And now, farewell.  They say we move forward in a week.  I hope it may be true.  They also say we shall finish the campaign in a couple of months.  Fiddle-de-dee! is what I say.  Tell H. to educate little S. as a scout among the Devonshire hedges, and give him a bit of practical training against the time he will be old enough to come out.  There will be Boers to take him on.

LETTER XVI

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR

BLOEMFONTEIN, April, 1900.

Yes, certainly, my own reason for fighting is plain and strong.  I am fighting for a united South Africa.  A united South Africa will, in my opinion, justify the war.  The Boers are genuinely patriotic, I haven’t a doubt.  They have every right and reason to fight to the last for their freedom and independence.  But the continued existence of independent States on the pattern of the Dutch republics in the midst of South Africa is bound to be a perpetual irritation.  The development of the resources of the country will be checked.  The effort to remain separate and apart has obliged, and will more and more oblige, these States to build themselves round with a whole system of laws specially directed to hamper immigration; and the richer are found to be the resources of the country, the more harassing and stringent will this system of laws have to become.  In fact, in this great, free, and undivided country, to hedge a State round with artificial barriers of this sort, in order that it may enjoy a kind of obsolete, old-fashioned independence of its own, soon becomes intolerable.  It is unjust to all the rest of the continent.  The country, if it is to have its due weight and influence in the affairs of the world, must be united and make itself felt as a whole.  It is not fair on such a country, young but rapidly developing, to take two of the richest tracts of it right in its midst and to say, “You may go ahead with the development of all the rest, but these two portions are to be left on one side, to drop out of the running, to be withered and useless members, and instead of contributing to the total, and joining in with the progress of the rest, are to do all in their power to impede the general advance.”

It is bad enough when any naturally separate State shows the retrograde temper and an inability to profit by its own resources, but when that State is an integral part of one great and young continent, then its action becomes intolerable.  I think it is not only the people in a country that have claims, but the country itself that has a claim.  If you want South Africa to ripen ultimately into a great first-class world Power (and that is its claim), instead of a bunch of fifth-rate antagonistic States, the first thing to do is to range the country under one Government, and as a British Government will be progressive, and a Dutch one will certainly be retrograde, you must put it under a British one.  That is the first essential, and if any genuinely patriotic instincts are overridden in the process, it is very sad, but it cannot be helped.  Better this than that the whole country should miss its destiny.