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The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct

by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #24951 · 365,209 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle


        
Release date: March 29, 2008 [eBook #24951]

Language: English

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E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Stephen Blundell, and the Project
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Transcriber's Note:

   Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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   Obsolete spellings have been retained.





THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

Its Cause and Conduct

by

A. CONAN DOYLE

Author of 'The Great Boer War'







Published by
Smith, Elder, & Co., 15 Waterloo Place, London, S.W.

All Copies for the Colonies and India supplied by
G. Bell & Sons, London and Bombay

1902

[All rights reserved]




PREFACE


For some reason, which may be either arrogance or apathy, the British
are very slow to state their case to the world. At present the reasons
for our actions and the methods which we have used are set forth in many
Blue-books, tracts, and leaflets, but have never, so far as I know, been
collected into one small volume. In view of the persistent slanders to
which our politicians and our soldiers have been equally exposed, it
becomes a duty which we owe to our national honour to lay the facts
before the world. I wish someone more competent, and with some official
authority, had undertaken the task, which I have tried to do as best I
might from an independent standpoint.

There was never a war in history in which the right was absolutely on
one side, or in which no incidents of the campaign were open to
criticism. I do not pretend that it was so here. But I do not think that
any unprejudiced man can read the facts without acknowledging that the
British Government has done its best to avoid war, and the British Army
to wage it with humanity.

To my publisher and to myself this work has been its own reward. In this
way we hope to put the price within the reach of all, and yet leave a
profit for the vendor. Our further ambition is, however, to translate it
into all European tongues, and to send a free copy to every deputy and
every newspaper on the Continent and in America. For this work money
will be needed--a considerable sum. We propose to make an appeal to the
public for these funds. Any sums which are sent to me or to my publisher
will be devoted to this work. There cannot be too much, for the more we
get the more we shall do.

I may add that I have not burdened my pages with continual references.
My quotations are reliable and can always, if necessary, be
substantiated.

                                                       A. CONAN DOYLE.
 UNDERSHAW, HINDHEAD:
   _January, 1902._




CONTENTS


 CHAP.                                            PAGE

    I. THE BOER PEOPLE                               9

   II. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL                         23

  III. THE NEGOTIATIONS                             41

   IV. SOME POINTS EXAMINED                         61

    V. THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE                   73

   VI. THE FARM-BURNING                             84

  VII. THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS                      94

 VIII. THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN SOUTH AFRICA         107

   IX. FURTHER CHARGES AGAINST BRITISH TROOPS      123

    X. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE QUESTION              133

   XI. CONCLUSIONS                                 150




THE WAR:

ITS CAUSE AND CONDUCT




CHAPTER I

THE BOER PEOPLE


It is impossible to appreciate the South African problem and the causes
which have led up to the present war between the British Empire and the
Boer republics without some knowledge, however superficial, of the past
history of South Africa. To tell the tale one must go back to the
beginning, for there has been complete continuity of history in South
Africa, and every stage has depended upon that which has preceded it. No
one can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he
is what his past has made him.

It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith--in 1652,
to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their first lodgment at
the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been there before them, but,
repelled by the evil weather, and lured forward by rumours of gold, they
had passed the true seat of empire, and had voyaged farther, to settle
along the eastern coast. But the Dutchmen at the Cape prospered and grew
stronger in that robust climate. They did not penetrate far inland, for
they were few in number, and all they wanted was to be found close at
hand. But they built themselves houses, and they supplied the Dutch East
India Company with food and water, gradually budding off little
townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and pushing their settlements up the
long slopes which lead to that great central plateau which extends for
1,500 miles from the edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi.

For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the
gradual spreading of the Africanders over the huge expanse of veldt
which lay to the north of them. Cattle-raising became an industry, but
in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are
necessary for even small herds. Six thousand acres was the usual size,
and 5_l._ a year the rent payable to Government. The diseases which
follow the white man had in Africa, as in America and Australia, been
fatal to the natives, and an epidemic of smallpox cleared the country
for the new-comers. Farther and farther north they pushed, founding
little towns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and Swellendam, where
a Dutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale of the bare necessaries
of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered dwellings. Already the
settlers were showing that independence of control and that detachment
from Europe which has been their most prominent characteristic. Even the
mild sway of the Dutch Company had caused them to revolt. The local
rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal cataclysm which
followed the French Revolution. After twenty years, during which the
world was shaken by the Titanic struggle in the final counting up of the
game and paying of the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the
British Empire.

In all the vast collection of British States there is probably not one
the title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this. Britain
had it by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of purchase.
In 1806 troops landed, defeated the local forces, and took possession of
Cape Town. In 1814 Britain paid the large sum of six million pounds to
the Stadtholder for the transference of this and some South American
land. It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly in
that general redistribution which was going on. As a house of call upon
the way to India the place was seen to be of value, but the country
itself was looked upon as unprofitable and desert. What would
Castlereagh or Liverpool have thought could they have seen the items
which they were buying for six million pounds? The inventory would have
been a mixed one of good and of evil: nine fierce Kaffir wars, the
greatest diamond mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, two
costly and humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected even when we
fought with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africa of peace and
prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for all men.

The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones, but there
is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions. The ocean has
marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is undefined. There is no
word of the 'hinterland,' for neither the term nor the idea had then
been thought of. Had Great Britain bought those vast regions which
extended beyond the settlements? Or were the discontented Dutch at
liberty to pass onwards and found fresh nations to bar the path of the
Anglo-Celtic colonists? In that question lay the germ of all the trouble
to come. An American would realise the point at issue if he could
conceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutch
inhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westward and
established fresh communities under a new flag. Then, when the American
population overtook these western States, they would be face to face
with the problem which this country has had to solve. If they found
these new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive,
they would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with which
British statesmen have had to deal.

At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists--Dutch, French, and German--numbered some thirty thousand.
They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as numerous as
themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation between the British
and the original settlers would have seemed to be a good one, since they
were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be
distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance. Five
thousand British emigrants were landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern
borders of the colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but
steady influx of English-speaking colonists. The Government had the
historical faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was
mild, clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it might
have done very well had it been content to leave things as it found
them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic
races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long series of
complications, making up the troubled history of South Africa.

The Imperial Government has always taken an honourable and philanthropic
view of the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the
protection of the law. We hold, and rightly, that British justice, if
not blind, should at least be colour-blind. The view is irreproachable
in theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt to be irritating
when urged by a Boston moralist or a London philanthropist upon men
whose whole society has been built upon the assumption that the black is
the inferior race. Such a people like to find the higher morality for
themselves, not to have it imposed upon them by those who live under
entirely different conditions.

The British Government in South Africa has always played the unpopular
part of the friend and protector of the native servants. It was upon
this very point that the first friction appeared between the old
settlers and the new administration. A rising with bloodshed followed
the arrest of a Dutch farmer who had maltreated his slave. It was
suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment
was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget
the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold. The
making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship.
However, the thing was done, and it is typical of the enduring
resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson Raid, it
seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be hanged, the
beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at Cookhouse Drift to
Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the Dutchmen had died in
1816. Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British
Government and the Africanders.

And the separation soon became more marked. With vicarious generosity,
the English Government gave very lenient terms to the Kaffir tribes who
in 1834 had raided the border farmers. And then, finally, in this same
year there came the emancipation of the slaves throughout the British
Empire, which fanned all smouldering discontents into an active flame.

It must be confessed that on this occasion the British philanthropist
was willing to pay for what he thought was right. It was a noble
national action, and one the morality of which was in advance of its
time, that the British Parliament should vote the enormous sum of twenty
million pounds to pay compensation to the slaveholders, and so to remove
an evil with which the mother country had no immediate connection. It
was as well that the thing should have been done when it was, for had we
waited till the colonies affected had governments of their own it could
never have been done by constitutional methods. With many a grumble the
good British householder drew his purse from his fob, and paid for what
he thought to be right. If any special grace attends the virtuous action
which brings nothing but tribulation in this world, then we may hope for
it over this emancipation. We spent our money, we ruined our West Indian
colonies, and we started a disaffection in South Africa, the end of
which we have not seen.

But the details of the measure were less honourable than the principle.
It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust
itself to the new conditions. Three million pounds were ear-marked for
South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from 60_l._ to 70_l._, a
sum considerably below the current local rates. Finally, the
compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold their
claims at reduced prices to middlemen. Indignation meetings were held in
every little townlet and cattle-camp on the Karoo. The old Dutch spirit
was up--the spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion was useless.
But a vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them. The nomad
life was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons--like
those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to
Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by one they
were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women were seated
inside, the men with their long-barrelled guns walked alongside, and the
great exodus was begun. Their herds and flocks accompanied the
migration, and the children helped to round them in and drive them. One
tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok whip behind the bullocks.
He was a small item in that singular crowd, but he was of interest to
us, for his name was Paul Stephanus Kruger.

It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the sallying
forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the promised land
of Utah. The country was known and sparsely settled as far north as the
Orange River, but beyond there was a great region which had never been
penetrated save by some daring hunter or adventurous pioneer. It
chanced--if there be indeed such an element as chance in the graver
affairs of man--that a Zulu conqueror had swept over this land and left
it untenanted, save by the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest
of the human race. There were fine grazing and good soil for the
emigrants. They travelled in small detached parties, but their total
numbers were considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their
historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the colony.
Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large number made a
trysting-place at a high peak to the east of Bloemfontein, in what was
lately the Orange Free State. One party of the emigrants was cut off by
the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the great Zulu nation.

The final victory of the 'voortrekkers' cleared all the country between
the Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what have been known as
the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In the meantime another body of
the emigrants had descended into Natal, and had defeated Dingaan, the
great Chief of the Zulus.

And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies, the Boers
saw at the end of their travels the very thing which they desired
least--that which they had come so far to avoid--the flag of Great
Britain. The Boers had occupied Natal from within, but England had
previously done the same by sea, and a small colony of Englishmen had
settled at Port Natal, now known as Durban. The home Government,
however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest of
Natal by the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British colony. At
the same time they asserted the unwelcome doctrine that a British
subject could not at will throw off his allegiance, and that, go where
they might, the wandering farmers were still only the pioneers of
British colonies. To emphasise the fact three companies of soldiers were
sent in 1842 to what is now Durban--the usual Corporal's guard with
which Great Britain starts a new empire. This handful of men was waylaid
by the Boers and cut up, as their successors have been so often since.
The survivors, however, fortified themselves, and held a defensive
position--as also their successors have done so many times since--until
reinforcements arrived and the farmers dispersed. Natal from this time
onward became a British colony, and the majority of the Boers trekked
north and east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their brethren
of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.

Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that height of
philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal absolutely
impartially where his own country is a party to the quarrel. But at
least we may allow that there is a case for our adversary. Our
annexation of Natal had been by no means definite, and it was they and
not we who first broke that bloodthirsty Zulu power which threw its
shadow across the country. It was hard after such trials and such
exploits to turn their back upon the fertile land which they had
conquered, and to return to the bare pastures of the upland veldt. They
carried out of Natal a heavy sense of injury, which has helped to poison
our relations with them ever since. It was, in a way, a momentous
episode, this little skirmish of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the
heading off of the Boer from the sea and the confinement of his ambition
to the land. Had it gone the other way, a new and possibly formidable
flag would have been added to the maritime nations.

The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country between the
Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had been
recruited by new-comers from the Cape Colony until they numbered some
fifteen thousand souls. This population was scattered over a space as
large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England. Their form of government was individualistic and democratic to
the last degree compatible with any sort of cohesion. Their wars with
the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the British Government appear
to have been the only ties which held them together. They divided and
subdivided within their own borders, like a germinating egg. The
Transvaal was full of lusty little high-mettled communities, who
quarrelled among themselves as fiercely as they had done with the
authorities at the Cape. Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Potchefstroom were
on the point of turning their rifles against each other. In the south,
between the Orange River and the Vaal, there was no form of government
at all, but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos, Hottentots, and
half-breeds living in a chronic state of turbulence, recognising neither
the British authority to the south of them nor the Transvaal republics
to the north. The chaos became at last unendurable, and in 1848 a
garrison was placed in Bloemfontein and the district incorporated in the
British Empire. The emigrants made a futile resistance at Boomplaats,
and after a single defeat allowed themselves to be drawn into the
settled order of civilised rule.

At this period the Transvaal, where most of the Boers had settled,
desired a formal acknowledgment of their independence, which the British
authorities determined once and for all to give them. The great barren
country, which produced little save marksmen, had no attractions for a
Colonial Office which was bent upon the limitation of its liabilities. A
Convention was concluded between the two parties, known as the Sand
River Convention, which is one of the fixed points in South African
history. By it the British Government guaranteed to the Boer farmers the
right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves by their own
laws without any interference upon the part of the British. It
stipulated that there should be no slavery, and with that single
reservation washed its hands finally, as it imagined, of the whole
question. So the Transvaal Republic came formally into existence.

In the very year after the Sand River Convention, a second republic, the
Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate withdrawal of Great
Britain from the territory which she had for eight years occupied. The
Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and the cloud of a great
war was drifting up, visible to all men. British statesmen felt that
their commitments were very heavy in every part of the world, and the
South African annexations had always been a doubtful value and an
undoubted trouble. Against the will of a large part of the inhabitants,
whether a majority or not it is impossible to say, we withdrew our
troops as amicably as the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the new
republic was left with absolute and unfettered independence. On a
petition being presented against the withdrawal, the Home Government
actually voted 48,000_l._ to compensate those who had suffered from the
change. Whatever historical grievance the Transvaal may have against
Great Britain, we can at least, save perhaps in one matter, claim to
have a very clear conscience concerning our dealings with the Orange
Free State. Thus in 1852 and in 1854 were born those sturdy States who
have been able for a time to hold at bay the united forces of the
Empire.

In the meantime Cape Colony, in spite of these secessions, had prospered
exceedingly, and her population--British, German, and Dutch--had grown
by 1870 to over two hundred thousand souls, the Dutch still slightly
predominating. According to the liberal colonial policy of Great
Britain, the time had come to cut the cord and let the young nation
conduct its own affairs. In 1872 complete self-government was given to
it, the Governor, as the representative of the Queen, retaining a
nominal unexercised veto upon legislation. According to this system the
Dutch majority of the colony could, and did, put their own
representatives into power and run the government upon Dutch lines.
Already Dutch law had been restored, and Dutch put on the same footing
as English as the official language of the country. The extreme
liberality of such measures, and the uncompromising way in which they
have been carried out, however distasteful the legislation might seem to
English ideas, are among the chief reasons which made the illiberal
treatment of British settlers in the Transvaal so keenly resented at the
Cape. A Dutch Government was ruling the British in a British colony, at
a moment when the Boers would not give an Englishman a vote upon a
municipal council in a city which he had built himself.

For twenty-five years after the Sand River Convention the burghers of
the Transvaal Republic had pursued a strenuous and violent existence,
fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes with each other,
with an occasional fling at the little Dutch republic to the south.
Disorganisation ensued. The burghers would not pay taxes and the
treasury was empty. One fierce Kaffir tribe threatened them from the
north, and the Zulus on the east. It is an exaggeration to pretend that
British intervention saved the Boers, for no one can read their military
history without seeing that they were a match for Zulus and Sekukuni
combined. But certainly a formidable invasion was pending, and the
scattered farmhouses were as open to the Kaffirs as our farmers'
homesteads were in the American colonies when the Indians were on the
war-path. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British Commissioner, after an
inquiry of three months, solved all questions by the formal annexation
of the country. The fact that he took possession of it with a force of
some twenty-five men showed the honesty of his belief that no armed
resistance was to be feared. This, then, in 1877, was a complete
reversal of the Sand River Convention and the opening of a new chapter
in the history of South Africa.

There did not appear to be any strong feeling at the time against the
annexation. The people were depressed with their troubles and weary of
contention. Burgers, the President, put in a formal protest, and took up
his abode in Cape Colony, where he had a pension from the British
Government. A memorial against the measure received the signatures of a
majority of the Boer inhabitants, but there was a fair minority who took
the other view. Kruger himself accepted a paid office under Government.
There was every sign that the people, if judiciously handled, would
settle down under the British flag.

But the Empire has always had poor luck in South Africa, and never worse
than on that occasion. Through no bad faith, but simply through
preoccupation and delay, the promises made were not instantly fulfilled.
If the Transvaalers had waited, they would have had their Volksraad and
all that they wanted. But the British Government had some other local
matters to set right, the rooting out of Sekukuni and the breaking of
the Zulus, before they would fulfil their pledges. The delay was keenly
resented. And we were unfortunate in our choice of Governor. The
burghers are a homely folk, and they like an occasional cup of coffee
with the anxious man who tries to rule them. The 300_l._ a year of
coffee-money allowed by the Transvaal to its President is by no means a
mere form. A wise administrator would fall into the social and
democratic habits of the people. Sir Theophilus Shepstone did so. Sir
Owen Lanyon did not. There was no Volksraad and no coffee, and the
popular discontent grew rapidly. In three years the British had broken
up the two savage hordes which had been threatening the land. The
finances, too, had been restored. The reasons which had made so many
burghers favour the annexation were weakened by the very power which had
every interest in preserving them.

It cannot be too often pointed out that in this annexation, the
starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however mistaken she may
have been, had no possible selfish interest in view. There were no Rand
mines in those days, nor was there anything in the country to tempt the
most covetous. An empty treasury and two expensive native wars were the
reversion which we took over. It was honestly considered that the
country was in too distracted a state to govern itself, and had, by its
weakness, become a scandal and a danger to its neighbours and to itself.
There was nothing sordid in the British action, though it may have been
premature and injudicious. There is some reason to think that if it had
been delayed it would eventually have been done on the petition of the
majority of the inhabitants.

In December 1880 the Boers rose. Every farmhouse sent out its riflemen,
and the trysting-place was the outside of the nearest British fort. All
through the country small detachments were surrounded and besieged by
the farmers. Standerton, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Lydenburg,
Wakkerstroom, Rustenburg, and Marabastad were all invested and all held
out until the end of the war. In the open country the troops were less
fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a small British force was taken by
surprise and shot down without harm to their antagonists. The surgeon
who treated them has left it on record that the average number of wounds
was five per man. At Laing's Nek an inferior force of British
endeavoured to rush a hill which was held by Boer riflemen. Half of the
men were killed and wounded. Ingogo may be called a drawn battle, though
the British loss was more heavy than that of the enemy. Finally came the
defeat of Majuba Hill, where 400 infantry upon a mountain were defeated
and driven off by a swarm of sharpshooters who advanced under the cover
of boulders. Of all these actions there was not one which was more than
a skirmish, and had they been followed by a final British victory they
would now be hardly remembered. It is the fact that they were skirmishes
which succeeded in their object which has given them an importance which
is exaggerated.

