craftily
laid programme. After having succeeded in producing race hatred between
Boer and English, the next step had been to convince the Boer leaders
and the people of the inevitableness of a contest for ensuring the
supremacy of the Afrikaners, coupled with the absolute necessity of the
complete expulsion of the entire British element. As arguments were
adduced that the British element had proved itself unassimilable and
irreconcilable, its retention in South Africa would necessitate
continuous provisions to keep it in a state of subjection. The existence
of such conditions would be inconsistent and incompatible with the true
ideal liberty as intended for the whole of South Africa, and which must
be linked with all-round equality and fraternity. The presence of a
British factor would be an unsurmountable bar to that consummation,
hence the necessity of its total removal.

The Bond leaders are the next in guilt; with these the incentive is
principally ambition, which, by degrees, became mis-shaped into a
specious patriotism. It is known how an ardently desired object pursued
for a long period is apt to so monopolize and infatuate the mind as to
totally vitiate and pervert the sense of discernment between right and
wrong, both as to the legitimacy of the object and the means to be
employed for its attainment. As the realization remains deferred and the
efforts are increased, the object from being considered legitimate is by
degrees invested with merit, a halo of virtue is added to the aspect,
its pursuit is viewed as a duty by fair or by questionable means, the
end justifying the latter. All, it is said, is fair in love and warfare.
This diagnosis appears particularly applicable to President Krueger and
State Secretary F.W. Reitz, both men of sincere piety (perhaps also to
Mr. Schreiner), who would have abandoned their project and renounced and
repudiated the Afrikaner Bond if ever they had doubted its legitimacy of
principle. So also with most of the other Boer leaders and their clergy
too. The agencies must have been exceedingly subtle, and the jugglery
and artifice superhuman, to operate such processes of reasoning, such
deception and aberration in honest-minded and even godly persons.

As to the bulk of the Boer people, they are simply led by their chiefs
and superiors, in whom they repose unquestioning confidence. They go
unreasoningly with the stream of opinion under the firm belief that all
is divinely sanction