A Review of the South African Question.
[Sidenote: Religious Intolerance of the Boers]
The South African War of 1899 grew out of racial conditions and
national considerations far apart from, and long precedent to, the
growth of Kimberley and Johannesburg or the discovery of diamonds and
gold. It arose, primarily, from racial tendencies which had grown more
and more opposed to each other as the climate and conditions of South
Africa accentuated their peculiarities. History and tradition had
early driven into the Boer's heart an intense intolerance of religious
thought to which the isolation of the veldt added an almost
incomprehensible ignorance. A wider survey of the world and a fuller
grasp of the essentials of liberty had, meanwhile, developed in the
Englishman's mind[1] a love for free religious thought and practice to
which his belief in schools and his affection for literature and the
press added strength and character. The Dutchman was nomadic in life,
pastoral in pursuit, lazy and sluggish in disposition. The Englishman
was at times restless in seeking wealth or pleasure, but upon the whole
he liked to settle down in a permanent home and with surroundings which
he could make his own in ever-increasing comfort and usefulness. He
drew the line at no single occupation and made, as the case might be, a
good farmer, or artisan, or labourer, or merchant. And he was usually
of active mind as well as body.
[1] I use the word Englishman here in a general sense, and inclusive of
the Scotchman or Irishman.
[Sidenote: Two Opposite Views of Liberty]
The Dutchman in South Africa wanted liberty to do as he liked and to
live as he chose, but he did not wish to accord that liberty to
inferior races, or to attempt the training of them in its use and
application. The Englishman, on the other hand, loved liberty in a
broad way, and wanted nothing better than to see it applied to others
as freely and fully as to himself. The one race looked upon the negro
as only fitted to be a human chattel and as not being even a possible
subject for improvement, education or elevation. The other, in all
parts of the world as well as in the Dark Continent, believed in the
humanity of the coloured man, whether black, or red, or brown, and
looked upon him as fitted for civilization, for Christianity and for
freedom. He considered him as material for good government and for
fair play. Both views, however, have been carried to an extreme in
South Africa and upon either side evil resulted. The Boer treated the
native from the standpoint of an intolerant and ignorant slave-owner.
The Colonial Office tried to treat him solely from the standpoint of
the sympathizing and often prejudiced missionary. Hence, in part, the
Great Trek; hence some of the Kaffir raids and consequent sufferings of
the early settlers; hence an addition to the growing racial antagonism.
[Sidenote: Two Opposing Views of Government]
The principles of government believed in and practiced by the Dutch and
British in South Africa have been and are diametrically opposed. The
one took territory from the natives wherever and whenever he could and
used it without scruple, and without return in the form of just
government, for his own purposes. The latter, time and again, avoided
the acquisition of territory; experienced war after war which might
have been averted by the prompt expression of authority and strength;
gave up regions to native chiefs which had afterwards to be conquered
by force of arms; tried every phase of policy in the form of alliances,
protectorates and "buffer" states in order to avoid increased
responsibilities; gave up the Orange Free State to an independent
existence under circumstances of almost incredible insistence; annexed
the Transvaal with indifference, and gave it up without serious
thought; in later days allowed German East Africa to be established,
and at one time practically declined the acquisition of Delagoa Bay;
permitted the Boers of the Transvaal to annex part of Zululand and to
take almost the whole of Swaziland at the expense, even, of possible
injustice to the natives. And all this from an honest though mistaken
desire to avoid unnecessary expansion of authority or extension of
territory. In those departments of Government which are apart from
questions of acquiring or ruling dependent states there was the same
antagonism. [Sidenote: Boer Ideas of Democracy] Equality being an
unknown principle to the Boer, it was, perhaps, natural that he should
endeavor to make his own language and laws and institutions the pivot
of administration in any country under his control; that he should
regard with suspicion and fear any attempt to raise the status of
surrounding natives; and should reject with contempt, in the Transvaal
at least, later efforts on the part of civilized aliens to obtain
equality of political rights. The Dutchman in South Africa knew, in
earlier days as well as at the present time, absolutely nothing of
democracy in the British sense of the word. Republicanism, in the
sense of Government by the majority, he does not even now
understand--unless the majority be Dutch. To dream of convincing, or
trying to convince others, by argument and discussion that some
particular policy is better than another has always been far from his
point of view. He has been too long accustomed to using the shot-gun
or whip upon inferior races to deem such a policy either desirable or
possible.
