Transcriber’s note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected, all
other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author’s spelling
has been maintained.

LORD MILNER’S WORK
IN SOUTH AFRICA

FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT IN 1897 TO
THE PEACE OF VEREENIGING IN 1902

containing hitherto unpublished information

BY W. BASIL WORSFOLD

with portraits and map

“What would have been the position to-day in South Africa if
there had not been a man prepared to take upon himself
responsibility; a man whom difficulties could not conquer, whom
disasters could not cow, and whom obloquy could never
move?”—Lord Goschen in the House of Lords, March 29th, 1906

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY ALBEMARLE STREET W
1906

This Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne
Convention, as well as in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and all British
Colonies and Dependencies.

Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

(p. v) PREFACE

In sending this book to press I have only two remarks to make by way
of preface.

The first is wholly personal. It has been my good fortune to reside
twice for a considerable period in South Africa—first in the
neighbourhood of Capetown (1883-5), and afterwards in Johannesburg
(1904-5). During these periods of residence, and also during the long
interval between them, I have been brought into personal contact with
many of the principal actors in the events which are related in this
book. While, therefore, no pains have been spared to secure accuracy
by a careful study of official papers and other reliable publications,
my information is not derived by any means exclusively from these
sources.

My second remark is the expression of a hope that the contents of this
book may be regarded not merely as a chapter of history, but also as a
body of facts essential to the full understanding of the circumstances
and conditions of South Africa, as it is to-day. Since the restoration
of peace—an event not yet five years old—a great change has been
wrought in the political and (p. vi) economic framework of this
province of the empire. None the less, with a few conspicuous
exceptions, almost all of the principal actors in these pages are
still there; and, presumably, they are very much the same men now as
they were before, and during, the war. And in this connection it
remains to notice an aspect of the South African struggle which
transcends all others in fruitfulness and importance. It was a
struggle to keep South Africa not a dependency of Great Britain, but a
part of the empire. The over-sea Britains, understanding it in this
sense, took their share in it. They made their voices heard in the
settlement. The service which they thus collectively performed was
great. It would have been infinitely greater if they had been directly
represented in an administration nominally common to them and the
mother country. No political system can be endowed with effective
unity—with that organic unity which is the only effective
unity—unless it is possessed of a single vehicle of thought and
action. To create this vehicle—an administrative body in which all
parts of the empire would be duly represented—is difficult to-day.
The forces of disunion, which are at work both at home and beyond the
seas, may make it impossible to-morrow.

W. B. W.

Ridge, near Capel, Surrey,
October 19th, 1906

(p. vii) CONTENTS

(p. 001) LORD MILNER

CHAPTER I

DOWNING STREET AND THE MAN ON THE SPOT

The failure of British administration in South Africa during the
nineteenth century forms a blemish upon the record of the Victorian
era that is at first sight difficult to understand. If success could
be won in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in India and in Egypt,
why failure in South Africa? For failure it was. A century of wars,
missionary effort, British expansion, industrial development, of lofty
administrative ideals and great men sacrificed, had left the two
European races with political ambitions so antagonistic, and social
differences so bitter, that nothing less than the combined military
resources of the colonies and the mother-country sufficed to compel
the Dutch to recognise the British principle of “equal rights for all
white men south of the Zambesi.” Among the many contributory causes of
failure that can be distinguished, the two most prominent are the
nationality difficulty and the native question. But these are problems
of administration that have been solved elsewhere: the former in
Canada and (p. 002) the latter in India. Or, to turn to agencies of a
different order, is the cause of failure to be found in a grudging
nature—the existence of physical conditions that made it difficult
for the white man, or for the white and coloured man together, to
wring a livelihood from the soil? The answer is that the like material
disadvantages have been conquered in Australia, India, and in Egypt,
by Anglo-Saxon energy. We might apply the Socratic method throughout,
traversing the entire range of our distinguishable causes; but in
every case the inquiry would reveal success in some other portion of
the Anglo-Saxon domain to darken failure in South Africa.

Nevertheless, in so far as any single influence can be assigned to
render intelligible a result brought about by many agencies, various
in themselves and operating from time to time in varying degrees, the
explanation is to be found in a little incident that happened in the
second year of the Dutch East India Company’s settlement at the Cape
of Good Hope. The facts are preserved for us by the diary which
Commander Van Riebeck was ordered to keep for the information of his
employers. Under the date October 19th, 1653, we read that David
Janssen, a herdsman, was found lying dead of assegai wounds, inflicted
by the Beechranger Hottentots, while the cattle placed under his
charge were seen disappearing round the curve of the Lion’s Head. The
theft had been successfully accomplished through the perfidy (p. 003)
of a certain “Harry,” a Hottentot chief, who was living on terms of
friendship with the Dutch—a circumstance which was sufficiently
apparent from the fact that the raid was timed to take place at an
hour on Sunday morning when the whole of the little community, with
the exception of two sentinels and a second herdsman, were assembled
to hear a sermon from the “Sick-Comforter,” Wylant. It was the first
conflict between the Dutch and the natives; for Van Riebeck had been
bidden, for various excellent reasons, to keep on good terms with the
Hottentots, and to treat them kindly. But the murder of a white man
was a serious matter. Kindness scarcely seemed to meet the case; and
so Van Riebeck applied to the Directors, the famous Chamber of
Seventeen, for definite instructions as to the course which he must
pursue.

He was told that only the actual murderer of David Janssen (if
apprehended) was to be put to death; that cattle equal in amount to
the cattle stolen were to be recovered, but only from the actual
robbers; and that “Harry,” if necessary, should be sent to prison at
Batavia. But he was not otherwise to molest or injure the offending
Hottentots. Excellent advice, and such as we should expect from the
countrymen of Grotius in their most prosperous era.
But unfortunately
it was quite impossible for Van Riebeck, with his handful of soldiers
and sailors, planted at the extremity of the great barbaric continent
of Africa, (p. 004) to think of putting it into effect. He replied
that he had no means of identifying the individual wrong-doers, and
that the institution of private property was unknown among the
Hottentots. The only method by which the individual could be punished
was by punishing the tribe, and he therefore proposed to capture the
tribe and their cattle. But this was a course of action which was
repugnant to the Directors’ sense of justice. It aroused, besides, a
vision of reinforcements ordered from Batavia, and of disbursements
quite disproportionate to the practical utility of the Cape station as
an item in the system of the Company. In vain Van Riebeck urged that a
large body of slaves and ten or twelve hundred head of cattle would be
a great addition to the resources of the settlement. The Chamber of
Seventeen refused to sanction the proposals of the commander, and, as
its own were impracticable, nothing was done. The Beechranger tribe
escaped with impunity, and the Hottentots, as a whole, were emboldened
to make fresh attacks upon the European settlers.

This simple narrative is a lantern that sheds a ray of light upon an
obscure subject. Two points are noticeable in the attitude of the home
authority. First, there is its inability to grasp the local
conditions; and second, the underlying assumption that a moral
judgment based upon the conditions of the home country, if valid, must
be equally valid in South Africa. By the time that the (p. 005) home
authority had become Downing Street instead of the peripatetic Chamber
of Seventeen, the field of mischievous action over which these
misconceptions operated had become enlarged. The natives were there,
as before; but, in addition to the natives, there had grown up a
population of European descent, some thirty thousand in number, whose
manner of life and standards of thought and conduct were scarcely more
intelligible to the British, or indeed to the European mind, than
those of the yellow-skinned Hottentot or the brown-skinned Kafir. A
century and a half of the Dutch East India Company’s government—a
government “in all things political purely despotic, in all things
commercial purely monopolist”—had produced a people unlike any other
European community on the face of the earth.
Of the small original
stock from which the South African Dutch are descended, one-quarter
were Huguenot refugees from France, an appreciable section were
German, and the institution of slavery had added to this admixture the
inevitable strain of non-Aryan blood. But this racial change was by no
means all that separated the European population in the Cape Colony
from the Dutch of Holland. A more potent agency had been at work. The
corner-stone of the policy of the Dutch East India Company was the
determination to debar the settlers from all intercourse—social,
intellectual, commercial, and political—with their kinsmen in Europe.
One fact will suffice to (p. 006) show how perfectly this object was
attained. Incredible as it may seem, it is the case that at the end of
the eighteenth century no printing-press was to be found in the Cape
Colony, nor had this community of twenty thousand Europeans the means
of knowing the nature of the laws and regulations of the Government by
which it was ruled. So long and complete an isolation from European
civilisation produced a result which is as remarkable in itself as it
is significant to the student of South African history. This
phenomenon was the existence, in the nineteenth century, of a
community of European blood whose moral and intellectual standards
were those of the seventeenth.

Our dip into the early history of South Africa is not purposeless. It
does not, of course, explain the failure of British administration;
but it brings us into touch with circumstances that were bound to make
the task of governing the Cape Colony—a task finally undertaken by
England in 1806—one of peculiar difficulty. The native population was
strange, but the European population was even more strange and
abnormal.
If we had been left to deal with the native population alone
we should have experienced no serious difficulty in rendering them
harmless neighbours, and have been able to choose our own time for
entering upon the responsibilities involved in the administration of
their territories. But, coming second on the field, we were bound to
modify (p. 007) our native policy to suit the conditions of a
preexisting relationship between the white and black races that was
not of our creation, and one, moreover, that was in many respects
repugnant to British ideas of justice. Nor was this all. The old
European population, which should have been, naturally, our ally and
fellow-worker in the task of native administration, gradually changed
from its original position of a subject nationality to that of a
political rival; and, as such, openly bid against us for the
mastership of the native African tribes.

Now when two statesmen are pitted against each other, of whom one is a
man whose methods of attack are limited by nineteenth-century ideas,
while the morality of the other, being that of the seventeenth
century, permits him greater freedom of action, it is obvious that the
first will be at a disadvantage. And this would be the case more than
ever if the nineteenth-century statesman was under the impression that
his political antagonist was a man whose code of morals was identical
with his own. When once he had learnt that the moral standard of the
other was lower than, or different from, his own, he would of course
make allowance for the circumstance, and he would then be able to
contest the position with him upon equal terms. But until he had
grasped this fact he would be at a disadvantage.

Generally speaking, the representatives of the British Government,
both Governors and High (p. 008) Commissioners, soon learnt that
neither the natives nor the Dutch population could be dealt with on
the same footing as a Western European. But the British Government
cannot be said to have thoroughly learnt the same lesson until, in
almost the last week of the nineteenth century, the three successive
defeats of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso aroused it to a
knowledge of the fact that we had been within an ace of losing South
Africa. Many, indeed, would question whether even now the lesson had
been thoroughly learnt. But, however this may be, it is certain that
throughout the nineteenth century the Home Government wished to treat
both the natives and the Dutch in South Africa on a basis of British
ideas; and that by so doing it constantly found itself in conflict
with its own local representatives, who knew that the only hope of
success lay in dealing with both alike on a basis of South African
ideas.

As the result of this chronic inability of British statesmen to
understand South Africa, it follows that the most instructive manner
of regarding our administration of that country during the nineteenth
century is to get a clear conception of the successive divergences of
opinion between the home and the local authorities.

At the very outset of British administration—during the temporary
occupation of the Cape from 1795 to 1808—we find a theoretically
perfect policy laid down for the guidance of the early (p. 009)
English Governors in their treatment of the Boers, or Dutch frontier
farmers. It is just as admirable, in its way, as were the instructions
for the treatment of the Hottentots furnished by the Directors of the
Dutch East India Company to Van Riebeck. In a despatch of July, 1800,
the third Duke of Portland, who was then acting as Secretary for the
Colonies, writes:

“Considering the tract of country over which these border
inhabitants are dispersed, the rude and uncultivated state in
which they live, and the wild notions of independence which
prevail among them, I am afraid any attempts to introduce
civilisation and a strict administration of justice will be slow
in their progress, and likely, if not proceeded upon with caution
and management, rather to create a spirit of resistance, or to
occasion them to emigrate still further from the seat of
government, than answer the beneficent views with which they
might be undertaken. In fact, it seems to me the proper system of
policy to observe to them is to interfere as little as possible
in their domestic concerns and interior economy; to consider them
rather as distant communities dependent upon the Government than
as subjects necessarily amenable to the laws and regulations
established within the precincts of Government. Mutual advantages
arising from barter and commerce, and a strict adherence to good
faith and justice in all arrangements with them, joined to
efficient protection and occasional acts of kindness on the part
of the Government, seem likely to be the best means of securing
their attachment.”

Who would have thought that this statement of policy, admirable as it
is at first sight, contained (p. 010) in itself the germ of a
political heresy of the first magnitude? Yet so it was. The principle
of non-interference, here for the first time enunciated and
subsequently followed with fatal effect, could not be applied by a
nineteenth-century administration to the case of a seventeenth-century
community without its virtually renouncing the functions of
government. Obviously this was not the intention of the home
authority. There remained the difficulty of knowing when to apply, and
when not to apply, the principle; and directly a specific case arose
there was the possibility that, while the local authority, with a full
knowledge of the local conditions, might think interference necessary,
the home authority, without such knowledge, might take an opposite
view.

A very few years sufficed to show that the most ordinary exercise of
the functions of government might be regarded as an “interference with
the domestic concerns and interior economy” of the European subjects
of the British Crown in South Africa. At the time of the permanent
occupation of the Cape (1806) the population of the colony consisted
of three classes: 26,720 persons of European descent, 17,657
Hottentots, and 29,256 returned as slaves. One of the first measures
of the British Governor, Lord Caledon, was the enactment of a series
of regulations intended to confer civil rights on the Hottentots,
while at the same time preventing them from using their freedom at the
expense of the European population. (p. 011) From the British, or
even European point of view, this was a piece of elementary justice to
which no man could possibly take exception. As applied to the
conditions of the Franco-Dutch population in the Cape Colony it was,
in fact, a serious interference with their “domestic concerns and
internal economy.” And as such it produced the extraordinary protest
known to history as the “Rebellion” of Slaghter’s Nek.
There was no
question as to the facts. Booy, the Hottentot, had completed his term
of service with Frederick Bezuidenhout, the Boer, and was therefore
entitled, under the Cape law, to leave his master’s farm, and to
remove his property. All this Bezuidenhout admitted; but when it came
to a question of yielding obedience to the magistrate’s order, the
Boer said “No.” In the words of Pringle, “He boldly declared that he
considered this interference between him (a free burgher) and his
Hottentot to be a presumptuous innovation upon his rights, and an
intolerable usurpation of tyrannical authority.”

And the danger of allowing the Boers to pursue their
seventeenth-century dealings with the natives became rapidly greater
when the European Colonists, Dutch and English, were brought, by their
natural eastward expansion, into direct contact with the masses of
military Bantu south and east of the Drakenberg chain of
mountains—the actual dark-skinned “natives” of South Africa as it is
known to the people (p. 012) of Great Britain. The Boer frontiersman,
with his aggressive habits and ingrained contempt for a dark-skin,
disintegrated the Bantu mass before we were ready to undertake the
work of reconstruction. And therefore the local British authority soon
learnt that non-interference in the case of the Boer generally meant
the necessity of a much more serious interference at a subsequent date
with both Boer and Kafir. And so non-interference, in the admirable
spirit of the Duke of Portland’s despatch, came to bear one meaning in
Downing Street and quite another in Capetown.

The earliest of the three crucial “divergences of opinion,” to which
collectively the history of our South African administration owes its
sombre hue, was that which led to the reversal of Sir Benjamin
D’Urban’s frontier policy by Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg)
at the end of the year 1835. The circumstances were these. On
Christmas Day, 1834, the Kafirs (without any declaration of war,
needless to say) invaded the Cape Colony, murdering the settlers in
the isolated farms, burning their homesteads, and driving off their
cattle. After a six months’ campaign, in which the Dutch and British
settlers fought by the side of the regular troops, a treaty was made
with the Kafir chiefs which, in the opinion of D’Urban
and his local
advisers, would render the eastern frontier of the Colony secure from
further inroads. The Kafirs were to retire to (p. 013) the line of
the Kei River, thus surrendering part of their territory to the
European settlers who had suffered most severely from the invasion;
while a belt of loyal Kafirs, supported by a chain of forts, was to be
interposed between the defeated tribes and the colonial farmsteads. In
addition to these measures, D’Urban proposed to compensate the
settlers for the enormous losses[1] which they had incurred; since, as
a contemporary and not unfriendly writer[2] puts it, the British
Government had exposed them for fourteen years to Kafir depredations,
rather than acknowledge the existence of a state of affairs that must
plainly have compelled it to make active exertions for their
protection.

The view of the home authority was very different. In the opinion of
His Majesty’s ministers at Downing Street the Kafir invasion was the
result of a long series of unjustifiable encroachments on the part of
the European settlers. D’Urban was instructed, therefore, to reinstate
the Kafirs in the districts from which they had retired under the
treaty of September, 1835, and to cancel all grants of land beyond the
Fish River—the original eastern boundary of the Colony—which the
Colonial Government (p. 014) had made to its European subjects from
1817 onwards; while, as for compensation, any indemnity was altogether
out of the question, since the colonists had only themselves to thank
for the enmity of the natives—if, indeed, they had not deliberately
provoked the war with a view to the acquisition of fresh territory.

The divergence between these two opinions is sufficiently well marked.
To trace the precise agencies through which two diametrically opposed
views were evolved on this occasion from the same groundwork of facts
would be too lengthy a business; but, by way of comment, we may recall
two statements, each significant and authentic. Cloete, writing while
the events in question were still fresh in his mind, says of Lord
Glenelg’s despatch: “A communication more cruel, unjust, and insulting
to the feelings not only of Sir Benjamin D’Urban … but of the
inhabitants … could hardly have been penned by a declared enemy of
the country and its Governor.” And Sir George Napier, by whom D’Urban
was superseded, stated in evidence given before the House of Commons:
“My own experience, and what I saw with my own eyes, have confirmed me
that I was wrong and Sir Benjamin D’Urban was perfectly right; that if
he meant to keep Kafirland under British rule, the only way of doing
so was by having a line of forts, and maintaining troops in them.”

This settlement of a South African question (p. 015) upon a basis of
British, or rather non-South African, ideas was followed by events as
notorious as they were disastrous. It must be remembered that in
1819-20 the first and only effort to introduce a considerable British
population into South Africa had been successfully carried out when
the “Albany” settlers, to the number of some five thousand, were
established in this and other districts upon the eastern border of the
Cape Colony. The colonial farmers who suffered from the Kafir invasion
of 1834-5 were not exclusively Boers. Among them there were many
members of the new British population, and the divergence of opinion
between D’Urban and Lord Glenelg was all the more significant, since
in this case the British settlers were in agreement with the Boers. It
was no longer merely a divergence of views as between the local and
the home authority, but as between the British in Britain and the
British in South Africa. It must also be remembered that, in the same
year as the Kafir invasion, a social revolution—the emancipation of
slaves—had been accomplished in the Cape Colony by an Act of the
British Parliament, in comparison with which the nationalisation of
the railways or of the mines in England would seem a comparatively
trifling disturbance of the system of private property to the
Englishman of to-day. The reversal of D’Urban’s arrangements for the
safety of the eastern frontier was not only bad in itself, but it came
at a bad time. Whether (p. 016) the secession of the Emigrant Farmers
would in any case have taken place as the result of the emancipation
of slaves is a matter which cannot now be decided. But, however this
may be, the fact remains that two men so well qualified to give an
opinion on the subject as Judge Cloete and Sir John Robinson, the
first Prime Minister of Natal, unhesitatingly ascribe the determining
influence which drove the Boers to seek a home beyond the jurisdiction
of the British Government to the sense of injustice created by the
measures dictated by Lord Glenelg, and by the whole spirit of his
despatch.[3] And this judgment is supported by the fact that the
wealthier Dutch of the Western Province were much more seriously
affected by the emancipation of slaves than the “Boers” of the eastern
districts of the Colony; yet it was these latter, of course, who
provided the bulk of the emigrants who crossed the Orange River in the
years of the
Great Trek (1835-8) We shall not therefore be drawing an
extravagantly improbable conclusion, if we decide that the movement
which divided European South Africa was due to a well-ascertained
divergence (p. 017) of opinion between the home and local
authorities—both British.

The results of this secession of something like one-fourth of the
Franco-Dutch population are common knowledge. Out of the scattered
settlements founded by the Emigrant Farmers beyond the borders of the
Colony were created, in 1852 (Sand River Convention) and 1854
(Bloemfontein Convention), the two Boer Republics,
which half a
century later withstood for two years and eight months the whole
available military force of the British Empire. The first effect of
the secession was to erect the republican Dutch into a rival power
which bid against the British Government for the territory and
allegiance of the natives. Secession, therefore, made the inevitable
task of establishing the supremacy of the white man in South Africa
infinitely more costly both in blood and treasure. The British nation
accepted the task, which fell to it as paramount power, with the
greatest reluctance. The endless and apparently aimless Kafir wars
exhausted the patience of the country, and the destruction of an
entire British regiment by Ketshwayo’s[4] impis created a feeling of
deep resentment against the great High Commissioner, whose policy was
held—unreasonably enough—responsible for the military disaster of
Isandlhwana. Two opportunities of recovering the lost solidarity of
the Europeans were presented before the republican Dutch had set
themselves (p. 018) definitely to work for the supremacy of South
Africa through reunion with their colonial kinsfolk. That both were
lost was due at bottom to the disgust of the British people at the
excessive cost and burden of establishing a civilised administration
over the native population in South Africa. But in both cases the
immediate agency of disaster was the refusal of the Home Government to
listen to the advice of its local representative.
Sir George Grey.
Sir George Grey
would have regained the lost solidarity of the Europeans by taking
advantage of the natural recoil manifested among the Free State Dutch
from independence and responsibility towards the more settled and
prosperous life assured by British rule. His proposal was to unite the
Cape Colony, Natal, and the Free State in a federal legislature,
consisting of representatives chosen by popular vote in the several
states. In urging this measure he took occasion to combat the
pessimistic views of South African affairs which were prevalent in
England. The country was not commercially useless, but of “great and
increasing value.” Its people did not desire Kafir wars, but were well
aware of the much greater advantages which they derived from the
peaceful pursuits of industry. The colonists were themselves willing
to contribute to the defence of that part of the Queen’s dominions in
which they lived. And, finally, the condition of the natives was not
hopeless, for the missionaries were producing most beneficial effects
upon the tribes of the interior. (p. 019) But the most powerful
argument which Grey used was his ruthless exposure of the futility of
the Conventions. By allowing the Boer emigrants to grow into
independent communities the British Government believed that not only
had they relieved themselves of responsibility for the republican
Dutch, but that they had secured, in addition, the unfaltering
allegiance of the larger Dutch population which remained behind in the
Cape Colony. Grey assured the Home Government that in both respects it
was the victim of a delusion bred of its complete ignorance of South
African conditions. The Boer Republics would give trouble. Apart from
the bad draftsmanship of the conventions—a fertile source of
disagreement—these small states would be centres of intrigue and
“internal commotions,” while at the same time their revenues would be
too small to provide efficiently for their protection against the
warlike tribes. The policy of divide et impera—or, as Grey called
it, the “dismemberment” policy—would fail, since the political
barrier which had been erected was wholly artificial.

The “divergence of opinion” between Capetown and Downing Street was
complete. Grey was charged with “direct disobedience” for listening to
the offers of the Free State inhabitants. Recalled by a despatch of
June 4th, 1859, he was reinstated in August on condition that “he felt
himself sufficiently free and uncompromised,” both with the Cape
Legislature and the people of the Free State, to be able personally to
carry out the policy of the Home Government, which, said the despatch,

“is entirely opposed to those measures, tending to the resumption
of sovereignty over that State, of which you have publicly
expressed your approval in your speech to the Cape Parliament,
and in your answers to the address from the State in question.”

(p. 021) Nor was that all. In his endeavours to establish a simple but
effective system of European magistrates over the Kafirs beyond the
eastern border of the Colony, he was hampered by the short-sighted
economy of the Home Government. It seems incredible that a Colonial
Governor, even at that epoch, should have been looked upon by Downing
Street as a sort of importunate mendicant. But Grey’s language shows
that this was the attitude against which he had to defend himself.

“I would now only urge upon Her Majesty’s Government,” he writes
on September 8th, 1858, “that they should not distress me more
than is absolutely necessary for the government and control of
the people of the country which lies beyond the Colony of the
Cape of Good Hope. Stripping the country as I am of troops [to
serve in putting down the Indian Mutiny], some great disaster
will take place if necessary funds are at the same time cut off
from me. I am sure, if the enormous reductions I have effected in
military expenditure are considered, the most rigid economists
will feel that the money paid by Great Britain for the control of
this country has been advantageously laid out.”

These extracts are not pleasant reading. They were written at the time
when the Imperial spirit was at its nadir. In the plain language of
the Secretary of State for the Colonies[6] in 1858, it was a time when
ministers were “compelled to recognise as fact the increased and
increasing (p. 022) dislike of Parliament to the maintenance of large
military establishments in our colonies at Imperial cost.” Yet one
more passage must be cited, not so much because it is tinged by a
certain grim humour—although this is a valuable quality in such a
context—as because it affords an eminently pertinent illustration in
support of the contention that the refusal of the Home Government to
follow the advice of the “man on the spot” has been the operative
cause of the failure of British administration in South Africa. The
reply to the charge of “direct disobedience,” which Grey formulates in
one leisurely sentence, runs as follows:

“With regard to any necessity which might exist for my removal on
the ground of not holding the same views upon essential points of
policy as Her Majesty’s Government hold, I can only make the
general remark that, during the five years which have elapsed
since I was appointed to my present office, there have been at
least seven Secretaries of State for the Colonial Department,
each of whom held different views upon some important points of
policy connected with this country.”

Grey was not by any means the only Governor of the Cape to show the
home authorities how impossible it was to govern South Africa from
Downing Street, and to urge upon them the necessity of allowing their
representative, the one man who was familiar with local conditions, to
decide by what methods the objects of British (p. 023) policy could
be most effectively advanced. But it was not until some considerable
time after the Colonial Department had been placed under a separate
Secretary of State, and the Colonial Office had been constituted on
its present basis, with a staff of permanent officials, that these
protests produced any appreciable effect. What really aroused an
interest in South Africa—that is to say a practical interest, as
distinct from the interest created by the stories of missionary
enterprise and travel, and by the records of Kafir warfare—was the
discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1870, and the subsequent
establishment of the diamond industry at Kimberley. It was the first
time that anything certain had occurred to show that the vast
“hinterland” of the Cape might prove to be a territory of industrial
possibilities. The earnings of the diamond mines provided the Cape
Colony with a revenue sufficient to enable it to link together its
main towns by a tolerable railway system. The industry, once
established, attracted British capital and British population, and by
so doing it did what Blue-books and missionary reports had failed to
do: it brought the every-day life of the British Colonist in South
Africa within the purview of the nation. Thanks to the Kimberley mines
the Cape ceased to be thought of as a country whose resources were
exclusively pastoral and agricultural.

The epoch of the next great divergence of (p. 024) opinion was a more
hopeful time from an Imperialist point of view. Lord Beaconsfield, who
was the first statesman to give practical expression to the belief
that the maintenance of empire was not inconsistent with the welfare
of the masses of the home population, was in power. British statesmen,
and the class from which British statesmen are drawn, had begun to
study Colonial questions in a more hopeful and intelligent spirit.
Something had been learnt, too, of the actual conditions of South
Africa. And yet it was at this epoch that what was, perhaps, the most
ruinous of all the divergences of opinion between Capetown and Downing
Street occurred.

When Sir Bartle Frere was sent out to South Africa to carry out a
definite scheme for the union of the Republics with the British
colonies in a federal system, British statesmen and the educated
classes in general had adopted the views expressed by Grey twenty
years before. Tardily they had learnt to recognise both the essential
unity of the Dutch population and the value of the country as an
industrial asset of the empire. But, in the meantime, the centre of
political power had shifted in England. The extension of the franchise
had placed the ultimate control of British policy in South Africa in
the hands of a class of electors who were, as yet, wholly uneducated
in the political and economic conditions of that country. The
divergence of opinion between the home and the local authority became
(p. 025) in this case wider than ever. In short, it was the will of
the nation that caused Frere to be arrested midway in the
accomplishment of his task, and gave a mandate in 1880 to the Liberal
party to administer South Africa upon the lines of a policy shaped in
contemptuous indifference of the profoundest convictions and most
solemn warnings of a great proconsul and most loyal servant of the
Crown.

The facts of Frere’s supersession and recall are notorious: the story
is too recent to need telling at length. We know now that, apart from
the actual discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-mines, all that he
foresaw and foretold has been realised in the events which culminated,
twenty years later, in the great South African War. The military power
which at that time (1877-80) stood in the way of South African unity
under the British flag was the Zulu people. The whole adult male
population of the tribe had been trained for war, and organised by
Ketshwayo into a fighting machine. With this formidable military
instrument at his command Ketshwayo proposed to emulate the sanguinary
career of conquest pursued by his grandfather Tshaka;[7] and he had
prepared the way for the half-subdued military Bantu throughout South
Africa to co-operate with him in a general revolt against the growing
supremacy of the white man. Frere removed this obstacle. But in doing
so he, or rather the (p. 026) general entrusted with the command of
the military operations, lost a British regiment at Isandlhwana. This
revelation of the strength of the Zulu army was, in fact, a complete
confirmation of the correctness of Frere’s diagnosis of the South
African situation. His contention was that England must give evidence
of both her capacity and her intention to control the native
population of South Africa before she could reasonably ask the
republican Dutch to surrender their independence and reunite with the
British colonies in a federal system under the British flag. A native
power, organised solely for aggressive warfare against one of two
possible white neighbours, constituted therefore, in his opinion, not
only a perpetual menace to the safety of Natal, but an insuperable
obstacle to the effective discharge of a duty by the paramount Power,
the successful performance of which was a condition precedent to the
reunion of the European communities. The only point in dispute was the
question whether the powers of Ketshwayo’s impis had been
exaggerated. To this question the disaster of Isandlhwana returned an
emphatic “No.”

The divergence of opinion between Frere and Lord Beaconsfield’s
cabinet was trivial as compared with the profound gulf which separated
his policy from the South African policy of Mr. Gladstone. After the
return of the Liberal party to power in the spring of 1880, Frere was
allowed (p. 027) to remain in office until August 1st, when he was
recalled by a telegraphic despatch. But, as Lord Kimberley pointed out
to him, there had been “so much divergence” between his views and
those of the Home Government that he would not have been allowed to
remain at the Cape, “had it not been for the special reason that there
was a prospect of his being able materially to forward the policy of
confederation.” This prospect, of course, had then been removed by the
failure of the Cape Government, on June 29th, to bring about the
conference of delegates from the several States, which was the initial
step towards the realisation of Lord Carnarvon’s scheme of federal
union.

The vindication of Frere’s statesmanship has been carried, by the
inexorable logic of events, far beyond the sphere of Blue-book
arguments. But it is impossible to read this smug despatch without
recalling the words which Mr. Krüger wrote to Mr. (now Lord) Courtney
on June 26th of the same year: “The fall of Sir Bartle Frere will …
be useful…. We have done our duty and used all legitimate influence
to cause the conference proposals to fail.” That is to say, it was
known to these faithful confederates of that section of the Liberal
party of which Mr. Courtney was the head, that the Gladstone
Government had determined to recall Sir Bartle Frere three days before
“the special reason” for maintaining him at the Cape had disappeared.

But what we are really concerned with is the nature of the opinions
upon the central question of South African administration which Frere
put forward at this critical period. With these before us, the most
elementary acquaintance with the events of the last ten years will
suffice to indicate the profound degree in which his knowledge of
South African conditions surpassed the knowledge of those who took
upon themselves to reverse his policy. What, above all, Frere realised
was, that a point had been reached at which the whole of South Africa
must be gathered under the British flag without delay. He had noted
the disintegrating influences at work in the Cape Colony and the
strength of the potential antagonism of the republican Dutch. The
annexation of the Transvaal was not his deed, nor did either the time
or the manner in which it was done command his approval. But he
asserted that British rule, once established there, must be maintained
at all costs. With this end in view, he urged that every
responsibility incurred by England in the act of annexation must be
fulfilled to the letter. Utilising the information which he had gained
by personal observation during his visit to the Transvaal in 1879, and
availing himself of the co-operation of President Brand, of the Free
State, and Chief Justice de Villiers, in the Cape Colony, he drafted a
scheme of administrative reform sufficient to satisfy the legitimate
aspirations of the Boers for self-government without (p. 029)
endangering the permanency of British rule. It included proposals for
administrative and financial reforms framed with a view of reducing
the cost of government to the lowest point consistent with efficiency,
for the reorganisation of the courts of law, for the survey of the
proposed railway line to Delagoa Bay, and full details of a system of
representative government. This measure he urged upon the Colonial
Office as one of immediate necessity, since it embodied the fulfilment
of the definite promises of an early grant of self-government made to
the Boers at the time of annexation.[8]

He recognised the value of Delagoa Bay as an essential factor in the
political and commercial system of a united South Africa, and he
earnestly recommended its acquisition by purchase from the Portuguese
Government. His perception of the extreme importance of satisfying all
legitimate claims of the Boers, and his acute realisation of the
danger of allowing the Transvaal to become a “jumping-off ground”
either for foreign powers or Afrikander Nationalists, are exhibited in
due relationship in a private memorandum which he wrote from the Cape
at the end of July, 1879:

Could not the man who foresaw these dangers have prevented them? It is
impossible to resist the momentum of this thought.

The events by which this forecast was so closely realised are not
likely to be effaced from the (p. 031) memory of this generation.
Frere had scarcely left the Colony from which he had been recalled by
the joint efforts of Mr. Krüger and Lord (then Mr.) Courtney before
the former, with his fellow triumvirs, had raised the Vier-kleur upon
the still desolate uplands of the Witwatersrand. The attempt to put
down by force the Boer revolt of 1880-81 failed. Mr. Gladstone’s
cabinet recoiled before the prospect of a war in which the Boers might
have been supported by their kinsmen in the Free State and the Cape
Colony.
The retrocession of the Transvaal under the terms of the
Pretoria Convention (1881) was followed by further concessions
embodied in the London Convention of 1884. It is absolutely
established as fact that Mr. Gladstone’s Government intended, by
certain articles contained in both conventions, to secure to all
actual and potential British residents in the Transvaal the enjoyment
of all the political rights of citizenship possessed by the Boers. But
it is equally certain that the immediate contravention of Article XVI.
of the Pretoria Convention, when in 1882 the period of residence
necessary to qualify for the franchise was raised from two to five
years, was allowed to pass without protest from the Imperial
Government. And thus a breach of the Convention, which the discovery
of the Witwatersrand gold-fields (1886) and the subsequent
establishment of a great British industrial community made a matter of
vital importance, was condoned. A few years more and the country which
prided itself (p. 032) upon being the home of liberty and of free
institutions was confounded by the spectacle of a South Africa of its
own making, in which a British majority denied the franchise in a
Dutch Republic, contrasted with a Dutch minority dominating and
controlling the machinery of responsible government in a British
colony.

This situation brings us (to use a military phrase) within striking
distance of the objective of the present work—the personality and
efforts of the man who administered South Africa in the momentous
years of the struggle for equal rights for all white men from the
Zambesi to Capetown.

If the records set out in the preceding pages leave any impression
upon the mind, it is one that must produce a sense of amazement,
almost exasperation, at the thought of the many mistakes and disasters
that might have been avoided, if only greater weight had been attached
to the advice tendered to the British Government by its local
representative in South Africa. And with this sense of amazement a
generous mind will associate inevitably a feeling of regret for the
injustice unwittingly, but none the less irreparably, inflicted upon
loyal and capable servants of the Crown—an injustice so notorious
that it has made South Africa the “grave of reputations.” Apart from
the pre-eminence with which the period of Lord Milner’s administration
is invested by the occurrence within it of a military conflict of
unparalleled magnitude, Lord Milner stands out in the annals (p. 033)
of South Africa as the first High Commissioner whose knowledge of
South African conditions was allowed to inspire the policy of the Home
Government, and who himself was recognised by the Government and
people of Great Britain as voicing the convictions and aspirations of
all loyal subjects of the Crown in that province of the empire.

The state of affairs with which Lord Milner was called upon to deal
was in its essence the situation sketched by Frere twenty years before
in the memorable forecast to which reference has been made. But the
working of the forces indicated by Frere as destined, if unchecked, to
drive England one day to a life-and-death struggle for her supremacy
in South Africa, had been complicated by an event which cannot be
omitted altogether from a chapter intended, like a Euripidean
prologue, to prepare the mind of the spectator for the proper
understanding of the characters and action of the drama. This event is
the Jameson Raid.

