De Aar

“ I can assure the reader that I was never killed in action or executed at De Aar, I was never in Mafeking or any other prison in my life (save here at St. Helena) , nor was I in the Cape Colony during the War. I never masqueraded with a Red Cross, and I was never exchanged for Lady Sarah Wilson. ”

“ ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER The Camp, De Aar,
September 23rd, 1899.
Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage, presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country, with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to fill the emptiness of the mind. ”

“ Between Orange River and De Aar, which are sixty miles apart, there were the 9th Lancers, the Royal Munsters, the 2nd King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers, under three thousand men in all, with two million pounds' worth of stores and the Free State frontier within a ride of them. Verily if we have something to deplore in this war we have much also to be thankful for. ”

“ The gain of Kimberley, had they gained it, would have been poor compensation for the daily increasing solidity of the still weak British grasp on the central positions outlined by De Aar, Orange River and Naauwport. This absorption of the Boers' attention by Kimberley was maintained by frequent sorties of the garrison, in every direction, which at an early period of the siege became possible through the ready facility with which the citizens were converted into irregular mounted troops. ”

“ A glance along this stretch of road will show that between De Aar and Bloemfontein it receives three tributary routes from three different points of the sea-coast—Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London—the whole system concentrating some sixty miles before Bloemfontein, at Springfontein, which thus becomes a (p. 012) central depot fed by four convergent, but, in their origin, independent streams of supply; an administrative condition always conducive to security and to convenience. ”

“ In particular it was to stop raids on the railway line which might impede Methuen's advance on Kimberley.
Collecting a part of his force at Cape Town, French left on November 18. On the following night he reached De Aar, where Major-General Wauchope gave him another couple of companies of Mounted Infantry. Acting on Wauchope's advice, he determined to [Pg 55] make Naauwpoort his base. ”

“ He would stay here, on Earth, serving a godlike race in its uncertain infancy. Perhaps he could forget that beneath the skin of Major Abner Harris lay the body and mind of Aar Khiilom.
Forget Darruu. Forget the fragrance of the jasaar trees and the radiance of the moons. Earth has trees that smell as sweet, it has a glorious pale moon that hangs high in the night sky. Put homesickness away. Forget Darruu.
It would not be easy. He looked up again at the stars as he reached the entrance to the Medlin headquarters. Earth was the name of his planet now. ”

“ She said, "We had information on you from the moment you entered the orbit of Earth, Abner—or should I say Aar Khiilom?"
"How did you know that name?"
She laughed lightly. "The same way I knew you were from Darruu, the same way I knew the exact moment you were going to come out of your room before."
"The same way you knew I was coming here to kill you just now?"
She nodded.
Harris frowned. "Medlins aren't telepathic. There isn't a single telepathic race in the galaxy." ”

“ Earth was a mighty force in the galaxy—so mighty that it would resent the role it really played, that of pawn between Darruu and Medlin. Darruu wanted Terran support in the conflict to come. Obtaining it was a delicate problem in consent engineering. A cadre of disguised Darruui, planted on Earth, gradually manipulating public opinion toward the Darruu camp and away from Medlin—that was the plan, and Harris, once Aar Khiilom, was one of its agents. ”

“ In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way and from that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state at all clearly how much I made of these questions during that Johannesburg time. I cannot get back into those ancient ignorances, revive my old astonishments and discoveries. Certainly I envisaged the whole process much less clearly than I do now, ignored difficulties that have since entangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that have now become lucidly plain. ”

“ And this element was LABOR. The rich lowlands of the 'double-armed' Rhine teemed with a busy life, that, king-like, demanded a tribute of the sea, and wrenched from the greedy waves a treasure that its industry made priceless. Each man became a prince in his own divine right, and every occupation had its lords and its lore, its 'mysteries,' and its social rights. The seamen, merchants, and artisans of the Netherlands had made their country the richest in Europe. ”

“ A stranger to the real condition of things might believe, at sight of this spectacle, that he had arrived in a country where some great social revolution had taken place, and that the newly enriched had come into the city to triumph over the despoiled citizens. But the finest sight is in the evening when they go back to their villages and their factories. ”

“ History, including the history of painting, shows a whole array of mothers who, through their firm belief in their sons' talent, their indefatigable material solicitude, their utter self sacrifice, have smoothed for their sons the difficult road of art. Ary received his first training at his father's hands and, when the latter died, at a time when the art of painting in Holland had sunk very low, Mrs. Scheffer resolved to take her children to Paris, where Ary and Henri could receive a good education. ”

“ But we may fancy that something of the religious spirit had gone, according to the law of the transmutation of forces, into the scrupulous care for cleanliness, into the grave, old-world, conservative beauty of Dutch houses, which meant that the life people maintained in them was normally affectionate and pure. ”

“ Statistics have proved that in France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Saxony, the education of the peasant, along with the security of tenure he enjoys on his small farms, has encouraged industrious, temperate, virtuous, and cleanly habits, fostered a respect for property, increased social comforts, cherished a spirit of healthy and active independence, improved the cultivation of the land, lessened pauperism, and has rendered the people averse to revolution, and friends of order. ”

