Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Poverty Bay Herald (New Zealand), February 23, 1901
PORT ELIZABETH, Cape Colony
I have been to church—to a church in a little dorp* on the Port Elizabeth-Graaff Reinet line, a white-washed, square-cut kirk and ugly. A village where a handful of khaki-clad militiamen play at guarding a bridge, and the stories of Transvaal atrocities are believed as the Gospel.
Dorp (Afrikaans)—a village, a small town. ]
What I heard there can be heard in any Dutch Reformed church in South Africa—in Graaff Reinet, in Uitenhage, in Somerset East, even, it is whispered, in effect in Capetown.
The dream of a United Afrikander nation is dying hard.
The Dutch colonists are only now grasping the significance of their shadowy ideal and the vague, shapeless vision of a separate national life has, in the moment of the realisation of its hopelessness, assumed a certain tangibility. Nothing is more patent to the most casual observer than the fact that it is only during the past two months that the leaders of the "New National" movement in the Cape Colony have seen the impossibility of the fulfilment of their dream.
At the beginning of the war a general rising throughout the colony would have put altogether a different complexion upon matters, but the malcontents were confident of the success of the Republican forces and, at the worst, of European intervention, and so they played that waiting game which so happily fits the backveldt indolent.
IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHOSEN
Now it is that, with all the impotent rage of strong men caught napping, platform, pulpit, and Press thunder forth denunciation of the conqueror. Now it is that every method that human ingenuity can devise, every effort that leaders and interested organisers can put forth, every malignant lie calculated to fire the blood of the unlearned and intensify the already existing hatred, is being employed to the undoing of the English.
Curious to see for myself what manner of thing a political sermon is, I attended an evening service not far from here.
The church, grim and bleak, was half filled. There was no great display of colour, no attempt at anything startling in shape of dress. Black was the hue and home-made severity the cut. The worshippers sat bolt upright in their uncomfortable pews, and the boot-squeak of the comer and the occasional sniff or apologetic cough were the only sounds that broke the silence. There were elderly men in irreproachable broad-cloth with sombre banded hats. There were young men greatly daring in fanciful suits, lacking originally in cravats. Stout Boer women in brocaded silk, and plump Dutch girls with expressionless eyes. They came in, keeping step to the monotonous clang of the church bell, in twos, singly, in parties, and in families, recognising with a glance such of their friends as were already seated.
The bell stopped, and a little harmonium droningly asserted itself. And then, accompanied by one of the deacons, the predikant himself entered and ascended the pulpit. The organ wailed itself into sleep, and the predikant* adjusted his glasses.
Predikant (Afrikaans)—a preacher. ]
NO NAMES
There were spirit and life in the hymns, many of which were sung without as much as a glance at the book, for the congregation had beguiled many a long evening on lonely farms and isolated homesteads, singing them over, not so much from any great religious zeal or piety as from that desire to kill time which moves the convict to master the contents of his Prayer Book.
Then there were lessons and prayers, chapters from the Old Testament of people in bondage and their delivery, prayers that this Trouble which is in the Land may pass, that the heart of the Oppressor might be softened, that the Vengeance of the Lord might descend and smite the Destroyer, that Israel be delivered from the hands of its enemies, that the Philistines might be swept into the sea—yea, even as the wind sweeps the locust.
The predikant prayed with fervour, with hands clasping and unclasping, in agony of spirit. In his prayers he did not refer by name to the Boer Republic; he simply asked for Divine intervention for the Lord's Chosen. He did not speak of England; he said Philistines and Amalekites. He did not refer directly to Sir Alfred Milner nor Mr. Chamberlain, but with all the passion he could command he called for vengeance on the false counsellors who had initiated the persecution of the people of the land. He prayed, and the congregation punctuated his prayers with deep sighs and amens, and I, a Philistine in the House of the Chosen, sat and wondered why this fervour, this undoubted earnestness, had hot been directed towards Paul Kruger in the days when a word from the Dutch churches in South Africa would have prevented the war.
THE PULPIT SLANDERER
Then came the sermon. No particular verse of the Scripture was taken—the text was a Psalm in the whole. There was no "secondly" and very little "lastly." Verse by verse the Palmist's song was spoken to illustrate the depravity of the British. Each injustice to Israel had a parallel to-day. Each passionate appeal of David had application to the case of Chamberlain's victims in the North. It was the fourteenth psalm he took as a subject. The fool had said in his heart that the cause of the burgher was a lost cause; that the Lord was not behind His people; that the accursed tyranny of the oppressor should prevail.
And what of these oppressors? These people who tried to hide themselves from ! the rifles of the burghers by arraying their bodies in mud-colored cloth? The congregation murmured with a sympathetic appreciation of this sarcasm. What of these men? Truly, the Psalmist said, they were corrupt, they had done abominable things, there was not one who had done good; no, not one. What of the wasted lands in the north? What of the dishonored homes and the blackened walls of the once prosperous farmhouse? What of—?—again that awful story—that Horror, made doubly authentic by reason of the place of delivery.
He told the story, the bald, crude tale, carrying to a white Englishman its own refutation in every syllable, and the congregation held its breath.
He told the story, so that a man seated in the next pew to myself half rose from his seat and, like a man who tries to shout in a dream and finds that he can but whisper, muttered: "There is time yet, there is time yet."
So that a young girl rose from her seat, tittering and whimpering, and was led out.
"FRIENDS!"
And the sermon went on. The Lord had looked down upon the Oppressor, and had visited him with affliction, with disaster upon disaster. Colenso, Stormberg, Magersfontein had come like a thunderbolt upon the world. It was the Divine warning to turn from the path of oppression, to open the eyes of a blind nation. And how had the warning been taken? Had the nation heeded the voice? No. It had prosecuted its unrighteous designs, its unholy object. It had gone from worse to worst; it had become filthy.
Had they no knowledge, these iniquitous people, who had brought war and desolation to the country, whose path had been marked by much blood and burning? These people, who are dead to all dictates of conscience, to all honor and pity? Did they not realise that at the eleventh hour the Lord would save His people? Or that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! Did his brethren understand what that passage meant?
The predikant paused and leant forward over the pulpit, and there was a silence. Did they understand that the people of the captivity looked to their own kindred for deliverance from their bondage?
Another pause, and the congregation shifted uneasily in their seats. Thus abruptly the sermon ended, and the people dispersed, some walking, some riding, some driving. Group by group they scattered, parting with limp shakes of great horny hands—the elder men in gloomy silence, the younger men with mutterings of threats and hints of startling things to be.
I passed down towards the little village that staggers from the church at one end and to the naked veldt at the other, passed by the little camp, answering the sentry's challenge. There was a rattle of wheels behind me. It was the predikant driving back with one of his flock. I stood on one side to allow them to pass. As the trap neared the little roadside camp a bayonet glittered in the moonlight, and the horses were pulled up sharp.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
Back came the answer, prompt, and clear, and glib—
"Friends!"
