’Reitz:  We’ll see.

’Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means—­the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the Legislature—­until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr. Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause.  Believe me, the day on which F.W.  Reitz sat down to pen his ultimatum to Great Britain was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one which had for long years been looked forward to by him with eager longing and expectation.’

Compare with these utterances of a Dutch politician of the Cape, and of a Dutch politician of the Orange Free State, the following passage from a speech delivered by Kruger at Bloemfontein in the year 1887: 

’I think it too soon to speak of a United South Africa under one flag.  Which flag was it to be?  The Queen of England would object to having her flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to hauling ours down.  What is to be done?  We are now small and of little importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our place among the great nations of the world.’

‘The dream of our life,’ said another, ’is a union of the States of South Africa, and this has to come from within, not from without.  When that is accomplished, South Africa will be great.’

Always the same theory from all quarters of Dutch thought, to be followed by many signs that the idea was being prepared for in practice.  I repeat that the fairest and most unbiased historian cannot dismiss the conspiracy as a myth.

And to this one may retort, why should they not conspire?  Why should they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa?  Why should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common speech?  Why should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and push us into the sea?  I see no reason why they should not.  Let them try if they will.  And let us try to prevent them.  But let us have an end of talk about British aggression, of capitalist designs upon the gold fields, of the wrongs of a pastoral people, and all the other veils which have been used to cover the issue.  Let those who talk about British designs upon the republics turn their attention for a moment to the evidence which there is for republican designs upon the colonies.  Let them reflect that in the one system all white men are equal, and that on the other the minority of one race has persecuted the majority of the other, and let them consider under which the truest freedom lies, which stands for universal liberty and which for reaction and racial hatred.  Let them ponder and answer all this before they determine where their sympathies lie.