[Sidenote: Varied Opportunities for Settlers]
The region these two races were destined to dominate was, and is, a
splendid one. It had an infinite variety of resource and tropical
production and temperate growth. Within the million and a half square
miles of South African territory were room and verge for a vastly
greater white population than has yet touched its shores; while every
racial peculiarity or pursuit could find a place in its towns and farms
and mines and upon its rolling veldt. To the lover of quiet village
life and retirement nothing could be more pleasant than parts of Natal
and Cape Colony, and of the two Republics. To the keen business man,
eager for gain and intent upon quick returns, the rapid and
wealth-producing progress of the great mining towns gave all that could
be desired. To the adventurous spirit, willing to suffer hardships and
endure labor in its severest form for a possibly glittering return, the
diamond and gold fields offered untold opportunities. To the hunter
and tourist and traveller the myriad wild animals of the interior gave
a pleasure only second to that felt by the Kaffir and the Boer when
hunting the lion to his lair or the elephant in its native jungle. To
the man fond of country life the vast plains, stretching in varied
degrees of value and elevation from Cape Town to the Zambesi, afforded
room for pastoral occupation and the raising of cattle and sheep upon a
veritable thousand hills. To the seeker after new industries, ostrich
farming, mohair, the feather industry and diamond mining have from time
to time proved the greatest attraction. To the farmer or planter parts
of the region were eminently fitted for the raising of wheat and other
cereals, and the cultivation of tobacco, cotton, sugar and rice. To
the restless and wandering Boer, South Africa seems to have given for a
time everything that his spirit desired--isolation, land, wild animals
to hunt, independence of control, freedom from the trammels of
education and taxation and civilization. To the quieter Dutchman of
Cape Colony has been given every element of British liberty and
privilege of British equality; as well as land in plenty, and for
thirty years, at least, the pledge of internal peace.
[Sidenote: Statistics and Finances of South Africa]
According, also, to the latest figures[2] the material progress and
recent position of all these countries has been good. Cape Colony, in
1897-98, had a revenue of $36,940,000, an expenditure of $34,250,000
and an indebtedness of $136,400,000; a tonnage of British vessels,
entered and cleared, amounting to 12,137,000, together with 2,835 miles
of railway and 6,609 miles of telegraph; exports of $108,300,000, and
imports of $90,000,000; and 132,000 scholars in its schools. Natal and
Zululand, combined, had a revenue of $11,065,000, an expenditure of
$8,120,000 and an indebtedness of $38,720,000; a tonnage of British
vessels, entering and clearing, of 2,132,000, together with 487 miles
of railway and 960 of telegraph; exports of $8,100,000 and imports of
$30,000,000; and 19,222 scholars in its schools. The exports of
Basutoland, under purely native control, had grown to $650,000 and its
imports to half a million. The length of railway in the Bechuanaland
Protectorate was 586 miles and in Rhodesia 1,086 miles; while the
telegraph lines of the former region covered 1,856 miles. The South
African Republic, or Transvaal, had a revenue of $22,400,000, an
expenditure of $21,970,000 and an indebtedness of $13,350,000;
announced imports of $107,575,000 and no declared exports; railways of
774 miles in total length and telegraph lines of 2,000 miles; and
scholars numbering 11,552. The Orange Free State had a revenue of
$2,010,000, an expenditure of $1,905,000 and an indebtedness of
$200,000; imports of $6,155,000--chiefly from Cape Colony--and exports
of $8,970,000, which were divided principally between Cape Colony and
the Transvaal; 366 miles of railway, 1,762 miles of telegraph and 7,390
scholars in its schools. The following table[3] gives an easily
comprehended view of South Africa as divided amongst its Kaffir, Dutch
and English communities in respect to mode of government and measure of
British responsibility:
[2] _British Empire Series_. Vol. II. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner 4
Co., Limited. London, 1809.
