Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

Scenes from a comfortable life - when did the novel come out?

"It is impossible for anything to be by nature better than from what it is derived" - evolution?

"For the desire for true good is implanted by nature in the minds of men, only error leads them astray towards false good" - socio/pyschpaths?

...honour is not accorded to virtue because of the office held, but to the office because of the virtue of the holder.

"At their age, disdain and confusion are to distinquish." - Aha, an equal opportunities cynic!

"And I've noticed that, after a certain age, sentiment and memory tend to merge, ..." - Ah, the cynicism of youth!

Andrés Barba's story 'The Coming Flood' best so far.

"So put your faith in transient luck/And trust in wealth's mortality" - is he advocating gambling?

For if you remember the country you come from, it is not govermed by majority rule like Athens of old...

"[The Muses of Poetry] have no medicine to ease his pains, only sweetened poison to make them worse" - 'What I've learned' youtube video on sugar.

On the contrary, it was the plight of those who had been left in the veld and refused ... admittance to these camps

"What with our sentimentality, our party system, our Government by Committee, our 'Mandarins', our 'Society', and our Generals...The game is just hopeless' - Milner, quite the Nazi

Behind every white man with a rifle was a black man with a spade

'concentration camps', taking it from the the notorious reconcentrado camps set up by the Spanish to deal with Cuban guerillas

"We cannot consent to purchase a shameful peace by leaving the coloured population in the position in which they stood before the war." - contrasting views of the Empire, an ethnic one and a civic one.

"the steady enduring discipline of the men under fire, their absolute indifference to losses, contributed to carry on the glorious traditions of the British infantry" - and French, and German...

Better still would have been to quote that lapidary phrase of Milner's: 'You only have to sacrifice "the nigger" absolutely, and the game is easy.

..he denounced the British for the most emotive of all atrocities: the employment of black Africans to fight the Boers.

He compared [the Boer War] with the American war of Independence. It was no good capturing capitals, unless they could subdue the territory between. - to what extent did the strategic situation reflect the political situation?

"Burghers...we're now going in to attack the enemy and we shan't all be coming back. Do your duty and trust in the Lord." - what role did civic and religious duty play in thr organization of the Boer army?

The dedication of the Boer vrouw was epitomized by Kruger's own family. In 1900 he had one hundred and fifty-six surviving children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

The very people who were never credited with any governing capacity or industrial acumen...the Boers...solve the whole problem in an afternoon, put the Kaffir in his proper place...

Besides, in the eyes of the volk, surrounded by black enemies, no white man's death, even a white enemy's, was much cause for celebrating.

the brst that was said about the British was that they the dupes of Jewish financiers. - Beit et al presumably

Kruger's main political objective was was a new settlement, with Britain giving the Transvaal unqualified independence - why he started the war?

They must send a relief expedition immediately or Rhodes would surrender Kimberley to the Boers.

"Cape loyalists, Natal loyalists, Uitlanders from Johannesburg and Rhodesians - would be cast into imperial steel, fusing with the stronger metals from the mother country" - when did this attitude change?

"The second [principle] was to secure the loyalty of the very men - the uitlanders - who were determined to keep the natives oppressed." - by Cry it was simply the Boers, economic competition was as much a driver of this as race.

"Dams, schools, agricultural colleges" - Look, the denouement of Cry, the Beloved country. As far as white Liberal aspirations for blacks went.

'all for people we despise and for territory that will bring no power to England' - rather overlooking all that gold and diamond.