-Caveat Lector- http://news.24.com/English/Anglo_Boer_War/Boer_War_News/ENG_179325_790353_SE O.asp Queen's apology does not satisfy rightwing Johannesburg - The British Queen's carefully worded statement on the Anglo Boer War war has failed to satisfy supporters of the Boer-cause. Queen Elizabeth last night told a state banquet that no one could fail to be moved by the suffering in British concentration camps during the Anglo Boer War a century ago. But she stopped short of making an outright apology. White right-wingers wanted an admission of guilt... not an invitation to read between the lines of a delicately crafted political statement. Members of the Herstigte Nasionale Party also held a small protest at the Union Buildings on Wednesday. The HNP's Leon Strydom says they'll keep protesting until they hear what they want to hear. He says the British must acknowledge their guilt, and apologise in the same way the Germans apologised to the Jews. http://news.24.com/English/Anglo_Boer_War/Boer_War_News/ENG_180999_795942_SE O.asp Churchill's grand-daughter 'late Boer war casualty' Spioenkop - Winston Churchills grand-daughter, Celia Sandys, became a late casualty of the Anglo-Boer war when a cannon backfired in her face during commemoration ceremonies in Estcourt on Saturday. Sandys had agreed to fire a starting cannon for a road race named after her distinguished ancestor, but it backfired peppering her face with grains of black powder which fortunately missed her eyes. They re-enacted the Anglo-Boer War for real and Im the first casualty," she joked later in the day. http://news.24.com/English/Anglo_Boer_War/InDepth/Features.asp And the winner is ... by Sir Thomas Pakenham You would think that war is about winning and losing. But it is sometimes unclear, even a century later, which side actually won the war - or won the peace that followed. Take the Boer War. The British went to war in October 1899, accepting the ultimatum of the two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- The Boers believed they were fighting to preserve their independence. "It is my country you want," said President Kruger of the Transvaal. Nonsense, said Britain's Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. All we want is to help British citizenship. "We want no gold, we want no territory," he repeated. Of course it was humbug. As the world's leading maritime power, Britain was deeply concerned with global strategy. The Cape was the hub of the world's shipping lanes. Britain needed to protect its supremacy in the region with a naval base at the Cape. Already there was suspicion that Britain's European rivals -- especially Germany -- had designs on the gold-rich Transvaal. Britain could take no chances. By hook or by crook, those tiresome Boers must be incorporated in the British empire. In due course Britain won the war -- or so it appeared. The cost proved huge, and the war hugely humiliating. It was the longest (over two and a half years), costliest (over 200 million pounds) and bloodiest (more than 22 000 British and 50 000 Boer and African lives) war the British had fought since they had beaten Napoleon in 1815. But the British achieved their global aim. The Boers were dragged protestingly into the British empire. And for half a century -- that is, until 1951 -- Britain controlled a naval base at the Cape, which played a vital role, as did Jan Smuts and the South African army, on the allied side in two world wars. In the short term, the Boers certainly looked like losers. The survivors of the commandos returned to find their homes burnt or looted, their cattle and sheep and horses slaughtered or stolen. Many lost their wives or children in the concentration camps. Still worse, from a political view-point, was the destruction of the unity of the volk. An increasing minority of the Boers -- up to a fifth by the end of the war -- had fought on the side of the British as 'hansuppers'. To bind up these self-inflicted wounds and reconcile the divisions within the volk was the first priority of the Boer leaders after the war. However, by 1907 the new Liberal government in London had restored self-government within the empire to the two ex-republics. The Transvaal's commandant-general, Louis Botha, defeated on the veld, had signed the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902. Eight years later he was Prime Minister of the new dominion of South Africa, elected on a platform of reconciling the 'white races'. So who had won the peace: Britain or the Boers? To many of the British minority in the Cape, now governed by defeated Boer commando leaders such as Botha and Smuts, their war-time victories seemed hollow enough. And in 1951 the Nationalists, exploiting the bitter legacy of the war, resolved the question of who had won the peace. Putting the clock back 50 years, they kicked Britain out of their naval base and took South Africa out of the Commonwealth. Yet there was a third group -- the black majority in South Africa -- who were without doubt the greatest losers in both the war and the peace. In the short-term they suffered worse than the Boers of the republics. We don't know how many blacks died in the concentration camps. No British officials bothered to keep accurate records. But historians now estimate that there was an even higher death-rate among the 107 000 Africans sent to the camps than among their white counterparts. Perhaps 30 000 died there of disease and neglect. In addition Africans suffered disproportionately heavily fighting on the side of the British. Despite British claims that this was a "white man's war", 10 000 Africans were armed as scouts, guides and guards; at least another 40 000 served as non-combatants. When captured by the Boers, they were generally shot out of hand. As for gradually giving more Africans the vote, the war had the opposite effect. There had been no colour bar in the old Cape Colony, and Coloured voters were an increasingly important minority. But the British were determined to make the Boers happy citizens of the empire. Between 1902 and 1948, a series of political pacts were made between the two white communities. In each one a political price had to be paid, and it was paid by extending the colour bar and disfranchising the blacks and the browns. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dungeon/1156/19german.htm England at the beginning of the present Century was no longer the secure citadel of the Money power. That power had been alarmed by the revival of nationalism brought about by the increased influence of the Throne. It had been alarmed, too, by the swift extension of the policies of Social Reform upon which, as has been said, it had looked favourably at the beginning. Education, housing, public health, and factory inspection were now, in changed conditions, adding to costs and so preventing "wholesome measures of deflation," and equally (though unavowed) "wholesome measures of inflation." Booms could no longer be trusted to mount so high, nor slumps to sink so deep. And it is on the extent of the difference between mountain and abyss that "Dutch finance depends for its greatest profits." But much more than all these, the demand for Imperial Unity and Empire Free Trade was growing more insistent every day. Above every other menace was the menace of Chamberlain. Another question exercised the minds of financiers : Was England safe in the military sense ? The Germans did not think so. They declared openly that the experiences in the Boer War were without value for European warfare on the scale on which they meant to wage it. "The invincible army," said the Kaiser, "cannot be beaten." The faith of the German naval leaders was not less secure. The command of the seas, they boasted, would very soon be wrested from England. ... It was into this bewildered world that Mr. Chamberlain launched his policy of Tariff Reform. That part of the British people which had found in Rudyard Kipling an evangelist of Empire and a messenger of hope received gladly the new doctrine ; but the mass of the people, lying still in abject poverty, was unprepared. The campaign was launched in Birmingham on May 15, 1903, at a meeting of Unionists called to welcome their member on the conclusion of his tour in South Africa. Mr. Chamberlain said : "The Empire is not old. The Empire is new. The Empire is in its infancy. . . . Now what is the meaning of an Empire ? What does it mean to us ? We have had a little experience. We have had a war (the Boer War) a war in which the majority of our children abroad had no apparent direct interest. We had no hold over them, no agreement with them of any kind, and yet, at one time during this war, by their voluntary decision, at least 50,000 colonial soldiers were standing shoulder to shoulder with British troops, displaying a gallantry equal to their own and the keenest intelligence. It is something for a beginning ; and if this country were in danger I mean if we were, as our forefathers were, face to face some day, which Heaven forfend, with some great coalition of hostile nations, when we had, with our backs to the wall, to struggle for our very lives it is my firm conviction that there is nothing within the power of these self-governing colonies that they would not do to come to our aid. . . . "Now I suppose that you and I are agreed that the British Empire is one and indivisible. You and I are agreed that we absolutely refuse to look upon any of the States that form the British Empire as in any way excluded from any advantage or privilege to which the British Empire is entitled. We may well, therefore, have supposed that an agreement . . . by which Canada does a kindness to us (in the matter of preferential treatment in her markets) was a matter of family arrangement, concerning nobody else. But, unfortunately, Germany thinks otherwise. There is a German Empire. The German Empire is divided into States. Bavaria and, let us say, Hanover, Saxony, and W�rtemberg may deal between themselves in any way they please. But in this case of Canada, Germany insists upon treating Canada as though it were a separate country. It refuses to recognize it as a part of our Empire entitled to claim the privileges of that Empire. It regards this as being something more than a domestic agreement, and it has penalized Canada by placing upon Canadian goods an additional duty. "Now the reason for this is clear. The German newspapers very frankly explain that this is a policy of reprisal and that it is intended to deter other colonies from giving to us the same advantage. Therefore it is not merely punishment inflicted by Germany upon Canada, but it is a threat to South Africa, to Australia, and to New Zealand. This policy, a policy of dictation and interference, is justified by the belief that we are so wedded to our fiscal system that we cannot interfere and that we cannot defend our colonies, and that, in fact, any one of them that attempts to establish any kind of special relations with us does so at its own risk and must be left to bear the brunt of foreign hostility. To my mind, that is putting us in rather a humiliating position I do not like it at all. I know what will follow if we allow it to prevail ; it is easy to predict the consequences. How do you think that under such circumstances we can approach our colonies with appeals to aid us in promoting the union of the Empire or ask them to bear a share of the common burdens ? Are we to say to them : 'This is your Empire, take pride in it, share its privileges' ? They will say, 'What are its privileges ? The privileges appear to be that if we trust you as relations and friends, if we show you kindness, if we give you preference, you, who benefit by our action, can only leave us alone to fight our own battles against those who are offended by our action ?' Now is that Free Trade ? . . . No, it is absolutely a new situation ; there has been nothing like it in our history." http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dungeon/1156/20kingpa.htm It was, as has been said, one of Napoleon's beliefs that men have found no answer to usury except a King by God's Grace. The history of England in the Nineteenth Century goes a long way towards confirming that view. England, by the special mercy of God, retained her Throne ; but she saw the Throne shorn of power in favour of the Parliament. Under her Kings England suffered many trials ; but, upon the witness of all unprejudiced observers, her case was better then, in days of scarcity and limited production, than it is now, when productive power has reached its present overwhelming proportions. Where was poverty like the poverty of the great industrial towns of England when Disraeli and Chamberlain dared to challenge the rule of Mammon and when, by efforts that ought for ever to bind this race to its Royal House, Queen Victoria raised high the ideal of duty in the hearts of her people? Parliament failed England by delivering her over to "Dutch finance," and by that failure made it clear that Liberalism is impotent except in a Monarchy where the King is possessed of real power. It was not the Government but King Edward who took the first vital steps to bring England and France together in those days when the fate of this country depended upon that alliance. Parliament has not known how to abolish abject poverty in the middle of overflowing plenty, how to refute the doctrine of gain, how to curb the insolence of Money, how to save agriculture and industry from the intolerable burden of usury. But it may be that the fault does not rest with Parliament, but rather with those who supposed that such an instrument can discharge the office of the King, failing to understand that it is the Grace of God, by which he reigns, that arms the King against the power of Money by arming him against the greed and the fear on which that power is founded. That British Governments and Parliaments are actuated by the highest motives and composed of men and women whose sole aim it is to do service to their fellows is, of course, beyond dispute. It is not the men but the system that is at fault. This applies also to bankers. As has been said, faith in God has given place to faith in gold so that gold has become a god. Even the Money power itself probably believes to some extent in the virtue, as opposed to the profitable nature, of its commodity. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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