[3] _South Africa_. By W. Basil Worsfold, M.A. London, 1895.
MODE OF GOVERNMENT.
{ Cape Colony } Responsible Government
Three British Colonies { Natal }
{
{ Bechuanaland } Crown Colony.
{ South African } Full internal freedom
{ Republic } within terms of
Two Republics { or } Conventions of 1852-54
{ Transvaal } and 1881-84.
{ Free State. }
{ Basutoland, } Officers under High
{ Zululand, } Commissioner.
{ Tongaland, }
Native Territories {
{ Transkei, } Officers under Cape
{ Tembuland, } Government.
{ Griqualand, }
{ Pondoland. }
Territories of } { Administrator who
the Chartered } . . . . . . . { represents the Directors
Company } { and Secretary of State
} { jointly.
Yet, with all the varied advantages and evidences of substantial
progress and prosperity given above, the present war has broken out in
a result which could not have been different had the whites of South
Africa been dwelling amidst limited areas, restricted resources, few
liberties and a crowded population of competitive classes. Some of the
reasons for this situation have been pointed out, and they include
natural racial differences; a quality which Lord Wolseley described in
a speech at the Author's Club on November 6, 1899, when he declared
that "of all the ignorant people in the world that I have ever been
brought into contact with I will back the Boers of South Africa as the
most ignorant;" the inherent desire of the Dutch population for native
slave labor and intense aversion to principles of racial equality;
mistakes of administration and more important errors of judgment in
territorial matters made by the British Colonial Office; a Dutch pride
of race born from isolation, ignorance and prejudice and developed by
various influences into an aggressive passion for national expansion
and a vigorous determination to ultimately overwhelm the hated
Englishman, as well as the despised Kaffir, and to thus dominate South
Africa. [Sidenote: Afrikander Bund] Of the elements entering into this
last and perhaps most important evolution the Afrikander Bund has been
the chief. The formation of this organization really marks an epoch in
South African history, and has proved, in the end, to be one of the
most effective and potent forces in the creation of the present
situation. Nominally, it was organized in 1881 amongst the Dutch
farmers of Cape Colony for the purpose of promoting agricultural
improvement and co-operation and for the increase of their influence in
public business and government. In 1883 it swallowed up the Farmer's
Protective Association--also a Dutch organization. Practically, it was
a product of the feeling of racial pride, which developed in the heart
and mind of every Boer in South Africa as a result of Majuba Hill and
the surrender of 1881. The openly asserted influence of their
Transvaal brethren, and of this triumph, had prevailed with the Cape
Boers to such an extent that the latter were able to compel the
rejection of Lord Carnarvon's federation scheme although they did not
at the time possess a large vote in the Cape Legislature or a single
member in the Government. The same influence created a desire for
racial organization, and the result was the Afrikander Bund.
Its chief individual and local promoter was Mr. Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, a
man whose record is one of a loyalty to the British Crown which seems,
in some peculiar fashion, to have equalled his loyalty to his race. In
the beginning of the Bund, and during its earlier years, he could
easily harmonize the two principles. How he could do so at a later
period is one of the puzzles of history and of personal character.
Incidentally, it may be said that Mr. Hofmeyr attended the Colonial
Conference of 1887, in London, and contributed to its proceedings the
then novel proposition that each part of the Empire should levy a
certain duty upon foreign products--above that imposed upon goods
produced in and exported to British dominions--and that the proceeds
should be devoted to the maintenance and improvement of the Imperial
Navy. He also attended the Colonial Conference at Ottawa in 1894, and
had, consequently, received all the knowledge of Imperial development
and power which travel and experience and association with the rulers
of its various countries could afford. He has, since 1881, always
declined office at the Cape, and it is, therefore, apparent that the
solution of the personal problem must, in his case, be left to the
future--with, perhaps, the further intimation that he is looked upon
with great suspicion by local loyalists, and is considered to be the
owner, or controlling influence, of _Our Land_, the chief anti-British
organ in Cape Colony.
