Transvaal (South Africa) -- Politics and government -- 1880-1910
This the Englishmen in Johannesburg and foreigners of all nations
could not possibly feel. They were not more bound to die to obtain
control of the gold mines of Johannesburg for a man already wealthy
or his confederates, than to assist South Africans in defending them;
or than we who visit the south of France or Italy for health should
feel ourselves bound to remain and die if war breaks out between the
Bonapartists and the Republicans, or the Pope and the King. If by a
process of abstract thought we have arrived at a strong conviction of a
right or human justice to be maintained by a cause with which we have
no practical concern, we may feel morally compelled to take a part
in it; but no man can throw it in our teeth if we refuse to die in a
strange land for
A CAUSE THAT IS NOT OURS.
The Englishmen and others who refused to fight in Johannesburg, or
fled rather than run the risk of remaining, pursued the only course
open to wise and honorable men. Had they resolved to remain permanently
in South Africa, and to become citizens of the Transvaal Republic, the
case might have been otherwise. As it was, they could not run a knife
into the heart of a people which had hospitably received them, and
attempt to destroy a land in which they had found nothing but greater
wealth and material comfort than in their own; and they could also
not enter upon a deadly raid for a man whom personally the workers of
Johannesburg cared nothing for, and with whom they had not a sympathy
or interest in common. In leaving Johannesburg and refusing to fight,
they pursued the only course left open to them by justice and honor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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