In order to see the Jameson Raid in its true perspective, it is not
sufficient to place it in relationship to those familiar and notorious
events by which it was followed. It must also be placed in
relationship to the no less clearly defined events by which it was
preceded. Thus placed it becomes the direct outcome of the refusal of
the Imperial Government to use the advice of its local
representative—or, more precisely, of the refusal to base its policy
on South African instead (p. 034) of British conditions: and, as
such, it convinced the Imperial Government of the need of reviving the
power of its local representative. In other words, it is a connecting
link between the High Commissionerships of Frere and Milner. The
events which followed the recall of Frere were accepted by the British
inhabitants of South Africa as a practical demonstration of the
inherent viciousness of the system under which the decision of
cardinal questions of South African administration was left in the
hands of the House of Commons, a body in which they were not
represented; which met 6,000 miles away; whose judgment was liable to
be warped by irrelevant considerations of English party politics; and
one which was admittedly unfamiliar with the country and peoples whose
interests were vitally affected by the manner in which these questions
were decided. The lesson of the retrocession was taken to heart so
earnestly that, fifteen years later, the majority of the British
residents in the Transvaal refused to support a movement for reform
which involved the re-establishment of Imperial authority, while among
those who were loyal to the British connection throughout South Africa
its effect was to make them think, Rhodes.
as did Rhodes, that the machinery
of the various local British governments must be dissociated as much
as possible from the principles and methods of the Home Government.
Hence the necessity for what Rhodes called the “elimination of the
Imperial factor.” The (p. 035) expression, as he afterwards
explained, was in no way inconsistent with attachment to the British
connection. As read in the context in which it was originally used, it
meant merely that the European population of Bechuanaland,[9] being
mainly Boer immigrants, could be administered more successfully by
officers responsible to a government which, like that of the Cape
Colony, was well versed in South African conditions, than by officers
directly responsible to the Imperial Government. The phrase was a
criticism of Downing Street, and still more of English party
government. In short, Rhodes was convinced that if a system of British
administration, based on South African conditions, was ever to be
carried on successfully, the local British authority, and not the Home
Government, must be the machine employed; and in order to allow it to
work freely, its action must be made as independent as possible of
Downing Street. For Downing Street was an authority which blew hot or
cold, in accordance with the views of the party for the time being in
power.[10]

And, in point of fact, both parties in England (p. 036) acquiesced in
this judgment of the South African British. During the years between
Frere’s recall and the appointment of Lord Milner (1880-1897) the High
Commissioner was a decreasing force. Both Lord Rosmead and Lord Loch
did little to mould the destiny of South Africa: not because they
lacked capacity, but because it was the determination of the Home
Government to leave the difficult problem of South African unity to
local initiative. On the other hand, the progress which was made in
this direction by local initiative, aided as it was by the fortuitous
discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-fields, was considerable. The
highlands of South Central Africa were acquired for the British race,
and the Boer was effectively prevented from carrying the Vier-kleur
beyond the Limpopo; the railway, drawn through the Free State by the
magnet of the Rand, disturbed the retirement of the republican Dutch;
and finally the Cape Colony and Natal were linked together with the
Free State in a Customs Union. But the development of the mineral
resources of the country led to the appearance of a new factor in
South African politics. The comparative decline in the activity of the
High Commissioner had been accompanied by the establishment and growth
of powerful industrial corporations. It is easy to understand how a
man like Rhodes, with the wealth and influence of De Beers and the
Chartered Company at his command, might seek, by an alliance with the
“great houses” of the Rand, to (p. 037) find in private effort an
instrument for remedying the deficiencies of the Imperial Government
even more appropriate than the local governmental action upon which he
had previously relied. For the work of these industrial corporations
had powerfully enlisted the interest and sympathy of the British
public. The Jameson Raid was an illegitimate and disastrous
application of an otherwise meritorious and successful effort to
strengthen the British hold upon South Africa by private enterprise.
It was at once the measure of Imperial inefficiency, and its cure.

One other circumstance must be recalled in estimating the extent to
which the Home Government had earned the distrust of the British
population in South Africa. Only eighteen months[11] before the Raid
the High Commissioner, Lord Loch, had gone to Pretoria carrying a
despatch in which the grant of a five years’ franchise was advocated
on behalf of the Uitlanders. His instructions were to present this
despatch, and press upon President Krüger personally the necessity for
giving effect to its recommendations. These instructions were
cancelled at the last moment by Lord Ripon, because the German
Ambassador had made representations in London that such action would
be regarded as an interference with the status quo in South Africa,
and, as such, detrimental to German interests in that country. And six
months later[12] (p. 038) President Krüger, in attending a “Kommers”
given by the German Club at Pretoria in honour of the Kaiser Wilhelm
II.’s birthday, alluded to Germany as a grown-up power that would stop
England from “kicking” the child Republic.

The Raid was, therefore, a short cut to baffle German intrigue and
solve the problem of South African unity at one blow. For to Rhodes
the enfranchisement of the Uitlanders meant the withdrawal of the
Transvaal Government from its opposition to his scheme of commercial
federation. It is obvious that one ground of justification, and one
only, can be found for the usurpation of the functions of government
by a private individual, or group of individuals. This justification
is success. It has been the custom to represent Dr. Jameson’s decision
to “ride in” as “an act of monumental folly,” alike from a political
and a military point of view.
But this opinion overlooks the fact that
the affair may have been so planned in Rhodes’s mind that success did
not depend upon the victory of the Uitlanders, aided by Jameson’s
troopers, but on the presence of the High Commissioner in the
Transvaal under such conditions as would make the intervention of the
Imperial Government at once imperative and effectual. The
representative of the Imperial Government, backed by a Johannesburg in
armed revolt against the Boer oligarchy, would find himself—so Rhodes
thought—in a position highly favourable to the successful prosecution
(p. 039) of the demands which had already been put forward on behalf
of British subjects resident in the Transvaal. And in order that this
essential part of the plan might be carried out without a moment of
unnecessary delay, Rhodes kept a train, with steam up, in the station
at Capetown ready to speed Lord Rosmead northwards directly the news
of Dr. Jameson’s arrival at Johannesburg should have reached him. Once
Jameson’s force had “got through,” he relied upon the Reform
Committee, however incomplete its preparations, being able to hold
Johannesburg for a couple of days against any force the Boers could
bring.[13] Nor in the light of what happened, during the war, both at
Mafeking and Kimberley, can this expectation be thought extravagant.
Here his responsibilities would have ended. The High Commissioner and
the Imperial Government would have done the rest. To indulge in
metaphor, the Imperial locomotive was to be set going, but the lines
on which it was to run were those laid down by Mr. Rhodes.

If this was the essence of Rhodes’s plan, it would matter
comparatively little whether the Reformers had, or had not, completed
their preparations, or whether Dr. Jameson had 1,200 or 500 men.
Certainly some such assumption is necessary to account for the fact
that Rhodes (p. 040) treated his confederates at Johannesburg as so
many pawns on a chess-board. It is equally necessary to account for
Dr. Jameson’s action. “Twenty years friends, and now he goes in and
ruins me,” was Rhodes’s comment on the news that Dr. Jameson had
“ridden in,” in spite of his own orders to the contrary and the
message to the same effect which Captain Heany had delivered on behalf
of the Reformers. But what if Dr. Jameson knew, or thought that he
knew, that Rhodes’s object in forcing the insurrection was not to make
the Uitlanders reduce Krüger, but to compel the Imperial Government to
step in? In this case he may well have thought that what was essential
was not that the rising should be successful, but that there should be
a rising of any kind; provided that it was sufficiently grave to
arrest the attention of the world, and claim the interference of the
Imperial Government.

According to Mr. Chamberlain the continued inaction of the Imperial
Government in the eighteen months that had passed since Lord Loch’s
visit to Pretoria in June, 1894, was due to two circumstances. In the
first place, “the Uitlanders and their organs had always deprecated
the introduction into the dispute of what is called in South Africa
the ‘Imperial factor'”; and in the second, the “rumours” of violent
measures “were continually falsified by the event.” Obviously, if
Rhodes forced an insurrection with the intention of removing these
obstacles—if, that is to say, the intervention (p. 041) of the
Imperial Government, and not the success of the insurrection, was his
primary object—the temerity of Dr. Jameson’s invasion is materially
diminished. Now Mr. Chamberlain’s statement, made under date February
4th, 1896, i.e. five weeks after the Raid, is perfectly consistent
with the view of the attitude of the Reformers expressed by Rhodes on
the day before the Raid took place.

Dr. Jameson’s force, it will be remembered, started on the evening of
Sunday, December 29th, 1895. Up to three days before—the
26th—nothing had occurred to interfere with the final arrangement,
telegraphed to Dr. Jameson from Capetown, that the movement in
Johannesburg would take place on Saturday, the 28th. The circumstances
which caused the Reformers to alter their plans were explained by
Rhodes in an interview with Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary,
at Capetown on the same Saturday, the 28th, with his accustomed
vivacity. The Johannesburg insurrection, he said—

“had fizzled out as a damp squib. The capitalists financing the
movement had made the hoisting of the British flag a sine quâ
non.
This the National Union rejected, and issued a manifesto
declaring for a republic. The division had led to the complete
collapse of the movement, and it was thought that the leaders
would make the best terms they could with President Krüger.”

The telegrams which reached Dr. Jameson between the 26th and 29th
contained the same facts, with (p. 042) the further information that
Captain Heany was travelling by special train to him with a message
direct from the Reformers. In these circumstances it is said that
Rhodes at Capetown imagined as little as the Reform leaders at
Johannesburg that Dr. Jameson would cross the frontier. That, however,
there was another point of view from which the situation might present
itself to Dr. Jameson is shown by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain, in
reply to the High Commissioner’s telegram reporting the substance of
Rhodes’s statement to Sir Graham Bower, at once[14] inquired of Lord
Rosmead, “Are you sure Jameson has not moved in consequence of the
collapse?”

Was Mr. Chamberlain right? Did Dr. Jameson see in the fact that the
Reformers were divided on such an issue only an additional reason for
carrying out a plan which had for its object to compel the Imperial
Government to intervene in the affairs of the Transvaal before it was
too late; that is to say, before the British population had definitely
committed itself to the policy of a purged republic, but a republic
under any flag but that of Great Britain? Such a policy was not merely
possible. It seemed inevitable to the vivacious French observer who
wrote, not from hearsay, but “with his eyes upon the object,” in
December, 1893:

“The Transvaal will never be an English colony. The English of
the Transvaal, as well as those (p. 043) of Cape Colony and
Natal, would be as firmly opposed to it as the Boers themselves,
for they have never forgiven England for letting herself be
beaten by the Boers at Majuba Hill and accepting her defeat, a
proceeding which has rendered them ridiculous in the eyes of the
Dutch population of South Africa…. With me this is not a simple
impression, but a firm conviction.”[15]

If these were the considerations which weighed with Dr. Jameson, his
decision to “ride in” was inconsistent neither with friendship nor
with patriotism. When Captain Heany had read from his pocket-book the
message from the Reformers, Jameson paced for twenty minutes outside
his tent. Having re-entered it, he announced his determination to
disregard Heany’s message no less than Rhodes’s telegram.
It was a
momentous decision to take after twenty minutes’ thought. Had he a
reasonable expectation of carrying out the plan as Rhodes conceived
it, in spite of the change in the position of affairs at Johannesburg?
Had he any reason to believe that Rhodes desired him to force the
insurrection in spite of his telegrams to the contrary? It is the
answers to these questions that make the Raid, as far as Dr. Jameson
is concerned, an “act of monumental folly,” or a legitimate assumption
of personal responsibility that is part of the empire-builder’s
stock-in-trade. The answer to the second question remains a matter of
speculation. The answer to the first is to be found in the record of
the (p. 044) expedition. Dr. Jameson reached Krügersdorp at three
o’clock on Wednesday, January 1st. A few hours before a cyclist had
brought him congratulatory messages from the Reform leaders. The goal
was almost within sight. What prevented Sir John Willoughby from
taking his little force safely over the remaining twenty miles from
Krügersdorp to Johannesburg was the merest accident: the few hours’
delay caused, naturally enough, by Dr. Jameson’s desire that his force
should be met and escorted by a small body of volunteers from the
Rand. He did not want, as he said, to go to Johannesburg as “a
pirate.” Sir John Willoughby’s evidence is perfectly definite and
conclusive on the point. If the force had pushed on by road from
Krügersdorp to Johannesburg on Wednesday evening—had not, in
Willoughby’s words, “messed about” at Krügersdorp in expectation of
the welcoming escort—Johannesburg would have been reached in safety
on Thursday morning. With Dr. Jameson in Johannesburg and Lord Rosmead
speeding northwards in his special train, the way would have been
prepared for that decisive and successful action on the part of the
Imperial Government which Rhodes had desired to bring about.

But, unsuccessful as was the actual expedition, the decision to “ride
in” had secured the intervention of the Imperial Government. If
intervention could have done what Rhodes expected of it, Dr. Jameson’s
decision to “ride in” would (p. 045) have gained, at the cost of few
lives and no increase of the national debt, what the war gained four
years later at the cost of twenty thousand lives and £220,000,000. As
it was, it failed to win the franchise for the Uitlanders. Why did not
Lord Rosmead, with so strong a Colonial Secretary as Mr. Chamberlain
at his back, brush the Raid aside, and address himself to the removal
of the greater wrong that gave it birth? If Lord Rosmead had acted in
the spirit of Mr. Chamberlain’s despatches; if he had reminded the
Government of the Republic from the first “that the danger from which
they had just escaped was real, and one which, if the causes which led
up to it were not removed, might recur, although in a different form”;
if he had used “plain language” to President Krüger; and if, above
all, he had remembered—as Mr. Chamberlain reminded him—that “the
people of Johannesburg had surrendered in the belief that reasonable
concessions would have been arranged through his intervention, and
until these were granted, or were definitely promised to him by the
President, the root-causes of the recent troubles would
remain,”—might he not yet have saved South Africa for the empire
without subjecting her to the dread arbitrament of the sword?

It is in the answer to this question that we find the actual cause of
the utter failure of Rhodes’s plan. The truth is that success in any
real sense—that is to say, success which would (p. 046) have
strengthened British supremacy and promoted the union of European
South Africa—was impossible. The sole response which Lord Rosmead
returned to Mr. Chamberlain’s counsels was the weary confession: “The
question of concessions to Uitlanders has never been discussed between
President Krüger and myself.” The methods employed by Rhodes were so
questionable that no High Commissioner could have allowed the Imperial
Government to have derived any advantage from them. To have gained the
franchise for the Uitlanders as the result of violent and unscrupulous
action, would have inflicted an enduring injury upon the British cause
in South Africa for which the enfranchisement itself would have been
small compensation. The disclosure of these methods and, with them, of
the hollowness of Rhodes’s alliance with the Afrikander Bond, alarmed
and incensed the whole Dutch population of South Africa. What this
meant Lord Rosmead knew, and Mr. Chamberlain did not know. The ten
years’ truce between the forces of the Afrikander nationalists and the
paramount Power was at an end. To combat these forces something better
than the methods of the Raid was required. Non tali auxilio, nec
defensoribus istis! No modern race have excelled the Dutch in courage
and endurance. In Europe they had successfully defended their
independence against the flower of the armies of Spain, Austria, and
France. The South African Dutch were not inferior in these (p. 047)
qualities to the people of the parent stock. If such a race, embarked
upon what it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to
be overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as
strong. None the less the active sympathy with the Uitlanders
exhibited in Mr. Chamberlain’s despatches was welcomed by the British
as evidence that the new Colonial Secretary was more alert and
determined than his predecessors. For the first time in the history of
British administration in South Africa, Downing Street had shown
itself more zealous than Capetown. It was the solitary ray of light
that broke the universal gloom in which South Africa was enshrouded by
the catastrophe of the Raid.[Back to Contents]

(p. 048) CHAPTER II

THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS[16]

In the face of the colossal resistance offered to the British arms by
the Boers and their colonial kinsmen in the South African War, it may
seem unnecessary to produce any evidence in support of the contention
that the military strength then displayed by the Dutch in South Africa
was the result of long and careful preparation. But the same inability
to grasp the facts of the South African situation which kept the Army
Corps in England three months after it should have been sent to the
Cape, is still to be met with. This attitude of mind—whether it be a
consciousness of moral rectitude, or a mere insular disdain of looking
at things from any but a British point of view—is still to be
observed in the statements of those politicians who will even now deny
that any (p. 049) trace of a definite plan of action, or of a
concerted purpose, which could properly be described as a “conspiracy”
against British supremacy was to be found among the Dutch population
of South Africa as a whole, prior to the outbreak of the war. It is
for the benefit of such politicians in part, and still more with a
view of bringing the mind of the reader into something approaching a
direct contact with the actual working of the Afrikander mind, that I
transcribe a statement of the pure doctrine of the Bond, as it was
expounded by the German,
Borckenhagen, and his followers in the Free
State. It will, however, be convenient to preface the quotation with a
word of explanation in respect both of the text and the personality of
Borckenhagen.

The passage, which is taken verbatim from a work entitled, “The
Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed,” is a collection of sentences
gathered from Dutch pamphlets and articles “emanating from Holland,”
and translated literally into the somewhat uncouth English of the
text. The author of the work, Mr. C. H. Thomas, was for many years a
burgher of the Free State, where he shared the opinions of President
Brand, and subsequently supported Mr. J. G. Fraser in opposing the
policy of “closer union” with the South African Republic, advocated by
Brand’s successor, Mr. F. W. Reitz. The point of view from which the
Dutch of Holland regarded the nationalist movement in South Africa was
succinctly (p. 050) stated in an article published by the Amsterdam
Handelsblad in 1881.

“The future of England lies in India, and the future of Holland
in South Africa…. When our capitalists vigorously develop this
trade, and, for example, form a syndicate to buy Delagoa Bay from
Portugal, then a railway from Capetown to Bloemfontein,
Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Delagoa Bay will be a lucrative
investment. And when, in course of time, the Dutch language shall
universally prevail in South Africa, this most extensive
territory will become a North America for Holland, and enable us
to balance the Anglo-Saxon race.”[17]

Carl Borckenhagen, who, with Mr. Reitz,[18] advocated the
establishment of the Bond in 1881, was a German republican. His name
has been associated with Mr. Thomas’s summary of the Bond propaganda
in the Free State, because, as editor of The Bloemfontein Express up
to the time of his death, early in 1898, he was probably the most
consistent of all the South African exponents of the nationalist
creed. Certainly it is no exaggeration to say that he converted the
Free State of Brand into the Free State of Steyn.

These brief and disjointed sentences present in their shortest form
arguments and exhortations with which the Dutch population of the Free
State, the Transvaal, and the Cape Colony, were familiarised through
the Press, the pulpit, the platform, and through individual
intercourse and advocacy, from the time of the Retrocession in 1881
onwards. It is in effect the scheme of a Bond “worked out more in
detail by some friends at Bloemfontein,” as published by Borckenhagen
in his paper, The Bloemfontein Express, on April 7th, 1881, to which
Du Toit, the founder of the Bond in the Cape Colony, referred in the
pamphlet, De Transvaalse Oorlog (The Transvaal War), which he issued
from his press at the Paarl later on in the same year. The nationalist
creed, as (p. 055) thus formulated, was preached consistently in the
Free State; but in the Cape Colony it was modified by Hofmeyr to meet
the exigencies of Colonial politics.

None the less it was in the Cape Colony that the Bond, as a political
organisation, was destined to find its chief sphere of action. In the
Free State it was discouraged by President Brand, and in point of fact
the British population was too insignificant a factor in the politics
of the central republic to make it necessary to maintain a distinct
organisation for the promotion of nationalist sentiment. In the
Transvaal, again, the Bond maintained no regular organisation. And
this for two reasons. Every burgher of the northern Republic was
sufficiently animated by the anti-British sentiments which it was
intended to promote; and the only “constitution” which the Transvaal
Dutch would accept was one which embodied principles so flagrantly
inconsistent with submission to British authority that it could not be
adopted by the branches of the Bond in the Cape Colony without
exposing its members to immediate prosecution for high treason.[20]

In the politics of the Cape Colony, however, the Bond became the
predominant force; and any picture, however briefly sketched, of South
Africa as it was when Lord Milner’s administration commenced,
(p. 056) must include some account of the origin and methods of this
remarkable organisation.

The origin of the Afrikander Bond is to be found in the articles
written by the Rev. S. J. du Toit, a Dutch predikant, in De Patriot,
a newspaper published at the Paarl, of which he was the editor. Mr. du
Toit’s political standpoint is sufficiently revealed by the fact that
in 1881 he claimed that De Patriot had done more than any other
single agency to secure the successful revolt of the Boers from
British authority accomplished in that year. The inspiration which
drove his pen to advocate the founding of a political organisation,
that should serve to prepare the way for a more general and complete
“war of independence,” was the defeat of the British troops by the
Transvaal burghers.

“This is now our time,” he wrote, in the same year, “to establish
the Bond, while a national consciousness has been awakened
through the Transvaal War. And the Bond must be our preparation
for the future confederation of all the States and Colonies of
South Africa. The English Government keeps talking of a
confederation under the British flag. That will never happen. We
can assure them of that. We have often said it: there is just one
hindrance to confederation, and that is the English flag. Let
them take that away, and the confederation under the free
Afrikander flag would be established. But so long as the English
flag remains here the Afrikander Bond must be our confederation.
And the British will, after a while, realise that Froude’s advice
is the best for them: they must just have (p. 057) Simon’s Bay
as a naval and military station on the road to India, and give
over all the rest of South Africa to the Afrikanders.”[21]

This general statement of the purpose of the Bond was supported by
reiterated appeals to racial passion:

“The little respect which the Afrikander had for British troops
and cannons [up to the Majuba defeat],” he writes, “is utterly
done away. And England has learnt so much respect for us
Afrikanders that she will take care not to be so ready to make
war with us again…. The Englishman has made himself hated,
language and all. And this is well.”

When, by the use of these and even more violent expressions, the mind
of the Dutch population had been sufficiently aroused, Du Toit
proceeded to unfold his plan of campaign. His modus operandi is
similar to that of Borckenhagen in its main features. The Bond, says
De Patriot, must boycott all English traders, except only those who
are ready to adopt its principles. English signboards, advertisements,
shops and book-keepers, must be abolished. The English banks must be
replaced by a National Bank. No land must be sold to Englishmen. The
Republics must “make their own ammunition, and be well supplied with
cannon, and provide a regiment of artillery to work them.” And he
cheerfully notices that “at Heidelberg there are already 4,000
cartridges (p. 058) made daily, and a few skilful Afrikanders have
begun to make shells, too. This is right: so must we become a nation.”
For the Cape Colony, however, “such preparations are not so especially
necessary.” But, most of all, Du Toit insists upon the need of
combating the growing use of the English language. “English
education,” he laments, “has done more mischief to our country and
nation than we can express.” And, therefore, he urges “war” against
the English language. In the schools, in the Church, and “in our
family life above all,” it must be considered a “disgrace to speak
English…. Who will join the war? All true Afrikanders, we hope.”

Thus was the Bond, the child of Majuba, quickened into conscious being
by the fiery pen of the predikant, Du Toit. Poor Du Toit! His after
life was a strange commentary upon this early triumph of his brain,
won in the drowsy solitudes of the Paarl. Summoned to be Director of
Education in the Transvaal, he was quickly disillusioned of his love
of his Dutch mother-country by actual intercourse with the
contemptuous Hollanders whom Krüger had invited to serve the Republic.
Later, again, he was rejected by the Bond which he had himself
created, and driven to find comfort in the broad freedom of allegiance
to an Empire-state.

The object of the Bond, as stated by Du Toit in De Transvaalse
Oorlog, was the “creation of a South African nationality … through
the (p. 059) establishment of this Bond in all states and colonies of
South Africa.” Its organisation was to consist of a central governing
body (bestuur), with provincial, district, and ward besturen. The
central bestuur was to be composed of five members, two for the Cape
Colony, and one each for the Transvaal, Natal, and Free State, who
were “to meet yearly in one or other of the chief towns of the
component states.” The provincial besturen, consisting of one
representative from each of the district besturen, were to meet
every six months at their respective colonial or state capitals.[22]

The first Congress of the Afrikander Bond was held at Graaf Reinet in
1882. In the draft constitution then drawn up for the approval of its
members, the relationship of the Bond to the British Government in
South Africa was defined with commendable frankness. In the “Programme
of Principles” was the article:

In itself acknowledging no single form of government as the only
suitable form, and whilst acknowledging the form of government
existing at present, [the Bond] means that the aim of our
national development must be a united South Africa under its own
flag.

And it was upon the basis of this “Programme of Principles” that the
earliest Bond organisations were formed in the Transvaal, the Free
State, and the Cape Colony. In the year following the Graaf Reinet
Congress, however, the “Farmers’ (p. 060) Protection Association” was
amalgamated with the Bond in the Cape Colony,
and the influence of Mr.
J. H. Hofmeyr led the joint organisation to adopt a modified
“programme.” Mr. Hofmeyr, who was destined afterwards to assume the
undisputed headship of the Bond, was an economist as well as a
nationalist. He was intensely interested in the development of the
country districts, and he saw that the conditions of agriculture could
hardly be improved without the co-operation of the British and more
progressive section of the farming class. He also knew that an
organisation, professing to forward aims of avowed disloyalty, would
rapidly find itself in collision with the Cape Government. With the
growth of Mr. Hofmeyr’s influence the policy, though not the aims, of
the Bond was changed. All declarations, such as the clause “under its
own flag,” inconsistent with allegiance to the British Crown were
omitted from the official constitution, and its individual members
were exhorted to avoid any behaviour or expressions likely to prevent
Englishmen from joining the organisation. As early as 1884 the Bond
secured the return of twenty-five members to the Cape Parliament, and
it was their support that enabled the Upington Ministry to maintain
itself in office against an opposition which consisted of the main
body of the representatives elected by the British population; and
from this date onwards it was the recognised aim of Mr. Hofmeyr to
control the Legislature of the Colony (p. 061) by making it
impossible for any ministry to dispense with the support of the Bond
members, although he refrained from putting a ministry of Bondsmen
into office. To have done this latter might have united the British
population and their representatives in a solid phalanx, and
endangered the success of the effort to separate the British settlers
in the country districts from the more recent arrivals from
England—mostly townsmen—which remained a fruitful source of
Afrikander influence up to the time of the Jameson Raid. By
representing the new British population, which followed in the wake of
the mineral discoveries, as “fortune-seekers” and adventurers and not
genuine colonists, the Bond endeavoured, not merely to widen the
natural line of cleavage between the townsman and the countryman, but
actually to detach the older British settlers from sympathy with the
mother country, and, by drawing them within the sphere of Afrikander
nationalist aspirations, to make them share its own antagonism to
British supremacy.

But, in spite of the change of policy due to Mr. Hofmeyr, the old
leaven of stalwart Bondsmen remained sufficiently in evidence to draw
from Mr. J. X. Merriman—then a strong Imperialist in close
association with Mr. J. W. Leonard—a striking rebuke. The speech in
question was made, fittingly enough, at Grahamstown, the most
“English” town in South Africa, in 1885. It was reprinted with
complete appropriateness, (p. 062) in The Cape Times of July 10th,
1899. The struggle which Mr. Merriman had foreseen fourteen years
before was then near at hand; while Mr. Merriman himself had become a
member of a ministry placed in power by the Bond for the avowed
purpose of “combating the British Government.”

“The situation is a grave one,” he said. “It is not a question of
localism; it is not a question of party politics; but it is a
question whether the Cape Colony is to continue to be an integral
part of the British Empire…. You will have to keep public men
up to the mark, and each one of you will have to make up his mind
whether he is prepared to see this colony remain a part of the
British Empire, which carries with it obligations as well as
privileges, or whether he is prepared to obey the dictates of the
Bond. From the very first time, some years ago, when the poison
began to be instilled into the country, I felt that it must come
to this—Is England or the Transvaal to be the paramount force in
South Africa?… Since then that institution has made a show of
loyalty, while it stirred up disloyalty…. Some people, who
should have known better, were dragged into the toils under the
idea that they could influence it for good, but the whole
teaching of history goes to show that when the conflict was
between men of extreme views and moderate men, the violent
section triumphed. And so we see that some moderate men are in
the power of an institution whose avowed object is to combat the
British Government. In any other country such an organisation
could not have grown; but here, among a scattered population, it
has insidiously and successfully worked…. No one who wishes
well for the (p. 063) British Government could have read the
leading articles of the Zuid Africaan, and Express, and De
Patriot, in expounding the Bond principles, without seeing that
the maintenance of law and order under the British Crown and the
object they have in view are absolutely different things. My
quarrel with the Bond is that it stirs up race differences. Its
main object is to make the South African Republic the paramount
power in South Africa.”

This was plain speaking. The rare insight revealed in such a sentence
as this—”in any other country such an organisation could not have
grown, but here, among a scattered population, it has insidiously
and successfully worked”; the piquant incident of the reproduction of
the speech on the eve of the war; the fact that the man who made this
diagnosis was to drink the poison whose fatal effects he described so
faithfully, was indeed to become the most bitter opponent of the great
statesman that “kept South Africa a part of the British
Empire,”—these things together make Mr. Merriman’s Grahamstown speech
one of the most curious and instructive of the political utterances of
the period.

In the year following (1886) the Bond met officially, for the first
and only time, as an inter-state organisation. Bloemfontein was the
place of assemblage, and in the Central Bestuur, or Committee, the
South African Republic, the Free State, and the Cape Colony were each
represented by two delegates. This meeting revealed the (p. 064)
practical difficulties which prevented the Cape nationalists from
adopting the definitely anti-British programme of the Bond leaders in
the Republics; and the conflict of commercial interests between the
Cape Colony and the Transvaal, already initiated by the attempt of the
latter to secure Bechuanaland in 1884-5,
confirmed the Cape delegates
in their decision to develop the Bond in the Cape Colony upon colonial
rather than inter-state lines. The result of the divergences of aim
manifested at Bloemfontein was speedily made apparent in the Cape
Colony. In 1887 Mr. T. P. Theron, then Secretary of the Bond,
delivered an address in which the new, or Hofmeyr, programme was
formulated and officially adopted. In recommending the new policy to
the members of the Bond, Mr. Theron made no secret of the nature of
the considerations by which its leaders had been chiefly influenced.

“You must remember,” he said, “that the eyes of all are directed
towards you. The Press will cause your actions, expressions, and
resolutions to be known everywhere. You cannot but feel how much
depends on us for our nation and our country. If we must plead
guilty in the past of many an unguarded expression, let us be
more cautious and guarded for the future.”

And he then proceeded to sketch a picture of racial conciliation, when
all “differences and disagreements” between Dutch and English would be
merged in the consciousness of a new and (p. 065) common
nationality—pointing out, however, that the advent of that day
depended on “you and me, my fellow Bond members.”

Assuming that the predominance of Afrikander ideals could be secured
only by the complete separation of the local governments from the
Government of Great Britain, nothing could be more masterly than the
manner in which the Bond approached the task of reuniting the European
communities of South Africa—the task which the Imperial Government
had abandoned as hopeless. As inspired and controlled by Hofmeyr
during the years between this date (1887) and the Jameson Raid, the
Bond embodied a volume of effort in which the most sincere supporter
of the British connection could co-operate. It was the assistance
afforded by the Bond in moulding British administration in South
Africa upon South African lines that provided the common ground upon
which Rhodes and Hofmeyr met in their long alliance. Hofmeyr probably
never abandoned his belief that a republican form of government was
the inevitable dénouement to which the administration of South
Africa on a basis of South African ideas must lead. Rhodes never
wavered in his loyalty to the British connection. But there was a
great body of useful work which both men could accomplish in common,
which each desired to see accomplished, which, when accomplished,
would leave each free to choose the path—Republican or Imperial—by
which the last stage was to be (p. 066) traversed and the goal of
South African unity finally attained.

The character and career of Rhodes afford material for a study of such
peculiar and engrossing interest that any adequate treatment of the
subject would require a separate volume. Fortunately, the broad facts
of his life are sufficiently well known to make it unnecessary to
attempt the almost impossible task of condensing a volume within the
limits of a few pages. None the less, there is one incident in his
political career which must be recalled here, and that for the simple
reason that it establishes two facts, each of which is essential to
the complete understanding of the situation in the Cape Colony as it
developed immediately after the Raid. First, that all through the
years of the Rhodes-Hofmeyr alliance the Bond remained at heart true
to the aim which it had at first openly avowed—the aim of
establishing a united South Africa under its own flag. And second,
that Rhodes was equally staunch in maintaining his ideal of a united
South Africa under the British flag. The incident which exhibits both
these facts in the clearest light is the refusal by Rhodes of the
overtures made to him by Borckenhagen. At the time when these
overtures were made Rhodes was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, the
Chartered Company had been successfully launched, and the alliance
between himself and Hofmeyr was in full operation. The occasion which
led to them was the opening of (p. 067) the railway at Bloemfontein
in 1890—a railway constructed by the Cape Government under a friendly
arrangement with the Free State. And it was one, therefore, which
afforded a conspicuous example of the value of the Bond influence as a
means of securing progress in the direction of South African unity.
The story was told by Rhodes himself in a speech which he made in the
Cape Colony on March 12th, 1898.

“I remember,” he said, “that we had a great meeting at
Bloemfontein, and in the usual course I had to make a speech. I
think I was your Prime Minister. And this speech pleased many
there, and especially—and I speak of him with the greatest
respect—a gentleman who is dead,
Mr. Borckenhagen. He came to me
and asked me to dictate to him the whole of my speech. I said, ‘I
never wrote a speech, and I don’t know what I said; but I will
tell you what I know about it.’ He wrote it down, and afterwards
came to Capetown with me…. He spoke very nicely to me about my
speech. ‘Mr. Rhodes, we want a united South Africa.’ And I said,
‘So do I; I am with you entirely. We must have a united South
Africa.’ He said, ‘There is nothing in the way.’ And I said, ‘No;
there is nothing in the way. Well,’ I said, ‘we are one.’ ‘Yes,’
he said, ‘and I will tell you: we will take you as our leader,’
he said. ‘There is only one small thing, and that is, we must, of
course, be independent to the rest of the world.’ I said, ‘No;
you take me either for a rogue or a fool. I would be a rogue to
forget all my history and traditions; and I would be a fool,
because I would be hated by my own countrymen and mistrusted by
yours.’ From that day he assumed a most acrid tone in his
Express towards myself, and (p. 068) I was made full sorry at
times by the tone. But that was the overpowering thought in his
mind—an independent South Africa.”[23]

The facts here disclosed explain how it was that the apparently
satisfactory situation in South Africa before the Raid so rapidly
developed into the dangerous situation of the years that followed it.
The Raid tore aside the veil which the Rhodes-Hofmeyr alliance had
cast over the eyes alike of Dutch and British, and left them free to
see the essential antagonism of aim between the two men in its naked
truth.[24] From that moment Rhodes was recognised by the Bond as its
chief and most dangerous enemy; and as such he was pursued by its
bitterest hostility to the day of his death; while Rhodes, on the
other hand, was driven to seek support solely in the people of his own
nationality. From that (p. 069) moment the Bond fell back upon the
policy of 1881. The Dutch Press, pulpit, and platform commenced an
active nationalist propaganda on the old racial lines; and the
advocacy of anti-British aims increased in boldness and in
definiteness as the Transvaal grew strong with its inflowing
armaments.

We are now in a position to sum up the main features of the situation
in South Africa as Lord Milner found it. British administration,
controlled from Downing Street, had quickly led to what Sir George
Grey called the dismemberment of European South Africa. The Imperial
Government, having found out its mistake, had endeavoured to regain
the lost solidarity of the European communities and its authority over
them, by bringing the Republics into a federal system under the
British Crown. It had been thwarted in this endeavour by the military
resistance of the Boers in the Transvaal, and the fear of a like
resistance on the part of the Dutch population throughout South
Africa. Its impotency had invited, and in part justified, the efforts
made by local British initiative to solve the problem of South African
unity on South African lines, but in a manner consistent with the
maintenance of British supremacy. The early success of these efforts,
prosecuted mainly through the agency of Rhodes, had been obliterated
by the Jameson Raid. All attempts to secure the reunion of South
Africa under the British flag having failed (p. 070) alike under
Imperial and local British initiative, the way was open for the
Afrikander nationalists once more to put forward the alternative plan
of a united South Africa under its own flag, which they had formulated
in the year immediately following the retrocession of the Transvaal.

In proportion as the friends and supporters of British supremacy were
discredited and depressed by the catastrophe of the Raid, the
advocates and promoters of Afrikander nationalism were emboldened and
encouraged.
It was not Sir Gordon Sprigg, the Prime Minister of the
Cape who succeeded the discredited Rhodes (January 13th, 1896), but
Mr. Hofmeyr, the veteran leader of the Afrikander Bond, that dictated
the policy which Lord Rosmead must pursue to re-establish the
integrity of the Imperial Government in the minds of its Dutch
subjects. At the next presidential election in the Free State (March
4th, 1896), Mr. J. G. Fraser, the head of the moderate party which
followed in the steps of President Brand, was hopelessly beaten by Mr.
Marthinus Steyn, an Afrikander nationalist of the scientific school of
Borckenhagen, and a politician whose immediate programme included the
“closer union” of that state with the South African Republic, the
terms of which were finally settled at Bloemfontein on March 9th,
1897. In the Cape Colony the Bond organised its resources with a view
of securing even more complete control of the Cape Legislature at the
general election of 1898. And lastly, President Krüger, (p. 071) who
had ceased to rely upon Holland for administrative talent, and opened
the lucrative offices of the South African Republic to the ambitious
and educated Afrikander youth of the Free State and Cape Colony,
commenced methodically and secretly to supply arms and ammunition to
the adherents of the nationalist cause in the British Colonies.