[Sidenote: An Imperium in Imperio]
From the first the Bund was regarded with suspicion by not only English
politicians in the Colony, but by a few of the more sober and
statesmanlike leaders amongst the Dutch. They were, however, won over,
as time passed, except the President of the Orange Free State. Sir
John Brand--he had accepted knighthood from the Queen as an evidence of
his British sympathies--absolutely refused to have anything to do with
it. "I entertain," said he, "grave doubts as to whether the path the
Afrikander Bund has adopted is calculated to lead to that union and
fraternization which is so indispensable for the bright future of South
Africa. According to my conception the institution of the Bund appears
to be desirous of exalting itself above the established Government and
forming an _imperium in imperio_." But, wise and far-seeing as were
these views, the Free State President could not hold back his own
people from sharing in the movement. Mr. F. W. Reitz, then a Judge at
Bloemfontein, afterwards President in succession to Sir John Brand,
and, finally, State Secretary of the Transvaal under President Kruger,
joined enthusiastically in its organization, and soon had many branches
in the Free State itself. Of this period in the history of the Bund,
Mr. Theodore Schreiner, son of a German missionary, brother of the Cape
Premier and of Olive Schreiner--the bitter anti-British writer--has
described an interesting incident in the _Cape Times_. [Sidenote: Mr.
Reitz and the Present War] He says that in 1882 Mr. Reitz earnestly
endeavored to persuade him to join the organization, and that the
conversation which took place upon his final refusal was so striking as
to indelibly convince him that in the mind of Reitz and of other Dutch
leaders it constituted, even then, a distinct and matured plot for the
driving of British authority out of South Africa. "During the
seventeen years that have elapsed," says Mr. Schreiner, "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, sir, 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 has, for long years,
been looked forward to by him with eager longing and expectation."
Branches of the Bund, within a few years, were established all over
Cape Colony and the Free State, and, by 1888, the slow-moving mind of
the Cape Dutch had grasped the racial idea thus presented with
sufficient popular strength to warrant the holding of a large and
general Congress. In his opening address the President spoke of a
"United South Africa under the British flag;" but at the meeting held
on March 4, 1889, at Middleburg, while much was said about the future
Afrikander union, references to Britain and the flag were conveniently
omitted. The platform, as finally and formally enunciated at this
gathering, included the following paragraphs:
"1. The Afrikander National Party acknowledge the guidance of
Providence in the affairs of both lands and peoples.
2. They include, under the guidance of Providence, the formation of a
_pure nationality_ and the preparation of our people for the
establishment of a United South Africa.
3. To this they consider belong--
_a_. The establishment of a firm union between all the different
European nationalities in South Africa.
_b_. The promotion of South Africa's _independence_."
[Sidenote: Dutch and English not Harmonious]
There was also a clause of gratuitous impertinence towards the Imperial
country--through whose grant of absolute self-government in 1872 the
Bund was now beginning to aim, with practical effort, at the racial
control of the Colony--in the declaration that "outside interference
with the domestic concerns of South Africa shall be opposed." Under
the general principles of the platform these "domestic concerns" meant,
of course, the relation of the different States toward each other, and
the growing rivalry of Dutch and English in matters of Colonial
Government, as well as the old-time question of native control and the
newer one of territorial extension on the part of Cape Colony. So long
as President Brand lived and ruled at Bloemfontein there remained,
however, some check upon the Bund as well as upon President Kruger. If
he had opposed the Bund actively, as he certainly did in a passive and
deprecatory sense, the result might have been a serious hindrance to
its progress. Brand's policy was to, indirectly and quietly, keep the
Cape Colony and the Free State in harmonious and gradually closer
co-operation instead of promoting that closer union of the two
republics which was one of the ideals of the Bund leaders. He refused
to accept Kruger's proposal of isolating their countries from the
British possessions, and thus promoting the policy which, without
doubt, had, since 1881, been shaping itself in the latter's mind. But,
in 1888, Sir John Brand died, and was succeeded by F. W. Reitz. The
influence of the new régime became at once visible in the platform
above quoted, and in the whole succeeding policy of the Free State. It
now assumed a more and more intimate alliance with the Transvaal, and
frequently, during these years, the question of a union of the two
countries was discussed. In 1896 Reitz resigned and accepted the State
Secretaryship of the Transvaal--a position analogous in personal power,
though not in the matter of responsibility to the people, with that of
a Colonial Premier. Mr. M. T. Steyn became President of the Free State
and the triumvirate of Kruger, Steyn and Reitz formed, with Mr. W. P.