The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the
Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous
or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is hard for the big man to
draw away from the small before blows are struck, but when the big man
has been knocked down three times it is harder still. An overwhelming
British force was in the field, and the General declared that he held
the enemy in the hollow of his hand. British military calculations have
been falsified before now by these farmers, and it may be that the task
of Wood and Roberts would have been harder than they imagined; but on
paper, at least, it looked as if the enemy could be crushed without
difficulty. So the public thought, and yet they consented to the
upraised sword being stayed. With them, as apart from the politicians,
the motive was undoubtedly a moral and Christian one. They considered
that the annexation of the Transvaal had evidently been an injustice,
that the farmers had a right to the freedom for which they fought, and
that it was an unworthy thing for a great nation to continue an unjust
war for the sake of a military revenge. Such was the motive of the
British public when it acquiesced in the action of the Government. It
was the height of idealism, and the result has not been such as to
encourage its repetition.

An armistice was concluded on March 5, 1881, which led up to a peace on
the 23rd of the same month. The Government, after yielding to force
what it had repeatedly refused to friendly representations, made a
clumsy compromise in their settlement. A policy of idealism and
Christian morality should have been thorough if it were to be tried at
all. It was obvious that if the annexation were unjust, then the
Transvaal should have reverted to the condition in which it was before
the annexation, as defined by the Sand River Convention. But the
Government for some reason would not go so far as this. They niggled and
quibbled and bargained until the State was left as a curious hybrid
thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which was part
of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office, and
included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns of the
'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague suzerainty,
the limits of which no one has ever been able to define. Altogether, in
its provisions and in its omissions, the Convention of Pretoria appears
to prove that our political affairs were as badly conducted as our
military in this unfortunate year of 1881.

It was evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an
agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and indeed
the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation was on foot
for its revision. The Boers considered, and with justice, that if they
were to be left as undisputed victors in the war then they should have
the full fruits of victory. On the other hand, the English-speaking
colonies had their allegiance tested to the uttermost. The proud
Anglo-Celtic stock is not accustomed to be humbled, and yet they found
themselves through the action of the home Government converted into
members of a beaten race. It was very well for the citizen of London to
console his wounded pride by the thought that he had done a magnanimous
action, but it was different with the British colonist of Durban or Cape
Town who, by no act of his own, and without any voice in the settlement,
found himself humiliated before his Dutch neighbour. An ugly feeling of
resentment was left behind, which might perhaps have passed away had the
Transvaal accepted the settlement in the spirit in which it was meant,
but which grew more and more dangerous, as during eighteen years our
people saw, or thought that they saw, that one concession led always to
a fresh demand, and that the Dutch republics aimed not merely at
equality, but at dominance in South Africa. Professor Bryce, a friendly
critic, after a personal examination of the country and the question,
has left it upon record that the Boers saw neither generosity nor
humanity in our conduct, but only fear. An outspoken race, they conveyed
their feelings to their neighbours. Can it be wondered at that South
Africa has been in a ferment ever since, and that the British Africander
has yearned with an intensity of feeling unknown in England for the hour
of revenge?

The Government of the Transvaal after the war was left in the hands of a
triumvirate, but after one year Kruger became President, an office which
he continued to hold for eighteen years. His career as ruler vindicates
the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the American
Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this office.
Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an autocrat.
The old President has said himself, in his homely but shrewd way, that
when one gets a good ox to lead the team it is a pity to change him. If
a good ox, however, is left to choose his own direction without
guidance, he may draw his wagon into trouble.

During three years the little State showed signs of a tumultuous
activity. Considering that it was larger than France and that the
population could not have been more than fifty thousand, one would have
thought that they might have found room without any inconvenient
crowding. But the burghers passed beyond their borders in every
direction. The President cried aloud that he had been shut up in a
kraal, and he proceeded to find ways out of it. A great trek was
projected for the north, but fortunately it miscarried. To the east they
raided Zululand, and succeeded, in defiance of the British settlement of
that country, in tearing away one-third of it and adding it to the
Transvaal. To the west, with no regard to the three-year-old treaty,
they invaded Bechuanaland, and set up the two new republics of Goshen
and Stellaland. So outrageous were these proceedings that Great Britain
was forced to fit out in 1884 a new expedition under Sir Charles Warren
for the purpose of turning these freebooters out of the country. It may
be asked, Why should these men be called freebooters if the founders of
Rhodesia were pioneers? The answer is that the Transvaal was limited by
treaty to certain boundaries which these men transgressed, while no
pledges were broken when the British power expanded to the north. The
upshot of these trespasses was the scene upon which every drama of South
Africa rings down. Once more the purse was drawn from the pocket of the
unhappy taxpayer, and a million or so was paid out to defray the
expenses of the police force necessary to keep these treaty-breakers in
order. Let this be borne in mind when we assess the moral and material
damage done to the Transvaal by the Jameson Raid.

In 1884 a deputation from the Transvaal visited England, and at their
solicitation the clumsy Treaty of Pretoria was altered into the still
more clumsy Convention of London. The changes in the provisions were all
in favour of the Boers, and a second successful war could hardly have
given them more than Lord Derby handed them in time of peace. Their
style was altered from the Transvaal to the South African Republic, a
change which was ominously suggestive of expansion in the future. The
control of Great Britain over their foreign policy was also relaxed,
though a power of veto was retained. But the most important thing of
all, and the fruitful cause of future trouble, lay in an omission. A
suzerainty is a vague term, but in politics, as in theology, the more
nebulous a thing is the more does it excite the imagination and the
passions of men. This suzerainty was declared in the preamble of the
first treaty, and no mention of it was made in the second. Was it
thereby abrogated or was it not? The British contention is that only the
articles were changed, and that the preamble continued to hold good for
both treaties. They point out that not only the suzerainty, but also the
independence, of the Transvaal is proclaimed in that preamble, and that
if one lapses the other must do so also. On the other hand, the Boers
point to the fact that there is actually a preamble to the second
convention, which would seem, therefore, to take the place of the first.
As a matter of fact, the discussion is a barren one, since both parties
agree that Great Britain retained certain rights over the making of
treaties by the Republic, which rights place her in a different position
to an entirely independent state. Whether this difference amounts to a
suzerainty or not is a subject for the academic discussion of
international jurists. What is of importance is the fact, not the word.




CHAPTER II

THE CAUSE OF QUARREL


Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it was only in
1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie some thirty miles
south of the capital are of a very extraordinary and valuable nature.
The proportion of gold in the quartz is not particularly high, nor are
the veins of a remarkable thickness, but the peculiarity of the Rand
mines lies in the fact that throughout this 'banket' formation the metal
is so uniformly distributed that the enterprise can claim a certainty
which is not usually associated with the industry. It is quarrying
rather than mining. Add to this that the reefs which were originally
worked as outcrops have now been traced to enormous depths, and present
the same features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of
the value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of pounds.

Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much
the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept away the
rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly-opened
goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual
adventurer. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical experts, and
the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these were the
Uitlanders, drawn from all races under the sun, but with the
Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers were American, the
best miners were Cornish, the best managers were English, the money to
run the mines was largely subscribed in England. As time went on,
however, the German and French interests became more extensive, until
their joint holdings are now probably as heavy as those of the British.
Soon the population of the mining centres became about as numerous as
that of the whole Boer community, and consisted mainly of men in the
prime of life--men, too, of exceptional intelligence and energy.

The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the Dutch of
New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and highly
unprogressive State. To carry out the analogy we will now suppose that
that State was California, that the gold of that State attracted a large
inrush of American citizens, that these citizens were heavily taxed and
badly used, and that they deafened Washington with their outcry about
their injuries. That would be a fair parallel to the relations between
the Transvaal, the Uitlanders, and the British Government.

That these Uitlanders had very real and pressing grievances no one could
possibly deny. To recount them all would be a formidable task, for their
whole lives were darkened by injustice. There was not a wrong which had
driven the Boer from Cape Colony which he did not now practise himself
upon others--and a wrong may be excusable in 1835 which is monstrous in
1895. The primitive virtue which had characterised the farmers broke
down in the face of temptation. The country Boers were little affected,
some of them not at all, but the Pretoria Government became a most
corrupt oligarchy, venal and incompetent to the last degree. Officials
and imported Hollanders handled the stream of gold which came in from
the mines, while the unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the
taxation was fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts
when he endeavoured to win the franchise by which he might peaceably set
right the wrongs from which he suffered. He was not an unreasonable
person. On the contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness, as
capital is likely to be when it is surrounded by rifles. But his
situation was intolerable, and after successive attempts at peaceful
agitation, and numerous humble petitions to the Volksraad, he began at
last to realise that he would never obtain redress unless he could find
some way of winning it for himself.

Without attempting to enumerate all the wrongs which embittered the
Uitlanders, the more serious of them may be summed up in this way:

1. That they were heavily taxed and provided about seven-eighths of the
revenue of the country. The revenue of the South African Republic--which
had been 154,000_l._ in 1886, when the goldfields were opened--had
grown in 1899 to four million pounds, and the country through the
industry of the new-comers had changed from one of the poorest to the
richest in the whole world (per head of population).

2. That in spite of this prosperity which they had brought, they were
left without a vote, and could by no means influence the disposal of the
great sums which they were providing. Such a case of taxation without
representation has never been known.

3. That they had no voice in the choice or payment of officials. Men of
the worst private character might be placed with complete authority over
valuable interests. The total official salaries had risen in 1899 to a
sum sufficient to pay 40_l._ per head to the entire male Boer
population.

4. That they had no control over education. Mr. John Robinson, the
Director-General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has reckoned
the sum spent on the Uitlander schools as 650_l._ out of 63,000_l._
allotted for education, making 1_s._ 10_d._ per head per annum on
Uitlander children, and 8_l._ 6_s._ per head on Boer children--the
Uitlander, as always, paying seven-eighths of the original sum.

5. No power of municipal government. Watercarts instead of pipes, filthy
buckets instead of drains, a corrupt and violent police, a high
death-rate in what should be a health resort--all this in a city which
they had built themselves.

6. Despotic government in the matter of the Press and of the right of
public meeting.

7. Disability from service upon a jury.

8. Continual harassing of the mining interest by vexatious legislation.
Under this head come many grievances, some special to the mines and some
affecting all Uitlanders. The dynamite monopoly, by which the miners had
to pay 600,000_l._ extra per annum in order to get a worse quality of
dynamite; the liquor laws, by which the Kaffirs were allowed to be
habitually drunk; the incompetence and extortions of the State-owned
railway; the granting of concessions for numerous articles of ordinary
consumption to individuals, by which high prices were maintained; the
surrounding of Johannesburg by tolls from which the town had no
profit--these were among the economical grievances, some large, some
petty, which ramified through every transaction of life. These are the
wrongs which Mr. W. T. Stead has described as 'the twopenny-halfpenny
grievances of a handful of Englishmen.'

The manner in which the blood was sucked from the Uitlanders, and the
rapid spread of wealth among the Boer officials, may be gathered from
the list of the salaries of the State servants from the opening of the
mines to the outbreak of the war:

                       L
    1886             51,831
    1887             99,083
    1888            164,466
    1889            249,641
    1890            324,520
    1891            332,888
    1892            323,608
    1893            361,275
    1894            419,775
    1895            570,047
    1896            813,029
    1897            996,959
    1898          1,080,382
    1899          1,216,394

which shows, as Mr. FitzPatrick has pointed out, that the salary list
had become twenty-four times what it was when the Uitlanders arrived,
and five times as much as the total revenue was then.

But outside and beyond all the definite wrongs from which they suffered,
there was a constant irritation to freeborn and progressive men,
accustomed to liberal institutions, that they should be despotically
ruled by a body of men some of whom were ignorant bigots, some of them
buffoons, and nearly all of them openly and shamelessly corrupt. Out of
twenty-five members of the First Volksraad twenty-one were, in the case
of the Selati Railway Company, publicly and circumstantially accused of
bribery, with full details of the bribes received, their date, and who
paid them. The black-list includes the present vice-president, Schalk
Burger; the vice-president of that date; Eloff, the son-in-law of
Kruger; and the secretary of the Volksraad. Apparently every man of the
executive and the legislature had his price.

A corrupt assembly is an evil master, but when it is narrow-minded and
bigoted as well, it becomes indeed intolerable. The following tit-bits
from the debates in the two Raads show the intelligence and spirit of
the men who were ruling over one of the most progressive communities in
the world:

'Pillar-boxes in Pretoria were opposed on the grounds that they were
extravagant and effeminate. Deputy Taljaard said that he could not see
why people wanted to be always writing letters; he wrote none himself.
In the days of his youth he had written a letter and had not been afraid
to travel fifty miles and more on horseback and by wagon to post it--and
now people complained if they had to go one mile.'

A debate on the possibility of decreasing the plague of locusts led to
the following enlightened discussion:

'_July 21._--Mr. Roos said locusts were a plague, as in the days of King
Pharaoh, sent by God, and the country would assuredly be loaded with
shame and obloquy if it tried to raise its hand against the mighty hand
of the Almighty.

'Messrs. Declerq and Steenkamp spoke in the same strain, quoting largely
from the Scriptures.

'The Chairman related a true story of a man whose farm was always spared
by the locusts, until one day he caused some to be killed. His farm was
then devastated.

'Mr. Stoop conjured the members not to constitute themselves terrestrial
gods and oppose the Almighty.

'Mr. Lucas Meyer raised a storm by ridiculing the arguments of the
former speakers, and comparing the locusts to beasts of prey which they
destroyed.

'Mr. Labuschagne was violent. He said the locusts were quite different
from beasts of prey. They were a special plague sent by God for their
sinfulness.'

In a further debate:

'Mr. Jan de Beer complained of the lack of uniformity in neckties. Some
wore a Tom Thumb variety, and others wore scarves. This was a state of
things to be deplored, and he considered that the Raad should put its
foot down and define the size and shape of neckties.'

The following note of a debate gives some idea of how far the
legislators were qualified to deal with commercial questions:

'_May 8._--On the application of the Sheba G. M. Co. for permission to
erect an aerial tram from the mine to the mill,

'Mr. Grobelaar asked whether an aerial tram was a balloon or whether it
could fly through the air.

'The only objection that the Chairman had to urge against granting the
tram was that the Company had an English name, and that with so many
Dutch ones available.

'Mr. Taljaard objected to the word "participeeren" (participate) as not
being Dutch, and to him unintelligible: "I can't believe the word is
Dutch; why have I never come across it in the Bible if it is?"

'_June 18._--On the application for a concession to treat tailings,

'Mr. Taljaard wished to know if the words "pyrites" and "concentrates"
could not be translated into the Dutch language. He could not understand
what it meant. He had gone to night-school as long as he had been in
Pretoria, and even now he could not explain everything to his burghers.
He thought it a shame that big hills should be made on ground under
which there might be rich reefs, and which in future might be required
for a market or outspan. He would support the recommendation on
condition that the name of the quartz should be translated into Dutch,
as there might be more in this than some of them imagined.'

Such debates as these may be amusing at a distance, but they are less
entertaining when they come from an autocrat who has complete power over
the conditions of your life.

From the fact that they were a community extremely preoccupied by their
own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent
politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government of
the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own industry
and of their own daily lives more endurable. How far there was need of
such an interference may be judged by any fair-minded man who reads the
list of their complaints. A superficial view may recognise the Boers as
the champions of liberty, but a deeper insight must see that they (as
represented by their elected rulers) have in truth stood for all that
history has shown to be odious in the form of exclusiveness and
oppression. Their conception of liberty has been a narrow and selfish
one, and they have consistently inflicted upon others far heavier wrongs
than those against which they had themselves rebelled.

As the mines increased in importance and the miners in numbers, it was
found that these political disabilities affected some of that
cosmopolitan crowd far more than others, in proportion to the amount of
freedom to which their home institutions had made them accustomed. The
Continental Uitlanders were more patient of that which was unendurable
to the American and the Briton. The Americans, however, were in so great
a minority that it was upon the British that the brunt of the struggle
for freedom fell. Apart from the fact that the British were more
numerous than all the other Uitlanders combined, there were special
reasons why they should feel their humiliating position more than the
members of any other race. In the first place, many of the British were
British South Africans, who knew that in the neighbouring countries
which gave them birth the most liberal possible institutions had been
given to the kinsmen of these very Boers who were refusing them the
management of their own drains and water-supply. And again, every Briton
knew that Great Britain claimed to be the paramount Power in South
Africa, and so he felt as if his own land, to which he might have looked
for protection, was conniving at and acquiescing in his ill-treatment.
As citizens of the paramount Power, it was peculiarly galling that they
should be held in political subjection. The British, therefore, were the
most persistent and energetic of the agitators.

But it is a poor cause which cannot bear to fairly state and honestly
consider the case of its opponents. The Boers had made, as has been
briefly shown, great efforts to establish a country of their own. They
had travelled far, worked hard, and fought bravely. After all their
efforts they were fated to see an influx of strangers into their
country, some of them men of questionable character, who threatened to
outnumber the original inhabitants. If the franchise were granted to
these, there could be no doubt that, though at first the Boers might
control a majority of the votes, it was only a question of time before
the new-comers would dominate the Raad and elect their own President,
who might adopt a policy abhorrent to the original owners of the land.
Were the Boers to lose by the ballot-box the victory which they had won
by their rifles? Was it fair to expect it? These new-comers came for
gold. They got their gold. Their companies paid a hundred per cent. Was
not that enough to satisfy them? If they did not like the country, why
did they not leave it? No one compelled them to stay there. But if they
stayed, let them be thankful that they were tolerated at all, and not
presume to interfere with the laws of those by whose courtesy they were
allowed to enter the country.

That is a fair statement of the Boer position, and at first sight an
impartial man might say that there was a good deal to say for it; but a
closer examination would show that, though it might be tenable in
theory, it is unjust and impossible in practice.

