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LORD MILNER'S WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA
FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT IN 1897 TO
THE PEACE OF VEREENIGING IN 1902
CONTAINING HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED INFORMATION
BY W. BASIL WORSFOLD
WITH PORTRAITS AND MAP
"What would have been the position to-day in South Africa if
there had not been a man prepared to take upon himself
responsibility; a man whom difficulties could not conquer, whom
disasters could not cow, and whom obloquy could never
move?"--LORD GOSCHEN _in the House of Lords, March 29th, 1906_
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY ALBEMARLE STREET W
1906
_This Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne
Convention, as well as in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and all British
Colonies and Dependencies._
_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
PREFACE
In sending this book to press I have only two remarks to make by way
of preface.
The first is wholly personal. It has been my good fortune to reside
twice for a considerable period in South Africa--first in the
neighbourhood of Capetown (1883-5), and afterwards in Johannesburg
(1904-5). During these periods of residence, and also during the long
interval between them, I have been brought into personal contact with
many of the principal actors in the events which are related in this
book. While, therefore, no pains have been spared to secure accuracy
by a careful study of official papers and other reliable publications,
my information is not derived by any means exclusively from these
sources.
My second remark is the expression of a hope that the contents of this
book may be regarded not merely as a chapter of history, but also as a
body of facts essential to the full understanding of the circumstances
and conditions of South Africa, as it is to-day. Since the restoration
of peace--an event not yet five years old--a great change has been
wrought in the political and economic framework of this province of
the empire. None the less, with a few conspicuous exceptions, almost
all of the principal actors in these pages are still there; and,
presumably, they are very much the same men now as they were before,
and during, the war. And in this connection it remains to notice an
aspect of the South African struggle which transcends all others in
fruitfulness and importance. It was a struggle to keep South Africa
not a dependency of Great Britain, but a part of the empire. The
over-sea Britains, understanding it in this sense, took their share in
it. They made their voices heard in the settlement. The service which
they thus collectively performed was great. It would have been
infinitely greater if they had been directly represented in an
administration nominally common to them and the mother country. No
political system can be endowed with effective unity--with that
organic unity which is the only effective unity--unless it is
possessed of a single vehicle of thought and action. To create this
vehicle--an administrative body in which all parts of the empire would
be duly represented--is difficult to-day. The forces of disunion,
which are at work both at home and beyond the seas, may make it
impossible to-morrow.
W. B. W.
RIDGE, NEAR CAPEL, SURREY,
_October 19th, 1906_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I Page
DOWNING STREET AND THE MAN ON THE SPOT.................. 1
CHAPTER II
THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS............... 48
CHAPTER III
A YEAR OF OBSERVATION.................................. 75
CHAPTER IV
UNDER WHICH FLAG?..................................... 130
CHAPTER V
PLAYING FOR TIME...................................... 188
CHAPTER VI
THE ULTIMATUM......................................... 253
CHAPTER VII
THE FALL OF THE REPUBLICS............................. 300
CHAPTER VIII
THE REBELLION IN THE CAPE COLONY...................... 341
CHAPTER IX
THE "CONCILIATION" MOVEMENT........................... 373
CHAPTER X
THE DISARMAMENT OF THE DUTCH POPULATION............... 413
CHAPTER XI
PREPARING FOR PEACE................................... 470
CHAPTER XII
THE SURRENDER OF VEREENIGING.......................... 536
INDEX................................................... 585
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF LORD MILNER _Frontispiece_
_From a photograph by Elliott & Fry (Photogravure)_
FACING PAGE
LORD MILNER AT SUNNYSIDE.............................. 473
MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA........................... _At the End_
LORD MILNER
CHAPTER I
DOWNING STREET AND THE MAN ON THE SPOT
The failure of British administration in South Africa during the
nineteenth century forms a blemish upon the record of the Victorian
era that is at first sight difficult to understand. If success could
be won in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in India and in Egypt,
why failure in South Africa? For failure it was. A century of wars,
missionary effort, British expansion, industrial development, of lofty
administrative ideals and great men sacrificed, had left the two
European races with political ambitions so antagonistic, and social
differences so bitter, that nothing less than the combined military
resources of the colonies and the mother-country sufficed to compel
the Dutch to recognise the British principle of "equal rights for all
white men south of the Zambesi." Among the many contributory causes of
failure that can be distinguished, the two most prominent are the
nationality difficulty and the native question. But these are problems
of administration that have been solved elsewhere: the former in
Canada and the latter in India. Or, to turn to agencies of a
different order, is the cause of failure to be found in a grudging
nature--the existence of physical conditions that made it difficult
for the white man, or for the white and coloured man together, to
wring a livelihood from the soil? The answer is that the like material
disadvantages have been conquered in Australia, India, and in Egypt,
by Anglo-Saxon energy. We might apply the Socratic method throughout,
traversing the entire range of our distinguishable causes; but in
every case the inquiry would reveal success in some other portion of
the Anglo-Saxon domain to darken failure in South Africa.
Nevertheless, in so far as any single influence can be assigned to
render intelligible a result brought about by many agencies, various
in themselves and operating from time to time in varying degrees, the
explanation is to be found in a little incident that happened in the
second year of the Dutch East India Company's settlement at the Cape
of Good Hope. The facts are preserved for us by the diary which
Commander Van Riebeck was ordered to keep for the information of his
employers. Under the date October 19th, 1653, we read that David
Janssen, a herdsman, was found lying dead of assegai wounds, inflicted
by the Beechranger Hottentots, while the cattle placed under his
charge were seen disappearing round the curve of the Lion's Head. The
theft had been successfully accomplished through the perfidy of a
certain "Harry," a Hottentot chief, who was living on terms of
friendship with the Dutch--a circumstance which was sufficiently
apparent from the fact that the raid was timed to take place at an
hour on Sunday morning when the whole of the little community, with
the exception of two sentinels and a second herdsman, were assembled
to hear a sermon from the "Sick-Comforter," Wylant. It was the first
conflict between the Dutch and the natives; for Van Riebeck had been
bidden, for various excellent reasons, to keep on good terms with the
Hottentots, and to treat them kindly. But the murder of a white man
was a serious matter. Kindness scarcely seemed to meet the case; and
so Van Riebeck applied to the Directors, the famous Chamber of
Seventeen, for definite instructions as to the course which he must
pursue.
[Sidenote: Van Riebeck's difficulty.]
He was told that only the actual murderer of David Janssen (if
apprehended) was to be put to death; that cattle equal in amount to
the cattle stolen were to be recovered, but only from the actual
robbers; and that "Harry," if necessary, should be sent to prison at
Batavia. But he was not otherwise to molest or injure the offending
Hottentots. Excellent advice, and such as we should expect from the
countrymen of Grotius in their most prosperous era. But unfortunately
it was quite impossible for Van Riebeck, with his handful of soldiers
and sailors, planted at the extremity of the great barbaric continent
of Africa, to think of putting it into effect. He replied that he had
no means of identifying the individual wrong-doers, and that the
institution of private property was unknown among the Hottentots. The
only method by which the individual could be punished was by punishing
the tribe, and he therefore proposed to capture the tribe and their
cattle. But this was a course of action which was repugnant to the
Directors' sense of justice. It aroused, besides, a vision of
reinforcements ordered from Batavia, and of disbursements quite
disproportionate to the practical utility of the Cape station as an
item in the system of the Company. In vain Van Riebeck urged that a
large body of slaves and ten or twelve hundred head of cattle would be
a great addition to the resources of the settlement. The Chamber of
Seventeen refused to sanction the proposals of the commander, and, as
its own were impracticable, nothing was done. The Beechranger tribe
escaped with impunity, and the Hottentots, as a whole, were emboldened
to make fresh attacks upon the European settlers.
