"It has been found impossible to avoid in this book more or less

pointed reference to certain nationalities in certain connections; for

instance, such expressions as 'the Boers,' 'the Cape Dutch,' 'the

Hollanders,' 'the Germans,' are used. The writer desires to say once

and for all that unless the contrary is obviously and deliberately

indicated, the distinctions between nationalities are intended in the

political sense only and not in the racial sense, and if by mischance

there should be found something in these pages which seems offensive,

he begs the more indulgent interpretation on the ground of a very

earnest desire to remove and not to accentuate race distinctions."

[Illustration: A HUMANE AND DARING DEED. Lieutenant L. R. Pomeroy,

when retiring to shelter at the battle of Ladysmith, November 3, 1890,

saw a wounded and dismounted trooper needing help; and regardless of

bullets and shells flying around, assisted his comrade to mount behind

him and carried him to safety. Such are the deeds that win the

_Victoria Cross_.]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF LADYSMITH--TERRIBLE DASH OF HORSE ARTILLERY

RUSHING TO TAKE UP A NEW POSITION]

The first chapter of the inside history opens with this searching

paragraph:

"When, before resorting to extreme measures to obtain what the

Uitlanders deemed to be their bare rights, the final appeal or

declaration was made on Boxing Day, 1895, in the form of the manifesto

published by the Chairman of the National Union, President Kruger,

after an attentive consideration of the document as translated to him,

remarked: 'Their rights. Yes, they'll get them--over my dead body!'

Volumes of explanation could not better illustrate the Boer attitude

and policy towards the English-speaking immigrants."

[Sidenote: A Few Facts of History]

President Burgess, the predecessor of Kruger is described in this work

as leaving the Transvaal "brokenhearted by the cruelty and mean

intrigue, the dissensions among and disloyalty of the people." He left

a statement denouncing Kruger for his intrigues to secure the

presidency for himself, and charges and proves Kruger to have been a

leader in breaking promises and betraying where he had promised

support. When the Transvaal was annexed after President Burgess'

pathetic retirement before the rising tyrant, Kruger calmly took office

under the British government, and resigned the dignity and emolument

only when refused increased remuneration for which he repeatedly

applied. The English authority during this time was undermined by

rumors incessantly circulated among the sentimentalists of English

statesmen, and having some foundation that the Transvaal would be given

up. This was preparing the way for trouble, and the weakness displayed

in England was met by what amounted to a conspiracy in the Transvaal.

Kruger's point was an artful though crude demagogy of violence against

taxation.

It was about taxes that the first English war was finally started, and

the Majuba Hill incident was preliminary to a complacent accommodation,

glossed in England as magnanimity and exalted expression of the

overwhelming power of Great Britain, but perfectly understood in the

Transvaal to mean that the British Empire was whipped and could be

kicked about at the pleasure of the powerful President.

[Sidenote: Outrages Perpetrated by Boers]

It was during the war leading down to this inglorious surrender and

false peace, that many murders were committed by Boer assassins, who

used white flags and Red Crosses to lure victims. A few incidents of

this treachery are thus specified:

"There was the murder of Green in Lydenburg, who was called to the Boer

camp, where he went unarmed and in good faith, only to have his brains

blown out by the Boer with whom he was conversing; there was the public

flogging of another Englishman by the notorious Abel Erasmus because he

was an Englishman and had British sympathies; and there were the

various white flag incidents. At Ingogo the Boers raised the white

flag, and when in response to this General Colley ordered the hoisting

of a similar flag to indicate that it was seen, a perfect hail of lead

was poured on the position where the General stood; and it was obvious

that the hoisting of the flag was merely a ruse to ascertain where the

General and his staff were. There was the ambulance affair on Majuba,

when the Boers came upon an unarmed party bearing the wounded with the

Red Cross flying over them, and after asking who they were and getting

a reply, fired a volley into the group, killing Surgeon-Major Cornish."

These are facts of history, and the Boers have played the same savage

game in all their wars with the English. The policy of Kruger has from

the first been engineered to exclude immigrants, to repel all

foreigners especially held in abhorrence by the Transvaal government,

and constantly denied civil rights associated with civilization.

After a naturalized subject "shall have been qualified to sit in the

Second Volksraad for ten years (one of the conditions for which is that

he must be thirty years of age), he may obtain the full burgher rights

or political privileges, provided the majority of burghers in his ward

will signify in writing their desire that he should obtain them, and

provided the President and Executive shall see no objection to granting

the same! It is thus clear that, assuming the Field-cornet's records

to be honestly and properly compiled, and to be available for reference

(which they are not), the immigrant, after fourteen years' probation

during which he shall have given up his own country and have been

politically emasculated, and having attained the age of at least forty

years, would have the privilege of obtaining burgher rights should he

be willing, and able to induce the majority of a hostile clique to

petition in writing on his behalf, and should he then escape the veto

of the President and Executive.

[Sidenote: The Copingstone to Mr. Kruger's Chinese Wall]

This was the coping-stone to Mr. Kruger's Chinese wall. The Uitlanders

and their children were disfranchised forever, and as far as

legislation could make it sure, the country was preserved by entail to

the families of the "Voortrekkers." The measure was only carried

because of the strenuous support given by the President both within the

Raad and at those private meetings which practically decide the

important business of the country.

The great statesman Kruger, when asked just to "open the door a little"

to outsiders, began an address in a village near Johannesburg by

saying, "Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers, newcomers and others."

The particular propriety of this was that for a long time Kruger could

not be persuaded to visit Johannesburg. He hated the flourishing,

stirring and steadily increasing city, and mistrusted the people,

because he knew that his methods could not for a great while be

submitted to by an enlightened community. He relaxed his vigilant

attitude of hostility at last so far as to become the guest of the

people of the city, and when he was civilly treated, and the fact that

the Johannesburgers had been handsome in entertainment, he reviled them

as "a set of lick-spittles."

[Sidenote: The Wise Man's Treatment of the Natives]

The style of the wise man's treatment of the natives appears in this:

The "April" case was one in which an unfortunate native named April,

having worked for a number of years for a farmer on promise of certain

payment in cattle, and having completed his term, applied for payment

and a permit to travel through the district. On some trivial pretext

this was refused him, his cattle were seized, and himself and his wives

and children forcibly retained in the service of the Boer. He appealed

in the nearest official, Field-cornet Prinsloo, who acted in a

particularly barbarous and unjustifiable manner, so that the Chief

Justice before whom the case was heard (when April, having enlisted the

sympathy of some white people, was enabled to make an appeal),

characterized Prinsloo's conduct as brutal in the extreme and a

flagrant abuse of power perpetrated with the aim of establishing

slavery. Judgment was given against Prinsloo with all costs. Within a

few days of this decision being arrived at, the President, addressing a

meeting of burghers, publicly announced that the Government had

reimbursed Prinsloo, adding, "Notwithstanding the judgment of the High

Court, we consider Prinsloo to have been right."

[Sidenote: A Misleading Reputation]

President Kruger has had provided for him a reputation that is

astonishingly misleading. His part in public affairs has been one of

vehement and vindictive self-assertion, participation in intrigue for

office and for salaries--the constant intrusion of his personality in

the rudest and most selfish ways into everything that concerns the

state, disregarding the law, and with complete indifference to the

rights of all persons except those who recognize him as their master.

Abstaining himself from intoxicating drinks, he has long sustained a

liquor ring in dispensing horrible drinks at scandalous profit. Given

to self-praise for lofty purity in matters of state, he maintained a

dynamite ring that cut off a large revenue, seemingly for no better

reason than that his friends--his sycophant friends--were of it, and he

has stooped to studied interference between employers and employed,

that he might break up reasonable relations, believing himself in a

position to profit by agitations; and in this insidious proceeding he

has used secret service funds in the organization of hostilities for

the embarrassment of employers, not because they had wronged the

laboring man, but for the reason that they were not on their knees to

him.

All this the world has accepted as manifestations of virtue, domestic

kindliness and the religious sensibilities that are always in the

public eye, that the multitude may gaze upon the goodness of the great

and good man. The sincerity of his character as a professor of piety

is not doubtful, but he carries into that, as into everything else, an

ostentatious egotism, that among some nations and peoples is regarded

as unbecoming a Christian statesman. It is fair to say of him that the

one thing in which he seems to have profound convictions in addition to

his self-esteem and hatred of English-speaking people, is in his

devotion to the doctrines of the Old Testament. He does not seem to

have made the acquaintance of the New Testament.

[Sidenote: Racial Prejudices, Racial Hatreds]

He has sought to keep apart the merchants and the miners, fearing their

united power might interfere with his characteristic proceedings. He

has lost no opportunity to promote belligerency among white laborers,

and utterly and always ignores the rights as men of the natives. When

intriguing with organized labor he has shown all the surface

indications of partnership in carrying on, as the inside historian

Fitzpatrick says, "an anticapitalist campaign with the Government

press," and also "fostering the liquor industry with its thousands of

reputable hangers on"; and more than all, he has without hesitation or

variation flagrantly indulged racial prejudices and incited racial

hatreds in South Africa, the most deplorable and dangerous possible use

of power, and he has found constant consolation and been greatly

sustained in his public pursuits by the hatred of the Whites against

the Black and Brown people. But his favorite investment and

educational enterprise is in arousing the animosities of the Boers

against the British, that they may be at the same altitude with his own.

It is to the rough violence of President Kruger, his disregard of the

laws, studied demoralization of his own courts, that he has repeatedly,

recklessly overruled with sheer brute force--his heedless refusal to

aid in the prosperous development of his own country, his gross and

violent opposition to progress of all kinds--to the extension and

protection of legitimate industries, and steadfast cares for those that

are illegitimate, and sinister participation in corrupting schemes

surrounded and inspired by the noisy congratulations of his habitual

flatterers--all this afflicting him with the elephantiasis of conceit.

It is to that and his effusion of arrogance to which we trace with

certain steps the remote sources and the rampant rushing of the war,

that is so destructive and wanton. There is no good in it, unless it

involves the downfall of the Kruger tyranny, an example of individual

caprice of a type of ruthless misgovernment, not surpassed in the

self-indulgence of those who rule the barbarous tribes of Africa or sit

on the gaudy thrones of Asia.

[Sidenote: Illustrating Specifications]

So much accusation must for full effect be illustrated by

specifications. In 1897 the Burghers, the ruling class behind

President Kruger, had heavy losses from the ravages of Rinderpest and

there followed a great work of benevolence in the shape of purchases by

the Government of a multitude of mules, to take the place of the oxen

that had perished; and there was associated with this, provision made

in "mealies," the corn of the country, to save the alleged starving.

Under a form of favoritism by a Government that was the personal

property of Mr. Kruger, anything could be done under the pretense of

saving the rulers of the land said to be suffering by pestilence and

famine. Government officials were greatly interested in the contracts

for the salvation of the people. The historian Fitzpatrick says: "The

notorious Mr. Barend Vorster, who had bribed Volksraad members with

gold watches, money and spiders, in order to secure the Selati Railway

concession, and who although denounced as a thief in the Volksraad

itself, declined to take action to clear himself and was defended by

the President, again played a prominent part. This gentleman and his

partners contracted with the Government to supply donkeys at a certain

figure apiece, the Government taking all risk of loss from the date of

purchase. The donkeys were purchased in Ireland and South America at

one-sixth of the contract price. The contractors alleged that they had

not sufficient means of their own and received an advance equal to

three-quarters of the total amount payable to them; that is to say, for

every £100 which they had to expend they received £450 as an unsecured,

advance against their profits."