But disastrous as was the Jameson Raid in its method of execution and
immediate effects, it produced certain results that cannot be held to
have been prejudicial to the British cause in South Africa, if once we
recognise the fact that the English people as a whole were totally
ignorant, at the time of its occurrence, of the extent to which the
sub-continent had already slipped from their grasp. Something of the
long advance towards the goal of nationalist ambition, achieved by the
Bond, was revealed. The emphatic cry of “Hands off” to Germany, for
which the Kaiser’s telegram of congratulation provided the occasion,
was undoubtedly the means of arresting the progress of that power, at
a point when further progress would have gained her a foot-hold in
South Africa from which nothing short of actual hostilities could have
dislodged her. And more important still was the fact that the Raid,
with its train of dramatic incidents, had published, once and for all,
the humiliating position of the British population in the Transvaal
throughout the length and breadth of the Anglo-Saxon world, and
compelled the Imperial Government (p. 072) to pledge itself to obtain
the redress of the “admitted grievances” of the Uitlanders.

Against the rallying forces of Afrikander nationalism Mr. Chamberlain,
for the moment, had nothing to oppose but the vague and as yet unknown
power of an awakened Imperial sentiment. Lord Rosmead’s attitude at
Pretoria had convinced him of the uselessness of expecting that any
satisfactory settlement of the franchise question could be brought
about through the agency of the High Commissioner. He, therefore,
invited President Krüger to visit England in the hope that his own
personal advocacy of the cause of the Uitlanders, backed up by the
weight of the Salisbury Government, might remove the “root causes” of
Transvaal unrest. But President Krüger refused to confer with the
Colonial Secretary upon any other than the wholly inadmissible basis
of the conversion of the London Convention into a treaty of amity such
as one independent power might conclude with another. Mr. Chamberlain,
therefore, having put upon record that the purpose of the proposed
conference was to give effect to the London Convention and not to
destroy it,
proceeded to formulate a South African policy that would
enable him to make the most effective use of the authority of Great
Britain as paramount Power. His purpose was to win Dutch opinion in
the Free State and the Cape Colony to the side of the Imperial
Government, and then to use this more progressive Dutch (p. 073)
opinion as the fulcrum by which the lever of Imperial remonstrance was
to be successfully applied to the Transvaal Government. In the
speech[25] in which he sketched the main lines of this policy he
declared emphatically that the paramount power of England was to be
maintained at all costs, that foreign intervention would not be
permitted under any pretence, and that the admitted grievances of the
Uitlanders were to be redressed:

“We have,” he continued, “a confident hope that we shall be able
in the course of no lengthened time to restore the situation as
it was before the invasion of the Transvaal, to have at our backs
the sympathy and support of the majority of the Dutch population
in South Africa, and if we have that, the opinion—the united
opinion—which that will constitute, will be an opinion which no
power in Africa can resist.”

With the record of the last ten years before us it seems strange that
Mr. Chamberlain should ever have believed in the efficacy of such a
policy: still more strange that he should have spoken of his
“confident hope” of winning the Afrikander nationalists to support the
paramount Power. But it must be remembered that the evidence of the
real sentiments and purposes of the nationalists here set forth in the
preceding pages, and now the common property of all educated
Englishmen, was then known only to perhaps a dozen journalists and
politicians in England; and if these men had (p. 074) attempted to
impart their knowledge to the general public, they would have failed
from the sheer inability of the average Englishman to believe that
“British subjects” under responsible government could be anything but
loyal to the Imperial tie.

But little as Mr. Chamberlain knew of the real strength of the forces
of Afrikander nationalism, he discerned enough of the South African
situation to realise that this policy would have no chance of success,
unless the maintenance of the British cause in South Africa was placed
in the hands of a personality of exceptional vigour and capacity.
When, therefore, Lord Rosmead intimated his desire to be relieved of
the heavy responsibility of the joint offices of High Commissionship
for South Africa and Governor of the Cape Colony no attempt to
dissuade him was made. His health had been enfeebled for some time
past, and he did not long survive his return to England. Both in
Australia and at the Cape he had devoted his strength and ability to
the service of the Empire. In the years 1883-5 he had resolutely and
successfully opposed the attempt of the Transvaal Boers to seize
Bechuanaland. His failure to control his powerful and impatient Prime
Minister is mitigated by the circumstance that it was solely on the
ground of public interest that, upon the retirement of Lord Loch in
1895, he had allowed himself, in spite of his advanced years and
indifferent health, to assume the office of High Commissioner for a
third time.[Back to Contents]

(p. 075) CHAPTER III

A YEAR OF OBSERVATION

Lord Rosmead retired early in 1897. It is said that three men so
different in character as Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr.
Stead, each separately fixed upon the same name as being that of the
man most capable of undertaking the position of High Commissioner in
South Africa—a position always difficult, but now more than ever
arduous and responsible. To nine out of every ten men with whom he had
been brought into contact there was little in Sir Alfred Milner—as he
then was—to distinguish him from other high-principled, capable, and
pleasant-mannered heads of departments in the Civil Service.
His
métier was finance, and his accomplishment literature. Commencing
with journalism and an unsuccessful contest (in the Liberal interest)
for the Harrow division of Middlesex, he had been private secretary to
Lord Goschen, Under-Secretary for Finance in Egypt, and Head of the
Inland Revenue. In this latter office he had given invaluable
assistance to Sir William Harcourt, then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
in respect of what is perhaps the most successful of recent (p. 076)
methods of raising revenue—the death duties. The principle of the
graduated death duties was Harcourt’s; but it was Milner who worked
out the elaborate system which rendered his ideas coherent, and
enabled them eventually to be put into effect. Academic distinctions,
however ample, cannot be said to-day to afford a definite assurance of
pre-eminent capacity for the service of the State. Yet it was
certainly no disadvantage to Sir Alfred Milner to have been a scholar
of Balliol, or a President of the Oxford Union.[26] Whatever direct
knowledge the educated public had of him was based probably upon the
impression created by his book England in Egypt. This was a work
which indicated that its author had formed high ideals of English
statesmanship, and that his experience of a complex administrative
system, working in a political society full of intrigue and
international jealousy, had developed in him the rare qualities of
insight and humour. Some of his readers might have reflected that an
active association with so accomplished a master of financial and
administrative method as Lord Cromer was in itself a useful equipment
for a colonial administrator.

But the British public, both in England and South Africa, took their
view of the appointment (p. 077) from the opinions expressed by the
many prominent men to whom Sir Alfred Milner was personally known. The
leaders and the Press of both parties were unstinted in approval of
the choice which Mr. Chamberlain had made. The banquet given to Sir
Alfred Milner three weeks before his departure to the Cape (March
28th, 1897) provided an occasion for an expression of unrestrained
admiration and confidence unique in the annals of English public life.
“He has the union of intellect with fascination that makes men mount
high,” wrote Lord Rosebery. And Sir William Harcourt, “the most
grateful and obliged” of Milner’s “many friends and admirers,”
pronounced him to be “a man deserving of all praise and all
affection.” Mr. Asquith, who presided, stated in a speech marked
throughout by a note of intimate friendliness that “no appointment of
our time has been received with a larger measure both of the
approbation of experienced men and of the applause of the public.” The
office itself was “at the present moment the most arduous and
responsible in the administrative service of the country.” Not only
“embarrassing problems,” but “formidable personalities” would confront
the new High Commissioner for South Africa:

“But,” he added, “we know that he takes with him as clear an
intellect and as sympathetic an imagination, and, if need should
arise, a power of resolution as tenacious and as inflexible as
belongs to any man of our acquaintance.”

(p. 078) Milner’s reply is significant of the spirit in which he had
undertaken his task. Like Rhodes, he had found in his Oxford studies
the reasoned basis for an enlightened Imperialism. Chief among his
earliest political convictions was the belief that—

“there was no political object comparable in importance with that
of preventing a repetition of such a disaster [as the loss of the
United States]: the severance of another link in the great
Imperial chain…. It is a great privilege to be allowed to fill
any position in the character of what I may be, perhaps, allowed
to call a ‘civilian soldier of the Empire.’ To succeed in it, to
render any substantial service to any part of our world-wide
State, would be all that in any of my most audacious dreams I had
ever ventured to aspire to. But in a cause in which one
absolutely believes, even failure—personal failure, I mean, for
the cause itself is not going to fail—would be preferable to an
easy life of comfortable prosperity in another sphere.”

This was the man who was sent to maintain the interests of the
paramount Power in a South Africa shaken by racial antagonism, and
already feverish with political intrigue and commercial rivalry. Of
all the tributes of the farewell banquet, Sir William Harcourt’s was
closest to the life—”worthy of all praise and all affection.” The
quality of inspiring affection to which this impressive phrase bore
witness was one which had made itself felt among the humblest of those
who were fortunate enough to have been associated with Lord Milner in
any public work. Long after Milner had left Egypt, the face of
(p. 079) the Syrian or Coptic Effendi of the Finance Department in
Cairo would light up at the chance mention of the genial Englishman
who had once been his chief. And in remote English counties revenue
officials still hang his portrait upon the walls of their lodgings.
Such men had no claim to appraise his professional merit or his gifts
of intellect; but their feelings were responsive to the charm of his
nature. “He was so considerate”: that was their excuse for retaining
his name and personality among the pleasant memories of the past. But
the other side of Milner’s character, the power of “tenacious and
inflexible resolution,” of which Mr. Asquith spoke, was destined to be
brought into play so prominently during the “eight dusky years” of his
South African administration, that to the distant on-looker it came to
be accepted as the characterising quality of the man. To some Milner
became the “man of blood and iron”; determined, like Bismarck, to
secure the unity of a country by trampling with iron-shod boots upon
the liberties of its people: even as in the view of others his clear
mental vision—never more clear than in South Africa—became clouded
by an adopted partisanship, and he was a “lost mind.” Nothing could be
further from the truth. If the man lived who could have turned the
Boer and Afrikander from hatred and distrust of England and English
ideas by personal charm and honourable dealing, it was the man who
(p. 080) had universally inspired all his former associates, whether
equals or subordinates, with admiration and affection. Whatever
bitterness was displayed against Lord Milner personally by the Boer
and Afrikander leaders after the issue of the war was decided was due
to their perception that he was then—as always—a source of strength
and an inspiration for renewed effort to those whom they regarded as
their rivals or opponents. They hated him just as the French hated
Bismarck—because he was the strong man on the other side.

Lord Milner’s inflexibility was, in its essence, a keener perception
of duty than the ordinary: it was a determination to do what he
believed to be for the good of South Africa and the Empire,
irrespective of any consideration of personal or party relationship.
It was in no sense the incapacity to measure the strength of an
opponent, still less did it arise from any failure to perceive the
cogency of an opinion in conflict with his own. Before the eight years
of his administration had passed, Lord Milner’s knowledge of the needs
of South Africa and the Empire had become so profound that it carried
him ahead of the most enlightened and patriotic of the home statesmen
who supported him loyally to the end. Through the period of the war,
when the issues were simple and primitive, they were wholly with him.
But afterwards they supported him not so much because they understood
the methods which he employed and the objects at which he aimed, as
(p. 081) because they were by this time convinced of his complete
mastery of the political and economic problems of South Africa. It is
to this inability to understand the facts of the South African
situation, as he had learnt them, that we must attribute the
comparative feebleness shown by the Unionist leaders in resisting the
perverse attempt which was made by the Liberal party, after the
General Election of 1906, to revoke the final arrangements of his
administration. The interval that separated Lord Milner’s knowledge of
South Africa from that of the Liberal ministers was profound; but even
the Unionist chiefs showed but slight appreciation of the unassailable
validity of the administrative decisions with which they had
identified themselves, when the “swing of the pendulum” brought these
decisions again, and somewhat unexpectedly, before the great tribunal
of the nation.

Lord Milner sailed for the Cape on April 17th, 1897. At the actual
moment of his arrival the relations between the Home Government and
the South African Republic were strained almost to the breaking point.
In a peremptory despatch of March 6th, Mr. Chamberlain had demanded
the repeal of the Aliens Immigration and Aliens Expulsion Laws of
1896—the former of which constituted a flagrant violation of the
freedom of entry secured to British subjects by Article XIV. of the
London Convention. This virtual ultimatum was emphasised by the
appearance of a British (p. 082) squadron at Delagoa Bay, and by the
despatch of reinforcements to the South African garrisons. The evident
determination of the Imperial Government induced the Volksraad to
repeal the Immigration Law and to pass a resolution in favour of
amending the Expulsion Law. The crisis was over in June, and during
the next few months the Pretoria Executive showed a somewhat more
conciliatory temper towards the Government of Great Britain. And in
this connection two other facts must be recorded. In August, 1896, Sir
Jacobus de Wet had been succeeded as British Agent at Pretoria by Sir
William (then Mr.) Conyngham Greene, and the Imperial Government was
assured, by this appointment, of the services of an able man and a
trained diplomatist. The Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the
Raid, promised in July, 1896, met on February 16th, 1897, and reported
on July 13th of the same year. Its report did little more than
reassert the findings of the Cape Parliamentary Inquiry, which had
been before the British public for the last year. It was otherwise
remarkable for the handle which it gave (by the failure to insist upon
the production of certain telegrams) to some extreme Radicals to
assert Mr. Chamberlain’s “complicity” in the “invasion” of the
Transvaal as originally planned by Mr. Rhodes.

Lord Milner had expressed his intention of acquainting himself with
the conditions of South Africa by personal observation before he
attempted to take any definite action for the solution of the
(p. 083) problems awaiting his attention. Nor, after the first month
of anxious diplomatic controversy with the Pretoria Executive, was
there anything either in the political situation in the Cape Colony,
or in the attitude of the Transvaal Government, to prevent him from
putting his purpose into effect. Apart from the circumstance that the
reorganisation of the Chartered Company’s Administration—a question
in which the political future of Mr. Rhodes was largely involved—was
a matter upon which his observation and advice were urgently required
by the Colonial Office, Lord Milner had no intention, as he said, of
“being tied to an office chair at Capetown.” He had resolved,
therefore, to visit at the earliest opportunity, first, the country
districts of the colony which formed the actual seat of the Dutch
population, and, second, the two protectorates of Bechuanaland and
Basutoland, which were administered by officers directly responsible
to the High Commissioner, as the representative of the Imperial
Government. In point of fact he did more than this. Within a year of
his arrival he had travelled through the Cape Colony (August and
September, 1897), through the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Rhodesia
(November and December, 1897), and visited Basutoland (April, 1898).
And with characteristic thoroughness he set himself to learn both the
Dutch of Holland and the “Taal”—the former in order that he might
read the newspapers which the Afrikanders read, and the latter to
(p. 084) open the way to that intercourse of eye and ear which most
helps a man to know the character of his neighbour.

Lord Milner’s year of observation may be said to have ended with the
speech at Graaf Reinet (March 3rd, 1898), which held his first clear
and emphatic public utterance. During the greater part of this period
he was by no means exclusively occupied with the shortcomings of
President Krüger. The discharge of his official duties as Governor of
the Cape Colony required more than ordinary care and watchfulness in
view of the disturbed state of South African politics. And as High
Commissioner he was called upon to deal with a number of questions
relative to the affairs of Rhodesia and the Protectorates, of which
some led him into the new and unfamiliar field of native law and
custom, while others involved the exercise of his judgment on delicate
matters of personal fitness and official etiquette. But an account of
these questions—questions which he handled with equal insight and
decision—must yield to the commanding interest of the actual steps by
which he approached the two central problems upon the solution of
which the maintenance of British supremacy in South Africa
depended—the removal of the pernicious system of race oligarchy in
the Transvaal, and the preservation of the Cape Colony in its
allegiance to the British Crown.

The position which Lord Milner took up in his relations with the
Transvaal Government was (p. 085) one that was consistent alike with
his personal characteristics and with the dictates of a high and
enlightened statesmanship. Within the first few weeks of his arrival
he let it be known, both through the British Agent at Pretoria, and
through those of the Afrikander leaders in the Cape Colony who were on
terms of intimacy with President Krüger, that he desired, as it were,
to open an entirely new account between the two governments. He, a new
High Commissioner with no South African past, with no errors to
retrieve, no failures to rankle, could afford to bury the diplomatic
hatchet. There was nothing to prevent him from approaching the
discussion of any questions that might arise in a spirit of perfect
friendliness, or from believing that the President would be inspired,
on his side, by the same friendly feelings. It was his hope,
therefore, that much of the friction incidental to formal diplomatic
controversy might be avoided through the settlement of all lesser
matters by amicable and informal discussion between President Krüger
and himself.

This was no mere official pose. Milner never posed. He, too, desired
to eliminate the Imperial factor in his own way. He saw from the first
the advantage of limiting the area of dispute between Downing Street
and Pretoria; and he made it his object to settle as many matters as
possible by friendly discussion on the spot. The desire to avoid
unnecessary diplomatic friction, and to make the best of President
Krüger, was (p. 086) manifested in all he did at this time. In the
course of the preparations for the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee
by the British community on the Rand, the new High Commissioner was
asked to decide whether the toast of Queen Victoria, or that of
President Krüger, should come first upon the list at the public
banquet. He replied unhesitatingly that the courtesy due to President
Krüger, as the head of the State, must be fully accorded. On this
occasion, of all others, British subjects, he said, “should be most
careful to avoid anything which might be regarded as a slight to the
South African Republic or its chief magistrate.”[27]

While to President Krüger Lord Milner said, “Let us see if we cannot
arrange matters by friendly discussion between ourselves”; to the
Colonial Office he said, “Give them time; don’t hurry them. Reform
there must be: if by no other means, then by our intervention. But
before we intervene, let us be sure that they either cannot, or will
not, reform themselves. Therefore let us wait patiently, and make
things as easy as possible for President Krüger.”
More than this, he
had almost as little belief in the utility (p. 087) of the
Conventions[28] as Grey had in those of his epoch. Whether the Boers
did, or did not, call the Queen “Suzerain” seemed to him to be a small
matter—an etymological question, as he afterwards called it. What was
essential was that men of British blood should not be kept under the
heel of the Dutch. Moreover, the grievances for which the observance
of the London Convention, however strictly enforced, could provide a
remedy, were insignificant as compared with the more real grievances,
such as the attack upon the independence of the law courts, the injury
to industrial life caused by a corrupt and incompetent administration,
and the denial of elementary political rights, which no technical
observance of the Convention would remove. Nor did it escape Lord
Milner’s notice that a policy of rigid insistence upon the letter of
the Conventions might place the Imperial Government in a position of
grave disadvantage. If any breach of the Conventions was once made the
subject of earnest diplomatic complaint, the demand of the Imperial
Government must be enforced even at the cost of war. The Conventions,
therefore, should be invoked as little as possible. For, if the Boers
denied the British Law Officers’ interpretation of (p. 088) the text,
the Imperial Government might find itself on the horns of a dilemma.
Either it must beat an undignified retreat, or it must make war upon
the Transvaal for a mere technicality, a proceeding which would gain
for the Republic a maximum, and for the Imperial Government a minimum
of sympathy and support. Therefore, he said, “Keep the Conventions in
the background. If we are to fight let it be about something that is
essential to the peace and well-being of South Africa, and not a mere
diplomatic wrangle between the Pretoria Executive and the British
Government.”

Lord Milner’s hope that President Krüger might meet him half-way,
although it was shown by subsequent events to have been devoid of
foundation, had for the moment superficial appearances in its favour.
After their retreat on the question of the Aliens Immigration Law the
attitude of the Pretoria Executive remained for some time outwardly
less hostile to the Imperial Government. Woolls-Sampson and “Karri”
Davies were released from Pretoria gaol in honour of Queen Victoria’s
Jubilee,[29] and at the same period the first and only step was taken
that offered a genuine (p. 089) promise of reform from within. The
Industrial Commission, appointed earlier in the year by the Executive
at the request of President Krüger, surprised the Uitlander community
by conducting its inquiry with a thoroughness and impartiality that
left no ground for complaint. Its report, reviewing in detail the
conditions of the mining industry, was published in July. It afforded
a complete confirmation of the fiscal and administrative complaints
put forward by the Uitlanders against the Government; and as Mr.
Schalk Burger, the Chairman of the Commission, was both a member of
the Executive and the leader of the more progressive section of the
Boers, there seemed to be a reasonable prospect of the recommendations
of the Report being carried into effect. Scarcely more than six months
later President Krüger proved conclusively that the hope of these, or
of any other, reforms was entirely unfounded; but so long as there
remained any prospect of the Uitlanders and the Transvaal Government
being able to settle their differences by themselves, Lord Milner
consistently pursued his intention of “making things easy” for the
Transvaal Government. And this although the Pretoria Executive soon
began to make heavy drafts upon his patience in other respects.[30]

(p. 090) If Lord Milner was prepared to make the most of Paul Krüger
and the Boers, he showed himself no less ready to see the best side of
the Dutch in the Cape Colony. As we have already had occasion to
notice, the year of his appointment was that of the Diamond Jubilee
celebration; and on June 23rd he sent home a brief despatch in which
he dwelt with evident satisfaction upon the share taken by the Dutch
in the general demonstrations of loyalty called forth by the occasion
in the Cape Colony. After a reference to the number of loyal addresses
or congratulatory telegrams which had been sent to the Colonial
Secretary for transmission to the Queen, he continued:

“The enthusiasm evoked here … seems to me to be of peculiar
interest … in view of recent events, which, as you are aware,
have caused a feeling of considerable bitterness among different
sections of the community. All I can say is that, so far as I am
able to judge, these racial differences have not affected the
loyalty of any portion of the community to Her Majesty the Queen.
People of all races, the English, the Dutch, the Asiatics, as
well as the African natives, have vied with one another in
demonstrations of affection for her person and devotion to the
throne. When every allowance is made for the exaggeration of
feeling caused by the unparalleled scale and prolonged duration
of the present festivities, and for the contagious excitement
which they have produced, it is impossible to doubt that the
feeling of loyalty among all sections of the population is much
stronger than has sometimes been believed. In (p. 091) my
opinion, the impression made by the world-wide celebration of Her
Majesty’s Jubilee has strengthened that feeling throughout South
Africa, and is likely to have a permanent value.”[31]

It has been urged that the opinion here recorded is inconsistent with
the charge of anti-British sentiment subsequently brought by Lord
Milner against the Dutch leaders in the Cape Colony, and the despatch
itself has been cited as affording evidence of the contention that the
unfavourable view subsequently expressed in the Graaf Reinet speech,
and more definitely in the despatch of May 4th, 1899, was not the
result of independent investigation, but was a view formed to support
the Imperial Government in a coercive policy towards the Transvaal.
This criticism, which is a perfectly natural one, only serves to
establish the fact that Lord Milner actually did approach the study of
the nationality difficulty in complete freedom from any preconceived
notions on the subject. As he said, he went to South Africa with an
“open mind.” So far from having any prejudice against the Dutch, his
first impression was distinctly favourable, and as such he recorded
it, suitably enough, in this Jubilee despatch. But it must be
remembered that the opinion here recorded was based upon a very
limited field of observation. At the time when this despatch was
written Lord Milner had not yet been quite two months in (p. 092)
South Africa, and his experience of the Dutch of the Cape Colony had
been confined to intercourse with the Dutch of the Cape peninsula;
that is to say, he had only come into contact with that section of the
Cape Dutch which is, as indeed it has been for a century, closely
identified, from a social point of view, with the official and
mercantile British population of Capetown and its suburbs.

What the Jubilee despatch really shows is that Lord Milner was
prepared to make the best of the Dutch. The contrast between its tone
of ready appreciation and the note of earnest remonstrance in the
Graaf Reinet speech is apparent enough. The despatch is dated June
23rd, 1897; the speech was delivered on March 3rd, 1898. What had
happened in this interval of nine months to produce so marked a change
in the mind of the genial, clear-sighted Englishman, who, as Mr.
Asquith said, took with him to South Africa “as sympathetic an
imagination” as any man of his acquaintance? Nemo repente fuit
turpissimus. Whether the diagnosis of his Graaf Reinet speech was
right or wrong, something must have happened to turn Lord Milner from
ready appreciation to grave remonstrance.

The circumstances which provide the answer to this question form an
element of vital importance in the volume of evidence upon which
posterity will pronounce the destruction of the Dutch Republics in
South Africa to have been a just and (p. 093) necessary, or a
needless and aggressive, act. But to see them in true perspective, the
reader must first be possessed of some more precise information of the
political situation in the Cape Colony at this time.

At the period of Lord Milner’s appointment the political forces set in
motion by the Raid were operating already to prepare the way for the
new and significant combinations of persons and parties in the Cape
Colony that took definite form in the parliamentary crisis of May,
1898.
The Ministry now in office was that formed by Sir Gordon Sprigg
upon Mr. Rhodes’s resignation of the premiership after the Raid
(January 6th, 1896). Like every other Cape Ministry of the last
thirteen years, it was dependent upon the support of the Afrikander
Bond, which supplied two out of the six members of the cabinet—Mr.
Pieter Faure, Minister of Agriculture, and a moderate Bondsman, and
Dr. Te Water, the intimate friend of Mr. Hofmeyr, and his direct
representative in the Ministry. Another minister, Sir Thomas Upington,
who had succeeded Mr. Philip Schreiner as Attorney-General, had been
himself Prime Minister in the period 1884-6, when he and Sir Gordon
Sprigg (then Treasurer-General), had opposed the demand for the
intervention of the Imperial Government in Bechuanaland, successfully
and strenuously advocated by Mr. J. W. Leonard and Mr. Merriman. It
was, therefore, eminently, what would be called in France “a Ministry
(p. 094) of the Centre.” Sir Gordon Sprigg’s regard for British
interests was too lukewarm to command the confidence of the more
decided advocates of British supremacy; while, on the other hand, his
more or less friendly relations with Mr. Rhodes aroused the suspicions
of the Dutch extremists. But Dr. Te Water’s presence in the Ministry,
offering in itself a sufficient assurance that no measures deemed by
Mr. Hofmeyr to be contrary to the interests of the Bond would be
adopted, had secured for the Government the votes of the majority of
the Dutch members of the Legislative Assembly. An example of the
subserviency of the Sprigg Ministry to the Bond at this date was
afforded upon Lord Milner’s arrival. As we have seen, the Home
Government determined to reinforce the South African garrison, in
order to strengthen its demand upon the Transvaal Government for the
repeal of the Aliens Immigration Law. Although no direct opposition
was offered by the Ministry to this measure, the insufficiency of
barrack accommodation in the Cape Colony was used as a pretext for
placing obstacles in the way of its accomplishment. These difficulties
were successfully overcome by Lord Milner, and in the end the
reinforcements arrived without giving rise to any political
excitement.[32]

A more disagreeable incident was the covert attempt made by the Bond
to obstruct the business (p. 095) of the Cape Parliament, in order
that Sir Gordon Sprigg might be prevented from taking his place among
the other prime ministers of the self-governing colonies at the
Colonial Conference, and representing the Cape in the Jubilee
celebrations in England.[33] This was the beginning of a disagreement
between the Ministry and the Bond, which gradually increased in
seriousness after Sir Gordon’s return from England, until it
culminated in the resignation of Dr. Te Water (May, 1898).
The offer
of an annual contribution to the cost of the British Navy, which was
affirmed in principle by the Cape Parliament at this time, was
understood in England to be a mark of Afrikander attachment to the
British connection. In point of fact the measure received practically
no support from the Bondsmen in Parliament; while, outside of
Parliament, on Bond platforms and in the Bond Press, the Government’s
action in the matter was employed as an effective argument to
stimulate disaffection in the ranks of its Dutch supporters. Mr.
Hofmeyr, however, was careful not to allow the Bond, as an
organisation, to commit itself to any overt opposition to the
principle of a contribution to the British Navy—an attitude which
would have been obviously inconsistent with the Bond’s profession of
loyalty—and with characteristic irony the third reading of (p. 096)
the Navy Contribution Bill was eventually passed, a year later,
without a division in the Legislative Assembly by a Ministry[34]
placed in office by Bond votes for the declared purpose of opposing
the policy of the Imperial Government on the one question—the reform
of the Transvaal Administration—upon the issue of which depended the
maintenance of British supremacy in South Africa.

But circumstances of deeper significance contributed to deprive the
Sprigg Ministry of the support of the Bond, causing its majority to
dwindle, and driving Sir Gordon himself, in an increasing degree, into
the opposite camp. The British population for the first time showed a
tendency to organise itself in direct opposition to the Bond. As Sir
Gordon Sprigg grew more Imperialist, the Progressive party was formed
for parliamentary purposes; while for the purpose of combating the
Afrikander nationalist movement in general an Imperialist
organisation, called the South African League, was established with
the avowed object of maintaining British supremacy in South Africa.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes, immediately after the Raid, announced his intention
of taking no further part in the politics of the Cape Colony, and of
devoting himself, for the future, to the development of Rhodesia. But
upon his return from England, after giving evidence before the
Committee of Inquiry into the Raid, he was received with so much
warmth by the (p. 097) British population at Capetown in July, 1897,
that he had retracted this decision, and determined to assume the same
position of real, though not nominal, leadership of what was
afterwards the Progressive party as Mr. Hofmeyr held in the Bond. Mr.
Rhodes’s return to political life, following, as it did, upon the
report of the Committee of Inquiry, aroused the most bitter hostility
against him on the part of his former associates in the Bond. And the
Sprigg Ministry, by their increasing reliance upon the new party of
which he was the leader, incurred the distrust of its Dutch supporters
to a corresponding extent. In the meantime the Bond leaders had
adopted Mr. Philip Schreiner, who was not a member of the Bond, as
their parliamentary chief in the place of Rhodes, and this new
combination was strengthened by the accession of Mr. J. X. Merriman
and Mr. J. W. Sauer. Thus the opening months of the new year, 1898,
found the population of the Cape Colony grouping itself roughly, for
the first time, into two parties with definite and mutually
destructive aims. On the one side there was the Sprigg Ministry, now
almost exclusively supported by the British section of the Cape
electorate, soon to be organised on the question of “redistribution”
into the Progressive party, with Rhodes as its real, though not its
recognised, leader; and on the other there was the Bond party, with
Schreiner as its parliamentary chief and Hofmeyr as its real leader,
depending in no (p. 098) less a degree upon the Dutch population of
the Colony, and naturally opposed to an electoral reform that
threatened to deprive this population of its parliamentary
preponderance. And in a few months’ time, as we shall see, the
Schreiner-Bond coalition took for its immediate aim the prevention of
British interference in the Transvaal; while the Progressive party
came, no less openly, to avow its determination to promote and support
the action of the Imperial Government in seeking to obtain redress for
the Uitlander grievances.

The movements here briefly indicated were, of course, perfectly well
known to Lord Milner as constitutional Governor of the Colony. But at
Graaf Reinet he probes the situation too deeply, and speaks with too
authoritative a tone, to allow us to suppose that the remonstrance
which he then addressed to the Cape Dutch was based upon any sources
of knowledge less assured than his own observation and experience. For
the Graaf Reinet speech is not an affair of ministers’ minutes or
party programmes; it is the straight talk of a man taught by eye and
ear, and informed by direct relationships with the persons and
circumstances that are envisaged in his words. To restate our
question, which among these facts of personal observation and
experience produced the change from the ready appreciation of the Cape
Dutch, shown in the Jubilee despatch, to the earnest remonstrance of
the Graaf Reinet speech? The historian cannot claim, like the writer
of creative (p. 099) literature, to exhibit the working of the human
mind. In the terms of the Aristotelian formula, he can relate only
what “has” happened, leaving to the craftsman whose pen is enlarged
and ennobled by the universal truth of art to tell what “must” happen.
But such satisfaction as the lesser branch of literature can afford is
at the disposal of the reader, in “good measure, pressed down, and
running over.” Without assuming, then, the philosophic certainty of
poetry, we know that between the Jubilee despatch and the Graaf Reinet
speech the development of the great South African drama reached its
“turning-point” in the Transvaal; while in the Cape Colony Lord Milner
was learning daily more of the “formidable personalities” and the
“embarrassing problems” to which Mr. Asquith had referred.

The more hopeful situation in the Transvaal that followed upon the
determined action of the Imperial Government in May was succeeded by a
period punctuated by events which, taken collectively, obliterated all
prospect of “reform from within.”
The treatment accorded to the report
of the Industrial Commission, which, as we have noticed, established
the truth of practically all the fiscal and administrative complaints
of the Uitlanders, was a matter of especial significance. The
Commission was created by President Krüger; it was in effect the
fulfilment of his promises, made after the Raid, to redress the
grievances of the Uitlanders. The Commissioners were his own (p. 100)
officials, Boers and Hollanders; men who had no prejudice against the
Government, and no sympathy with the new population, yet their
recommendations, if carried into effect, would have removed the most
serious of the industrial grievances of the British community. The
Report had raised great expectations. It was thought that, not all,
but a substantial proportion of its recommendations would be put into
effect. Here, then, was an opportunity for reform which involved no
loss of prestige, entailed no danger to the independence of the
Republic, and held not the slightest threat to the stability of
burgher predominance. If what President Krüger was waiting for was a
convenient opportunity, he had such an opportunity now. This
reasonable forecast was utterly falsified by the event. Mr. Schalk
Burger, the Chairman of the Commission, was denounced by Mr. Krüger in
the Volksraad as a traitor to the Republic, because he had dared to
set his hand to so distasteful a document. The report itself was
thrown contemptuously by the grim old President from the Volksraad to
the customary committee of true-blue “doppers,” whose ignorance of the
industrial conditions of the Rand was equalled only by their personal
devotion to himself. Here the adverse findings of the commissioners on
the dynamite and railway monopolies were reversed; and the
recommendation for a Local Board for the Rand was condemned as
subversive of the authority of the State. At length, after the report
(p. 101) had been tossed about from Volksraad to committee, and from
committee to Volksraad, until very little of the original
recommendations remained, the Government took action. In addition to
an immaterial reduction of the exorbitant rates charged by the
Netherlands Railway Company—a concession subsequently alleged to have
been the price paid by the Hollander Corporation to avoid further
inquiry into its affairs—it was announced that, with the object of
lessening the cost of living on the Rand, the import duties upon
certain necessaries in common use would be reduced, in accordance with
the recommendations of the Commissioners on this point; but that,
since it was obviously inexpedient to diminish the revenue of the
Republic, the duties upon certain other articles of the same class
would be raised to an extent more than counterbalancing the loss upon
the reduction. Parturiunt montes; nascitur ridiculus mus.

This singular display of mingled effrontery and duplicity marked the
closing months of the year (1897). In the February following Mr.
Krüger was elected to the presidency of the South African Republic for
the fourth time. It was generally recognised that the success of his
candidature was inevitable, but few, within or without the Transvaal,
had expected him to secure so decisive a victory over his competitors.
The figures—Krüger 12,858, Schalk Burger 3,750, and Joubert
(Commandant-General) 2,001—were additional (p. 102) evidence of the
impotency or lukewarmness of the reform party among the burghers. The
first act of President Krüger, on his return to power, was to dismiss
Chief Justice Kotzé. Mr. Kotzé’s struggle for the independence of the
law courts, thus summarily closed, had commenced a year before with
what was known as the “High Court crisis.” At that time President
Krüger had obtained power from the Volksraad by the notorious law No.
1 of 1897 to compel the judges, on pain of dismissal, to renounce the
right, recently exercised, to declare laws, which were in their
opinion inconsistent with the Grondwet (Constitution), to be, to that
extent, invalid. As a protest against this autocratic proceeding the
entire bench of judges threatened to resign, and the courts were
adjourned. The deadlock continued until a compromise was arranged
through the intervention of Chief Justice de Villiers. The President
undertook to introduce a new law providing satisfactorily for the
independence of the Courts, and the judges, on their side, pledged
themselves not to exercise the “testing” right in the meantime. In
February, 1898, Chief Justice Kotzé wrote to remind President Krüger
that his promise remained unfulfilled,[35] withdrawing at the same
time the conditional (p. 103) pledge not to exercise the “testing”
right given by himself. The President then dismissed Mr. Kotzé under
Law No. 1, compelled a second judge, Mr. Justice Amershof (who had
supported the Chief Justice in the position he had taken up) to
resign, and appointed, as the new Chief Justice, Mr. Gregorowski, who,
as Chief Justice of the Free State, had presided at the trial of the
Reformers in 1896, and at the time of the crisis a year before had
declared that “no honourable man could possibly accept the position of
a judge so long as Law No. 1 remained in force.” The judicature was
now rendered subservient to the Executive, and the Uitlanders were
thus deprived of their last constitutional safeguard against the
injustice of the Boer and Hollander oligarchy.