[Sidenote: The Afrikander stock.]
This simple narrative is a lantern that sheds a ray of light upon an
obscure subject. Two points are noticeable in the attitude of the home
authority. First, there is its inability to grasp the local
conditions; and second, the underlying assumption that a moral
judgment based upon the conditions of the home country, if valid, must
be equally valid in South Africa. By the time that the home authority
had become Downing Street instead of the peripatetic Chamber of
Seventeen, the field of mischievous action over which these
misconceptions operated had become enlarged. The natives were there,
as before; but, in addition to the natives, there had grown up a
population of European descent, some thirty thousand in number, whose
manner of life and standards of thought and conduct were scarcely more
intelligible to the British, or indeed to the European mind, than
those of the yellow-skinned Hottentot or the brown-skinned Kafir. A
century and a half of the Dutch East India Company's government--a
government "in all things political purely despotic, in all things
commercial purely monopolist"--had produced a people unlike any other
European community on the face of the earth. Of the small original
stock from which the South African Dutch are descended, one-quarter
were Huguenot refugees from France, an appreciable section were
German, and the institution of slavery had added to this admixture the
inevitable strain of non-Aryan blood. But this racial change was by no
means all that separated the European population in the Cape Colony
from the Dutch of Holland. A more potent agency had been at work. The
corner-stone of the policy of the Dutch East India Company was the
determination to debar the settlers from all intercourse--social,
intellectual, commercial, and political--with their kinsmen in Europe.
One fact will suffice to show how perfectly this object was attained.
Incredible as it may seem, it is the case that at the end of the
eighteenth century no printing-press was to be found in the Cape
Colony, nor had this community of twenty thousand Europeans the means
of knowing the nature of the laws and regulations of the Government by
which it was ruled. So long and complete an isolation from European
civilisation produced a result which is as remarkable in itself as it
is significant to the student of South African history. This
phenomenon was the existence, in the nineteenth century, of a
community of European blood whose moral and intellectual standards
were those of the seventeenth.
[Sidenote: The nationality difficulty.]
Our dip into the early history of South Africa is not purposeless. It
does not, of course, explain the failure of British administration;
but it brings us into touch with circumstances that were bound to make
the task of governing the Cape Colony--a task finally undertaken by
England in 1806--one of peculiar difficulty. The native population was
strange, but the European population was even more strange and
abnormal. If we had been left to deal with the native population alone
we should have experienced no serious difficulty in rendering them
harmless neighbours, and have been able to choose our own time for
entering upon the responsibilities involved in the administration of
their territories. But, coming second on the field, we were bound to
modify our native policy to suit the conditions of a preexisting
relationship between the white and black races that was not of our
creation, and one, moreover, that was in many respects repugnant to
British ideas of justice. Nor was this all. The old European
population, which should have been, naturally, our ally and
fellow-worker in the task of native administration, gradually changed
from its original position of a subject nationality to that of a
political rival; and, as such, openly bid against us for the
mastership of the native African tribes.
Now when two statesmen are pitted against each other, of whom one is a
man whose methods of attack are limited by nineteenth-century ideas,
while the morality of the other, being that of the seventeenth
century, permits him greater freedom of action, it is obvious that the
first will be at a disadvantage. And this would be the case more than
ever if the nineteenth-century statesman was under the impression that
his political antagonist was a man whose code of morals was identical
with his own. When once he had learnt that the moral standard of the
other was lower than, or different from, his own, he would of course
make allowance for the circumstance, and he would then be able to
contest the position with him upon equal terms. But until he had
grasped this fact he would be at a disadvantage.
Generally speaking, the representatives of the British Government,
both Governors and High Commissioners, soon learnt that neither the
natives nor the Dutch population could be dealt with on the same
footing as a Western European. But the British Government cannot be
said to have thoroughly learnt the same lesson until, in almost the
last week of the nineteenth century, the three successive defeats of
Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso aroused it to a knowledge of the
fact that we had been within an ace of losing South Africa. Many,
indeed, would question whether even now the lesson had been thoroughly
learnt. But, however this may be, it is certain that throughout the
nineteenth century the Home Government wished to treat both the
natives and the Dutch in South Africa on a basis of British ideas; and
that by so doing it constantly found itself in conflict with its own
local representatives, who knew that the only hope of success lay in
dealing with both alike on a basis of South African ideas.
As the result of this chronic inability of British statesmen to
understand South Africa, it follows that the most instructive manner
of regarding our administration of that country during the nineteenth
century is to get a clear conception of the successive divergences of
opinion between the home and the local authorities.
At the very outset of British administration--during the temporary
occupation of the Cape from 1795 to 1808--we find a theoretically
perfect policy laid down for the guidance of the early English
Governors in their treatment of the Boers, or Dutch frontier farmers.
It is just as admirable, in its way, as were the instructions for the
treatment of the Hottentots furnished by the Directors of the Dutch
East India Company to Van Riebeck. In a despatch of July, 1800, the
third Duke of Portland, who was then acting as Secretary for the
Colonies, writes:
[Sidenote: Non-interference.]
"Considering the tract of country over which these border
inhabitants are dispersed, the rude and uncultivated state in
which they live, and the wild notions of independence which
prevail among them, I am afraid any attempts to introduce
civilisation and a strict administration of justice will be slow
in their progress, and likely, if not proceeded upon with caution
and management, rather to create a spirit of resistance, or to
occasion them to emigrate still further from the seat of
government, than answer the beneficent views with which they
might be undertaken. In fact, it seems to me the proper system of
policy to observe to them is to interfere as little as possible
in their domestic concerns and interior economy; to consider them
rather as distant communities dependent upon the Government than
as subjects necessarily amenable to the laws and regulations
established within the precincts of Government. Mutual advantages
arising from barter and commerce, and a strict adherence to good
faith and justice in all arrangements with them, joined to
efficient protection and occasional acts of kindness on the part
of the Government, seem likely to be the best means of securing
their attachment."
Who would have thought that this statement of policy, admirable as it is
at first sight, contained in itself the germ of a political heresy of
the first magnitude? Yet so it was. The principle of non-interference,
here for the first time enunciated and subsequently followed with fatal
effect, could not be applied by a nineteenth-century administration to
the case of a seventeenth-century community without its virtually
renouncing the functions of government. Obviously this was not the
intention of the home authority. There remained the difficulty of
knowing when to apply, and when not to apply, the principle; and
directly a specific case arose there was the possibility that, while the
local authority, with a full knowledge of the local conditions, might
think interference necessary, the home authority, without such
knowledge, might take an opposite view.
[Sidenote: Slaghter's Nek.]
