Transvaal (South Africa) -- History -- War of 1880-1881
1. The actual value of gold in the Transvaal is at least 200,000
millions of pounds, and this fact is as well known to the Emperors
of Germany and Russia as it is to us. You estimate the value of the
gold at only 700 millions of pounds, or, at least, that is what you
pretend to estimate it at. But Germany, Russia, and France do not
desire you to get possession of this vast mass of gold, and so,
after encouraging you to believe that they will not interfere in
South Africa they will certainly do so, and very easily find a
_casus belli_, and they will assist us directly and indirectly
to drive you out of Africa.
2. We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to
prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the
great peace party, will raise the question of expense, and this
will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working classes, who will
never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire,
or even to preserve your existence as a nation.
3. We know from all the military authorities of the European and
American continents that you exist as an independent Power merely
on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor William can
arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the
earth. They can at any time starve you into surrender. You must
yield in all things to the United States also, or your supply of
corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working classes
would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather
than do that they would have civil war, and invite any foreign
Power to assist them by invasion, for there is no patriotism in the
working classes of England, Wales, or Ireland.
4. We know that your country has been more prosperous than any
other country during the last fifty years (you have had no civil
war like the Americans and French to tone up your nerves and
strengthen your manliness), and consequently your able-bodied men
will not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you
have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and
they are deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in
all the qualities that make good fighting men.
5. Your military officers we know to be merely pedantic scholars or
frivolous society men, without any capacity for practical warfare
with white men. The Afridis were more than a match for you, and
your victory over the Sudanese was achieved because those poor
people had not a rifle amongst them.
6. We know that your men, being the dregs of your people, are
naturally feeble, and that they are also saturated with the most
horrible sexual diseases, as all your Government returns plainly
show, and that they cannot endure the hardships of war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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