Knaplund—A Study in British Colonial Policy 
15 
Boers. The Afrikander Bond urged ‘‘the development of a 
feeling of national unity in South Africa and a federal union of 
the British South African Colonies, keeping in view the mutual 
interests of these Colonies and the supreme authority of the Brit¬ 
ish Crown. Mr. F. S. Malan, leader of the Bond forces in the 
Cape assembly, began in 1906 a series of vigorous articles favoring 
unification in 0ns Land, the leading Dutch newspaper in South 
Africa.®® Of even greater significance was the aid received from 
the leaders of the old republicans. Some of these had, indeed, 
agitated for a united South Africa in the years preceding the 
war, but by this they meant union under the republics. Now they 
advocated consolidation under the Union Jack. 
M. F. Steyn, ex-president of the Orange Free State, related in 
language of pathetic simplicity how the view of a pool of blood 
from soldiers representing the Free State, the Transvaal, and the 
Cape had brought him to realize the folly of internecine strife.®’’ 
His weighty influence was thrown in the scale favoring unification. 
General Smuts had already in 1895, as Mr. Advocate Smuts, urged 
cooperation among the whites.®® With the war over he pleaded 
eloquently for reconciliation and union. Speaking at Potchef- 
stroom in February, 1905, he refused to “hide the fact that the 
source of all our evils was disunion, disruption.’’ “Our object 
of old,” he continued, “was to found a United South Africa, 
stretching as far as Zambesi or farther, but because we were at 
sixes and sevens we did not succeed ^ . Let us take the 
hand of brotherhood.” At Klerksdorp “he advised his hearers 
to let ‘ The union of Boer and Briton resemble that of England and 
Scotland not that of England and Ireland. Let us cooperate in 
order to attain our old object: A United South Africa.’ ”®® 
Some of Smut’s appeals for union thus antedated the grant 
of self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, 
“South African Union” in The Edinburgh Revieiv, vol. OCX, p. 8 (July, 1909). 
p. 9. 
“De dag na de slag te Graspan nabij Reitz, waar generaals De Wet en De la Rey 
’n vronwelager verlosten, kvam ik op ’t slagveld en wer mij de plaats getoond waar 
drie van onze mannen gesneuveld warn—’n Kolonialer ’n Vrijstater en ’n Transvaler, 
Ik zag hoe hun levensbloed in een grote plas tezamen gestroomd was, Ik stond als 
genageld bij die plas! Ik sprak met niemand, ’t Was voor mij ’n heilig ogenblik. 
Nieuwe hoop en nieuwe moed vervulden mij. Ik Klom op mijn paard en reed weg 
overtuigd in mijn hart dat ik de ware vereniging van Zuid-Afrika gezeien had, want dat 
bloed kon geen mens meer scheideni”—Prom a speech of March 19, 1908. N. J. van 
der Merwe, Marthinus Theunis Steyn (2 vols., Cape Town, 1921), II, p. 221. 
®* For quotations from this speech see N. Levi, Jan Smuts (London, 1917), pp. 25—27. 
^Ibid., p. 74. 