A very few years sufficed to show that the most ordinary exercise of
the functions of government might be regarded as an "interference with
the domestic concerns and interior economy" of the European subjects
of the British Crown in South Africa. At the time of the permanent
occupation of the Cape (1806) the population of the colony consisted
of three classes: 26,720 persons of European descent, 17,657
Hottentots, and 29,256 returned as slaves. One of the first measures
of the British Governor, Lord Caledon, was the enactment of a series
of regulations intended to confer civil rights on the Hottentots,
while at the same time preventing them from using their freedom at the
expense of the European population. From the British, or even
European point of view, this was a piece of elementary justice to
which no man could possibly take exception. As applied to the
conditions of the Franco-Dutch population in the Cape Colony it was,
in fact, a serious interference with their "domestic concerns and
internal economy." And as such it produced the extraordinary protest
known to history as the "Rebellion" of Slaghter's Nek. There was no
question as to the facts. Booy, the Hottentot, had completed his term
of service with Frederick Bezuidenhout, the Boer, and was therefore
entitled, under the Cape law, to leave his master's farm, and to
remove his property. All this Bezuidenhout admitted; but when it came
to a question of yielding obedience to the magistrate's order, the
Boer said "No." In the words of Pringle, "He boldly declared that he
considered this interference between him (a free burgher) and _his_
Hottentot to be a presumptuous innovation upon his rights, and an
intolerable usurpation of tyrannical authority."
And the danger of allowing the Boers to pursue their
seventeenth-century dealings with the natives became rapidly greater
when the European Colonists, Dutch and English, were brought, by their
natural eastward expansion, into direct contact with the masses of
military Bantu south and east of the Drakenberg chain of
mountains--the actual dark-skinned "natives" of South Africa as it is
known to the people of Great Britain. The Boer frontiersman, with his
aggressive habits and ingrained contempt for a dark-skin,
disintegrated the Bantu mass before we were ready to undertake the
work of reconstruction. And therefore the local British authority soon
learnt that non-interference in the case of the Boer generally meant
the necessity of a much more serious interference at a subsequent date
with both Boer and Kafir. And so non-interference, in the admirable
spirit of the Duke of Portland's despatch, came to bear one meaning in
Downing Street and quite another in Capetown.
[Sidenote: D'Urban's policy.]
The earliest of the three crucial "divergences of opinion," to which
collectively the history of our South African administration owes its
sombre hue, was that which led to the reversal of Sir Benjamin
D'Urban's frontier policy by Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg)
at the end of the year 1835. The circumstances were these. On
Christmas Day, 1834, the Kafirs (without any declaration of war,
needless to say) invaded the Cape Colony, murdering the settlers in
the isolated farms, burning their homesteads, and driving off their
cattle. After a six months' campaign, in which the Dutch and British
settlers fought by the side of the regular troops, a treaty was made
with the Kafir chiefs which, in the opinion of D'Urban and his local
advisers, would render the eastern frontier of the Colony secure from
further inroads. The Kafirs were to retire to the line of the Kei
River, thus surrendering part of their territory to the European
settlers who had suffered most severely from the invasion; while a
belt of loyal Kafirs, supported by a chain of forts, was to be
interposed between the defeated tribes and the colonial farmsteads. In
addition to these measures, D'Urban proposed to compensate the
settlers for the enormous losses[1] which they had incurred; since, as
a contemporary and not unfriendly writer[2] puts it, the British
Government had exposed them for fourteen years to Kafir depredations,
rather than acknowledge the existence of a state of affairs that must
plainly have compelled it to make active exertions for their
protection.
[Footnote 1: The official returns showed that 456 farm-houses
had been wholly, and 350 partially, destroyed; and that 60
waggons, 5,715 horses, 111,930 head of horned cattle, and
161,930 sheep had been carried off by the Kafirs. And this
apart from the remuneration claimed by the settlers for
services in the field, and commandeered cattle and supplies.]
[Footnote 2: Cloete. See note, p. 16.]
The view of the home authority was very different. In the opinion of
His Majesty's ministers at Downing Street the Kafir invasion was the
result of a long series of unjustifiable encroachments on the part of
the European settlers. D'Urban was instructed, therefore, to reinstate
the Kafirs in the districts from which they had retired under the
treaty of September, 1835, and to cancel all grants of land beyond the
Fish River--the original eastern boundary of the Colony--which the
Colonial Government had made to its European subjects from 1817
onwards; while, as for compensation, any indemnity was altogether out
of the question, since the colonists had only themselves to thank for
the enmity of the natives--if, indeed, they had not deliberately
provoked the war with a view to the acquisition of fresh territory.
The divergence between these two opinions is sufficiently well marked.
To trace the precise agencies through which two diametrically opposed
views were evolved on this occasion from the same groundwork of facts
would be too lengthy a business; but, by way of comment, we may recall
two statements, each significant and authentic. Cloete, writing while
the events in question were still fresh in his mind, says of Lord
Glenelg's despatch: "A communication more cruel, unjust, and insulting
to the feelings not only of Sir Benjamin D'Urban ... but of the
inhabitants ... could hardly have been penned by a declared enemy of
the country and its Governor." And Sir George Napier, by whom D'Urban
was superseded, stated in evidence given before the House of Commons:
"My own experience, and what I saw with my own eyes, have confirmed me
that I was wrong and Sir Benjamin D'Urban was perfectly right; that if
he meant to keep Kafirland under British rule, the only way of doing
so was by having a line of forts, and maintaining troops in them."
[Sidenote: The Great Trek.]
This settlement of a South African question upon a basis of British,
or rather non-South African, ideas was followed by events as notorious
as they were disastrous. It must be remembered that in 1819-20 the
first and only effort to introduce a considerable British population
into South Africa had been successfully carried out when the "Albany"
settlers, to the number of some five thousand, were established in
this and other districts upon the eastern border of the Cape Colony.
The colonial farmers who suffered from the Kafir invasion of 1834-5
were not exclusively Boers. Among them there were many members of the
new British population, and the divergence of opinion between D'Urban
and Lord Glenelg was all the more significant, since in this case the
British settlers were in agreement with the Boers. It was no longer
merely a divergence of views as between the local and the home
authority, but as between the British in Britain and the British in
South Africa. It must also be remembered that, in the same year as the
Kafir invasion, a social revolution--the emancipation of slaves--had
been accomplished in the Cape Colony by an Act of the British
Parliament, in comparison with which the nationalisation of the
railways or of the mines in England would seem a comparatively
trifling disturbance of the system of private property to the
Englishman of to-day. The reversal of D'Urban's arrangements for the
safety of the eastern frontier was not only bad in itself, but it came
at a bad time. Whether the secession of the Emigrant Farmers would in
any case have taken place as the result of the emancipation of slaves
is a matter which cannot now be decided. But, however this may be, the
fact remains that two men so well qualified to give an opinion on the
subject as Judge Cloete and Sir John Robinson, the first Prime
Minister of Natal, unhesitatingly ascribe the determining influence
which drove the Boers to seek a home beyond the jurisdiction of the
British Government to the sense of injustice created by the measures
dictated by Lord Glenelg, and by the whole spirit of his despatch.[3]
And this judgment is supported by the fact that the wealthier Dutch of
the Western Province were much more seriously affected by the
emancipation of slaves than the "Boers" of the eastern districts of
the Colony; yet it was these latter, of course, who provided the bulk
of the emigrants who crossed the Orange River in the years of the
Great Trek (1835-8) We shall not therefore be drawing an extravagantly
improbable conclusion, if we decide that the movement which divided
European South Africa was due to a well-ascertained divergence of
opinion between the home and local authorities--both British.
[Footnote 3: For the benefit of those who may desire to read
the passages in which these opinions are expressed, I append
the references. Cloete's opinion is to be found in his "Five
Lectures on the Emigration of the Dutch Farmers," delivered
before the Natal Society and published at Capetown in 1856. A
reprint of this work was published by Mr. Murray in 1899. Sir
John Robinson's opinion, which endorses the views of Mrs.
