Will it be considered the mere fancy of enthusiasts, which admits the
thought of occult forces of a sinister kind set in array to overturn
beneficent dispensations, that the evil one, the father of lies, has been
active in all this marring of peace? Had that personage or evil principle,
if this term is more acceptable, not scored with his malignant skill of
deception 6,000 years ago, and been walking up and down his domain ever
since, intent upon undoing redemptive provisions and counteracting all
endeavours to ameliorate the miseries of humanity? His malice would seem
discernible against the Boer nation, the people who continued in the simple
faith which had been kept by their ancestors despite the persecutions heaped
upon them in France and by the oppressor of Holland; he must have viewed
with growing rage the designs of a gracious Providence surrounding that very
people with the blessings of security and peace and accumulations of
unparalleled riches, all construable as in compensation for the sacrifices
so willingly submitted to by their forefathers and for their own fidelity to
the faith. Would he tamely brook that—and not bend on all his artifices to
reverse those provisions and to divert those rich dispensations in favour of
his own devotees instead, or else rather cause them to be devoured by
wasting war? He has so far succeeded in instigating the Boer nation to acts
which involve the forfeiture of their special heirlooms. He would also
thwart the programme of the world's nations for the civilization of Central
Africa, and would gratify his malice against the people to whom is largely
attributable the spread of governmental principles of equity and liberty. He
would seek to stamp with failure those hitherto successful and
self-rewarding methods, and so strike an effective blow against their
further adoption as being goody-goody, weak and inefficient.
We
see civilized humanity congested with over-population, excess of energy and
of production and suffering from a plethora of capital, the entire condition
rife on the one hand with prodigal waste and on the other fraught with the
cruel want of toiling and jostling millions vainly fighting for space and
the most modest means of existence—conditions which presage an inevitable
and universal crash unless checked by a Malthusian or else by a beneficent
and humane remedy. We know the right remedy for at least staving off the
impending universal crisis lies in the manifold opportunities of creating
outlets. These exist to the full in the vast fallow regions of Africa, and
in the scope for industries and commerce in Asia and elsewhere. Each
well-devised colonizing scheme, every railway built, and every other new
investment would afford improved employment and relieve the general strain;
every true convert gained by the spread of Christianity would become an
obedient and reliable unit towards the menaced stability of authorized
Governments. We see capital impelled to vast enterprises, as it were by
secret forces;[13] we are aware of the activity of nations singly and in
co-operation in promoting and sustaining such projects. All those efforts
and outlets would serve as safety-valves for the discontent of the
ill-provided masses, and their success would render them governable at a
lesser cost, and even admit the reduction of standing armies and other
objects treated by the recent Peace Conference at the Hague. The essential
thing, indeed, is peace, and that in turn would consolidate security and
progress. But the enemy is interested exactly the other way. His ascendancy
is coincident, not with the mitigation of the conditions of human existence,
but in accentuating the misery of the masses, driving them to desperation
and to embrace illogic and deceptive maxims of socialism and violent
anarchy. It is with those forces that he intends to uproot and usurp
divinely instituted authority expressly set up to repress evil and to
protect person and property. He wants by licence and not liberty to hasten
the advent of that murderous political power prophetically depicted with the
statue standing upon feet of clay and iron: supreme authority vested in the
world's proletariat in unstable and uncohesive union with militarism, Satan
himself the actual lawless animator.[14] As to the scope for outlets in the
East, it is more restricted to industries and commerce, but those
enterprises, however brilliantly promising, are fraught with the risks
incidental to hostile rivalries and political complications, while in Africa
the openings are at least as vast and inviting immigration on a huge scale
as well, but all with much greater security, inasmuch as the spheres of
operation are definitely apportioned to various nations, and where in the
nature of things the success of each would be promoted by joint-solidarity,
and thus afford a guarantee for the peaceable and prosperous development of
the whole continent. Our common enemy would fain frustrate it all with his
Afrikaner Bond device, and then finally gloat over the accomplished ruin of
his deluded Boer victims.
Africa has for some thousands of years been the enemy's favourite and
undisturbed haunt for his gory orgies, for the hecatombs of millions of
immolated victims each year, the teeming recruiting preserve for his
contingents.
Is
he likely to surrender it all to an invading beneficent operation? Will he
not rather continue a most determined and desperate resistance and oppose
the most advanced of his subtle devices? The malignant power of his agencies
is ever and anon manifest—if restrained in one direction his sway is doubly
asserted in another. While the Boer war is proceeding a diversion upon a
large scale is being effected in Asia which may result in deferring progress
in Africa, or history may be brought to repeat itself by the production of
some African Attila or Grenseric or a Saladin or another Moselikatse or
Mahdi, whose overrunning hordes will efface all the good work thus far done
and restore conditions in accord with his murderous sway, whilst at the same
time revelling over the ominous developments looming in Europe and America
for the production of giant strikes and other imminent socialistic outbursts
which could all be prevented, or at least staved off for a long time, if the
existing immense spheres for civilizing outlets could only be peaceably
utilized.
FOOTNOTES:
13. One of those enterprises is the railway which is to connect the Cape
with Cairo.
14. Pro-Boer Propaganda is persisting in designating England as answering
to that prophetic image destined to signal destruction.