Investigation of this scandal was hushed up, but the money payable

under the contracts was all exacted and all lost. There is nothing to

show that the people got any good of it. The shippers of mules

persuaded the majestical President that the health of those animals

demanded the ventilation of the upper decks, and that the vessels might

not be topheavy there must be double cargoes, mules for the bereaved

Boers on top, and food for the famine-stricken, none of whom were in

actual want, carried in the hold as ballast. Here was a double stroke

of the ingenuity of contractors, and the profit was swollen accordingly.

[Sidenote: Free and Independent Krugerism]

The benevolent President was a fierce defender of the money makers by

this transaction. There are a few figures that indicate the scientific

political economy by which the formidable President wins the affections

of the populace and guards his free state from harm. His particular

friends are in office, of course, and they have fixed salaries to a

great extent. It shows the progress made by the Government, that the

amount of those salaries was twenty-four times as great in 1899 as in

1886, having risen from £51,831, 3s. 7d., to £1,121,394, 5s. This is

the revenue that goes to the promotion and perpetuation of free and

independent Krugerism.

[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE FIRST VOLKSRAAD, S.A.R. J. W. VanDerryst

(Bode), S. P Dutoit, A. K. Loveday, J. H. Labuschagne, J. G. G. Bassle

(Stenographer), A. J. Havinga (Ass. Bode). B. J. Vorster, J. P.

Goetser, L. Botha, J. DeGleroq, J. L. VanWiok, A. Bieperink. D. I.

Louw, I. K. DeBeer, P. I. Schutte. W. J. Fogkens, Sec., A. D.

Wolmarans, F. G. H. Wolmarans, H. M. S. Prinsloo, J. P. Meyer, J. DuP.

DeBeer, J. H. De LaReis.]

[Illustration: PRESIDENT KRUGER AND HIS CHIEF ADVISERS IN THE WAR. A.

Wolmarans, F. W. Reitz (State Secretary), S. M. Berger, J. M. H. Kock,

Com. Gen'l P. J. Joubert, President S. J. P. Kruger, P. J. Cronje

(Supt. of Natives).]

[Sidenote: President Kruger's Nepotism]

The law forbids the sale of liquor to the natives, and yet they are to

an astonishing degree habitually drunk on the Rand, and the cost of

labor in the great mines is largely increased by the disabilities of

men a great part of the time under the influence of liquor, and the men

themselves perish at a shocking rate. We quote again the historian

Fitzpatrick: "The fault rests with a corrupt and incompetent

administration. That administration is in the hands of the President's

relations and personal following. The remedy urged by the State

Secretary, State Attorney, some members of the Executive, the general

public, and the united petition of all the ministers of religion in the

country, is to entrust the administration to the State Attorney's

department and to maintain the existing law. In the face of this,

President Kruger has fought hard to have the total prohibition law

abolished and has successfully maintained his nepotism--to apply no

worse construction. In replying to a deputation of liquor dealers he

denounced the existing law as an 'immoral' one, because by restricting

the sale of liquor it deprived a number of honest people of their

livelihood--and President Kruger is an abstainer!

"The effect of this liquor trade is indescribable; the loss in money,

although enormous, is a minor consideration compared with the crimes

committed and the accidents in the mines traceable to it; and the

effect upon the native character is simply appalling."

This is a shocking indictment, and the history in it has been hidden

under a boisterous sentimentalism, to the effect that the

eccentricities of monstrous vulgarity should be accepted as the graces

of supernaturalism of true natural greatness.

[Illustration: SCENE IN MARKET SQUARE, KIMBERLEY, THE CITY OF DIAMONDS]

[Illustration: THE RICHEST DIAMOND MINES OF THE WORLD, KIMBERLEY, SOUTH

AFRICA]

CHAPTER III.

The Boers and British Gold and Diamonds.

[Sidenote: Solomon's Ophir]

Solomon obtained his supplies of gold, it is believed, from the

Transvaal. There is something more in this than imagination and

conjecture. There are two excellent harbors on the South African coast

that confronts the Indian Ocean, and in Solomon's great days he was a

"sea power" there and his ships were on the Mediterranean and the Red

Sea, so that his connection with African gold mining is not at all

improbable. The Transvaal mines are neither remote nor inaccessible

from the best ports on the coast of Eastern Africa. Solomon obtained

the "gold of Ophir," and it was by making "a navy of ships in

Ezion-Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the

land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that

had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came

to Ophir and fetched from thence gold * * * and brought it to King

Solomon." The visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon in his glory is

testimony of the familiar splendor of his fame in Africa.

[Sidenote: How the Gold was discovered]

The Leydenburg gold fields were first made definite and certain in the

public eye by the writings of a German explorer, Herr Carl Mauch, which

attracted adventurers from California, New Zealand and Australia. In

February, 1875, the official reports in Pretoria stated that notice was

given to the Landrost of Leydenburg of the discovery of alluvial gold

between thirty and forty miles eastward of that town, which is situated

5,825 feet above the sea. In 1873 the Postmaster-General at Pretoria

received a letter from the Landdrost of Leydenburg and with it two

ounces and a half of gold. This had been found on a farm thirty miles

from Leydenburg. Other gold discoveries were soon made and among them

nuggets in the walls of mud houses. A letter was published in the

"Transvaal Advocate" giving interesting incidents of gold finding. We

quote as follows:

[Sidenote: Reports About Early Gold Finds]

"In the bed of a spruit running through the farm (Hendricksdale)

alluvial gold was found in sufficient quantity to justify the opinion

that it was present in paying quantities, and this opinion was

confirmed from day to day by the following facts:

"1st. Messrs. McLachlan, Palmer and Valentine, with two Kaffirs, and

without proper appliances, found in fourteen days the first sample of

two ounces, among which is a nugget the size of a half sovereign,

somewhat longer, but more flattened.

2nd. Mr. Valentine with two Kaffirs found and sent to the cashier of

the Standard Bank of Natal a second sample of above two ounces, in

which was a nugget as large as a middle sized bean.

"One of the farms distinguished by gold, that of Erasmus and Mullers,

was at this time hired for thirty years at £200 per annum.

"Among these hills are caves, in one of which one might travel

underground for hours, and here, in olden times, the natives sheltered

themselves and cattle in many an inter-tribal war. Skulls and bones of

men and cattle are found, and tradition, whether justly or not, brands

the occupiers as cannibals. Near some of the southern sources of the

Um Saabi, or Sabea, is the Spitz Kop, 100 feet high, under which the

first gold in the district was found, and the gold district was in

early times supposed to be about fifty miles long by eight broad, and

six or eight farms were known to have gold upon them. The gold was

found about three feet below the surface, the upper layer being red

clay; then large gravel quartz in fragments, limestone and a cindery

fused substance, like slag from a smelting furnace, but softer; below

this is a soft black soil, which when put in the box reminds one of a

mixture of tar and oil, and with this a soft white clay is found. The

quartz when pounded proved also to have gold in it, and so did the

cylinder layer, and the stones of which the cattle kraal was built

contained gold. The best finds were usually under or between the large

boulders.

[Sidenote: The Most Interesting Specimen]

"The latest testimony I can give is that I saw thirty-one ounces of

gold a day or two ago brought from McMc and Pilgrim's Rest, and that

one of my friends not long ago sent 145 ounces home. But to me the

most interesting specimen was a half ounce obtained from the country to

the southeast of Matabeleland, probably about half way between Hartley

Hill and the ruins of Mazimboeye Zimboae--or Zimbabye--of Herr Mauch,

in which direction I have reason to believe that alluvial fields as

rich as and more extensive than those of Leydenburg await the coming of

the explorer who shall unite to skill in prospecting patience,

perseverance and tact in dealing with the various native tribes, whose

friendship must be cultivated and assistance gained before the richest

of all the districts of Southeastern Africa shall be ready to surrender

its treasures to the enterprise and industry of Europe."

United States Consul Macrum writes from Pretoria to the State

Department in regard to the gold production in South Africa in 1897 and

1898:

"The Rand has at last reached and surpassed the marvelous output of

400,000 ounces of gold as the production for a single month of

twenty-eight working days. Every twenty-four hours, then, witness the

recovery of 14,250 ounces of gold, worth rather over £50,000

($243,325). The Rand total comprises only the output of mines along a

stretch of some thirty miles of country. With this statement for the

month of October, the gold winnings of the whole Republic for the ten

months of 1898 amount to 3,700,908 ounces. At this rate the total for

the whole of 1898 would be over four and a half millions.

[Sidenote: Gold Production of South Africa in 1897 and 1898]

The value of the October 423,000 ounces is £1,500,000 ($7,299,750),

which may be compared with £11,653,725 ($56,162,743), the value for all

in 1897, and £12,208,411 ($59,412,232), the value of the gold

production of the United States in the same year. Although the

combined mines of Colorado, California, Dakota, Montana, Nevada, and

Alaska put out more gold last year than did the South African Republic,

it is not likely that the Transvaal will take second place this year.

Deep levels continue on the upgrade, as their production in October was

106,426 ounces--the first time that the hundred thousand has been

exceeded. The average price of the September production was £3 16s.

($18.42) per ounce."

The yearly aggregate for eleven years was:

Ounces. Ounces.

1888 .......... 208,122 1894 .......... 2,024,162

1889 .......... 369,577 1895 .......... 2,277,685

1890 .......... 494,819 1896 .......... 2,279,827

1891 .......... 729,238 1897 .......... 3,034,678

1892 .......... 1,210,869 1898 .......... 3,700,908

1893 .......... 1,478,477

The price of gold is a few cents less than $18.50 per ounce. The

figures $18.42 often occur. Consul Macrum sent from Pretoria December

31, 1898, a report of the gold production of the South African

Republic--the Transvaal--saying:

"It must be remembered that this has been a remarkably dull year, so

far as ordinary business is concerned, and the mining companies, it is

freely said, are not working up to their full capacity; but,

nevertheless, the production and profit have been greater this year

than ever before. When the differences that are said to exist between

the Government and capital have been removed or adjusted, the

Transvaal, it is predicted, will see a most wonderful boom."

But it must be taken into account that the Boer has a soul above booms.

[Sidenote: A Clear and Impartial Statement]

Mr. O. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury

Department of the United States, gives an admirable, impartial and

clear statement of the matters of first importance in the Transvaal. A

few official, indisputable figures and simple facts put the question of

the right and wrong of the bloody war in South Africa in the right way

and yield the correct answer unmistakably. He says:

"The laws of the State are enacted by a Parliament of two chambers, the

first or higher chamber enacting a large share of the laws independent

of the lower house, which only originates measures relating to certain

subjects of administration, and which cannot become laws without the

approval of the upper house. Members of the first chamber are elected

from and by the first-class burghers, who comprise only the male whites

resident in the Republic before May, 1876, or who took an active part

in the war of independence in 1881 or subsequent wars, and the children

of such persons over the age of sixteen. This condition would deprive

persons natives of other countries of becoming "first-class burghers,"

and thus obtaining the privilege of participating in the election of

the President or the house which enacts the most important of the laws

and has a veto power upon all measures originating in the lower house.

The second-class burghers may become members of and participate in the

election of the second chamber, the second-class comprising the

naturalized male alien population and their children over the age of

sixteen. Naturalization may, according to the Statesman's Year Book,

1899, "be obtained after two years' residence and registration on the

books of the field cornet, oath of allegiance and payment of £2, and

naturalized burghers may by special resolution of the first or higher

chamber become first-class burghers twelve years after naturalization."