Anna Elizabeth Steenekamp as expressed in _The Cape Monthly
Magazine_ for September, 1876, is to be found at pp. 46, 47
of his "A Lifetime in South Africa" (Smith, Elder, 1900).]
[Sidenote: The birth of the republic.]
[Sidenote: Sir George Grey.]
The results of this secession of something like one-fourth of the
Franco-Dutch population are common knowledge. Out of the scattered
settlements founded by the Emigrant Farmers beyond the borders of the
Colony were created, in 1852 (Sand River Convention) and 1854
(Bloemfontein Convention), the two Boer Republics, which half a century
later withstood for two years and eight months the whole available
military force of the British Empire. The first effect of the secession
was to erect the republican Dutch into a rival power which bid against
the British Government for the territory and allegiance of the natives.
Secession, therefore, made the inevitable task of establishing the
supremacy of the white man in South Africa infinitely more costly both
in blood and treasure. The British nation accepted the task, which fell
to it as paramount power, with the greatest reluctance. The endless and
apparently aimless Kafir wars exhausted the patience of the country, and
the destruction of an entire British regiment by Ketshwayo's[4] _impis_
created a feeling of deep resentment against the great High
Commissioner, whose policy was held--unreasonably enough--responsible
for the military disaster of Isandlhwana. Two opportunities of
recovering the lost solidarity of the Europeans were presented before
the republican Dutch had set themselves definitely to work for the
supremacy of South Africa through reunion with their colonial kinsfolk.
That both were lost was due at bottom to the disgust of the British
people at the excessive cost and burden of establishing a civilised
administration over the native population in South Africa. But in both
cases the immediate agency of disaster was the refusal of the Home
Government to listen to the advice of its local representative. Sir
George Grey would have regained the lost solidarity of the Europeans by
taking advantage of the natural recoil manifested among the Free State
Dutch from independence and responsibility towards the more settled and
prosperous life assured by British rule. His proposal was to unite the
Cape Colony, Natal, and the Free State in a federal legislature,
consisting of representatives chosen by popular vote in the several
states. In urging this measure he took occasion to combat the
pessimistic views of South African affairs which were prevalent in
England. The country was not commercially useless, but of "great and
increasing value." Its people did not desire Kafir wars, but were well
aware of the much greater advantages which they derived from the
peaceful pursuits of industry. The colonists were themselves willing to
contribute to the defence of that part of the Queen's dominions in which
they lived. And, finally, the condition of the natives was not hopeless,
for the missionaries were producing most beneficial effects upon the
tribes of the interior. But the most powerful argument which Grey used
was his ruthless exposure of the futility of the Conventions. By
allowing the Boer emigrants to grow into independent communities the
British Government believed that not only had they relieved themselves
of responsibility for the republican Dutch, but that they had secured,
in addition, the unfaltering allegiance of the larger Dutch population
which remained behind in the Cape Colony. Grey assured the Home
Government that in both respects it was the victim of a delusion bred of
its complete ignorance of South African conditions. The Boer Republics
would give trouble. Apart from the bad draftsmanship of the
conventions--a fertile source of disagreement--these small states would
be centres of intrigue and "internal commotions," while at the same time
their revenues would be too small to provide efficiently for their
protection against the warlike tribes. The policy of _divide et
impera_--or, as Grey called it, the "dismemberment" policy--would fail,
since the political barrier which had been erected was wholly
artificial.
[Footnote 4: Cetewayo.]
"Although these European countries are treated as separate
nations," he wrote, "their inhabitants bear the same family names
as the inhabitants of this Colony, and maintain with them ties of
the closest intimacy and relationship. They speak generally the
same language--not English, but Dutch. They are for the most part
of the same religion, belonging to the Dutch Reformed Church.
They have the same laws--the Roman Dutch. They have the same
sympathies, the same prejudices, the same habits, and frequently
the same feelings regarding the native races....
"I think that there can be no doubt that, in any great public, or
popular, or national question or movement, the mere fact of
calling these people different nations would not make them so,
nor would the fact of a mere fordable stream running between them
sever their sympathies or prevent them from acting in unison....
Many questions might arise in which, if the Government on the
south side of the Orange River took a different view from that on
the north side of the river, it might be very doubtful which of
the two Governments the great mass of the people would obey."[5]
[Footnote 5: Despatch of November 19th, 1858, to Sir E. B.
Lytton.]
The "divergence of opinion" between Capetown and Downing Street was
complete. Grey was charged with "direct disobedience" for listening to
the offers of the Free State inhabitants. Recalled by a despatch of
June 4th, 1859, he was reinstated in August on condition that "he felt
himself sufficiently free and uncompromised," both with the Cape
Legislature and the people of the Free State, to be able personally to
carry out the policy of the Home Government, which, said the despatch,
"is entirely opposed to those measures, tending to the resumption
of sovereignty over that State, of which you have publicly
expressed your approval in your speech to the Cape Parliament,
and in your answers to the address from the State in question."
Nor was that all. In his endeavours to establish a simple but
effective system of European magistrates over the Kafirs beyond the
eastern border of the Colony, he was hampered by the short-sighted
economy of the Home Government. It seems incredible that a Colonial
Governor, even at that epoch, should have been looked upon by Downing
Street as a sort of importunate mendicant. But Grey's language shows
that this was the attitude against which he had to defend himself.
[Sidenote: The burden of the empire.]
"I would now only urge upon Her Majesty's Government," he writes
on September 8th, 1858, "that they should not distress me more
than is absolutely necessary for the government and control of
the people of the country which lies beyond the Colony of the
Cape of Good Hope. Stripping the country as I am of troops [to
serve in putting down the Indian Mutiny], some great disaster
will take place if necessary funds are at the same time cut off
from me. I am sure, if the enormous reductions I have effected in
military expenditure are considered, the most rigid economists
will feel that the money paid by Great Britain for the control of
this country has been advantageously laid out."
These extracts are not pleasant reading. They were written at the time
when the Imperial spirit was at its nadir. In the plain language of
the Secretary of State for the Colonies[6] in 1858, it was a time when
ministers were "compelled to recognise as fact the increased and
increasing dislike of Parliament to the maintenance of large military
establishments in our colonies at Imperial cost." Yet one more passage
must be cited, not so much because it is tinged by a certain grim
humour--although this is a valuable quality in such a context--as
because it affords an eminently pertinent illustration in support of
the contention that the refusal of the Home Government to follow the
advice of the "man on the spot" has been the operative cause of the
failure of British administration in South Africa. The reply to the
charge of "direct disobedience," which Grey formulates in one
leisurely sentence, runs as follows:
[Footnote 6: Sir E. B. Lytton.]
"With regard to any necessity which might exist for my removal on
the ground of not holding the same views upon essential points of
policy as Her Majesty's Government hold, I can only make the
general remark that, during the five years which have elapsed
since I was appointed to my present office, there have been at
least seven Secretaries of State for the Colonial Department,
each of whom held different views upon some important points of
policy connected with this country."
[Sidenote: The discovery of diamonds.]
