E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Stephen Blundell, and the Project
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Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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Obsolete spellings have been retained.
THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA
Its Cause and Conduct
by
A. CONAN DOYLE
Author of 'The Great Boer War'
Published by
Smith, Elder, & Co., 15 Waterloo Place, London, S.W.
All Copies for the Colonies and India supplied by
G. Bell & Sons, London and Bombay
1902
[All rights reserved]
PREFACE
For some reason, which may be either arrogance or apathy, the British
are very slow to state their case to the world. At present the reasons
for our actions and the methods which we have used are set forth in many
Blue-books, tracts, and leaflets, but have never, so far as I know, been
collected into one small volume. In view of the persistent slanders to
which our politicians and our soldiers have been equally exposed, it
becomes a duty which we owe to our national honour to lay the facts
before the world. I wish someone more competent, and with some official
authority, had undertaken the task, which I have tried to do as best I
might from an independent standpoint.
There was never a war in history in which the right was absolutely on
one side, or in which no incidents of the campaign were open to
criticism. I do not pretend that it was so here. But I do not think that
any unprejudiced man can read the facts without acknowledging that the
British Government has done its best to avoid war, and the British Army
to wage it with humanity.
To my publisher and to myself this work has been its own reward. In this
way we hope to put the price within the reach of all, and yet leave a
profit for the vendor. Our further ambition is, however, to translate it
into all European tongues, and to send a free copy to every deputy and
every newspaper on the Continent and in America. For this work money
will be needed--a considerable sum. We propose to make an appeal to the
public for these funds. Any sums which are sent to me or to my publisher
will be devoted to this work. There cannot be too much, for the more we
get the more we shall do.
I may add that I have not burdened my pages with continual references.
My quotations are reliable and can always, if necessary, be
substantiated.
A. CONAN DOYLE.
UNDERSHAW, HINDHEAD:
_January, 1902._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE BOER PEOPLE 9
II. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL 23
III. THE NEGOTIATIONS 41
IV. SOME POINTS EXAMINED 61
V. THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE 73
VI. THE FARM-BURNING 84
VII. THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS 94
VIII. THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN SOUTH AFRICA 107
IX. FURTHER CHARGES AGAINST BRITISH TROOPS 123
X. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE QUESTION 133
XI. CONCLUSIONS 150
THE WAR:
ITS CAUSE AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER I
THE BOER PEOPLE
It is impossible to appreciate the South African problem and the causes
which have led up to the present war between the British Empire and the
Boer republics without some knowledge, however superficial, of the past
history of South Africa. To tell the tale one must go back to the
beginning, for there has been complete continuity of history in South
Africa, and every stage has depended upon that which has preceded it. No
one can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he
is what his past has made him.
It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith--in 1652,
to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their first lodgment at
the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been there before them, but,
repelled by the evil weather, and lured forward by rumours of gold, they
had passed the true seat of empire, and had voyaged farther, to settle
along the eastern coast. But the Dutchmen at the Cape prospered and grew
stronger in that robust climate. They did not penetrate far inland, for
they were few in number, and all they wanted was to be found close at
hand. But they built themselves houses, and they supplied the Dutch East
India Company with food and water, gradually budding off little
townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and pushing their settlements up the
long slopes which lead to that great central plateau which extends for
1,500 miles from the edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the
gradual spreading of the Africanders over the huge expanse of veldt
which lay to the north of them. Cattle-raising became an industry, but
in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are
necessary for even small herds. Six thousand acres was the usual size,
and 5_l._ a year the rent payable to Government. The diseases which
follow the white man had in Africa, as in America and Australia, been
fatal to the natives, and an epidemic of smallpox cleared the country
for the new-comers. Farther and farther north they pushed, founding
little towns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and Swellendam, where
a Dutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale of the bare necessaries
of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered dwellings. Already the
settlers were showing that independence of control and that detachment
from Europe which has been their most prominent characteristic. Even the
mild sway of the Dutch Company had caused them to revolt. The local
rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal cataclysm which
followed the French Revolution. After twenty years, during which the
world was shaken by the Titanic struggle in the final counting up of the
game and paying of the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the
British Empire.
In all the vast collection of British States there is probably not one
the title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this. Britain
had it by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of purchase.
In 1806 troops landed, defeated the local forces, and took possession of
Cape Town. In 1814 Britain paid the large sum of six million pounds to
the Stadtholder for the transference of this and some South American
land. It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly in
that general redistribution which was going on. As a house of call upon
the way to India the place was seen to be of value, but the country
itself was looked upon as unprofitable and desert. What would
Castlereagh or Liverpool have thought could they have seen the items
which they were buying for six million pounds? The inventory would have
been a mixed one of good and of evil: nine fierce Kaffir wars, the
greatest diamond mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, two
costly and humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected even when we
fought with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africa of peace and
prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for all men.