This was the position in the Transvaal in February, 1898. President
Krüger had demonstrated by his refusal to carry out the
recommendations of the Industrial Commission, and by the dismissal of
Chief Justice Kotzé, that he was determined not merely to set himself
against all measures of reform, but to increase the disabilities under
which the Uitlanders had hitherto lived. He had been placed, for the
fourth time, at the head of the Republic by an overwhelming majority;
he had refused to sacrifice a penny of revenue, and he was in
possession of ample resources, which were being sedulously applied in
increasing his already disproportionate supply of munitions of war.
Through Dr. Leyds, who had returned from (p. 104) his mission to
Europe, he had opened up communications with European Powers, that
placed him in a position to avail himself to the full of the possible
embarrassment of Great Britain through international rivalries or
disagreements. In South Africa he had carried through a treaty of
offensive and defensive alliance with the Free State, and he had
received more than one recent assurance that the flame of Afrikander
nationalism had been kindled anew by the Bond in the Cape Colony.

These events were disquieting enough in themselves; but what made the
disappearance of any prospect of spontaneous reform in the Transvaal
still more serious to the High Commissioner for South Africa, was the
complaisance with which President Krüger’s reactionary policy was
regarded by the Dutch subjects of the Crown. It was just here that
Lord Milner’s observations must have yielded the most startling
results. We know that the days which had passed since the Jubilee
despatch was written had brought him constant and varied opportunities
for seeing “things as they really were” in South Africa; we know that
he was keenly alert in the accomplishment of his mission, and we may
presume, therefore, that few, if any, of these opportunities were
lost.

In September Lord Milner had travelled right round the Colony. At
every little town and dorp—wherever, in fact, he went—he conversed
with the Dutch, whom his pleasant manner quickly won to friendliness;
and all the speeches that he made in (p. 105) reply to the addresses
of welcome were extremely conciliatory in tone. This was the time when
there were hopeful anticipations of the good results that were to come
from the Industrial Commission; and Lord Milner often began his speech
with an expression of the sense of relief which he felt—a feeling
which his audience must share—that now there was to be peace in South
Africa. These conciliatory utterances of the new High Commissioner
were almost completely ignored by the Dutch Press. An exception to
this rule of silence was significant. The High Commissioner was
accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. (now Sir Pieter)
Faure. On one occasion Mr. Faure made some remarks in the same spirit
as that in which Lord Milner had spoken. “People,” he said, “talk of
Africa for the Afrikanders; but what I say is, Africa for all.”
The
expression of this moderate sentiment drew down upon Mr. Faure a sharp
reproof from Ons Land. From this and many other such incidents it
must have begun to dawn upon Lord Milner’s mind that what the Dutch of
the Cape Colony wanted was not conciliation but domination.

And so it came about that in the months that President Krüger was busy
shutting the door against reform, Lord Milner was learning to realise
that on this all-important matter there was nothing to hope from the
Cape Dutch. When once the question of reform, or no reform, in the
Transvaal came up, all conciliatory speeches were useless. (p. 106)
It made no difference whether the Transvaal was right or wrong; it was
always, “Our Transvaal, good or bad.” In short, all that happened
both in the Transvaal and the Cape Colony during this (South African)
spring and summer was of the nature to impress conclusively upon Lord
Milner’s mind that on the crucial issue between the Imperial
Government and the Transvaal, the leaders of Dutch opinion in the Cape
Colony were against the British cause. The rank and file of the Dutch
population, if left to themselves, might be indifferent, possibly
friendly; but the Bond organisation had placed them under the control
of the Bond leaders; and the Bond was hostile. What, more than
anything else, would serve to confirm this impression was Lord
Milner’s constant study of the Dutch Press. Among these journals, Ons
Land presented the most authoritative and significant expression of
the Bond policy, as directed by Mr. Hofmeyr’s astute brain and
unrivalled experience. The editorial columns of Ons Land rarely
contained a sentence that, standing alone, could be quoted as evidence
of its advocacy of anti-British action. Its method was far more
subtle. In everything in which Great Britain was concerned the
attitude which it adopted was one of profound alienation, rather than
of aggressive hostility. England’s position in the world was presented
and discussed as though “Afrikanders” were no more interested in it
than they were in that of any foreign country. (p. 107) And, in South
African matters, the tone of the Dutch Press, and of the Bond leaders,
was not merely discouraging; at any hint of possible British action
for the improvement of the administrative conditions of the Transvaal,
it took a note of menace. “Hands off” the Transvaal: that was the sum
and substance of Bond policy.

Between the Jubilee despatch and the Graaf Reinet speech, then, the
Transvaal Government had shown that it had set its face definitely
against reform, and Lord Milner had had time to realise the true state
of political feeling in the Colony of which he was Governor. While
there was anger among the British at the hopeless situation in the
Transvaal, among the Dutch was a fixed determination not to allow the
Transvaal to be interfered with. And there was something else that
Lord Milner would have observed during his travels throughout the
Colony. It was the utter despondency of the British population, and
the condition of abasement to which they had been reduced. Nor can he
have failed to observe that everywhere among the British there was a
constant apology for the Raid; while, on the part of the Dutch, there
was no recognition of all that the British had done to wipe out its
stain and to mitigate its effects: in a word, that the moral conquest
of the Colony by the Dutch was practically complete.

It was with this accumulated evidence in his (p. 108) mind that Lord
Milner travelled down, on March 2nd, 1898, from Capetown to Graaf
Reinet, expecting to take part in a Governor’s function of the
ordinary sort at the opening of the railway on the following day. The
conventional expressions of loyalty to the Queen, and the scarcely
veiled hypocrisy and defiance with which the Dutch reiterated them, at
the time when the whole weight of their influence was thrown against
Great Britain on the only South African question that really mattered,
had become nauseating even to his serene temper and generous
disposition. He was wearied, too, of receiving a frivolous or
unfriendly reply from the Pretoria Executive to the most reasonable
proposals of the Imperial Government. Late at night there was brought
to him, in the train, a copy of an address from the Graaf Reinet
branch of the Afrikander Bond, which was to be presented to him on the
morrow. It contained, in more than usually pointed language, a protest
against “the charges of disloyalty made against the Bond,” and a
request that the High Commissioner would “convey to the Queen the
expression of its unswerving loyalty.” As he read on we can imagine
how, in ominous contrast to the superficial protestations of the text,
something exceptionally aggressive in the tone of the address,
something which emphasised the inconsistency of these formal
professions of attachment to the throne with the very practical
hostility of their (p. 109) authors to British policy, struck the
High Commissioner with peculiar force. The Dutch, who, under British
rule, enjoyed—one might almost say abused—every privilege of
citizenship in the Cape Colony, were quite prepared to see the British
excluded, under Dutch rule, from these same privileges in the
Transvaal. More than that, they were determined to employ all the
agencies at their command to prevent any effective interference with
the Transvaal oligarchy. Lord Milner evidently felt that the time had
come for remonstrance, so, gathering up the impressions which had been
accumulating in his mind, he wrote down then and there his answer,
which was delivered on the following day.

Here was a bolt from the blue! All South Africa stood to attention. No
such authoritative and inspiring utterance had come from the High
Commissioners for South Africa since Frere had been recalled, now
eighteen years ago. The Afrikander nationalists saw that their action
and policy were exposed to the scrutiny of a penetrating intellect,
and grew uneasy.

(p. 114) The position which Lord Milner had taken up was impregnable.
What is the good of your loyalty, he said in effect to the Cape Dutch,
if you refuse to help us in the one thing needful? And this the one
thing of all others the justice of which you Afrikanders should
feel—that the Transvaal should “assimilate its institutions … and
the tone and temper of its administration, to those of the free
communities of South Africa such as this Colony and the Orange Free
State.”

The impact of these words was tremendous. The weight behind them was
the weight of inevitable truth.

A week later Mr. J. X. Merriman wrote to President Steyn to beg him to
urge President Krüger to be careful. Under date March 11th, 1898, he
says:

Still more striking and salutary was the effect produced upon the
British population in the Cape Colony. All who were not utterly abased
by the yoke of Bond domination stood upright. Those whose spirit had
been cowed by the odium of the Raid took heart. Never had the
essential morality of England’s dealings with the Dutch been
vindicated more triumphantly. The moral right of the Power which had
done justice to the Dutch in its own borders to require the Dutch to
do justice to the British within the borders of the Republic was
unassailable. We have noticed before how in the year 1897 the
different sections of the British population were manifesting a
tendency to draw closer together. After the Graaf Reinet speech this
movement rapidly developed into a general determination to challenge
the long domination of the Bond. It had been recognised for some time
past that the recent and considerable growth of the urban population
of the Colony, which was mainly British, had not been accompanied by
any corresponding increase in the number of its parliamentary
representatives. In February (1898), the anomalous condition of the
Cape electoral (p. 116) system was brought before the Ministry. The
indignation caused by the dismissal of Chief Justice Kotzé, and the
growing evidence of President Krüger’s determination to ride
rough-shod over the British population in the Transvaal, contributed
to unite the Colonial British of all sections, with the exception of
the one or two men who were wholly identified with the Bond, in the
common aim of obtaining a fair representation for the chief centres of
British population in the Cape Colony; and the practically solid
British party thus formed adopted the title of “Progressives.” The
Ministry knew, of course, that any such measure would be displeasing
to Mr. Hofmeyr;
but Sir Gordon Sprigg, being now assured of the almost
united support of the British members in the Colonial Parliament,
resolved to bring forward a Redistribution Bill. The draft Bill was
approved by the Executive Council on May 13th, and Dr. Te Water, Mr.
Hofmeyr’s representative in the Ministry, thereupon resigned.[38]

Sir Gordon Sprigg had now done a thing unprecedented in the
parliamentary history of the Cape Colony in the last fifteen years. He
had defied the Bond. He knew that the Bond was quite able to turn his
Ministry out of Office. But he had made up his mind, in this event, to
throw in his lot with the Progressive party, of which (p. 117) Mr.
Rhodes was the actual chief. Mr. Hofmeyr did not leave him long in
doubt. On the resignation of Dr. Te Water all the Bond artillery was
at once turned on to the Ministry. On May 31st Mr. Schreiner gave
notice of a vote of “no confidence.” It was put off until June 13th,
and in the meantime the second reading of the
Redistribution Bill was
met by the “previous question” moved by Mr. Theron, the Chairman of
the Provincial Council of the Bond. No attempt was made, either in
Parliament or in the Press, to conceal the fact that, under the
question of redistribution, wider and more momentous issues were at
stake. The counts in the Bond’s indictment of the Ministry, as set out
in Ons Land, were (1) its Imperialist tendencies as evidenced by the
proposed gift of a warship to the British Navy; and (2) its lack of
sympathy with the South African Republic. Against these crimes it had
nothing to place, except that it had permitted the employment of the
captured Bechuanas, as indentured labourers[39]—its sole merit, in
the opinion of the Bond journal. The Cape Times, on the other hand,
declared with equal frankness that the real point to be decided was,
whether the interests of President Krüger and the South African
Republic, or those of the Cape Colony, as part of the British Empire,
had the greater claim upon the Government and Parliament of the
(p. 118) Colony. And Mr. Schreiner, when, on June 13th, he introduced
the “no confidence” motion, asked the House to condemn the Ministry on
the ground that it had not shown any “sympathy” with, or made any
“conciliatory approach” towards, the “sister Republic.” On Monday,
June 20th, the second reading of the Redistribution Bill was carried
by a majority of seven, but two days later, June 22nd, the Ministry
found itself in a minority of five on Mr. Schreiner’s motion of “no
confidence.”[40] In these circumstances Sir Gordon Sprigg determined
not to resign, but to appeal to the electorate—a course justified by
constitutional usage—and Parliament was dissolved.

The election which ensued was fought with great determination and no
little bitterness. Both the Progressive party and the Bond were
supplied with ample funds; the former had the purse of Mr. Rhodes and
other Englishmen to draw upon, while the latter was subsidised by
President Krüger and his agents from the revenues of the
Transvaal.[41] Mr. Schreiner’s election utterances were studiously
moderate; indeed, his letter of thanks to the electors of the
Malmesbury division, by whom he (p. 119) was returned to Parliament,
contained a reference to “the noble empire which was theirs, and to
which they belonged.” But such pronouncements by no means represented
the sentiment of the party with which he had identified himself. The
objects of the Afrikander party, as presented in their most attractive
form by Ons Land, were to overthrow Rhodes and all his works, to
oppose the “Chartered clique” and “the influence of Mammon in
politics,” and to secure a “pure administration” and “the cultivation
of friendly relations with the neighbouring states:” in other words,
to give every possible encouragement to the Transvaal in the
diplomatic struggle with Great Britain. The Dutch press in general
preached the creed of Afrikander nationalism without disguise. The
under-current of anti-British feeling which prevailed among the Dutch
population may be understood from the fact that the following frank
appeal from a republican nationalist to the Cape Afrikanders was
published in the columns of Ons Land:

“When one considers the state of affairs in the Cape Colony, it
must be confessed the future does not appear too rosy. The
majority of the Afrikander nation in the Cape Colony still go
bent under the English yoke. The free section of the two
Republics is very small compared to that portion subject to the
stranger, and, whatever may be our private opinion, one thing at
least is certain, namely, that without the assistance of the Cape
Colonial Afrikanders the Afrikander cause is lost. The (p. 120)
two Republics by themselves, surrounded as they are by the
stranger [i.e. British] are unable to continue the fight. One
day the question of who is to be master will have to be referred
to the arbitrament of the sword, and then the verdict will depend
upon the Cape Colonial Afrikanders. If they give evidence on our
side we shall win. It does not help a brass farthing to mince
matters. This is the real point at issue; and in this light every
Afrikander must learn to see it. And what assistance can we
expect from Afrikanders in the Cape Colony?… The vast majority
of them (Afrikanders) are still faithful, and will even gird on
the sword when God’s time comes.”[42]

At the same period the Dutch Reformed Church in the Colony had become
what was, to all intents and purposes, a vehicle for the advocacy of
rebellion. The manner in which the principles of Afrikander
nationalism were combined with religious doctrine may be gathered from
certain extracts from the Studenten Blad of the Theological Seminary
of Burghersdorp, which were translated and published by The Albert
Times. The passage following appeared on May 26th, 1899; and by
November 16th the Seminary was closed, since the bulk of the students
had at that date joined the Boer forces:

“Must we love this people [the English] who robbed our ancestors
of their freedom, who forced them to leave a land dear to them as
their heart’s blood—a people that followed our fathers to the
new fatherland which they had bought with their (p. 121) blood
and snatched from the barbarians, and again threatened their
freedom? Our fathers fought with the courage of despair, and
retook the land with God’s aid and with their blood. But England
is not satisfied. Again is our freedom threatened by the same
people, and not only our freedom, but our language, our
nationality, our religion! Must we surrender everything, and
disown our fathers? I cannot agree with this. The thought is
hateful to me—the thought of trampling on the bodies of our
fathers as we extend the hand of friendship to those who have
slain our fathers in an unrighteous quarrel…. But some may say
that the Bible teaches us to love our enemies. I think, however,
that the text cannot be here applied. Race hatred is something
quite distinct from personal enmity. When I meet an Englishman as
a private individual I must regard him as my fellow-creature; if,
however, I meet him as an Englishman, then I, as an Afrikander,
must regard him as the enemy of my nation and my religion—as a
wolf that is endeavouring to creep into the fold. This is the
chief reason why we must regard them as our enemies; they are the
enemies of our religion.”

At the beginning of September, when the bulk of the elections were
over, 40 Afrikander members and 36 Progressives had been returned.
Three seats remained to be filled. Mr. Rhodes, who had been returned
both for Barkly West and Namaqualand, decided to sit for the former
constituency, and the decision of the Bond to contest the seat thus
vacated caused a delay in the new election for Namaqualand. The return
of the two representatives of the Vryburg division was not to take
place until the 15th. As all three (p. 122) constituencies were
expected to elect Progressives—an expectation which was
fulfilled—the result of the general election was to give the Bond a
bare majority of one, and this in spite of the fact that a
considerably larger total of votes had been cast for the Progressive
than for the Bond candidates.[43]

These somewhat unusual circumstances gave rise to an incident which is
significant of the absolute impartiality with which Lord Milner
discharged the duties of his office as constitutional Governor of the
Cape Colony. In view of the circumstance that the Progressives had
polled a majority of the electorate, although they were actually in a
minority in the Assembly, Mr. Rhodes was of opinion that the Ministry
should remain in office, and postpone the meeting of Parliament until
the Namaqualand election had been held. He believed, further, that in
the period of grace thus obtained it would be found possible to induce
one or other of the Bond members to change sides, and thereby put the
Ministry again in a majority. The immediate obstacle to the execution
of this plan of action was the necessity of obtaining “supply.” The
partial appropriation made by (p. 123) Parliament before the
dissolution was exhausted, and the only method by which funds could be
provided without the authority of Parliament was the issue of
Governor’s warrants on the Treasury. Lord Milner was willing to sign
warrants to enable the Ministry to carry on the administration during
the unavoidable interval between the exhaustion of the last
appropriation and the commencement of the new session. But, in view of
the constitutional principle that no ministry which cannot obtain
supply is justified in remaining in office, he absolutely refused to
issue warrants for any longer period. He held, moreover, that as the
Namaqualand election was a bye-election, the new Parliament would be
completed, and therefore competent to transact business, so soon as
the two members for Vryburg had been duly returned. Lord Milner was,
no doubt, aware that the Sprigg Ministry would have had a fair
prospect of retaining office if Mr. Rhodes had been allowed time to
put his tactics into effect. On the other hand, he can scarcely have
failed to observe that there was another aspect of the question. A
loyalist ministry, by showing an undue desire to cling to office, with
or without the employment of questionable political methods, would run
the risk of alienating the more scrupulous of the British members, and
of failing to obtain the support of the moderate Afrikander, who might
otherwise have been won to the Progressive and Imperialist side. But,
as Governor of the Colony, he refused (p. 124) to allow any
considerations of party interest, on this or on any subsequent
occasion, to influence his judgment. While he conceived it to be his
duty to give advice and criticism to public men of all shades of
political opinion, he showed himself inexorably opposed to the thought
of straining his constitutional powers in the slightest degree for the
benefit of one side or the other.[44] Accordingly provision for the
expenses of administration was made by Governor’s warrants up to
September 30th, and on the day following the Vryburg election
(September 16th), a proclamation summoning Parliament for October 7th
was issued.

On October 11th the Government was again defeated on a vote of “no
confidence” by a majority of two.[45] On the 17th the House assembled
with an Afrikander Ministry formed by Mr. Schreiner. In addition to
the Premier it contained Dr. Te Water and Mr. Herholdt, both members
of the Bond; Messrs. Merriman and Sauer, who were now in close
association with the Bond; and Mr. (now Sir) Richard Solomon. The
latter, who had been defeated in the general election, was provided
with a seat upon his accepting office as Attorney-General. The
Progressives (p. 125) continued to be led in opposition by Sir Gordon
Sprigg. Mr. (now Sir) James Rose Innes was returned as an
“independent,” since he had found himself unable to work in
association with a party in which Mr. Rhodes had a dominant influence.
The new Ministry was not strong enough to resist the continued demand
of the Progressives for a measure of electoral reform; but the
Redistribution Bill, as now passed, took the form of a compromise so
disastrous to the British population that the Bond majority was
increased to eight by the new elections held in April, 1899.[46]

Mr. Chamberlain’s policy, as we have seen, was based upon the belief
that it was possible to win over the Dutch in the Cape Colony and the
Free State to the side of the Imperial Government. But here, in
October, 1898, was an Afrikander ministry in power in the Cape Colony
pledged to prevent the intervention of the Imperial Government in the
affairs of the Transvaal. From that moment the issue became more and
more one not of right, but of might. In the Free State, as we have
seen, what was virtually an offensive and defensive alliance with the
northern Republic had been ratified by the Volksraad. In the Transvaal
the work of armament was proceeding apace, and Dr. Leyds had been
despatched to Europe, as Envoy Extraordinary of the Republic, with
authority and funds calculated to enable (p. 126) him to enlist the
active sympathy of the Continental powers on behalf of the Pretoria
Executive. His place as State Secretary had been filled, in July, by
Mr. Reitz, the former President of the Free State, and one of the
actual founders of the Afrikander Bond; and Mr. Smuts, a younger and
even more enthusiastic believer in the nationalist creed, was
appointed to the office of State Attorney.[47] With the exception of
Rhodesia and Natal and the native territories immediately under the
control of the Imperial Government, the Afrikander nationalists
dominated the whole of South Africa. Nor is it surprising that, in
these circumstances, the tone of the communications passing between
the Transvaal Government and the paramount Power should have become
increasingly unsatisfactory.[48]

In the (English) winter of 1898-9 Lord Milner paid a visit to England.
Sir William Greene, who had left Pretoria on a holiday on June 29th,
was also at home during the same period. Lord Milner’s visit was due
in part to the necessity for medical treatment;[49] but, in any case,
it had become desirable that he should be able to communicate fully to
Mr. Chamberlain the grave views which he had formed on the South
African situation. He left for England on November 2nd, landed on the
19th, sailed on January 28th, and reached Capetown again on February
14th. During the whole of the two months that he was in England he was
engaged in an endeavour to impress upon Mr. Chamberlain, and everybody
else with whom he could converse, that the existing state of affairs
was one which, if allowed to remain unchanged, would end in the loss
of South Africa.

During nineteen months of close observation and earnest, patient
study, Lord Milner had grasped the situation in its completeness. What
he saw was the demoralising effect of the spectacle of the Dutch
ruling in the Cape Colony, and the British being tyrannised over in
the Transvaal. Looking at South Africa as a whole, there was the fact,
as indisputable as it was grotesque, that the British inhabitant was
in a position of distinct (p. 128) inferiority to the Dutch; and this
although the Cape and Natal were British colonies, while the Transvaal
and the Free State were states subject to the authority of Great
Britain as paramount Power. It was an impossible position. What Lord
Milner urged upon the Imperial Government was the plain necessity of
putting an end to an intolerable state of things which showed no
capacity of righting itself; of pressing for justice to the British
population of the Transvaal, with an absolute determination to obtain
it. That such a policy might result in war, he knew; though neither he
nor any one else realised, in the beginning of 1899, how near war
actually was. The reliance of the Transvaal oligarchy on the Orange
Free State, now bound to them by a formal alliance, and on the party
of the Bond now in power at the Cape, might tempt them to resist even
the most moderate demands. But Milner no doubt hoped that, if the
British Government grasped the nettle firmly, and, while treating the
Transvaal with all possible diplomatic courtesy, yet left no doubt
whatever of its inflexible resolution, war might still be avoided. And
in any case he felt that there was no option for the British
Government but to take up the case of the Transvaal British, if a
shred of respect for the power and name of Britain was to be preserved
in South Africa. To embark on such a policy involved two dangers: the
danger of war, and what in Milner’s eyes was perhaps even greater,
(p. 129) the danger that, by advancing just claims and then, letting
ourselves be “bluffed” out of them, we might yet further lessen, and
indeed totally destroy, what hold we still possessed upon the
affection of the South African British or on the respect either of
British or Dutch. In the light of past experience the second danger
may well have seemed to him the greater of the two. But, with perils
on both hands, he still felt that there was nothing for it but to go
forward, to make one supreme effort to save a situation which was
rapidly becoming a hopeless one. To have remained quiescent, with the
forces which were gradually edging us out of the Sub-Continent growing
on every side, could only have ended in the overthrow, or at best, the
euthanasia of British dominion in South Africa.

It was in the course of this visit that Lord Milner realised the
magnitude of the task that lay before him. To save England in spite of
herself; to keep South Africa a part of the Empire in spite of
ignorance at home, in the teeth of an armed Republic and an Afrikander
ministry, required not merely an iron will and mastership in
statecraft, but a reasoned and unfaltering belief in the justice of
the British cause. “Certainly I engaged in that struggle with all my
might,” he said long afterwards in his farewell speech at
Johannesburg, “because I was, from head to foot, one mass of glowing
conviction of the rightness of our cause.”[Back to Contents]

(p. 130) CHAPTER IV

UNDER WHICH FLAG?

Upon his return Lord Milner found that the storm clouds had gathered
in the Transvaal. In a despatch of January 13th, 1899, Mr. Chamberlain
had informed the Pretoria Executive that the proposed extension of the
dynamite contract in its new form (i.e. as, in effect, a “privileged
importation by one firm,” although nominally “a State undertaking”)
was held by the law officers of the Crown to be as much a violation of
the Convention as the original monopoly, which had been cancelled on
the representations of the Imperial Government in 1892. Mr. Reitz’s
reply, which Lord Milner transmitted to the Colonial Office not long
after his arrival at Capetown, was a blunt assertion that, in the
opinion of his Government, the Imperial Government had no right to
interfere. But in the meantime the whole question of the position of
the British residents in the Transvaal had been raised directly by the
agitation which had arisen out of the shooting of Edgar at
Johannesburg on December 18th, 1898.[50] This (p. 131) event was
followed by the petition for protection,
which Sir William Butler (who
was General-in-Command, and during Lord Milner’s absence Acting High
Commissioner) refused to transmit to the Secretary of State (January
4th, 1899); by the arrest of Messrs. Webb and Dodd and the breaking up
of the Amphitheatre meeting (January 14th); by the attempt of the
Pretoria Executive to buy off the capitalists (February 27th-April
14th); by the presentation of the second petition to the Queen (March
24th); by the agitation on the Rand in favour of the reforms for which
it prayed; and lastly by the public meetings held in the Cape Colony
and Natal for, and against, the intervention of the Imperial
Government.[51]

Within three months of his return Lord Milner cabled the masterly
statement in which he endorsed the petition of the Uitlanders[52] with
the memorable (p. 132) words: “The case for intervention is
overwhelming.” Like the Graaf Reinet speech, this despatch of May 4th
was written at white heat, but the opinions which it expressed were in
no less a degree the mature and measured judgments of a mind fully
informed upon every detail germane to the issue. So much is this the
fact that all that is essential for the full comprehension of the
second Reform Movement at Johannesburg—the salient features of which
have been outlined above—is to be found within the limits of this
brief and notable State document:

It was Lord Milner’s intention that the text of this despatch should
have been made public upon its receipt in England. It contained the
essential facts of the South African situation; and, what is more, it
exhibited with perfect frankness the connection between Dutch
ascendancy in the Cape Colony and Dutch tyranny in the Transvaal—a
matter which was very imperfectly understood. The circumstance that
these essential facts were before the British people, and, moreover,
the circumstance that President Krüger knew that they were before the
British people, would, he believed, greatly increase the effect of the
strong demand for reforms which the Imperial Government had determined
to address to the Pretoria Executive in response to the petition to
the Queen.

Nor was he alone in this opinion. Mr. Hofmeyr (p. 140) knew that a
despatch of grave importance had gone home. He had gathered, no doubt,
a fairly accurate notion of its tenor from Mr. Schreiner, whom Lord
Milner had warned some time before of “the gravity of the
situation.”[54] It is not going beyond the limits of probability to
assume that the Master of the Bond realised the effect which the
publication of these plain truths, backed by the authority of the High
Commissioner, would produce upon the mind of the English people, and
that he thereupon determined to take steps to prevent a turn of
affairs which, as he conceived, would be most unfavourable to the
nationalist cause. Surmises apart, it is certain, at least, that five
days sufficed to place Mr. Hofmeyr in a position to ask Lord Milner if
he would favourably consider an invitation to meet President Krüger in
conference at Bloemfontein; and that within three days more (May 12th)
a definite proposal to this effect had been made through the agency of
President Steyn and accepted by Mr. Chamberlain. Nor, is it any less
certain that, in view of the friendly discussion which was to take
place so soon, the Secretary of State decided to postpone the
publication of Lord Milner’s despatch. This is the short history of
the Bloemfontein Conference. It was a counter-stroke dealt by one of
those “formidable personalities” of which Mr. Asquith spoke, and in
all respects worthy of Mr. Hofmeyr’s (p. 141) statesmanship. Indeed,
the methods which he employed for paralysing the machinery of British
administration in South Africa were always subtle: infinitely more
subtle than those which Parnell adopted in the not very dissimilar
circumstances of the Home Rule campaign.

The decision to postpone the publication of Lord Milner’s despatch of
May 4th was a serious mistake, the injurious effect of which was felt
both at the Conference and afterwards. But before we observe the
incidents by which this central event was immediately preceded, it is
necessary to examine more fully the political environment in which
Lord Milner found himself established now that the April elections[55]
had given the Afrikander party an assured tenure of power, and, at the
same time, the moment had arrived for the Imperial Government to
fulfil the pledge given on February 4th, 1896, for the redress of the
“admitted grievances” of the Uitlanders.

The Schreiner Ministry was the agent of the Bond; it could not exist
for a day if the Bond withdrew its support. The Bond majority in the
Legislative Assembly had been returned by the Dutch inhabitants of the
Colony for the avowed purpose of preventing the intervention of the
Imperial Government in the affairs of the Transvaal. The Ministry and
its supporters had begun by ranging themselves definitely on the side
(p. 142) of the Transvaal. And, therefore, in all that was done by
either party from the Bloemfontein Conference to the Ultimatum, it
followed, ex hypothesi, that, in their opinion, the Transvaal was
right, and England was wrong. Twice, as we shall see, Mr. Schreiner,
on behalf of the Cape Ministry, hastened to declare publicly that the
proposals of the Transvaal were all that was satisfactory, before he
even knew what those proposals were. The Cape nationalists represented
themselves as “mediators.” They had as little intention of mediating
between the Pretoria Executive and the British Government as a
barrister, heavily feed and primed with his client’s case, has of
mediating between his client and his client’s opponent at the hearing
of a case in court.

But the Bond was “loyal.” The Bond members of the Cabinet—T. Nicholas
German Te Water, and Albertus Johannes Herholdt, no less than William
Philip Schreiner, John Xavier Merriman, Jacobus Wilhelmus Sauer, and
Richard Solomon—had sworn, upon taking office, “to be faithful and
bear true allegiance to Her Majesty.”

The situation in which Lord Milner now found himself was thus one of
so extraordinary a character that it would be difficult to find a
parallel to it in the annals of our colonial administration. As High
Commissioner, he had advocated in the most emphatic terms the exercise
of the authority of Great Britain, as paramount Power, in the
Transvaal. As Governor of the Cape Colony, (p. 143) he was bound to
administer the affairs of the Colony in accordance with the advice
tendered by his ministers. And the advice which ministers were pledged
to give him was the direct opposite of that which he himself, as High
Commissioner, had given to the Imperial Government. To dismiss his
ministers—the alternative to accepting this advice—would have been
an extreme measure, to be justified only upon clear evidence that they
had failed in the duty which they, no less than he himself, owed to
the Crown. Whether Mr. Schreiner’s Cabinet did so fail is a matter
that the reader must determine for himself; possibly it would be
difficult to show that, collectively or individually, the Cape
ministers did anything more injurious to British interests than was
done by the Liberal Opposition—again collectively or individually—in
England. One thing is certain: the action of the Afrikander Cabinet,
whether within or beyond the letter of its allegiance, lessened—and
was intended to lessen—the force of an effort on the part of the
Imperial Government, which might otherwise have averted the necessity
for war.

And here certain questions which will arise inevitably to the mind
that pursues the narrative of the next few months, must be
anticipated. What was the position of Mr. Schreiner? What was his real
standpoint, and what was his relationship to Lord Milner? How was it
that two Englishmen, Mr. Merriman and Sir (then Mr.) (p. 144) Richard
Solomon, came to be in this Afrikander Cabinet, and what were their
respective motives in thus associating themselves with the objects of
the Bond?

Mr. Philip Schreiner was the son of a German by birth, a missionary of
the London Missionary Society, who had married an Englishwoman, and
afterwards settled in the Orange Free State. He had himself married a
sister of Mr. F. W. Reitz, formerly President of the Free State, and
now State Secretary of the South African Republic. The Schreiner
family was remarkable for intellectual power. Of his sisters one is
the authoress of The Story of an African Farm, and a second, Mrs.
Lewis, like her brother Theophilus, was an active Imperialist and a
determined opponent of the Bond. Mr. Schreiner himself was educated at
the South African College at Capetown, and subsequently at Cambridge,
where he was placed first in the First Class of the Law Tripos, and
afterwards elected a Fellow of Downing. After a successful career at
the Cape Bar he was appointed Attorney-General in Mr. Rhodes’s
Ministry, a position which he held at the time of the Raid. He was
prevented by his strong disapproval of the part then played by Mr.
Rhodes from joining the Progressive party; and, having accepted the
position of Parliamentary leader of the Bond, he had become, as we
have seen, Prime Minister through the Bond victory in the Cape General
Election of 1898. It is characteristic alike of (p. 145) Mr.
Schreiner and of his political position that the only word of sympathy
with the British connection, uttered from first to last during this
election by the Bond candidates or their supporters, was the
conventional reference to the greatness of the British Empire which,
as we have noticed, occurred in his address to the electors of
Malmesbury. With these political and social ties, Mr. Schreiner was
compelled to be a South African first and a British subject second.
His is precisely the kind of case where true allegiance can be
expected only when a federal constitution has been created for the
Empire.

“See,” said Lord Milner, in his farewell speech at Johannesburg,
“how such a consummation would solve, and, indeed, can alone
solve, the most difficult and most persistent of the problems of
South Africa; how it would unite its white races as nothing else
can. The Dutch can never own a perfect allegiance merely to Great
Britain. The British can never, without moral injury, accept
allegiance to any body politic which excludes their motherland.
But British and Dutch alike could, without loss of integrity,
without any sacrifice of their several traditions, unite in loyal
devotion to an empire-state, in which Great Britain and South
Africa would be partners, and could work cordially together for
the good of South Africa as a member of that greater whole.”[56]

With Schreiner, and such as he, loyalty to the Crown was for the
moment the product of intellectual judgment or considerations of
policy. (p. 146) All, or almost all, the instinctive feelings, born
of pleasant associations with persons and places, which enter so
largely into the sentiment of patriotism seem to have drawn him, as
they drew his sister, Mrs. Cronwright-Schreiner, into sympathy with
the cause of Afrikander nationalism. What his view was upon the
particular issue now agitating South Africa may be gathered from an
answer which he gave to a question put to him by Mr. Chamberlain in
the course of the inquiry into the Raid (1897):

In other words, Mr. Schreiner was a consistent and convinced opponent
of Imperial intervention. But there was a difference between his
motive and that of the Bond leaders. Schreiner desired to prevent
intervention, not because he did not recognise the justice of the
claims of the Uitlanders, but because he believed that the Imperial
Government was devoid of any right to intervene under the Conventions;
while, at the same time, his instinctive sympathy with the Afrikander
nationalists made him blind to the existence of any (p. 147) moral
right of interference that England might possess, as the Power
responsible for the well-being of South Africa as a whole. And so,
partly by force of environment and partly by a narrow and erroneous
interpretation of the principles of international law,[58] the Boer
and Hollander oligarchy in the Transvaal, with all its moral obliquity
and administrative incompetence, had become, as it were, a thing
sacrosanct in his eyes. Mr. Hofmeyr and the Bond leaders, on the other
hand, desired to prevent intervention because they were perfectly
satisfied to see the British Uitlanders in a position of political
inferiority, and perfectly content with the whole situation, the
continuance of which, as they knew, was directly calculated to bring
about the supremacy of the Dutch race in South Africa. Therefore
Hofmeyr made no effort to improve the state of affairs in the
Transvaal until he saw the storm bursting. And when, at a later stage,
he set himself to work in earnest to induce President Krüger to grant
reforms, he did so to save the cause of Afrikander nationalism and not
to assist the British Government in winning justice for the
Uitlanders.

Sir Richard Solomon, who was a nephew of Saul Solomon, the prominent
radical politician chiefly instrumental in carrying the vote for
Responsible Government through the Legislative Council of (p. 148)
the Cape Colony (1872), was the leader of the Bar at Kimberley. His
presence, at first sight, formed a wholly incongruous element in such
a ministry. On the native question, in his fiscal views, as a
supporter of the Redistribution Bill, and in his sympathy with the
Uitlanders, he was in direct conflict with the characteristic
principles of the Bond. His one link with the Afrikander party was his
distrust of Rhodes; and in view of his unquestioned loyalty to the
British connection, his decision to join the Schreiner Ministry is
probably to be attributed to his personal friendship for the Prime
Minister. On the other hand, his ability, detachment from local
parties, and the respect which he commanded, made him a valuable asset
to Mr. Schreiner.