In the present crowded state of the world a policy of Thibet may be
carried out in some obscure corner, but it cannot be done in a great
tract of country which lies right across the main line of industrial
progress. The position is too absolutely artificial. A handful of people
by the right of conquest take possession of an enormous country over
which they are dotted at such intervals that it is their boast that one
farmhouse cannot see the smoke of another, and yet, though their numbers
are so disproportionate to the area which they cover, they refuse to
admit any other people upon equal terms, but claim to be a privileged
class who shall dominate the new-comers completely. They are outnumbered
in their own land by immigrants who are far more highly educated and
progressive, and yet they hold them down in a way which exists nowhere
else upon earth. What is their right? The right of conquest. Then the
same right may be justly invoked to reverse so intolerable a situation.
This they would themselves acknowledge. 'Come on and fight! Come on!'
cried a member of the Volksraad when the franchise petition of the
Uitlanders was presented. 'Protest! Protest! What is the good of
protesting?' said Kruger to Mr. W. Y. Campbell; 'you have not got the
guns, I have.' There was always the final court of appeal. Judge Creusot
and Judge Mauser were always behind the President.

Again, the argument of the Boers would be more valid had they received
no benefit from these immigrants. If they had ignored them they might
fairly have stated that they did not desire their presence. But even
while they protested they grew rich at the Uitlanders' expense. They
could not have it both ways. It would be consistent to discourage him
and not profit by him, or to make him comfortable and build the State
upon his money; but to ill-treat him and at the same time grow strong by
his taxation must surely be an injustice.

And again, the whole argument is based upon the narrow racial
supposition that every naturalised citizen not of Boer extraction must
necessarily be unpatriotic. This is not borne out by the examples of
history. The new-comer soon becomes as proud of his country and as
jealous of her liberty as the old. Had President Kruger given the
franchise generously to the Uitlander, his pyramid would have been firm
upon its base and not balanced upon its apex. It is true that the
corrupt oligarchy would have vanished, and the spirit of a broader, more
tolerant freedom influenced the counsels of the State. But the republic
would have become stronger and more permanent with a population who, if
they differed in details, were united in essentials. Whether such a
solution would have been to the advantage of British interests in South
Africa is quite another question. In more ways than one President Kruger
has been a good friend to the Empire.

At the time of the Convention of Pretoria (1881) the rights of
burghership might be obtained by one year's residence. In 1882 it was
raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both in Great
Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it is safe to say
that there would never have been either an Uitlander question or a war.
Grievances would have been righted from the inside without external
interference.

In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the franchise was
raised so as to be only attainable by those who had lived fourteen years
in the country. The Uitlanders, who were increasing rapidly in numbers
and were suffering from the formidable list of grievances already
enumerated, perceived that their wrongs were so numerous that it was
hopeless to have them set right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the
leverage of the franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which
weighed them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000 Uitlanders, couched in
most respectful terms, was submitted to the Raad, but met with
contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this failure, the National
Reform Union, an association which was not one of capitalists, came back
to the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition which was signed by
35,000 adult male Uitlanders, as great a number probably as the total
Boer male population of the country. A small liberal body in the Raad
supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to obtain some justice
for the new-comers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece of this select band.
'They own half the soil, they pay at least three-quarters of the taxes,'
said he. 'They are men who in capital, energy, and education are at
least our equals. What will become of us or our children on that day
when we may find ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a
single friend among the other nineteen, among those who will then tell
us that they wished to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made
them strangers to the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal sentiments
were combated by members who asserted that the signatures could not
belong to law-abiding citizens, since they were actually agitating
against the law of the franchise, and others whose intolerance was
expressed by the defiance of the member already quoted, who challenged
the Uitlanders to come out and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and
racial hatred won the day. The memorial was rejected by sixteen votes to
eight, and the franchise law was, on the initiative of the President,
actually made more stringent than ever, being framed in such a way that
during the fourteen years of probation the applicant should give up his
previous nationality, so that for that period he would belong to no
country at all. No hopes were held out that any possible attitude upon
the part of the Uitlanders would soften the determination of the
President and his burghers. One who remonstrated was led outside the
State buildings by the President, who pointed up at the national flag.
'You see that flag?' said he. 'If I grant the franchise, I may as well
pull it down.' His animosity against the immigrants was bitter.
'Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers, new-comers, and others,' is the
conciliatory opening of one of his public addresses. Though Johannesburg
is only thirty-two miles from Pretoria, and though the State of which he
was the head depended for its revenue upon the goldfields, he paid it
only three visits in nine years.

This settled animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued
with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one
which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned
the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a
liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had
demanded admission into the twelve tribes. He mistook an agitation
against the exclusive policy of the State for one against the existence
of the State itself. A wide franchise would have made his republic
firm-based and permanent. It was a minority of the Uitlanders who had
any desire to come into the British system. They were a cosmopolitan
crowd, only united by the bond of a common injustice. The majority of
the British immigrants had no desire to subvert the State. But when
every other method had failed, and their petition for the rights of
freemen had been flung back at them, it was natural that their eyes
should turn to that flag which waved to the north, the west, and the
south of them--the flag which means purity of government with equal
rights and equal duties for all men. Constitutional agitation was laid
aside, arms were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an organised
rising.

It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain night,
that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the rifles and
ammunition, used to arm the Uitlanders. It was a feasible device, though
it must seem to us, who have had such an experience of the military
virtues of the burghers, a very desperate one. But it is conceivable
that the rebels might have held Johannesburg until the universal
sympathy which their cause excited throughout South Africa would have
caused Great Britain to intervene. Unfortunately they had complicated
matters by asking for outside help. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was Premier of the
Cape, a man of immense energy, and one who had rendered great services
to the empire. The motives of his action are obscure--certainly, we may
say that they were not sordid, for he has always been a man whose
thoughts were large and whose habits were simple. But whatever they may
have been--whether an ill-regulated desire to consolidate South Africa
under British rule, or a burning sympathy with the Uitlanders in their
fight against injustice--it is certain that he allowed his lieutenant,
Dr. Jameson, to assemble the mounted police of the Chartered Company, of
which Rhodes was founder and director, for the purpose of co-operating
with the rebels at Johannesburg. Moreover, when the revolt at
Johannesburg was postponed, on account of a disagreement as to which
flag they were to rise under, it appears that Jameson (with or without
the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading
the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had
taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and two field-guns made up the
forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal
border upon December 29, 1895. On January 2 they were surrounded by the
Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many of
their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses,
they were compelled to lay down their arms. Six burghers lost their
lives in the skirmish.

Determined attempts have been made to connect the British Government
with this fiasco, and to pretend that the Colonial Secretary and other
statesmen were cognisant of it. Such an impression has been fostered by
the apparent reluctance of the Commission of Inquiry to push their
researches to the uttermost. It is much to be regretted that every
possible telegram and letter should not have been called for upon that
occasion; but the idea that this was not done for fear that Mr.
Chamberlain and the British Government would be implicated, becomes
absurd in the presence of the fact that the Commission included among
its members Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir William Harcourt. Is it
conceivable that these gentlemen held their hands for fear of damaging
the Government, or that Mr. Chamberlain could afterwards have the
effrontery to publicly and solemnly deny all knowledge of the business
in the presence of gentlemen who had connived at the suppression of the
proofs that he _did_ know? Such a supposition is ridiculous, and yet it
is involved in the theory that the Commission refrained from pushing
their examination because they were afraid of showing their country to
have been in the wrong.

Again, even the most embittered enemy of Mr. Chamberlain must admit that
he is a clear-headed man, a man of resolution, and a man with some sense
of proportion as to the means which should be used for an end. Is such a
man, knowing the military record of the burghers, the sort of man to
connive at the invasion of their country by 500 policemen and two guns?
Would he be likely, even if he approved of the general aim, to sanction
such a harebrained piece of folly? And, having sanctioned it, would he
be so weak of purpose as to take energetic steps, the instant that he
heard of the invasion, to undo that which he is supposed himself to have
done, and to cause the failure of his own scheme? Why should he on such
a supposition send energetic messages to Johannesburg forbidding the
British to co-operate with the raiders? The whole accusation is so
absurd that it is only the mania of party spite or of national hatred
which could induce anyone to believe it.

Again, supposing for an instant that the British Government knew
anything about the coming raid, what is the first and most obvious thing
which they would have done? Whether Jameson got safely to Johannesburg
or not there was evidently a probability of a great race-struggle in
South Africa. Would they not then, on some pretext or another, have
increased the strength of the British force in the country, which was
so weak that it was powerless to influence the course of events? It is
certain that this is so. But nothing of the kind was done.

Mr. Chamberlain's own denial is clear and emphatic:

'I desire to say in the most explicit manner that I had not then, and
that I never had, any knowledge, or until, I think it was the day before
the actual raid took place, the slightest suspicion of anything in the
nature of a hostile or armed invasion of the Transvaal.'--(British South
Africa Committee, 1897. Q. 6223.)

The Earl of Selborne, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, was no
less explicit:

'Neither then nor at any subsequent period prior to the raid did we know
of what is now called "Jameson's plan," nor that the revolution at
Johannesburg was being largely controlled and financed from Cape Colony
and Rhodesia.... Sir Hercules Robinson had no suspicion of what was
impending, nor apparently President Kruger, nor Mr. Hofmeyr, nor any
public man in South Africa, except those who were preparing the plan. At
any rate the fact remains that from no quarter did the Colonial Office
receive any warning. I submit, therefore, it would have been a most
extraordinary thing if any suspicion had occurred to us.'

The finding of the Committee--a Committee composed of men of all
parties, some of whom, as we know, were yearning 'to give Joe a
fall'--was unanimous in condemning the raid and equally unanimous in
exonerating the Government from any knowledge of it. Their Report said:

'Your Committee fully accept the statements of the Secretary of State
for the Colonies, and of the Under-Secretary, and entirely exonerate the
officials of the Colonial Office of having been in any sense cognisant
of the plans which led up to the incursion of Dr. Jameson's force into
the South African Republic....

'Neither the Secretary of State for the Colonies, nor any of the
officials of the Colonial Office received any information which made
them, or should have made them, or any of them, aware of the plot during
its development.'

And yet to this day it is one of the articles of faith of a few
crack-brained fanatics in this country, and of many ill-informed and
prejudiced editors upon the Continent, that the British Government was
responsible for the raid.

The Uitlanders have been severely criticised for not having sent out a
force to help Jameson in his difficulties, but it is impossible to see
how they could have acted in any other manner. They had done all they
could to prevent Jameson coming to their relief, and now it was rather
unreasonable to suppose that they should relieve their reliever. Indeed,
they had an entirely exaggerated idea of the strength of the force which
he was bringing, and received the news of his capture with incredulity.
When it became confirmed they rose, but in a half-hearted fashion which
was not due to want of courage, but to the difficulties of their
position. On the one hand the British Government disowned Jameson
entirely, and did all it could to discourage the rising; on the other,
the President had the raiders in his keeping at Pretoria, and let it be
understood that their fate depended upon the behaviour of the
Uitlanders. They were led to believe that Jameson would be shot unless
they laid down their arms, though, as a matter of fact, Jameson and his
people had surrendered upon a promise of quarter. So skilfully did
Kruger use his hostages that he succeeded, with the help of the British
Commissioner, in getting the thousands of excited Johannesburgers to lay
down their arms without bloodshed. Completely out-man[oe]uvred by the
astute old President, the leaders of the reform movement used all their
influence in the direction of peace, thinking that a general amnesty
would follow; but the moment that they and their people were helpless
the detectives and armed burghers occupied the town, and sixty of their
number were hurried to Pretoria Gaol.

To the raiders themselves the President behaved with generosity. Perhaps
he could not find it in his heart to be harsh to the men who had managed
to put him in the right and won for him the sympathy of the world. His
own illiberal and oppressive treatment of the new-comers was forgotten
in the face of this illegal inroad of filibusters. The true issues were
so obscured by this intrusion that it has taken years to clear them, and
perhaps they will never be wholly cleared. It was forgotten that it was
the bad government of the country which was the real cause of the
unfortunate raid. From then onwards the government might grow worse and
worse, but it was always possible to point to the raid as justifying
everything. Were the Uitlanders to have the franchise? How could they
expect it after the raid? Would Britain object to the enormous
importation of arms and obvious preparations for war? They were only
precautions against a second raid. For years the raid stood in the way,
not only of all progress, but of all remonstrance. Through an action
over which they had no control, and which they had done their best to
prevent, the British Government was left with a bad case and a weakened
moral authority.

The raiders were sent home, where the rank and file were very properly
released, and the chief officers were condemned to terms of imprisonment
which certainly did not err upon the side of severity. In the meantime,
both President Kruger and his burghers had shown a greater severity to
the political prisoners from Johannesburg than to the armed followers of
Jameson. The nationality of these prisoners is interesting and
suggestive. There were twenty-three Englishmen, sixteen South Africans,
nine Scotchmen, six Americans, two Welshmen, one Irishman, one
Australian, one Hollander, one Bavarian, one Canadian, one Swiss, and
one Turk. The list is sufficient comment upon the assertion that only
the British Uitlanders made serious complaints of subjection and
injustice. The prisoners were arrested in January, but the trial did not
take place until the end of April. All were found guilty of high
treason. Mr. Lionel Phillips, Colonel Rhodes (brother of Mr. Cecil
Rhodes), George Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the American engineer, were
condemned to death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the
payment of an enormous fine. The other prisoners were condemned to two
years' imprisonment, with a fine of 2,000_l._ each. The imprisonment was
of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the harshness
of the gaoler, Du Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut his throat,
and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the sanitary conditions
being equally unhealthy. At last, at the end of May, all the prisoners
but six were released. Four of the six soon followed, two stalwarts,
Sampson and Davies, refusing to sign any petition and remaining in
prison until they were set free in 1897. Altogether the Transvaal
Government received in fines from the reform prisoners the enormous sum
of 212,000_l._ A certain comic relief was immediately afterwards given
to so grave an episode by the presentation of a bill to Great Britain
for 1,677,938_l._ 3_s._ 3_d._--the greater part of which was under the
heading of moral and intellectual damage. It is to be feared that even
the 3_s._ 3_d._ remains still unpaid.

The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes
which produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a
statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making some
effort to remove a state of things which had already caused such grave
dangers, and which must obviously become more serious with every year
that passed. But Paul Kruger had hardened his heart, and was not to be
moved. The grievances of the Uitlanders became heavier than ever. The
one power in the land to which they had been able to appeal for some
sort of redress amid their troubles was the law courts. Now it was
decreed that the courts should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief
Justice protested against such a degradation of his high office, and he
was dismissed in consequence without a pension. The judge who had
condemned the reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the
protection of a fixed law was withdrawn from the Uitlanders.

A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the
condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the
new-comers suffered. The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the most
liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and impartial.
The result was a report which amply vindicated the reformers, and
suggested remedies which would have gone a long way towards satisfying
the Uitlanders. With such enlightened legislation their motives for
seeking the franchise would have been less pressing. But the President
and his Raad would have none of the recommendations of the commission.
The rugged old autocrat declared that Schalk Burger was a traitor to his
country for having signed such a document, and a new reactionary
committee was chosen to report upon the report. Words and papers were
the only outcome of the affair. No amelioration came to the new-comers.
But at least they had again put their case publicly upon record, and it
had been endorsed by the most respected of the burghers. Gradually in
the press of the English-speaking countries the raid was ceasing to
obscure the issue. More and more clearly it was coming out that no
permanent settlement was possible where half the population was
oppressed by the other half. They had tried peaceful means and failed.
They had tried warlike means and failed. What was there left for them to
do? Their own country, the paramount power of South Africa, had never
helped them. Perhaps if it were directly appealed to it might do so. It
could not, if only for the sake of its own imperial prestige, leave its
children for ever in a state of subjection. The small spark which caused
a final explosion came from the shooting of a British subject named
Edgar by a Boer policeman, Jones, in Johannesburg. The action of the
policeman was upheld by the authorities, and the British felt that their
lives were no longer safe in the presence of an armed overbearing
police. At another time the incident might have been of no great
importance, but at that moment it seemed to be taken as the crowning
example of the injustice under which the miners suffered. A meeting of
protest called by the British residents was broken up by gangs of
workmen under Boer officials. Driven to desperation the Uitlanders
determined upon a petition to Queen Victoria, and in doing so they
brought their grievances out of the limits of a local controversy into
the broader field of international politics. Great Britain must either
protect them or acknowledge that their protection was beyond her power.
A direct petition to the Queen praying for protection was signed in
April 1899 by 21,000 Uitlanders.

The lines which this historical petition took may be judged from the
following excerpt:

'The condition of Your Majesty's subjects in this State has indeed
become well-nigh intolerable.

'The acknowledged and admitted grievances of which Your Majesty's
subjects complained prior to 1895, not only are not redressed, but exist
to-day in an aggravated form. They are still deprived of all political
rights, they are denied any voice in the government of the country, they
are taxed far above the requirements of the country, the revenue of
which is misapplied and devoted to objects which keep alive a continuous
and well-founded feeling of irritation, without in any way advancing the
general interest of the State. Maladministration and peculation of
public moneys go hand-in-hand, without any vigorous measures being
adopted to put a stop to the scandal. The education of Uitlander
children is made subject to impossible conditions. The police afford no
adequate protection to the lives and property of the inhabitants of
Johannesburg; they are rather a source of danger to the peace and safety
of the Uitlander population.

'A further grievance has become prominent since the beginning of the
year. The power vested in the Government by means of the Public Meetings
Act has been a menace to Your Majesty's subjects since the enactment of
the Act in 1894. This power has now been applied in order to deliver a
blow that strikes at the inherent and inalienable birthright of every
British subject--namely, his right to petition his Sovereign. Straining
to the utmost the language and intention of the law, the Government have
arrested two British subjects who assisted in presenting a petition to
Your Majesty on behalf of four thousand fellow-subjects. Not content
with this, the Government, when Your Majesty's loyal subjects again
attempted to lay their grievances before Your Majesty, permitted their
meeting to be broken up, and the objects of it to be defeated, by a body
of Boers, organised by Government officials and acting under the
protection of the police. By reason, therefore, of the direct, as well
as the indirect, act of the Government, Your Majesty's loyal subjects
have been prevented from publicly ventilating their grievances, and from
laying them before Your Majesty.

