at they are now. The present
contented acquiescence of the coloured people in the dominance of the
whites, and the absence of resentment at the contempt displayed toward
them, cannot be expected from a people whose inferiority, though still
real, will be much less palpable. And if trouble comes, the
preponderance of numbers on the black side may make it more serious than
it could be in the United States, where the Southern whites are the
outmost fringe of an enormous white nation. These anxieties are little
felt, these problems are little canvassed, in South Africa, for things
which will not happen in our time or in the time of our children are for
most of us as though they would never happen; and we have become so
accustomed to see the unexpected come to pass as to forget that where
undoubted natural causes are at work--causes whose working history has
examined and verified--a result may be practically certain, uncertain as
may be the time when and the precise form in which it will arrive.

There are, however, some thoughtful men in the Colonies who see the
magnitude of the issues involved in this native problem. They hold, so
far as I could gather their views, that the three chief things to be
done now are to save the natives from intoxicating liquor, which injures
them even more than it does the whites, to enact good land laws, which
shall keep them from flocking as a loafing proletariate into the towns,
as well as just labour laws, and to give them much better opportunities
than they now have of industrial education. Manual training and the
habit of steady industry are quite as much needed as book education, a
conclusion at which the friends of the American negro have also arrived.
Beyond this the main thing to be done seems to be to soften the feelings
of the average white and to mend his manners. At present he considers
the native to exist solely for his own benefit. He is harsh or gentle
according to his own temper; but whether harsh or gentle, he is apt to
think of the black man much as he thinks of an ox, and to ignore a
native's rights when they are inconvenient to himself.

Could he be got to feel more kindly toward the native, and to treat him,
if not as an equal, which he is not, yet as a child, the social aspect
of the problem--and it is the not least serious aspect--would be
completely altered.

[Footnote 69: The Boers are a genuinely religious people, but they have
forgotten 1 Cor. xii. 13, Gal. iii. 2