“The Transvaal Government requires an immediate and affirmative reply on these four points, before five o’clock, p.m. on Wednesday, October 11th, and it is added that should a satisfactory reply not have reached within that period, it will, to its great regret, be compelled to consider the action of Her Majesty’s Government as a formal declaration of War.”

Next day Mr. Chamberlain naturally replied that “henceforth all discussion was impossible.”  Notification was made on the 11th of October.  Englishmen and suspected foreigners were expelled; and President Steyn, with the special Boer skill, in misrepresenting facts, announced that “England had committed itself to an open, and unjustifiable attack upon the independence of the South African Republic.”

We have seen from which side the attack came.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DR. KUYPER’S FINAL METAPHOR.[24]

1.—­Where are the Peace Lovers?

I have finished my criticism of Dr. Kuyper’s article.

Should he not find it clear, perhaps he will be kind enough to mark the points which he desires to have explained.  I will gladly insert his reply, on condition that he allows me to publish it, with his article, in pamphlet form, so that readers may have both sides of the question before them.  I do not follow him in detail in his apologetic, religious, metaphysical, and oratorical digressions where common-places stand for facts and arguments.

“Has civilisation the right to propagate itself by means of war?” he cries.  As far as I am concerned, I think war a very bad vehicle of civilisation, albeit it has often served the purpose; but as long as it remains the last resource of international relations, it is impossible to suppress it.

I return the question.  “Has an inferior civilisation the right to impose itself upon a superior civilisation, and to propagate itself by means of war?”

Pro-Boers delight to exhibit in the shop windows a picture representing three Transvaal soldiers; a youth of sixteen, an old man of sixty-five, and a man in the prime of life.  What does it prove?  That every Boer is a soldier.  They have no other calling; to drive ox-teams; ride; shoot; keep a sharp eye on the Kaffirs in charge of their cattle; use the sjambok freely “in Boer fashion,” to make them work; these are their occupations.  Their civilisation is one of the most characteristic types of a military civilisation.

It is a curious thing, that so many Europeans among the lovers of peace, should actually be the fiercest enemies of England, a country which represents industrial civilisation in so high a degree, that she stands alone, in all Europe, in refusing to adopt compulsory military service.  Such lovers of peace range themselves on the side of professional fighters against peaceable citizens.  They are for the Boer spoliator against the despoiled Uitlanders.  They take their stand against the English who in 1881 and 1884 voluntarily restored autonomy to the Transvaal, and in favor of the Boer, who in the Petition of Rights, 1881, took for programme, as in the pamphlet recently published by Dr. Reitz, “Africa for the Afrikanders from the Zambesi to Simon’s Bay.”