Mr. Merriman, whose close political associate was Mr. Sauer, had twice
held office under Mr. Rhodes (1890-96); but his separation from
Rhodes, consequent upon the Raid, had thrown him into the arms of the
Bond. Some of the more striking incidents in Mr. Merriman’s political
career have been already mentioned.[59] Fifteen years ago more
Imperialist than Rhodes, he was soon to show himself more Bondsman
than the Bond. Once the resolute, almost inspired, castigator of the
separatist aims of that organisation, he was now in close and
sympathetic association with the leaders of Afrikander nationalism in
the Republics and the Cape Colony. The denunciations (p. 149) of
“capitalism” and “capitalists” with which he now regaled his
Afrikander allies, had an ill savour in the mouth of the man who had
tried to amalgamate the Diamond Mines at Kimberley—failing where
Rhodes and Beit afterwards succeeded—and who, attracted by the magnet
of gold discovery, for a short time had acted as manager of the
Langlaagte Estate and Mr. J. B. Robinson’s interests at Johannesburg.
With political principles thus unstable and a mind strangely sensitive
to any emotional appeal, it is not surprising that Mr. Merriman
displayed the proverbial enthusiasm of the convert in his new
political creed. His original perception of the imprudence and
administrative incompetency of President Krüger’s régime was rapidly
obliterated by a growing partizanship, which in turn gave place to an
unreasoning sympathy with the Boer cause, combined with a bitter
antipathy against all who were concerned, whether in a civil or
military capacity, in giving effect to the intervention of the
Imperial Government on behalf of the British industrial community in
the Transvaal. Mr. J. W. Sauer was destined to exhibit his political
convictions in a manner so demonstrative that his words and acts, as
recorded in the sequel, will leave the reader in no doubt as to the
reality of his sympathy with the Boer and Afrikander cause. For the
moment, therefore, it is sufficient to notice that, although he shared
Mr. Merriman’s present abhorrence of (p. 150) “capitalism” and
“capitalists,” he was for many years of his life a promoter and
director of mining and other companies.

Of the two Bondsmen in the Cabinet, Mr. Herholdt was a member of the
Legislative Council, and a Dutch farmer of moderate views and good
repute; while Dr. Te Water was the friend and confidant of Mr.
Hofmeyr, and, as such, the intermediary between the Bond and the
Afrikander nationalists in the Free State and in the Transvaal.

The Schreiner Cabinet was the velvet glove which covered the mailed
hand of Mr. Hofmeyr. Dr. Te Water had been Colonial Secretary in the
Sprigg Ministry up to the crisis of May, 1898. He was now “minister
without portfolio” in the Schreiner Ministry. His presence was the
sign and instrument of the domination of the Bond; and the domination
of the Bond was as yet the permanent and controlling factor in the
administration of the Colony under Responsible Government. The fact
that only two out of six members of the Ministry were Bondsmen, is to
be referred to the circumstance that the actual business of
administration had been hitherto mainly in the hands of a small group
of British colonial politicians, who were prepared to bid against each
other for the all-important support of the Dutch vote. With the
majority of these men, to be in office was an object for the
attainment of which they were prepared to make a (p. 151)
considerable sacrifice in respect of their somewhat elastic political
principles. The denial of political rights to the British population
in the Transvaal, by threatening the maintenance of British supremacy
in South Africa, had now for the first time created a British party in
the Cape Colony—the Progressives—strong enough to act in
independence of the Bond. The existence of this British party, not
only free from the Bond, but determined (although it was in a
minority) to challenge the Bond predominance, was a new phenomenon in
Cape politics. In itself it constituted an appreciable improvement
upon the previously existing state of affairs; since the British
population was thus no longer hopelessly weakened by being divided
into two parties of almost equal strength, nor were its leaders any
longer obliged to subordinate their regard for British interests to
the primary necessity of obtaining office by Bond support.

Mr. Schreiner’s Ministry, however, in spite of a difference of motives
on the part of its individual members, was unanimous in its desire to
prevent that intervention of the Imperial Government for which, in
Lord Milner’s judgment, there was “overwhelming” necessity. The idea
of inducing President Krüger to grant such a “colourable measure of
reform”[60] as would satisfy the Imperial Government, or at least
deprive it of any justification (p. 152) for interference by force of
arms, was in contemplation some months before the Bloemfontein
Conference took place. On January 1st, 1899, Mr. Merriman wrote to
President Steyn with this object in view. “Is there no opportunity,”
he said,[61] “of bringing about a rapprochement between us, in which
the Free State might play the part of honest broker? We, i.e., the
Colony and Free State, have common material interests in our railway,
apart from our anxiety to see the common welfare of South Africa
increase from the removal of the one great cause of unrest and the
pretext for outside interference.”

And Lord Milner, very soon after his return from England, was sounded
by Mr. Schreiner as to the possibility of settling the franchise
question by means of a South African Conference. Early in March—when
Mr. Smuts was in Capetown, and the Pretoria Executive was engaged in
the abortive attempt to separate the leaders of the mining industry
from the rank and file of the Uitlander population by offering them
certain fiscal and industrial reforms, if only they would undertake to
discourage the agitation for political rights—the same subject was
brought before the High Commissioner by Mr. Merriman himself. In
pursuance of the real purpose of the Afrikander Ministry—i.e. to
obtain a fictitious concession from President Krüger, instead of the
“fair share in the government (p. 153) of the country” required by
the Imperial Government—it was proposed originally to exclude Lord
Milner altogether from the negotiations by arranging that the
Transvaal Government should bring forward proposals for reform at an
inter-State Conference consisting of representatives of the
governments of the two Republics and the self-governing British
Colonies. But Lord Milner was, happily, High Commissioner as well as
Governor of the Cape. As High Commissioner, he declared that at any
such Conference the Imperial Government must be separately
represented. Neither the Transvaal nor the Free State was willing to
enter a Conference on these terms, although they were acceptable to
the Cape Government; and the plan fell to the ground.

It was then that Mr. Hofmeyr intervened, in view of Lord Milner’s
despatch of May 4th; and President Steyn, persuaded with dramatic
swiftness to accept the rôle of peace-maker, which his predecessor,
Sir John Brand, had played with such success in 1881, secured the
grudging consent of President Krüger to meet the High Commissioner at
Bloemfontein.

The incidents which led to the accomplishment of Hofmeyr’s tour de
force are singularly instructive. Lord Milner’s despatch was
telegraphed from Capetown about midday on May 4th. It was soon
apparent that there was a leakage, legitimate or illegitimate, from
the Colonial Office. On Saturday, the 6th, Mr. (p. 154) Schreiner
received warning telegrams from trusted sources in London, including
“Hofmeyr’s best friends”; and on this day he wrote a letter to
President Steyn containing a “proposition” of so confidential a
character that it could not be telegraphed in spite of the urgent need
of haste.[62] On Monday, the 8th, Mr. Schreiner received more warning
telegrams, and Dr. Te Water, in writing to President Steyn, expressed
his hope that the proposition, made by Schreiner in his letter of
Saturday, might by this time “have been accepted, or that something
had been done which would achieve the same purpose.”[63] On the same
day the Cape papers published an alarming telegram reproducing from
The Daily Chronicle[64] a statement that the South African situation
was very serious, and that the British Government was prepared to
“take some risk of war.” On Tuesday, the 9th, Lord Milner was present
at a dinner given by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly; and Mr.
Hofmeyr, who was among the guests, in the course of a long
conversation with him after dinner, broached the idea of his meeting
President Krüger at Bloemfontein. On Wednesday, the 10th, Lord Milner
sent for Mr. Hofmeyr and discussed the subject more at length; and, a
little later, when he had gone to the Governor’s Office, Mr. Schreiner
came in with a telegram (p. 155) from President Steyn, in which the
Cape Prime Minister was requested to ascertain formally whether the
High Commissioner would be willing to accept an invitation to meet
President Krüger. This telegram Lord Milner forwarded to Mr.
Chamberlain, adding that the Cape Cabinet was “strongly” in favour of
acceptance, and that Schreiner himself had declared that the
invitation was the result of the “influence which he (Schreiner) had
been using with the Transvaal Government ever since I had warned him
of the gravity of the situation.”[65] Mr. Chamberlain’s reply (May
12th), authorised Lord Milner to accept President Steyn’s invitation,
and in doing so, to state that a despatch was already on its way which
contained a similar proposal made by the Imperial Government—

“in the hope that, in concert with the President, you may arrive
at such an arrangement as Her Majesty’s Government could accept
and recommend to the Uitlander population as a reasonable
concession to their just demands and a settlement of the
difficulties which have threatened the good relations”

between the two Governments. This was the famous despatch of May 10th,
in which Mr. Chamberlain reviewed carefully and exhaustively the whole
situation as between the Transvaal and the Imperial Government, and
formally accepted the Uitlanders’ Petition to the Queen. It was not
published until June 14th, i.e., after the Bloemfontein (p. 156)
Conference had been held. It was then issued, together with Lord
Milner’s despatch of May 4th, in a Blue-book containing the complete
record of all discussions of Transvaal affairs subsequent to Lord
Milner’s appointment.

In the course of the next few days communications passed rapidly
between Lord Milner, Mr. Chamberlain, President Steyn, and President
Krüger, with the result that, on May 18th, President Steyn’s
invitation was formally accepted, and on the following day it was
arranged that the Conference should begin on May 31st. Never was
intervention more effective, or less obtrusive. Mr. Hofmeyr’s part in
the affair was confined apparently to an after-dinner conversation
with the High Commissioner. Nor was the directing hand of the Master
of the Bond revealed more fully until Lord Roberts’s occupation of
Bloemfontein placed the British authorities in possession of part of
the communications which passed at this time, and during the four
succeeding months, between the Cape nationalists and their republican
confederates. And even in these documents Hofmeyr’s name is rarely
found at the end of a letter or telegram. It is Schreiner or Te Water
who writes or telegraphs to Steyn or Fischer, adding sometimes, by way
of emphasis, “Hofmeyr says” this or that. In the meantime (May 22nd),
Lord Milner had telegraphed, for “an indication of the line” which Mr.
Chamberlain wished him to take at the Conference. He himself (p. 157)
suggested that the franchise question should be put in the foreground;
since it would be useless to discuss other matters in dispute until a
satisfactory settlement of this all-important question had been
achieved. Mr. Chamberlain replied (May 24th), agreeing with the line
indicated by Lord Milner:

“I think personally that you should lay all the stress,” he
telegraphed, “on the question of the franchise in the first
instance. Other reforms are less pressing, and will come in time
if this can be arranged satisfactorily, and the form of oath
modified.”

Mr. Chamberlain at the same time authorised Lord Milner to inform the
Uitlander petitioners that they might rely upon obtaining the general
sympathy of the Imperial Government in the prayers which they had
addressed to the Queen.

There was no doubt in Lord Milner’s mind as to the real motives which
had prompted the Afrikander nationalist leaders to make this effort.
They recognised at length that he was in earnest, and that Mr.
Chamberlain was in earnest, and they desired, above all things, to
avoid a crisis which would force a conflict before their ultimate
plans had fully matured. Lord Milner knew that any delay which
involved the continuance of the present position—a position which was
one of moral superiority for the Dutch—would unite the whole of the
Dutch, with a section of the British population, against Great Britain
within a measurable period. He recognised that the franchise (p. 158)
question was the one issue which could be raised between the paramount
Power and the South African Republic in which the whole of the Cape
Dutch would not throw in their lot bodily with their republican
kinsmen. This very anxiety on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr to prevent the
decisive action of the Imperial Government was evidence of the truth
of his estimate. But as a response to the appeal of the Graaf Reinet
speech, this Afrikander mediation came too late. “Hands off” the
Transvaal was the first plank in the platform of the Schreiner
Ministry; “reform” was a second and subsidiary plank, adopted in place
of the first only when they had been driven to abandon it by Lord
Milner’s resolution and statesmanship. But the purpose of the Ministry
now, no less than before, was to hinder, and not to help, the British
Government in obtaining justice for the Uitlanders. Moreover, the
Transvaal armaments were well advanced, and the Pretoria Executive was
too deeply committed to a policy of defiance to allow it to draw back
without humiliation. Nevertheless, Lord Milner felt bound to avail
himself of any prospect of peace that the Conference might afford.
When, however, Mr. Schreiner, in bringing President Steyn’s telegram,
had said that he regarded the proposal as “a great step in advance on
the part of President Krüger,” Lord Milner had replied that he could
“hardly take that view, as the invitation did not emanate from
President Krüger (p. 159) himself,” and contained no indication of
“the basis or subject of discussion.”

The High Commissioner was right. The slight degree in which any appeal
adequate to the occasion was likely to prove acceptable to President
Krüger may be gathered from a passage in a letter of Sir Henry de
Villiers to President Steyn (May 21st), in which the Chief Justice of
the Cape refers to his recent experience in Pretoria when he was on
this very errand of “mediation”:

And again, in writing to his brother, Mr. Melius de Villiers, Chief
Justice of the Free State, at a later date (July 31st), he says, in
allusion to this same visit to Pretoria:

“From an intimate acquaintance with what was going on, I foresaw,
three months ago, that if President Krüger did not voluntarily
yield he would be made to do so, or else be prepared to meet the
whole power of England. I accordingly begged of Krüger’s friends
to put the matter to him in this way: On the one side there is
war with England; on the other side there are concessions
(p. 161) which will avoid war or occupation of the country. Now,
decide at once how far you will ultimately go; adopt the English
five years’ franchise; offer it voluntarily to the Uitlanders,
make them your friends, be a far-sighted statesman, and you will
have a majority of the Uitlanders with you when they become
burghers. The answer I got was: We have done too much already,
and cannot do more. Yet afterwards they did a great deal more.
The same policy of doing nothing except under pressure is still
being pursued. The longer the delay, the more they will have to
yield.”

This was plain speaking and sound statesmanship. Nor was Mr.
Merriman’s appeal, written almost concurrently (May 26th) with Sir
Henry’s letter to President Steyn, any less emphatic. It was addressed
to Mr. Abraham Fischer, a member of the Free State Executive and a
convinced nationalist; and it is otherwise remarkable for an estimate
of the economic conditions of the Boers which subsequent experience
has completely justified:

“I most strongly urge you,” he writes, “to use your utmost
influence to bear on President Krüger to concede some colourable
measure of reform, not so much in the interests of outsiders as
in those of his own State. Granted that he does nothing. What is
the future? His Boers, the backbone of the country, are perishing
off the land; hundreds have become impoverished loafers, landless
hangers-on of the town population. In his own interests he should
recruit his Republic with new blood—and the sands are running
out. I say this irrespective of agitation about Uitlanders. The
fabric will go to pieces of its own accord unless something is
(p. 162) done…. A moderate franchise reform and municipal
privileges would go far to satisfy any reasonable people, while a
maintenance of the oath ought to be sufficient safeguard against
the swamping of the old population.”[66]

But the Schreiner Cabinet contained, as we have seen, a representative
of Mr. Hofmeyr in the person of Dr. Te Water. Mr. Merriman could see
that the position in the Transvaal was one that could not go on
indefinitely—that “the fabric would go to pieces of its own accord,
unless something was done.” Dr. Te Water was blind even to this aspect
of the question. The correspondence found after the occupation of
Bloemfontein (March 13th, 1900), from which these letters are taken,
contains also certain letters to President Steyn that disclose both
the nature of the Afrikander mediation, as it was understood by the
nationalist leaders of the Cape Colony, and the faithfulness with
which Dr. Te Water served them.

The Te Water correspondence, as we have it,[67] consists of three
letters written respectively on May 8th, 17th, and 27th, from “the
Colonial Secretary’s Office, Capetown,” to President Steyn. The
replies of the latter have been withheld, not unnaturally, from the
public eye. In the first of these letters Dr. Te Water “hopes
heartily” that Schreiner’s “proposition” for the Conference (p. 163)
has been accepted, and then proceeds to impress upon him the
advisability of President Krüger’s yielding on the ground, not of
justice, but of temporary expediency. In so doing, this Minister of
the Crown completely identifies himself with the aspirations of the
Afrikander nationalists, and he concludes by asking for “a private
telegraphic code. The absence thereof was badly felt on Saturday, when
Schreiner was obliged to write instead of telegraphing.”

In the second letter Dr. Te Water regrets that he cannot share
President Steyn’s view that “all (p. 164) the noise about war is
bluff.” Then there follows a passage showing that Mr. Steyn had
entertained expectations of assistance from the Schreiner Cabinet that
even Dr. Te Water could not reconcile with his ideas of ministerial
allegiance:

“But now I should like a few words of explanation,” he writes,
“as to what you mean by saying that ‘The Cape Ministry will be
able to do much more good.’ In what respect do you think that we
can be of more use than before?”

Assuming, for the moment, that President Steyn had written, “In the
event of war becoming inevitable, or having broken out, the Cape
Ministry will be able to do much more good than it is doing now,” or
words to this effect, it would appear that he shared the erroneous
views of Mr. Reitz, against which Sir Henry de Villiers had protested
during his visit to Pretoria. In the letter to Mr. Melius de Villiers,
from which we have quoted above, Sir Henry writes:

“When I was in the Transvaal three months ago, I found that Reitz
and others had the most extraordinary notions of the powers and
duties of a Cape Ministry in case of war. They are ministers of
the Crown, and it will be their duty to afford every possible
assistance to the British Government. Under normal conditions, a
responsible Ministry is perfectly independent in matters of
internal concern, but in case of war they are bound to place all
the resources of the Colony at the disposal of the British Crown;
at least if they did not do so they would be liable to
dismissal.”

(p. 165) Dr. Te Water then continues:

“I would very much like to know your views, and if we are not
already working in that direction I will try, as far as possible,
to do what I can to give effect to your wishes, which may be for
the welfare of all. Please let me hear immediately and fully
about this.”

The last letter, written on the eve of the Conference, opens with a
curiously significant passage. There were some things discussed
between Steyn and Te Water that Mr. Schreiner was not to know.
President Steyn has been getting nervous. Dr. Te Water, therefore,
reassures him:

“Yours received on my return this morning from Aberdeen. Telegram
also reached me. I keep all your communications strictly private:
naturally you do not exclude my colleagues and our friend
Hofmeyr. I have often read extracts to them, but do not be
afraid; I shall not give you away.”

It also contains the information that, as President Steyn had no
private code available, Dr. Te Water has borrowed the private
telegraphic code of the Cabinet for President Steyn’s use.

“To-day, by post, I send you personally our private telegraphic
code for use. I borrowed one from Sauer; we have only three, and
I must, therefore, ask you to let me have it back in a couple of
weeks. Please keep it under lock, and use it yourself only. It
is quite possible that you will have to communicate with us, and
the telegraphic service is not entirely to be trusted. I am
afraid that things leak out there in one way or another.”

And he then drives home the advice given before: (p. 166) “It is
honestly now the time to yield a little, however one may later again
tighten the rope.”

One other letter must be given to complete this view of the
circumstances in which the conference met. It was written on May 9th,
1899—that is to say, on the day on which Mr. Hofmeyr proposed to Lord
Milner that he should accept President Steyn’s good offices to arrange
the conference with President Krüger. It is addressed to President
Steyn, and, translated, runs as follows:

(p. 167) The Cape nationalists had asked the Republics to “play for
time,” because they believed that, with the return of the Liberal
party to power in England, it would be possible to achieve the aims of
their policy without the risk of a conflict in arms. The Republics
were “playing for time,” but in another sense. They were waiting until
their military preparations were sufficiently complete to allow them
to defy the British Government.

It was in these circumstances that the High Commissioner met President
Krüger in conference at Bloemfontein (May 31st—June 5th). He was
accompanied only by his staff: Mr. G. V. Fiddes (Imperial Secretary),
Mr. M. S. O. Walrond (Private Secretary), Colonel Hanbury Williams
(Military Secretary) and Lord Belgrave (A.D.C.),[70] with Mr.
Silberbauer (the interpreter) and a shorthand writer. Mr. Schreiner
had been very solicitous to attend the Conference; but Lord Milner,
following his usual practice, had determined to keep the affairs of
the High Commissionership completely distinct from those in which he
was concerned as Governor of the Cape Colony. The absence both of the
Prime Minister and Mr. Hofmeyr was not unnaturally a matter of
“sincere regret” to Dr. Te Water, as he informed President Steyn on
the eve of the Conference.[71] Nor did Lord Milner avail (p. 168)
himself of President Steyn’s willingness to take part in the
proceedings; but, at the High Commissioner’s suggestion, Mr. Fischer
(who was a member of the Free State Executive) was invited to act as
interpreter—a duty which he discharged to the satisfaction of both
parties. With President Krüger there went to Bloemfontein Mr. Schalk
Burger and Mr. A. D. Wolmarans (members of the Transvaal Executive),
Mr. J. C. Smuts (the State Attorney), and two other officials. All of
these, the High Commissioner’s Staff, and Mr. Fischer were present at
the meetings of the Conference; but the actual discussion was confined
to Lord Milner and President Krüger.[72] As regards the (p. 169)
business in hand, the failure to publish the despatch of May 4th had
deprived Lord Milner of what would have proved a helpful influence.
Mr. Hofmeyr’s action had procured an opportunity for “friendly
discussion.” But the friendliness was to be all on the side of the
Imperial Government. For the purpose of the Afrikander leaders was, as
we have seen, to secure a fictitious concession on the part of
President Krüger. Lord Milner’s aim was to obtain by friendly
discussion a genuine and substantial measure of reform; and the
prospect of his success would have been greatly increased if this
despatch and Mr. Chamberlain’s reply to it had been before the public
when the Conference took place. It was written with the object of
making the British people and President Krüger alike aware how grave
was the judgment which he had formed of the existing situation. With
England alive to the near danger which threatened her supremacy in
South Africa, and President Krüger brought to understand that the man
with whom he had to deal was one who held these opinions, Lord Milner
could have been “friendly” without the risk of having his friendliness
mistaken for a readiness to accept the illusory concession which was
all that the Afrikander mediation was intended to secure.

As it was, Lord Milner was placed in a position of great
embarrassment. If he “used plain language” he exposed himself to the
charge of entering upon the discussion in an (p. 170) aggressive
spirit, calculated to make agreement difficult. If he adopted a
conciliatory tone, his arguments seemed to be nothing more than the
abortive protests with which the grim old President had cheerfully
filled the republican waste-paper basket for the last ten years. It
has been suggested that Lord Milner might have obtained a better
result if he had shown himself less “inflexible”; if, in short, he had
been willing to accept a “compromise.” But any such criticism is based
upon an entire misunderstanding of the method which the High
Commissioner did, in fact, adopt. The five years’ franchise—the
Bloemfontein minimum—was in itself a compromise. What Lord Milner
said, in effect, to President Krüger was this: “I have a whole sheaf
of grievances against you: the dynamite monopoly, excessive railway
rates, interference with the independence of the judiciary, a vicious
police system, administrative corruption, municipal abuses, and the
rest. I will let all these go in exchange for one thing—a franchise
reform which will give at once to a fair proportion of the Uitlander
population some appreciable representation in the government of the
Republic.” Lord Milner not only offered a compromise, but a compromise
that enormously reduced the area of dispute. His “inflexibility” arose
from the simple fact that, having readily and frankly yielded all that
could be yielded without sacrificing the paramount object of securing
a permanent (p. 171) settlement of the Uitlander question, he had
nothing further to concede, and said so.

No two men more characteristic of the two utterly unlike and
antagonistic political systems, which they respectively represented,
could have been found. At the evening reception given by President
Steyn on the opening day of the Conference, a big man, in a tightly
buttoned frock-coat, stood just inside the door for ten minutes, and
then moved awkwardly away. Above the frock-coat was a peasant’s face,
half-shrewd, half-furtive, with narrow eyes and a large, crooked mouth
which somehow gave the man a look of power. This was President Krüger,
ætat. 74. Once, doubtless, Paul Krüger’s large and powerful frame
had made him an impressive figure among a race of men as stalwart as
the Boers. But he was now an old man: the powerful body had become
shapeless and unwieldy; he had given up walking, and only left his
stoep to drag himself clumsily into his carriage, and although he
retained all his old tenacity of purpose, his mind had lost much of
its former alertness. It needed all Mr. Smuts’ mental resources—all
that the young Afrikander had so recently learnt at Cambridge and the
Temple—to enable the old President to maintain, even by the aid of
his State-Attorney’s ingenious paper pleadings, a decent show of
defence against the perfect moderation and relentless logic with which
the High Commissioner presented the British case. Lord Milner went to
the Conference (p. 172) to make “one big straightforward effort to
avert a great disaster”; Krüger to drive a “Kafir bargain.” The end
was as Lord Milner had foreseen. To yield the necessary instalment of
reform seemed to President Krüger, in this mind, “worse than
annexation”; and on June 5th Lord Milner declared, “The Conference is
absolutely at an end, and there is no obligation on either side
arising out of it.”

The Bloemfontein Conference made retreat for ever impossible. Lord
Milner himself was perfectly conscious that in holding President
Krüger to the franchise question he had made the conference the
pivotal occasion upon which turned the issue of peace or war. He knew,
when he closed the proceedings with a declaration that his meeting
with President Krüger had utterly failed to provide a solution of the
franchise question, that from this day forward there could be no
turning back for him or for the Imperial Government. But he knew, too,
that poor as was the prospect of obtaining the minimum reforms by any
subsequent negotiation, nothing could contribute more to the
attainment of this object than the blunt rejection of the makeshift
proposals put forward by President Krüger at Bloemfontein.

The result of the Conference, from this point of view, and its effect
upon the British population in South Africa, may be gathered from the
address presented to Lord Milner on his return to Capetown, (p. 173)
and from his reply to it. By the mouth of Mr. Alfred Ebden, a veteran
colonist, the British population of the Colony then (June 12th)
expressed their “admiration” of Lord Milner’s “firm stand” on behalf
of the Uitlanders, offered him their “earnest support,” and declared
their “entire confidence in his fairness and ability to bring these
unhappy differences to a satisfactory settlement.” The essence of Lord
Milner’s reply lies in the words, “some remedy has still to be found.”
The nationality problem would be solved if the principle of equality
could be established all round. The Transvaal is “the one State where
inequality is the rule, which keeps the rest of South Africa in a
fever.” It is inconsistent, he says, with the position of Great
Britain as paramount Power, and with the dignity of the white race,
that a great community of white men “should continue in that state of
subjection which is the lot of the immigrant white population of the
Transvaal.” And he concludes:

“I see it is suggested in some quarters that the policy of Her
Majesty’s Government is one of aggression. I know better than any
man that their policy, so far from being one of aggression, has
been one of singular patience, and such, I doubt not, it will
continue. But it cannot relapse into indifference. Can any one
desire that it should? It would be disastrous that the present
period of stress and strain should not result in some settlement
to prevent the recurrence of similar crises in the future. Of
that I am still hopeful. It may be that the Government of the
South African Republic (p. 174) will yet see its way to adopt a
measure of reform more liberal than that proposed at
Bloemfontein. If not, there may be other means of achieving the
desired result. In any case, it is a source of strength to those
who are fighting the battle of reform, and will, I believe,
contribute more than anything else to a peaceful victory, to feel
that they have behind them, as they perhaps never had before, the
unanimous sympathy of the British people throughout the
world.”[73]

In the four months that followed the Bloemfontein Conference a burden
of toil and responsibility was laid upon Lord Milner which would have
crushed any lesser man into utter passivity or resignation. An
Afrikander Cabinet, with a nationalist element reporting its
confidential councils with the Governor to Mr. Hofmeyr, the Bond
Master, and President Steyn, the secret ally of President Krüger,
would have been sufficient in itself to paralyse the faculties of any
ordinary administrator at such a crisis. But this was not the only
adverse influence with which circumstances brought Lord Milner into
collision. Incredible as it may seem, it is none the less the fact
that Sir William Butler, the General-in-Command of the British forces
in South Africa, and the military adviser of the High Commissioner,
was in close political sympathy with Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer, and
in complete agreement with their views. For General Butler held that a
war to compel the (p. 175) Boer oligarchy to grant the elementary
political rights to the British in the Transvaal, which even Mr.
Gladstone’s Cabinet intended to secure for them, would be the
“greatest calamity that ever occurred in South Africa.” And more than
this, that if the Home Government did make war, it would be merely
playing the game of “the party of the Raid, the South African
League.”[74]

It is generally supposed that Lord Milner’s disagreement with General
Butler had its origin in the conduct of the latter, when Acting High
Commissioner, in refusing the first Uitlander petition. This is quite
untrue. Lord Milner’s view of the Uitlander grievances was, of course,
different from that of General Butler, who treated the appeal to the
Queen as an unnecessary and artificial agitation against the Transvaal
Government, and thereby placed the Acting British Agent, Mr. Edmund
Fraser, in a position of extreme difficulty; since Mr. Fraser was, of
course, desirous of carrying out his duties upon the general lines
followed by Sir William Greene in accordance with the instructions of
the Home Government. But the Transvaal question had never been
discussed between Lord Milner and General Butler; and at the time of
the Edgar incident Lord Milner was in England, and he had no means,
therefore, of forming an opinion as to the significance which attached
to this event, or the agitation to which it gave rise. On this
particular point (p. 176) there was no opportunity for a conflict of
opinion. Had Lord Milner been in South Africa he would, no doubt, have
accepted the first petition to the Queen; but he made no complaint of
General Butler’s refusal to receive it. For the moment it was General
Butler’s business, as Acting High Commissioner, and not Lord Milner’s.
From a wider point of view, General Butler’s action was injurious. It
was one of the many instances in which their English sympathisers have
led the Boers to destruction. But there was no friction, or argument,
or unfriendliness between him and the High Commissioner on this
account. This arose at a much later period; and arose, not on the
general question of policy, but on the question of the necessity of
military precautions in view of the imminence of war.

The friction between the High Commissioner and the General-in-Command
in South Africa was the most disastrous manifestation of a disregard
of the necessity for timely military preparations on the part of the
Imperial Government, which, when war broke out, jeopardised the
success of the British arms. For quite distinct reasons both General
Butler and the Imperial Government were opposed to any preparations
for war. The Salisbury Cabinet were reluctant to take any step that
might seem to indicate that they considered that the door to a
peaceful solution of the dispute was closed. In thus subordinating the
needs of the military situation to those of the political, they
(p. 177) acted in direct opposition to the maxim si pacem vis,
bellum para. They carried this policy to such a point that they
disregarded the advice of Lord Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, and
that of the Intelligence Department,[75] with the result that when the
war did break out the available British forces in South Africa were
found to be in a position of grave disadvantage. The motive of General
Butler’s opposition was entirely different.
His view was that what
made the situation dangerous was not President Krüger’s obduracy, but
what he called the “persistent effort” to “produce war” made by the
British inhabitants who desired Imperial intervention in the
Transvaal. And he, therefore, held that any reinforcements sent by the
Home Government would “add largely to the ferment which he (General
Butler) was endeavouring to reduce by every means.”[76] The position
in June and July, from a military point of view, was as extraordinary
as it was harassing to Lord Milner. In England the civil authority,
the Cabinet, was refusing to make the preparations which its military
adviser declared to be necessary. In South Africa the civil authority,
the High Commissioner, was provided with a military adviser who cabled
to the Home Government political reasons for not sending the
reinforcements which the High Commissioner then urgently required. In
these circumstances it is obvious that nothing but the supreme efforts
of Lord (p. 178) Milner could have saved England from an overwhelming
military defeat, or from a moral catastrophe even more injurious to
the interests of the empire.

When Lord Milner saw, before the Bloemfontein Conference, that the
situation was becoming dangerous—and still more after the
Conference—he desired that preparations for war should be made by the
Imperial Government as a precautionary measure. Between December 1st,
1896, and December, 1898, the South African garrison had been raised
from 5,409 to 9,593 men.[77] It remained at a little under 10,000 up
to the end of August, 1899. Lord Milner had repeatedly impressed upon
the Home Government, from the middle of 1897 onwards, that 10,000 men
was the minimum force consistent with safety. In view of the increased
tension after Bloemfontein and of the enormous armament of the South
African Republic, he felt that this minimum had become inadequate, and
that it was desirable, and would strengthen the chance of a peaceful
submission of the Boers, to steadily but unostentatiously increase the
garrison. And what he desired especially was that the general on the
spot should do, locally and quietly, all that could be done to advance
these preparations. The measures which he urged were that plans should
be prepared for the defence of Kimberley and other towns on the
colonial borders, and that all supplies and (p. 179) material of war
necessary to put these plans into effect should be accumulated, and,
as far as possible, distributed.

General Butler, as we have seen, was opposed to all preparations for
war; and it is not surprising, therefore, that everybody who offered
assistance, or advice on the military situation, was coldly received
by him. Mr. (now Sir) Aubrey Wools-Sampson, who, after the failure of
the Bloemfontein Conference, threw up lucrative civil employment in
Rhodesia in order to come to the Cape and place himself, as a
volunteer, at the service of the military authorities in the event of
war, was so completely discouraged that he went to Natal to form the
nucleus of the splendid fighting force afterwards known as the
Imperial Light Horse. When Colonel Nicholson, then head of the British
South Africa Police in Rhodesia, suggested that, in the same event, an
attack on the Transvaal, launched from the north, might prove valuable
as a means of diverting a portion of the Burgher forces from
employment against the Cape Colony and Natal, General Butler is said
to have looked upon his proposal as another Jameson Raid.[78] And
when, after the Bloemfontein Conference had been held, the Home
Government, in response to Lord Milner’s repeated appeals, proposed to
send out the very inadequate reinforcements which formed its first
(p. 180) effort to strengthen the British military position in South
Africa, General Butler immediately represented to the War Office that
these additional troops were unnecessary, and protested against their
being despatched.

General Butler’s action at this crisis is so remarkable, and so
unprecedented, that the circumstances must be related with some
precision. In 1896, and again in 1897, General Goodenough had
submitted to the War Office schemes for the defence of the British
colonies, in which both the enormous extent of the frontiers to be
protected and the great numerical superiority of the burgher forces to
the then existing British garrison were fully exhibited. A memorandum
of the Department of Military Intelligence, dated September 21st,
1898, urged “that defence schemes should be drawn up locally for the
Cape and Natal”; that “the arrangements which would be made for the
despatch of reinforcements from England, and for the provision of
supplies and transport, be worked out fully in the War Office; and
that the General Officer Commanding, South Africa, be informed what
action under these arrangements would be required of him on the
outbreak of war.”[79] On December 21st, 1898, General Butler, upon
succeeding to the South African command, was requested to furnish, at
an early date, a fresh scheme of defence embodying his own proposals
for the distribution of the 9,500 British troops then in South Africa
in the event (p. 181) of war. At the same time the latest information
as to the military strength of the two Republics—showing, among other
things, a total of 40,000 burghers[80]—was forwarded to him, and his
attention was directed to the fact that the troops under his command
must be considered as a purely defensive force, whose rôle would be
to repel invasion pending the arrival of reinforcements from England.
In the absence of any reply to this communication General Butler was
again requested, on June 6th, 1899 (i.e. after the failure of the
Bloemfontein Conference), to report on the defence of the British
colonies. He then sent his scheme of defence, cabling the substance in
cipher, on June 9th, and sending the text by despatch on June 14th. On
June 21st he received a War Office telegram informing him that it had
been decided to “increase the efficiency of the existing force” in
South Africa. And to this communication was added the question: “Do
you desire to make any observations?”

The sequel can be given in General Butler’s words: “I looked on the
one side,” he said, in giving evidence before the War Commission, “and
I saw what seemed to me a very serious political agitation going on
with a Party that I had not alluded to yet, whom I had always looked
upon as a Third Party; they were pressing on all they knew. The
Government did not seem to be aware of that, and (p. 182) this
telegram brought matters to such a point that I thought it gave me the
opportunity to speak. So I took these words ‘any observations,’ and
answered in a way which I thought would at least ring the War Office
bell.”

The telegram with which General Butler “rang the War Office bell” was
this:

“You ask for my observations: present condition of opinion here
is highly excited, and doubtless the news quoting preparations
referred to in your telegram, if it transpires, will add largely
to the ferment which I am endeavouring to reduce by every means.
Persistent effort of a party to produce war forms, in my
estimation, gravest elements in situation here. Believe war
between white races, coming as sequel to Jameson Raid, and
subsequent events of last three years, would be greatest calamity
that ever occurred in South Africa.”

This telegram elicited the following reply from the Home Government:

“You cannot understand too clearly that, whatever your private
opinions, it is your duty to be guided in all questions of policy
by the High Commissioner, who is fully aware of our views, and
whom you will, of course, loyally support.”

In the course of his evidence before the War Commission General Butler
gave some further explanation of the motives which had prompted his
reply to the telegram of June 21st. In response to the question, “It
was never in your contemplation (p. 183) that Mr. Krüger would
declare war?” he replied:

“My view was this, that as long as I held the neck of the bottle,
so to speak, there would be no war … but to my mind the minute
there was the least indication of the Imperial Government coming
in, in front of, or behind, that party [i.e. “the party of the
Raid, the South African League”], there would be a serious state
of things. Until then there was, to my mind, no probability—no
possibility—of an invasion. That was the state of my mind at the
time … [and] I wished to point it out before final decisions
were arrived at.”

