The message sent from the Cabinet Council of September 8th was evidently
the precursor either of peace or of war. The cloud must burst or blow over.
As the nation waited in hushed expectancy for a reply it spent some portion
of its time in examining and speculating upon those military preparations
which might be needed. The War Office had for some months been arranging for
every contingency, and had made certain dispositions which appeared to them
to be adequate, but which our future experience was to demonstrate to be far
too small for the very serious matter in hand.
It is curious in turning over the files of such a paper as the 'Times' to
observe how at first one or two small paragraphs of military significance
might appear in the endless columns of diplomatic and political reports, how
gradually they grew and grew, until at last the eclipse was complete, and
the diplomacy had been thrust into the tiny paragraphs while the war filled
the journal. Under July 7th comes the first glint of arms amid the drab
monotony of the state papers. On that date it was announced that two
companies of Royal Engineers and departmental corps with reserves of
supplies and ammunition were being dispatched. Two companies of engineers!
Who could have foreseen that they were the vanguard of the greatest army
which ever at any time of the world's history has crossed an ocean, and far
the greatest which a British general has commanded in the field?
On August 15th, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a very
serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein conference and the
dispatch 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 forty or 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.
In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been sent
from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir W. Hely
Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office. It was notorious that the
Transvaal was armed to the teeth, that the Orange Free State was likely to
join her, and that there had been strong attempts made, both privately and
through the press, to alienate the loyalty of the Dutch citizens of both the
British colonies. Many sinister signs were observed by those upon the spot.
The veld had been burned unusually early to ensure a speedy grass-crop after
the first rains, there had been a collecting of horses, a distribution of
rifles and ammunition. The Free State farmers, who graze their sheep and
cattle upon Natal soil during the winter, had driven them off to places of
safety behind the line of the Drakensberg. Everything pointed to approaching
war, and Natal refused to be satisfied even by the dispatch of another
regiment. On September 6th a second message was received at the Colonial
Office, which states the case with great clearness and precision.
'The Prime Minister desires me to urge upon you by the unanimous advice of
the Ministers that sufficient troops should be dispatched to Natal
immediately to enable the colony to be placed in a state of defence against
an attack from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. I am informed by the
General Officer Commanding, Natal, that he will not have enough troops, even
when the Manchester Regiment arrives, to do more than occupy Newcastle and
at the same time protect the colony south of it from raids, while Laing's
Nek, Ingogo River and Zululand must be left undefended. My Ministers know
that every preparation has been made, both in the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State, which would enable an attack to be made on Natal at short
notice. My Ministers believe that the Boers have made up their minds that
war will take place almost certainly, and their best chance will be, when it
seems unavoidable, to deliver a blow before reinforcements have time to
arrive. Information has been received that raids in force will be made by
way of Middle Drift and Greytown and by way of Bond's Drift and Stangar,
with a view to striking the railway between Pietermaritzburg and Durban and
cutting off communications of troops and supplies. Nearly all the Orange
Free State farmers in the Klip River division, who stay in the colony
usually till October at least, have trekked, at great loss to themselves;
their sheep are lambing on the road, and the lambs die or are destroyed. Two
at least of the Entonjanani district farmers have trekked with all their
belongings into the Transvaal, in the first case attempting to take as
hostages the children of the natives on the farm. Reliable reports have been
received of attempts to tamper with loyal natives, and to set tribe against
tribe in order to create confusion and detail the defensive forces of the
colony. Both food and warlike stores in large quantities have been
accumulated at Volksrust, Vryheid and Standerton. Persons who are believed
to be spies have been seen examining the bridges on the Natal Railway, and
it is known that there are spies in all the principal centres of the colony.
In the opinion of Ministers, such a catastrophe as the seizure of Laing's
Nek and the destruction of the northern portion of the railway, or a
successful raid or invasion such as they have reason to believe is
contemplated, would produce a most demoralising effect on the natives and on
the loyal Europeans in the colony, and would afford great encouragement to
the Boers and to their sympathisers in the colonies, who, although armed and
prepared, will probably keep quiet unless they receive some encouragement of
the sort. They concur in the policy of her Majesty's Government of
exhausting all peaceful means to obtain redress of the grievances of the
Uitlanders and authoritatively assert the supremacy of Great Britain before
resorting to war; but they state that this is a question of defensive
precaution, not of making war. '
In answer to these and other remonstrances the garrison of Natal was
gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly by the
dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd Berkshires, the
1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters, and the 2nd Dublin
Fusiliers arrived in succession with reinforcements of artillery. The 5th
Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers, and 19th Hussars came from India, with the 1st
Devonshires, 1st Gloucesters, 2nd King's Royal Rifles and 2nd Gordon
Highlanders. These with the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of Field
Artillery made up the Indian Contingent. 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.