Grey was not by any means the only Governor of the Cape to show the
home authorities how impossible it was to govern South Africa from
Downing Street, and to urge upon them the necessity of allowing their
representative, the one man who was familiar with local conditions, to
decide by what methods the objects of British policy could be most
effectively advanced. But it was not until some considerable time
after the Colonial Department had been placed under a separate
Secretary of State, and the Colonial Office had been constituted on
its present basis, with a staff of permanent officials, that these
protests produced any appreciable effect. What really aroused an
interest in South Africa--that is to say a practical interest, as
distinct from the interest created by the stories of missionary
enterprise and travel, and by the records of Kafir warfare--was the
discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1870, and the subsequent
establishment of the diamond industry at Kimberley. It was the first
time that anything certain had occurred to show that the vast
"hinterland" of the Cape might prove to be a territory of industrial
possibilities. The earnings of the diamond mines provided the Cape
Colony with a revenue sufficient to enable it to link together its
main towns by a tolerable railway system. The industry, once
established, attracted British capital and British population, and by
so doing it did what Blue-books and missionary reports had failed to
do: it brought the every-day life of the British Colonist in South
Africa within the purview of the nation. Thanks to the Kimberley mines
the Cape ceased to be thought of as a country whose resources were
exclusively pastoral and agricultural.
The epoch of the next great divergence of opinion was a more hopeful
time from an Imperialist point of view. Lord Beaconsfield, who was the
first statesman to give practical expression to the belief that the
maintenance of empire was not inconsistent with the welfare of the
masses of the home population, was in power. British statesmen, and
the class from which British statesmen are drawn, had begun to study
Colonial questions in a more hopeful and intelligent spirit. Something
had been learnt, too, of the actual conditions of South Africa. And
yet it was at this epoch that what was, perhaps, the most ruinous of
all the divergences of opinion between Capetown and Downing Street
occurred.
[Sidenote: Sir Bartle Frere.]
When Sir Bartle Frere was sent out to South Africa to carry out a
definite scheme for the union of the Republics with the British
colonies in a federal system, British statesmen and the educated
classes in general had adopted the views expressed by Grey twenty
years before. Tardily they had learnt to recognise both the essential
unity of the Dutch population and the value of the country as an
industrial asset of the empire. But, in the meantime, the centre of
political power had shifted in England. The extension of the franchise
had placed the ultimate control of British policy in South Africa in
the hands of a class of electors who were, as yet, wholly uneducated
in the political and economic conditions of that country. The
divergence of opinion between the home and the local authority became
in this case wider than ever. In short, it was the will of the nation
that caused Frere to be arrested midway in the accomplishment of his
task, and gave a mandate in 1880 to the Liberal party to administer
South Africa upon the lines of a policy shaped in contemptuous
indifference of the profoundest convictions and most solemn warnings
of a great proconsul and most loyal servant of the Crown.
The facts of Frere's supersession and recall are notorious: the story
is too recent to need telling at length. We know now that, apart from
the actual discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-mines, all that he
foresaw and foretold has been realised in the events which culminated,
twenty years later, in the great South African War. The military power
which at that time (1877-80) stood in the way of South African unity
under the British flag was the Zulu people. The whole adult male
population of the tribe had been trained for war, and organised by
Ketshwayo into a fighting machine. With this formidable military
instrument at his command Ketshwayo proposed to emulate the sanguinary
career of conquest pursued by his grandfather Tshaka;[7] and he had
prepared the way for the half-subdued military Bantu throughout South
Africa to co-operate with him in a general revolt against the growing
supremacy of the white man. Frere removed this obstacle. But in doing
so he, or rather the general entrusted with the command of the
military operations, lost a British regiment at Isandlhwana. This
revelation of the strength of the Zulu army was, in fact, a complete
confirmation of the correctness of Frere's diagnosis of the South
African situation. His contention was that England must give evidence
of both her capacity and her intention to control the native
population of South Africa before she could reasonably ask the
republican Dutch to surrender their independence and reunite with the
British colonies in a federal system under the British flag. A native
power, organised solely for aggressive warfare against one of two
possible white neighbours, constituted therefore, in his opinion, not
only a perpetual menace to the safety of Natal, but an insuperable
obstacle to the effective discharge of a duty by the paramount Power,
the successful performance of which was a condition precedent to the
reunion of the European communities. The only point in dispute was the
question whether the powers of Ketshwayo's _impis_ had been
exaggerated. To this question the disaster of Isandlhwana returned an
emphatic "No."
[Footnote 7: Chaka.]
[Sidenote: The recall of Frere.]
The divergence of opinion between Frere and Lord Beaconsfield's
cabinet was trivial as compared with the profound gulf which separated
his policy from the South African policy of Mr. Gladstone. After the
return of the Liberal party to power in the spring of 1880, Frere was
allowed to remain in office until August 1st, when he was recalled by
a telegraphic despatch. But, as Lord Kimberley pointed out to him,
there had been "so much divergence" between his views and those of the
Home Government that he would not have been allowed to remain at the
Cape, "had it not been for the special reason that there was a
prospect of his being able materially to forward the policy of
confederation." This prospect, of course, had then been removed by the
failure of the Cape Government, on June 29th, to bring about the
conference of delegates from the several States, which was the initial
step towards the realisation of Lord Carnarvon's scheme of federal
union.
The vindication of Frere's statesmanship has been carried, by the
inexorable logic of events, far beyond the sphere of Blue-book
arguments. But it is impossible to read this smug despatch without
recalling the words which Mr. Krueger wrote to Mr. (now Lord) Courtney
on June 26th of the same year: "The fall of Sir Bartle Frere will ...
be useful.... We have done our duty and used all legitimate influence
to cause the conference proposals to fail." That is to say, it was
known to these faithful confederates of that section of the Liberal
party of which Mr. Courtney was the head, that the Gladstone
Government had determined to recall Sir Bartle Frere three days before
"the special reason" for maintaining him at the Cape had disappeared.
[Sidenote: Frere's forecast.]
But what we are really concerned with is the nature of the opinions
upon the central question of South African administration which Frere
put forward at this critical period. With these before us, the most
elementary acquaintance with the events of the last ten years will
suffice to indicate the profound degree in which his knowledge of
South African conditions surpassed the knowledge of those who took
upon themselves to reverse his policy. What, above all, Frere realised
was, that a point had been reached at which the whole of South Africa
must be gathered under the British flag without delay. He had noted
the disintegrating influences at work in the Cape Colony and the
strength of the potential antagonism of the republican Dutch. The
annexation of the Transvaal was not his deed, nor did either the time
or the manner in which it was done command his approval. But he
asserted that British rule, once established there, must be maintained
at all costs. With this end in view, he urged that every
responsibility incurred by England in the act of annexation must be
fulfilled to the letter. Utilising the information which he had gained
by personal observation during his visit to the Transvaal in 1879, and
availing himself of the co-operation of President Brand, of the Free
State, and Chief Justice de Villiers, in the Cape Colony, he drafted a
scheme of administrative reform sufficient to satisfy the legitimate
aspirations of the Boers for self-government without endangering the
permanency of British rule. It included proposals for administrative
and financial reforms framed with a view of reducing the cost of
government to the lowest point consistent with efficiency, for the
reorganisation of the courts of law, for the survey of the proposed
railway line to Delagoa Bay, and full details of a system of
representative government. This measure he urged upon the Colonial
Office as one of immediate necessity, since it embodied the fulfilment
of the definite promises of an early grant of self-government made to
the Boers at the time of annexation.[8]
[Footnote 8: The receipt of the despatch in which these
valuable recommendations were made was not even acknowledged
by the Colonial Office. Frere himself gives the outlines of
his proposals in an article published in _The Nineteenth
Century_ for February, 1881.]