And in a note which he desired to be appended to his evidence before
the War Commission, General Butler wrote with reference to his failure
to endorse Lord Milner’s request for immediate reinforcements, that in
his opinion “such a demand at such a time would be to force the hands
of the Government, play into the hands of the ‘Third Party,’ and
render [himself] liable to the accusation in the future that [he] had
by this premature action produced or hastened hostilities.”[81]

Here was an impasse from which obviously there was but one method of
extrication. Either the High Commissioner or his military adviser must
be recalled. That the Imperial Government did not recall General
Butler then and there cannot be attributed to any ignorance on their
part of Lord Milner’s extreme anxiety for adequate (p. 184) military
preparations. It arose, no doubt, from the circumstance that General
Butler was known to be favourably inclined to the Boer cause, and
that, therefore, his removal at this juncture would have been
represented by the friends of the Boers in England, and by the
official leader of the Opposition, as evidence of Mr. Chamberlain’s
alleged determination to force a war upon the Transvaal. General
Butler was allowed, in these circumstances, to remain at the Cape
until the latter part of August, when fresh employment was found for
him, and Lieutenant-General Forestier-Walker was appointed to the Cape
command. How General Butler was able to reconcile the opinions which
he had expressed to the War Office with the discharge of his duties as
military adviser to Lord Milner during these two critical months is a
matter which need not be discussed. The decision to retain him in the
South African command would seem, on the face of it, to have been a
grave administrative error. It is enough for us to record the
undoubted facts that Lord Milner was supremely dissatisfied with the
action of General Butler as his military adviser, and that whereas the
High Commissioner had requested the Home Government to provide him
with a new military adviser in June, General Butler did in fact remain
at the Cape until the latter part of August.

General Butler is reputed to be both an able man and a good soldier.
It is interesting, therefore, (p. 185) to know what was his view, and
to compare it with that of Lord Milner. In these opinions, which
dominated General Butler during the period in question (May to August,
1899), there was only one point in which he and Lord Milner found
themselves at one. This was the danger of the war; that is to say, the
seriousness of the military task which would await Great Britain in
the event of war with the Dutch in South Africa.

As a great deal has been written on the subject of the military
unpreparedness of England, and it has, moreover, been frequently
stated in this connection that Sir William Butler was the only man to
form a just estimate of the military strength of the burgher forces,
it is very desirable to place on record what was really in Lord
Milner’s mind at this time. He agreed with General Butler in his
estimate of the formidable character of the Boers; but he differed
from him in everything else. To Lord Milner’s mind the situation
presented itself primarily from a political, and not from a military
point of view. He believed that England was bound to struggle at least
for political equality between the British and Dutch throughout South
Africa. He felt that, after our bad record in the past, it would be
absolutely fatal to begin to struggle for this equality unless we were
prepared to carry our efforts to a successful issue. He thought that
such a claim as this for the enfranchisement of the Uitlanders was one
that admitted of only two alternatives—it must never (p. 186) be
made, or, being made, it must never be abandoned. The whole weakness
of our position in South Africa was a moral weakness. The contempt
which the Dutch had learnt for England was writ large over the whole
social and political fabric of South Africa. Englishmen could not look
the Dutch in the face as equals. If, after all our previous
humiliations and failures; after Majuba, and after the Raid, we were
going to commence a struggle for equality—nothing more, and then not
to get it, the shame would be too grave for any great Power to
support, or for those who sympathised with us in South Africa to
endure. We had raised the British party in South Africa from the dust
by the stand which we had made against Dutch tyranny in the Transvaal.
If we were going to retreat from that position, the discredit of our
action would compel England to resign her claim to be paramount Power,
and with the resignation of that claim England’s rights in South
Africa would inevitably shrink to the narrow limits of a naval base at
Simon’s Town, and a sub-tropical plantation in Natal. What was
fundamental was not the possibility of war, but the impossibility of
retreat.

Lord Milner still thought it possible, though not probable, that, if
the British Government took a perfectly strong and unwavering line,
the Dutch would yield, not indeed everything, but something
substantial. He also foresaw that it was possible, perhaps probable,
that they would not yield, and (p. 187) that in this case a state of
tension would be created which must end in war. His position was,
therefore, definite and consistent from the first. As we are pursuing
a policy from which we cannot retreat—a policy that may lead to
war—it is wholly unjustifiable, he said, to remain unprepared,
unarmed, without a plan, as if war were quite out of the question. And
so far from thinking that the preparations which he urged upon the
Imperial Government, and more especially upon General Butler, would
make war more likely, he believed that they would make it less likely.
But even if they did lead the Dutch to fight, it was not war but
“retreat” that must be avoided at all costs.[Back to Contents]

(p. 188) CHAPTER V

PLAYING FOR TIME

On June 8th, 1899, Mr. Chamberlain declared in the House of Commons,
that with the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, a “new
situation” had arisen. If the Imperial Government had translated this
remark into action, the South African War would have been less
disastrous, less protracted, and less costly. But the same order of
considerations which prevented the Salisbury Cabinet from recalling
General Butler in June, caused it to withhold its sanction from the
preparations advised by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley. From
the political point of view it was held to be desirable that the
British Government should have an absolutely good case as before the
world—a case which would not only ensure the whole-hearted support of
the great bulk of the nation, and the active sympathy of the over-sea
British communities; but one that would be so strong in justice as to
overcome, or at least mitigate, the natural repugnance with which
international opinion regards a great and powerful state that imposes
its will upon a small and weak people by force of arms. Above all,
(p. 189) it had become a cardinal principle in Mr. Chamberlain’s
South African policy to refrain to the last moment from any step which
would necessarily close the door to a peaceful solution of the
differences which had arisen between the South African Republic and
the Imperial Government.

Influenced by these considerations, the Government refused to give
effect to the measures demanded by the military situation, as it
existed after the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, except in so
far as these demands could be satisfied without prejudice to the
dominating political objects which it had in view. As to the nature of
these measures there could be no reasonable doubt. It was necessary to
raise the British forces in the Cape Colony and Natal to a point
sufficient for defensive purposes, and to prepare an additional
force—an army corps—for any offensive movement against one or both
of the Republics. And as 6,000 miles of sea separated the seat of war
from the chief base of the army, the United Kingdom, it was obvious
that the defensive force should be despatched at once, and the
offensive force prepared no less speedily, in order that it might be
held in readiness to embark at the earliest moment that its services
were required.

To Lord Milner’s reiterated warnings of the last two years, there was
now added the definite advice of Lord Wolseley and the Department
(p. 190) of Military Intelligence. In a memorandum dated June 8th,
1899,[82] and addressed to the Secretary of State for War, the
Commander-in-Chief advised the mobilisation in England of a force
consisting of one complete army corps, one cavalry division, one
battalion mounted infantry, and four infantry battalions for lines of
communication; the collection of transport in South Africa; and the
immediate initiation of all subsidiary arrangements necessary for
conveying these additional troops and their equipment to the seat of
war. This advice was disregarded; but in place of the immediate
mobilisation of the Army Corps the Cabinet decided to increase the
efficiency of the existing force in South Africa, and General Butler
was informed of this decision, as we have seen, on June 21st. On July
7th,[83] Lord Wolseley recommended, in addition to the mobilisation of
the offensive force—which he still deemed necessary—that “the South
African garrisons should be strengthened by the despatch of 10,000 men
at a very early date.” Instead of adopting these measures, the
Government confined itself to doing just the few necessary things,
both for defence and offence, that could be done without creating any
belief in its warlike intentions, and without involving any
appreciable expenditure of the public funds. Undoubtedly this latter
consideration—the desire to avoid any expenditure that might
afterwards prove to have been unnecessary—added (p. 191) weight to
the purely political argument against immediate military preparation.

The course actually taken by the Salisbury Cabinet was this. Instead
of the immediate mobilisation of the offensive force, Lord Wolseley
was instructed to prepare a scheme for the “constitution,
organisation, and mobilisation” of such a force; and to do this in
consultation with Sir Redvers Buller, the General Officer commanding
at Aldershot, who had been selected to lead the British forces in
South Africa in the event of war. Instead of the immediate despatch of
additional troops sufficient to render the South African garrisons
capable of repelling invasion—which was what Lord Milner had
especially desired—the actual deficiencies of the existing Cape
garrison[84] were made good by the despatch in July of small additions
of artillery and engineers, and by directing General Butler to provide
the fresh transport without which even this diminutive force was
unable to mobilise. At the same time certain special service
officers,[85] including engineers and officers of the Army Service
Corps, were sent out to organise the materials, locally existing, for
the defence of the (p. 192) eastern frontier of the Cape Colony and
the southern districts of Rhodesia; and generally to make preliminary
preparations for the provisioning, transport, and distribution of any
British forces that might be despatched subsequently to the Cape
Colony.

These were the utterly inadequate reinforcements sent in response to
Lord Milner’s urgent appeal, and in disregard of General Butler’s
protest that they were wholly undesirable—an opinion which was
endorsed in England by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, when, on June 17th,
1899, he declared that there was nothing in the South African
situation to justify even preparations for war.

During the interval between the Bloemfontein Conference and General
Butler’s recall in the latter part of August Lord Milner’s position
was one of unparalleled difficulty. The Cape and Natal garrisons were
maintained in a state of perilous weakness by the policy of the Home
Government. The measures to be undertaken locally for the defence of
the colonies, which the Cabinet had sanctioned, were wholly
insufficient in Lord Milner’s opinion. And the general execution of
these wholly insufficient local measures was left in the hands of a
General Officer who had told the Secretary of State that he absolutely
disapproved of them on political grounds, since the mere announcement
of their being made would “add largely to the ferment,” which he “was
[then] endeavouring to reduce by every (p. 193) means.” The Cape
Ministry, with whom rested the disposal of the colonial forces, was a
ministry placed in office by the Bond for the especial purpose of
opposing British intervention in the Transvaal. In these circumstances
it needed all Lord Milner’s mastery of South African conditions, and
all his tact and address, to make the relations between himself and
his Afrikander Cabinet tolerable; and, above all, in view of the
refusal of the Imperial Government to sanction the military
preparations advised by the Commander-in-Chief, it required ceaseless
vigilance on his part to prevent the acceptance of an illusory
settlement which would have sounded the death-knell of British
supremacy in South Africa.

On the last day of the Conference President Krüger had put in a
memorandum in which he expressed his intention of introducing his
franchise scheme to the Volksraad, and his hope that the High
Commissioner would be able to recommend this, and a further proposal
for the settlement of disputes by arbitration, to the favourable
consideration of the Imperial Government. Lord Milner had replied that
any such proposals would be considered on their merits; but that the
President must not expect them to be connected in any way with the
proceedings of the Conference, out of which, as he then declared, no
obligation had arisen on either side.

The Raad met on Friday, June 9th; and on Monday, the 12th—the day on
which Lord (p. 194) Milner received the Ebden address[86]—President
Krüger laid the draft Franchise law, containing his revised
Bloemfontein scheme, before it. On Tuesday, 13th, Mr. Chamberlain’s
despatch of May 10th, on the position of the Uitlanders and the
petition to the Queen, was delivered to the Transvaal Government by
the British Agent; and on Wednesday, June 14th, as we have already
noticed, the Blue-book containing this despatch, Lord Milner’s
despatch of May 4th, and the whole story of the franchise controversy
up to the Bloemfontein Conference, was published in England. As the
conditions under which Lord Milner’s despatch had been telegraphed to
England were now changed, it would have been better if it had remained
unpublished, and the stage of fighting diplomacy, reached through the
failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, had been at once opened—and
opened in another way. What Lord Milner had learnt at Bloemfontein was
not merely that President Krüger was unwilling to yield, but that he
was psychologically incapable of yielding. He had learnt, that is to
say, not that Krüger was determined to refuse the particular reform
which the Imperial Government demanded, but that his whole system of
thought was irreconcilably opposed to that of any English statesman.
It is the knowledge which can be obtained only by personal dealings
(p. 195) with the Boers, and no one who has had such personal
dealings can fail to remember the sense of hopelessness that such an
experience brings with it. The Boer may be faithful to his own canons
of morality; but his whole manner of life and thought is one that
makes his notion of the obligations of truth and justice very
different from that of the ordinary educated European. He is not
devoid of the conception of duty, but he applies this conception in
methods adapted to the narrow and illiberal conditions of his isolated
and self-centred life.

As for the mediation of the Cape Afrikanders, Lord Milner estimated it
at its real value. The Cape nationalists believed that war would
result in disaster to their cause; the Republican nationalists did
not. They both hated the British in an equal degree. But the
Afrikander leaders at the Cape knew that they had the game in their
own hands. “For goodness’ sake,” they said, “keep quiet until we have
got rid of this creature, Milner; and the Salisbury Cabinet—the
‘present team so unjustly disposed to us’—is replaced by a Liberal
Government.”

That was the meaning of their mediation—nothing more. Lord Milner
acquiesced in the negotiations after Bloemfontein, but what he wanted
was a polite but absolutely inflexible insistence upon the
Bloemfontein minimum, and at the same time such military preparations
as, in view of the clear possibility of a failure of (p. 196)
negotiations, seemed to him absolutely vital. This, however, was not
the course which the Salisbury Cabinet thought right to adopt; and the
problem that now lay before him was to convert the illusory
concessions, which were all that Afrikander mediation was able or even
desirous to wring from President Krüger, into the genuine reform that
the British Government had twice pledged itself to secure.

But Lord Milner had also grasped the fact that the one issue which
could drive a wedge into Dutch solidarity was the franchise question.
He had determined, therefore, that nothing that transpired at the
Bloemfontein Conference should permit President Krüger to change the
ground of dispute from this central issue. During the negotiations
between the Home Government and the Pretoria Executive that followed
the Conference, and especially during the period of Mr. Hofmeyr’s
active intervention, his most necessary and pressing task was to
prevent the Salisbury Cabinet from being “jockeyed” by Boer diplomacy
out of the advantageous position which he had then taken up on its
behalf. The pressure of the Hofmeyr mediation increased the difficulty
of this task by driving President Krüger into a series of franchise
proposals of the utmost complexity. The danger was that Mr.
Chamberlain and his colleagues in the Cabinet, in their earnest desire
to avoid war, might recognise some illusory measures of reform as
satisfactory, and then, after further consideration, (p. 197) finding
them to be worthless, be driven by their previous admission to make
war, after all, not on the single issue of “equality all round,” but
on an issue that might be plausibly represented to South Africa and
the world as the independence of the Boers.

The period is crowded with demonstrations, despatches, mediations,
petitions, and incidents of all kinds. A tithe of these—disentangled
from the Blue-books, but vitalised by a knowledge of the master facts
that lie behind the official pen—will serve, however, to present the
play of the mingling, conflicting, and then frankly opposing forces.
The “formidable personalities” are all in motion. At first it seemed
as though the whole weight of the Schreiner Cabinet, acting in
conjunction with General Butler’s political objection to military
preparation on the part of the Imperial Government, was to be thrown
into the scale against Lord Milner’s efforts. On June 12th President
Krüger laid the draft of his new Franchise Law before the Raad, which
then (the 15th) adjourned, in order that the feeling of the burghers
might be ascertained. On the 17th a great assemblage of Boers met at
Paardekraal, and, among the warlike speeches then delivered was that
of Judge Kock,[87] a member of the Transvaal Executive, who “dwelt
upon the doctrine of ‘what he called Afrikanderdom,’ and said that he
‘regarded the Afrikanders, from the (p. 198) Cape to the Zambesi as
one great family. If the Republics are lost,’ he continued, ‘the
Afrikanders would lose. The independence of the country was to them a
question of life and death. The Free State would stand by the
Transvaal, even to the death. Not only the Free State, but also the
Cape Colony.'” Nor was this boast without some foundation. A week
before (June 10th), Mr. Schreiner had requested Lord Milner to inform
Mr. Chamberlain that, in ministers’ opinion, President Krüger’s
franchise proposal was “practical, reasonable, and a considerable step
in the right direction.”[88] Four days later (June 14th) he further
informed the Governor that, in ministers’ opinion, there was nothing
in the existing situation to justify “the active interference of the
Imperial Government in what were the internal affairs of the
Transvaal.”[89] And this expression of opinion the Prime Minister also
desired Lord Milner, as the only constitutional medium of
communication between the Cape Ministry and the Secretary of State, to
convey to Mr. Chamberlain. On the day (June 10th) on which the first
of these interviews between Lord Milner and Mr. Schreiner took place,
a meeting of five thousand persons—in Sir William Greene’s words,
“the largest and most enthusiastic ever held at Johannesburg”—passed
three resolutions which sufficiently exhibit the extent to which the
views of the Cape (p. 199) Ministry differed from those of the
Transvaal British. After affirming the principle of equal political
rights for all white inhabitants of South Africa, and declaring that
President Krüger’s Bloemfontein proposals were “wholly inadequate,”
this great meeting proceeded to place on record its “deep sense of
obligation” to Lord Milner for his endeavour to secure the redress of
the Uitlander grievances, and its willingness, in order to “support
his Excellency in his efforts to obtain a peaceful settlement,” to
endorse “his very moderate proposals on the franchise question as the
irreducible minimum that could be accepted.”

In other words, the Schreiner Cabinet, immediately after the failure
of the Conference, used its influence unreservedly to assist the
Pretoria Executive in refusing the franchise reform put forward by the
High Commissioner—a reform which, in the opinion of the community
most concerned and most capable of judging of its effect, constituted
an “irreducible minimum” only to be accepted in deference to Lord
Milner’s judgment, and in the hope of avoiding war. Mr. Schreiner’s
action on this occasion was characteristic of the blind partizanship
of the Cape Ministry. On June 10th, when the Prime Minister pressed
his and his colleagues’ favourable view of President Krüger’s
proposals upon Lord Milner and Mr. Chamberlain, the draft Franchise
Law, with its intricate provisions, had not been laid before the
Volksraad. Mr. Schreiner, therefore, (p. 200) had made haste to bless
before he knew what he was blessing. And a few weeks later, as we
shall notice, he let his zeal for the Boer oligarchy outrun his
discretion in an even more amazing manner.

In these difficult circumstances Lord Milner displayed the highest
address in his relations with the Schreiner Cabinet. Thanks to his
mingled tact and firmness, aided by the outspoken support which he
received from Mr. Chamberlain, his intercourse with his ministers
remained outwardly friendly, while at the same time he had the
satisfaction of seeing that during the next few weeks the
considerations of policy, which he laid before them with absolute
frankness, appreciably modified their original attitude. He had at
once availed himself of the one point on which he and they were in
agreement. With reference to the first interview with Mr. Schreiner
(June 10th), he telegraphed to the Colonial Secretary:

And at the long and rather unpleasant interview of June 14th,
although, as we have seen, Mr. Schreiner desired Lord Milner to inform
Mr. Chamberlain that the Cape Ministry considered the “active
interference” of the British Government unjustified, yet he also said
“that he and his colleagues were agreed that there were two respects
in which the Government of the South African Republic might better
their franchise scheme: (1) By admitting to the full franchise at once
persons who had entered the country before 1890; and (2) By making it
optional to obtain the full franchise without previous naturalisation
after seven years’ residence.”[90]

Mr. Chamberlain’s reply (June 16th), contained a more direct
admonition. Lord Milner was instructed to inform the Cape Ministers
that the Government trusted that they would “use all the influence
they could to induce the Transvaal Government to take such action as
would relieve Her Majesty’s Government from the necessity of
considering the question of being obliged to have recourse to
interference of such a nature.”[91]

This was admirable backing, and precisely what Lord Milner required to
aid him in his two-fold task of bringing both the Cape Ministry and
the (p. 202) Pretoria Executive to a more reasonable frame of mind.
But Mr. Chamberlain’s next step was one of questionable utility.

In his speech at Birmingham (June 26th), after reviewing the relations
of Great Britain with the Transvaal Boers during the last twenty
years, Mr. Chamberlain declared that the Imperial Government, although
deeply anxious not to use force, must somehow see that things were put
right in South Africa.

“We have tried waiting, patience, and trusting to promises which
are never kept,” he said; “we can wait no more. It is our duty,
not only to the Uitlanders, but to the English throughout South
Africa, to the native races, and to our own prestige in that part
of the world, and in the world at large, to insist that the
Transvaal falls into line with the other states in South Africa,
and no longer menaces the peace and prosperity of the whole.”

This was the kind of speech which would have been suitable and
effective, if the South African garrison had been 20,000 instead of
10,000 strong, and the expeditionary force had been mobilised on
Salisbury Plain. It was unsuitable and ineffective under the existing
circumstances; when, that is to say, the British Government, by
refusing to sanction the measures advised by the Commander-in-Chief,
had elected to put themselves at a military disadvantage for the sake
of prolonging the stage of friendly discussion and in the hope of
gaining their point by diplomatic means. In these circumstances such
speeches were merely (p. 203) food for President Krüger to use in
feeding the enthusiasm of his burghers. What Lord Milner desired of
the Home Government was, as we have seen, a polite but inflexible
demand for the Bloemfontein minimum, coupled with unostentatious, but
effective, military preparations. The Home Government, as the sequel
will show, were driven by the unpatriotic attitude of the Liberal
Opposition into a precisely opposite course in both these respects.
Their demand was vague in substance, and irritating in manner; while
their inadequate defensive preparations were more than neutralised by
the loudness with which, in deference to the views of the Liberal
Opposition, they proclaimed their reluctance to undertake military
measures on a scale that would really have made an impression on the
Boers.[92]

One result which Mr. Chamberlain’s speech produced was to bring Mr.
Hofmeyr once more upon the scene. Before this date (June 26th) Mr.
Fischer, apparently considering that the failure of the Bloemfontein
Conference cast a reflection upon the statesmanship and influence of
the Free State Government, had commenced a second essay in mediation.
Early in June he had paid a visit to Capetown, where he was in close
communication with Mr. Hofmeyr and the (p. 204) Cape Ministers, and
had twice called upon the High Commissioner. He had left Capetown on
the 19th for Bloemfontein; and then proceeded to Pretoria, which he
reached on the 25th. At the Transvaal capital he entered into
negotiations with the Executive, calling upon the British Agent on the
26th, and again on the 28th, and maintaining communication, through
him, with Lord Milner. From Pretoria Mr. Fischer returned to
Bloemfontein in company with Mr. Smuts and Mr. Groebler,[93] on July
1st. Here he met Mr. Hofmeyr, who, leaving Capetown with Mr. Herholdt,
on the same day (July 1st), reached Bloemfontein early on the
following morning.

Mr. Hofmeyr was in Bloemfontein, because the events of the last few
days had convinced him that the only hope of saving the
situation—saving it, that is, from the Afrikander nationalist point
of view—lay in prompt and energetic action on his part. On June 23rd
Mr. Schreiner had been informed by the High Commissioner of the
intention of the Home Government to “complete” the Cape garrison; and
shortly afterwards the despatch of the special service officers was
publicly announced in England. Mr. Chamberlain’s speech at Birmingham
on the 26th, cabled almost in extenso to the High Commissioner, was
communicated to the local press on the 28th. On the same evening a
mass meeting, held in the Good Hope Hall at Capetown, declared its
strong approval of the (p. 205) action of the Imperial Government on
behalf of the British population in the Transvaal. With these signs of
an approaching Armageddon before his eyes, Mr. Hofmeyr had overcome
his objection to personal dealings with President Krüger, and had
resolved to go to Pretoria to confer with the leaders of the Boer
oligarchy. But, in order to protect himself from the risk of a useless
rebuff, he had first arranged to meet Mr. Fischer at Bloemfontein, and
obtain through him and President Steyn some definite assurance that
his counsels would be treated with respect, before finally proceeding
to the Transvaal.

On Sunday, July 2nd, and in these circumstances, a conference was held
between the Master of the Bond and Mr. Fischer and Mr. Smuts—two men
not unworthy to represent the cause of Afrikander nationalism in their
respective republics. As the result of their discussions, carried on
almost uninterruptedly from the early morning until nearly midnight,
Mr. Fischer, Mr. Smuts, and Mr. Groebler, in the words of Ons Land,
“knew precisely what had to be done, in the opinion of the Colonial
representatives, to gain the moral support of Colonial Afrikanders and
to lead in the direction of peace.”[94]

On the following day (Monday, the 3rd) Mr. Fischer and his companions
arrived again in (p. 206) Pretoria; but Mr. Hofmeyr remained at
Bloemfontein, since he had decided not to go to the Transvaal capital,
unless “he was assured of achieving something of importance there.” Up
to the afternoon of Tuesday (the 4th) no such assurance had been
received; and, says Ons Land, “as it seemed the assurance was almost
in a contrary direction, preparations were already made for the
homeward journey.” But a little later on in the day Mr. Hofmeyr and
his companion “received a hint that, although their chances of success
at Pretoria were but slight, they were not altogether hopeless.” The
facts thus far provided by Ons Land must now be supplemented by a
reference to the telegrams which fell into the hands of the British
authorities a year later upon the occupation of Bloemfontein. From
these documents we know that President Krüger at first telegraphed to
President Steyn a polite refusal of Mr. Hofmeyr’s mediation. This was
followed, on Tuesday morning, by a telegram from Mr. Fischer himself,
informing President Steyn that the Transvaal Government “would be glad
to meet Mr. Hofmeyr and Mr. Herholdt, but that he could not say what
chance there was of their mission succeeding until the Volksraad had
been consulted.” This, as we have seen, was by no means sufficient for
Mr. Hofmeyr. But later on there came a second telegram—the telegram
which Ons Land delicately calls a “hint”—in which Mr. Fischer said
that President Krüger “was willing (p. 207) to see Mr. Hofmeyr before
he brought the matter before the Raad,” and that he himself “hoped to
obtain certain concessions from the Executive Council, with the
members of which he was in consultation.”

Thus encouraged, Mr. Hofmeyr and Mr. Herholdt at once left
Bloemfontein by special train, and, travelling all night, reached
Pretoria on Wednesday, the 5th, at seven o’clock.

“From the station,” says Ons Land, “they were escorted by various
officials and friends to the Transvaal Hotel, where rooms had been
engaged for them as guests of the State. Even before they had taken
breakfast they had an audience with President Krüger. On the
invitation of His Honour they accompanied Mr. Fischer to three
meetings of the Executive Council—two on Wednesday and one on
Thursday. They had the opportunity, too, of meeting the greater part
of the Volksraad members, and of conversing with them. What occurred
on this occasion is, of course, private, and not for publication.”

Mr. Hofmeyr and Mr. Herholdt left Pretoria on Friday, the 7th, and
reached Capetown on Monday, the 10th.

Lord Milner did everything possible to secure the success of the
Fischer-Hofmeyr mission. Provided President Krüger was induced to give
the Uitlanders an appreciable share in the government of the
Transvaal, it made no difference to the Imperial Government whether he
did so from a (p. 208)
desire to secure the “moral support” of the
Bid for “moral support”.
Cape Afrikander party, or from any other motive of political
expediency. What was essential was that the existing franchise scheme
should be so far improved as to become a genuine, and no longer a
fictitious, measure of reform. On the understanding that the “mission”
had no less an object in view—an understanding which he gained from
conversation with Mr. Fischer himself as well as from Mr. Schreiner
and Mr. Hofmeyr—Lord Milner placed the British Government code at the
disposal of Mr. Fischer and the Prime Minister, and further arranged
with the former to communicate with him (Lord Milner) through the
British Agent at Pretoria. But Lord Milner especially impressed, alike
upon Mr. Fischer, Mr. Hofmeyr, and Mr. Schreiner, the necessity of
urging President Krüger to discuss any proposed modifications in the
Draft Law with the Imperial Government or its representatives, before
they were submitted to the Raad. The objection to the adoption of this
course, which, according to Mr. Fischer’s statement,[95] the Pretoria
Executive did in fact make, was their inability to “recognise the
right of the British Government to be consulted on the franchise,
which was an internal matter.” This objection, however, as Lord Milner
pointed out to the members of the Pretoria Executive, both directly
through Sir William Greene,[96] and indirectly through Mr. Hofmeyr and
Mr. Fischer, was a mere pretext. “The whole world,” he said (p. 209)
in effect, “knows that whatever alterations you make in the Draft
Law—and indeed the Law itself—will be the result of the pressure
brought to bear upon you by the British Government. That being so, to
refuse to discuss these alterations with us privately, and in a
friendly manner, because the franchise is an ‘internal matter,’ is to
strain at a gnat while you are all the while swallowing a camel.” But
neither at this time, nor at any other period in the three months’
negotiations, did President Krüger desire to come to an agreement with
the British Government at the price of granting a genuine measure of
reform. As a bid for the “moral support” of the Cape Ministry, but
without the slightest attempt to consult with the British Government
or its representatives, he recommended to the Volksraad, on July 7th,
certain amendments, the effect of which was to confer the franchise
upon a very small body of Uitlanders, and that only if they succeeded
in complying with certain cumbersome and protracted formalities.[97]
On the following morning the Bond Press announced, with a great
flourish of trumpets, that Mr. Hofmeyr’s mission had been remarkably
successful, and set out the amendments of “The Great Reform Act” as
representing the fruit of his and Mr. Fischer’s efforts. This was for
the public. To Mr. Fischer, Hofmeyr himself telegraphed on his return
journey to Capetown, that he “deplored the failure” of his mission,
when he “thought (p. 210) he had reason to expect success.” Mr.
Schreiner, on the other hand, was no less ready to bless the “Hofmeyr
compromise” than Krüger’s original scheme. Upon receiving by telegram
the bare heads of the proposed amendments, and without waiting to
learn what practical effect they would have upon the position of the
Uitlanders, he hastily authorised The South African News to announce
(July 8th) that the Cape Government considered the proposals of the
amended law “adequate, satisfactory, and such as should secure a
peaceful settlement.”[98] This opinion he subsequently modified; and,
at Lord Milner’s request, he advised Mr. Fischer (July 11th) to urge
his friends at Pretoria to delay the passage of the bill through the
Volksraad. And Lord Milner was authorised by Mr. Chamberlain to
instruct Sir William Greene to offer the same advice to the Transvaal
Government, with the more precise intimation that “full particulars of
the new scheme” ought to be furnished officially to the Imperial
Government, if the proposals which it embodied were to form “any
element in the settlement of the differences between the two
Governments.”[99] The High Commissioner’s object was, of course, to
reduce the area of formal negotiations, and therefore the risk of
official friction, to its narrowest limits. But this was not President
Krüger’s object. His principle was the very opposite of that of the
Imperial Government. (p. 211) They abstained from preparations for
war in order to improve the prospect of a peaceable settlement. The
force upon which he relied was the warlike temper of his burghers, and
the answering enthusiasm which the spectacle of the Republic, prepared
to defy the British Empire, would arouse among the whole Dutch
population of South Africa. Mr. Reitz was, therefore, instructed to
decline Mr. Chamberlain’s request on the ground that “the whole matter
was out of the hands of the Government”;[100] meaning, thereby, that
it had already been submitted to the Volksraad. This, again, was the
thinnest of excuses, since President Krüger had never yet shown any
scruple in modifying or withdrawing proposals already laid before the
Volksraad, when it suited him to do so.

It may be questioned, however, whether, even at this time, the “whole
matter” had not passed, in another and more serious sense, “out of the
hands” both of the Pretoria Executive and the British Government. The
political atmosphere of South Africa had become electric. The
Uitlanders themselves cherished no illusion on the subject of
President Krüger’s proposals. Amended and re-amended, the Franchise
Law, as the Uitlander Council then and there declared, left the
granting of the franchise at the discretion of the Boer officials or
the Pretoria Executive, and as such it was “a most dangerous measure,
and apparently framed with the object of defeating the end it
(p. 212) was presumed to have in view.”[101] Further and convincing
evidence of the utterly vicious and depraved character of the
personnel of the Boer administration was afforded by the proceedings
arising out of the alleged “conspiracy” against the Republic, of which
the unfortunate Englishman Nicholls was the innocent victim (May 18th
to July 25th).[102] In this disgraceful affair the (p. 213) gravest
offences against international comity were committed; high officials,
including Mr. Tjaart Krüger, the President’s youngest son, were
implicated in a gross and scandalous prostitution of the machinery of
justice; and yet no apology was offered to the Imperial Government,
nor any compensation awarded to Nicholls for the two months’
imprisonment and continuous persecution by the agents-provocateurs, to
which he had been subjected. The impassioned speeches delivered at the
Paardekraal meeting was only one among many signs of the dangerous
hostility to England and everything English that had taken possession
of the Republic. War fever in the Transvaal.
The British residents who had petitioned the Queen
were denounced as “revolutionaries,” and threatened with the vengeance
of the burghers. “If war breaks out,” wrote De Rand Post,”[103] the
Johannesburg agitators are the real instigators, and to these
ringleaders capital punishment should be meted out.” In the Volksraad
discussion of the Franchise Law the same passionate hatred of the
Uitlanders was manifested. “Is it the English only who have the right
to make conditions?” asked Mr. Lombard on July 15th. “If it comes to
be a question of war, there will be a great destruction. And who will
be destroyed if it comes to a collision? Why, the subjects of Her
Majesty in Johannesburg.”[104]

(p. 214) These expressions scarcely do justice to the spirit of
vindictiveness with which certain of the republican leaders regarded
the British population of the Rand. On May 22nd, 1900, less than a
year after the date of the Volksraad discussion of the Franchise Bill,
and when Lord Roberts was advancing rapidly upon Johannesburg, a
conversation took place with Mr. Smuts in Pretoria, which was reported
in The Times. In the course of this conversation the State Attorney
said, with reference to the proposed destruction of the mines, that
“he greatly regretted that Johannesburg should suffer, but that the
Government had no choice in the matter, as the popular pressure upon
them was too great to be resisted.” This determination is rightly
characterised by Mr. Farrelly, the late legal adviser to the
Government of the South African Republic, as the “fiendish project of
wrecking the mines and plunging into hopeless misery for years tens of
thousands of innocent men, women, and children.” But that is not all.
He has put upon record[105] the sinister fact that the man entrusted
with the execution of this infamous design was Mr. Smuts himself. The
mines were saved, therefore, not by the Boer Government, but in spite
of it, and solely through the independent action of Dr. Krause, the
Acting-Commandant of Johannesburg, who “arrested the leader of the
wreckers, sent by Mr. Smuts, the day before the surrender to Lord
Roberts.”[106]

The British population, although it provided no such displays of
racial passion, was in an equally determined mood. Undismayed by the
threats of the Boers, the Uitlander Council continued calmly to
analyse the Franchise Bill in each successive phase—an unostentatious
but very useful service, which materially assisted Lord Milner in
following the windings and doublings of Boer diplomacy. After the
great meeting at Johannesburg (June 10th), the British centres in the
Cape Colony, Natal, and Rhodesia gave similar demonstrations of their
confidence in Lord Milner’s statesmanship, and their conviction of the
justice and necessity of the five years’ franchise demanded by the
Imperial Government. On the other hand, the irritation against British
intervention was growing daily in the Free State; and the Dutch
Reformed Church and the Bond had organised a counter-demonstration in
the Cape Colony. The Synod of the former, meeting on June 30th, drew
up an address protesting that the differences between Lord Milner’s
franchise proposals and those of President Krüger were not sufficient
to justify the “horrors of war,” and requested the Governor to forward
it to the Queen. At Capetown (July 12th) and in the Dutch districts
throughout the Colony, Bond meetings were held at which resolutions
were passed in favour of a “compromise” as between Lord Milner’s five
years’ franchise and the scheme embodied in President Krüger’s law.
(p. 216) More sinister was the circumstance that the information,
that a consignment of 500 rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges, landed at
Port Elizabeth on July 8th, had been permitted by the Cape Government
to be forwarded through the Colony to the Free State, only came to the
ears of the High Commissioner by an accident. In the meantime, more
definite evidence of the almost unanimous approval of Lord Milner’s
policy by the British population in South Africa was forthcoming. In
all three British colonies petitions to the Queen praying for justice
to the Uitlanders, and affirming absolute confidence in Lord Milner,
were signed. The Natal petition contained the names of three-fourths
of the adult male population of the Colony, while the signatures to
the joint petition of the Cape and Rhodesia had already reached a
total of 40,500 before the end of July. In other respects the
testimony of Natal was clear and unmistakable. In this predominantly
English Colony identical resolutions supporting the action and policy
of the Imperial Government, were carried unanimously in both Chambers
of the Legislature.

In the middle of July the situation improved in a slight degree
through the influence which Lord Milner had exercised upon the
Afrikander leaders in the Cape Colony. On the 14th the Cape Parliament
met, and on this day Mr. Hofmeyr, chagrined at a suggestion for
further support which he had received from the republican (p. 217)
nationalists at Pretoria, despatched a telegram to Mr. Smuts, in which
he, as the recognised head of the Afrikander Bond, reminded the
members of President Krüger’s Executive that the promised co-operation
of the Cape Government with them had been definitely limited to “moral
support.” And he plainly hinted that, unless greater deference was
shown to his advice, even this “moral support” might be withdrawn.

