It strikes me with wonder also that with all our astuteness, our
experience, and our knowledge of human nature, we should be so credulous
of these many professions of amity from the Transvaal. I am fresh from
my visit to Mr Kruger. It was but yesterday I heard the many dismal
complaints of Johannesburg; I have but now come in from a look at the
fortified heights of Pretoria. I open the last blue book and extract
the following from the Boer despatches:--
1. "No unfriendliness is intended by Volksraad. It would be unfair to
interpret it as such."
2. "This Government also can give the assurances that it has no other
than peaceable intentions."
3. "This Government again expresses its opinion that through friendly
co-operation, the confidence so rudely shaken, as well as peace and
prosperity, will be restored."
9. "The Government readily gives the assurances that there is no
intention on its part of infringing its obligations."
5. "This Government need hardly assure Her Majesty's Government that it
will comply with its obligations as soon as It is in a position to do
so."
6. "His Honour the President requests me to assure you that there is no
intention on his part to depart from the terms of the London Convention,
and that he is anxious to act throughout in conformity with those
assurances, etc."
"A BOER MACHIAVELLI."
One who knows anything of the conditions under which the Johannesburgers
live need not come to Pretoria to know how hollow and insincere these
and countless other professions are; but when read at Pretoria with
those four forts constructed at lavish expense commanding the approaches
to the capital from the Johannesburg direction, the mendacity of the
writer seems appalling. Take these in conjunction with the many
promises President Kruger has uttered to interviewers, to casual English
visitors, to deputations or in public speeches, in relation to his
intentions to adhere strictly to the terms of the Convention of 1884,
and one cannot but conclude that, though the President reads the Bible
daily, he must have overlooked the sentences that apply to liars. If,
despite the cordiality, conciliatoriness, and numerous expressions of
goodwill, that are visible in Mr Chamberlain's despatches, and the
entreaties, remonstrances, and the continual patient efforts of the
uitlanders to soften the asperities of Boer rule, President Kruger and
his burghers, while writing in the style of the above quotations, build
these great forts at Pretoria and Johannesburg, it is evident that
English people have wholly failed to understand this man, and that their
ideal of a "goodish sort of man, kindly and a little old-fashioned, a
little slow perhaps, and stubborn after the Dutch type," never existed
since Pretoria was founded. On the contrary, the real Kruger is a Boer
Machiavelli, astute and bigoted, obstinate as a mule, and remarkably
opinionated, vain and puffed up with the power conferred on him,
vindictive, covetous and always a Boer, which means a narrow-minded and
obtuse provincial of the illiterate type.