[Sidenote: Boss and Caste Government]

This is the rarest combination known of Boss and Caste Government. It

is an unrestrained despotism designed to perpetuate itself by favor and

force, regardless of everybody not of the ruling race and condition,

and the Englishman who would give up his rights in the Transvaal as a

British subject for the privilege of ultimate participation in the

government, even of his own town, if that town contained ten Englishmen

to the people of all other nationalities, would have to be "a man

without a country" for seven years. It was at this point that Mr.

President Kruger stood fast, peremptorily refusing the reduction of the

period of probation even two years--leaving it five, and yet the

probability is a very large number of the naturalized citizens of the

United States who would regard such a restriction in this country as a

bitter and remorseless discrimination against the foreign born, are

sympathizing with the unrelenting attitude of the Boers upon this

subject. Apply to this condition of things in the Transvaal the facts

and figures following:

[Sidenote: Facts and Figures]

The area of the Republic is 119,139 square miles; the white population,

according to the State Almanack for 1898, is 345,397, and the native

population, 748,759. The seat of government is Pretoria, with a white

population of 10,000. The largest town is Johannesburg, the mining

center of Witwatersrand gold fields, having a population within a

radius of three miles, according to the census of 1896, of 102,078

persons, of which number 50,907 were whites, 952 Malays, 4,807 Coolies

and Chinese, 42,533 Kaffirs, and 2,879 of mixed race. One-third of the

population of the Republic is estimated to be engaged in agriculture,

the lands of the Republic generally, outside the mining districts,

being extremely productive, and the demand for farm products in the

mining regions very great, even in excess of the local products at the

present time."

It does not in the least soothe the Boers that they have a good market

for their farm products, for which they are indebted almost exclusively

to English enterprise in great feats of engineering, in the application

of the most modern methods of mining, and to immense investments, in

the cheapening of transportation, and extending the capacities and

facilities of the poor as well as the rich, for swift and easy

communication with neighbors.

[Sidenote: Boer Prejudice and Intolerance]

The chief care, concern and anxiety of the Boer is that a government of

the people must not by any chance be established in Transvaal. It is

the elementary principle of the Boer disposition and government, that

there are no real "people" except Boers, who place the Hottentot, the

Englishman, the Zulu and the Kaffir, the American, the German and the

Frenchman on the same level. He will have none of them except in the

capacity of subordinates, and when it suits his humor, servants of the

established class that dominates. The native population is double that

of the number of whites, but that does not concern the Boer. His

Republicanism takes no account of people with darker skins than his

own. In the most important part of the Transvaal, the Boers themselves

are in a pronounced minority, if we take into account only the white

folks. The Boer capital, Pretoria, has a white population of 10,000;

the white population of Johannesburg is 50,907; and the great political

task and vindictive occupation of the Boers of Pretoria, the political

capital of the alleged free country, is that the select few of the

10,000 whites in that town shall rule it and Johannesburg also at their

pleasure, and according to the obstinate caprices of their will. There

were 50,000 whites in Johannesburg, and the argument the Boer advocates

have advanced in America is that the whites of that city, five times as

numerous as those of Pretoria, must not be allowed even the shadow of

the right of suffrage, because they would outvote the chosen people who

have taken the course of government upon themselves in the political

capital. It is this insistence upon an atrocious inequality that is

the elementary cause of the war. Such an oppression becomes an

intolerable condition, and there is no cure for it but the sword. Of

course, it has been a characteristic of this situation that it is

associated with a systematic tyranny at once insulting and

extortionate. [Sidenote: The "Dog in the Manger"] The Boer policy is

moderately described as that of the "dog in the manger." The 50,000

white people of Johannesburg, are disfranchised, first, because they

under the rule of the majority would be at least their own rulers and

exercising an important influence in the government of Johannesburg,

would impair the authority and destroy the prestige of the oligarchy at

Pretoria. We do not urge the fact that this majority at Johannesburg

are also the creators and possessors of the greater wealth of the

Transvaal. Property has the right of recognition as the result of

investment and industry, but it is not necessary that to protect itself

it must have political advantages out of proportion to the number of

the electors who are the property holders. So the argument for the

enfranchisement in a reasonable time of the Uitlanders of Johannesburg

rests primarily and safely upon the proposition that they could cast a

majority vote, and we do not need to call in the merits of the property

qualification or the question whether the natives have by possibility

any rational right to consideration because about sixty years ago they

were crowded out of their hunting grounds by the Boers, seeking a

country where they could own labor and assert mastery over all others,

instead of being second in importance as a people to the English of

lands further South.

[Sidenote: The Commerce of the Transvaal]

The Johannesburghers are not merely disfranchised; they are, by a

vengeful and grasping minority, excluded from the right to protect

themselves in persons and property. It is a great fault in them that

they did not arm themselves and march to Pretoria to receive and

reinforce the Jameson raiders as deliverers. They are justly punished

for this sin of omission. The statistician of the United States

Treasury Department says: The gold mines are now the most productive in

the world, and have already turned out gold to the value of more than

$300,000,000, and, according to the estimate of experts, have still

$3,500,000,000 'in sight.' The commerce of the South African Republic,

while naturally great because of the large number of people employed by

the mining industries, cannot be as accurately stated as that of states

or divisions whose imports are all received through a given port or

ports. Foreign goods for the South African Republic reach it through

several ports--Cape Colony, Natal, Lourenco Marquez, and in smaller

quantities from other ports on the coast. The total imports of 1897

are estimated at £21,515,000, of which £17,012,000 were from Great

Britain, £2,747,000 from the United States, £1,054,226 from Germany,

and the remainder from Belgium, Holland and France."

All this does not help the Boer as a politician. He is devoted to the

rule of the minority and the exercise of his will in commanding others,

native and foreign, black and white, and trampling them into the place

he has assigned them. This he calls liberty, and for that sort of

liberty he has a portentous passion that he is absolutely sure is

sanctified.

Mr. Howard C. Hillegas, in his book "Oom Paul's People," D. Appleton &

Co., holds the Boers to be a nation, and his pages are full of highly

colored partiality for their cause. The diamond mines, he says, "have

yielded more than four hundred million dollars worth of diamonds since

the Free State conceded them to England for less than half a million

dollars."

He does not condescend to consider the proposition that if the cession

had not been made, the find of diamonds would not have occurred, or if

it had, and the Boers undertaken to work the mines, their success would

have been small in comparison with the remarkable results produced by

the Uitlanders.

Mr. Hillegas in his story of the gold mines sheds light upon the

character of the people of the Orange State as well as the Transvaal.

He says:

"In 1854, a Dutchman named John Marais, who had a short time before

returned from the Australian gold fields, prospected in the Transvaal,

and found many evidences of gold. The Boers fearing, that their land

would be overrun with gold seekers, paid £500 to Marais and sent him

home after extracting a promise that he would not reveal his secret to

any one.

"It was not until 1884 that England heard of the presence of gold in

South Africa. A man named Fred Stuben, who had spent several years in

the country, spread such marvellous reports of the underground wealth

of the Transvaal, that only a short time elapsed before hundreds of

prospectors and miners left England for South Africa. When the first

prospectors discovered auriferous veins of wonderful quality on a farm

called Sterkfontein, the gold boom had its birth. It required the

lapse of only a short time for the news to reach Europe, America and

Australia, and immediately thereafter that vast and widely scattered

army of men and women which constantly awaits the announcement of new

discoveries of gold was set in motion toward the Randt.

[Sidenote: The First Stamp Mill]

"The Indian, Russian, American and Australian gold fields were

deserted, and the steamships and sailing vessels to South Africa were

overladen with men and women of all degrees and nationalities. The

journey to the Randt was expensive, dangerous and comfortless, but

before a year had passed almost 20,000 persons had crossed the deserts

and the plains and had settled on claims purchased from the Boers. In

December, 1885, the first stamp mill was erected for the purpose of

crushing the gneiss rock in which the gold lay hidden. This enterprise

marks the real beginning of the gold fields of the Randt, which now

yield one-third of the world's total product of the precious metal.

The advent of thousands of foreigners was a boon to the Boers, who

owned the large farms on which the auriferous veins were located.

Options on farms that were of little value a short time before were

sold at incredible figures, and the prices paid for small claims would

have purchased farms of thousands of acres two years before. * * *

"Owing to the Boer's lack of training and consequent inability to share

in the development of the gold fields, the new industry remained almost

entirely in the hands of the newcomers, the Uitlanders, and two totally

different communities were created in the Republic. The Uitlanders,

who, in 1890, numbered about 100,000, lived almost exclusively in

Johannesburg, and the suburbs along the Randt. The Boers, having

disposed of their farms and lands on the Randt, were obliged to occupy

the other parts of the Republic, where they could follow their pastoral

and other pursuits."

Elsa Goodwin Green, a lady who volunteered as a nurse and served in the

hospital at Pretoria, where forty of Jameson's wounded raiders were

cared for, writes of "Raiders and Rebels in South Africa," and says of

the gold question:

"In the year 1885 gold was found in the reefs underlying the

Witwatersrand (Whitewater's strand). Miners, prospectors and

capitalists soon gathered together--drawn by the magnet gold--and a

fine town, Johannesburg, sprang rapidly into existence. The progress

of this town with its rich reefs--gold-bearing--excited a large amount

of curiosity, felt by the world in general.

"With the rapid development of the mining industry and the influx of

strangers, a certain amount of friction sprang up between the two

races--viz., the Boers and the ever-increasing Uitlander population. A

repressive legislation was persevered in, to prevent the still growing

majority of newcomers from predominating or participating in affairs of

the Republican States.

"This rush of men with capital to the Randt meant undreamt of

prosperity to the Boers, who found a ready market for horses, cattle

and farm produce. Railways and telegraphic communication further

developed the land.

"Though the foreigner and his money were welcome to the Boer, yet he

was persistently denied a voice in the government of the community--a

vote even in matters most concerning himself--indeed all rights as a

citizen. Heavy duties were imposed on the articles most necessary to

the development of the mining industry. Monopolies were often unjustly

obtained by those having interest with the Government. Concessions

were granted only after large consideration to a Government not wholly

free from a taint of bribery."

South Africa is not only a land of gold. It is even more famous for

its diamonds; and the richest mines in the whole world for these

precious stones are located in that country. Some of the most fabulous

stories have been told by travelers of their experiences in the early

mining days of South Africa, and such books as "King Solomon's Mines,"

and others have served to awaken a lively interest and induce

adventurous spirits to go to that land.

[Sidenote: Diamonds for Toys]

The use the Boers had for diamonds when they took their wagons and oxen

and moved north from Cape Colony 700 miles, to find a country where

they could subjugate the natives and live in a Paradise of Great Game,

was to amuse their children with the pretty stones,--certain glittering

pebbles that sparkled as the young Boers, without the least

comprehension of the prodigality of Nature, rolled on the grass and

sand. If it had not been for the revelations of the riches of Africa

by travelers from foreign lands, the Boer boys would still have had a

monopoly of diamonds for toys, and but a dim consciousness of their

bucolic magnificence. Boers are very queer people. Their idea of a

next-door neighbor is that he must keep his hut and wagon at least

three miles away. A closer approach makes a crowd; the air and the

soil become impure, and the Boer is stifled in the midst of his own

splendors. He is the most conservative citizen in the world. He

estimates his own inherent, individual imperialism so extravagantly,

that the rights of men without big wagons with tents on them, and long

strings of oxen with long horns, fade into speculative insignificance.

