PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK

Few historical events have been so impressive as the sudden and
complete union of the South-African States. Seldom have men's minds
progressed so rapidly, their life purposes changed so completely. In
1902 England, with the aid of her African colonists in Cape Colony and
Natal, was ending a bitter war, almost of extermination, against the
Dutch "Boers" of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In that year
the ablest and most dreaded of England's enemies in Africa was the
Dutch General, Louis Botha, leader of the fiercest and most
irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare
against all the might of the British Empire. As one English paper
dramatically phrases it: "One used to see pictures of Botha in the
illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure,
with rifle and bandoliers--the most dangerous of our foes. To-day he is
the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the
Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers
of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all
races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led
in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across
the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago. Was ever so strange a
transformation, so swift an oblivion of old enmities and rancors, so
rapid a growth of union and concord out of hatred and strife!"

Necessity has in a way compelled this harmony. The old issue of Boer
independence being dead, new and equally vital issues confronted the
South-Africans. The whites there are scarcely more than a million in
number, and they dwell amid many times their number of savage blacks.
They must unite or perish. Moreover, the folly and expense of