“The most important suggestions sent from here will apparently
not be adopted. The independence of the Republics is in danger.
As to the Colony, the utmost prospect held out was moral support.
The Ministry and the Bond have acted up to that. If Parliament
[i.e. the Cape Parliament] goes too strongly in the same
direction, there may be a change of Ministry, with Sprigg or
Rhodes backed by Milner. Would your interests be benefited
thereby? Verb. sat. sap.“[107]

As President Krüger wanted to retain the “moral support” of the Cape
Government for a few weeks longer, he listened to Mr. Fischer’s
advice[108] to humour their prejudices, and forthwith recommended a
further modification of the Franchise Bill to the Volksraad. This
final amendment, under which a uniform seven years’ retrospective
franchise was substituted for a nine years’ retrospective (p. 218)
franchise, alternate with a seven years’ retrospective franchise
taking effect five years after the passing of the law (i.e. in
1904), was accepted on July 18th, and the new Franchise Law was passed
on the 19th and promulgated on the 26th. Its provisions were so
obscure that it was accompanied by an explanatory memorandum furnished
by the State Attorney, Mr. Smuts. But even assuming that the legal
pitfalls could be removed, and the law, thus simplified, would be
worked in the most liberal spirit by the officials of the Republic,
President Krüger’s proposals failed to provide the essential reform
which Lord Milner had pledged himself and the Imperial Government to
obtain. That reform was the immediate endowment of a substantial
proportion of the British residents in the Transvaal with the rights
of citizenship. To use his own words,[109] “the whole point” of his
Bloemfontein proposal was “to put the Uitlanders in a position to
fight their own battles, and so to avoid the necessity of pressing for
the redress of specific grievances.”

No one in South Africa had any doubt as to the entire inadequacy of
the Franchise Bill to fulfil this essential object. In the opinion of
the Uitlander Council it was[110] “expressly designed to exclude
rather than admit the newcomer.” Sir Henry de Villiers complained[111]
to Mr. Fischer:

“Then there is the Franchise Bill, which is so (p. 219) obscure
that the State Attorney had to issue an explanatory memorandum to
remove the obscurities. But surely a law should be clear enough
to speak for itself, and no Government or court of law will be
bound by the State Attorney’s explanations. I do not know what
those explanations are, but the very fact that they are required
condemns the Bill. That Bill certainly does not seem quite to
carry out the promises made to you, Mr. Hofmeyr, and Mr.
Herholdt.”

And Lord Milner, in his final analysis of the law on July 26th,
concludes[112] that “the Bill as it stands leaves it practically in
the hands of the Government to enfranchise, or not to enfranchise, the
Uitlanders as it chooses.” And he then draws attention to the very
grave consideration that if the paramount Power once accepts this
illusory measure, it will deprive itself of any future right of
intervention on the franchise question.

“And the worst of it,” he wrote, “is that should the Bill,
through a literal interpretation of its complicated provisions,
fail to secure the object at which it avowedly aims, no one will
be able to protest against the result.”

For one moment it seemed to the anxious warden of British interests in
South Africa as though the Home Government might be caught in
President Krüger’s legislative net. The incident is one that well
exhibits the tireless effort and unflinching resolution with which
Lord Milner discharged the duties of his office.

(p. 220) President Krüger’s Bloemfontein scheme was a maze of legal
pitfalls. What these pitfalls were the reader may learn from the
analysis of the scheme which was published in The Cape Times of June
10th, 1899. When the Franchise Bill was before the Volksraad this
complicated scheme, as we have seen, was amended and re-amended; and
each new provision was as intricate in its working as the parent
scheme. It is obvious that nothing short of a commission of inquiry
could have determined with certainty the manner in which the
representation of the Uitlanders was affected by each successive
amendment. While these changes were in progress in the Raadzaal at
Pretoria—changes so “numerous and so rapid,” as Lord Milner
said,[113] that it was “absolutely impossible at any given moment to
know what the effect of the scheme, as existing at that moment, was
likely to be”—Lord Milner himself at Capetown was at one and the same
time overwhelmed with detailed criticisms from Uitlanders, anxious
that no legal pitfall or administrative obstacle should remain
undetected, and besieged with cables from the Colonial Office
requesting precise information upon any point upon which an energetic
member of the House of Commons might have chosen to interrogate the
Secretary of State. And, in addition to this rain of telegrams, people
on the spot were constantly calling at Government House to ask if the
High Commissioner (p. 221) had observed this or that defect or trap
in clauses, the text of which he had not yet had time to receive,
still less to read or comprehend. All this, too, was over and above
the heavy administrative and official duties of the Governor and High
Commissioner—duties which Lord Milner was called upon to perform with
more than usual care, in view of the political ascendancy of the Dutch
party in the Cape Colony.

On July 13th, Lord Milner sent warning telegrams to Mr.
Chamberlain,[114] pointing out specific defects in the Franchise Bill,
and showing how seriously President Krüger’s proposals fell short of
the Bloemfontein minimum. Five days later the Volksraad accepted the
final amendments. The face value of the Bill, as it now stood to be
converted into law, was a seven years’ franchise, prospective and
retrospective. When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain heard this same day
(July 18th) that the Volksraad had accepted the bill in this form with
only five dissentients, he seems to have assumed that a really
considerable concession had been made by President Krüger at the last
moment, and that, with the President and the Volksraad in this mood,
still further concessions would be forthcoming. Under this impression
he informed the House of Commons lobby correspondent of The Times
that “the crisis might be regarded as at an end.” His words were
reproduced in The Times on the day (p. 222) following (July 19th),
and at once cabled to South Africa.

It is impossible for any one who has not lived in South Africa to
realise the sickening distrust and dread produced in the minds of the
loyal subjects of the Crown by this statement. War they were ready to
face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the
shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more
aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent
contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. The Uitlander
Council at once cabled an emphatic message of protest[115] to Mr.
Chamberlain, and every loyalist that had a friend in England
telegraphed to beg him to use all his influence to prevent the
surrender of the Government. How near the British population in South
Africa were to this ignominy may be gathered from the fact that on
this day Lord Milner received a telegram in which Mr. Chamberlain
congratulated him upon the successful issue of his efforts. Lord
Milner’s reply (p. 223) was one that could have left no doubt in Mr.
Chamberlain’s mind as to the gravity of the misconception under which
he laboured. It was, of course, beyond the High Commissioner’s power
to prevent the Home Government from accepting the Franchise Bill; but
he could at least remove the impression that he was anxious to
participate in an act, which would have made the breach between the
loyalists of South Africa and the mother country final and
irrevocable.

It is scarcely possible to believe that Mr. Chamberlain, with Lord
Milner’s telegrams before him, was himself prepared to accept
President Krüger’s illusory franchise scheme. The source of the
weakness of the Government in the conduct of the negotiations, no less
than in its refusal to make adequate preparations for war, is to be
found in the inability of the mass of the people of England to
understand how completely British power in South Africa had been
undermined by the Afrikander nationalists during the last twenty
years. How could the average elector know that the refusal or
acceptance of the Volksraad Bill, differing only from the Bloemfontein
minimum in an insignificant—as it seemed—particular of two years,
would, in fact, make known to all European South Africa whether
President Krüger or the British Government was master of the
sub-continent? In view of this profound ignorance of South African
conditions, and the consequent uncertainty of any assured support,
even from the (p. 224) members of their own party, the Salisbury
Cabinet may well have argued: “Here is something at last that we can
represent as a genuine concession. Let us take it, and have done with
this troublesome South African question; or leave it to the next
Liberal Government to settle.”

If the Cabinet did so reason to themselves, what English statesman
could have “cast the first stone” at them? But how profound is the
interval between the spirit of the policy of “the man on the spot,”
with his eyes upon the object, and the spirit of the policy of the
island statesman with one eye upon the hustings and the other strained
to catch an intermittent glimpse of an unfamiliar and distant Africa!

This 19th of July was a dark day for the High Commissioner. In the
morning came Mr. Chamberlain’s telegram with its ominous suggestion of
a change for the worse in the attitude of the Home Government. And
this change in the Cabinet was, as Lord Milner knew, only the natural
reflection of a wider change, which had manifested itself among the
supporters of the Government and in the country at large since the
publication, on June 14th, of his despatch of May 4th. Private letters
had made him aware that to men to whom Dutch ascendancy at the Cape
and Boer tyranny in the Transvaal, Afrikander nationalism and Boer
armaments, were meaningless expressions, his resolute advocacy of the
Uitlanders’ cause and his frank presentation of the weakness of Great
Britain had (p. 225) seemed the work of a disordered imagination or a
violent partisanship. Nor was his knowledge of the relapse in England
limited to the warnings or protests of his private friends. The South
African News, the ministerial organ, which of late had filled its
columns with adverse criticisms taken from the London Press, this
morning contained a bitter article on him reprinted from Punch,
which had arrived by the yesterday’s mail. After all, it seemed, the
long struggle against mis-government in the Transvaal was going to end
in failure; and the British people would once more be befooled. With
such thoughts in his mind, Lord Milner must have found the work of
making up the weekly despatches for the Colonial Office—for it was a
Wednesday[116]—a wearisome and depressing task. The mail was detained
until long past the customary hour. But before it left, in spite of
discouragement and anxiety, Lord Milner had gathered together into a
brief compass all the documents necessary to put Mr. Chamberlain in
possession of every material fact relative to the new law—passed only
on the day before—and to the proceedings of the Transvaal Executive
and the Volksraad between the 12th and the 19th. And, in addition to
this, he had written a fresh estimate of the Franchise Bill in its
latest form, in which he emphasised his former verdict that the
proposals which it contained were not such as the Uitlanders (p. 226)
would be likely to accept. And in particular he pointed out that the
fact of the final amendment being thus readily adopted by the
Volksraad disposed of the contention, upon which President Krüger had
laid so much stress at Bloemfontein, that his “burghers” would not
permit him to make the concessions which the British Government
required. He wrote:

“On July 12th Her Majesty’s Government requested the Government
of the South African Republic to give them time to consider the
measure and communicate their views before it was proceeded with.
To this the Government of the South African Republic replied, on
July 13th, with a polite negative, saying that ‘the whole matter
was out of the hands of the Government, and it was no longer
possible for the Government to satisfy the demands of the
Secretary of State.’ The State-Attorney informed Mr. Greene[117]
at the same time that ‘the present proposals represented
absolutely the greatest concession that could be got from the
Volksraad, and could not be enlarged. He personally had tried
hard for seven years’ retrospective franchise, but the Raad would
not hear of it, and it was only with difficulty that the present
proposals were obtained.’ This was on the 12th, but within a week
the seven years’ retrospective franchise had been adopted.
Indeed, the statement of the absolute impossibility of obtaining
more than a particular measure of enfranchisement from the
Volksraad or the burghers has been made over and over again in
the history of this question—never more emphatically than by the
President himself at Bloemfontein—and (p. 227) has over and
over again been shown to be a delusion.”[118]

But this full record of the shifts and doublings of Boer diplomacy
would not reach London for another two weeks and a half. It was
necessary, therefore, to use the cable. Early the next morning Lord
Milner sent a telegram to the Secretary of State, in which he warned
the Home Government of the extreme discouragement produced among all
who were attached to the British connection by The Times statement
of their readiness to accept the Franchise Bill. On that afternoon
(July 20th), Mr. Chamberlain made a statement in the House of Commons
in which he took up a much more satisfactory position. The Government,
he said, were led to hope that the new law “might prove to be a basis
of settlement on the lines laid down” by Lord Milner at the
Bloemfontein Conference. They observed, however, that “a number of
conditions” which might be used “to take away with one hand what had
been given with the other” were still retained. But they—

“felt assured that the President, having accepted the principle
for which they had contended, would be prepared to reconsider any
detail of his schemes which could be shown to be a possible
hindrance to the full accomplishment of the objects in view, and
that he would not allow them to be nullified or reduced in value
by any subsequent alterations of the law or acts of
administration.”

(p. 228) That is to say, Mr. Chamberlain was no longer willing to take
the bill at its face value, but in accordance with his determination
to exhaust every possible resource of diplomacy before he turned to
force, he gave President Krüger credit for a genuine desire to promote
a peaceable settlement. A week later he formulated the method by which
the President was to be allowed an opportunity of justifying this
generous estimate of his intentions. In the meantime Lord Milner had
sent lengthy telegrams to the Secretary of State on the 23rd, and
again on the 26th, and the Salisbury Cabinet had determined to make a
definite pronouncement of its South African policy, and to endeavour
to arouse the country to a sense of the seriousness of the situation
with which President Krüger’s continued obduracy would bring it face
to face. On July 27th Mr. Balfour declared, in addressing the Union of
Conservative Associations, that—

“If endless patience, endless desire to prevent matters coming to
extremities, if all the resources of diplomacy, were utterly
ineffectual to untie the knot, other means must inevitably be
found by which that knot must be loosened.”

On the day following (July 28th) the Transvaal question was debated in
both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Lords the Prime Minister,
Lord Salisbury, delivered a moderate and almost sympathetic speech.
After making all allowance for the natural apprehension experienced by
President (p. 229) Krüger at the sudden inrush of population caused
by the discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-fields, he expressed the
opinion that an attempt “to put the two races fairly and honestly on
the same footing” would bring a peaceful solution of the crisis. But,
he added—

“How long we are to consider that solution, and what patience we
are bound to show, these things I will not discuss. We have to
consider not only the feelings of the inhabitants of the
Transvaal, but, what is more important, the feelings of our
fellow-subjects…. Whatever happens, when the validity of the
Conventions is impeached, they belong from that time entirely to
history. I am quite sure that if this country has to make
exertions in order to secure the most elementary justice for
British subjects,—I am quite sure [it] will not reinstate a
state of things that will bring back the old difficulties in all
their formidable character at the next turn of the wheel. Without
intruding on his thoughts, I do not think President Krüger has
sufficiently considered this.”

In the House of Commons Mr. Chamberlain announced that he had proposed
to the Transvaal Government that a joint commission should be
appointed to test the efficacy of the scheme of electoral reform
embodied in the new Franchise Law. This proposal was set out in detail
in a despatch already addressed to the High Commissioner, the
substance of which had been telegraphed[119] to him on the preceding
day (July 27th). The British Government assumed that “the (p. 230)
concessions now made to the Uitlanders were intended in good faith to
secure to them some approach to the equality which was promised in
1881″; they proposed that the “complicated details and questions of a
technical nature” involved in the new law should be discussed in the
first instance by delegates appointed by the High Commissioner and by
the South African Republic; and if, and when, a “satisfactory
agreement” had been reached on these points, they further proposed
that all disputes as to the terms of the Convention should be settled
by a “judicial authority, whose independence … would be above
suspicion,” and all remaining matters in respect of the political
representation of the Uitlanders by “another personal Conference”
between the High Commissioner and President Krüger.

Although the position which the Salisbury Cabinet had now taken up was
one which placed them beyond the danger of accepting an illusory
franchise scheme in lieu of an adequate measure of reform, it was not
the course of action which was best to follow, except from the point
of view of opening the eyes of the British public. In itself further
delay was dangerous. It gave the Boers more time to arm, while we, for
this very reason for which it was necessary to protract the
negotiations, were prevented from arming vigorously. It discouraged
our friends in South Africa, and made them even begin to doubt whether
Great Britain “meant business.” It was good policy (p. 231) to offer
the Joint Inquiry, given the truth of the assumption upon which this
offer was based—namely, that the Bill represented an honest desire on
the part of President Krüger to provide a peaceable settlement of the
Uitlander question. Lord Milner knew, within the limits of human
intelligence, that this assumption was wholly unwarranted. The Home
Government apparently did not. As the result of this difference, Lord
Milner’s policy was again deflected to the extent that two months of
negotiation were devoted to a purely futile endeavour to persuade the
Pretoria Executive to prove the good faith of a proposal, which was
never intended to be anything more than a pretext for delay. And, as
before, the injury to British interests lay in the fact that, while
the Home Government was prevented from making any adequate use of this
delay by its determination not to make preparations for war until war
was in sight, the period was fully utilised by President Krüger, who
since Bloemfontein had been resolutely hastening the arrangements
necessary for attacking the British colonies at a given moment with
the entire burgher forces of the two Republics.

The offer of the Joint Inquiry was formally communicated to the
Pretoria Executive in an eminently friendly telegram[120] from Lord
Milner on August 1st. Efforts were made on all sides to induce
President Krüger to accept it. Chief (p. 232) Justice de Villiers
wrote strongly in this sense to Mr. Fischer,[121] and to his brother
Melius, the Chief Justice of the Free State. Mr. Schreiner telegraphed
to Mr. Fischer, and Mr. Hofmeyr to President Steyn, both urging that
the influence of the Free State should be used in favour of the
proposal. The Dutch Government advised the Republic “not to refuse the
English proposal”;[122] and further informed Dr. Leyds that, in the
opinion of the German Government, “every approach to one of the Great
Powers in this very critical moment will be without any results
whatever, and very dangerous to the Republic.”[123] Even the English
sympathisers of the Boers were in favour of acceptance. Mr. Montagu
White, the Transvaal Consul-General in London, cabled that “Courtney,
Labouchere, both our friends, and friendly papers without exception,”
recommended this course; and that “refusal meant war and would
estrange friends.” The letter which he wrote to Mr. Reitz on the same
day (August 4th), possesses an independent interest, as revealing the
degree in which the friends of the Boers in England had identified
themselves with the policy of the Afrikander party in the Cape Colony.

“The essence of friendly advice,” said Mr. White,[124] “is:
Accept the proposal in principle, point out how difficult it will
be to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to statistics, etc.,
and how undesirable it would be to have a miscarriage of the
Commission. (p. 233) In other words: Gain as much time as you
can, and give the public time here to get out of the dangerous
frame of mind which Chamberlain’s speeches have created….
Labouchere said to me this morning: ‘Don’t, for goodness’ sake,
let Mr. Krüger make his first mistake by refusing this; a little
skilful management, and he will give Master Joe another fall.’ He
further said: ‘You are such past-masters of the art of gaining
time; here is an opportunity; you surely haven’t let your right
hands lose their cunning, and you ought to spin out the
negotiations for quite two or three months.'”

A week later (August 11th), President Krüger received a telegram[125]
in which fifty Afrikander members of the Cape Parliament advanced the
same argument. The acceptance of the Joint Commission, they pointed
out, would provide a way out of a crisis “which might prove fatal to
the best interests, not only of our Transvaal and Free State brethren,
but also of the Afrikander party.” They, therefore, begged his Honour
to “lay their words privately” before the Executive and the Volksraad.

But President Krüger, like Lord Milner, had his eyes fixed upon the
object. He looked beyond the Afrikander leaders to the rank and file
of the Dutch population in the British colonies, with whom he had been
in direct communication through his agents for many months past.[126]
He knew that (p. 234) any such inquiry as Mr. Chamberlain proposed
would expose the flagrant insincerity of the Franchise Bill. On August
2nd he had telegraphed to President Steyn that compliance with the
Joint Commission was “tantamount to the destruction of the
independence of the Republic.”[127] To the Dutch Consul-General[128]
he was perfectly frank: “Defeats such as the English had suffered in
the war for freedom, and later under Jameson, had never been suffered
by the Boers.” His burghers were ready to “go on the battue of
Englishmen,” when he gave the word.[129]

The burghers of the Free State could be counted upon with almost equal
certainty. Mr. Fischer, a more potent influence than President Steyn,
had by this time openly dissociated himself from the “mediation”
policy of the Cape nationalists, and was again (August 4th to 9th) at
Pretoria. Here he threw himself heart and soul into the work of
completing the military preparations of the two Republics. On the 6th
he telegraphed to President Steyn that the draft reply was prepared;
that it “invited discussion and asked questions to gain time,” and
that, therefore, it “was not yet necessary to deliberate as to calling
together the Volksraad” for the final decision of peace or war.
“Military matters, especially artillery,” he added, “seem to me very
faulty. Care will be taken to make all (p. 235) necessary
preparations.”[130] Nor did he leave the Transvaal capital until he
had settled the details of the invasion of Natal with General Joubert.
Indeed, from this time onwards to the despatch of the ultimatum—a
document which came, in its final form, from his pen—Mr. Fischer’s
part in the conduct of the negotiations was second only to that of
President Krüger. In all he did he displayed the same reasoned
determination to oppose British supremacy in South Africa which he has
exhibited since the war in his control of the Bloemfontein Friend.
Orders for the inspection of the commando organisation in the Free
State had been given before Mr. Fischer had left Bloemfontein; and on
his return from Pretoria he responded to Mr. Schreiner’s urgent and
continued representations of the desirability of inducing President
Krüger to accept Mr. Chamberlain’s offer, by a request to be informed
of any probable movements of British forces. Mr. Schreiner’s reply,
that the Free State must ask for such information from the High
Commissioner, caused him to apply to Mr. Hofmeyr for an explanation of
the Cape Premier’s attitude. The inquiry produced a notable analysis
of Mr. Schreiner’s position.

“Hofmeyr says,” Dr. Te Water telegraphed, “that whatever the
Premier’s feelings or relations to our people are, he is at the
same time a minister of the Crown. As such he has on him claims
in two directions, of which he is acquitting himself to (p. 236)
the best of his ability. He has no control over the movement of
troops. You had better come and have a quiet talk. Meanwhile the
Free State should surely refrain from an aggressive step.”[131]

This well-meant advice was somewhat belated. In reply to a telegram
from President Steyn, asking whether it was true that the Imperial
Government was going to send 1,000 men to Bethulie Bridge, Lord Milner
replied on August 16th, that, “as a matter of fact, no despatch of
Imperial troops to the borders of the Orange Free State was in
contemplation.” But he added that in view of the much more substantial
reports of the “importation of large quantities of munitions of war”
into that State and “the general arming of the burghers,” it “would
not have been unnatural, if such military preparations had been
responded to by a defensive movement” on the part of the British
Government.[132] Indeed, the circumstances which had led to Mr.
Fischer’s co-operation in Mr. Hofmeyr’s “mediation” were rapidly
disappearing. The Port Elizabeth Mausers and ammunition were safely
through the Cape Colony; a further consignment of Mauser ammunition
arrived at Delagoa Bay (August 16th) in the German steamship
Reichstag at the very time that these telegrams were passing; and
both this and other enormous consignments were forwarded to Pretoria a
fortnight later in spite of an abortive attempt on the part of the
British Foreign Office (p. 237) to induce the Portuguese authorities
to retain them. The possession of an adequate supply of ammunition was
a matter of cardinal importance to which, as we have seen, President
Steyn had drawn the attention of the Pretoria Executive nearly a month
before the Bloemfontein Conference. It was these Mauser cartridges
that were wanted especially, since, without them, the new arm—the
splendid Mauser magazine rifle—must have been rejected in place of
the inferior Martini-Henry for which the Boers had long been provided
with an ample reserve of ammunition.

In the meantime the British Government was still waiting for a reply
to its offer of a Joint Inquiry. On August 7th the Volksraad discussed
the question, and on the 12th a despatch was written by Mr. Reitz
refusing the offer on the ground that such a proposal was inconsistent
with the independence of the Republic. It was held back, however,
until September 1st; that is to say, until the Portuguese authorities
had allowed the Transvaal ammunition to leave Lorenzo Marques. Then,
as we shall see, it was forwarded in conjunction with a second
despatch of September 2nd. The delay was won by a characteristic
display of “the art of gaining time,” in which, as Mr. Labouchere
remarked, the Boers were past-masters. On the same day that Mr. Reitz
wrote his despatch (August 12th), Mr. Smuts approached Sir William
Greene[133] with the offer of (p. 238) a still further simplified
seven years’ franchise in lieu of the Joint Commission. When, however,
Sir William Greene assured him that the British Government would not
accept anything less than the Bloemfontein minimum, he subsequently
agreed to an arrangement of which the main items were: A five years’
franchise; the workable character of the new law to be secured by the
submission of its provisions to the British Agent with a legal
adviser; and increased representation in the Volksraad, together with
the use of the English language. After communications had passed
between Sir William Greene, Lord Milner, and Mr. Chamberlain, these
proposals, with certain reservations, were formally communicated to
the British Government by Mr. Reitz on August 19th. Two days later a
second note was forwarded in which the offer contained in the previous
note (August 19th) was declared to be subject to the acceptance by the
British Government of two conditions. These conditions—an undertaking
not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Republic in the future
and a specific withdrawal of the claim of suzerainty—amounted in
effect to a formal renunciation by Great Britain of its position as
paramount Power in South Africa. Boer diplomacy.
In other words, the Pretoria
Executive had repudiated the arrangement made by Mr. Smuts with Sir
William Greene. Mr. Chamberlain, noticing the material variation
between the original offer as initialled by Mr. Smuts and forwarded by
Sir William (p. 239) Greene, and Mr. Reitz’s note of August 19th,
instructed Sir William Greene to obtain an explanation of the
discrepancy from the Transvaal Government. The reply was a curt
rejoinder that there was not “the slightest chance of an alteration or
an amplification” of the terms of the arrangement as set out in the
note of the 19th.[134] In these circumstances Mr. Chamberlain
telegraphed a reply on August 28th, in which he accepted the original
offer, and rejected the impossible conditions subsequently attached to
it.[135] The terms of settlement thus proposed were in substance the
same as those of the despatch of July 27th, with the exception that an
inquiry by the British Agent was substituted for the Joint Commission,
and the five years’ franchise of the Smuts-Greene arrangement was
accepted in lieu of the seven years’ franchise of the Volksraad law.
The Transvaal reply was a further essay in the same useful “art of
gaining time.” It was dated September 2nd, and contained a definite
withdrawal of the Smuts-Greene offer as embodied in the notes of
August 19th and 21st, and a vague return to the Joint Commission.

“Under certain conditions,” wrote Mr. Reitz,[136] “this
Government would be glad to learn from Her Majesty’s Government
how they propose that (p. 240) the Commission should be
constituted, and what place and time for meeting is
suggested.”[137]

And this with the consoling promise of a “further reply” to other
questions arising out of the despatch of July 27th, which the
Transvaal Government had not yet been able to consider.

The response to this astute document was the last effort of the
Salisbury Cabinet to arrange a settlement upon the basis of the
“friendly discussion” inaugurated at Bloemfontein. The British
Government, Mr. Chamberlain wrote, had “absolutely repudiated” the
claim, made in the notes of April 16th and May 9th, that the South
African Republic was a “sovereign international state,” and they could
not, therefore, consider a proposal which was conditional on the
acceptance of this view of the status of the Republic. They “could not
now consent to go back to the proposals for which those of the note of
August 19th were intended as a substitute,” since they were “satisfied
that the law of 1899, in which these proposals were finally embodied,
was insufficient to secure the immediate and substantial
representation” of the Uitlanders. They were “still prepared to accept
the offer made in paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 of the note of August 19th,”
provided that an inquiry, joint or unilateral as the Transvaal
Government might prefer, showed that “the new scheme of representation
would not be encumbered (p. 241) by conditions which would nullify
the intention to give substantial and immediate representation to the
Uitlanders.” They assumed that “the new members of the Raad would be
permitted to use their own language.” They expressed their belief that
“the acceptance of these terms would at once remove the tension
between the two Governments, and would in all probability render
unnecessary any further intervention” on the franchise question, and
their readiness—

“to make immediate arrangements for a further conference between
the President of the South African Republic and the High
Commissioner to settle all the details of the proposed Tribunal
of Arbitration, and the questions … which were neither
Uitlander grievances nor questions of interpretation”

of the Convention. And they added that if the reply of the Republic
was negative or inconclusive, “they would reserve to themselves the
right to reconsider the situation de novo, and to formulate their
own proposals for a final settlement.”[138]

The text of this despatch was telegraphed to Lord Milner late at night
on September 8th. It was presented to the Transvaal Government on the
12th, with a request that the reply might reach the British Agent not
later than midday on the 14th. This limit of time was fixed by Sir
William Greene on his own initiative, and it was withdrawn by Lord
Milner’s instructions, in order that the (p. 242) Pretoria Executive
might not be unduly hurried. The Transvaal reply, which was delivered
on the 15th, was a refusal to accept the Smuts-Greene arrangement,
re-stated by the British Government, as the basis of the franchise
reform, coupled with a charge of bad faith against Sir William Greene.

It was a cleverly composed document, which owed its diplomatic effect
in no small degree to Mr. Fischer, who had revised it. It was written
for publication, since, in Mr. Fischer’s opinion, the time had come to
write despatches which would “justify the Republic in the eyes of the
world”; and with this end in view it contained the suggestion that the
British Government was bent upon worrying the Pretoria Executive into
war.

“This Government,” it explains, “continues to cherish the hope
that Her Majesty’s Government, on further consideration, will
feel itself free to abandon the idea of making the new proposals
more difficult for this Government, and imposing new conditions,
and will declare itself satisfied to abide by its own proposal
for a Joint Commission at first proposed by the Secretary of
State for the Colonies in the Imperial Parliament, and
subsequently proposed to this Government and accepted by it.”[139]

The British despatch of September 8th represented the united opinion
of the Cabinet Council which had met on that day to consider the South
African situation. In sending it, the Government also decided to raise
the strength of the Natal and (p. 243) Cape forces to the total of
22,000, estimated by the War Office as sufficient for defensive
purposes, by the immediate addition of 10,000 men, of whom nearly
6,000 were to be provided by the Indian Army.[140] The despatch
itself, definite in contents and resolute in tone, was the sort of
communication which, in Lord Milner’s judgment, should have been
forwarded to the Transvaal Government after the failure of the
Bloemfontein Conference; and the additional troops now ordered out
were nothing more than the substantial reinforcements for which he had
applied in June. The three months’ negotiations had led the Salisbury
Cabinet to the precise conclusion which Lord Milner had formed at
Bloemfontein. The only hope of a peaceable settlement lay in a
definite demand, backed by preparations for war. But to do this in
June, and to do it in September, were two very different things.
Assuming that diplomatic pressure could in any case have availed to
secure the necessary reforms, it is obvious that, whatever prospect of
success attached to this course of action—Policy No. 2, as Lord
Milner called it—in June, was materially diminished in September.
During the interval the British Government had done practically
nothing to improve its military position. That of (p. 244) President
Krüger had been conspicuously improved. He had carried the Free State
with him; he had got his Mauser ammunition and additional artillery,
and he had completed his arrangements for the simultaneous
mobilisation of the burghers of the two Republics. Even now the
military action of the British Government was confined to preparations
for defence; for the order to mobilise the army corps was not given
until the next Cabinet Council had been held on September 22nd. The
spirit of Pretoria was very different. The commandos were on their way
to the Natal border before the reply to this British despatch of
September 8th was delivered to the British Agent. That was President
Krüger’s real answer—not the diplomatic fencing of September 15th.

More than this, the three months’ negotiations had embittered the
relations of the British and Dutch factions in every South African
state to such a degree that any compromise of the sort proposed by
Lord Milner at Bloemfontein was no longer sufficient to effect a
settlement. The moderate measure of representation then suggested
would have been rejected now by the Uitlanders as wholly inadequate
for their protection, in view of the violent antipathy to them and the
gold industry which the diplomatic struggle had evoked among all
classes of the Dutch inhabitants of the Transvaal. The particulars of
the outrageous treatment, and still more outrageous threats, to which
the British Uitlanders were subjected from (p. 245) this time onwards
up to the ultimatum are to be found in the Blue-books. As early as the
middle of August, when the Smuts-Greene negotiations had just been
commenced, Mr. Monypenny, the editor of the Johannesburg Star, was
warned that the Transvaal Government intended to issue a warrant for
his arrest on a charge of high treason. This intention, postponed
during the fortnight of delay won by these negotiations, was carried
out on September 1st, on which day Mr. Pakeman, the editor of the
Transvaal Leader, was secured, while Mr. Monypenny succeeded in
effecting his escape. This indefensible act was followed by a
characteristic attempt to disown it, made by Mr. Smuts, the State
Attorney, the nature of which is sufficiently exhibited in the
following telegram, despatched by the High Commissioner on September
4th to the Secretary of State:

The violence of the Boers culminated a week before the Ultimatum
(October 9th-11th) in the wholesale expulsion of the British subjects
still remaining in the two Republics. Assuming that this measure was
justifiable on military grounds, there can be no excuse for the brutal
precipitancy with which it was enforced. It crowded the colonial ports
with homeless and impoverished fugitives; it inflicted unnecessary
suffering and pecuniary loss upon inoffensive and innocent
non-combatants, both European and native; and it was accompanied in
some instances by displays of wanton cruelty and deliberate spite
utterly unworthy of a people of European descent.

Thus it was only when Lord Milner’s foresight had been unmistakably
confirmed by the stern logic of facts that the British Government
ordered these 10,000 troops to South Africa, 6,000 of whom—the Indian
contribution—arrived just in time to save Natal from being overrun by
the Boers. (p. 247) The three weeks preceding the Cabinet Council of
September 8th, at which this decision was arrived at, had been a
period of intense anxiety for the High Commissioner. With the
spectacle of the increasing activity of England’s enemies, and the
increasing dismay of England’s friends, before his eyes, his protests
against the inactivity of the Home Government had become more urgent.
In the middle of August he declared that he could no longer be
responsible for the administration of South Africa unless he were
provided immediately with another military adviser. General
Forestier-Walker was then appointed, and after the departure of
General Butler the Imperial Government intervened at length to check
the further passage of munitions of war through the Colony to the Free
State.[142] The Norman, the mail-boat of August 23rd in which Sir
William Butler sailed for England, took home the masterly
despatch[143] in which Lord Milner explained the position taken up by
him at the Bloemfontein Conference, and showed how completely the
proposals of the Transvaal Government differed from the spirit of the
settlement which he had then invited President Krüger to accept. In
doing so he reviewed the whole course of the subsequent negotiations,
pointed out the insidious character of the last Transvaal proposal
(August 19th and 21st), and emphatically protested against the
suggestion that the Imperial Government should (p. 248) barter its
rights as paramount Power for “another hastily framed franchise
scheme,” on account of its “superficial conformity” with what, after
all, was only a single item in the long list of questions that must be
adjusted before the peaceful progress of South Africa would be
assured.[144] On August 28th Mr. Schreiner, when called to account in
the Cape Parliament for having allowed, “in the usual course,” the
Mausers and ammunition for the Free State to pass through the Colony,
made the strange declaration that in the event of war—

“he would do his very best to maintain [for the Cape Colony] the
position of standing apart and aloof from the struggle, both with
regard to its forces and with regard to its people.”

Three days later (August 31st) Lord Milner sent a still more
impressive appeal for “prompt and decisive action” on the part of the
Home Government. The despatch, which was telegraphed, is otherwise
significant for its account of the situation in Johannesburg:

“I am receiving representations from many quarters,” he said, “to
urge Her Majesty’s Government to terminate the state of suspense.
Hitherto I have hesitated to address you on the subject, lest Her
Majesty’s Government should think me impatient. But I feel bound
to let you know that I am satisfied, from inquiries made in
various reliable quarters, that the distress is now really
(p. 249) serious. The most severe suffering is at Johannesburg.
Business there is at a standstill; many traders have become
insolvent, and others are only kept on their legs by the leniency
of their creditors. Even the mines, which have been less affected
hitherto, are now suffering, owing to the withdrawal of workmen,
both European and native. The crisis also affects the trading
centres in the Colony. In spite of this, the purport of all the
representations made to me is to urge prompt and decided action,
not to deprecate further interference on the part of Her
Majesty’s Government. British South Africa is prepared for
extreme measures, and is ready to suffer much in order to see the
vindication of British authority. It is a prolongation of the
negotiations, endless and indecisive of result, that is dreaded.
I fear seriously that there will be a strong reaction of feeling
against the policy of Her Majesty’s Government if matters drag.
Please to understand that I invariably preach confidence and
patience—not without effect. But if I did not inform you of the
increasing difficulty in doing this, and of the unmistakable
growth of uneasiness about the present situation, and of a desire
to see it terminated at any cost, I should be failing in my
duty.”[145]

Indeed, while in England Mr. Chamberlain was remarking (at Highbury,
August 27th) that he “could not truly say that the crisis was passed,”
and picturesquely complaining of President Krüger “dribbling out
reforms like water from a squeezed sponge,” every loyalist in South
Africa knew that the time for words had gone by. On September 6th and
7th public meetings were held respectively (p. 250) at Maritzburg and
Capetown, at which resolutions were passed affirming the uselessness
of continuing the negotiations and the necessity for the prompt action
of the Imperial Government.

Even this did not exhaust the evidence which was needed to persuade
the Salisbury Cabinet to make effective preparations for the defence
of the British colonies. The Cabinet Council of September 8th had
before it, in addition to the Transvaal note of September 2nd, a
direct and urgent request[146] for immediate reinforcements from the
Government of Natal—the loyal colony which, as Lord Milner had
declared, was to be defended “by the whole force of the empire.”