The Boers did not believe in diamonds--for they are not decorators of

their persons--until they found others making money by mining them, and

even then they only took a feeble interest in the work and were willing

to rent a few square miles of each of their farms to those who were,

with labor and capital, seeking the beautiful crystals. The Boer

talent, according to the testimony of their lives, was in the

multiplication of cattle, the shooting of wild beasts good to eat,

occasional encounters with lions, and hunting parties that pursued the

hippopotamus in the marshy lakes. As a matter of military science,

they were educated in making forts out of their big wagons to repel the

black warriors opposed to invasion by the drivers of horned cattle and

dwellers in houses on wheels.

[Sidenote: President Kruger]

President Kruger is a power, because he is representative of his

people. He is a great chief for the reason that a big savage becomes a

leader and the headman of a tribe on account of his superior strength.

In his youth he was the swiftest and longest winded runner and the

champion rifleman in his part of the country, and it is the favorite

tradition of his admirers that once when a youth he was pursued by a

lion, and the brute incontinently ran away when the man of destiny

turned upon him and looked him in the eye. His attitude towards gold

is a distinction in which those who celebrate his virtues take special

pride. It is well known that his capital city, Pretoria, is built on a

gold mine, and a few years ago there was a revolutionary proposition

made in Mr. Kruger's alleged parliament--even that of opening the

neighboring land to prospectors seeking gold! The powerful President

crushed out the insidious proposal.

"The Transvaal and the Boers," an interesting volume by William Garrett

Fisher, says of the pre-eminence of Mr. Kruger in the official decision

settling this matter that the great and good man said, with the wisdom

inherited from generations of ancestors who had studied the

encyclopedias of Nature:

"Stop and think what you are doing before you open fresh gold fields.

Look at Johannesburg, what a nuisance and expense it has been to us!

We have enough gold and gold seekers in this country already; for all

you know there may be a second Rand at your very feet."

These momentous words in the aid of higher destinies were addressed to

the Volksraad, and there was no more countenancing the idea of digging

for gold.

[Sidenote: Gold Found in 1854]

In 1854 there was a find of the obnoxious yellow metal in the Boer

country, but it was hushed up on the great principle announced with

such simple sublimity by the grand old President when the horrors of

prosperity broke in upon the contentment of his people and caused the

"nuisance" at Johannesburg, where fifty thousand white men rushed in

and gave the Boers more trouble to make them "servants of servants"

according to the curse of Cain than millions of blacks had done, whose

lives were ordered upon even more primitive and economical lines than

presented by the secondary rulers of the golden lands.

However, it cannot be denied that from the standpoint of the Boers, the

British are not to be tolerated when they assume that they have

"certain inalienable rights," for they make themselves an abomination,

obstreperous in the preliminaries of their educational reduction to the

condition of the serfs of semi-barbarians. The objection undoubtedly

is good against the British that they are fond of lands where gold is

found, and they obstinately support the yellow metal as the standard of

value, notwithstanding that they are by their ubiquitous commerce and

enduring egotism forcing the yellow metal as the true standard upon the

great nations of the earth.

Diamonds do not play the great part in the forces that form governments

and shape the destinies of peoples in South Africa or elsewhere, that

gold does. While the precious stone is useful in the arts, excellent

as a tool, and adorns beauty with the beautiful in the highest degree,

it does not find its way diffusively into the service of the people

generally. Diamonds are not a popular production. They are for a

class and not for the mass. The four hundred million dollars worth of

glittering stones picked up and dug up in South Africa within a few

years, have not affected the measure of value. The finding of gold in

such quantities as to over-pass largely and permanently the consumption

of it, affects the money standard by which is valued all that the

fields and shops produce; that is, all that comes of perseverance in

toil that is productive.

[Sidenote: Diamonds of not so great importance is Gold]

Mines of diamonds attract labor for immediate returns--only as they can

be sold for gold or silver, which have functions that make up power in

purchasing food and raiment and in construction, the carrying out of

enterprise that causes the activities both of capital and labor,

putting the two in harmonious relations. Diamonds in Africa have aided

commerce, increased exportation and importation, indirectly helping the

people at large, but they have not competed with gold in the political

potentialities. They are found, when their stories are written, to be

rather romantic than historical. Their is a fascination in the

relation of the finding of South African diamond mines equal to the

charms of fiction. One would have thought the old Dutch settlers

should have had special qualifications for seeking and securing and

appreciating diamonds as one of the gifts that are gracious, for the

African stones have to find the world at large by way of Belgium and

Holland, and are not ready to be known to fame until they have been cut

in Amsterdam.

[Sidenote: Boyle's Statement]

In Boyle's delightful history "To the Cape for Diamonds," he says of

the diamond fields:

"Old Dutch residents of Cape Town appear to have been quite astir upon

the matter on several occasions; but as years passed on, the ancient

rumor died away. Men had to search back for memories long buried when

Governor Woodhouse set the Colony agog by exhibiting the "Hopetown"

diamond in 1867. That Bushmen, Corannas and other tribes of low

condition used the gem mechanically from immemorial time seems to be

quite ascertained. They still remember how their fathers made

periodical visits to the rivers of West Griqualand, seeking diamonds to

bore their "weighting stones." The rediscovery, however, took place in

1867. At that date a shrewd trader named Niekirk, passing through a

country forty miles or so west of Hopetown, saw the children of a Boer

called Jacobs playing with pebbles, picked up along the banks of the

neighboring Orange. Struck with the appearance of one among their

playthings, Niekirk told Vrouw Jacobs that it reminded him of the white

shining stones mentioned in the Bible. As he uttered the words, an

ostrich-hunter named O'Reilly chanced to pass the doorway of the house.

He overheard, entered, and was also impressed. Vague ideas of a

diamond--which none of the three had ever seen--passed through their

minds. They tried the pebble upon glass, scratching the sash all over,

as I have seen it at this day. A bargain was struck. O'Reilly took

the stone for sale, and each of the parties present was to share. At

Capetown, upon the verdict of Dr. Atherstone, Sir P. E. Woodhouse gave

£500 for it. The news spread fast. At the moment of this discovery,

there was something exceeding a panic in the colony. Wool, its staple

product was at a hopelessly low quotation. A murrain was thinning the

sheep. Never had merchants known such a time of anxiety, and no hope

was visible. The story of the trader, corroborated by actual

inspection of his treasure thus excited more active stir than it would

have made at any other time. People began to study every foot of the

ground. Then other stones turned up, the most of them bought from

natives, in whose hands they had lain for many years, perhaps

centuries. In 1868 several were picked up along the banks of the Vaal

about Pniel, and then the rush began. But as yet it was mere surface

seeking.

[Sidenote: "Star of South Africa"]

Early next year a Hottentot shepherd named Swartzboy, brought to Mr.

Gers' store, at the Hook, a gem of eighty-three and a half carats, the

"Star of South Africa," wide famed. In Mr. Gers' absence, his shopman

did not like to risk the £200 worth of goods demanded. Swartzboy

passed on to the farm of that same Niekirk above mentioned. Here he

demanded £400 which Niekirk ultimately paid, receiving £12,000 from

Messrs. Lilienfeld the same day. The diamond was passed to Cape Town,

and all the colony rose. But not for twelve months more did "digging"

begin. On January 7, 1870, Captain Rolleston and his party washed out

their first diamond at Pniel, on the lands claimed by the Berlin

Mission. Within three months, there were five thousand people digging

there.

[Sidenote: The Earliest Discoveries]

South African diamond fields henceforth were established; but of such

"pockets" as Dutoitspan and New Rush none yet had any inkling. The

fields were established as a fact in the colony, but none yet at home.

Mr. Harry Emmanuel sent out a professed expert, Mr. Gregory, to report

upon them, and his foolish haste in discrediting their wealth caused

serious loss to English merchants. The diggers only laughed, and

showed each other their glittering prizes. Mr. Coster, of Amsterdam,

came out, and he also went back incredulous. But the diggings grew and

grew. The necessity of some system of government amongst the crowd

became apparent. The Orange Free State claimed jurisdiction over the

larger space, and the Transvaal Republic exercised rights over the

remainder. Practically there was no government at all.

The earliest report, in writing of discovery, is a letter addressed by

Mr. Parker to Mr. Webb. However it be, Mr. Parker was not long in

acquiring very great influences. All the camp yielded authority to

him, and passed the title of President which he affected. He met the

chief of the South African Republic upon such easy terms of equality

that the latter hastily fled to realms where his supremacy was

uncontested.

[Sidenote: The First Dry Diggings]

In December, 1870, the dry diggings first were heard of. Hitherto the

search for diamonds had been only carried on by river banks, and the

gems discovered there had been washed down in ancient floods from some

kopje, or dry mine now perhaps worn away. In two years of such digging

in a score of places, the yield had not been greater than 300,000

pounds, as Mr. Webb computed. This is indeed an astonishing figure,

all circumstances considered, but the time draws near when the same

amount will be returned as the monthly average in Custom House reports

at Cape Town. In December then, it was whispered that the children of

Dutoit, a Boer living at Dorsfontein--so well known by the name of

Dutoitspan--were in the habit of picking up diamonds on their father's

farm. To those who believed the rumor, it was evident that diamond

digging was henceforth to enter on a novel phase. The gem would be

sought in the bed where nature created it. But few believed--not till

the end of January did the crowd put faith. About that time the farm

was "rushed," an expressive word, though sinister to the ears of a

landed proprietor nowadays. It signifies that diggers swarmed to the

spot in such throngs as to render merely foolish any resistance a

proprietor might meditate. But the simple Boer who owned Dutoitspan

never dreamed of such a thing. He only sat in, staring, amazed at the

endless train of carts and wagons and foot travelers that filed past

him.

[Sidenote: Conditions Under Which Diamonds are Found]

Diamonds in South Africa are found in a limy, chalky grit, bound

together in smaller or larger lumps, from the measure of a foot ball to

that of a pea. The grit is very dry and of considerable hardness, so

that a heap of it looks like shingle on the sorting board. I do not

understand that the diamond is found under those conditions anywhere

else. It is discovered in a limy stratum at the Brazils, I find, but

rarely, and always waterworn. The river beds are the treasure houses

there. In India, for the most part, it seems to have been the same

case; though at one large field, five days' journey from Golconda, the

diamonds were hooked out from crevices of the rock. "In the

neighborhood of the mines," says Tavernier, "the earth is sandy,

covered with rocks and thickets; something like the environs of

Fontainebleau. In these rocks there are many veins, sometimes half a

finger wide, and sometimes double of this. The miners have short iron

instruments, hooked at the end, which they thrust into the veins, and

so drag out the sand or earth collected there. This earth they load

into convenient vessels, and therein are the diamonds found. No one

reading this description can doubt that the jewels were lodged in the

crevices by water power."

The Vaal and the Orange Rivers, the Mod and the Riet, all contain

diamonds, waterworn for the most part. Hundreds or thousands of years

have these lain grinding mid the pebbles, brought, I should take it,

from some diamond kopjes, washed away and vanished which stood beside

the stream. There is not the mark of water on a single stone at the

dry diggings.

The foremost quality of the Cape diamond which attracts attention is

its freedom from the coat or skin which wraps the stone [Transcriber's

note: end of chapter?]

CHAPTER IV

The Cause of War.