As to the disposition of these troops a difference of opinion broke out
between the ruling powers in Natal and the military chiefs at the spot.
Prince Kraft has said, 'Both strategy and tactics may have to yield to
politics '; but the political necessity should be very grave and very clear
when it is the blood of soldiers which has to pay for it. Whether it arose
from our defective intelligence, or from that caste feeling which makes it
hard for the professional soldier to recognise (in spite of deplorable past
experiences) a serious adversary in the mounted farmer, it is certain that
even while our papers were proclaiming that this time, at least, we would
not underrate our enemy, we were most seriously underrating him. The
northern third of Natal is as vulnerable a military position as a player of
kriegspiel could wish to have submitted to him. It runs up into a thin
angle, culminating at the apex in a difficult pass, the ill-omened Laing's
Nek, dominated by the even more sinister bulk of Majuba. Each side of this
angle is open to invasion, the one from the Transvaal and the other from the
Orange Free State. A force up at the apex is in a perfect trap, for the
mobile enemy can flood into the country to the south of them, cut the line
of supplies, and throw up a series of entrenchments which would make retreat
a very difficult matter. Further down the country, at such positions as
Ladysmith or Dundee, the danger, though not so imminent, is still an obvious
one, unless the defending force is strong enough to hold its own in the open
field and mobile enough to prevent a mounted enemy from getting round its
flanks. To us, who are endowed with that profound military wisdom which only
comes with a knowledge of the event, it is obvious that with a defending
force which could not place more than 12,000 men in the fighting line, the
true defensible frontier was the line of the Tugela. As a matter of fact,
Ladysmith was chosen, a place almost indefensible itself, as it is dominated
by high hills in at least two directions.
Such an event as the siege of the town appears never to have been
contemplated, as no guns of position were asked for or sent. In spite of
this, an amount of stores, which is said to have been valued at more than a
million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway junction, so that
the position could not be evacuated without a crippling loss. The place was
the point of bifurcation of the main line, which divides at this little town
into one branch running to Harrismith in the Orange Free State, and the
other leading through the Dundee coal fields and Newcastle to the Laing's
Nek tunnel and the Transvaal. An importance, which appears now to have been
an exaggerated one, was attached by the Government of Natal to the
possession of the coal fields, and it was at their strong suggestion, but
with the concurrence of General Penn Symons, that the defending force was
divided, and a detachment of between three and four thousand sent to Dundee,
about forty miles from the main body, which remained under General Sir
George White at Ladysmith. General Symons underrated the power of the
invaders, but it is hard to criticise an error of judgment which has been so
nobly atoned and so tragically paid for. At the time, then, which our
political narrative has reached, the time of suspense which followed the
dispatch of the Cabinet message of September 8th, 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, for by this time it was evident
that the Orange Free State, with which we had had no shadow of a dispute,
was going, in a way which some would call wanton and some chivalrous, to
throw in its weight against us. 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. 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. In artillery they were known to have about a hundred
guns, many of them (and the fact will need much explaining) more modern and
powerful than any which we could bring against them. 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 were 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.
At the risk of a tedious but very essential digression, something must be
said here as to the motives with which the Boers had for many years been
quietly preparing for war. That the Jameson raid was not the cause is
certain, though it probably, by putting the Boer Government into a strong
position, had a great effect in accelerating matters. What had been done
secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when so plausible
an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the preparations were
long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts at Pretoria and
Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that wretched incursion, and
the importation of arms was going on apace. In that very year, 1895, a
considerable sum was spent in military equipment.