He recognised the value of Delagoa Bay as an essential factor in the
political and commercial system of a united South Africa, and he
earnestly recommended its acquisition by purchase from the Portuguese
Government. His perception of the extreme importance of satisfying all
legitimate claims of the Boers, and his acute realisation of the
danger of allowing the Transvaal to become a "jumping-off ground"
either for foreign powers or Afrikander Nationalists, are exhibited in
due relationship in a private memorandum which he wrote from the Cape
at the end of July, 1879:
"Any reliance on mere force in the Transvaal must react
dangerously down here in the old colony, and convert the Dutch
Country party, now as loyal and prosperous a section of the
population as any under the Crown, into dangerous allies of the
small anti-English Republican party, who are for separation, thus
paralysing the efforts of the loyal English party now in power,
who aim at making the country a self-defending integral portion
of the British Empire. Further, any attempt to give back or
restore the Boer Republic in the Transvaal must lead to anarchy
and failure, and probably, at no distant period, to a vicious
imitation of some South American Republics, in which the more
uneducated and misguided Boers, dominated and led by better
educated foreign adventurers--Germans, Hollanders, Irish Home
Rulers, and other European Republicans and Socialists--will
become a pest to the whole of South Africa, and a most dangerous
fulcrum to any European Power bent on contesting our naval
supremacy, or injuring us in our colonies.
"There is no escaping from the responsibility which has already
been incurred, ever since the British flag was planted on the
Castle here. All our real difficulties have arisen, and still
arise, from attempting to evade or shift this responsibility....
If you abdicate the sovereign position, the abdication has always
to be heavily paid for in both blood and treasure.... Your object
is not conquest, but simply supremacy up to Delagoa Bay. This
will have to be asserted some day, and the assertion will not
become easier by delay. The trial of strength will be forced on
you, and neither justice nor humanity will be served by
postponing the trial if we start with a good cause."
Could not the man who foresaw these dangers have prevented them? It is
impossible to resist the momentum of this thought.
[Sidenote: The retrocession.]
The events by which this forecast was so closely realised are not
likely to be effaced from the memory of this generation. Frere had
scarcely left the Colony from which he had been recalled by the joint
efforts of Mr. Krueger and Lord (then Mr.) Courtney before the former,
with his fellow triumvirs, had raised the Vier-kleur upon the still
desolate uplands of the Witwatersrand. The attempt to put down by
force the Boer revolt of 1880-81 failed. Mr. Gladstone's cabinet
recoiled before the prospect of a war in which the Boers might have
been supported by their kinsmen in the Free State and the Cape Colony.
The retrocession of the Transvaal under the terms of the Pretoria
Convention (1881) was followed by further concessions embodied in the
London Convention of 1884. It is absolutely established as fact that
Mr. Gladstone's Government intended, by certain articles contained in
both conventions, to secure to all actual and potential British
residents in the Transvaal the enjoyment of all the political rights
of citizenship possessed by the Boers. But it is equally certain that
the immediate contravention of Article XVI. of the Pretoria
Convention, when in 1882 the period of residence necessary to qualify
for the franchise was raised from two to five years, was allowed to
pass without protest from the Imperial Government. And thus a breach
of the Convention, which the discovery of the Witwatersrand
gold-fields (1886) and the subsequent establishment of a great British
industrial community made a matter of vital importance, was condoned.
A few years more and the country which prided itself upon being the
home of liberty and of free institutions was confounded by the
spectacle of a South Africa of its own making, in which a British
majority denied the franchise in a Dutch Republic, contrasted with a
Dutch minority dominating and controlling the machinery of responsible
government in a British colony.
This situation brings us (to use a military phrase) within striking
distance of the objective of the present work--the personality and
efforts of the man who administered South Africa in the momentous
years of the struggle for equal rights for all white men from the
Zambesi to Capetown.
If the records set out in the preceding pages leave any impression
upon the mind, it is one that must produce a sense of amazement,
almost exasperation, at the thought of the many mistakes and disasters
that might have been avoided, if only greater weight had been attached
to the advice tendered to the British Government by its local
representative in South Africa. And with this sense of amazement a
generous mind will associate inevitably a feeling of regret for the
injustice unwittingly, but none the less irreparably, inflicted upon
loyal and capable servants of the Crown--an injustice so notorious
that it has made South Africa the "grave of reputations." Apart from
the pre-eminence with which the period of Lord Milner's administration
is invested by the occurrence within it of a military conflict of
unparalleled magnitude, Lord Milner stands out in the annals of South
Africa as the first High Commissioner whose knowledge of South African
conditions was allowed to inspire the policy of the Home Government,
and who himself was recognised by the Government and people of Great
Britain as voicing the convictions and aspirations of all loyal
subjects of the Crown in that province of the empire.
The state of affairs with which Lord Milner was called upon to deal
was in its essence the situation sketched by Frere twenty years before
in the memorable forecast to which reference has been made. But the
working of the forces indicated by Frere as destined, if unchecked, to
drive England one day to a life-and-death struggle for her supremacy
in South Africa, had been complicated by an event which cannot be
omitted altogether from a chapter intended, like a Euripidean
prologue, to prepare the mind of the spectator for the proper
understanding of the characters and action of the drama. This event is
the Jameson Raid.
[Sidenote: The Jameson raid.]
[Sidenote: Rhodes.]
In order to see the Jameson Raid in its true perspective, it is not
sufficient to place it in relationship to those familiar and notorious
events by which it was followed. It must also be placed in relationship
to the no less clearly defined events by which it was preceded. Thus
placed it becomes the direct outcome of the refusal of the Imperial
Government to use the advice of its local representative--or, more
precisely, of the refusal to base its policy on South African instead
of British conditions: and, as such, it convinced the Imperial
Government of the need of reviving the power of its local
representative. In other words, it is a connecting link between the High
Commissionerships of Frere and Milner. The events which followed the
recall of Frere were accepted by the British inhabitants of South Africa
as a practical demonstration of the inherent viciousness of the system
under which the decision of cardinal questions of South African
administration was left in the hands of the House of Commons, a body in
which they were not represented; which met 6,000 miles away; whose
judgment was liable to be warped by irrelevant considerations of English
party politics; and one which was admittedly unfamiliar with the country
and peoples whose interests were vitally affected by the manner in which
these questions were decided. The lesson of the retrocession was taken
to heart so earnestly that, fifteen years later, the majority of the
British residents in the Transvaal refused to support a movement for
reform which involved the re-establishment of Imperial authority, while
among those who were loyal to the British connection throughout South
Africa its effect was to make them think, as did Rhodes, that the
machinery of the various local British governments must be dissociated
as much as possible from the principles and methods of the Home
Government. Hence the necessity for what Rhodes called the "elimination
of the Imperial factor." The expression, as he afterwards explained,
was in no way inconsistent with attachment to the British connection. As
read in the context in which it was originally used, it meant merely
that the European population of Bechuanaland,[9] being mainly Boer
immigrants, could be administered more successfully by officers
responsible to a government which, like that of the Cape Colony, was
well versed in South African conditions, than by officers directly
responsible to the Imperial Government. The phrase was a criticism of
Downing Street, and still more of English party government. In short,
Rhodes was convinced that if a system of British administration, based
on South African conditions, was ever to be carried on successfully, the
local British authority, and not the Home Government, must be the
machine employed; and in order to allow it to work freely, its action
must be made as independent as possible of Downing Street. For Downing
Street was an authority which blew hot or cold, in accordance with the
views of the party for the time being in power.[10]
[Footnote 9: The Crown Colony--not the Protectorate--annexed
by the Cape Colony in 1895.]