Schreiner and Mr. J. W. Sauer, in the Cape Parliament and Afrikander
Bund, a very strong Dutch combination. Just where Mr. Hofmeyr stood it
is hard to say now, but the probabilities are that, he was pretty well
acquainted with the plots and schemes of these leaders.
[Sidenote: Mr. Cecil Rhodes to the Front]
Meanwhile Mr. Cecil Rhodes had come to the front in mining, in
speculation, in wealth, in financial organization, in politics, and in
a great policy of Empire expansion. He had studied South Africa from
the Cape to the Zambesi as few or no Englishmen have ever been able to
do. He understood its Governments, its peoples and its racial
complexities with the innate thoroughness of genius or of a woman's
intuition. To him the looming menace of the Afrikander Bund was as
clear as it had been to President Brand, and, from the time when he
entered the Cape Parliament in 1880 and became Premier in 1890 until
his retirement from the latter post in 1895, his whole heart and
ambition was devoted to preventing Dutch expansion and to checkmating
the new Dutch organization with its clever manipulators at Pretoria,
Bloemfontein and Cape Town. To this end he founded the famous British
South Africa Company, and, by acquiring control over the vast areas of
Mashonaland and Matabeleland, effectually checked Dutch expansion to
the north of the Transvaal. With this in view he urged upon British
statesmen the annexation of Bechuanaland, a huge strip of country to
the west of the same Republic; and supported with his influence the
annexation of Zululand on the south-east coast, into which many Boers
had trekked and for the possession of which they had an intense
ambition as opening the way to the sea. His reasons seldom appeared on
the surface, and some of them were not fully comprehended in South
Africa itself until long after their accomplishment. But there is no
doubt that as Mr. Rhodes' power at the Cape became felt, as the great
interests of the Chartered Company grew more manifest in their
importance to the Empire, and as the wealth and ability of its Chairman
became a factor in London as well as in the Colony, so also his
influence at the Colonial Office was enhanced.
[Sidenote: Rhodes' Policy of Conciliation]
At the same time he developed this line of action for many years in
conjunction with a policy of public conciliation toward the Dutch
everywhere. If, eventually, a system of kindly co-operation could be
evolved and the principles of the Afrikander Bund rendered
comparatively harmless by the winning over of its strongest men at the
Cape to his side, and to the continuous expansion of British power in
the common interest of a United South Africa, so much the better. If
he failed in this he did not, however, propose that the Empire should
some day find itself face to face with the problem of a thin line of
English settlement--mixed with Dutch--along the sea-coast, in rivalry
or conflict with a united Afrikander nation holding all the keys of the
interior to the north and stretching from the Delagoa region on the
east to the German possessions on the west. Hence his continuous
acquisition of territory, and hence the present position of the two
republics--surrounded by British soil except for the small strip of
Portuguese possessions to the east of the Transvaal. Hence, also, his
hope that as British power grew in South Africa the Bund would
eventually see the futility of its effort to make the whole country a
Dutch republic, and would meet his policy of conciliation at least half
way. Between 1890 and 1895, when the Jameson Raid and his resignation
of the Premiership took place, Mr. Rhodes' speeches teemed with
expressions of friendliness toward the Dutch, of appreciation of their
rights in South Africa, of sympathy with all legitimate aspirations, of
appeals for co-operation. In his Ministry, from time to time, he
managed to include leaders of the roll such as W. P. Schreiner, J. W.
