Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/147

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Platform and Pulpit
135

and the Chartered magnates in charge of Rhodesia? Why should he suspect that he is not seeing everything, or that his views are being moulded for him as he passes along the carefully greased path of travel? He is quite honest, and those who entertain and inform him are quite honest in the expression of their views. None the less, the members of the British aristocracy, the big business men, members of Parliament, and eminent divines who have returned from a visit in South Africa to enlighten us upon the racial, political, and economic problems of that kaleidoscopic country, have brought with them just that information and those sentiments which it was intended they should bring. I do not, of course, impute to the hospitable British South Africans a fully conscious design of impressing any special point of view upon visitors: this conscious play was probably very rare, and even then was blended with the native instinct of hospitality, so prevalent in these as in other colonies. It is rather to be regarded as a necessary incident of the economic situation that the mining capitalists and their financial friends should have enjoyed these private individual opportunities of inculcating their facts and their views upon the minds of

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.