[Footnote 10: Rhodes's words were: "If we do not settle this
[_i.e._ the question of Bechuanaland] ourselves, we shall see
it taken up in the House of Commons on one side or the other,
not from any real interest in the question, but simply
because of its consequences to those occupying the
Ministerial benches. We want to get rid of Downing Street in
this question, and to deal with it ourselves, as a
self-governing colony."]
[Sidenote: New forces.]
And, in point of fact, both parties in England acquiesced in this
judgment of the South African British. During the years between
Frere's recall and the appointment of Lord Milner (1880-1897) the High
Commissioner was a decreasing force. Both Lord Rosmead and Lord Loch
did little to mould the destiny of South Africa: not because they
lacked capacity, but because it was the determination of the Home
Government to leave the difficult problem of South African unity to
local initiative. On the other hand, the progress which was made in
this direction by local initiative, aided as it was by the fortuitous
discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-fields, was considerable. The
highlands of South Central Africa were acquired for the British race,
and the Boer was effectively prevented from carrying the Vier-kleur
beyond the Limpopo; the railway, drawn through the Free State by the
magnet of the Rand, disturbed the retirement of the republican Dutch;
and finally the Cape Colony and Natal were linked together with the
Free State in a Customs Union. But the development of the mineral
resources of the country led to the appearance of a new factor in
South African politics. The comparative decline in the activity of the
High Commissioner had been accompanied by the establishment and growth
of powerful industrial corporations. It is easy to understand how a
man like Rhodes, with the wealth and influence of De Beers and the
Chartered Company at his command, might seek, by an alliance with the
"great houses" of the Rand, to find in private effort an instrument
for remedying the deficiencies of the Imperial Government even more
appropriate than the local governmental action upon which he had
previously relied. For the work of these industrial corporations had
powerfully enlisted the interest and sympathy of the British public.
The Jameson Raid was an illegitimate and disastrous application of an
otherwise meritorious and successful effort to strengthen the British
hold upon South Africa by private enterprise. It was at once the
measure of Imperial inefficiency, and its cure.
One other circumstance must be recalled in estimating the extent to
which the Home Government had earned the distrust of the British
population in South Africa. Only eighteen months[11] before the Raid
the High Commissioner, Lord Loch, had gone to Pretoria carrying a
despatch in which the grant of a five years' franchise was advocated
on behalf of the Uitlanders. His instructions were to present this
despatch, and press upon President Krueger personally the necessity for
giving effect to its recommendations. These instructions were
cancelled at the last moment by Lord Ripon, because the German
Ambassador had made representations in London that such action would
be regarded as an interference with the _status quo_ in South Africa,
and, as such, detrimental to German interests in that country. And six
months later[12] President Krueger, in attending a "Kommers" given by
the German Club at Pretoria in honour of the Kaiser Wilhelm II.'s
birthday, alluded to Germany as a grown-up power that would stop
England from "kicking" the child Republic.
[Footnote 11: June, 1894.]
[Footnote 12: January 28th, 1895.]
[Sidenote: Rhodes's Plan.]
The Raid was, therefore, a short cut to baffle German intrigue and
solve the problem of South African unity at one blow. For to Rhodes
the enfranchisement of the Uitlanders meant the withdrawal of the
Transvaal Government from its opposition to his scheme of commercial
federation. It is obvious that one ground of justification, and one
only, can be found for the usurpation of the functions of government
by a private individual, or group of individuals. This justification
is success. It has been the custom to represent Dr. Jameson's decision
to "ride in" as "an act of monumental folly," alike from a political
and a military point of view. But this opinion overlooks the fact that
the affair may have been so planned in Rhodes's mind that success did
not depend upon the victory of the Uitlanders, aided by Jameson's
troopers, but on the presence of the High Commissioner in the
Transvaal under such conditions as would make the intervention of the
Imperial Government at once imperative and effectual. The
representative of the Imperial Government, backed by a Johannesburg in
armed revolt against the Boer oligarchy, would find himself--so Rhodes
thought--in a position highly favourable to the successful prosecution
of the demands which had already been put forward on behalf of
British subjects resident in the Transvaal. And in order that this
essential part of the plan might be carried out without a moment of
unnecessary delay, Rhodes kept a train, with steam up, in the station
at Capetown ready to speed Lord Rosmead northwards directly the news
of Dr. Jameson's arrival at Johannesburg should have reached him. Once
Jameson's force had "got through," he relied upon the Reform
Committee, however incomplete its preparations, being able to hold
Johannesburg for a couple of days against any force the Boers could
bring.[13] Nor in the light of what happened, during the war, both at
Mafeking and Kimberley, can this expectation be thought extravagant.
Here his responsibilities would have ended. The High Commissioner and
the Imperial Government would have done the rest. To indulge in
metaphor, the Imperial locomotive was to be set going, but the lines
on which it was to run were those laid down by Mr. Rhodes.
[Footnote 13: It is worth noticing that even the presence of
the German Marines at Delagoa Bay was
counterbalanced--whether by chance or design--by the
coincidence of the arrival of a British troopship with
time-expired men from the Indian garrison, off Durban.]
If this was the essence of Rhodes's plan, it would matter
comparatively little whether the Reformers had, or had not, completed
their preparations, or whether Dr. Jameson had 1,200 or 500 men.
Certainly some such assumption is necessary to account for the fact
that Rhodes treated his confederates at Johannesburg as so many pawns
on a chess-board. It is equally necessary to account for Dr. Jameson's
action. "Twenty years friends, and now he goes in and ruins me," was
Rhodes's comment on the news that Dr. Jameson had "ridden in," in
spite of his own orders to the contrary and the message to the same
effect which Captain Heany had delivered on behalf of the Reformers.
But what if Dr. Jameson knew, or thought that he knew, that Rhodes's
object in forcing the insurrection was not to make the Uitlanders
reduce Krueger, but to compel the Imperial Government to step in? In
this case he may well have thought that what was essential was not
that the rising should be successful, but that there should be a
rising of any kind; provided that it was sufficiently grave to arrest
the attention of the world, and claim the interference of the Imperial
Government.
According to Mr. Chamberlain the continued inaction of the Imperial
Government in the eighteen months that had passed since Lord Loch's
visit to Pretoria in June, 1894, was due to two circumstances. In the
first place, "the Uitlanders and their organs had always deprecated
the introduction into the dispute of what is called in South Africa
the 'Imperial factor'"; and in the second, the "rumours" of violent
measures "were continually falsified by the event." Obviously, if
Rhodes forced an insurrection with the intention of removing these
obstacles--if, that is to say, the intervention of the Imperial
Government, and not the success of the insurrection, was his primary
object--the temerity of Dr. Jameson's invasion is materially
diminished. Now Mr. Chamberlain's statement, made under date February
4th, 1896, _i.e._ five weeks after the Raid, is perfectly consistent
with the view of the attitude of the Reformers expressed by Rhodes on
the day before the Raid took place.
[Sidenote: The reformers divided.]
