BROTHER AFRICANDERS!

Once more in the annals of our bloodstained history has the day dawned
when we are forced to grasp our weapons in order to resume the struggle
for liberty and existence, entrusting our national cause to that
Providence which has guided our people throughout South Africa in such a
miraculous way.

The struggle of now nearly a century, which began when a foreign rule
was forced upon the people of the Cape of Good Hope, hastens to an end;
we are approaching the last act in that great drama which is so
momentous for all South Africa; we have reached a stage when it will be
decided whether the sacrifices which both our fathers and we ourselves
have made in the cause of freedom have been offered in vain, whether the
blood of our race, with which every part of South Africa has been, as it
were, consecrated, has been shed in vain; and whether by the grace of
God the last stone will now be built into the edifice which our fathers
began with so much toil and so much sorrow.

[Sidenote: The alternative of Africanderdom.]

The hour has struck which will decide whether South Africa, in jealously
guarding its liberty, will enter upon a new phase of its history, or
whether our existence as a people will come to an end, whether we shall
be exterminated in the deadly struggle for that liberty which we have
prized above all earthly treasures, and whether South Africa will be
dominated by capitalists without conscience, acting in the name and
under the protection of an unjust and hated Government 7,000 miles away
from here.

[Sidenote: The necessity of historical retrospect.]

In this hour it behoves us to cast a glance back at the history of this
great struggle. We do so not to justify ourselves, because liberty, for
which we have sacrificed everything, has justified us and screened our
faults and failings, but we do so in order that we may be, as it were,
sanctified and prepared for the conflict which lies before us, bearing
in mind what our people have done and suffered by the help of God. In
this way we may be enabled to continue the work of our fathers, and
possibly to complete it. Their deeds of heroism in adventures with Bantu
and Briton shine forth like guiding stars through the history of the
past, in order to point out the way for posterity to reach that goal for
which our sorely tried people have made such great sacrifices, and for
which they have undergone so many vicissitudes.

The historical s