The Englishman will swear to you on the word of an Englishman, and the Bantu on the word of the Bantu, but no Half-caste ever yet swore on the honour of a Half-caste. The world would break into cackling laughter did he do so: "The _honour_ of a _Half-caste_!" Neither is the condition of the Half-caste woman analogous to that of the pure-blooded Bantu in our society. (We again ask no forgiveness for the length of this digression on Half-castism. It will be seen when we come to sum up, and combine the different portions of our South African problem, that no time spent in the consideration of this subject is wasted if it tends to throw any light on it. There are certain questions in South Africa on which no man is qualified to pass an opinion till he has studied as far as possible this matter, and made up his mind as to the direction in which action with regard to them is desirable.) However much the standard of sexual virtue among Bantus may differ from our own with regard to polygamy and other institutions, at least officially disapproved among us, officially approved among them, there does exist a standard, and it is often more closely adhered to than our own. We have it on the most irrefragable evidence that when, after war, a few years back, a regiment of English soldiers was stationed for many months in the heart of a subdued Bantu tribe, not only was the result of the contact between the soldiers and the native women nil as regarding illegitimate births, but it had been practically impossible for the soldiers to purchase women for purposes of degradation throughout the whole time.[30] Even when draggled under the feet of our savage civilization in European seaport towns, the Bantu woman seldom shows the same inveterate tendency to gravitate towards sexual self-abandonment which the Half-caste exhibits, preferring, in a majority of instances, the healthier and more equal sex-relationships with men of her own race, to prostitution under the foot of the white man at any price. [30] (Added in 1896.) We are not referring to that which takes place when Englishmen, untrammelled by any public opinion, are absolutely dominant over a crushed native race, as in the territories north of the Limpopo to-day. We shall deal with this, to an Englishman most sorrowful matter, at some future date. It is impossible that the Half-caste should possess that traditional standard and racial pride which tend to save the black woman from absolute degradation.[31] She necessarily feels it small disgrace to bring her children into the world as her own ancestors were brought; and better to her often is the most degrading relationship, which binds her children closer to the ancestral race she covets, than the most honourable which binds them to the ancestral race she scorns. No ancestral code of honour rises up in her case, strengthening her self-respect.