'Wherefore Your Majesty's humble petitioners humbly beseech Your Most
Gracious Majesty to extend Your Majesty's protection to Your Majesty's
loyal subjects resident in this State, and to cause an inquiry to be
made into grievances and complaints enumerated and set forth in this
humble petition, and to direct Your Majesty's representative in South
Africa to take measures which will insure the speedy reform of the
abuses complained of, and to obtain substantial guarantees from the
Government of this State for a recognition of their rights as British
subjects.'

From the date of this direct petition from our ill-used people to their
Sovereign events moved inevitably towards one end. Sometimes the surface
was troubled and sometimes smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and
the roar of the fall sounded ever louder in the ears.




CHAPTER III

THE NEGOTIATIONS


The British Government and the British people do not desire any direct
authority in South Africa. Their one supreme interest is that the
various States there should live in concord and prosperity, and that
there should be no need for the presence of a British redcoat within the
whole great peninsula. Our foreign critics, with their misapprehension
of the British colonial system, can never realise that whether the
four-coloured flag of the Transvaal or the Union Jack of a
self-governing colony waved over the gold mines would not make the
difference of one shilling to the revenue of Great Britain. The
Transvaal as a British province would have its own legislature, its own
revenue, its own expenditure, and its own tariff against the mother
country, as well as against the rest of the world, and Britain be none
the richer for the change. This is so obvious to a Briton that he has
ceased to insist upon it, and it is for that reason perhaps that it is
so universally misunderstood abroad. On the other hand, while she is no
gainer by the change, most of the expense of it in blood and in money
falls upon the home country. On the face of it, therefore, Great Britain
had every reason to avoid so formidable a task as the conquest of the
South African Republic. At the best she had nothing to gain, and at the
worst she had an immense deal to lose. There was no room for ambition or
aggression. It was a case of shirking or fulfilling a most arduous duty.

There could be no question of a plot for the annexation of the
Transvaal. In a free country the Government cannot move in advance of
public opinion, and public opinion is influenced by and reflected in the
newspapers. One may examine the files of the press during all the months
of negotiations and never find one reputable opinion in favour of such a
course, nor did one in society ever meet an advocate of such a measure.
But a great wrong was being done, and all that was asked was the minimum
change which would set it right, and restore equality between the white
races in Africa. 'Let Kruger only be liberal in the extension of the
franchise,' said the paper which is most representative of the sanest
British opinion, 'and he will find that the power of the republic will
become not weaker, but infinitely more secure. Let him once give the
majority of the resident males of full age the full vote, and he will
have given the republic a stability and power which nothing else can. If
he rejects all pleas of this kind, and persists in his present policy,
he may possibly stave off the evil day, and preserve his cherished
oligarchy for another few years; but the end will be the same.' The
extract reflects the tone of all the British press with the exception of
one or two papers which considered that even the persistent ill-usage of
our people, and the fact that we were peculiarly responsible for them in
this State, did not justify us in interfering in the internal affairs of
the republic. It cannot be denied that the Jameson Raid had weakened the
force of those who wished to interfere energetically on behalf of
British subjects. There was a vague but widespread feeling that perhaps
the capitalists were engineering the situation for their own ends. It is
difficult to imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say
nothing of a state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and
surely it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances
of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would
be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among
those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and
throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as
her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest
but fussy and faddy minority.

It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their petition
praying for protection to their native country. Since the April previous
a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State
for the South African Republic, and Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary,
upon the existence or non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one hand,
it was contended that the substitution of a second convention had
entirely annulled the first; on the other, that the preamble of the
first applied also to the second. If the Transvaal contention were
correct it is clear that Great Britain had been tricked and jockeyed
into such a position, since she had received no _quid pro quo_ in the
second convention, and even the most careless of Colonial Secretaries
could hardly have been expected to give away a very substantial
something for nothing. But the contention throws us back upon the
academic question of what a suzerainty is. The Transvaal admitted a
power of veto over their foreign policy, and this admission in itself,
unless they openly tore up the convention, must deprive them of the
position of a sovereign State.

But now to this debate, which had so little of urgency in it that seven
months intervened between statement and reply, there came the bitterly
vital question of the wrongs and appeal of the Uitlanders. Sir Alfred
Milner, the British Commissioner in South Africa, a man of liberal
politics who had been appointed by a Conservative Government, commanded
the respect and confidence of all parties. His record was that of an
able, clear-headed man, too just to be either guilty of or tolerant of
injustice. To him the matter was referred, and a conference was arranged
between President Kruger and him at Bloemfontein, the capital of the
Orange Free State. They met on May 31, 1899.

There were three different classes of subject which had to be discussed
at the Conference. One included all those alleged breaches of the
Convention of London which had caused so much friction between the two
Governments, and which had thrice in eighteen years brought the States
to the verge of war. Among these subjects would be the Boer annexations
of native territory, such interference with trade as the stopping of the
Drifts, the question of suzerainty, and the possibility of arbitration.
The second class of questions would deal with the grievances of the
Uitlanders, which presented a problem which had in no way been provided
for in the Conventions. The third class contained the question of the
ill-treatment of British Indians, and other causes of quarrel. Sir
Alfred Milner was faced with the alternative either to argue over each
of these questions in turn--an endless and unprofitable business--or to
put forward some one test-question which would strike at the root of the
matter and prove whether a real attempt would be made by the Boer
Government to relieve the tension. The question which he selected was
that of the franchise for the Uitlanders, for it was evident that if
they obtained not a fair share--such a request was never made--but any
appreciable share in the government of the country, they would in time
be able to relieve their own grievances and so spare the British
Government the heavy task of acting as their champions. But the
Conference was quickly wrecked upon this question. Milner contended for
a five-years' retroactive franchise, with provisions to secure adequate
representation for the mining districts. Kruger offered a seven-years'
franchise, coupled with numerous conditions which whittled down its
value very much; promised five members out of thirty-one to represent
half the male adult population; and added a provision that all
differences should be subject to arbitration by foreign powers--a
condition which is incompatible with any claim to suzerainty. This offer
dropped the term for the franchise from fourteen years to seven, but it
retained a number of conditions which might make it illusory, while
demanding in exchange a most important concession from the British
Government. The proposals of each were impossible to the other, and
early in June Sir Alfred Milner was back in Cape Town and President
Kruger in Pretoria, with nothing settled except the extreme difficulty
of a settlement.

On June 12 Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town and
reviewed the situation. 'The principle of equality of races was,' he
said, 'essential for South Africa. The one State where inequality
existed kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of
aggression, but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse
into indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed the Raad. 'The other
side had not conceded one tittle, and I could not give more. God has
always stood by us. I do not want war, but I will not give more away.
Although our independence has once been taken away, God had restored
it.' He spoke with sincerity no doubt, but it is hard to hear God
invoked with such confidence for the system which encouraged the liquor
traffic to the natives, and bred the most corrupt set of officials that
the modern world has seen.

A despatch from Sir Alfred Milner, giving his views upon the situation,
made the British public recognise, as nothing else had done, how serious
the position was, and how essential it was that an earnest national
effort should be made to set it right. In it he said:

'The case for intervention is overwhelming. The only attempted answer is
that things will right themselves if left alone. But, in fact, the
policy of leaving things alone has been tried for years, and it has led
to their going from bad to worse. It is not true that this is owing to
the raid. They were going from bad to worse before the raid. We were on
the verge of war before the raid, and the Transvaal was on the verge of
revolution. The effect of the raid has been to give the policy of
leaving things alone a new lease of life, and with the old consequences.

'The spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the
position of helots, constantly chafing under undoubted grievances, and
calling vainly to her Majesty's Government for redress, does steadily
undermine the influence and reputation of Great Britain within the
Queen's dominions. A section of the press, not in the Transvaal only,
preaches openly and constantly the doctrine of a republic embracing all
South Africa, and supports it by menacing references to the armaments of
the Transvaal, its alliance with the Orange Free State, and the active
sympathy which, in case of war, it would receive from a section of her
Majesty's subjects. I regret to say that this doctrine, supported as it
is by a ceaseless stream of malignant lies about the intentions of her
Majesty's Government, is producing a great effect on a large number of
our Dutch fellow-colonists. Language is frequently used which seems to
imply that the Dutch have some superior right, even in this colony, to
their fellow-citizens of British birth. Thousands of men peaceably
disposed, and if left alone perfectly satisfied with their position as
British subjects, are being drawn into disaffection, and there is a
corresponding exasperation upon the part of the British.

'I can see nothing which will put a stop to this mischievous propaganda
but some striking proof of the intention of her Majesty's Government not
to be ousted from its position in South Africa.'

Such were the grave and measured words with which the British pro-consul
warned his countrymen of what was to come. He saw the stormcloud piling
in the north, but even his eyes had not yet discerned how near and how
terrible was the tempest.

Throughout the end of June and the early part of July much was hoped
from the mediation of the heads of the Afrikander Bond, the political
union of the Dutch Cape colonists. On the one hand, they were the
kinsmen of the Boers; on the other, they were British subjects, and were
enjoying the blessings of those liberal institutions which we were
anxious to see extended to the Transvaal. 'Only treat our folk as we
treat yours!' Our whole contention was compressed into that prayer. But
nothing came of the mission, though a scheme endorsed by Mr. Hofmeyr and
Mr. Herholdt, of the Bond, with Mr. Fischer of the Free State, was
introduced into the Raad and applauded by Mr. Schreiner, the Africander
Premier of Cape Colony. In its original form the provisions were obscure
and complicated, the franchise varying from nine years to seven under
different conditions. In debate, however, the terms were amended until
the time was reduced to seven years, and the proposed representation of
the Goldfields placed at five. The concession was not a great one, nor
could the representation, five out of thirty-one, be considered a
generous provision for half the adult male population; but the reduction
of the years of residence was eagerly hailed in England as a sign that a
compromise might be effected. A sigh of relief went up from the country.
'If,' said the Colonial Secretary, 'this report is confirmed, this
important change in the proposals of President Kruger, coupled with
previous amendments, leads Government to hope that the new law may prove
to be the basis of a settlement on the lines laid down by Sir Alfred
Milner in the Bloemfontein Conference.' He added that there were some
vexatious conditions attached, but concluded, 'Her Majesty's Government
feel assured that the President, having accepted the principle for which
they have contended, will be prepared to reconsider any detail of his
scheme which can be shown to be a possible hindrance to the full
accomplishment of the object in view, and that he will not allow them to
be nullified or reduced in value by any subsequent alterations of the
law or acts of administration.' At the same time, the 'Times' declared
the crisis to be at an end: 'If the Dutch statesmen of the Cape have
induced their brethren in the Transvaal to carry such a Bill, they will
have deserved the lasting gratitude, not only of their own countrymen
and of the English colonists in South Africa, but of the British Empire
and of the civilised world.' The reception of the idea that the crisis
was at an end is surely a conclusive proof how little it was desired in
England that that crisis should lead to war.

But this fair prospect was soon destined to be overcast. Questions of
detail arose which, when closely examined, proved to be matters of very
essential importance. The Uitlanders and British South Africans, who had
experienced in the past how illusory the promises of the President might
be, insisted upon guarantees. The seven years offered were two years
more than that which Sir Alfred Milner had declared to be an irreducible
minimum. The difference of two years would not have hindered their
acceptance, even at the expense of some humiliation to our
representative. But there were conditions which excited distrust when
drawn up by so wily a diplomatist. One was that the alien who aspired to
burghership had to produce a certificate of continuous registration for
a certain time. But the law of registration had fallen into disuse in
the Transvaal, and consequently this provision might render the whole
Bill valueless. Since it was carefully retained, it was certainly meant
for use. The door had been opened, but a stone was placed to block it.
Again, the continued burghership of the new-comers was made to depend
upon the resolution of the first Raad, so that should the mining members
propose any measure of reform, not only their Bill but they also might
be swept out of the house by a Boer majority. What could an Opposition
do if a vote of the Government might at any moment unseat them all? It
was clear that a measure which contained such provisions must be very
carefully sifted before a British Government could accept it as a final
settlement and a complete concession of justice to its subjects. On the
other hand, it naturally felt loth to refuse those clauses which offered
some prospect of an amelioration in their condition. It took the course,
therefore, of suggesting that each Government should appoint delegates
to form a joint commission which should inquire into the working of the
proposed Bill before it was put into a final form. The proposal was
submitted to the Raad on August 7, with the addition that when this was
done Sir Alfred Milner was prepared to discuss anything else, including
arbitration without the interference of foreign powers.

The suggestion of this joint commission has been criticised as an
unwarrantable intrusion into the internal affairs of another country.
But then the whole question from the beginning was about the internal
affairs of another country, since there could be no rest in South Africa
so long as one race tried to dominate the other. It is futile to suggest
analogies, and to imagine what France would do if Germany were to
interfere in a question of French franchise. Supposing that France
contained nearly as many Germans as Frenchmen, and that they were
ill-treated, Germany would interfere quickly enough and continue to do
so until some fair _modus vivendi_ was established. The fact is that the
case of the Transvaal stands alone, that such a condition of things has
never been known, and that no previous precedent can apply to it, save
the general rule that white men who are heavily taxed must have some
representation. Sentiment may incline to the smaller nation, but reason
and justice are all on the side of Britain.

A long delay followed upon the proposal of the Secretary of the
Colonies. No reply was forthcoming from Pretoria. But on all sides there
came evidence that those preparations for war which had been quietly
going on even before the Jameson Raid were now being hurriedly
perfected. For so small a State enormous sums were being spent upon
military equipment. Cases of rifles and boxes of cartridges streamed
into the arsenal, not only from Delagoa Bay, but even, to the
indignation of the English colonists, through Cape Town and Port
Elizabeth. Huge packing-cases, marked 'Agricultural Instruments' and
'Mining Machinery,' arrived from Germany and France, to find their
places in the forts of Johannesburg or Pretoria. As early as May the
Orange Free State President, who was looked upon by the simple and
trustful British as the honest broker who was about to arrange a peace,
was writing to Grobler, the Transvaal official, claiming his share of
the twenty-five million cartridges which had then been imported. This
was the man who was posing as mediator between the two parties a
fortnight later at Bloemfontein.

For three years the Transvaal had been arming to the teeth. So many
modern magazine-rifles had been imported that there were enough to
furnish five to every male burgher in the country. The importation of
ammunition was on the same gigantic scale. For what were these
formidable preparations? Evidently for a war with Great Britain, and not
for a defensive war. It is not in a defensive war that a State provides
sufficient rifles to arm every man of Dutch blood in the whole of South
Africa. No British reinforcements had been sent during the years that
the Transvaal was obviously preparing for a struggle. In that one
eloquent fact lies a complete proof as to which side forced on a war,
and which side desired to avoid one. For three weeks and more, during
which Mr. Kruger was silent, these preparations went on more
energetically and more openly.

But beyond them, and of infinitely more importance, there was one fact
which dominated the situation and retarded the crisis. A burgher cannot
go to war without his horse, his horse cannot move without grass, grass
will not come until after rain, and it was still some weeks before the
rain would be due. Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried while
the veldt was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain. Mr. Chamberlain
and the British public waited week after week for an answer. But there
was a limit to their patience, and it was reached on August 26, when the
Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of speech which is as
unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the question could not be
hung up for ever. 'The sands are running down in the glass,' said he.
'If they run out we shall not hold ourselves limited by that which we
have already offered, but, having taken the matter in hand, we will not
let it go until we have secured conditions which once for all shall
establish which is the paramount power in South Africa, and shall secure
for our fellow-subjects there those equal rights and equal privileges
which were promised them by President Kruger when the independence of
the Transvaal was granted by the Queen, and which is the least that in
justice ought to be accorded them.' Lord Salisbury, a short time before,
had been equally emphatic: 'No one in this country wishes to disturb the
conventions so long as it is recognised that while they guarantee the
independence of the Transvaal on the one side, they guarantee equal
political and civil rights for settlers of all nationalities upon the
other. But these conventions are not like the laws of the Medes and the
Persians. They are mortal, they can be destroyed ... and once destroyed
they can never be reconstructed in the same shape.' The long-enduring
patience of Great Britain was beginning to show signs of giving way.

Pressure was in the meanwhile being put upon the old President and upon
his advisers, if he can be said ever to have had any advisers, in order
to induce him to accept the British offer of a joint committee of
inquiry. Sir Henry de Villiers, representing the highest Africander
opinion of the Cape, wrote strongly pleading the cause of peace, and
urging Mr. Fischer of the Free State to endeavour to give a more
friendly tone to the negotiations. 'Try to induce President Kruger to
meet Mr. Chamberlain in a friendly way, and remove all the causes of
unrest which have disturbed this unhappy country for so many years.'
Similar advice came from Europe. The Dutch minister telegraphed as
follows:

'_August 4, 1899._--Communicate confidentially to the President that,
having heard from the Transvaal Minister the English proposal of the
International Commission, I recommend the President, in the interest of
the country, not peremptorily to refuse that proposition.'

'_August 15, 1899._--Please communicate confidentially to the President
that the German Government entirely shares my opinion expressed in my
despatch of August 4, not to refuse the English proposal. The German
Government is, like myself, convinced that every approach to one of the
Great Powers in this very critical moment will be without any results
whatever, and very dangerous for the Republic.'

But neither his Africander brothers nor his friends abroad could turn
the old man one inch from the road upon which he had set his foot. The
fact is, that he knew well that his franchise proposals would not bear
examination; that, in the words of an eminent lawyer, they 'might as
well have been seventy years as seven,' so complicated and impossible
were the conditions. For a long time he was silent, and when he at last
spoke it was to open a new phase of the negotiations. His ammunition was
not all to hand yet, his rifles had not all been distributed, the grass
had not appeared upon the veldt. The game must be kept going for a
couple of months. 'You are such past-masters in the art of gaining
time!' said Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Montague White. The President
proceeded to prove it.

His new suggestions were put forward on August 12. In them the Joint
Commission was put aside, and the proposal was made that the Boer
Government should accede to the franchise proposals of Sir Alfred Milner
on condition that the British Government withdrew or dropped her claim
to a suzerainty, agreed to arbitration by a British and South African
tribunal, and promised never again to interfere in the internal affairs
of the Republic. To this Great Britain answered that she would agree to
such arbitration; that she hoped never again to have occasion to
interfere for the protection of her own subjects, but that with the
grant of the franchise all occasion for such interference would pass
away; and, finally, that she would never consent to abandon her position
as suzerain power. Mr. Chamberlain's despatch ended by reminding the
Government of the Transvaal that there were other matters of dispute
open between the two Governments apart from the franchise, and that it
would be as well to have them settled at the same time. By these he
meant such questions as the position of the native races and the
treatment of Anglo-Indians.

