'The Presidents of the Orange Free State and of the South African
Republic to the Marquess of Salisbury. Bloemfontein March 5th,
1900.
'The blood and the tears of the thousands who have suffered by this
war, and the prospect of all the moral and economic ruin with which
South Africa is now threatened, make it necessary for both
belligerents to ask themselves dispassionately and as in the sight
of the Triune God for what they are fighting and whether the aim of
each justifies all this appalling misery and devastation.
'With this object, and in view of the assertions of various British
statesmen to the effect that this war was begun and is carried on
with the set purpose of undermining Her Majesty's authority in
South Africa, and of setting up an administration over all South
Africa independent of Her Majesty's Government, we consider it our
duty to solemnly declare that this war was undertaken solely as a
defensive measure to safeguard the threatened independence of the
South African Republic, and is only continued in order to secure
and safeguard the incontestable independence of both Republics as
sovereign international States, and to obtain the assurance that
those of Her Majesty's subjects who have taken part with us in this
war shall suffer no harm whatsoever in person or property.
'On these conditions, but on these conditions alone, are we now as
in the past desirous of seeing peace re-established in South
Africa, and of putting an end to the evils now reigning over South
Africa; while, if Her Majesty's Government is determined to destroy
the independence of the Republics, there is nothing left to us and
to our people but to persevere to the end in the course already
begun, in spite of the overwhelming pre-eminence of the British
Empire, conscious that that God who lighted the inextinguishable
fire of the love of freedom in our hearts and those of our fathers
will not forsake us, but will accomplish His work in us and in our
descendants.