But if it was not the raid, and if the Boers had no reason to fear the
British Government, with whom the Transvaal might have been as friendly as
the Orange Free State had been for forty years, why then should they arm? It
was a difficult question, and one in answering which we find ourselves in a
region of conjecture and suspicion rather than of ascertained fact. But the
fairest and most unbiased of historians must confess that there is a large
body of evidence to show that into the heads of some of the Dutch leaders,
both in the northern republics and in the Cape, there had entered the
conception of a single Dutch commonwealth, extending from Cape Town to the
Zambesi, in which flag, speech, and law should all be Dutch. It is in this
aspiration that many shrewd and well-informed judges see the true inner
meaning of this persistent arming, of the constant hostility, of the forming
of ties between the two republics (one of whom had been reconstituted and
made a sovereign independent State by our own act), and finally of that
intriguing which endeavoured to poison the affection and allegiance of our
own Dutch colonists, who had no political grievances whatever. They all
aimed at one end, and that end was the final expulsion of British power from
South Africa and the formation of a single great Dutch republic. The large
sum spent by the Transvaal in secret service money--a larger sum, I believe,
than that which is spent by the whole British Empire--would give some idea
of the subterranean influences at work. An army of emissaries, agents, and
spies, whatever their mission, were certainly spread over the British
colonies. Newspapers were subsidised also, and considerable sums spent upon
the press in France and Germany.
In the very nature of things a huge conspiracy of this sort to substitute
Dutch for British rule in South Africa is not a matter which can be easily
and definitely proved. Such questions are not discussed in public documents,
and men are sounded before being taken into the confidence of the
conspirators. But there is plenty of evidence of the individual ambition of
prominent and representative men in this direction, and it is hard to
believe that what many wanted individually was not striven for collectively,
especially when we see how the course of events did actually work towards
the end which they indicated. Mr. J. P. FitzPatrick, in 'The Transvaal from
Within'--a book to which all subsequent writers upon the subject must
acknowledge their obligations--narrates how in 1896 he was approached by Mr.
D. P. Graaff, formerly a member of the Cape Legislative Council and a very
prominent Afrikander Bondsman, with the proposition that Great Britain
should be pushed out of South Africa. The same politician made the same
proposal to Mr. Beit. Compare with this the following statement of Mr.
Theodore Schreiner, the brother of the 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 every one 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:
'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 unbiased historian cannot dismiss the conspiracy as a
myth.
And to this one may retort, why should they not conspire? 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 one system all white men are equal,
and that on the other the minority of one race has persecuted the majority
of 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.
Leaving these wider questions of politics, and dismissing for the time those
military considerations which were soon to be of such vital moment, we may
now return to the course of events in the diplomatic struggle between the
Government of the Transvaal and the Colonial Office. On September 8th, as
already narrated, a final message was sent to Pretoria, which stated the
minimum terms which the British Government could accept as being a fair
concession to her subjects in the Transvaal. A definite answer was demanded,
and the nation waited with sombre patience for the reply.
There were few illusions in this country as to the difficulties of a
Transvaal war. It was clearly seen that little honour and immense vexation
were in store for us. The first Boer war still smarted in our minds, and we
knew the prowess of the indomitable burghers. But our people, if gloomy,
were none the less resolute, for that national instinct which is beyond the
wisdom of statesmen had borne it in upon them that this was no local
quarrel, but one upon which the whole existence of the empire hung. The
cohesion of that empire was to be tested. Men had emptied their glasses to
it in time of peace. Was it a meaningless pouring of wine, or were they
ready to pour their hearts' blood also in time of war? Had we really founded
a series of disconnected nations, with no common sentiment or interest, or
was the empire an organic whole, as ready to thrill with one emotion or to
harden into one resolve as are the several States of the Union? That was the
question at issue, and much of the future history of the world was at stake
upon the answer.
Already there were indications that the colonies appreciated the fact that
the contention was no affair of the mother country alone, but that she was
upholding the rights of the empire as a whole, and might fairly look to them
to support her in any quarrel which might arise from it. As early as July
11th, Queensland, the fiery and semitropical, had offered a contingent of
mounted infantry with machine guns; New Zealand, Western Australia,
Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia followed in the
order named. Canada, with the strong but more deliberate spirit of the
north, was the last to speak, but spoke the more firmly for the delay. Her
citizens were the least concerned of any, for Australians were many in South
Africa but Canadians few. None the less, she cheerfully took her share of
the common burden, and grew the readier and the cheerier as that burden came
to weigh more heavily. From all the men of many hues who make up the British
Empire, from Hindoo Rajahs, from West African Houssas, from Malay police,
from Western Indians, there came offers of service. But this was to be a
white man's war, and if the British could not work out their own salvation
then it were well that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent
Indian army of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the
same reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration
for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of
those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as
limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have
advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed in the same
position.