For a moment there seemed now to be a fair prospect of peace. There was
no very great gap between the two parties, and had the negotiations
been really _bona fide_ it seems incredible that it could not be
bridged. But the Transvaal was secure now of the alliance of the Orange
Free State; it believed that the Colony was ripe for rebellion; and it
knew that with 60,000 cavalry and 100 guns it was infinitely the
strongest military power in Africa. One cannot read the negotiations
without being convinced that they were never meant to succeed, and the
party which did not mean them to succeed was the party which prepared
all the time for war. De Villiers, a friendly critic, says of the
Transvaal Government: 'Throughout the negotiations they have always been
wriggling to prevent a clear and precise decision.' Surely the sequel
showed clearly enough why this was so. Their military hand was stronger
than their political one, and it was with that that they desired to play
the game. It would not do, therefore, to get the negotiations into such
a stage that a peaceful solution should become inevitable. What was the
use of all those rifles and cannon if the pen were after all to effect a
compromise? 'The only thing that we are afraid of,' wrote young
Blignant, 'is that Chamberlain with his admitted fitfulness of temper
should cheat us out of our war and, consequently, the opportunity of
annexing the Cape Colony and Natal, and forming the Republican United
States of South Africa'--a legitimate national ambition perhaps, but not
compatible with _bona-fide_ peaceful negotiations.

It was time, then, to give a less promising turn to the situation. On
September 2 the answer of the Transvaal Government was returned. It was
short and uncompromising. They withdrew their offer of the franchise.
They reasserted the non-existence of the suzerainty. The negotiations
were at a deadlock. It was difficult to see how they could be reopened.
In view of the arming of the burghers, the small garrison of Natal had
been taking up positions to cover the frontier. The Transvaal asked for
an explanation of their presence. Sir Alfred Milner answered that they
were guarding British interests, and preparing against contingencies.
The roar of the fall was sounding loud and near.

On September 8 there was held a Cabinet Council--one of the most
important in recent years. The military situation was pressing. The
handful of troops in Africa could not be left at the mercy of the large
and formidable force which the Boers could at any time hurl against
them. On the other hand, it was very necessary not to appear to threaten
or to appeal to force. For this reason reinforcements were sent upon
such a scale as to make it evident that they were sent for defensive,
and not for offensive, purposes. Five thousand men were sent from India
to Natal, and the Cape garrisons were strengthened from England.

At the same time that they took these defensive measures, a message was
sent to Pretoria, which even the opponents of the Government have
acknowledged to be temperate, and offering the basis for a peaceful
settlement. It begins by repudiating emphatically the claim of the
Transvaal to be a sovereign international State in the same sense in
which the Orange Free State is one. Any proposal made conditional upon
such an acknowledgment could not be entertained. The status of the
Transvaal was settled by certain conventions agreed to by both
Governments, and nothing had occurred to cause us to acquiesce in a
radical change in it.

The British Government, however, was prepared to accept the five years'
franchise as stated in the note of August 19, assuming at the same time
that in the Raad each member might use his own language.

'Acceptance of these terms by the South African Republic would at once
remove tension between the two Governments, and would in all probability
render unnecessary any future intervention to secure redress for
grievances which the Uitlanders themselves would be able to bring to the
notice of the Executive Council and the Volksraad.

'Her Majesty's Government are increasingly impressed with the danger of
further delay in relieving the strain which has already caused so much
injury to the interests of South Africa, and they earnestly press for an
immediate and definite reply to the present proposal. If it is acceded
to they will be ready to make immediate arrangements ... to settle all
details of the proposed tribunal of arbitration.... If, however, as they
most anxiously hope will not be the case, the reply of the South African
Republic should be negative or inconclusive, I am to state that Her
Majesty's Government must reserve to themselves the right to reconsider
the situation _de novo_, and to formulate their own proposals for a
final settlement.'

This despatch was so moderate in form and so courteous in tone that
press and politicians of every shade of opinion were united in approving
it, and hoping for a corresponding reply which would relax the tension
between the two nations. Mr. Morley, Mr. Leonard Courtney, the 'Daily
Chronicle'--all the most strenuous opponents of the Government
policy--were satisfied that it was a message of peace. But nothing at
that time, save a complete and abject surrender upon the part of the
British, could have satisfied the Boers, who had the most exaggerated
ideas of their own military prowess and no very high opinion of our own.
The continental conception of the British wolf and the Transvaal lamb
would have raised a laugh in Pretoria, where the outcome of the war was
looked upon as a foregone conclusion. The burghers were in no humour for
concessions. They knew their own power, and they concluded with justice
that they were for the time far the strongest military power in South
Africa. 'We have beaten England before, but it is nothing to the licking
that we shall give her now!' said one prominent citizen. 'Reitz seemed
to treat the whole matter as a big joke,' remarked de Villiers. 'Is it
really necessary for you to go,' said the Chief Justice of the Transvaal
to an English clergyman. '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.' Such were the extravagant ideas which
caused them to push aside the olive-branch of peace.

On September 18 the official reply of the Boer Government to the message
sent from the Cabinet Council was published in London. In manner it was
unbending and unconciliatory; in substance, it was a complete rejection
of all the British demands. It refused to recommend or propose to the
Raad the five-years' franchise and the other provisions which had been
defined as the minimum which the Home Government could accept as a fair
measure of justice towards the Uitlanders. The suggestion that the
debates of the Raad should be bilingual, as they are in the Cape Colony
and in Canada, was absolutely waved aside. The British Government had
stated in their last despatch that if the reply should be negative or
inconclusive they reserved to themselves the right to 'reconsider the
situation _de novo_, and to formulate their own proposals for a final
settlement.' The reply had been both negative and inconclusive, and on
September 22 a council met to determine what the next message should be.
It was short and firm, but so planned as not to shut the door upon
peace. Its purport was that the British Government expressed deep regret
at the rejection of the moderate proposals which had been submitted in
their last despatch, and that now, in accordance with their promise,
they would shortly put forward their own plans for a settlement. The
message was not an ultimatum, but it foreshadowed an ultimatum in the
future.

In the meantime, upon September 21, the Raad of the Orange Free State
had met, and it became more and more evident that this republic, with
whom we had no possible quarrel, but, on the contrary, for whom we had a
great deal of friendship and admiration, intended to throw in its weight
against Great Britain. Some time before, an offensive and defensive
alliance had been concluded between the two States, which must, until
the secret history of these events comes to be written, appear to have
been a singularly rash and unprofitable bargain for the smaller one. She
had nothing to fear from Great Britain, since she had been voluntarily
turned into an independent republic by her, and had lived in peace with
her for forty years. Her laws were as liberal as our own. But by this
suicidal treaty she agreed to share the fortunes of a State which was
deliberately courting war by its persistently unfriendly attitude, and
whose reactionary and narrow legislation would, one might imagine, have
alienated the sympathy of her progressive neighbour. The trend of events
was seen clearly in the days of President Brand, who was a sane and
experienced politician. 'President Brand,' says Paul Botha (himself a
voortrekker and a Boer of the Boers), 'saw clearly what our policy ought
to have been. He always avoided offending the Transvaal, but he loved
the Orange Free State and its independence for its own sake and not as
an appendage to the Transvaal. And in order to maintain its character he
always strove for the friendship of England.

'President Brand realised that closer union with the turbulent and
misguided Transvaal, led by Kruger's challenging policy, would
inevitably result in a disastrous war with England.

'I [Paul Botha] felt this as strongly, and never ceased fighting against
closer union. I remember once stating these arguments in the Volksraad,
and wound up my speech by saying, "May Heaven grant that I am wrong in
what I fear, because, if I am right, then woe, woe to the Orange Free
State."'

It is evident that if the Free State rushed headlong to utter
destruction it was not for want of wise voices which tried to guide her
to some safer path. But there seems to have been a complete
hallucination as to the comparative strength of the two opponents, and
as to the probable future of South Africa. Under no possible future
could the Free State be better off than it was already, a perfectly free
and independent republic; and yet the country was carried away by
race-prejudice spread broadcast from a subsidised press and an
unchristian pulpit. 'When I come to think of the abuse the pulpit made
of its influence,' says Paul Botha, 'I feel as if I cannot find words
strong enough to express my indignation. God's word was prostituted. A
religious people's religion was used to urge them to their destruction.
A minister of God told me himself, with a wink, that he had to preach
anti-English because otherwise he would lose favour with those in
power.' Such were the influences which induced the Free State to make an
insane treaty, compelling it to wantonly take up arms against a State
which had never injured it and which bore it nothing but good will.

The tone of President Steyn at the meeting of the Raad, and the support
which he received from the majority of his burghers, showed unmistakably
that the two republics would act as one. In his opening speech Steyn
declared uncompromisingly against the British contention, and declared
that his State was bound to the Transvaal by everything which was near
and dear. Among the obvious military precautions which could no longer
be neglected by the British Government, was the sending of some small
force to protect the long and exposed line of railway which lies just
outside the Transvaal border from Kimberley to Rhodesia. Sir Alfred
Milner communicated with President Steyn as to this movement of troops,
pointing out that it was in no way directed against the Free State. Sir
Alfred Milner added that the Imperial Government was still hopeful of a
friendly settlement with the Transvaal, but if this hope were
disappointed they looked to the Orange Free State to preserve strict
neutrality and to prevent military intervention by any of its citizens.
They undertook that in that case the integrity of the Free State
frontier would be strictly preserved. Finally, he stated that there was
absolutely no cause to disturb the good relations between the Free State
and Great Britain, since we were animated by the most friendly
intentions towards them. To this the President returned a somewhat
ungracious answer, to the effect that he disapproved of our action
towards the Transvaal, and that he regretted the movement of troops,
which would be considered a menace by the burghers. A subsequent
resolution of the Free State Raad, ending with the words, 'Come what
may, the Free State will honestly and faithfully fulfil its obligations
towards the Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing
between the two republics,' showed how impossible it was that this
country, formed by ourselves, and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel
with us, could be saved from being drawn into the whirlpool.

In the meantime, military preparations were being made upon both sides,
moderate in the case of the British and considerable in that of the
Boers.

On August 15, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a very
serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference and the
despatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the British forces in South Africa were
absolutely and absurdly inadequate for the purpose of the defence of our
own frontier. Surely such a fact must open the eyes of those who, in
spite of all the evidence, persist that the war was forced on by the
British. A statesman who forces on a war usually prepares for a war, and
this is exactly what Mr. Kruger did and the British authorities did not.
The overbearing suzerain power had at that date, scattered over a huge
frontier, two cavalry regiments, three field batteries, and six and a
half infantry battalions--say six thousand men. The innocent pastoral
States could put in the field more than fifty thousand mounted riflemen,
whose mobility doubled their numbers, and a most excellent artillery,
including the heaviest guns which have ever been seen upon a
battlefield. At this time it is most certain that the Boers could have
made their way easily either to Durban or to Cape Town. The British
force, condemned to act upon the defensive, could have been masked and
afterwards destroyed, while the main body of the invaders would have
encountered nothing but an irregular local resistance, which would have
been neutralised by the apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists. It
is extraordinary that our authorities seem never to have contemplated
the possibility of the Boers taking the initiative, or to have
understood that in that case our belated reinforcements would certainly
have had to land under the fire of the republican guns. They ran a great
military risk by their inaction, but at least they made it clear to all
who are not wilfully blind how far from the thoughts or wishes of the
British Government it has always been that the matter should be decided
by force.

In answer to the remonstrances of the Colonial Prime Minister the
garrison of Natal was gradually increased, partly by troops from
Europe, and partly by the despatch of 5,000 British troops from India.
Their arrival late in September raised the number of troops in South
Africa to 22,000, a force which was inadequate to a contest in the open
field with the numerous, mobile, and gallant enemy to whom they were to
be opposed, but which proved to be strong enough to stave off that
overwhelming disaster which, with our fuller knowledge, we can now see
to have been impending.

In the weeks which followed the despatch of the Cabinet message of
September 8, the military situation had ceased to be desperate, but was
still precarious. Twenty-two thousand regular troops were on the spot
who might hope to be reinforced by some ten thousand Colonials, but
these forces had to cover a great frontier, the attitude of Cape Colony
was by no means whole-hearted and might become hostile, while the black
population might conceivably throw in its weight against us. Only half
the regulars could be spared to defend Natal, and no reinforcements
could reach them in less than a month from the outbreak of hostilities.
If Mr. Chamberlain was really playing a game of bluff, it must be
confessed that he was bluffing from a very weak hand.

For purposes of comparison we may give some idea of the forces which Mr.
Kruger and Mr. Steyn could put in the field. The general press estimate
of the forces of the two republics varied from 25,000 to 35,000 men. Mr.
J. B. Robinson, a personal friend of President Kruger's and a man who
had spent much of his life among the Boers, considered the latter
estimate to be too high. The calculation had no assured basis to start
from. A very scattered and isolated population, among whom large
families were the rule, is a most difficult thing to estimate. Some
reckoned from the supposed natural increase during eighteen years, but
the figure given at that date was itself an assumption. Others took
their calculation from the number of voters in the last presidential
election; but no one could tell how many abstentions there had been, and
the fighting age is five years earlier than the voting age in the
republics. We recognise now that all calculations were far below the
true figure. It is probable, however, that the information of the
British Intelligence Department was not far wrong. No branch of the
British Service has come better out of a very severe ordeal than this
one, and its report before the war is so accurate, alike in facts and in
forecast, as to be quite prophetic.

According to this the fighting strength of the Transvaal alone was
32,000 men, and of the Orange Free State 22,000. With mercenaries and
rebels from the colonies they would amount to 60,000, while a
considerable rising of the Cape Dutch would bring them up to 100,000.
Our actual male prisoners now amount to 42,000, and we can account for
10,000 casualties, so that, allowing another 10,000 for the burghers at
large, the Boer force, excluding a great number of Cape rebels, would
reach 62,000. Of the quality of this large force there is no need to
speak. The men were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious
enthusiasm. They were all of the seventeenth century, except their
rifles. Mounted upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a
mobility which practically doubled their numbers and made it an
impossibility ever to outflank them. As marksmen they are supreme. Add
to this that they had the advantage of acting upon internal lines with
shorter and safer communications, and one gathers how formidable a task
lay before the soldiers of the Empire. When we turn from such an
enumeration of their strength to contemplate the 12,000 men, split into
two detachments, who awaited them in Natal, we may recognise that, far
from bewailing our disasters, we should rather congratulate ourselves
upon our escape from losing that great province which, situated as it is
between Britain, India, and Australia, must be regarded as the very
keystone of the imperial arch.

But again one must ask whether in the face of these figures it is still
possible to maintain that Great Britain was deliberately attempting to
overthrow by force the independence of the republics.

There was a lull in the political exchanges after the receipt of the
Transvaal despatch of September 16, which rejected the British proposals
of September 8. In Africa all hope or fear of peace had ended. The Raads
had been dissolved and the old President's last words had been that war
was certain, with a stern invocation of the Lord as the final arbiter.
Britain was ready less obtrusively, but no less heartily, to refer the
quarrel to the same dread judge.

On October 2 President Steyn informed Sir Alfred Milner that he had
deemed it necessary to call out the Free State burghers--that is, to
mobilise his forces. Sir A. Milner wrote regretting these preparations,
and declaring that he did not yet despair of peace, for he was sure that
any reasonable proposal would be favourably considered by her Majesty's
Government. Steyn's reply was that there was no use in negotiating
unless the stream of British reinforcements ceased coming into South
Africa. As our forces were still in a great minority, it was impossible
to stop the reinforcements, so the correspondence led to nothing. On
October 7 the army reserves for the First Army Corps were called out in
Great Britain, and other signs shown that it had been determined to send
a considerable force to South Africa. Parliament was also summoned, that
the formal national assent might be gained for those grave measures
which were evidently pending.

It has been stated that it was the action of the British in calling out
the reserves which caused the ultimatum from the Boers and so
precipitated the war. Such a contention is absurd, for it puts the cart
before the horse. The Transvaal commandos had mobilised upon September
27, and those of the Free State on October 2. The railways had been
taken over, the exodus from Johannesburg had begun, and an actual act of
war had been committed by the stopping of a train and the confiscation
of the gold which was in it. The British action was subsequent to all
this, and could not have been the cause of it. But no Government could
see such portents and delay any longer to take those military
preparations which were called for by the critical situation. As a
matter of fact, the Boer ultimatum was prepared before the date of the
calling out of the reserves, and was only delivered later because the
final details for war were not quite ready.

It was on October 9 that the somewhat leisurely proceedings of the
British Colonial Office were brought to a head by the arrival of an
unexpected and audacious ultimatum from the Boer Government. In contests
of wit, as of arms, it must be confessed that the laugh has up to now
been usually upon the side of our simple and pastoral South African
neighbours. The present instance was no exception to the rule. The
document was very firm and explicit, but the terms in which it was drawn
were so impossible that it was evidently framed with the deliberate
purpose of forcing an immediate war. It demanded that the troops upon
the borders of the republic should be instantly withdrawn, that all
reinforcements which had arrived within the last year should leave South
Africa, and that those who were now upon the sea should be sent back
without being landed. Failing a satisfactory answer within forty-eight
hours, 'The Transvaal Government will with great regret be compelled to
regard the action of her Majesty's Government as a formal declaration
of war, for the consequences of which it will not hold itself
responsible.' The audacious message was received throughout the empire
with a mixture of derision and anger. The answer was despatched next day
through Sir Alfred Milner.

'_October 10._--Her Majesty's Government have received with great regret
the peremptory demands of the Government of the South African Republic,
conveyed in your telegram of the 9th October. You will inform the
Government of the South African Republic in reply that the conditions
demanded by the Government of the South African Republic are such as her
Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss.'




CHAPTER IV

SOME POINTS EXAMINED


Such is a general sketch of the trend of the negotiations and of the
events which led up to the war. Under their different headings I will
now examine in as short a space as possible the criticisms to which the
British Government has been subjected. Various damaging theories and
alternate lines of action have been suggested, each of which may be
shortly discussed.