These were the circumstances in which the Salisbury Cabinet did in
September what Lord Milner had advised them to do in June. It is
impossible to maintain that the British Government had gained anything
in the way of political results comparable with the fatal loss of
military strength incurred by the three months’ delay. The over-sea
British did not need to be taught either the justice or the necessity
of securing citizen rights for the industrial population of the
Transvaal. Before Lord Milner had been authorised to state that the
petition of the Uitlanders had been favourably received by the Home
Government, the citizens of Sydney had recorded in a public meeting
their “sympathy with their fellow-countrymen in the Transvaal,” and
expressed their (p. 251) hope “that Her Majesty might be pleased to
grant the prayer of her subjects.” Queensland, Victoria, and New South
Wales had all three offered military contingents by July 21st;[147]
the other colonies refrained only from a desire not to embarrass the
Home Government in its negotiations with the Transvaal. Whatever good
effect was produced upon the public opinion of the continent of Europe
and the United States of America by the obvious reluctance of the
British Government to make war upon a puny enemy, was more than
counterbalanced by the spectacle of a great Power prevented from
employing the most elementary military precautions by a nice regard
for the susceptibilities of its political and commercial rivals. The
idea that the sentiment either of the world at large or of the
over-sea British would be favourably impressed by the three months of
futile negotiations was a sheer delusion. It was the people of England
who had to be educated.

How little they knew of the actual situation in South Africa, and of
the real character of the Boers may be seen from what happened on
September 15th. On this day a meeting was held at Manchester to
protest against the mere idea of England having to make war upon the
Transvaal. Lord (then Mr.) Courtney “hailed with satisfaction” the
British despatch of September 8th, which, having been published in the
Continental papers on the 13th, had appeared a day later (14th) in
those (p. 252) of Great Britain. “It was a rebuke to the
fire-eaters,” he said, “and a rebuke most of all to one whom I must
designate as a lost man, a lost mind—I mean Sir Alfred Milner.” And
Mr. John Morley, like Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, was convinced that
there was no need of any preparations for war; the Transvaal
Government “could not withdraw from the five years’ franchise.” The
day on which these words were uttered was the day on which the note
containing President Krüger’s determination to “withdraw” from the
five years’ franchise, and his refusal even to consider the British
offer of September 8th—hailed with satisfaction by his old ally, Lord
Courtney—was handed to Sir William Greene.[Back to Contents]

(p. 253) CHAPTER VI

THE ULTIMATUM

The British people were destined to pay a heavy penalty for the
ignorance and irresolution that caused them to withhold, from June to
September, the mandate without which the Government was unable to
prepare for war. What that penalty was will be made sufficiently clear
when we come to consider the position of grave disadvantage in which
the British forces designated for the South African campaign were
placed at the outbreak of the war. For the moment it is enough to
notice that, just as the real source of the military weakness of
England in the war was the fact that only a very small proportion of
her adult male population had received an elementary training in arms,
so the futility of her peace strategy must be traced to the general
ignorance of the bitter hatred with which British supremacy was
regarded, not only by the Boers, but also by the Dutch subjects of the
Crown in the Cape Colony and Natal. In a world-wide and composite
State such as the British Empire, it is, of course, natural that the
people of one component part should be unfamiliar, in a greater or
lesser degree, with the (p. 254) conditions of any other part. What
makes this mutual unfamiliarity dangerous is the circumstance that the
control of the foreign relations, and of the effective military and
naval forces, of the Empire as a whole, remains exclusively in the
hands of the people of one part—the United Kingdom. In the absence of
any administrative body in which the over-sea Britains are
represented, the power, thus possessed, of moulding the destiny of any
one province of the Empire lays upon the island people the duty of
informing themselves adequately upon the circumstances and conditions
of all its component parts. It is obvious that the likelihood of this
duty being efficiently performed has been diminished greatly by the
extension of the franchise. Fortunately, however, in the case of
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, questions involving a decision to
employ the Army or Navy which Great Britain maintains for the defence
of the Empire have arisen rarely in recent years. It is in regard to
India and South Africa that these decisions have been constantly
required; and for half a century past each of these two countries in
turn has been the battlefield of English parties. But while the
efficiency of British administration has suffered in both cases by
variations of policy due to party oscillations, infinitely greater
injury has been done in South Africa than in India.

In respect of South Africa, while, speaking broadly, Liberal
Governments have sought to escape from existing responsibilities, or
to decline (p. 255) new ones, Conservative Governments have sought to
discharge these responsibilities with the object of making this
country a homogeneous and self-supporting unit of the empire. To
persuade the nation to accept a policy which might, and probably
would, involve it in an immediate sacrifice both of men and money, was
plainly a more difficult task than to persuade it that no need existed
for any such sacrifices. The “long view” of the Imperialist statesmen
was supported in the present instance by past experience and by the
judgment of the great majority of the British population actually
resident in South Africa. The home English, remembering that the
recall of Sir Bartle Frere had been followed by Majuba and the
Retrocession, were anxious to maintain British supremacy unimpaired in
South Africa. What kept them irresolute was the uncertainty as to
whether this supremacy really was, or was not, in danger. Lord Milner
had told them that the establishment of a Dutch Republic, embracing
all South Africa, was being openly advocated, and that nothing but a
striking proof of Great Britain’s intention to remain the paramount
Power—such as would be afforded by insisting upon the grant of equal
rights to the British population in the Transvaal—could arrest the
growth of the nationalist movement. He had pointed out also that the
conversion of the Boer Republic into an arsenal of munitions of war,
when, as in the case of Ketshwayo, there was no enemy against
(p. 256) whom these arms could be turned other than Great Britain,
was in itself a definite and unmistakable menace to British supremacy.
This, moreover, was the deliberate and reasoned verdict of a man who
had been commissioned, with almost universal approval, to ascertain
the real state of affairs in South Africa. If the nation had believed
Lord Milner in June, the British Government would have received the
political support that would have enabled it to make the preparations
for war in that month which, as we have seen, it was now making in
September.

The agency which, by playing upon the ignorance of the public,
prevented the nation from accepting at once the truth of Lord Milner’s
verdict, was the Liberal Opposition. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the
official leader of the Liberal party, maintained throughout the three
months in question that no reason existed for military preparation.
Mr. Labouchere wrote, on the eve of the war: “The Boers invade Natal!
You might just as well talk of their invading England.” When Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman maintained that there was no need for the
Government to make any military preparations, we must presume that he
believed one of two things: either that President Krüger would yield,
or that, if President Krüger did not yield, there was nothing in the
condition of South Africa to make it necessary for Great Britain to
give any proof of her ability to maintain her position as paramount
Power by force of arms. (p. 257) The action of the Liberal Opposition
resolves itself, therefore, into a declaration, on its own authority
as against Lord Milner’s, that neither the republican nor the colonial
Dutch had any intention of making war upon Great Britain in South
Africa, or any resources which would enable them to carry out such an
intention with any hope of success. Now, apart from the overwhelming
testimony to the utter falsity of this assertion which is afforded by
the facts of the campaign, and apart from such documents as the
manifestos issued by both Republics upon the outbreak of the war, we
possess—thanks to the exertions of the Intelligence Department—a
mass of evidence, in the shape of private and official correspondence,
which enables us to learn what was actually passing in the minds of
the Dutch at this time. On the 15th of this month of September, 1899,
the meeting to which we have referred[148] was held at Manchester,
with the object, not of strengthening the hands of the Government in
the military preparations which they were making thus tardily, but of
protesting against the very idea that there was anything in the
attitude of the Dutch in South Africa to make war necessary. A perusal
of two of these captured documents will enable the reader to judge for
himself in what degree this Liberal view of the situation corresponded
with the facts. The first is a letter written on September 25th—that
is to say, ten days after Lord Courtney was (p. 258) denouncing Lord
Milner as “a lost mind” at Manchester—by Mr. Blignaut, brother to the
State Secretary of the Free State. It is concerned with the safe
arrival in the Free State of a Colonial Afrikander, who has left his
home in the Western Province of the Cape Colony to join the republican
forces:

This is not an isolated or exceptional expression of opinion. It is a
typical statement of what was (p. 259) in the mind of ninety-nine out
of every hundred republican nationalists at this time. The aspirations
it contains were proclaimed a fortnight later to the world by
President Krüger himself in the boast that his Republic would “stagger
humanity.” They appeared in the nonchalant remarks made a few days
later by Mr. Gregorowski, the Chief Justice of the Transvaal, in
bidding farewell to Canon Farmer,[150] who was preparing to leave his
cure at Pretoria in view of the certainty of war.

“Is it really necessary for you to go? The war will be over in a
fortnight. We shall take Kimberley and Mafeking, and give the
English such a beating in Natal that they will sue for peace.”

War, then, for the Boer meant “an opportunity of annexing the Cape
Colony and Natal, and forming the Republican United States of South
Africa.” When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. John Morley, Lord
Courtney, Mr. James Bryce, and other Liberal leaders saw no reason why
the British Government should make military preparations—did, in
fact, do all in their power to induce the English people to withhold
the support necessary to allow the British Government to make these
preparations—there were, twelve thousand British troops in South
Africa to oppose the “forty-six thousand fighting men who had pledged
themselves to die shoulder to shoulder” to secure the independence,
not of the Transvaal but of “South Africa”.

(p. 260) And what of the Dutch in the Cape Colony? Our second document
will enlighten us on this point. It is an invitation, composed in
doggerel rhyme, to the Boer forces to invade Griqualand West, signed
by the chairman of a district branch of the Afrikander Bond. The date
is not given; but as the proclamation under which Head-Commandant C.
J. Wessels annexed the districts in question is dated November 11th,
1899, it was obviously written during the first three or four weeks of
the war.

But, apart from this profound misconception of the real feeling and
intentions of the Afrikander (p. 261) nationalists in South Africa,
manifested with such disastrous effect during these critical
months—June to September, 1899—the leaders of the Liberal Opposition
otherwise displayed in their public utterances an ignorance of this
province of the Empire that can only be characterised as “wanton.” For
what expression other than “wanton ignorance” can be used to describe
the habit of mind which permits public men to make statements in
direct conflict with the facts of South African history, as
established by ascertainable evidence, or to state as facts
allegations which proper inquiry would have shown to be untrue? Here
again, from a mass of material provided by the utterances which came
from the Liberal Opposition leaders on South African affairs, a few
instances only can be brought to the notice of the reader, and these
in the briefest form consistent with precision. On September 5th Mr.
John Morley, speaking at Arbroath, stated that Sir Bartle Frere had
“annexed the Transvaal.” The present baronet, the late High
Commissioner’s son, called him to account at once; but it required
three successive letters[152] to wring from Mr. John Morley a specific
acknowledgement of his error. The evidence which establishes the fact
that Frere did not annex the Transvaal is the following statement,
bearing his signature and published in February, 1881:[153]

(p. 262) “It was an act which in no way originated with me, over
which I had no control, and with which I was only subsequently
incidentally connected…. It was a great question then, as now,
whether the annexation was justifiable.”

This was on the 5th. On the 27th a letter was published in The Times
in which Sir William Harcourt wrote, in respect of the suzerainty
question:

“All further argument is now superfluous, as the matter is
decisively disposed of by the publication at Pretoria of Lord
Derby’s telegram of February 27th, 1884, in which the effect of
the London Convention of that date was stated in the following
words: ‘There will be the same complete independence in the
Transvaal as in the Orange Free State.'”

In a letter written on the day following, and published in The Times
of October 2nd, the writer of the present work pointed out, among
other inaccuracies, that the words actually telegraphed by Lord Derby
were: “same complete internal independence in the Transvaal as in
Orange Free State.” That is to say, before the word “independence” the
word “internal”—vitally important to the present issue—was inserted
in the original, and omitted in the Boer version, from which Sir
William Harcourt had quoted without referring to the Blue-book, Cd.
4,036.

The third instance occurred some three months later. Mr. James Bryce,
speaking on December (p. 263) 14th, 1899, stated that Sir Bartle
Frere “sent to govern the Transvaal Sir Owen Lanyon, an officer
unfitted by training and character for so delicate and difficult a
task.”[154] The following passage, which the present writer
subsequently published, affords precise and overwhelming evidence of
the absolute untruth of Mr. Bryce’s assertion. It appears in a letter
written by Sir Bartle Frere on December 13th, 1878, to Mr. (now Sir)
Gordon Sprigg, then Premier of Cape Colony.

“The Secretary of State has nominated Lanyon to take Shepstone’s
place whenever he leaves [i.e. when Lanyon leaves Kimberley,
where he was Administrator of Griqualand West]. This was not my
arrangement, and had it been left to me I think I should have
arranged otherwise, for while I believe Lanyon to be one of the
most right-minded, hardworking, and able men in South Africa, I
know he does not fancy the work in the Transvaal, and I think I
could have done better. However, it does not rest with me, and
all I have to do is to find a man fit to take his place when he
leaves.”[155]

All of these three men were of Cabinet rank. Two of them, Mr. Morley
and Mr. Bryce, enjoyed a great and deserved reputation as men of
letters; and their public utterances on the South African question,
accepted in large measure on the strength (p. 264) of this literary
reputation, were responsible in an appreciable degree for the distrust
and coldness manifested by the people of the United States of America
towards Great Britain during the first year of the war. But this is a
consideration of secondary importance. The vital point to recognise is
that, so long as the Empire remains without a common representative
council, a knowledge of the conditions of the over-sea Britains must
be considered as necessary a part of the political equipment of any
English statesman as a knowledge of Lancashire or of Kent. After the
war had broken out, Lord Rosebery, almost alone among Liberal
statesmen, did something to support the Government. This distinguished
advocate of Imperial unity and national efficiency then recommended
the English people to educate themselves by reading Sir Percy
FitzPatrick’s The Transvaal from Within, and encouraged them by
declaring his belief that England would “muddle through” this, as
other wars. It does not seem, however, to have occurred to Lord
Rosebery that, if he had used his undoubted influence in time to
prevent his party from making it impossible for the Salisbury Cabinet
to carry out in June the effective peace strategy long recommended by
Lord Milner, the prospect of a “muddle” would have been materially
diminished, if not altogether removed.

There is one other fact that cannot be overlooked in estimating the
degree in which the Liberal leaders are answerable to the nation for
(p. 265) the fatal error of postponing effective military
preparations from June to September. After the failure of the
Bloemfontein Conference Lord Milner, as we have seen, asked for
immediate and substantial reinforcements. Mr. Chamberlain then
approached Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman with a proposal that the
Government should inform the Opposition leaders of the circumstances
that made military preparations necessary, and of the precise measures
which they might deem advisable to adopt from time to time, on the
understanding that the Opposition, on their part, should refrain from
raising any public discussion as to the expediency of these measures.
The object of this proposal was, of course, to enable the Government
to make effective preparations for war, without lessening the prospect
of achieving a peaceful settlement by the negotiations in progress.
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s reply to this overture was a refusal to
make the Opposition a party to any such arrangement. If the Government
chose to make military preparations they must do so, he said, entirely
on their own responsibility.

The significance of this refusal of Mr. Chamberlain’s offer appears
from the answer which was subsequently put forward by the Prime
Minister, the late Lord Salisbury, to the charge of “military
unpreparedness” brought against the British Government after the early
disasters of the campaign. What prevented the Cabinet, according to
the Premier, from taking the measures required (p. 266) by the
military situation in June was the British system of popular
government. Any preparations on the scale demanded by Lord Milner and
Lord Wolseley could not have been set on foot without provoking the
fullest discussion in Parliament and the Press. The leaders of the
Opposition would have contested fiercely the proposals of the
Government, and the perversion of these opportunities for discussion
into an anti-war propaganda might have exhibited England as a country
divided against itself. It may be questioned whether, in point of
fact, the Liberal leaders could have done anything more calculated to
injure the interests of their country if the Government had mobilised
the army corps, and despatched the ten thousand defensive troops in
June, than they did when these measures were postponed until
September. But, however this may be, the circumstance that this
proposal was made by Mr. Chamberlain, and refused by Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman, is noteworthy both as an indication of the spirit
of lofty patriotism of which the Salisbury Cabinet, in spite of its
initial error, was destined to give more than one proof in the course
of the war and as an example of a method of escaping from the
injurious results of a well-recognised defect in the democratic system
of government—a method which, it is not unreasonable to hope, may be
employed with success should the like occasion arise at any future
time.

This, then, was the state of affairs in England. (p. 267) The
Opposition throughout the negotiations was proclaiming that war was
out of the question, and that preparations for war were altogether
unnecessary. The people, being ignorant of the progress which the
nationalist movement in South Africa had made, were irresolute, and
withheld from the Government the support without which it could not
make adequate military preparations, except at the risk of defeat in
Parliament and possible loss of office.

What was the position in South Africa? Above all, what was the
position of the man whose duty it was “to take all such measures and
do all such things” as were necessary for the safety of the subjects
of the Crown and for the maintenance of British interests? The
ignorance of South Africa that led to the partial paralysis of the
Government was in no sense attributable to him. The broad fact that
the Afrikander nationalist[156] movement had made the moral supremacy
of the Dutch complete was declared by Lord Milner, during his visit to
England in the winter of 1898-9, to the Colonial Secretary and other
members of the Salisbury Cabinet. His verdict that nothing but prompt
and energetic action on the part of the Imperial Government could keep
South Africa a part of the Empire was publicly made known (so far as
he was concerned) in his despatch of (p. 268) May 4th, 1899, which
was withheld, however, from publication until June 14th. The
Bloemfontein Conference was a device of the Afrikander nationalists at
the Cape to avert a military conflict between the South African
Republic and Great Britain, which, they believed, would result not
merely in the destruction of the Republics, but in the loss of the
prospect—which they then enjoyed—of achieving through the existence
of the Republics the independence of the Afrikander nation as a whole.
All this Lord Milner made perfectly clear to Mr. Chamberlain. The
illusory concessions embodied in President Krüger’s Franchise Law were
yielded by the Republics with the object of securing the “moral
support” of the Cape Afrikanders in the negotiations, and thereby
obtaining the delay which was required to complete their military
preparations; since the Republican nationalists, unlike those of the
Cape, believed that the independence of the Afrikander nation could be
wrested from Great Britain by force of arms. The efforts made by the
Cape nationalists, first to secure these concessions, and then to
induce the republican nationalists to grant the further concessions
which would have satisfied the British Government, were made for the
same purpose as the Bloemfontein Conference had been arranged—namely,
to avert a conflict which, being premature, would be disastrous to the
nationalist cause, not only in the Republics but in the Cape Colony.
The respective objects both of the republican (p. 269) and Cape
nationalists had been divined by Lord Milner, and, therefore,
immediately after the failure of the Conference, he had urged the Home
Government to send reinforcements to South Africa sufficient to defend
British territory from attack, and to check any incipient rebellion in
the Cape Colony. The negotiations might, or might not, result in a
peaceful settlement; but it was futile, nay more, it was dangerous, he
said, for Great Britain to go on as though war were out of the
question.

This was the view of the South African situation which Lord Milner
laid before the Home Government in June. We have seen what was done by
them in response to these representations. Some special service
officers were sent out to organise locally the defences of the Cape
Colony and Rhodesia. The Cape and Natal garrisons were strengthened by
a few very inadequate reinforcements arriving in the course of the
next two months. General Butler was not recalled until the latter part
of August; his successor, General Forestier-Walker, did not arrive
until September 6th. We have traced the causes which made it
impossible for the Imperial Government, as they conceived, to do more
than this; and when in due course we come to consider the broad phases
of the war, the nature of the penalty which the British Army, and the
British nation, had to pay for the partial paralysis of the Government
will become sufficiently apparent.

(p. 270) The man who suffered most by all this was Lord Milner. When
he asked for military preparations, he was told that he could not have
them. When he asked for the removal of a military adviser with whom
he was supremely dissatisfied, he was told that he must put up with
General Butler for a little longer. He put up with him for two months.
His Colonial ministers, whose advice on many points he was bound to
accept so long as he did not dismiss them, were men placed in office
by the Dutch subjects of the Crown for the very purpose of
frustrating, by constitutional means, the successful intervention in
the Transvaal, by which alone, in his opinion, British supremacy could
be made a reality.

Indeed, the odds were heavily against Lord Milner in his task of
saving England, in spite of herself and in spite of the enemies of
whose power she was wholly ignorant, and to whose very existence she
remained contemptuously indifferent. To the great mass of the British
population in South Africa, he stood for England and English justice.
To them he seemed the representative man, for whom they had waited
many a long year. They felt that he was fighting their battle and
doing their work; and, making allowance for local jealousies and
accidental partialities, they never ceased to regard him thus. This
was his one and only source of assured support. But he was far removed
from the active British centres: (p. 271) from the group of towns
formed by the Albany settlers and their descendants in the Eastern
Province, and from Kimberley, Durban and Maritzburg, and Johannesburg.
In the Cape peninsula, of course, there was a considerable British
population of professional and commercial men; but this population had
been so closely related by business and social ties with the
preponderant Dutch population of the Western Province that many among
them hesitated to declare themselves openly against the Dutch party.
All who were members of the Progressive party, from the time of the
Graaf Reinet speech, had given unswerving support to Lord Milner’s
policy; but the strength of the influence created by years of
alternate political co-operation with the Bond leaders may be gathered
from the fact that even so staunch a supporter of the British
connection as Sir James (then Mr.) Rose Innes did not publicly declare
his adhesion to the intervention policy until after the failure of the
Bloemfontein Conference. Moreover, the increasing political solidarity
of the British population in the Cape Colony augmented the bitterness
with which the few English politicians, who had remained in alliance
with the Dutch party, regarded the man whose resolution and insight
had penetrated and exposed the designs of the Bond.

It is difficult to convey any adequate impression of the atmosphere of
suspicion and intrigue by which Lord Milner was surrounded. The Dutch
(p. 272) party was in the ascendant in the Colony. The Cape Civil
Service was tainted throughout with disaffection. Even the personnel
of the Government offices at Capetown, although it contained many
excellent and loyal men, included also many who were disaffected or
lukewarm. It is characteristic of the situation that during the most
critical period of the negotiations with the Transvaal, the
ministerial organ, The South African News, permitted itself to
indulge, where Lord Milner, was concerned, not only in the bitterest
criticisms but in outspoken personal abuse. To have abused the
representative of the Sovereign in a British colony of which one-half
of the population was seething with sedition, while a part had been
actually armed for rebellion by the secret emissaries of a state with
which Great Britain was on the verge of war, is an act which admits of
only one interpretation. Lord Milner was to be got rid of at all
costs; for the policy which The South African News was intended to
promote was that not of Great Britain, but of the Transvaal. The paper
was directly inspired—it is indeed not unlikely that the articles
themselves were written—by some of the members of the Ministry, Lord
Milner’s “constitutional advisers,” whom throughout he himself treated
with the respect to which their position entitled them.

But nothing, perhaps, shows more vividly how extraordinary was the
position in which Lord Milner found himself than the fact, which we
(p. 273) have already noted, that the passage of the large
consignment of 500 Mauser rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges for the Free
State, to which the Prime Minister’s attention was “drawn specially,
because it was large,” on July 15th, was not made known to him, the
Governor of the Cape Colony, until August 9th, and then only by
accident.[157] There is only one explanation of this remarkable
incident: the interests of the Dutch party were different from those
of the British Government. The Cape Colony was only in name a British
colony. Under the guise of constitutional forms it had attained
independence—virtual, though not nominal. If Lord Milner had
contracted the habit of Biblical quotation from the Afrikander
leaders, he might well have quoted the words of the psalmist: “Many
bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me
round.”[158] Even the approaches to Government House were watched by
spies in President Krüger’s pay, who carefully noted all who came and
went. Members of the Uitlander community were the special subjects of
this system of espionage.

“When on a visit to Capetown,” writes Sir Percy FitzPatrick, “I
called several times upon the High Commissioner, and learning, by
private advice, that my movements were being reported in detail
through the Secret Service Department, I informed Sir Alfred
Milner of the fact. Sir Alfred admitted that the idea of secret
agents in British territory (p. 274) and spies round or in
Government House was not pleasant, but expressed the hope that
those things should not deter those who wished to call on him, as
he was there as the representative of Her Majesty for the benefit
of British subjects, and very desirous of ascertaining for
himself the facts of the case.”[159]

The Afrikander leaders in the Cape never identified themselves with
the British cause. To them the Salisbury Cabinet was a “team most
unjustly disposed towards us”; a team, moreover, which they earnestly,
and not without reason, hoped might be replaced by a Liberal
Government that would allow them undisturbed to carry forward their
plans to full fruition. The motive of their “mediation,” such as it
was, was political expediency. It was not from any belief in the
justice of the British claims that they endeavoured to persuade the
republican nationalists to give way; still less from any feeling that
England’s cause was their cause. When, at length, they became really
earnest in pressing President Krüger to grant a “colourable” measure
of franchise reform—to use Mr. Merriman’s adjective—it was for their
own sake, and not for England’s, that they worked. This motive runs
through the whole of their correspondence; but it emerges more frankly
in the urgent messages sent during the three days (September 12th to
15th) in which the Transvaal reply to the British despatch of
(p. 275) September 8th was being prepared. “Mind,” telegraphs Mr.
Hofmeyr to Mr. Fischer on September 13th, “war will probably have a
fatal effect on the Transvaal, the Free State, and the Cape Afrikander
party.” And when, from Mr. Fischer’s reply, war was seen to have come
in spite of all his counsels of prudence, the racial tie asserted
itself, and he found consolation for his impotence in an expression of
his hatred against England. On September 14th Mr. Hofmeyr telegraphed
to President Steyn:

“I suppose you have seen our wires to Fischer and his replies,
which latter I deeply regret. The ‘to be or not to be’ of the
Transvaal, Free State, and our party at the Cape, depends upon
this decision. The trial is a severe one, but hardly so severe as
the outrageous despatches received by Brand from [Sir Philip]
Wodehouse and [Sir Henry] Barkly. The enemy then hoped that Brand
would refuse, as the Transvaal’s enemy now hopes Krüger will do;
but Brand conceded, and saved the State. Follow Brand’s example.
Future generations of your and my people will praise you.”

And on the 15th:

“You have no conception of my bitter feelings, which can hardly
be surpassed by that of our and your people, but the stronger my
feelings the more I am determined to repress them, when
considering questions of policy affecting the future weal or woe
of our people. May the Supreme Being help you, me, and them. Have
not seen the High Commissioner for weeks.”

The reply of the republican nationalists, addressed (p. 276) to Mr.
Hofmeyr and forwarded through President Steyn, contains a
characteristically distorted version of the course of the
negotiations. They have made concession after concession, but all in
vain. “However much we recognise and value your kind intentions,” they
write, “we regret that it is no longer possible for us to comply with
the extravagant and brutal requests of the British Government.” Thus
the Pretoria Executive declared themselves on September 15th, 1899, to
the Master of the Bond, when they were in the act of refusing Mr.
Chamberlain’s offer to accept a five years’ franchise bill, provided
it was shown by due inquiry to be a genuine measure of reform. Very
different was the account of the same transaction given by Mr. Smuts,
when, in urging the remnant of the burghers of both Republics to
surrender, he said, on May 30th, 1902, at Vereeniging, “I am one of
those who, as members of the Government of the South African Republic,
provoked the war with England“. But the passage in this document
which is most useful to the historian is that in which the republican
nationalists remind the Afrikander leaders at the Cape of the
insincerity of their original “mediation.” In dialectics Mr. Fischer,
Mr. Smuts, and Mr. Reitz are quite able to hold their own with Mr.
Hofmeyr, Dr. Te Water, and Mr. Schreiner. They have not forgotten the
Cape Prime Minister’s precipitate benediction alike of President
Krüger’s Bloemfontein scheme and of the seven years’ (p. 277)
franchise of the Volksraad proposals. They remember also how the
“Hofmeyr compromise” was proclaimed in the Bond and the ministerial
press as affording conclusive evidence of the “sweet reasonableness”
of President Krüger and his Executive. And so they remark, “We are
sorry not to be able to follow your advice; but we point out that you
yourself let it be known that we had your whole approval, if we gave
the present franchise as we were doing.”[160] Here we have the kernel
of the whole matter. A nine years’, seven years’, or a five years’
franchise was all one to the Cape Nationalists, provided only that
England was kept a little longer from claiming her position as
paramount Power in South Africa. For these men knew, or thought they
knew, that for England “a little longer” would be “too late.”

It was a greater achievement to have frustrated so subtle a
combination, directed by the astute mind of Mr. Hofmeyr—the man who
refused to allow his passions to interfere with his policy—than to
have prevented the British Government from falling a victim to the
coarse duplicity of President Krüger. Tireless effort and consummate
statesmanship alone would not have accomplished this purpose. To these
qualities Lord Milner added a personal charm, elusive, and yet
irresistible; and it was this “union of intellect with (p. 278)
fascination,” of which Lord Rosebery had spoken,[161] that enabled him
to transcend the infinite difficulty of his official relationship to
Mr. Schreiner. Even so that relationship must have broken down under
the strain of the negotiations and the war, had not Mr. Schreiner’s
complex political creed included the saving clause of allegiance to
his sovereign. When once the British troops had begun to land Mr.
Schreiner accepted the new situation. No longer merely the
parliamentary head of the Dutch party and the agent of the Bond, he
realised also his responsibility as a minister of the Crown. None the
less there were matters of the gravest concern in which, both before
and after the ultimatum, the Prime Minister used all the
constitutional means at his disposal to oppose Lord Milner. When, upon
the arrival (August 5th) of the small additions to the Cape garrison
ordered out in June, Lord Milner determined to draw the attention of
the Ministry to the exposed condition of the Colony, he found that the
Prime Minister’s views differed completely from his own. A few days
later he addressed a minute to his ministers on the subject of the
defence of Kimberley and other military questions. From this time
onwards, in almost daily battles, Mr. Schreiner resisted the plans of
local military preparation which Lord Milner deemed necessary for the
protection of the Colony. His object, as he said, was to keep the Cape
Colony out of the struggle.[162] On Friday, (p. 279) September 8th,
when in London the Cabinet Council was held at which it was decided to
send out the 10,000 troops to reinforce the South African garrison, at
Capetown Lord Milner was engaged in a long endeavour to persuade his
Prime Minister that it was necessary to do something for the defence
of Kimberley.[163] Up to the very day on which the Free State
commandos crossed the border, Mr. Schreiner relied upon the definite
pledge given him by President Steyn that the territory of the Cape
Colony would not be invaded; and not until that day was he undeceived.

“I said to the President,” he declared in the Cape Parliament a
year later,[164] “that I would not believe he would invade south
of the Orange River.[165] President Steyn’s reply was, ‘Can you
give me a guarantee that no troops will come to the border?’ Of
course, I could give no such guarantee, and I did not then
believe that, although such a guarantee could not be given, the
Free State would invade British territory with the object of
endeavouring to promote the (p. 280) establishment of one
Republic in South Africa, as the Prime Minister[166] has said.”

As the Boer invasion spread further into the Colony Mr. Schreiner
receded proportionately from his original standpoint of neutrality.
Indeed, three distinct phases in the Prime Minister’s progress can be
distinguished. In the first stage, which lasted until the actual
invasion of the Colony by the Boer commandos, he used all his
constitutional power to prevent the people of the Colony, British and
Dutch alike, from being involved in the war: and it was only after a
severe struggle that Lord Milner prevailed upon him even to call out
the Kimberley Volunteers on October 2nd, i.e., a week before the
Ultimatum. This, “the neutrality” stage, lasted up to the invasion.
After the invasion came the second stage, in which Mr. Schreiner seems
to have argued to himself in this manner: “As the Boers have invaded
this colony, I, as Prime Minister, cannot refuse that the local forces
should be called out to protect its territory.” And so on October
16th, after Vryburg had gone over to the Boers, after Kimberley had
been cut off, and the whole country from Kimberley to Orange River was
in the hands of the enemy, he consented to the issue of a proclamation
calling out 2,000 volunteers for garrison duty within the Colony.[167]
But in making this tardy concession he (p. 281) was careful to point
out to Lord Milner that the British cause would lose more than it
would gain. “I warn you,” he said in effect, “that it is not to your
advantage; because you are the weaker party. In the Cape Colony more
men will fight for the Boers than will fight for you.” The third stage
in Mr. Schreiner’s conversion was reached when, in November, 1899, the
invading Boers had advanced to the Tembuland border, in the extreme
east of the Colony. Then Mr. Schreiner allowed the natives to be
called out for the defence of their own territory. In making this
final concession the Prime Minister yielded to the logic of facts in a
matter concerning which he had previously offered a most stubborn
resistance to the Governor’s arguments.

For in the discussion of the measures urged by Lord Milner as
necessary for the protection of the Colony, the question of arming the
natives and coloured people had necessarily arisen. The Bastards in
the west and the Tembus in the east were known to be eager to defend
the Queen’s country against invasion. Mr. Schreiner declared that to
arm the natives was to do violence to the central principle upon which
the maintenance of civilisation in South Africa was based—the
principle that the black man must never be used to fight against the
white. Lord Milner did not question the validity (p. 282) of this
principle; but he maintained—and rightly, as Mr. Schreiner admitted
subsequently by his action in the case of the Tembu frontier—that it
could not be applied to the case in question. “If white men,” he said,
“will go and invade the territory of the blacks, then the blacks must
be armed to repel the invasion.”

The change which came over Mr. Schreiner’s attitude, due, no doubt,
partly to his gradual enlightenment as to the real aims of the
republican nationalists, but also to the skilful use which Lord Milner
made of that enlightenment, may be traced in the following contrasts.
Before the Boer invasion he refused to call out the local forces of
the Colony even for purposes of defence;[168] afterwards he not only
sanctioned the employment of these forces in the Colony, but allowed
them to take part in Lord Roberts’ advance upon Bloemfontein and
Pretoria. Before the invading Boers, having already possessed
themselves of the north-eastern districts of Cape Colony, began to
threaten the purely native territories to the south, he would not hear
of the natives being armed for their own protection. But when the
Boers had actually reached the borders of Tembuland he consented. In
his advice to the Cape Government, no less than in that which he gave
to the Home Government, Lord Milner was shown to be in the right. In
(p. 283) both cases he urged an effective preparation for war. In
both the measures which he advised were ultimately taken; but taken
only when they had lost all their power as a means of promoting peace,
and half of their efficacy as a contribution to the rapid and
successful prosecution of the war. In both cases Lord Milner was able,
in the face of unparalleled obstacles, to secure just the minimum
preparation for war which stood between the British Empire and
overwhelming military disaster.

We have observed the position in Great Britain, and found that the
root cause of the impotence of the Home Government was the nation’s
ignorance of South Africa. In the Cape Colony the evil was of a
different order. Lord Milner, although High Commissioner for South
Africa, had within the Colony only the strictly limited powers of a
constitutional governor. The British population were keenly alive to
the necessity for active preparations for the defence of their
country; were, indeed, indignant at the refusal of the Schreiner
Cabinet to allow the local forces to be called out: but the Dutch
party was in office, the Bond was “loyal,” Mr. Schreiner was a
minister of the Crown, and the most that the Governor could do was to
urge upon his ministers the measures upon the execution of which he
had no power to insist.

The best comment upon this strange situation is that which is afforded
by a passage in Lord Milner’s speech in the House of Lords on February
26th, 1906. Seven years have gone by, and (p. 284) the great
proconsul has returned to England. He is drawn from his much-needed
rest by a sudden danger to the country which he has kept a part of the
Empire. The Unionist Government has fallen, and a Liberal Government
has been placed in power. He is warning this Government of the danger
of a premature grant of responsible government to the Orange River
Colony.

“What is going to happen under responsible government? It is more
than probable, it is, humanly speaking, certain, that the persons
to whom I have referred will form a large majority, if not almost
the whole, of that first elected Parliament of the Orange River
Colony to which, from the first hour of its existence, the whole
legislative and executive power in that colony is to be
entrusted. I do not suggest that they will begin by doing
anything sinister. All forms will be duly observed; as why should
they not be? It will be perfectly possible for them, with the
most complete constitutional propriety, little by little to
reverse all that has been done, and gradually to get rid of the
British officials, the British teachers, the bulk of the British
settlers, and any offensive British taint which may cling to the
statute-book or the administration. I can quite understand that,
from the point of view of what are known as the pro-Boers, such a
result is eminently desirable. They thought the war was a crime,
the annexation a blunder, and they think to-day that the sooner
you can get back to the old state of things the better. I say I
quite understand that view, though I do not suppose it is shared
by His Majesty’s ministers, or, at any rate, by all of them. What
I cannot understand is how any human being, not being a pro-Boer,
can regard with equanimity the (p. 285) prospect that the very
hand which drafted the ultimatum of October, 1899,[169] may
within a year be drafting ‘Ministers’ Minutes’ for submission to
a British Governor who will have virtually no option but to obey
them. What will be the contents of those minutes, I wonder? As
time goes on it may be a proposal for dispensing with English as
an official language, or a proposal for the distribution to every
country farmer of a military rifle and so many hundred
cartridges, in view of threatened danger from the Basutos.”

So far Lord Milner had dealt with the Orange River Colony. Then he let
his thoughts range back to these months of his great ordeal.