Sauer, T. N. G. Te Water, and so prominent a Boer supporter of later
days as J. X. Merriman. But it seems to have become gradually apparent
to his mind that conciliation was practically useless; that the
influence and power of the Afrikander movement was daily growing
stronger; that Kruger had become too great a force with the Dutch of
the Cape for him to be checkmated by friendly demonstrations or
appeals; and that the oppression of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal was
a growing evidence of Boer unity and arrogance just as the increasing
electoral strength of the Cape Boers was a proof of their developing
power. [Sidenote: England's Ignorance of the Situation] And, above
all, he was aware that while this web of inter-state Dutch conspiracy
was building up the Afrikander Bund into a great anti-British force,
England was profoundly ignorant of the whole matter and was resting in
the belief, expressed by passing travellers and presented by the usual
number of superficial political theorists, that the Dutch and English
of South Africa were not only dwelling together in amity, but were
developing increased sympathy, and that the Uitlander trouble, of which
vague reports were beginning to reach the British public, was more or
less the creation of a transition period of development and would soon
settle itself.
To meet the dulled vision of the British people, to settle the
Transvaal issue without war between the Republic and the Empire, to
play with President Kruger at his own game and overthrow him by an
internal rebellion, Rhodes approved the general idea of the Jameson
Raid and of external assistance to the people of Johannesburg. The
policy was carried out rashly and prematurely by his deputy, the
Uitlanders were not ready and did not redeem their promises, it failed
and he had to retire from office. But one important result was
achieved. The eyes of the British public were in some measure opened
to the seriousness of the situation in South Africa. Mr. Chamberlain
and the members of the Imperial Ministry no doubt knew something
already of the general position from private advices--if in no other
way--and it was for this reason that they stood by Mr. Rhodes when the
Raid came before a Parliamentary Committee for investigation. They had
not, of course, known of the Raid itself or supported its aggressive
action. The code of honor, personal and political, is too high amongst
British statesmen to permit of anyone but a sensational journalist or
an unusually violent partisan accepting such a supposition for a
moment. But they did understand the motive and were not prepared to
punish the self-confessed originator, although obliged to allow the
legal punishment of the active participators. Mr. Rhodes could not
defend himself, and Mr. Chamberlain could not publicly support him in
connection with the matter, without avowing their belief in the
disloyalty of a portion of the population of Cape Colony and their
knowledge of a secret conspiracy shared in by the chiefs of two
nominally friendly republics. The former would have involved the
making of unwise charges which, in the nature of things, could hardly
have been proved, and if proved would have done more harm than good;
the latter would have meant a war which it might still be possible to
avert.
[Sidenote: Efforts and Conciliation not Successful]
Mr. Hofmeyr, the nominal leader of the Bund in Cape Colony, might at
almost any time during recent years have become Premier and, through
his reputation for moderate views, might, perhaps, have done good
service to the cause of compromise and conciliation. On the other
hand, it is doubtful whether he could have succeeded in this respect
when Mr. Rhodes, between 1890 and 1895, failed. The latter did
everything that man could do to hold the racial elements together and
checkmate the Kruger influence, and it seems probable that Hofmeyr
could not in the end have resisted the power of Pretoria over the
Afrikanders any more effectively than did Mr. W. P. Schreiner in the
two years preceding the outbreak of war. His Ministry would have been
a Bund Government just as that of Schreiner is to-day; his principal
co-workers would have been instruments of Kruger in much the same
degree as members of the Schreiner Cabinet have been; and his
participation in the general Afrikander movement, or conspiracy, or
whatever it may be called, would have been more dangerous than that of
Mr. Schreiner because his loyalty has always been asserted, and would
have been used, consciously or unconsciously as a cloak for the action
of his colleagues and friends. [Sidenote: Kruger's Auspicious
Opportunity] In 1898, however, Mr. Schreiner took office; the Bund was
triumphant at the polls in Cape Colony and in Parliament; and had a
weak Government or vacillating Colonial Secretary been in power in
London, Mr. Kruger's day would have indeed come. He undoubtedly built
upon this latter possibility and upon his personal experiences of Mr.
