“I think,” replied Mr. Bailey, “I have got the pick of the bunch, but there are millions of acres that are almost as good, with any number of them running to waste, and square miles of Karroo which are quite waterless for want of the windmill. I think,” added Mr. Bailey, “my farm has demonstrated in practical fashion that South Africa can be made one of the richest farming countries in the world. But you must have: first, brains in the management; second, windmills to raise water for your stock; third, dams to secure the irrigation of the flat land on either side of the plot; fourth, alfalfa with which to fodder your stock in winter, and fifth, you must raise nothing but the best stock. If you stick to these five rules you will not go far wrong.”
If the English had given Abe Bailey power, he might have made an Eldorado of South Africa.
Instead you have statesmen like Asquith and Grey who will make a world war without fear or doubt, or hesitation, but will not attempt at small cost to build up a world empire. Yet the Central Plateau of Africa is sure to become a world empire in the near future, for the climate is not only healthful, but the country is astoundingly attractive and rich as well, sun baked and life-giving all the year round without being too hot even in summer and on the Equator.
The great event of January 1906 was the overwhelming defeat of the Party that made the South African War. The great event of February was the re-establishment at Westminster of a Parliament which in every sense represented the heart of the nation. For years Parliament had been sinking in public esteem. In the last years of the Balfour Ministry it had come to be treated with contempt. Now all that was changed. Westminster was alive again. Even the Peers showed symptoms of a new life.
The King's speech, which was of considerable length, contained the welcome announcement that responsible government was to be established this year in both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, in the confident expectation that “the grant of free institutions will be followed by an increased prosperity and loyalty to the Empire.”
Best of all, the Chinese laborers in the Transvaal, or slaves as they really were, were to be sent home again at the cost of the British Government.
And so Milnerism was finally killed. His speech in the House of Commons was his death-song. In it, the tyrant stood confesseda tyrant whose one idea of government was to use racial supremacy as his sole instrument. There was no longer any disguise. Naked and unashamed Milnerism stood revealed before our eyes.
No wonder Lord Milner was miserable. To have been directly responsible for the slaughter of 25,000 fighting men, and for the deaths of 5,000 women and 20,000 helpless infants, would have been a terrible burden to bear even if the end had justified the means. But Lord Milner, in the frankest fashion, admitted his failure:
“Just now the Transvaalindeed, all South Africais under a cloud. It has cost us great sacrifice. The compensations which we expected, and reasonably expected, have not come.”
Seldom has there been a more signal and instantaneous manifestation of the magic influence of justice and sympathy than in the rally of the whole Boer nation to his Majesty's Ministers the moment they showed that they intended to keep faith with his Afrikaner subjects.
The aristocracy and Milnerism had come to much the same grief in South Africa at the end of the 19th century as their predecessors achieved in the United States at the end of the eighteenth.
CHAPTER III
The only man I knew in Bombay was a man called Taylor. He had some kind of position with the railways. Here I find my memory at fault. In a long life lived energetically over three parts of the globe, this lapse is perhaps excusable. I shall go straight to the things which most concerned me, for they, like certain pages of Virgil and like certain immortal lines of Meredith, will remain with me always.
It was late afternoon when Taylor conducted me through the bazaar. There is nothing so picturesque as the bazaars of India, and nothing so chaotic. The men, women, and the skinny brown children are as thick as flies in the midst of the gaudy bales and bundles of their colorful wares. I couldn't help noticing how, when they saw us, they seemed to make way for us and to impede us at the same time. Taylor called my attention to the Chinese silks, the Tibetan shawls, and to the large drums of brown and yellow spices. I feigned interest, but to tell the truth, I was interested in the people more than in the gaudy merchandise which they held up for us to see. It seemed to me significant that Taylor, who was, after all, a man of no breadth of mind, a man who missed alike the joys of the spirit and the sweetest of the body's delights, should barge his way like a railway porter through the crowd. He typified for me the worst aspect of the British Raj, the kind of man who, like Lord Milner, was devoid of the sense of justice and fair play when he was confronted by the subject races. I allowed him to walk ahead, like a bad- mannered guide. Thoughtfully, taking everything in, I followed in his wake.
