Emily Hobouse's Speech (continued)

Their spirit which we feel so near to us to-day warns ever: "Beware lest you forget what caused that struggle in the past. We died without a murmur to bear our part in saving our country from those who loved her not but only desired her riches. Do not confuse the issues and join hands with those who look on her with eyes of greed and not with eyes of love. It is not the glory of those weak sufferers to have laid down this principle: - In this South Africa of ours, true patriotism lies in the unity of those who live in her and love her as opposed to those who live on her but out of her. The Patriots and the Parasites. This issue, though fought out of old, is ever with you, it is alive to-day; voices of the dead call to you, their spirits lay a restraining hold upon you as they plead: "Here is the true division beside which all other cleavages are meaningless." There can be no permanent separation betwixt those who love our country, live in her and are bound up with her. At bottom such are one. Alongside of the honour we pay the Sainted Dead, forgiveness must find a place. I have read that when Christ said 'Forgive your enemies', it is not only for the sake of the enemy, He says so, but for one's own sake, "because love is more beautiful than hate." Surely your dead with the wisdom that now is theirs know this. To harbour hate is fatal to your own self-development; it makes a flaw, for hatred like rust, eats into the soul of a nation as of an individual. As your tribute to the dead, bury unforgiveness and bitterness at the foot of this monument forever. Instead, forgive for you can afford it, the rich who were greedy of more riches, the statesmen who could not guide affairs, the bad generalship that warred on weaklings and babies forgive - because so only can you rise to full nobility of character and a broad and noble national life' The years have brought changes they little dreamed, but South Africa is one and it is free. Its freedom is based on all they did; they suffered; they died; they could do no more. The supreme offering was made, the supreme price paid. Their sacrifice still bears fruit. Even could the graves open and give up their dead, we would not wish those women back, nor have them relinquish the great position they have won. Not even the children would we recall, the children, who - counting the vanished years -, would stand before us now, some 20,000 youths and maidens, fair and comely, - a noble array - peopling the too solitary veldt. For who does not feel their spirit move amongst us here to-day? Who fails to recognise the noble example by which they still live?...

Did you ever ask yourselves why I came to your aid in those dark days of strife? I had never seen your country nor ever known anyone of you. Hence it was no personal link that brought me hither. Neither did political sympathy of any kind prompt my journey. I came - quite simply - in obedience to the solidarity of our womanhood and to those nobler traditions of English life in which I was nurtured and which by long inheritance are mine'.I stand here as an Englishwoman, and I am confident that all that is best and most humane in England is with you also in heart to-day. Reverent sympathy is felt with you in this Commemoration and in your desire to accord full honour to your Dead. You and I were linked together by the strange decrees of fate at that dark hour; we stand now face to face for the last time. One thing I would ask of you. When you remember the ill done, remember also the atonement made. Dwell also upon all you have gained through this great episode, in the legacy left you by the Dead... My Friends: - Throughout the world the woman's day approaches; her era dawns. Proudly I unveil this Monument to the brave South African women, who, sharing the danger that beset their land and dying for it, affirmed for all times and for all peoples the power of Woman to sacrifice life and more than life for the common weal. This is your South African Monument; But it is more; for "their story is not graven only on stone, over their native earth. We claim it as a WORLD-MONUMENT, of which all the World's Women should be proud; for your dead by their brave simplicity have spoken to Universal Womanhood, and henceforth they are 'woven into the stuff' of every woman's life"