The English Blue Books treat the controversy that resulted in the war

officially, impartially and exhaustively. The full dispatches are

given, and all that the Boers had to say is fairly presented with

unquestionable authenticity. What President Kruger stated in his

conferences with Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner in

South Africa, is given in his own language, as faithfully put down as

the dispatches of Mr. Chamberlain or those of the High Commissioner

Milner. The British Blue Book is made a perfect History for both sides

and bears the closest scrutiny of a hostile opposition in parliament as

accurate.

[Sidenote: Conference With President Kruger]

June 14, 1899, High Commissioner Sir Alfred Milner wrote from

"Government House, Cape Town" to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain a

report of his conferences with President Kruger at Bloemfontein. On

the way to meet the President of the South African Republic, the

British High Commissioner was the guest of President Steyn, of the

Orange Free State. The conference with President Kruger was

interpreted and reported with the greatest care. It is not given

verbatim in all instances, because there was a great deal of

repetition, but there is nothing important omitted, and the actual

words of both gentlemen were officially reported and printed. The

importance of these conferences was perfectly understood, and the

official record has not been and will not be questioned. It was upon

these conferences that the issue of peace and war hinged. [Sidenote:

The Cause of Many Points of Difference] The President stated at the

first meeting that he preferred the British High Commissioner should

speak first, and the Commissioner, writing Mr. Chamberlain, said that

in his personal opinion, "The cause of many points of difference, and

the most serious, was the policy pursued by the South African Republic

towards the Uitlanders, among whom many thousands are British subjects.

The bitter feelings thus engendered in the Republic, the tension in

South Africa, and the sympathy throughout the Empire with the

Uitlanders, led to an irritated state of opinion on both sides which

rendered it more difficult for the two Governments to settle

differences amicably. It was my strong conviction that if the South

African Republic would, before things get worse, voluntarily change its

policy towards the Uitlanders, and take steps calculated to satisfy the

reasonable section of them, who after all are the great majority, not

only would the independence of the Republic be strengthened, but there

would be such a better state of feeling all round that it would become

far easier to settle outstanding questions between the two Governments.

[Sidenote: The President's Objection to the Franchise]

"The President, in coming to the Conference, had made a reservation as

to the independence of the Republic. I could not see that it was in

any way impairing that independence for Her Majesty's Government to

support the cause of the Uitlanders so far as it was reasonable. A

vast number were British subjects, and in similar circumstances we

should in any part of the world, even in a country not under

conventional obligations to Her Majesty's Government, be bound to make

representations, and to point out that the intense discontent of our

fellow-subjects stood in the way of the friendly relations which we

desired to exist between the two Governments."

[Sidenote: By Gradual Co-operation all Would be Burghers]

The President objected to granting the franchise which he was assured

by His Excellency, the Commissioner, was the main point, because he

said if it was done "to any large number of aliens," the result would

be "immediately the outvoting of the old burghers." The High

Commissioner went so far as to say that it "would not be reasonable to

do that," and he endeavored to explain the matter to the President,

saying: "At present the Uitlanders had no effective voice whatever in

the legislation, the existing form of oaths was offensive and

unnecessary, and by taking it a British subject at once lost his

nationality, and yet had to wait twelve years, or, under the

President's latest proposals, seven years, before he could become a

full citizen of the Republic. It was perfectly possible to leave the

old burghers in such a position that they could not be swamped, and yet

to give the numerous foreign population--to whom, after all, the

Republic owed its present position--some share in the work of

government, so that they could give the Government the benefit of their

knowledge and experience. In this way the time would come when, by

their gradual co-operation, instead of being divided into separate

communities, they would all be burghers of one State."

The President indicated "a strong dislike of every proposition of the

kind," and proceeded to assail a petition that had been sent from

Johannesburg to the British Government praying for a redress of

grievances, and alleged to have been signed by 25,000 people. This

petition was like a red rag to the Boer bull all through the

conferences. The British High Commissioner, when the President had

expressed his feeling about the petition, informed him that that

document did not change anything. The character of the petition was

not especially to be considered, but he (His Excellency the

Commissioner) based his statements "on a careful study of the

conditions."

[Sidenote: Qualifications for Citizenship]

At the second meeting the President talked about the strengthening of

the British garrison at the Cape, and referred to other military

preparations of the English, of which mention had been made in the

newspapers. The Commissioner denied the accuracy of the press in that

particular; and then the President returned to the petition from

Johannesburg to Her Majesty the Queen, and said the English proposition

to "enlarge the franchise of the strangers" would do away with the

independence of the Republic, and he added, "would be worse than

annexation." His Excellency, the Commissioner, remarks that the

President was "reluctant to come to close quarters" on the franchise

proposition, but at last asked for a proposal of that which would be

satisfactory to the Uitlanders and the English Commissioners, who said:

"I proposed that the full franchise should be given to every foreigner

who--

(_a_) "Had been resident for five years in the Republic.

(_b_) "Declared his intention to reside permanently.

(_c_) "Took an oath to obey the laws, undertake all obligations of

citizenship, and defend the independence of the country.

"The franchise to be confined to persons of good character possessing a

certain amount of property or income."

Finally it was proposed that a small number of new constituencies

should be created. That which was vital in the plan of peace, Sir

Alfred said, "was the simplification of the oath and the immediate

admission to full burghership on taking it. Knowing as I do the

feeling of the Uitlander population, and especially of the best of

them, in these points, I felt and feel that any scheme not containing

these concessions would be absolutely useless. The most influential

and respectable sections of the Uitlander community feel strongly the

indignity and injustice of asking them to denationalize themselves for

anything less than full burghership--which in the South African

Republic carries with it, _de ipso facto_, the right to vote for the

First Volks Raad and the President. They will not accept citizenship

of the Republic on any other terms." And Sir Alfred continues: "The

President at once objected very strongly to my proposal, saying that it

would immediately make the Uitlanders a majority of enfranchised

burghers, who by the constitution formed the sovereign voice, and so

controlled all legislation."

[Sidenote: Milner's proposition Absolutely Fair]

The President was evidently alarmed by the idea that a majority of the

Europeans might, under the proposition urged by the British

Commissioner, become the rulers of the land, and he stuck to his

objection after it was explained that the new burghers who would

appear, if the franchise arrangements were made, could have only a

minority of seats in the first Volks Raad, and therefore they could not

control the State. In fact, the President was not in favor of allowing

the Uitlanders any political power whatever without a long intermission

after the abandonment by the Uitlanders of their rights as British

subjects. The proposition of Sir Alfred was absolutely fair,

reasonable and moderate. Its acceptance would have prevented war.

There was time given by the Commissioner to the President for full

consultation and consideration--that is there was no effort to rush

him. Sir Alfred says in his communication to the Colonial Secretary

Chamberlain, that he felt here he "had reached the crucial point," and

he alleges that the Boer President endeavored to make the matter one of

bargaining, wanted to talk away from the real issue, and desired to

speak of what he called "grievances," wandering far from the main

matter, which was in its simplicity whether the great community of

Johannesburg and the surroundings in the gold mines, constituting a

very large majority of the Europeans and white men in the Transvaal,

should have any representation at all in the Volks Raad.

[Sidenote: Self-Government desired by all]

President Kruger at the fourth meeting of the conference presented what

he styled a "Complete Reform Bill," full, as Sir Alfred says, of

"elaborate restrictions." Subsequently Sir Alfred drew up a paper

showing what those restrictions were, and that this reform bill

consisted of traps and catches, and was a careful, studied evasion,

expressive of a fixed resolution to make no concessions whatever to the

majority of the white population of the country. Sir Alfred says: "I

pointed out that His Honor's proposal differed absolutely from mine, in

that it did not provide for an immediate, or even an early,

enfranchisement of people who might have been in the Republic for many

years, and it made no provision for an increase in the number of seats

in the Volks Raad. I, therefore, in view of the improbability of our

arriving at a settlement on this basis, suggested that the President

should consider whether there was any other way, apart from the

franchise, of giving the Uitlanders some powers of local

self-government, such as were suggested by Mr. Chamberlain in February,

1896. The President, however, was, if possible, more opposed to this

than to my previous proposal. He maintained that the municipality of

Johannesburg had already as great powers as could properly be entrusted

to it, and said it was no use speaking about self-government, as his

people would be absolutely against it."

[Sidenote: Lapse of Citizenship]

Sir Alfred further stated, as to President Kruger's plan: "Under the

plan no man not already naturalized, even if he had been in the country

for thirteen or fourteen years, would get a vote for the First Volks

Raad in less than two and a half years from the passing of the new law.

No considerable number of people would obtain the vote in less than

five years, even if they got naturalized; but the majority would not

naturalize because the scheme retained the unfortunate principle, first

introduced in 1890, by which a man must abandon his old citizenship for

a number of years before getting full burgher rights."

[Sidenote: Immediate Representation Wanted]

President Kruger added to his proposition a scheme for a few new seats.

Of this Sir Alfred remarks: "I have an open mind as to the number of

new seats for the Gold Fields, and for that reason did not attempt to

lay down any definite number of my own proposal. I think three is

decidedly too low. Under this proposal the enfranchised newcomers

might, not immediately, but after the lapse of several years, obtain

five seats in the First Volks Raad. Add, perhaps, two for other

constituencies, in which they would in time become the majority, and

they would be seven out of thirty-one. By that time they would be a

vast majority of the inhabitants, and would contribute, as they indeed

already do, almost the whole revenue. Under these circumstances less

than one-fourth of the representation seems a scanty allowance. But

the great point is, that even this limited degree of representation is

still a long way off. My aim was to obtain some representation for

them immediately. In my view, the First Volks Raad has already been

too long out of touch with the new population, with whose most vital

interests it is constantly dealing, and not dealing wisely. Every year

that this state of things continues increases the tension and the

danger. I do not assert that the mistakes made are due to ill-will. I

believe they are due to want of knowledge. If representatives of the

new population could make their voices heard, if they could come in

contact with the representatives of the old burghers on an equal

footing in the First Raad, they would, without being a majority or

anything like it, yet exercise an appreciable influence on legislation

and administration."

[Sidenote: Justice Would Have Prevented Intervention]

There is no question of the entire reasonableness and truth of this.

In his talk with President Kruger Sir Alfred said of the Uitlanders: "A

vast number of them are British subjects. If we had an equal number of

British subjects and equally large interests in any part of the world,

even in a country which is not under any conventional obligations to

Her Majesty's Government, we should be bound to make representations to

the Government in the interests of Her Majesty's subjects, and to point

out that the intense discontent of those subjects stood in the way of

the cordial relations which we desire to exist between us. I know that

the citizens of the South African Republic are intensely jealous of

British interference in their internal affairs. What I want to impress

upon the President is that if the Government of the South African

Republic of its own accord, from its own sense of policy and justice,

would afford a more liberal treatment to the Uitlander population this

would not increase British interference, but enormously diminish it.

If the Uitlanders were in a position to help themselves they would not

always be appealing to us under the convention."

When the conference was about to close President Kruger said: "Our

enfranchised burghers are probably about 30,000, and the newcomers may

be from 60,000 to 70,000, and if we give them the franchise to-morrow

we may as well give up the Republic. I hope you will clearly see that

I shall not get it through with my people."

Further along, when President Kruger insisted upon it that the too

numerous newcomers would end the Republic, Sir Alfred asked what the

President meant by "outvoting in the Volks Raad," and the President

answered: "I mean this; that if they are all enfranchised then they

would at once form the majority of the whole population, and the

majority of the enfranchised burgher, according to our law, must be

listened to by the Volks Raad; since in a republic we cannot leave the

sovereign voice out of account. Then if they once get the vote, and

the majority come to the Volks Raad saying that the members of the Raad

should be in proportion to the number of electors, the Volks Raad would

be all up with them."

