HOLLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL.

It would be necessary to go back to the years 1830 and 1831 in Dutch history to find the parallel to the national movement which has passed over Holland in the first months of this year.

The news of the armed rising of the Transvaal Boers has produced the effect of an electric shock through the whole of the Netherlands. All classes, all political parties, all religious denominations, have equally shared in the general enthusiasm. The smallest villages and remotest districts have followed the example of the large towns in organising meetings to discuss the interests of the Transvaal, and to raise money for alleviating the sufferings caused by the war in South Africa. One of the most considered of Dutch savants, the almost septuagenarian Professor of Natural Science at the University of Utrecht, Dr. P. Harting, has taken the lead in drawing up a memorial to the British nation, which, after having been signed in a few days by a number of Dutchmen forming the most distinguished part of the nation, has been sent to England and published by the various organs of public opinion. Under the auspices of the same Professor, a Transvaal Committee has been formed, composed principally of men holding high scientific positions, whose object is to enlighten public opinion as much as possible about the dispositions and intentions of the Boers.

The whole Dutch press, irrespective of its political opinions, has declared itself in favour of the Transvaal Boers. The Dutch papers have daily devoted a great part of their columns to the Transvaal, in order to satisfy the universal interest. In a word, no foreign event has for years excited the minds in Holland so much as the present war in South Africa.

It need hardly be pointed out that the general movement in this country has a very peculiar character, completely different from the isolated manifestations in favour of the Boers in Germany, France, and America. In Frankfort, Paris, or New York, either political calculations or the indefinite sympathy for all nations fighting for their independence may have had their influence, but in Holland the feeling of community of race was uppermost.

We have ancestors in common with the African Boers, of whom we are justly proud. In struggling for their independence, the Boers VOL. IX.-No. 49.

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are doing now what our common ancestors did three hundred years ago, when they declared themselves free from their allegiance to the mighty king of Spain. The history of that ever memorable eighty years' struggle, which since our schooldays has been a household tale with us, is remembered in South African homesteads with as much enthusiasm as on the marshy soil which witnessed it. In those South African farms Dutch manners and customs prevail, Dutch Calvinism is professed in its most characteristic form, and the same language which is spoken at Amsterdam and at the Hague may be heard on the Drakensberg and among the rocks of the Lang Nek pass.

When, a hundred years ago, the American colonists rose against England, a strong political party in what was then the Republic of the United Netherlands succeeded in forcing the Stadtholder to give his assistance to America. Dislike of England, more than sympathy for the Americans, was the motive of that party.

Fortunately at present the situation in the Netherlands is wholly changed. Not an atom of hostility towards England is mixed up with the sympathy for the Boers. On the contrary, it is the general respect and cordial friendship for Great Britain which keep the friends of the Transvaal in Holland from too loud protests.

No Dutchman will accuse England of having annexed the Transvaal from mere love of conquest, or from any idle wish to increase the number of her subjects. We willingly recognise that the form of government of the Transvaal was imperfect, and that the political institutions which the English Government established were in theory much better; we do not doubt for a moment that Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Theophilus Shepstone were actuated by a sincere wish for the welfare of the inhabitants of the Transvaal; we accuse English officials of no tyranny, and we are fully convinced of the truth of the declaration of Sir John Lubbock in the House of Commons, that the Transvaal will be none the less free because it forms a part of the great Empire of Great Britain.'

But we recognise as decidedly the right of the Transvaal Boers to refuse all those benefits. If they prefer their imperfect form of government to the better organised English administration, simply because the one is self-government and the other a form of government imposed by a foreign Power, they do exactly what the Spaniards did in the beginning of this century. When Napoleon wanted to replace their own medieval type of government by more free insti tutions, they found a powerful ally in England in their just resistance to the constitutional king imposed on them by France.

We, of course, do not mean to compare the motives of the French Emperor with those of the English Government of 1877, but in both cases the result was the same. What the Boers are doing now, we believe every European nation that loves its independence would do. We Dutchmen would be the first to act in a similar way if a covetous

neighbour, under the pretext of giving us the benefit of his institutions, threatened our independence. There can be no doubt that, apart from the special connection of Holland with the Transvaal, considerations of this nature have largely influenced Dutch opinion. To deny the right of nations and states to dispose of their own destinies at their own pleasure and to judge for themselves what is conducive to their happiness, is a most dangerous principle for the existence of small States, especially where annexations are carried out from the purest motives. The good aims which one power exercises in reality are too easily made a pretext by another, and soon every conquest and arnexation, however iniquitous and unwarrantable, is completely justified.