1. _That Mr. Chamberlain was personally concerned in the raid and that
out of revenge for that failure, or because he was in the power of Mr.
Rhodes, he forced on the war._--The theory that Mr. Chamberlain was in
the confidence of the raiders, has been already examined and shown to be
untenable. That he knew that an insurrection might probably result from
the despair of the Uitlanders is very probable. It was his business to
know what was going on so far as he could, and there is no reason why
his private sympathies, like those of every other Englishman, should not
be with his own ill-used people. But that he contemplated an invasion of
the Transvaal by a handful of policemen is absurd. If he did, why should
he instantly take the strongest steps to render the invasion abortive?
What could he possibly do to make things miscarry which he did not do?
And if he were conscious of being in the power of Mr. Rhodes, how would
he dare to oppose with such vigour that gentleman's pet scheme? The very
facts and the very telegrams upon which critics rely to prove Mr.
Chamberlain's complicity will really, when looked at with unprejudiced
eyes, most clearly show his entire independence. Thus when Rhodes, or
Harris in Rhodes's name, telegraphs, 'Inform Chamberlain that I shall
get through all right if he will support me, but he must not send cable
like he sent to the High Commissioner,' and again, 'Unless you can make
Chamberlain instruct the High Commissioner to proceed at once to
Johannesburg the whole position is lost,' is it not perfectly obvious
that there has been no understanding of any sort, and that the
conspirators are attempting to force the Colonial Secretary's hand?
Again, critics make much of the fact that shortly before the raid Mr.
Chamberlain sold to the Chartered Company the strip of land from which
the raid started, and that he made a hard bargain, exacting as much as
200,000_l._ for it. Surely the perversion of an argument could hardly go
further, for if Mr. Chamberlain were in their confidence and in favour
of their plan it is certain that he would have given them easy and not
difficult terms for the land for which they asked. The supposition that
Mr. Chamberlain was the tool of Rhodes in declaring war, presupposes
that Mr. Chamberlain could impose his will without question upon a
Cabinet which contained Lord Salisbury, Lord Lansdowne, Arthur Balfour,
Hicks-Beach, and the other ministers. Such a supposition is too
monstrous to discuss.

2. _That it is a capitalists' war, engineered by company promoters and
Jews._--After the Jameson Raid a large body of the public held this
view, and it was this which to a great extent tied the hands of the
Government, and stopped them from taking that strong line which might
have prevented the accumulation of those huge armaments which could only
be intended for use against ourselves. It took years to finally
dissipate the idea, but how thoroughly it has been dissipated in the
public mind is best shown by the patient fortitude with which our people
have borne the long and weary struggle in which few families in the land
have not lost either a friend or a relative. The complaisance of the
British public towards capitalists goes no further than giving them
their strict legal rights--and certainly does not extend to pouring out
money and blood like water for their support. Such a supposition is
absurd, nor can any reason be given why a body of high-minded and
honourable British gentlemen like the Cabinet should sacrifice their
country for the sake of a number of cosmopolitan financiers, most of
whom are German Jews. The tax which will eventually be placed upon the
Transvaal mining industry, in order to help to pay for the war, will in
itself prove that the capitalists have no great voice in the councils of
the nation. We know now that the leading capitalists in Johannesburg
were the very men who most strenuously resisted an agitation which might
lead to war. This seems natural enough when one considers how much
capitalists had at stake, and how much to lose by war. The agitation for
the franchise and other rights was a _bona-fide_ liberal agitation,
started by poor men, employes and miners, who intended to live in the
country, not in Park Lane. The capitalists were the very last to be
drawn into it. When I say capitalists I mean the capitalists with
British sympathies, for there is indeed much to be said in favour of the
war being a capitalists' war, in that it was largely caused by the
anti-British attitude and advice of the South African Netherlands
Company, the Dynamite Monopoly, and other leeches which drained the
country. To them a free and honest government meant ruin, and they
strained every nerve, even to paying bogus English agitators, in order
to hinder the cause of reform. Their attitude undoubtedly had something
to do with stiffening the backs of the Boers and so preventing
concessions.

3. _That Britain wanted the gold mines._--No possible accusation is more
popular or more widely believed upon the Continent, and yet none could
be more ridiculous when it is examined. The gold mines are private
companies, with shares held by private shareholders, German and French,
as well as British. Whether the British or the Boer flag flew over the
country would not alienate a single share from any holder, nor would the
wealth of Britain be in any way greater. She will be the poorer by the
vast expense of the war, and it is unlikely that more than one-third of
this expenditure can be covered by taxation of the profits of the gold
mines. Apart from this limited contribution towards the war, how is
Britain the richer because her flag flies over the Rand? The Transvaal
will be a self-governing colony, like all other British colonies, with
its own finance minister, its own budget, its own taxes, even its own
power of imposing duties upon British merchandise. They will pay a
British governor 10,000_l._, and he will be expected to spend 15,000_l._
_We_ know all this because it is part of our British system, but it is
not familiar to those nations who look upon colonies as sources of
direct revenue to the mother country. It is the most general, and at the
same time the most untenable, of all Continental comments upon the war.
The second Transvaal war was the logical sequel of the first, and the
first was fought before gold was discovered in the country.

4. _That it was a monarchy against a republic._--This argument
undoubtedly had weight with those true republics like the United States,
France, and Switzerland, where people who were ignorant of the facts
were led away by mere names. As a matter of fact Great Britain and the
British colonies are among the most democratic communities in the
world. They preserve, partly from sentiment, partly for political
convenience, a hereditary chief, but the will of the people is decisive
upon all questions, and every man by his vote helps to mould the destiny
of the State. There is practically universal suffrage, and the highest
offices of the State are within reach of any citizen who is competent to
attain them. On the other hand, the Transvaal is an oligarchy, not a
democracy, where half the inhabitants claim to be upon an entirely
different footing from the other half. This rule represents the
ascendency of one race over the other, such an ascendency as existed in
Ireland in the eighteenth century. Technically the one country is a
republic and the other a monarchy, but in truth the empire stood for
liberty and the republic for tyranny, race ascendency, corruption,
taxation without representation, and all that is most opposed to the
broader conception of freedom.

5. _That it was a strong nation attacking a weak one._--That appeal to
sentiment and to the sporting instincts of the human race must always be
a powerful one. But in this instance it is entirely misapplied. The
preparation for war, the ultimatum, the invasion, and the first shedding
of blood, all came from the nation which the result has shown to be the
weaker. The reason why this smaller nation attacked so audaciously was
that they knew perfectly well that they were at the time far the
stronger power in South Africa, and all their information led them to
believe that they would continue to be so even when Britain had put
forth all her strength. It certainly seemed that they were justified in
this belief. The chief military critics of the Continent had declared
that 100,000 men was the outside figure which Britain could place in the
field. Against these they knew that without any rising of their kinsmen
in the Cape they could place fifty or sixty thousand men, and their
military history had unfortunately led them to believe that such a force
of Boers, operating under their own conditions with their own horses in
their own country, was far superior to this number of British soldiers.
They knew how excellent was their artillery, and how complete their
preparations. A dozen extracts could be given to show how confident they
were of success, from Blignant's letter with his fears that Chamberlain
would do them out of the war, to Esselen's boast that he would not wash
until he reached the sea. What they did not foresee, and what put out
their plans, was that indignant wave of public opinion throughout the
British Empire which increased threefold--as it would, if necessary,
have increased tenfold--the strength of the army and so enabled it to
beat down the Boer resistance. When war was declared, and for a very
long time afterwards, it was the Boers who were the strong power and the
British who were the weak one, and any sympathy given on the other
understanding was sympathy misapplied. From that time onwards the war
had to take its course, and the British had no choice but to push it to
its end.

6. _That the British refused to arbitrate._--This has been repeated _ad
nauseam_, but the allegation will not bear investigation. There are some
subjects which can be settled by arbitration, and all those Great
Britain freely consented to treat in this fashion, before a tribunal
which should be limited to Great Britain and South Africa. Such a
tribunal would by no means be necessarily drawn from judges who were
committed to one side or the other. There were many men whose moderation
and discretion both sides would admit. Such a man, for example, was Rose
Innes amongst the British, and de Villiers among those who had
Africander sympathies. Both the Transvaal and the British Governments
agreed that such a tribunal was competent, but they disagreed upon the
point that the British Government desired to reserve some subjects from
this arbitration.

The desire upon the part of Great Britain to exclude outsiders from the
arbitration tribunal was due to the fact that to admit them was to give
away the case before going into Court. The Transvaal claimed to be a
sovereign international state. Great Britain denied it. If the Transvaal
could appeal to arbitration as a peer among peers in a court of nations,
she became _ipso facto_ an international state. Therefore Great Britain
refused such a court.

But why not refer all subjects to such a South African court as was
finally accepted by both sides? The answer is that it is a monstrous
hypocrisy to carry cases into an arbitration court, when you know
beforehand that by their very nature they cannot possibly be settled by
such a court. To quote Milner's words, 'It is, of course, absurd to
suggest that the question whether the South African Republic does or
does not treat British residents in that country with justice, and the
British Government with the consideration and respect due to any
friendly, not to say suzerain power, is a question capable of being
referred to arbitration. You cannot arbitrate on broad questions of
policy any more than on questions of national honour.' On this point of
the limitation of arbitration the Transvaal leaders appear to have been
as unanimous as the British, so that it is untrue to lay the blame of
the restriction upon one side only. Mr. Reitz, in his scheme of
arbitration formulated upon June 9, has the express clause 'That each
side shall have the right to reserve and exclude points which appear to
it to be too important to be submitted to arbitration.' To this the
British Government agreed, making the further very great concession that
an Orange Free Stater should not be regarded as a foreigner. The matter
was in this state when the Transvaal sent its ultimatum. Up to the
firing of the first shot the British Government still offered the only
form of arbitration which was possible without giving away the question
at issue. It was the Transvaal which, after agreeing to such a Court,
turned suddenly to the arbitrament of the Mauser and the Creusot.

7. _That the war was to avenge Majuba._--There can be no doubt that our
defeat in this skirmish had left considerable heart-burnings which were
not allayed by the subsequent attitude of the Boers and their
assumption, testified to by Bryce and other friendly observers, that
what we did after the action was due not to a magnanimous desire to
repair a wrong but to craven fear. From the outset of the war there was
a strong desire on the part of the soldiers to avenge Majuba, which was
fully gratified when, upon the anniversary of that day, Cronje and his
4,000 brave companions had to raise the white flag. But that a desire to
avenge Majuba swayed the policy of the country cannot be upheld in view
of the fact that eighteen years had elapsed; that during that time the
Boers had again and again broken the conventions by extending their
boundaries; that three times matters were in such a position that war
might have resulted and yet that peace was successfully maintained. War
might very easily have been forced upon the Boers during the years
before they turned their country into an arsenal, when it would have
been absolutely impossible for them to have sustained a long campaign.
That it was not done and that the British Government remained patient
until it received the outrageous ultimatum, is a proof that Majuba may
have rankled in our memory but was not allowed to influence our policy.

8. _What proof is there that the Boers ever had any aggressive designs
upon the British?_--It would be a misuse of terms to call the general
Boer designs against the British a conspiracy, for it was openly
advocated in the press, preached from the pulpit, and preached upon the
platform, that the Dutch should predominate in South Africa, and that
the portion of it which remained under the British flag should be
absorbed by that which was outside it. So widespread and deep-seated was
this ambition, that it was evident that Great Britain must, sooner or
later, either yield to it or else sustain her position by force of arms.
She was prepared to give Dutch citizens within her borders the vote, the
power of making their own laws, complete religious and political
freedom, and everything which their British comrades could have, without
any distinction whatever; but when it came to hauling down the flag, it
was certainly time that a stand should be made.

How this came about cannot be expressed more clearly than in the words
of Paul Botha, who, as I have already said, was a voortrekker like
Kruger himself, and a Boer of the Boers, save that he seems to have been
a man with wider and more liberal views than his fellows. He was member
for Kroonstadt in the Free State Raad.

'I am convinced,' he says, 'that Kruger's influence completely changed
the character of the Afrikander Bond--an organisation which I believe
Hofmeyr started at the Cape with the legitimate purpose of securing
certain political privileges, but which, under Kruger's henchmen--Sauer,
Merriman, Te Water, and others--raised unrest in the Cape Colony.

'This successful anti-British policy of Kruger created a number of
imitators--Steyn, Fischer, Esselen, Smuts, and numerous other young
educated Africanders of the Transvaal, Orange Free State, and the Cape
Colony, who, misled by his successes, ambitiously hoped by the same
means to raise themselves to the same pinnacle.

'Krugerism under them developed into a reign of terror. If you were
anti-Kruger you were stigmatised as "Engelschgezind," and a traitor to
your people, unworthy of a hearing. I have suffered bitterly from this
taunt, especially under Steyn's _regime_. The more hostile you were to
England the greater patriot you were accounted.

'This gang, which I wish to be clearly understood was spread over the
whole of South Africa, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the
Cape Colony, used the Bond, the press, and the pulpit to further its
schemes.

'Reitz, whom I believe to have been an honest enthusiast, set himself up
as second sponsor to the Bond and voiced the doctrine of this gang:
"Africa for the Africanders. Sweep the English into the sea." With an
alluring cry like this, it will be readily understood how easy it was to
inflame the imagination of the illiterate and uneducated Boer, and to
work upon his vanity and prejudices. That pernicious rag, Carl
Borckenhagen's "Bloemfontein Express," enormously contributed to
spreading this doctrine in the Orange Free State. I myself firmly
believe that the "Express" was subsidised by Kruger. It was no mystery
to me from where Borckenhagen, a full-blooded German, got his ardent
Free State patriotism.

'In the Transvaal this was done by the "Volksstem," written by a
Hollander and subsidised by Kruger; by the "Rand Post," also written by
a Hollander, also subsidised by Paul Kruger; and in the Cape Colony by
the "Patriot," which was started by intriguers and rebels to their own
Government, at the Paarl--a hot-bed of false Africanderism. "Ons Land"
may be an honest paper, but by fostering impossible ideas it has done us
incalculable harm. It grieves me to think that my poor people, through
want of education, had to swallow this poison undiluted.

'Is it possible to imagine that Steyn, Fischer, and the other educated
men of the Free State did not know that, following Kruger's hostile
policy of eliminating the preponderating Power in South Africa, meant
that that Power would be forced either to fight in self-preservation or
to disappear ignominiously? For I maintain that there were only two
courses open to England in answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to
fight or to retire from South Africa. It was only possible for men
suffering from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
suffering from, not to see the obvious or to doubt the issue.'

So much for a Boer's straightforward account of the forces at work, and
the influences which were at the back of those forces. It sums the
situation up tersely, but the situation itself was evident and dominated
Cape politics. The ambitions of Africanderdom were discussed in the
broad light of day in the editorial, in the sermon, in the speech,
though the details by which those ambitions were to be carried out were
only whispered on the Dutch stoeps.

Here are the opinions of Reitz, the man who more than all others, save
his master, has the blood of the fallen upon his conscience. It is taken
from the 'Reminiscences' of Mr. Theophilus Schreiner, the brother of the
ex-Prime Minister of the Cape:

'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in Bloemfontein
between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly after the retrocession
of the Transvaal, and when he was busy establishing the Afrikander Bond.
It must be patent to everyone that at that time, at all events, England
and its Government had no intention of taking away the independence of
the Transvaal, for she had just "magnanimously" granted the same; no
intention of making war on the republics, for she had just made peace;
no intention to seize the Rand gold fields, for they were not yet
discovered. At that time, then, I met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to
get me to become a member of his Afrikander Bond, but, after studying
its constitution and programme, I refused to do so, whereupon the
following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has been
indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since:

'_Reitz_: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take
an interest in political matters not a good one?

'_Myself_: Yes, it is; but I seem to see plainly here between the lines
of this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.

'_Reitz_: What?

'_Myself_: I see quite clearly that the ultimate object aimed at is the
overthrow of the British power and the expulsion of the British flag
from South Africa.

'_Reitz_ (_with his pleasant conscious smile, as of one whose secret
thought and purpose had been discovered, and who was not altogether
displeased that such was the case_): Well, what if it is so?

'_Myself_: You don't suppose, do you, that that flag is going to
disappear from South Africa without a tremendous struggle and fight?

'_Reitz_ (_with the same pleasant self-conscious, self-satisfied, and
yet semi-apologetic smile_): Well, I suppose not; but even so, what of
that?

'_Myself_: Only this, that when that struggle takes place you and I will
be on opposite sides; and what is more, the God who was on the side of
the Transvaal in the late war, because it had right on its side, will be
on the side of England, because He must view with abhorrence any
plotting and scheming to overthrow her power and position in South
Africa, which have been ordained by Him.

'_Reitz_: We'll see.

'Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have
elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power
in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means--the
press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the
Legislature--until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr.
Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause. Believe me, the
day on which F. W. Reitz sat down to pen his ultimatum to Great Britain
was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one which had for
long years been looked forward to by him with eager longing and
expectation.'

Compare with these utterances of a Dutch politician of the Cape, and of
a Dutch politician of the Orange Free State, the following passage from
a speech delivered by Kruger at Bloemfontein in the year 1887, long
before Jameson raids or franchise agitations:

'I think it too soon to speak of a United South Africa under one flag.
Which flag was it to be? The Queen of England would object to having her
flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to
hauling ours down. What is to be done? We are now small and of little
importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our
place among the great nations of the world.'

'The dream of our life,' said another, 'is a union of the States of
South Africa, and this has to come from within, not from without. When
that is accomplished, South Africa will be great.'

Always the same theory from all quarters of Dutch thought, to be
followed by many signs that the idea was being prepared for in practice.
I repeat, that the fairest and most unbiassed historian cannot dismiss
the movement as a myth.

And to this one may retort, Why should they not do so? Why should they
not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why should
they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common speech? Why
should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and push us into
the sea? I see no reason why they should not. Let them try if they will.
And let us try to prevent them. But let us have an end of talk about
British aggression, of capitalist designs upon the gold fields, of the
wrongs of a pastoral people, and all the other veils which have been
used to cover the issue. Let those who talk about British designs upon
the republics turn their attention for a moment to the evidence which
there is for republican designs upon the colonies. Let them reflect that
in the British system all white men are equal, and that in the Boer one
race has persecuted the other; and let them consider under which the
truest freedom lies, which stands for universal liberty, and which for
reaction and racial hatred. Let them ponder and answer all this before
they determine where their sympathies lie.