[Sidenote: Ireland and The Transvaal]

Sir Alfred and President Kruger in course of conversation had an outing

on "the Irish question," the President saying: "I say that by taking

the oath of naturalization, whereby they become entitled to elect

members for the Second Raad, they become lawful burghers, and at that

moment they get more than they get in their own country. In their own

country they cannot, within such a short period, choose ministers,

magistrates, or similar officials; but they do this with me, and are

they not to be regarded as full burghers because they cannot yet elect

certain officials? The only difference is that they cannot yet

exercise the full franchise. In England, for instance, the Irish also

have not their own administration."

His Excellency.--"Yes, they have."

President--"When?"

His Excellency.--"The Irish have always sent a full number of

representatives to the Imperial Parliament, even in excess of what was

due to them on a basis of population. If we were to apply the Irish

principle to the South African Republic the Rand would send about fifty

members to the First Volks Raad."

The conference came to nothing. President Kruger asserting to the last

substantially, that if the English-speaking people whom he styled the

"strangers" and the "newcomers," got any political rights at once, no

matter how restricted, it would put his "blood-bought country into the

hands of strangers."

[Sidenote: Grievances of the Uitlanders a Burning Question]

Mr. Conyngham Greene, Her Majesty's agent at Pretoria, wrote to the

State Secretary of the South African Republic June 26, 1899, that Sir

Alfred Milner "desires me to say that, as he pointed out to the

President at Bloemfontein, he considers that the question of finding a

remedy for the grievances of the Uitlanders is the burning question of

the moment, and that this has to be disposed of before other matters

can be discussed. The adoption by the Government of the South African

Republic of measures calculated to lead to an improvement in the

position of the Uitlanders would so improve the general situation that

outstanding differences between the two Governments could be considered

in a calmer atmosphere, and would be more capable of adjustment. Under

these circumstances, it might be possible to devise a scheme for

referring at least a certain number of differences to arbitration. But

as the Government of the South African Republic has not seen its way to

meet Her Majesty's Government on the question of primary importance,

the High Commissioner can see no use in approaching the delicate and

complicated subject of arbitration at the present time. Over and above

this, His Excellency does not consider the scheme now proposed to be a

practicable one. To make no mention of other objections, the

constitution of the suggested Arbitration Court, which would leave

every decision virtually in the hands of a President, who, it is

provided, shall not be a subject of either of the arbitration parties,

does not conform to the fundamental principle which, as Sir Alfred

Milner more than once stated at Bloemfontein, Her Majesty's Government

would regard as a _conditio sine qua non_ to the acceptance of any

scheme of arbitration."

[Illustration: A COMMANDO OF BOERS CHARGING COLONEL BADEN-POWELL'S

FORCES AT MAFEKING]

[Illustration: SOME OF THE SECOND GORDON HIGHLANDERS ENJOYING A ROUGH

AND READY CLEAN UP. BOER SCOUTING PARTY]

[Sidenote: What Mr. Chamberlain Wrote]

Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, writing July 27, 1899, to Sir

Alfred Milner, says:

"Besides the ordinary obligations of a civilized Power to protect its

subjects in a foreign country against injustice, and the special duty

arising in this case from the position of Her Majesty as the Paramount

Power in South Africa, there falls also on Her Majesty's Government the

exceptional responsibility arising out of the Conventions which

regulate the relations between the Government of the South African

Republic and that of Her Majesty. These Conventions were granted by

Her Majesty of her own grace, and they were granted in the full

expectation that, according to the categorical assurances conveyed by

the Boer leaders to the Royal Commissioners in the negotiations

preliminary to the Convention of 1881, equality of treatment would be

strictly maintained among the white inhabitants of the Transvaal.

"It may be well to remind you what those assurances were, as detailed

in the Blue Book of May, 1882. At the Conference of the 10th of May,

1881, at Newcastle, there were present: Sir Hercules Robinson

(President), Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir J. H. De Villiers, Her Majesty's

Commissioners; and, as Representatives of the Boers, Mr. Kruger, Mr. P.

J. Joubert, Dr. Jorissen, Mr. J. S. Joubert, Mr. DeVilliers and Mr.

Buskes.

"The following report of what took place shows the nature of the

assurances given on this occasion:

"239. (President).--'Before annexation, had British subjects complete

freedom of trade throughout the Transvaal; were they on the same

footing as citizens of the Transvaal?'

"240. (Mr. Kruger).--'They were on the same footing as the burghers;

there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand

River Convention.'

"241. (President).--'I presume you will not object to that continuing?'

"242. (Mr. Kruger).--'No; there will be equal protection for everybody.'

"243. (Sir E. Wood).--'And equal privileges?'

"244. (Mr. Kruger).--'We make no difference so far as burgher rights

are concerned. There may perhaps be some slight difference in the case

of a young person who has just come into the country.'

"At the Conference of the 26th of May, 1881, at Newcastle, there were

present: Sir Hercules Robinson (President), Sir E. Wood, Sir J. H.

DeVilliers, Her Majesty's Commissioners; and, as Representatives of the

Boers, Mr. Kruger, Mr. J. S. Joubert, Dr. Jorissen, Mr. Pretorius, Mr.

Buskes and Mr. DeVilliers.

"At this meeting the subject of the assurances was again alluded to as

thus reported:

"1037. (Dr. Jorissen).--'At No. 244 the question was, 'Is there any

distinction in regard to the privileges or rights of Englishmen in the

Transvaal?' and Mr. Kruger answered, 'No, there is no difference;' and

then he added, 'there may be some slight difference in the case of a

young person just coming into the country.' I wish to say that that

might give rise to a wrong impression. What Mr. Kruger intended to

convey was this: 'according to our law a newcomer has not his burgher

rights immediately.' The words 'young person' do not refer to age, but

to the time of his residence in the Republic. According to our old

'Grondwet' (Constitution), you had to reside a year in the country.'

[Sidenote: The Whole Spirit of the Convention disregarded]

"In spite of these positive assurances, all the laws which have caused

the grievances under which the Uitlanders labor, and all the

restrictions as to franchise and individual liberty under which they

suffer, have been brought into existence subsequently to the

conventions of Pretoria or London. Not only has the letter of the

convention of 1884 been repeatedly broken, but the whole spirit of that

convention has been disregarded by this complete reversal of the

conditions of equality between the white inhabitants of the Transvaal

which subsisted, and which, relying on the assurances of the Boer

leaders, Her Majesty believed would continue to subsist, when she

granted to it internal independence in the preamble of the convention

of 1881, and when she consented to substitute the articles of the

convention of 188 for those of the previous convention.

[Sidenote: A Statement by Kruger]

"The responsibility of Her Majesty's Government for the treatment of

the alien inhabitants of the Transvaal is further increased by the fact

that it was at the request of Her Majesty's High Commissioner that the

people of Johannesburg, who in December, 1895, had taken up arms

against the Government of the South African Republic to recover those

equal rights and privileges of which they had been unwarrantably

deprived, permitted themselves to be disarmed in January, 1896. The

High Commissioner's request was made after the issue by President

Kruger of a proclamation in which he stated: 'And I further make known

that the Government is still always ready to consider properly all

grievances which are laid before it in a proper manner, and to lay them

before the Legislature of the country without delay to be dealt with.'

Unfortunately, the assurances conveyed in this proclamation have been

no better observed than the assurances of 1881. Not only have no

adequate or genuine reforms been introduced up to the present time, but

the conditions and the general atmosphere in which the Uitlanders have

to live have become more difficult and irksome to free and civilized

men. Fresh legislation has been passed in a repressive and reactionary

direction, and the administration of justice itself has been made

subservient to the control of the Executive Government."

Every word of this is amply supported.

[Sidenote: Orders from Mr. Chamberlain]

August 1st Mr. Chamberlain telegraphed Sir Alfred Milner: "I now

authorize you to invite President Kruger to appoint delegates to

discuss with our question whether reforms, which the Volks Raad has

passed, will give immediate and substantial representation of

Uitlanders, and if not, what additions and alterations will be

necessary in order to secure this result. If invitation is accepted

our delegates would not be precluded from raising any point calculated

to improve measure; and you will instruct them to press for early

report, which on the points mentioned ought not to be difficult."

Also: "My telegram of the 31st July. We must confine proposed joint

inquiry, in the manner suggested in that telegram, to question of

political representation of Uitlanders. You should, however, let

President Kruger know through Greene that you will be ready, at the

conclusion of inquiry, to discuss with him, not only the report of the

inquiry, and the franchise question, but other matters as well,

including arbitration without introduction of foreign element."

[Sidenote: Petition From Natal]

This petition was signed by 6,336 "loyal colonists of Natal, July 10,

1899: "Your Majesty's petitioners, being British subjects resident in

the Colony of Natal, wish to express their sympathy with those

thousands of their fellow-subjects in the Transvaal Republic, whose

petition Your Majesty has been graciously pleased to receive.

"That men of British origin, engaged in industry of vital concern to

the prosperity of all South Africa, should labor on sufferance under

unjust laws partially administered; that they should contribute nearly

the whole revenue of the State and have no voice in its disposal; that,

while themselves rigorously designed, they should have to watch the

fruits of their labor being applied to swell the military strength of

the class which holds their liberties and even their lives at its

disposal; this is a position repugnant to our sentiments.

"Moreover, it is a source of unrest, insecurity, and injury to business

throughout Your Majesty's South African possessions.

"In all these possessions the rule is absolutely equal rights for the

Dutch-speaking and English-speaking population; in the Transvaal

Republic alone are the latter denied not only equal rights, but

political rights altogether.

"From this contrast springs an intense race-feeling, which tends

increasingly to divide and embitter all South Africa."

[Sidenote: Views of Mr. Baynes]

Mr. Baynes, of the Natal Parliament, is reported in the Natal _Times_,

July 20, 1899: "He had said before, and he would say again, that keenly

as he and all true Englishmen felt the defeat of those gallant British

soldiers fighting at the command of their country in the war ending at

Majuba, the Dutch then had right on their side and it was nothing but

right that right should prevail. As a result of that battle he had

hoped that the British blood there shed together with the magnanimous

act of the British Government, as exemplified in and by the deed of

retrocession, would have sufficed to have washed away all the

bitterness of the past, and evoked forgiveness for all wrongs suffered,

and that the two dominant races in South Africa would thereafter live

together in peace and happiness, and in the process of time by

inter-marriage, by mutual esteem, and by the uniting influence of the

principle of self-preservation, become one people, ennobled by the

struggles and sufferings of the past, each the better for the influence

of the other, forming a people and country that would become the

admiration and envy of the world. Any immediate prospect of such a

consummation had been hopelessly deferred and blighted by the action of

the Transvaal Government in refusing the continuance of the principle

of equal rights to all Europeans alike within their borders. It was

because he feared that the continued refusal of those rights must

sooner or later bring about a war too fearful to contemplate, a war

that might, and probably would, overthrow the independence of the

Transvaal Republic, that he urged upon that Assembly to unanimously

adopt the motion under consideration, in the hope that such an

expression of opinion made by that Assembly might receive favorable

consideration by His Honor the President, the Volks Raad and the

burghers of the Transvaal. Equal rights and privileges would give the

only sure foundation on which the Republic of the Transvaal could be

established, and the only foundation on which the independence of the

country could continue. Let these privileges be denied to Europeans

now, and perpetual race hatred and strife, anarchy or tyranny, or war,

too dreadful to contemplate, must result. With the same purpose of

endeavoring to avert such a calamity, he moved the resolution standing

in his name."

