Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/150

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
138
The Psychology of Jingoism

Outlander Council, and again as the South African Vigilance Committee, have been in effect the 'British South Africa' of Sir Alfred Milner's despatches: it was their influence and evidence that ultimately forced us into war, and that is forcing upon us a miscalled "settlement," fraught with costs and dangers which the future will disclose.

This conjunction of the forces of the press, the platform, and the pulpit, has succeeded in monopolizing the mind of the British public, and in imposing a policy calculated not to secure the interests of the British Empire, but to advance the private, political, and business interests of a small body of men who have exploited the race feeling in South Africa and the Imperialist sentiment of England. They have done this by the simple device of securing all important avenues of intelligence, and of using them to inject into the public mind a continuous stream of false or distorted information.

It may well be true that public opinion in Holland, and even in other Continental countries, has been similarly poisoned from Dutch Africander sources. The Hollander press of the Transvaal, Mr. Kruger's secret service, and the influence of the Africander

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.