Sir Bartle Frere, in his interesting article about the Transvaal which appeared in the last number of this Review, speaks of Dutchmen who look forward to the ultimate absorption of Holland into the Germanic Empire.' We do not know whether such Dutchmen actually exist-we fortunately have never come across any-but this we do know, that it is that section of the Dutch nation which, if there were any danger of the absorption of their country into the German or any other Empire, would appeal to England in the first place, that has been most painfully impressed by the events in the Transvaal.

But those Dutchmen, of whom Sir Bartle Frere suspected the existence, would, according to him, wish for the conversion of the Transvaal into an allied colony of Germany. Where, as I stated above, the persons themselves are unknown quantities to me, I cannot judge of their wishes and objects. Among the Dutchmen of my acquaintance there are few who have ever contemplated the eventuality of a German connection with the Transvaal, and there is not one among them who would contemplate such a combination with equanimity.

The position of our race in South Africa would not certainly be improved by being ensconced between two great powers. The relations between the Dutch and English already have given rise to difficulties. With the German race the Dutch have much less in common, and they would find it, in the long run, impossible to live on good terms with them. The uneasy relations between the German missionaries and the Transvaal Boers somewhat illustrate this fact.

There exists besides a more general reason why no Dutchman will wish for any intervention of Germany in South African affairs. It is a reason which is self-evident, and can be better appreciated in England than in any other country in the world. No English statesman can wish that either Germany, or Italy, or any other noncolonial European power, should make the acquisition of colonies an object of its policy. And if one of the most powerful European States, with the largest colonial dependencies in the world, objects to the prospect of new colonial rivals, how much more strongly will that

objection be felt by a people with much smaller dependencies beyond the sea and with a European territory comparatively much smaller!

A German protectorate is certainly the last thing we wish for our Transvaal brethren. If they cannot live without protection, then may England discharge those functions; but we are not yet convinced that they are unable to protect themselves. A population which of its own accord leaves its homesteads to defend its independence on its frontiers against an enemy superior in numbers, shows, it seems to me, that it possesses sufficient energy and national vigour to be able to maintain its independent existence. That they are less skilled in the difficult science of government than the civilised European nations who have had a long experience is natural. And even in some civilised States of Europe such conflicts between the executive and the legislative powers as appear to have taken place in 1877 in the Transvaal are not unknown. President Burgers may have uttered bitter words about the Volksraad, and the Volksraad may have shown itself intractable towards the President, but at least let it not be forgotten that the one thing they agreed in was a protest against the annexation by England.

Will such an annexation, which, as its partisans must themselves admit, has never received the formal sanction which they maintain it might so easily have obtained, be upheld by the English Government against the manifest will of the people?

As a foreigner I will abstain from criticising the colonial policy of the present English Government in South Africa. As a Dutchman I hope that the claims of my countrymen in South Africa may be weighed and considered with as much care as those of the races in the Balkan peninsula.

England's prestige on the Continent is sufficient not to require for its sake an easy military triumph over a weaker and badly equipped enemy.

However great may be the tension and anxiety in Holland, we still trust in the justice and impartiality of the English Government, and in the feelings of generosity and loyalty of the British nation.

W. H. DE BEAUFORT.

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

No. L.-APRIL 1881.

THE MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF

GREAT BRITAIN.

ON November 9, 1876, Benjamin Disraeli, as Premier of Great Britain, made a speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London which attracted immense notice. The political importance of the speaker, the tone of the speech, the universal echo it found in the country, justify the reproduction of its most noticeable phrases at the commencement of this paper. There is no country,' said Disraeli, so interested in the maintenance of peace as England. Peace is especially an English policy. She is not an aggressive Power, for there is nothing which she desires: she covets no cities and no provinces.'

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Who was not reminded by these words of the memorable speech of Louis Napoleon, when Prince-President, at the banquet of the Chambers of Commerce at Bordeaux, on October 9, 1852, which culminated in the famous phrase, 'L'empire c'est la paix'? The Empire which this speech was to introduce came, but it was war ; war in the Crimea, in Italy, in Cochin China, in Mexico-in France. Disraeli had surely only to thank his famous predecessor, if the world did not entirely believe in Peace so especially the policy of England.' To be sure, the noble lord who from 1874 to 1879 governed the British Empire with strong hand did his best to keep alive this distrust in the truth of his words. Although nothing existed which England could wish for, although she desired no states, no provinces, yet she has pushed forward the boundary lines of her power within the last five years. In 1874 England occupied Lahedsch, in Arabia, and annexed the Fiji Islands; in 1875 purVOL. IX.-No. 50.

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