Author: Herbert A. L. Fisher

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-12

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 9781331234517

Excerpt from Political Unions: The Creighton Lecture, Delivered in the University of London, November 8, 1911 Three years ago I was honoured by an invitation to deliver some historical lectures in South Africa. The country still bore upon its face the scars and memorials of the recent war. There were the grim ugly blockhouses guarding the railroad, the little crosses of white stone* fresh and glistening in the bright African air, and sprinkled so thickly in the desolate spaces between Estcourt and the Tugela that the train seemed to wind through a continuous cemetery. The rents made by the Boer guns in the Post Office and Hotel at Ladysmith were still gaping; the broken wire was still drawn in front of the long straight trench where the Highland Brigade met with its disaster under the round hills of Magersfontein. In the most lonely and secluded regions, on air-washed kopjes, commanding leagues of waving and utterly solitary veld and with no visible sign of man to disturb the enchanting tranquillity of the scene, you would suddenly kick against a Mauser bullet or the littered fragments of shrapnel mingling with the rugged grey rocks and the short stiff sun-browned grass. And in the haunts of men, behind all the hopeful bustle and good humour of Colonial life, you were never very far from the background of strife, tragedy, and adventure. The human race would indeed be hardly human if, after such a struggle, there were no bitter drop in the cup of memory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.