Dr. Jameson's force, it will be remembered, started on the evening of
Sunday, December 29th, 1895. Up to three days before--the
26th--nothing had occurred to interfere with the final arrangement,
telegraphed to Dr. Jameson from Capetown, that the movement in
Johannesburg would take place on Saturday, the 28th. The circumstances
which caused the Reformers to alter their plans were explained by
Rhodes in an interview with Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary,
at Capetown on the same Saturday, the 28th, with his accustomed
vivacity. The Johannesburg insurrection, he said--
"had fizzled out as a damp squib. The capitalists financing the
movement had made the hoisting of the British flag a _sine qua
non_. This the National Union rejected, and issued a manifesto
declaring for a republic. The division had led to the complete
collapse of the movement, and it was thought that the leaders
would make the best terms they could with President Krueger."
The telegrams which reached Dr. Jameson between the 26th and 29th
contained the same facts, with the further information that Captain
Heany was travelling by special train to him with a message direct
from the Reformers. In these circumstances it is said that Rhodes at
Capetown imagined as little as the Reform leaders at Johannesburg that
Dr. Jameson would cross the frontier. That, however, there was another
point of view from which the situation might present itself to Dr.
Jameson is shown by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain, in reply to the
High Commissioner's telegram reporting the substance of Rhodes's
statement to Sir Graham Bower, at once[14] inquired of Lord Rosmead,
"Are you sure Jameson has not moved in consequence of the collapse?"
[Footnote 14: Afternoon of Monday, December 30th.]
Was Mr. Chamberlain right? Did Dr. Jameson see in the fact that the
Reformers were divided on such an issue only an additional reason for
carrying out a plan which had for its object to compel the Imperial
Government to intervene in the affairs of the Transvaal before it was
too late; that is to say, before the British population had definitely
committed itself to the policy of a purged republic, but a republic
under any flag but that of Great Britain? Such a policy was not merely
possible. It seemed inevitable to the vivacious French observer who
wrote, not from hearsay, but "with his eyes upon the object," in
December, 1893:
"The Transvaal will never be an English colony. The English of
the Transvaal, as well as those of Cape Colony and Natal, would
be as firmly opposed to it as the Boers themselves, for they have
never forgiven England for letting herself be beaten by the Boers
at Majuba Hill and accepting her defeat, a proceeding which has
rendered them ridiculous in the eyes of the Dutch population of
South Africa.... With me this is not a simple impression, but a
firm conviction."[15]
[Footnote 15: "John Bull & Co.," by "Max O'Rell," 1894.]
[Sidenote: Jameson's decision.]
If these were the considerations which weighed with Dr. Jameson, his
decision to "ride in" was inconsistent neither with friendship nor
with patriotism. When Captain Heany had read from his pocket-book the
message from the Reformers, Jameson paced for twenty minutes outside
his tent. Having re-entered it, he announced his determination to
disregard Heany's message no less than Rhodes's telegram. It was a
momentous decision to take after twenty minutes' thought. Had he a
reasonable expectation of carrying out the plan as Rhodes conceived
it, in spite of the change in the position of affairs at Johannesburg?
Had he any reason to believe that Rhodes desired him to force the
insurrection in spite of his telegrams to the contrary? It is the
answers to these questions that make the Raid, as far as Dr. Jameson
is concerned, an "act of monumental folly," or a legitimate assumption
of personal responsibility that is part of the empire-builder's
stock-in-trade. The answer to the second question remains a matter of
speculation. The answer to the first is to be found in the record of
the expedition. Dr. Jameson reached Kruegersdorp at three o'clock on
Wednesday, January 1st. A few hours before a cyclist had brought him
congratulatory messages from the Reform leaders. The goal was almost
within sight. What prevented Sir John Willoughby from taking his
little force safely over the remaining twenty miles from Kruegersdorp
to Johannesburg was the merest accident: the few hours' delay caused,
naturally enough, by Dr. Jameson's desire that his force should be met
and escorted by a small body of volunteers from the Rand. He did not
want, as he said, to go to Johannesburg as "a pirate." Sir John
Willoughby's evidence is perfectly definite and conclusive on the
point. If the force had pushed on by road from Kruegersdorp to
Johannesburg on Wednesday evening--had not, in Willoughby's words,
"messed about" at Kruegersdorp in expectation of the welcoming
escort--Johannesburg would have been reached in safety on Thursday
morning. With Dr. Jameson in Johannesburg and Lord Rosmead speeding
northwards in his special train, the way would have been prepared for
that decisive and successful action on the part of the Imperial
Government which Rhodes had desired to bring about.
[Sidenote: Why the raid failed.]
But, unsuccessful as was the actual expedition, the decision to "ride
in" had secured the intervention of the Imperial Government. If
intervention could have done what Rhodes expected of it, Dr. Jameson's
decision to "ride in" would have gained, at the cost of few lives and
no increase of the national debt, what the war gained four years later
at the cost of twenty thousand lives and L220,000,000. As it was, it
failed to win the franchise for the Uitlanders. Why did not Lord
Rosmead, with so strong a Colonial Secretary as Mr. Chamberlain at his
back, brush the Raid aside, and address himself to the removal of the
greater wrong that gave it birth? If Lord Rosmead had acted in the
spirit of Mr. Chamberlain's despatches; if he had reminded the
Government of the Republic from the first "that the danger from which
they had just escaped was real, and one which, if the causes which led
up to it were not removed, might recur, although in a different form";
if he had used "plain language" to President Krueger; and if, above
all, he had remembered--as Mr. Chamberlain reminded him--that "the
people of Johannesburg had surrendered in the belief that reasonable
concessions would have been arranged through his intervention, and
until these were granted, or were definitely promised to him by the
President, the root-causes of the recent troubles would
remain,"--might he not yet have saved South Africa for the empire
without subjecting her to the dread arbitrament of the sword?
[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain.]
It is in the answer to this question that we find the actual cause of
the utter failure of Rhodes's plan. The truth is that success in any
real sense--that is to say, success which would have strengthened
British supremacy and promoted the union of European South Africa--was
impossible. The sole response which Lord Rosmead returned to Mr.
Chamberlain's counsels was the weary confession: "The question of
concessions to Uitlanders has never been discussed between President
Krueger and myself." The methods employed by Rhodes were so
questionable that no High Commissioner could have allowed the Imperial
Government to have derived any advantage from them. To have gained the
franchise for the Uitlanders as the result of violent and unscrupulous
action, would have inflicted an enduring injury upon the British cause
in South Africa for which the enfranchisement itself would have been
small compensation. The disclosure of these methods and, with them, of
the hollowness of Rhodes's alliance with the Afrikander Bond, alarmed
and incensed the whole Dutch population of South Africa. What this
meant Lord Rosmead knew, and Mr. Chamberlain did not know. The ten
years' truce between the forces of the Afrikander nationalists and the
paramount Power was at an end. To combat these forces something better
than the methods of the Raid was required. _Non tali auxilio, nec
defensoribus istis!_ No modern race have excelled the Dutch in courage
and endurance. In Europe they had successfully defended their
independence against the flower of the armies of Spain, Austria, and
France. The South African Dutch were not inferior in these qualities
to the people of the parent stock. If such a race, embarked upon what
it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to be
overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as strong.
None the less the active sympathy with the Uitlanders exhibited in Mr.
Chamberlain's despatches was welcomed by the British as evidence that
the new Colonial Secretary was more alert and determined than his
predecessors. For the first time in the history of British
administration in South Africa, Downing Street had shown itself more
zealous than Capetown. It was the solitary ray of light that broke the
universal gloom in which South Africa was enshrouded by the
catastrophe of the Raid.