On September 18th 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 measures 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 have been in the Cape Colony and in Canada, was
absolutely waived aside. The British Government had stated in their last
dispatch 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 22nd 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 dispatch, 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 21st 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.
There may have been ambitions like those already quoted from the report of
Dr. Reitz's conversation, or there may have been a complete hallucination as
to the comparative strength of the two combatants and the probable future of
South Africa; but however that may be, the treaty was made, and the time had
come to test how far it would hold.
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 fulfill 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. Everywhere, from over both borders, came the news of martial
preparations. Already at the end of September troops and armed burghers were
gathering upon the frontier, and the most incredulous were beginning at last
to understand that the shadow of a great war was really falling across them.
Artillery, war munitions, and stores were being accumulated at Volksrust
upon the Natal border, showing where the storm might be expected to break.
On the last day of September, twenty-six military trains were reported to
have left Pretoria and Johannesburg for that point. At the same time news
came of a concentration at Malmani, upon the Bechuanaland border,
threatening the railway line and the British town of Mafeking, a name
destined before long to be familiar to the world.
On October 3rd there occurred what was in truth an act of war, although the
British Government, patient to the verge of weakness, refused to regard it
as such, and continued to draw up their final state paper. The mail train
from the Transvaal to Cape Town was stopped at Vereeniging, and the week's
shipment of gold for England, amounting to about half a million pounds, was
taken by the Boer Government. In a debate at Cape Town upon the same day the
Africander Minister of the Interior admitted that as many as 404 trucks had
passed from the Government line over the frontier and had not been returned.
Taken in conjunction with the passage of arms and cartridges through the
Cape to Pretoria and Bloemfontein, this incident aroused the deepest
indignation among the Colonial English and the British public, which was
increased by the reports of the difficulty which border towns, such as
Kimberley and Vryburg, had had in getting cannon for their own defence. The
Raads had been dissolved, and the old President's last words had been a
statement that war was certain, and a stern invocation of the Lord as final
arbiter. England was ready less obtrusively but no less heartily to refer
the quarrel to the same dread Judge.
On October 2nd 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 7th 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 was on October 9th 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 been usually upon the side of
our simple and pastoral South African neighbours. The present instance was
no exception to the rule. While our Government was cautiously and patiently
leading up to an ultimatum, our opponent suddenly played the very card which
we were preparing to lay upon the table. 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 dispatched next day through
Sir Alfred Milner.
'10th October. --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. '
And so we have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of the pens
and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford and the
Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These people were as
near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They were of the same
Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit of mind, in religion,
in respect for law, they were as ourselves. Brave, too, they were, and
hospitable, with those sporting instincts which are dear to the Anglo-Celtic
race. There was no people in the world who had more qualities which we might
admire, and not the least of them was that love of independence which it is
our proudest boast that we have encouraged in others as well as exercised
ourselves. And yet we had come to this pass, that there was no room in all
vast South Africa for both of us. We cannot hold ourselves blameless in the
matter. 'The evil that men do lives after them,' and it has been told in
this small superficial sketch where we have erred in the past in South
Africa. On our hands, too, is the Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen
and led by officers who held the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame
of the shuffling, half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable
business. These are matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and
it is we who held them. But the fagots which proved to be so inflammable,
they were not of our setting. They were the wrongs done to half the
community, the settled resolution of the minority to tax and vex the
majority, the determination of a people who had lived two generations in a
country to claim that country entirely for themselves. Behind them all there
may have been the Dutch ambition to dominate South Africa. It was no petty
object for which Britain fought. When a nation struggles uncomplainingly
through months of disaster she may claim to have proved her conviction of
the justice and necessity of the struggle. Should Dutch ideas or English
ideas of government prevail throughout that huge country? The one means
freedom for a single race, the other means equal rights to all white men
beneath one common law. What each means to the coloured races let history
declare. This was the main issue to be determined from the instant that the
clock struck five upon the afternoon of Wednesday, October the eleventh,
eighteen hundred and ninety-nine. That moment marked the opening of a war
destined to determine the fate of South Africa, to work great changes in the
British Empire, to seriously affect the future history of the world, and
incidentally to alter many of our views as to the art of war. It is the
story of this war which, with limited material but with much aspiration to
care and candour, I shall now endeavour to tell.