The motion was one of sympathy with and approval of the action of the

British Government in endeavoring to secure equal rights and privileges

for all Europeans in South Africa. The resolution was carried without

a single dissentient.

[Sidenote: Resolutions of the House of Commons of Canada]

The House of Commons of Canada, July 31, 1899, adopted the following:

"1. Resolved, That this House has viewed with regret the complications

which have arisen in the Transvaal Republic, of which Her Majesty is

Suzerain, from the refusal to accord to Her Majesty's subjects now

settled in that region any adequate participation in its government.

"2. Resolved, That this House has learned with still greater regret,

that the condition of things there existing has resulted in intolerable

oppression, and has produced great and dangerous excitement among

several classes of Her Majesty's subjects in Her South African

possessions.

"3. Resolved, That this House, representing a people which has largely

succeeded, by the adoption of the principle of conceding equal

political rights to every portion of the population, in harmonizing

estrangement, and in producing general content with the existing system

of government, desires to express its sympathy with the effort of Her

Majesty's Imperial authorities to obtain for the subjects of Her

Majesty who have taken up their abode in the Transvaal such measure of

justice and political recognition as may be found necessary to secure

them in the full possession of equal rights and liberties."

[Sidenote: A Characteristic Article]

The Boer organ, _The Rand Post_, December 28, 1898, had an article on

"The Rebellion," which was very abusive of the petitioners, whose paper

sent to the British Government, so greatly irritated President Kruger,

who described it as "the lying and libelous petition"; and we quote:

"The hand on the rudder! It is more than time! Now once for all, an

end must be put to such exhibitions as that of Saturday's, by reason of

which the English Government will contend is not capable of exercising

authority, not in a position to insure the safety of personal property.

In the interests of the country such little upheavals must be

vigorously suppressed. From henceforward public gatherings of a

semi-political character in Johannesburg must be absolutely forbidden

and prevented, because here (in Johannesburg) such gatherings lead to

confusion and disorder. The 400 or 500 policemen are sufficient to

exercise authority, and especially to prevent such open-air gatherings,

and to prevent further flag waving by English ladies taking place

before the door of the English Consulate. Mounted police can and must

disperse such gatherings, and, if necessary, there must be some

shooting done. Nobody should find that in any respect very terrible.

In other countries that happens now and then, and the public well know

beforehand that taking part in such gatherings is forbidden, and that

force can be used for dispersing such gatherings. Those who then take

part in them do so at their own risk. The Government must not proceed

further under a Commandant who is hooted by the burghers, but appoint a

Commandant who will have the esteem of the burghers. Commandants of

neighboring districts should also be in complete readiness with their

burghers. Immediately anything happens, the Government must take

vigorous action. The Government must show that it is master of this

town, and not unsuccessful men of business, and cowardly political

wire-pullers, who shelter themselves behind the guns of Her British

Majesty, not the men who in their quality of British subjects, and

under cover of lying petitions bring to light their hatred of the Boer.

To this Johannesburg Rebellion an end must be put once and for all.

The well-meaning portion of the population, a very considerable part,

wishes nothing else. Let us shoot down a pair of these wire-pullers,

and thereby spare ourselves a formal war."

[Sidenote: A Whole History of Outrages]

This is expressive of the venomous intensity of the press of the Boers.

In the same article there are very broad hints to President Kruger that

he had been going too far in the conciliation of the British. There

are in the Blue Books many instances of personal outrage, violence,

insult, oppression and murder, with a view to the intimidation of the

"strangers," the "newcomers," those who were crowding themselves into

"the blood-bought land" from mere sordid motives of course in gathering

gold and diamonds, and being more numerous than the Boers, and having

more money and fixed property, were even not content with the simple

office of the payment of taxes and submission to the Boers as an

inferior caste. In order to emphasize this spirit of exclusion of

those who were actually representing the progress of civilization, and

doing vastly more than the Boers ever did to improve the country and

make it prosperous in all the ways of advanced civilization, a fort was

erected and so located as to bring the business centre of the

Uitlanders directly under the guns of the Boers, who not satisfied with

the menace of personal outrages and the denial of public rights, had to

have a fort from which they could fire into the city, in which their

policemen were constantly guilty of extraordinary brutalities. There

is a whole history of these outrages that would make good reading for

sentimentalists.

The policy of the Boer President and people in the negotiations that

had so unhappy a termination was, throughout, marked with all the worst

characteristics of the Boer race. The President of the South African

Republic had promised in London, where he appeared as the head of a

commission when the British attempted the alleged sublime policy of

magnanimity in refraining from pushing the war, after the miserable

slaughters and skirmishes culminating in the Majuba Hill insanity and

massacre--that the Government of the "Republic" would be most

considerate in protecting the rights of the British subjects in the

Transvaal. Doubtless it was the remembrance of his responsibilities

thus undertaken that aroused the violent spirit in the Boer Dictator

when he met the British High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, in the

Bloemfontein conferences--so that he vehemently denounced the true

petitioners of Johannesburg as falsifiers in appealing to the British

Government for belated protection. It was the pleasure of President

Kruger, who had himself in London promised his protection, that those

who told the plain truth as to the oppression of the European people

were "libelous liars." The Dictator, whose official title was that of

President, and who undertook to be the representative of the

implacable, domineering spirit of the Boer minority in the Transvaal,

in his personal declarations disregarded all civilized amenities, and

grossly insisted upon the humiliation of England in the very matter of

which she has been most justly proud and won the highest regard of all

enlightened peoples, and that is, of seeing at whatever cost that

British subjects shall be respected everywhere in their personal rights.

[Sidenote: England's Determined Protection of Her Subjects]

Mr. Chamberlain was well within the line of established truth when he

said, if the English Government had no rights in the Transvaal other

than those arising from the duty of demanding plain justice from an

independent government, be it republican or monarchy, the treatment of

the Uitlanders at the hands of the Boers required remonstrance and

demanded consideration. Of course, the logic of this statement was

that if there was not a remedy for the great and bitter wrong inflicted

upon one of the most important communities in the world, and far the

most important in Africa, the British Empire would have to interfere.

The claims of England that British subjects should be respected in

personal rights have been many times vindicated, and the fact that the

whole world knows the high principle and firm policy of the British in

the determined protection of its subjects is one of the glories of the

Empire. The President of the South African Republic flinched from his

own word of honor and responsibility given in London, and rudely

asserted that the majority of Europeans in the Transvaal had no rights

he was bound to respect. He did not use precisely that form of speech,

but it was that substantially, and the meaning of it was that the

English-speaking population that had sought the Transvaal because there

were there the greatest gold discoveries ever made were to be treated

by the Boers as exactly on a level with "niggers." It was the

President's persistent assumption and unconcealed purpose that the

minority of the people of the Transvaal he controlled must be supreme

over two majorities,--one the natives who had precedence of the Dutch

in possession of the country, and the other the newcomers who were

there on the business of civilized mankind--the Boers being a

semi-barbarous minority between the two--holding with a small fraction

of the population a half-way fortification from which to order and

command. President Kruger wandered constantly in his conferences from

the discussion of the franchise, showing an imperious temper and an

inordinate and reckless, domineering propensity.

[Sidenote: A Reasonable and Just Proposal]

The proposal made by the British Commissioner for a settlement of

difficulties was plain, reasonable in all respects, singularly careful

of all the just susceptibilities of the Boer Government. It consented

to the maintenance of the dominance of the minority, except in

requiring respect for personal and public rights accorded to

individuals in all civilized governments,--and in the declaration of

the strict rights of British subjects consent was given to the theory

of the utter independence of the Boers. There was a careful limitation

here, so that even the vanity of the semi-barbarians, who asserted that

they were and must be always the exclusive rulers, was not to be

suddenly and in a hostile sense disturbed. There was much conceded

merely to save the excessive and savage self-esteem of the Boers, who,

however, positively refused justice and demanded without mitigation

exercise of a despotism so unwarranted and wicked as to be intolerable

to civilization. The Boer statements, soliciting sympathy, circulated

in the United States have dwelt upon the assertion that the British

subjects, who meant to reside permanently in the Transvaal, refused to

become citizens of the South African Republic on any conditions. This

way of putting the case was misleading, and purposely so. The British

subjects did not agree to renounce their character as subjects, until

assured they could be citizens of the South African Republic so far,

and _that the large majority of the Europeans, the white men in the

Transvaal, might have a small minority of representation in the Volks

Raad, and this upon the belief that if a very few members of that body

who knew the truth of the conditions were able to speak it in public

and officially, there would be a mitigation of the remorseless tyranny

under which the Uitlanders had been suffering_.

[Sidenote: Boers Positively Refuse Justice]

The Boer President refused to think of this, on the precise and often

expressed ground that the Uitlanders were a large majority of the

people, and there could be no safeguards for the Boer Government if

these outsiders and strangers were permitted to have any political

rights whatever. The President held indomitably that the "newcomers"

and "strangers" should not occupy and possess the country to any degree

by force of numbers or merit of industry and property. They were in

the "blood-bought land"--that is truthfully applied, especially the

native blood, and British blood had been shed copiously, and the land

was bloody enough in that sense; but the condition of English-speaking

people and all white immigrants in the gold fields, the richest in the

world, and the diamond fields, also the richest ever known--the whole

output amounting to more than one hundred millions of dollars a

year--should be abject submission to an extortionate, tyrannous and

brutal caste that respected no human rights and revelled in

selfishness, sordidness and personal and racial insolence. [Sidenote:

Mr. Kruger's Views on the Question] The initial point at which

President Kruger stood through these negotiations, in which he had

ample and honorable opportunities to make peace, was that the great

communities of English-speaking people were composed of strangers and

aliens who must be inferiors. This amounted to a presumption,

officially and peremptorily and continuously asserted, that the Boers

must, though a minority, and _because they were a minority_, be

consecrated by "blood" a ruling caste, a caste whose authority it was

impious to dispute, and that they must have confided to them

exclusively and forever commanding powers held sacred over the natives

they had enslaved; and the English-speaking people they taxed, assessed

and restricted, insulted and humiliated with ostentation at their

sovereign, savage pleasure. It is a mild and gentle form of expression

to say that the behavior of the Boers has been that of a barbarous

tribe, and that their conduct has had a nearer correspondence with Zulu

savagery than with Christian civilization, and totally lacks the

kindliness of the Hottentot. The Boers forced the war with England in

the spirit of haughty, tribal, class, racial, contemptuous hostility,

and would have it so throughout the Conferences.

[Sidenote: The English Language not Permitted]

After the Conferences between the British Commissioner and Governor of

South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner and President Kruger, the peace-making

efforts lacked acute interest, but were perseveringly continued. The

latest concession of the Boers was that if the "people"--and by the

"people" were meant the burghers of the Transvaal--approved, and the

Government would try to get them to do so, a "retrospective five years'

franchise" would be granted, and the amount of it was that of

two-thirds of the white men of the Transvaal were to have one-fourth of

the representation in the Volks Raad, but by no possibility, it was a

little later explained, could the English language be permitted in that

august body--the barbarous jargon of the Boers being the official

language and the only tongue to be spoken. The President of the Orange

State, as the gravity of the situation increased played a raucous

second fiddle to President Kruger, and busied himself against the

English, constantly professing friendliness to excess, working upon the

line of securing the acceptance of an impossible complacency by the

majority of white men in the Transvaal, in reference to the policy of

their own subordination. That sort of submission is not according to

the inheritance of the blood or the antecedent history of the

English-speaking race, and the Uitlanders were not effusive with

satisfaction even at the last Boer effort to make peace by offering a

fractional representation in a body while they must listen to an

unknown tongue and not be permitted to speak in the "Republican"

parliament the language of the majority of the tolerably white men

dwelling in the territory of the Republic.