Long before the war, when the British public and the British Government
also had every confidence that the solution would be found in peace,
every burgher had been provided with his rifle, his ammunition, and his
instructions as to the part which he was to play in that war which they
looked upon as certain. A huge conspiracy as to the future, which might
be verbally discussed but which must not be written, seems to have
prevailed among the farmers. Curious evidence of it came into my own
hands in this fashion. After a small action at which I was present I
entered a deserted Boer farmhouse which had been part of the enemy's
position, and, desiring to carry away some souvenir which should be of
no value, I took some papers which appeared to be children's
writing-exercises. They were so, but among them were one or two letters,
one of which I append in all its frankness and simplicity. The date is
some fourteen weeks _before_ the declaration of war, when the British
were anxious for and confident in a peaceful solution:

                                              'Paradys, June 25, 1899.

'MY DEAR HENRY,--I taking my pen up to write you these few lines. That
we all are in good health, hoping to hear the same from you all. And the
letter of the 18th is handed to me. And I feel very much obliged that I
hear you are all in good health.... Here by us are the fields very dry,
and the dams just by dry also. _Dear Henry, the war are by us very much.
How is it there by you. News is very scarce to write, but much to speak
by ourselves._ I must now close with my letter because I see that you
will be tired out to read it. With best love to you and your family so I
remain your faithfully friend,

                                                       'PIETER WIESE.'

Here is, in itself, as it seems to me, evidence of that great
conspiracy, not of ambitions (for there was no reason why they should
not be openly discussed), but of weapons and of dates for using them,
which was going on all the time behind that cloud of suspicious
negotiations with which the Boer Governments veiled their resolution to
attack the British. A small straw, no doubt, but the result has shown
how deep and dangerous was the current which it indicates. Here is a
letter from one of the Snymans to his brother at a later period, but
still a month before the war. He is talking of Kruger:

'The old chap was nearly raving about it, and said that the burghers
wanted to tie his hands, and so, brother, the thing is simply war and
nothing else. He said we had gone too far, and help from oversea was
positively promised, only unanimity of opinion must reign here or we
could neither expect nor obtain assistance. Brother, the old man and his
Hollander dogs talk very easily about the thing; but what shall we do,
because if one speaks against it one is simply a rebel? So I remain
dumb.

'On the stoep it is nothing but war, but in the Raad everything is peace
and Queen. Those are the politics they talk. I have nothing more to say
here, but I can tell you a good deal. Brother, old Reitz says
Chamberlain will have a great surprise one of these days, and the
burghers must sleep with one eye open.

'It is rumoured here that our military officers work day and night to
send old Victoria an ultimatum before she is ready.'

'On the stoep it is nothing but war, but in the Raad everything is
peace.' No wonder the British overtures were in vain.




CHAPTER V

THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE


This is not an attempt to write the history of the war, which I have
done elsewhere, but only to touch upon those various points upon which
attempts have been made to mislead continental and American opinion. I
will endeavour to treat each of these subjects in turn, not in the
spirit of a lawyer preparing a brief, but with an honest endeavour to
depict the matter as it is, even when I venture to differ from the
action either of the British Government or of the generals in the field.
In this chapter I will deal with the question of making peace, and
examine how far the British are to blame for not having brought those
negotiations which have twice been opened to a successful conclusion.

The outset of the war saw the Boers aggressive and victorious. They
flocked into British territory, drove the small forces opposed to them
into entrenched positions, and held them there at Ladysmith, Kimberley,
and Mafeking. At the same time they drove back at Colenso and at
Magersfontein the forces which were sent to relieve these places. During
this long period of their predominance from October 1899 to February
1900, there was no word of peace. On the contrary, every yard of British
territory which was occupied was instantly annexed either by the
Transvaal or by the Orange Free State. This is admitted and beyond
dispute. What becomes then of the theory of a defensive war, and what
can they urge against the justice which awarded the same fate to the
land of the Boers when it in turn was occupied by us? The Boers did not
use their temporary victory in any moderate spirit. At the end of
January 1900, Dr. Leyds, while on his visit to Berlin, said:

'I believe that England will have to give us back a good part of the
territory formerly snatched away from us.... The Boers will probably
demand the cession of the strip of coast between Durban and Delagoa Bay,
with the harbours of Lucia and Kosi. The Orange Free State and the
Transvaal are to be united and to form one State, together with parts of
Natal and the northern districts of Cape Colony.'--(_Daily News_ Berlin
correspondent, February 1, March 16, 1900.)

They were to go to the sea, and nothing but going to the sea would
satisfy them. The war would end when their flag flew over Cape Town. But
there came a turn of the tide. The resistance of the garrisons, the
tenacity of the relieving forces, and the genius of Lord Roberts altered
the whole situation. The Boers were driven back to the first of their
capitals. Then for the first time there came from them those proposals
for peace, which were never heard when the game was going in their
favour. Here is President Kruger's telegram:

          'THE PRESIDENTS OF THE ORANGE FREE STATE AND OF THE
          SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC TO THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY.

                                         'Bloemfontein: March 5, 1900.

'The blood and the tears of the thousands who have suffered by this war,
and the prospect of all the moral and economic ruin with which South
Africa is now threatened, make it necessary for both belligerents to ask
themselves dispassionately, and as in the sight of the Triune God, for
what they are fighting, and whether the aim of each justifies all this
appalling misery and devastation.

'With this object, and in view of the assertions of various British
statesmen to the effect that this war was begun and is being carried on
with the set purpose of undermining Her Majesty's authority in South
Africa, and of setting up an Administration over all South Africa
independent of Her Majesty's Government, we consider it our duty
solemnly to declare that this war was undertaken solely as a defensive
measure to safeguard the threatened independence of the South African
Republic, and is only continued in order to secure and safeguard the
incontestable independence of both Republics as Sovereign International
States, and to obtain the assurance that those of Her Majesty's subjects
who have taken part with us in this war shall suffer no harm whatsoever
in person or property.

'On these conditions, but on these conditions alone, are we now, as in
the past, desirous of seeing peace re-established in South Africa, and
of putting an end to the evils now reigning over South Africa; while, if
Her Majesty's Government is determined to destroy the independence of
the Republics, there is nothing left to us and to our people but to
persevere to the end in the course already begun, in spite of the
overwhelming pre-eminence of the British Empire, confident that that God
who lighted the unextinguishable fire of the love of freedom in the
hearts of ourselves and of our fathers will not forsake us, but will
accomplish His work in us and in our descendants.

'We hesitated to make this declaration earlier to Your Excellency, as we
feared that as long as the advantage was always on our side, and as long
as our forces held defensive positions far in Her Majesty's colonies,
such a declaration might hurt the feelings of honour of the British
people; but now that the prestige of the British Empire may be
considered to be assured by the capture of one of our forces by Her
Majesty's troops, and that we are thereby forced to evacuate other
positions which our forces had occupied, that difficulty is over, and we
can no longer hesitate clearly to inform your Government and people in
the sight of the whole civilised world why we are fighting, and on what
conditions we are ready to restore peace.'

Here is Lord Salisbury's reply:

                                      'Foreign Office: March 11, 1900.

'I have the honour to acknowledge Your Honours' telegram dated the 5th
of March from Bloemfontein, of which the purport is principally to
demand that Her Majesty's Government shall recognise the "incontestable
independence" of the South African Republic and Orange Free State "as
Sovereign International States," and to offer, on those terms, to bring
the war to a conclusion.

'In the beginning of October last peace existed between Her Majesty and
the two Republics under the Conventions which then were in existence. A
discussion had been proceeding for some months between Her Majesty's
Government and the South African Republic, of which the object was to
obtain redress for certain very serious grievances under which British
residents in the South African Republic were suffering. In the course of
those negotiations the South African Republic had, to the knowledge of
Her Majesty's Government, made considerable armaments, and the latter
had, consequently, taken steps to provide corresponding reinforcements
to the British garrisons of Cape Town and Natal. No infringement of the
rights guaranteed by the Conventions had up to that point taken place on
the British side. Suddenly, at two days' notice, the South African
Republic, after issuing an insulting ultimatum, declared war upon Her
Majesty, and the Orange Free State, with whom there had not even been
any discussion, took a similar step. Her Majesty's dominions were
immediately invaded by the two Republics, siege was laid to three towns
within the British frontier, a large portion of the two colonies was
overrun, with great destruction to property and life, and the Republics
claimed to treat the inhabitants of extensive portions of Her Majesty's
dominions as if those dominions had been annexed to one or other of
them. In anticipation of these operations, the South African Republic
had been accumulating for many years past military stores on an enormous
scale, which by their character could only have been intended for use
against Great Britain.

'Your Honours make some observations of a negative character upon the
object with which these preparations were made. I do not think it
necessary to discuss the question you have raised. But the result of
these preparations, carried on with great secrecy, has been that the
British Empire has been compelled to confront an invasion which has
entailed upon the Empire a costly war and the loss of thousands of
precious lives. This great calamity has been the penalty which Great
Britain has suffered for having in recent years acquiesced in the
existence of the two Republics.

'In view of the use to which the two Republics have put the position
which was given to them, and the calamities which their unprovoked
attack has inflicted upon Her Majesty's dominions, Her Majesty's
Government can only answer Your Honours' telegram by saying that they
are not prepared to assent to the independence either of the South
African Republic or of the Orange Free State.'

Is there any sane man of any nation who can contend that a British
statesman could possibly have taken any other view? From the firing of
the first shot the irresistible logic of events showed that either the
Republics must dominate Africa or they must cease to exist. For the
sparing of the Orange Free State there might, I think, be a fair
argument, but they had put themselves out of court by annexing every
foot of British territory which they could lay their hands upon. For the
sparing of the Transvaal there could be no possible reason. Had that
State been reconstituted we should instantly have been faced once more
with the Franchise question, the Uitlander question, the corrupt
oligarchy, the anti-British conspiracy, and everything which we had
spent so much blood and money to set right. The desperate situation from
which the British power was only just emerging was so fresh in our minds
that we could not feel justified in leaving the possibility--indeed the
certainty--of its recurrence to our children. Remember, you who judge
us, that we had done all this before. Once before within our own
memories we had patched up an inconclusive peace, and left these people
the power to hurt us. And what had come of it? Eternal trouble ending in
a great war which strained the resources of the Empire. Could we be
asked to do the same again? Would any nation on earth have done the same
again? From the day of the signing of peace we should know that we had
an implacable and formidable foe to the north of us, nursing his wrath
and preparing his strength for the day when he might strike us at an
advantage. Our colonies would lie ever in the shadow of its menace. Who
can blame us for deciding that the job should be done now in such a way
that it should never, so far as we could help it, need to be done once
more?

Such was the end of the first negotiations for peace. The war was
resumed, and in time the second capital of the Boers was taken and
President Kruger withdrew to Europe, leaving South Africa in the welter
to which he had reduced it. Then, for the second time, negotiations for
peace were opened on the initiative of General Botha, which led to a
meeting upon February 28, 1901, between Kitchener and Botha. Kitchener
had already explained that for the reasons given above the restoration
of independence was impossible, and the negotiations were carried
through on that understanding. Here is Lord Kitchener's own account of
the interview and of the points at issue:

 [_Telegram._]                     'Pretoria: March 1, 1901, 2.20 P.M.

'_28th February._--I have had a long interview with Botha, who showed
very good feeling and seemed anxious to bring about peace. He asked for
information on a number of subjects which he said that he should submit
to his Government and people, and if they agreed he should visit Orange
River Colony and get them to agree. They should all then hand in their
arms and finish the war. He told me that they could go on for some time,
and that he was not sure of being able to bring about peace without
independence. He tried very hard for some kind of independence, but I
declined to discuss such a point, and said that a modified form of
independence would be most dangerous and likely to lead to war in the
future. Subject was then dropped, and--

'Firstly.--The nature of future government of Colonies asked about. He
wanted more details than were given by Colonial Secretary, and I said
that, subject to correction from home, I understood that when
hostilities ceased military guard would be replaced by Crown Colony
administration, consisting of nominated Executive, with elected assembly
to advise administration, to be followed after a period by
representative government. He would have liked representative government
at once, but seemed satisfied with above.

'Secondly.--Whether a Boer would be able to have a rifle to protect him
from native? I said I thought he would be by a licence and on
registration.

'Thirdly.--He asked whether Dutch language would be allowed? I said that
English and Dutch would, I thought, have equal rights. He expressed hope
that officials dealing with farmers would know Dutch.

'Fourthly.--The Kaffir question. This turned at once on franchise of
Kaffirs, and a solution seemed to be that franchise should not be given
to Kaffirs until after representative government was granted to
Colonies. Orange Free State laws for Kaffirs were considered good.

'Fifthly.--That Dutch Church property should remain untouched.

'Sixthly.--Public trusts and orphan funds to be left intact. He asked
whether British Government, in taking over the assets of Republics,
would also take over legal debts. This he made rather a strong point of,
and he intended it to include debts legally contracted since the war
began. He referred to notes issued amounting to less than a million.

'Seventhly.--He asked if any war tax would be imposed on farmers? I said
I thought not.

'Eighthly.--When would prisoners of war return?

'Ninthly.--He referred to pecuniary assistance to repair burnt farms,
and enable farmers to start afresh. I said I thought some assistance
would be given.

'Tenthly.--Amnesty to all at end of war. We spoke of Colonials who
joined Republics, and he seemed not adverse to their being
disfranchised.

'I arranged with him that I should write and let him know the view of
the Government on these points. All I said during the interview was
qualified by being subject to confirmation from home. He was anxious to
get an answer soon.'

There followed some correspondence between Lord Kitchener, Sir Alfred
Milner, and Mr. Chamberlain upon the exact terms which could be given to
Botha. They ended in the following offer, which was submitted to him
upon March 7. That, in consideration of a complete military surrender,

'1. There should be a complete amnesty for all _bona fide_ acts of war
for all burghers of the Republics. In the case of Colonial rebels, if
they returned to their Colonies some inquiry must be held on their
conduct.

'2. All prisoners to be at once sent back.

'3. Crown Colony government to be given as soon as possible; this in
turn to change to representative government, as in all other free
British possessions. The courts of law to be independent of the
government.

'4. The Dutch and English languages to be put upon an equality.

'5. That the Government should help to replace the farmers on their
farms, to restore their buildings, should pledge itself not to specially
tax them, and should pay as an act of grace one million pounds to meet
the debt incurred by the Republican governments to their own people
during the war.

'6. That the burghers be allowed sporting fire-arms.

'7. That the Kaffirs should have the protection of the law, but should
not have the vote.

'In conclusion,' says Lord Kitchener, 'I must inform your honour that if
the terms are not accepted after a reasonable delay for consideration,
they must be regarded as cancelled.'

But the wise and chivalrous Botha was overruled by the men around him,
many of whom had little to lose by a continuance of the struggle. It was
evident that he did not himself consider independence vital, since he
had gravely discussed terms which were based upon loss of independence.
But other influences had been brought to bear upon him, and this was his
reply--a reply which has already cost the lives of so many of each side:

'I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of Your Excellency's letter
stating what steps Your Excellency's Government is prepared to take in
the event of a general and total cessation of hostilities. I have
advised my Government of Your Excellency's said letter; but, after the
mutual exchange of views at our interview at Middelburg on 28th February
last, it will certainly not surprise Your Excellency to know that I do
not feel disposed to recommend that the terms of the said letter shall
have the earnest consideration of my Government. I may add also that my
Government and my chief officers here entirely agree to my views.'

It will be observed that in this reply Botha bases his refusal upon his
own views as expressed in the original interview with Kitchener; and we
have his own authority, therefore, to show that they were not determined
by any changes which Chamberlain may have made in the terms--a favourite
charge of that gentleman's enemies.

It is impossible to say how, short of independence, Great Britain could
have improved upon these terms, and it has already been shown that to
offer independence would mean having to fight the war over again. It has
been suggested that Great Britain might have offered a definite date
upon which representative institutions should come in force, but such a
promise must be disingenuous, for it must evidently depend not upon a
date, but upon the state of the country. The offers of loans to the
farmers towards the stocking and rebuilding the farms were surely
generous to our defeated foes, and, indeed, it is clear now that in some
respects our generosity went too far, and that the interests of the
Empire would have suffered severely had these terms been accepted. To
have given more would certainly seem not to have offered peace, but to
have implored it.

Whatever the final terms of peace may prove to be, it is to be earnestly
hoped that 40,000 male prisoners will not be returned, as a matter of
right, without any guarantee for their future conduct. It is also much
to be desired that the bastard taal language, which has no literature
and is almost as unintelligible to a Hollander as to an Englishman, will
cease to be officially recognised. These two omissions may repay in the
long run for weary months of extra war since, upon Botha's refusal, the
British Government withdrew these terms and the hand moved onwards upon
the dial of fate, never to turn back.

De Wet had said in reference to Kitchener's terms of peace, 'What is
the use of examining all the points, as the only object for which we are
fighting is our independence and our national existence?' It is evident,
however, that Botha did not consider this an absolute bar to renewing
the negotiations, for upon May 10, two months later, he wrote the
following letter to Lord Kitchener:

                             'Commandant-General's Camp, May 10, 1901.

'EXCELLENCY,--As I have already assured Your Excellency I am very
desirous of terminating this war, and its sad consequences. It is,
however, necessary, in order to comply with the "Grondwet" of this
Republic and otherwise, that, before any steps are taken in that
direction, the condition of our country and our cause be brought to the
notice of His Honour, State President Kruger, in Europe; and I therefore
wish to send two persons to him in order to acquaint him fully with that
condition.

'As speed in this matter is of great consequence to both contending
parties, and as such despatch without Your Excellency's assistance would
take a considerable time, I should like to hear from Your Excellency
whether Your Excellency is prepared to assist me in expediting this
matter by allowing such person or persons to journey there and back
unhindered, if necessary by the traffic medium within Your Excellency's
control.--I have, &c.,

                                    'LOUIS BOTHA, Commandant-General.'

To this Kitchener answered:

             'Army Headquarters, South Africa, Pretoria, May 16, 1901.

