YVES GUYOT.

CHAPTER I.

BOER APOLOGISTS.[2]

1.—­Disregard of Facts and Subordination to the Vatican.

I notice with satisfaction, that people, who a short time ago would not listen to a word about the Transvaal, are now no longer animated by the same spirit of confidence, and are even beginning to wonder whether they have not fallen into the same mistake made by so many in the Dreyfus case, who only began to entertain doubts after the exposure of the Henry forgery.

I have been asked “Why have you not answered Dr. Kuyper’s article in the Revue des Deux Mondes?” and it appears that Dr. Leyds has been heard to say in Brussels:  “M.  Yves Guyot has made no answer to Dr. Kuyper’s article.”  As though it were unanswerable!

I might well retort with the question:  “Why does the Pro-Boer press never reply to counter arguments save by vague phrases, and evading the real issue?  Why does the French press, in particular, confine itself to lauding “the brave Boers” and the “venerable President Krueger,” and to extolling the virtues with which it credits them, instead of studying their actual social condition, and giving its readers the plain facts?  Why do we not find one word in our papers of the articles by M.M.  Villarais and Tallichet, published in the Bibliotheque Universelle.[3]”

It is an exact repetition of the method employed by the Anti-Dreyfusard papers in the Dreyfus case.  But the odd thing is, that many who were then exasperated by it, now look upon it as quite natural, and are not surprised to find themselves bosom friends of Drumont, Rochefort, Judet, and Arthur Mayer.  The Transvaal question unites them in a “nationalist” policy, which, if it were to go beyond mere words, would result in a war with England and might complete, by a naval Sedan, the disaster of 1870.

The majority of Frenchmen have brought to the scrutiny of the matter a degree of pigheadedness that clearly proves the influence of our method of subjective education.  We state our faith on words, and believe—­because it is a mystery.

The Revue des Deux Mondes, in which Dr. Kuyper’s article is published (February 1st), has become an organ of Leo XIII.  Those free-thinkers, protestants, and Jews in France who take part in the Anglophobe movement, are thus naively furthering the aims of the Vatican and the Jesuits, whose endeavour has ever been to stir up Europe against England—­England that shall never be forgiven for the liberalism of her institutions, for the independence of her thinkers, and for her politics, to which they attribute, not without reason, the downfall of the temporal power.

The apologetic portion of Dr. Kuyper’s article shows the Boers in their true light.  Far from refuting it, I will quote from it.  The critical part obscures the points at issue.  I will clear them up.