to a friend in London a
letter regarding the relations of the British and Dutch races previous
to the war. Mr. Moffat, throughout his varied experiences, has been a
special friend to the natives. One of his younger sons, Howard, is with
a force of natives 60 miles south west of Khama's town (at the time of
writing, December 20th), and Dr. Alford Moffat, another son, was medical
officer to 300 Volunteers occupying the Mangwe Pass, to prevent a Boer
raid into Rhodesia at that point.

He writes:--

"1. _Had Steyn sat still and minded his own business_ no one would have
meddled with him. Had Kruger confined himself strictly to self-defence,
and _we_ had invaded _him_, we might have had to blame ourselves.

"2. To have placed an adequate defensive force on our borders before we
were sure that there was going to be war would have been accepted
(perhaps justly) by the Boers as a menace. We did not do it, out of
respect for their susceptibilities.

"3. To most people in South Africa who knew the Boers it was quite plain
that Kruger was all along playing what is colloquially known as the game
of 'spoof.' He never intended to make the slightest concession.

"4. Take them as a whole, the Boers are not pleasant people to live
with, especially to those who are within their power, as the natives
have found out sufficiently, and as the British have found out ever
since Majuba, and the retrocession of the Transvaal. The wrongs of the
Uitlanders were only one symptom of a disease which originated at
Pretoria in 1881, and was steadily spreading itself all over South
Africa.

"5. With regard to the equal rights question, it is quite true that all
is not as it ought to be in the Cape Colony. But the condition of the
native in the Transvaal is 100 years behind that of our natives in the
Cape Colony, and you may take it as a broad fact that in proportion as
Boer domination prevails the gravitation of the native towards slavery
will be accelerated."

In conclusion, Mr. Moffat has this to say of the "Boer dream of
Afrikander predominance": "We, who have been living out here, have been
hearing about this thing for years, but we have tried not to believe it.
We felt, many of us, that the struggle had to come, but we held our
peace because we did not want to be charged with fomenting race hatred."
He refers to Ben Viljoen's manifesto of September 29th, and to President
Steyn's manifesto, and State Secretary Reitz's proclamation of October