'YOUR HONOUR,--I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of Your
Honour's letter of 10th instant, and, in reply, beg to state that I can
only deal with you and your superior officers in the field in regard to
the cessation of hostilities, and that I do not recognise the official
status of any other persons in the late Republics of the Orange River
and Transvaal.

'If, however, Your Honour desires, with the object of bringing
hostilities to a close, to consult with any person in Europe, I will
forward any telegram Your Honour desires on the subject, and let you
have the reply. Should, however, Your Honour still desire to send
messengers, and will inform me of their names and status, I will refer
the matter to His Majesty's Government for decision.--I have, &c.,

                       'KITCHENER, General,

 'Commanding-in-Chief, British Troops, South Africa.'

At this period, the second week of May, the Boer cause was in very low
water, as on the same date we have Botha reopening negotiations which he
had declared to be definitely closed, and Reitz (the man who used to
regard the whole matter as a great joke) writing a despairing letter to
Steyn to the effect that the game was up and that it was time to take
the last final step. A reply was received from Kruger encouraging the
Boers to continue their hopeless and fatal resistance. His reply was to
the effect that there were still great hopes of a successful issue of
the war, and that he had taken steps to make proper provision for the
Boer prisoners and for the refugee women. These steps, and very
efficient ones, too, were to leave them to the generosity of that
Government which he was so fond of reviling. There are signs that
something else had occurred to give them fresh hope and also fresh
material supplies. It looks, upon the face of it, as if, about that
time, large supplies of rifles, ammunition, and possibly recruits must
have reached them from some quarter, either from German Damaraland or
the Portuguese coast. At any rate there has been so much ammunition used
since, that either Reitz must have been raving or else large supplies
have reached the Boers from some unknown source.

So much for the official attempts at peace.

They have been given in some detail in order to prove how false it is
_that the British Government has insisted upon an unconditional
surrender_. Far from this being so, the terms offered by the British
Government have been so generous that they have aroused the strongest
distrust and criticism in this country, where they have seemed to be
surrendering by the pen all that had been won by the sword. Nothing has
been refused the enemy, save only independence, and that can never be
given, if the war has to continue until the last Boer is deported out of
Africa.

It is only necessary to refer briefly to the unofficial Boer attempts at
peace. A considerable body of the Boers, including many men of influence
and of intelligence, were disposed to accept the British flag and to
settle down in peace. The leaders of this party were the brave Piet de
Wet, brother of Christian, Paul Botha of Kroonstad, Fraser of
Bloemfontein, and others. Piet de Wet, who had fought against us as hard
as any man, wrote to his brother: 'Which is better, for the Republics to
continue the struggle and run the risk of total ruin as a nation, or to
submit? Could we for a moment think of taking back the country, if it
were offered to us, with thousands of people to be supported by a
Government which has not a farthing? Put passionate feeling aside for a
moment and use common-sense, and you will then agree with me that the
best thing for the people and the country is to give in, to be loyal to
the new Government, and to get responsible government.' Such were the
sentiments of many of the best of the burghers, and they endeavoured to
persuade their fellows. Both in the Transvaal and in the Free State,
Peace Committees were formed among the burghers, who sent deputies to
lay the facts of the situation before their brethren on commando. The
results were tragic. Two of the envoys, Morgendaal and de Koch, were
shot in cold blood, the former having been first beaten. Several of the
others were beaten, and all were ill-used.

This severity did not, however, stop the movement, but gave it a fiercer
turn. The burghers who were in favour of peace, finding it useless to
argue with their fellow-countrymen and knowing that their country was
being hopelessly ruined by the insensate resistance, took the extreme
course at last of bearing arms against them. There are at present three
strong commandos of burghers fighting upon the British side, commanded
by three Boer Generals--Marais, Celliers, and the younger Cronje, all of
whom had made their names in fighting against us. This fact alone goes
far to dispel those stories of British barbarity with which I shall
presently deal. They are believed in by political fanatics in England
and by dupes abroad, but the answer which many of the Boers upon the
spot make to them is to enlist and fight under the British flag. They
are in the best position for knowing the truth, and how can they show in
a stronger way what they believe that truth to be?




CHAPTER VI

THE FARM-BURNING


In the official correspondence which is published between the Boer and
British leaders in South Africa may very clearly be traced the way in
which this practice came to assume proportions which shocked public
opinion. It must be admitted that the results have not justified it, and
that, putting all moral questions apart, a burned-out family is the last
which is likely to settle down, as we hope that the Boers may eventually
settle down, as contented British citizens. On the other hand, when a
nation adopts guerilla tactics it deliberately courts those sufferings
to the whole country which such tactics invariably entail. They have
been the same in all wars and at all times. The army which is stung by
guerillas, strikes round it furiously and occasionally indiscriminately.
An army which is continually sniped and harassed becomes embittered, and
a General feels called upon to take those harsher measures which
precedent and experience suggest. That such measures have not been
pushed to an extreme by the British authorities is shown by the fact
that the captured guerilla has been made a prisoner of war--unlike his
prototype, the _franc-tireur_. The general question of guerillas may be
discussed later. At present we will confine our attention to the burning
of farms.

The first protest from the Boer side is dated February 3, 1900. In it
the two Presidents accuse the British troops 'of burning and blowing up
with dynamite the farmhouses, and of the devastation of farms.' The
document also includes an accusation of having used armed natives
against the Boers.

Lord Roberts replied upon February 5 to the effect that stringent
instructions had been given to the British troops to respect private
property. 'All wanton destruction or injury to peaceful inhabitants is
contrary to British practice and tradition, and will, if necessary, be
rigorously repressed by me.' He added that it was an untrue statement
that natives had ever been encouraged by British officers to commit
depredations. The charge, which has been the subject of many effective
cartoons upon the Continent, is as absurd as most of the other works of
the same artists. Why should the State which refused the aid of its own
highly trained Indian army of 150,000 men, avail itself of that of
savages? Lord Roberts denied the assertion with befitting warmth, and it
is not again repeated in the course of the despatches.

Lord Roberts in this document was not content with denying the Boer
allegations, but carried the war into the enemy's country:

'I regret to say that it is the Republican forces which have in some
cases been guilty of carrying on the war in a manner not in accordance
with civilised usage. I refer especially to the expulsion of loyal
subjects of Her Majesty from their homes in the invaded districts of
this Colony, because they refused to be commandeered by the invader. It
is barbarous to attempt to force men to take sides against their own
Sovereign and country by threats of spoliation and expulsion. Men,
women, and children have had to leave their homes owing to such
compulsion, and many of those who were formerly in comfortable
circumstances are now being maintained by charity.'

He adds: 'I beg to call your Honours' attention to the wanton
destruction of property by the Boer forces in Natal. They not only have
helped themselves freely to the cattle and other property of farmers
without payment, but they have utterly wrecked the contents of many
farmhouses. As an instance I would specify Mr. Theodore Wood's farm
"Longwood" near Springfield. I point out how very different is the
conduct of the British troops. It is reported to me from Modder River
that farms within the actual area of the British Camp have never even
been entered, the occupants are unmolested, and their houses, gardens,
and crops remain absolutely untouched.'

On March 26 Lord Roberts's Proclamation spoke with no uncertain voice
upon the subject of private property. It says:

'The following Proclamation, issued by me in the name of Her Majesty's
Government on the 26th March, begins: Notice is hereby given that all
persons who within the territories of the South African Republic or
Orange Free State shall authorise or be guilty of the wanton destruction
or damage or the counselling, aiding, or assisting in the wanton
destruction or damage of public or private property, such destruction or
damage not being justified by the usages and customs of civilised
warfare, will be held responsible in their persons and property for all
such wanton destruction and damage.'

This was during the period of the halt at Bloemfontein. I can well
remember that then and for long afterwards the consideration which was
shown upon this point seemed to those who were at the spot to be
exaggerated and absurd. I can remember that when we applied for leave to
use the deserted villas to put our sick soldiers into--the hospitals
being full--we were told that it could only be done by private treaty
with the owners, who were at that time on commando against us. I
remember also suggesting that the corrugated-iron fencing round the
cricket field should be used for making huts, and being told that it was
impossible, as it was private property.

The same extreme respect for personal property was shown during Lord
Roberts's advance. The country through which he passed swarmed with
herds and flocks, but, with as scrupulous a regard for the rights of
property as Wellington showed in the south of France, no hungry soldier
was allowed to take so much as a chicken. The punishment for looting was
prompt and stern. It is true that farms were burned occasionally and the
stock confiscated, but this was as a punishment for some particular
offence and not part of a system. The limping Tommy looked askance at
the fat geese which covered the dam by the roadside, but it was as much
as his life was worth to allow his fingers to close round those tempting
white necks. On foul water and bully beef he tramped through a land of
plenty.

A most striking example of British discipline and forbearance was
furnished at this period, while the war could still be called regular
upon the Boer side, by Rundle's Division, christened the 'Hungry Eighth'
by the Army. This Division had the misfortune to be stationed for
several months some distance from the railway line, and in consequence
had great difficulty in getting supplies. They were on half-rations for
a considerable period, and the men were so reduced in strength that
their military efficiency was much impaired. Yet they lived in a land of
plenty--a land of large farms well stocked with every sort of food. Why
it was impossible to get this food for the men I do not know, but I do
know that the prices for bread, eggs, milk, and other such things were
kept very high by the wives of the farmers who were away upon commando;
and that the hungry soldiers were quite unable to buy, and were not
permitted to take, the nourishment which was essential.

On May 19, while Lord Roberts's force was advancing on Pretoria, De Wet
sent in a despatch to complain of the destruction of two farms, Paarde
Kraal and Leeuw Kop. Lord Roberts replied that these two farms were
destroyed because, while a white flag was flying from the houses, the
troops were fired upon from the farmsteads. 'I have had two farms near
Kroonstad,' he adds, 'destroyed for similar reasons, and shall continue
to punish all such cases of treachery by the destruction of the farms
where they occur.' Here is a definite declaration of policy, quite
distinct from wanton destruction, and it is difficult to see how any
General could take any other steps, with justice to his own men. These
farms, and all which are included in this category, were justly and
properly destroyed--the families being removed without violence to a
place of safety.

The next representations from the Boer Commander were more definite in
their nature.

'Complaints are repeatedly reaching me,' he writes, 'that private
dwellings are plundered, and in some cases totally destroyed, and all
provisions taken from women and children, so that they are compelled to
wander about without food or covering. To quote several instances: It
has just been brought to my notice by way of sworn affidavit that the
house of Field-Cornet S. Buys on the farm, Leeuwspruit district,
Middelburg, was set on fire and destroyed on 20th June last. His wife,
who was at home, was given five minutes' time to remove her bedding and
clothing, and even what she took out was again taken from her. Her food,
sugar, &c., was all taken, so that for herself and her children she had
neither covering nor food for the following night. She was asked for the
key of the safe, and after it was given up by her she was threatened
with a sword, and money was demanded. All the money that was in the
house was taken away, all the papers in the safe were torn up, and
everything at the homestead that could not be taken away was destroyed.
The house of Field-Cornet Buys's son was also destroyed, the doors and
windows broken, &c.

'It has also been reported to me that my own buildings, on the farm
Varkenspruit, district Standerton, as well as the house of Field-Cornet
Badenhorst, on the adjoining farm, have been totally destroyed, and such
of the stock as was not removed was shot dead on the farm.

'Further, there is the sworn declaration of Mrs. Hendrik Badenhorst,
which speaks for itself.

'I cannot believe that such godless barbarities take place with Your
Excellency's consent, and thus I deem it my solemn duty to protest most
strongly against such destruction and vindictiveness as being entirely
contrary to civilised warfare.'

The greater part of these alleged outrages had occurred on General
Buller's side of the Transvaal, so the matter was referred to him. He
acknowledged that he had ordered six farmhouses to be destroyed:

'The following circumstances induced me to give the order. On entering
the Transvaal I caused the attached Proclamation (A) to be widely
distributed along my line of route. We marched from Volksrust to
Standerton practically unopposed. Shortly after our arrival at
Standerton our telegraph line was cut on several nights following, and
attempts were made to damage the military line by placing dynamite
cartridges with detonators attached upon it. These attempts were all
made on or in close vicinity to the estates above named. A watch was
kept and it was found that the attempts were made not by any formed
force of the enemy, but by a few scattered banditti who were given
shelter during the night in the houses I afterwards had destroyed, and
who thence, when they could, tried to murder our patrols, and sallied
out at night to damage the line. It was further ascertained that these
men came and usually returned through Varkenspruit. I directed that
copies of Proclamation (A) should be personally left at each house, and
the inmates of each should be warned that these depredations could not
be permitted, and that if people living under our protection allowed
these sort of men to resort to their houses without informing us, they
must take the consequences, and their houses would be destroyed. This
warning had some effect for a day or two, but on 1st and 2nd of July the
nuisance recommenced, and on the 7th July, having acquired full proof
that the houses were being regularly used as shelters for men who were
hostile to us, and who were not under any proper command, in fact, who
were only acting as banditti, I had the houses destroyed.

'The women and children occupying the farms were removed elsewhere with
as little inconvenience to themselves as we could arrange.'

Here again it is impossible to doubt that the British commanders were
well within their rights. It is true that Article XXIII. of The Hague
Conventions makes it illegal to destroy the enemy's property, but it
adds: 'Unless such destruction be imperatively demanded by the
necessities of war.' Now nothing can be more imperative in war than the
preservation of the communications of the army. A previous clause of the
same Article makes it illegal to 'kill or wound treacherously
individuals belonging to the hostile army.' It is incontestable that to
take the cover of a farmhouse which flies the white flag in order to
make attacks is to 'kill or wound treacherously,' and so on a double
count the action of the British becomes legal, and even inevitable. Lord
Roberts's message to De Wet upon August 3, 1900, restates both his
intentions and his reasons for it:

'Latterly, many of my soldiers have been shot from farmhouses over which
the white flag has been flying, the railway and telegraph lines have
been cut, and trains wrecked. I have therefore found it necessary, after
warning your Honour, to take such steps as are sanctioned by the customs
of war to put an end to these and similar acts, and have burned down the
farmhouses at or near which such deeds have been perpetrated. This I
shall continue to do whenever I consider the occasion demands it.

'The remedy lies in your Honour's own hands. The destruction of property
is most distasteful to me, and I shall be greatly pleased when your
Honour's co-operation in the matter renders it no longer necessary.'

This raises the question of the legality of the burning of farmhouses in
the vicinity of the place where the railway is cut. The question
presented itself forcibly to my mind when I saw with my own eyes the
tall plumes of smoke rising from six farmhouses, De Wet's among them, in
the neighbourhood of Roodeval. There is no doubt whatever that in the
war of 1870--the classic type of modern war--the villages and
populations near the scene of a cut railway were severely punished. But
The Hague Conventions had not then been signed. On the one hand, it may
be urged that it is impossible without such disciplinary measures to
preserve a line of 1,000 miles running all the way through a hostile or
semi-hostile country. Also that it is 'imperatively demanded by the
necessities of war.' On the other hand, there is Article L., which says,
'No general penalty can be inflicted on the population on account of the
acts of individuals, for which it cannot be regarded as collectively
responsible.' An argument might be advanced for either side, but what
will actually determine is the strongest argument of all--that of
self-preservation. An army situated as the British Army was, and
dependent for its supplies upon its communications, _must_ keep them
open even if it strains the Conventions in doing so. As a matter of
fact, farm-burning had no effect in checking the railway-cutting, and
had a considerable effect in embittering the population. Yet a General
who was cut off from his base thirty times in a month was bound to leave
the argument of legality to the jurists, and to adopt the means which
seemed most likely to stop the nuisance. The punishment fell with cruel
injustice upon some individuals. Others may have been among the actual
raiders.

On September 2 Lord Roberts communicated his intentions to General
Botha:

'SIR,--I have the honour to address your Honour regarding the operations
of those comparatively small bands of armed Boers who conceal themselves
on farms in the neighbourhood of our lines of communication and thence
endeavour to damage the railway, thus endangering the lives of
passengers travelling by train who may or may not be combatants.

'2. My reason for again referring to this subject is that, except in the
districts occupied by the Army under the personal command of your
Honour, there is now no formed body of Boer troops in the Transvaal or
Orange River Colony, and that the war is degenerating into operations
carried on by irregular and irresponsible guerillas. This would be so
ruinous to the country and so deplorable from every point of view, that
I feel bound to do everything in my power to prevent it.

'3. The orders I have at present issued, to give effect to these views,
are that the farm nearest the scene of any attempt to injure the line or
wreck a train is to be burnt, and that all farms within a radius of 10
miles are to be completely cleared of all their stock, supplies, &c.'

Granting that the penalty is legal at all, it must be allowed that it is
put in a minimum form, since only one farm in each case is to be
destroyed; and the further clearing of stock is undoubtedly justified,
since it would tend to cripple the mobility of Boer raiders approaching
the line. Yet one farm for each attack becomes a formidable total when
the attacks are on an average of one per day.

We have treated two causes for which farms were burned: (1) For being
used as cover for snipers; (2) as a punishment for the cutting of
railways. A third cause now comes to the front. A large number of
burghers had taken the oath of neutrality and had been allowed to return
to their farms by the British. These men were persuaded or terrorised by
the fighting commandos into breaking their parole and abandoning those
farms on which they had sworn to remain. The farmhouses were their bail,
and Lord Roberts decreed that it was forfeited. On August 23 he
announced his decision to General Botha:

'Your Honour represents that well-disposed families living on their
farms have been driven from their houses, and that their property has
been taken away or destroyed. This no doubt is true, but not in the
sense which your letter would imply. Burghers who are well-disposed
towards the British Government, and anxious to submit to my authority,
have had their property seized by the Boer commandos, and have been
threatened with death if they refused to take up arms against the
British forces. Your Honour's contention that a solemn oath of
neutrality which the burghers have voluntarily taken in order to remain
in unmolested occupation of their farms is null and void, because you
have not consented to it, is hardly open to discussion. I shall punish
those who violate their oath and confiscate their property, no burgher
having been forced to take the oath against his will.'

It is quite certain that the Boer Government committed a very clear
breach of the Conventions of The Hague in compelling, or even in
permitting, these men to rejoin the ranks. 'In such cases,' says Article
X., 'their own Government shall not require of, nor accept from, them
any service incompatible with the parole given.' This is clear as
regards the Government. But in the case of the men it is different.
Their pro

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