pass away. In fifty years the plains of South Africa will know him no more. A mist gathers in the eye and a thickness in the throat when one realizes that the day will come when that figure which made for us so much of the charm and beauty of our African land will have passed away for ever! When no more will the great ox-wagon be drawn out to crawl slowly along the boundless plains, and Oom Piet sit on its front-box with his great felt-hat drawn low over his forehead, watching with keen still eye the wide veld, while Tante Annie looks out from behind him as they move forward on their long march in search of the Promised Land.The little brown house on the plain, where the stranger met so stately and so kindly a welcome, and the young South African grew up between his parents' knees, loving South African plains and kopjes dearer than life—will have passed away for ever. It will have gone with the springbok and the koodoo and the eland and the lion, with all that made the charm and poetry of this South Africa of ours, that we have loved so. The old krantzes will still look down from the flat mountain-tops, and the blue sky stretch above all; but the Africa we have known will have gone for ever. Men will not know, then, what it was we loved so.The Boer will pass away! He will pass away, not supplanted by the stranger and the alien, but by his own cultured, complex, many-sided, twentieth-century descendants.If the men of that generation, bearing his blood in their veins, love freedom as he loved it and hold resolutely by the best attainable by them as he held by it, then the future of the great South African Nation, as far as its strain of Dutch blood is concerned, is assured.
On the other hand, were we called upon at the present day to mention the names of two public men who might be counted always to make their stand and raise their voice where any action of injustice or repression towards the native was concerned, we should give the names of two men of purely Boer extraction, with no drop of English blood in their veins. If during the coming century South Africa is to be preserved from that doom which we sometimessee hovering in the dim future before her; if her native races are to be transformed from dumb brooding enemies, borne within her bosom, to citizens who shall be the joy and strength of her commonwealth, it will not be through the action of Dutchmen or Englishmen alone; but of brave souls irrespective of all descent—"God's-Dutchman" and "God's-Englishman"—hand in hand.
The Boer will pass away. In fifty years the plains of South Africa will know him no more. A mist gathers in the eye and a thickness in the throat when one realizes that the day will come when that figure which made for us so much of the charm and beauty of our African land will have passed away for ever! When no more will the great ox-wagon be drawn out to crawl slowly along the boundless plains, and Oom Piet sit on its front-box with his great felt-hat drawn low over his forehead, watching with keen still eye the wide veld, while Tante Annie looks out from behind him as they move forward on their long march in search of the Promised Land.
The little brown house on the plain, where the stranger met so stately and so kindly a welcome, and the young South African grew up between his parents' knees, loving South African plains and kopjes dearer than life—will have passed away for ever. It will have gone with the springbok and the koodoo and the eland and the lion, with all that made the charm and poetry of this South Africa of ours, that we have loved so. The old krantzes will still look down from the flat mountain-tops, and the blue sky stretch above all; but the Africa we have known will have gone for ever. Men will not know, then, what it was we loved so.
The Boer will pass away! He will pass away, not supplanted by the stranger and the alien, but by his own cultured, complex, many-sided, twentieth-century descendants.
If the men of that generation, bearing his blood in their veins, love freedom as he loved it and hold resolutely by the best attainable by them as he held by it, then the future of the great South African Nation, as far as its strain of Dutch blood is concerned, is assured.