The utility of the hysteria of the President of the Orange State was in

the warning his frequent and voluminous impracticable suggestions gave,

that peace could only be preserved by another case of sublime

magnanimity like that of Mr. Gladstone, whose Christian benevolence had

given the Boers confidence in their own invincibility and also in the

timidity of the British, who were supposed to be most happy when

dealing in generosities toward enemies in arms and victorious over the

generous. Suddenly the peace-maker, President of the Orange State,

snatched the British gold in transit, arrested or expelled British

subjects by countenancing and justifying a panic that led them to take

flight from his peaceable State, at the same time commandeering the

burghers in force, assuming that this was done in a purely pacific way;

and on the fourth of October this man of peace wrote to Sir Alfred

Milner that he must urge the "urgent necessity of intimating to me

without further delay whether Your Excellency sees your way clear to

give effect to these my views and wishes."

[Sidenote: The President of the Orange Free State as Peace Maker]

It will be remarked that there is found in the Orange President's

literature the same sort of note that Aguinaldo was in the habit of

putting in his proclamations expressions of his intense passion for

pacification when he was plotting the burning of Manila and the

massacre of the American army. President Steyn had just stated that

the South African Republic would not "make or entertain proposals or

suggestions unless not only the troops menacing their State were

withdrawn further from their borders, but an assurance given" that all

increase of British troops in South Africa would be stopped and those

on the water not landed "or as far removed as can be from the scene of

possible hostilities;" and then if the Orange State President was to do

anything more for peace he must now--this was the evening of October

5th--"if this preliminary but absolutely essential matter can be

regulated between this and to-morrow." This shows that the

professional presidential pacificator had received due notice of the

purpose of the Boers to rush a declaration of war.

CHAPTER V

The Boer Declaration of War and the Gathering of the Armies.

[Sidenote: Both sides Surprised]

When the Republic of South Africa and the Orange Free State, after a

conspiracy of the two Presidents, rushed their armies into what they

believed a campaign of conquests, the surprise of the Boers and their

allies that they gained so few and small advantages after elaborate

preparations and careful openings of their opportunities in striking

first, was as at as that of the British that they, indifferently

provided and hastily thrust into hot places, could not march headlong

in solid columns, storming fortifications, to easy victories.

[Illustration: THE LAST LETTER HOME. An incident at Ladysmith. Red

Cross Nurse writing a message of love from a dying soldier.]

[Illustration: THE GUARDS TERRIFIC CHARGE--BATTLE OF BELMONT]

The Boer ultimatum, ordering the British to flee, for waiting on the

frontiers would be regarded a "declaration of war on the part of Her

Majesty's Government," and that within forty-eight hours, was

promulgated on the 9th of October. The material part is in the

following words, as per Associated Press report:

THE TRANSVAAL'S ULTIMATUM,

which is signed by F. W. Reitz, State Secretary, is as follows:

"Her Majesty's unlawful intervention in the internal affairs of this

republic, in conflict of the London convention of 1884, by the

extraordinary strengthening of her troops in the neighborhood of the

borders of this republic, has caused an intolerable condition of things

to arise, to which this Government feels itself obliged, in the

interest not only of this republic, but also of all South Africa, to

make an end as soon as possible, and this Government feels itself

called upon and obliged to press earnestly and with emphasis for an

immediate termination of this state of things and to request Her

Majesty's Government to give assurances upon the following four demands:

"First--That all points of mutual difference be regulated by friendly

recourse to arbitration or by whatever amicable way may be agreed upon

by this Government and Her Majesty's Government.

"Second--That all troops on the borders of this republic shall be

instantly withdrawn.

"Third--That all reinforcements of troops which have arrived in South

Africa since June 1, 1899, shall be removed from South Africa within a

reasonable time to be agreed upon with this Government, and with the

mutual assurance and guarantee on the part of this Government that no

attack upon or hostilities against any portion of the possessions of

the British Government shall be made by this republic during the

further negotiations within a period of time to be subsequently agreed

upon between the Governments, and 'this Government will, on compliance

therewith, be prepared to withdraw the armed burghers of this republic

from the borders.

"Fourth--That Her Majesty's troops which are now on the high seas shall

not be landed in any part of South Africa."

To these demands is appended the definition of time limit for a reply:

"This Government presses for an immediate and affirmative answer to

these four questions, and earnestly requests Her Majesty's Government

to return an answer before or upon Wednesday October 11, 1899, not

later than 5 o'clock P.M.

It desires further to add that in the unexpected event of an answer

unsatisfactory being received by it within the interval, it will, with

great regret, be compelled to regard the action of Her Majesty's

Government as a formal declaration of war, and will not hold itself

responsible for the consequences thereof, and that in the event of any

further movement of troops occurring within the above mentioned time,

in a nearer direction to our borders, this Government will be compelled

to regard that also as a formal declaration of war. I have the honor

to be, respectfully yours,

F. W. REITZ,

State Secretary."

To the above, Great Britain replied that the demands were such as could

not be discussed, and instructed the British agent to apply for his

passport, which he did.

On the following day, October 11th, the proclamation of war was

formally issued at Pretoria, the Boer capital, and the Orange Free

State openly took its place as an ally of the South African Republic,

appointing General Petrus Jocobus Joubert Commandant-General of its

forces. Both the Transvaal and Free State Boers promptly invaded Natal

and took strong positions.

[Sidenote: Centers of combat quickly Defined]

The object was to overrun South Africa, raising the Dutch in revolt,

and driving all foes seaward, before the slender British garrisons

could be reinforced from England. Thus the war began with surprises on

both sides, for the outposts of the English met the onslaught of the

Boer columns whose movements were extraordinarily rapid as they were

nearly all mounted men, with a hearty appetite for coming to blows.

The flood of Boer riflemen on horseback well supplied with artillery,

largely living on the country that was to have swept the British into

the towns by the sea to meet their incoming transports, was soon

arrested. The centers of the cyclones of war were quickly defined.

The British were astonished to meet in the Boer armies evidences of

well studied campaigning, thorough armament and generalship in the

leaders, and in finding that what was understood to be irregular forces

in thin lines of skirmishers were masses of an army of 50,000 men. The

British were still more thoroughly surprised on finding themselves hard

pressed, than the Boers were that the momentum of the advance of the

sweeping successes of which they had such broad expectations, had been

suddenly stayed.

[Sidenote: Important Decisions to Be made]

If there had been no political considerations with respect to people of

whose tendencies there were doubts to control the action of the British

at the beginning of the war their military position would have been

much bettered by yielding more ground in Natal, abandoning the

positions that the Boers were abundantly able to surround and that were

certain to need relief in a few weeks, a condition that would force the

British armies to hasten advances on dangerous lines. The scenes of

the first chapter of the war had been located by the establishment of

arsenals and encampments that must be strenuously defended, if not

destroyed, with losses irreparable for many days. The gravest

consideration in the first weeks of the war were as to the choice

between the better military and political positions. Naturally there

was something of both given weight in the selections made. Rather than

abandon additional Natal territory the British accepted the conditions

in the midst of which they have repeatedly suffered severely, and their

columns have been driven to accept the contingencies of extra hazardous

operations and relief expeditions driven under the strain of perilous

emergency. The British, as well as the Boers and Orange State armies

underestimated the work they cut out for themselves. The mutual wonder

has been that there was such hot work on both sides.

[Sidenote: Early Days of the War]

During the first weeks of the war the British were busy in securing

transports and getting troops and supplies for the voyage of a month,

and the news of the passing days was of the scenes of parting at the

ports whence the regiments ordered to join the African army of the

British, sailed; and next was the announcement of the arrivals of the

famous organizations at the ports to which they had been

ordered,--speculations as to the time required to put in motion the

several columns for the relief of the besieged garrisons, and the

meantime the gallantry of the beleaguered British and their style of

defending themselves with dashing sorties deeply moved the public, and

gave edge and points to attention. The encounters at this time were

decidedly educational. The combatants were taught to respect each

other. Innumerable war incidents gave zest to the reading of the

current literature in which the journals paraded the names of the troop

ships, the number of men with rifles, the names of the officers,

speculations as to the days and hours the vessels would require to

reach the seat of war, the places where the troops could be put ashore

to the greatest advantage, the roads they must follow to the front.

[Sidenote: Public Opinion]

This was a period of confidence on the part of the British, mitigated

only by occasional furtive suggestions of misgiving. It was almost

universally held throughout the British Empire that the divisions on

the way would be equal to the demands upon them. The arrival of Sir

Redvers Buller to take supreme command was to be a signal for the

display of imperial power--the auspicious beginning of the speedy end.

It was reasonable that spectators not jealous of the British, and

inclined to some form of hatefulness towards them, should accept the

information and conclusions of the intelligence of the people of the

dominant British Island. The general judgment of the world outside the

British Empire--excepting the specialists in detailed knowledge who had

made close studies of the shifting situation with growing apprehension

of its seriousness, political as well as military--was that the war was

to be charged to the account of the land greed of Englishmen, and their

persecution of the religious and Republican Boers instead of to the

fact that the Transvaal Republicans made up one barbary state, and the

alleged Orange Free State another, in a lesser degree wanting in

civility, and that these allies were resolute and aggressive in their

determination to enslave both the original occupants of the soil and

those who had within a few years developed its exceedingly great

riches, and the worth to the world of the astounding revelation of the

most precious stones and metals.

When we form the intimate acquaintance of the facts we find the

friction between the strangely mixed races of the Transvaal was not

caused by British expansionists, or occasioned by British aggression,

but by the stolid abominable ambition of the Boer race--the same for

whom Great Britain had broken the Zulu power in a war that was most

expensive in blood and money. The trouble in Africa did not grow from

the anxiety of the British for extensions of territory or of

privileges. The Boers held all others to be according to the Gospel

their inferiors, and the protestation of the British Government that

there should be for the sake of peace a very moderate reform amounting

to the insertion of an admixture of justice, according to all testimony

denied disdainfully, in the administration of the laws, customs and

habits of the caste of burghers.

[Sidenote: Two Popular Illusions]

The world so far as it has admitted daylight to aid the inspection of

South African affairs has parted with two illusions: First, that the

English made the war, second, that they were ready for it, and menaced

the liberties of South African peoples when they landed two regiments

of regular troops at Durban. It is demonstrated the Boers were the war

makers and ready for war, holding the British in contempt for

peaceableness under the buffetings to which they had submitted, and for

their reluctance to take up arms to defend themselves. It was the

Boers who declared war and were first in the field. They had a fixed

policy for asserting themselves with increasing energy and ferocity,

and they opened the grim game of war in logical accordance with their

proceedings ever since England was so magnanimous after Majuba Hill.

Their astonishment as to the misapprehensions manifest in the course of

warfare thus far, is as great as that of the English at their

miscalculations that would seem humorous if they were not most grave.

CHAPTER VI

The First Bloodshed

[Sidenote: The First Battle of the War]