ach to the crowded hour that
made the fullest test of his resource and statesmanship. Clearly to
understand it you must first know something about the Boer and his long
stubborn struggle for independence which ended, for a time at least, in
the battle and blood of the Boer War.

Capetown, the melting pot, is merely a miniature of the larger boiling
cauldron of race which is the Union of South Africa. In America we also
have an astonishing mixture of bloods but with the exception of the
Bolshevists and other radical uplifters, our population is loyally
dedicated to the American flag and the institutions it represents. With
us Latin, Slav, Celt, and Saxon have blended the strain that proved its
mettle as "Americans All" under the Stars and Stripes in France. We have
given succor and sanctuary to the oppressed of many lands and these
foreign elements, in the main, have not only been grateful but have
proved to be distinct assets in our national expansion. We are a merged
people.

With South Africa the situation is somewhat different. The roots of
civilization there were planted by the Dutch in the days of the Dutch
East India Company when Holland was a world power. The Dutchman is a
tenacious and stubborn person. Although the Huguenots emigrated to the
Cape in considerable force in the seventeenth century and intermarried
with the transplanted Hollanders, the Dutch strain, and with it the
Dutch characteristics predominated. They have shaped South African
history ever since. This is why the Boer is still referred to in popular
parlance as "a Dutchman."

The Dutch have always been a proud and liberty-loving people, as the
Duke of Alva and the Spaniard learned to their cost. This inherited
desire for freedom has flamed in the hearts of the Boers. In the early
African day they preferred to journey on to the wild and unknown places
rather than sacrifice their independence. What is known as "The Great
Trek" of the thirties, which opened up the Transvaal and subsequently
the Orange Free State and Natal, was due entirely to unrest among the
Cape Boers. There is something of the epic in the narrative of those
doughty, psalm-singing trekkers who, like the Mormons in the American
West, went forth in their canvas-covered wagons with a rifle in one hand
and the Bible in the other. They fought the savage, endured untold
hardships, and met fate with a grim smile on their lips. It took Britain
nearly three costly years to subdue their