It occurred to me immediately that Taylor was not the kind of man I could trust to advise me in the matter which was closest to my heart. I decided, therefore, to take Mrs. Redfern at her word, and to accept her offer to be my guide and friend in sexual matters during my sojourn in India. Walking behind Taylor, I could not help feeling very anti-English. That this in general should have been the type of man they sent out to bring Western civilization to the East made me boil with rage. What kind of future could we expect when we showed such little wisdom in the choice of our emissaries? I remembered suddenly what I had said to Molly, the beautiful daughter of the innkeeper at Ballinasloe: “I am not ambitious, Molly, of place or power or riches; but of knowledge and wisdom I'm the lover and priest. I don't want happiness even, Molly, nor comfort, though I'll take all I can get of both. I'm wedded to that one quest for knowledge like a knight in search of the Holy Grail and my whole life will go to that achievement.” When I'd said that, I had been thinking of Smith, my friend and professor in Lawrence, Kansas. Now, for the thousandth time in my life, I was thinking of him again. If only our western governments would be sensible enough to use the fine qualities of men like Smith! There are true Empire Builders, the men in whom moral courage is leavened by wisdom, the men who, in their wisdom, despise not the body in its pleasures nor are insensitive to it in its afflictions. That kind of man, more than those who learn their manners on the cricket field of Eton, is the one who will build the only true empirethe everlasting Empire of Love!
All around me was a strange peoplemen, passionate in their poverty; women, tender as flowers in their travail; children, graceful in their filth; a strange people, a people whose natural right it was to know kindness and love but who had for centuries known nothing but ugliness and the whip! I decided that very moment to bid good- bye to Taylor as soon as we left the bazaar and to avoid wherever possible contact with his type during the rest of my stay in India. He was not, as you can well imagine, unsurprised at my sudden decision to part company with him, laughing first, and then, when he saw that I was in earnest, becoming cool and not a little angry toward me. But I have never had any time to waste on fools. I bade him good day politely and was lucky enough not to run into him again while I was in Bombay. I considered myself very lucky to have got off so lightly and so soon.
Mrs. Redfern, the stewardess, was not satisfied with failure. She was an extremely practical and capable woman, the widow of a noncommissioned officer, as I have said before. Perhaps it was that failures did not bring her in any money. In any case, she was resolved to win my vagrant fancy and I had confidence in her. Soon after her first unfortunate introductions in Bombay, she began talking to me of a wonderful girl who was quite independent but who, at eighteen, would soon have to choose a lover or a husband.
“Some go much longer,” I objected.
“Not in this climate,” she corrected me. “When a girl of eighteen sees a girl of fourteen already given up to love, as is often the case here, her chastity begins to trouble her, I can assure you. But I want to be certain that you will give this girl the best reception, for she is a peach.”
It was precisely her peach that interested me. We soon decided on an afternoon upon which to bring about the meeting. When it arrived, I arranged the sitting room with flowers and fruit and wine. When Mrs. Redfern came in with her protege, I was astonished. Her skin was a very pale brown color, too dark to be English, but she spoke English with no accent. She wore high-heeled slippers, but the rest of her costume was native, a large transparent veil hanging down from her head and being fastened between the knees. It was all in all an exceedingly gracious costume. Her pure accent caused me to ask her: “Are you English?”
“Half-English,” she replied, and I learned that her father was an English officer while her mother was an Indian of good family. Her name was May and she deserved it. She was certainly very pretty and her gentle and sympathetic manners increased the effect of her beauty.
Mrs. Redfern stripped the girl in front of my eyes and made me notice that the hairs on her mount had been
