Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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In the twentieth century it will not be possible for a state constructed after the plan of the ancient world to attain to power and developed greatness, even for a time. In an age in which the nations of the civilized world are with titanic efforts shaping rafts with which to shoot those rapids down which empire after empire, civilization after civilization, have disappeared, and will shoot them and appear below them, free united peoples; if the South Africa of the future is to remain eaten internally by race hatreds, a film of culture and intelligence spread over seething masses of ignorance and brutality, inter-support and union being wholly lacking; then, though it may be our misfortune rather than our fault, our doom is sealed; our place will be wanting among the great, free nations of earth. Neither in art, in science, in material invention, in the discovery of larger and more satisfactory modes of conducting human life, can we stand beside them. A man with an internal disease feeding on his vitals cannot compete with the sound in body and limb.