Gladstone, Lord Kimberley and Lord Derby. To demand, even in the days
of Transvaal weakness, had been to receive, and now, with the Uitlander
population under the heels of an ironclad law and of enactments
allowing them less liberty than was given the Kaffir; with great guns
guarding Pretoria and commanding Johannesburg--coupled with the
consciousness of other and more extensive military preparations; with
the policy of the Imperial Government hampered by the rash
aggressiveness of the Jameson Raid; with the Orange Free State in close
defensive and offensive alliance and its President a mere tool in his
own hands; with clever advisers and unscrupulous helpers such as Reitz
and Leyds; with the certainty of European sympathy, the expectation of
American support and the hope of active interposition on the part of
France, or Russia, or Germany; with the Cape Colonial Government in
tacit sympathy with his aims and in occasional active support of his
policy; with the assurance of an extensive support from the Boers of
the Colony itself; it is not surprising that President Kruger entered
the lists at the Bloemfontein Conference with great confidence, and
ultimately faced the might of Britain with assurance that the weakness
of a British Ministry, the power of a European combination, the
interposition of the United States, or some other providential aid,
would secure the abrogation of that British suzerainty which was the
bane of his life and the chief apparent element in preventing the
supremacy in South Africa of the Dutch race in general and the
Transvaal Republic in particular.
[Sidenote: Chamberlain's Strong Policy]
But he knew not Mr. Chamberlain or the changed conditions of British
thought. He did not realize that the days of indifference to the
Colonies had passed away, and that the Colonial Office had become one
of the greatest posts in the British Government and had been
deliberately selected by one of the most ambitious and able of modern
statesmen as a suitable field for achievement and labor. He had no
idea that the retention and extension of British territory was no
longer a party question, and that the days of Granville at the Foreign
Office had as completely passed away as had those of Derby at the
Colonial Office. His very knowledge of British political life and its
see-saw system was turned into a source of error through the rapid
developments of an epoch-making decade. It must have been a shock to
him to find that an insult to the Imperial Government in the form of
his ultimatum was looked upon as an insult to a dozen other British
Governments throughout the world, and that the invasion of the soil of
Natal and Cape Colony was regarded as an assault upon the interests of
Canada and Australia as well as of Great Britain. The days of weakness
had indeed departed, and despite all the conciliatory slowness and
caution of Mr. Chamberlain during weary months of controversy the iron
hand was concealed beneath the glove of velvet and there was nowhere a
thought of surrendering that right of suzerainty which preserved and
ensured British supremacy in South Africa. The inevitable war has now
come--the struggle which the Gladstone Government shrank from in days
when the Boer Power was weak, and which Sir George Grey spoke of in its
wider sense when he declared, in 1858, after the abandonment of the
Orange River State, that "many questions might arise, in which it might
be very doubtful which of the two Governments the great mass of the
Dutch population (in Cape Colony) would obey."
[Sidenote: Uitlander's Many Grievances]
Its more immediate cause has not been the chief reason, though, of
course, the more prominent and pronounced. The position of the
Uitlander was bad enough, and the facts which have been drilled into
the public mind and explained in the dispatches of Mr. Chamberlain and
Sir Alfred Milner are sufficiently explicit. Since 1895 the hundred
thousand aliens--chiefly British subjects--established in Johannesburg
and at the mines have been subjected to every restriction of liberty
which is conceivably possible. None of the rights of self-government
pledged in the Conventions of 1881 and 1884 have been given them or
rendered possible in any succeeding period worthy of consideration.
