Genl. Smuts and his followers, without any hesitation, laid all their much-celebrated quest for reconciliation and the creation of one nation of Afrikaans and English speakers on the altar of the British Empire. It is clear that their aim was not to create a truly South African people/volk, but a branch of the English people living in South Africa. And in it Afrikanerdom had to be dissolved. This war crisis was necessary to make that transparent to everyone.
Hendrik VerwoerdRelated topics
african aim altar branch british clear creation crisis empire english everyone hesitation lay living nation necessary people quest reconciliation south war africa afrikaans followers afrikanerdom volk smutsRelated quotes
There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with.
- Milner as recorded by Percy FitzPatrick, cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 374.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
The historical picture is clear. Counterfeiting was not invented in modern Asia. When they were backward themselves in terms of knowledge, all of today's rich countries blithely violated other people's patents, trademarks and copyrights. The Swiss 'borrowed' German chemical inventions, while the Germans 'borrowed' English trademarks and the Americans 'borrowed' British copyrighted materials-all without paying what would today be considered 'just' compensation.
Ha-Joon Chang
It took me a long time to discover that particularities of form and natural colour evoke subjective states of feeling which obscure pure reality. The appearance of natural forms changes, but reality remains. To create pure reality plasticity, it is necessary to reduce natural forms to constant elements of form, and natural colour to primary colour. The aim is not to create other particular forms and colours, with all their limitations, but to work toward abolishing them in the interest of a larger unity.
Piet Mondrian
We had two masters of the spoken word in South Africa, General Smuts and his lieutenant J. H. Hofmeyr, whose life I wrote. Smuts spoke in a high-pitched voice, not the kind of voice that one would expect from a famous soldier, but he too could hold an audience in the hollow of his hand, partly because he was Smuts, partly because he could say nothing trite or shallow, partly because he knew how to speak to ordinary men and women.
Alan Paton
We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace... we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.
Thomas Jefferson