“ Ready, I say, like a foaming charger, to devour the space between this and Rotterdam, and strong to combat the ills of life, even poverty and old age, which last philosophers have called the ‘summum malum.’ Negatur; unless the man’s life has been ill-spent—which, by the bye, it generally has. ”

“ A grand and noble figure always: most pathetic when thus redeeming by vigorous but solitary and melancholy hard labor, the political error which had condemned him to retirement. To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature. ”

“ For the first time in my life I was really looking at the social fundamental of Labor.
There is something astonishingly naïve in the unconsciousness with which people of our class float over the great economic realities. All my life I had been hearing of the Working Classes, of Industrialism, of Labor Problems and the Organization of Labor; but it was only now in South Africa, in this chaotic, crude illuminating period of putting a smashed and desolated social order together again, that I perceived these familiar phrases represented [Pg 120] something—something stupendously real. ”

“ Three centuries of patient and courageous labor, often given up in despair and again renewed with obstinate determination, and carried on through every kind of difficulty and peril, have transformed that savage and dangerous region into a most fertile country, intersected by canals, dotted with towns and factories, where agriculture flourishes, commerce and labor go hand in hand, and a population of wealthy and well-instructed people swarms. ”

“ In the narrow valley lives an honest worker; one who, with years of labor, has subdued the hardy soil. Even now, the yellow grain bends beneath the weight of its own wealth, and wakes a joy which ambition never knew. Think you that his days are unrecorded in the Book of Life? Upon his broad shoulders rests the State. Ariel’s soul is content. ”

“ It would be thought ridiculous to claim Divinity for Dutch farming, or any other special mode of farming; but it is just as ridiculous to claim Divinity for Dutch society, or any other society. The farm and the society are alike and equally the work of men. ”

“ Tension of heart and mind, and incessant work,—the toil of a daily mechanical labourer, with the keen, continuous thought of the highest thinker,—working as much as any drudging slave, and as intensely as if all he did was his delight,—at sixty-three the strong, peasant frame was worn out as most men's are at eighty, and he longed for rest. ”

“ Others had doubted and had afterwards believed; for the doubter silence was a duty; the blinded had better keep their misery to themselves. I found some practical relief in parish work of a non-doctrinal kind, in nursing the sick, in trying to brighten a little the lot of the poor of the village. But here, again, I was out of sympathy with most of those around me. The movement among the agricultural laborers, due to the energy and devotion of Joseph Arch, was beginning to be talked of in the fens, and bitter were the comments of the farmers on it, while I sympathised with the other side. ”

“ I am the Shaker of Society's Pillars, I have discovered that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil bears nothing but rotten apples. There are milestones on the Bergen road—but I can see through most of them. I am the New Generation knocking at the old stage-door. ”

“ To those who take an interest in the delightful study of political economy, and who have examined the condition of the people in different countries, with a view to discover the causes of their welfare or their suffering, there is no spectacle so interesting as that which the situation of the people in Flanders affords. ”

“ I am the niece and the adopted daughter of the lord of the soil; none can gainsay or deny me; a Luttrell of Arran, I can assert myself against the world; poverty is only an infliction when side by side with affluence; we are the great and the rich here! Let me only forget the past, and this life can be enjoyable enough. I used to fancy, long ago, as I walked the garden alone at Dinasllyn, that no condition of life would ever find me unprepared to meet. ”

“ Some of the youngest and ablest-bodied labourers were indeed drawn away to join those swift trains that hurried thousands and tens of thousands to the frontier by the Rhine. But most of the male population were married, and were the fathers of young children, and the village was only moved to a thrill of love and of honest pride to think how its young Louis and Jean and André and Valentin were gone full of high hope and high spirit, to come back, maybe—who could say not?—with epaulettes and ribbons of honour. ”

“ The spirit of the land was stirring within it, and every portion of it thrilled with new energy and life. Some of the fugitive artizans from Flanders saw in the thriving village safety and peace, and added what wealth they had, and, what was better, their manufacturing intelligence and skill, to the humble hamlet's store. ”

“ The pulse of life is beating here in more boisterous measure. A variegated crowd of people surges past the old, grey houses, talking, laughing, jesting; laborers who come in their grimy clothes after having received their pay ”

“ The dignity of labour began to assert itself; and when it did, inevitably it broke into ornament on its own account—not at the bidding of an employer, but for the honour and glory of the worker himself. And so, from that date on, the homes and halls and churches of the guilds became some of the noblest monuments to what life meant for men who had found joy in their labour. ”

“ Each day a new episode of life—but of life over which Poverty has thrown its shadow.
Fritz was now to experience all this; now, travelling with a company of wandering apprentices; now, keeping company with a group of peasants on the way to market; sometimes, partaking of a seat in a Bauer’s waggon—often, alone and weary, thinking over his future—a future, that each day seemed to render more doubtful and gloomy. ”

“ But the priests were more numerous than the burgesses. [11] There was no thought here of industry until the end of the Middle Ages, when this part of the country became the seat of collieries and ironworks.
[48]
Under the influence of such commercial and industrial conditions as we have recited, the life of the country people and the control of the soil were entirely transformed. After the twelfth century the old agricultural régime broke down and servitude became an exception; generally speaking, the peasant was thenceforward a free man, like the burgess. ”

“ I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and, according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and instruments of labor on their shoulders. Nor have the Boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labor ”