The press had been gagged and public discussion prevented; the Courts
had been made subservient to the Boer Volksraad and the money raised in
taxes applied upon armaments directed against Great Britain and the
Uitlander. No attention had been paid to industrial development or
financial security and the drink traffic amongst the natives had been
openly encouraged. No protection had been given to individual
Englishmen and their families by the Boer Police and education had
become a matter of Dutch language and Dutch methods. Roman Catholics
were excluded from even the faintest chance of obtaining the franchise
and monopolies were publicly sold to Hollander favorites and
adventurers. Heavier and heavier burdens of taxes have been laid upon
the Uitlanders--poll tax, railway tax, road tax, miner's claims,
digger's license, prospector's license. An enactment made in 1894, in
addition to the five years' residence required of adult aliens,
declared that the children of such, though born in the Transvaal, must
wait fourteen years after making claim for the right to vote. The
respectable, educated Hindoo merchants had been classed with and
treated with the same contempt as the indentured coolies. These things
were surely cause enough for Mr. Chamberlain's intervention, and more
than cause for his sustained effort to obtain equal rights for British
men.
[Sidenote: Causes of the War]
Nominally, therefore, the failure to modify these grievances and abuses
of the Uitlander was the cause of the condition out of which war came.
Practically, the cause was in the distant past, in the character of the
Boer, the development of his peculiar history, the British mistakes of
1836, 1852 and 1877, the aggressive Dutch pride of recent years, the
historical hatred of the English, the growth of military resources in
the Transvaal, the evolution of the Afrikander Bund, the determination
to create a Dutch South Africa. The means for success, even to the
most utterly ignorant and intensely vain Dutchman, were not apparent
until the gold mines of the Witwatersrand paved the way and the
revenues of the little State rose in the following ratio from $889,000
in 1885--the year preceding the discoveries--to nearly $25,000,000 in
the year 1897:
1886 ............... $1,902,165 1892 ............... $6,279,145
1887 ............... 3,342,175 1893 ............... 8,513,420
1888 ............... 4,422,200 1894 ............... 11,238,640
1889 ............... 7,887,225 1895 ............... 17,699,775
1890 ............... 6,145,300 1896 ............... 22,660,970
1891 ............... 4.835.955 1897 ............... 24,432,495
[Sidenote: Misappropriation of Taxes]
For an assumed Boer population of little more than 200,000, the
expenditure of this large sum would have been difficult under ordinary
and honest conditions of government. Nothing, practically was expended
upon the Uitlanders, from whom the revenue came, and nothing upon the
800,000 Kaffirs in the country. Nothing was spent upon the development
of natural resources, and but little upon the extension of railways,
etc. Of this $120,000,000, in round numbers, it might be fair to allow
$3,000,000 per annum for ordinary purposes of administration and
development during the twelve years, or one million per annum more than
had been spent by the Free State in any year of the same period. It
would then be reasonably safe to assume that the remaining $84,000,000,
and the acquired indebtedness of $13,000,000, have been spent upon
fortifications, armament, subsidies to foreign papers and politicians
and salaries to Hollander adventurers. It is in this connection a
curious fact that the imports to the Transvaal in 1898 were over a
hundred millions in value, with no recorded exports--except gold, of
which the production in 1897 was over $85,000,000. These imports must
have consisted very largely of ammunition and military supplies, as the
Boers are not a people who use extraneous products or luxuries. Of
course, the Uitlanders were responsible for a portion; but the great
bulk must have been made up of articles very different from the usual
commodities of peaceful commerce. Such was the state of affairs, in a
brief summary, which led up to the diplomatic crash between Mr.
Chamberlain and President Kruger, to the negotiations conducted by Sir
Alfred Milner and the two Presidents, and to the invasion of the
British Colonies on the eleventh of October, 1899.
[Illustration: LT.-COL. T. D. B. EVANS, Canadian Mounted Rifles in
South Africa. LT.-COL. F. L. LESSARD, Commanding Royal Canadian
Dragoons in South Africa. LIEUT. JAMES C. MASON, First Canadian
Contingent in South Africa. LIEUT.-COL. A. M. COSBY Commanding 48th
Royal Highlanders, Toronto, and his two sons in the Second Contingent
in South Africa--Lieut. F. Lorne Cosby and Norman W. Cosby]
[Illustration: COLONEL BADEN-POWELL. GENERAL FRENCH]