The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones, but there
is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions. The ocean has
marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is undefined. There is no
word of the 'hinterland,' for neither the term nor the idea had then
been thought of. Had Great Britain bought those vast regions which
extended beyond the settlements? Or were the discontented Dutch at
liberty to pass onwards and found fresh nations to bar the path of the
Anglo-Celtic colonists? In that question lay the germ of all the trouble
to come. An American would realise the point at issue if he could
conceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutch
inhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westward and
established fresh communities under a new flag. Then, when the American
population overtook these western States, they would be face to face
with the problem which this country has had to solve. If they found
these new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive,
they would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with which
British statesmen have had to deal.
At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists--Dutch, French, and German--numbered some thirty thousand.
They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as numerous as
themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation between the British
and the original settlers would have seemed to be a good one, since they
were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be
distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance. Five
thousand British emigrants were landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern
borders of the colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but
steady influx of English-speaking colonists. The Government had the
historical faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was
mild, clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it might
have done very well had it been content to leave things as it found
them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic
races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long series of
complications, making up the troubled history of South Africa.
The Imperial Government has always taken an honourable and philanthropic
view of the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the
protection of the law. We hold, and rightly, that British justice, if
not blind, should at least be colour-blind. The view is irreproachable
in theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt to be irritating
when urged by a Boston moralist or a London philanthropist upon men
whose whole society has been built upon the assumption that the black is
the inferior race. Such a people like to find the higher morality for
themselves, not to have it imposed upon them by those who live under
entirely different conditions.
The British Government in South Africa has always played the unpopular
part of the friend and protector of the native servants. It was upon
this very point that the first friction appeared between the old
settlers and the new administration. A rising with bloodshed followed
the arrest of a Dutch farmer who had maltreated his slave. It was
suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment
was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget
the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold. The
making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship.
However, the thing was done, and it is typical of the enduring
resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson Raid, it
seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be hanged, the
beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at Cookhouse Drift to
Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the Dutchmen had died in
1816. Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British
Government and the Africanders.
And the separation soon became more marked. With vicarious generosity,
the English Government gave very lenient terms to the Kaffir tribes who
in 1834 had raided the border farmers. And then, finally, in this same
year there came the emancipation of the slaves throughout the British
Empire, which fanned all smouldering discontents into an active flame.
It must be confessed that on this occasion the British philanthropist
was willing to pay for what he thought was right. It was a noble
national action, and one the morality of which was in advance of its
time, that the British Parliament should vote the enormous sum of twenty
million pounds to pay compensation to the slaveholders, and so to remove
an evil with which the mother country had no immediate connection. It
was as well that the thing should have been done when it was, for had we
waited till the colonies affected had governments of their own it could
never have been done by constitutional methods. With many a grumble the
good British householder drew his purse from his fob, and paid for what
he thought to be right. If any special grace attends the virtuous action
which brings nothing but tribulation in this world, then we may hope for
it over this emancipation. We spent our money, we ruined our West Indian
colonies, and we started a disaffection in South Africa, the end of
which we have not seen.
But the details of the measure were less honourable than the principle.
It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust
itself to the new conditions. Three million pounds were ear-marked for
South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from 60_l._ to 70_l._, a
sum considerably below the current local rates. Finally, the
compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold their
claims at reduced prices to middlemen. Indignation meetings were held in
every little townlet and cattle-camp on the Karoo. The old Dutch spirit
was up--the spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion was useless.
But a vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them. The nomad
life was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons--like
those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to
Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by one they
were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women were seated
inside, the men with their long-barrelled guns walked alongside, and the
great exodus was begun. Their herds and flocks accompanied the
migration, and the children helped to round them in and drive them. One
tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok whip behind the bullocks.
He was a small item in that singular crowd, but he was of interest to
us, for his name was Paul Stephanus Kruger.
It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the sallying
forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the promised land
of Utah. The country was known and sparsely settled as far north as the
Orange River, but beyond there was a great region which had never been
penetrated save by some daring hunter or adventurous pioneer. It
chanced--if there be indeed such an element as chance in the graver
affairs of man--that a Zulu conqueror had swept over this land and left
it untenanted, save by the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest
of the human race. There were fine grazing and good soil for the
emigrants. They travelled in small detached parties, but their total
numbers were considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their
historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the colony.
Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large number made a
trysting-place at a high peak to the east of Bloemfontein, in what was
lately the Orange Free State. One party of the emigrants was cut off by
the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the great Zulu nation.
The final victory of the 'voortrekkers' cleared all the country between
the Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what have been known as
the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In the meantime another body of
the emigrants had descended into Natal, and had defeated Dingaan, the
great Chief of the Zulus.
And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies, the Boers
saw at the end of their travels the very thing which they desired
least--that which they had come so far to avoid--the flag of Great
Britain. The Boers had occupied Natal from within, but England had
previously done the same by sea, and a small colony of Englishmen had
settled at Port Natal, now known as Durban. The home Government,
however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest of
Natal by the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British colony. At
the same time they asserted the unwelcome doctrine that a British
subject could not at will throw off his allegiance, and that, go where
they might, the wandering farmers were still only the pioneers of
British colonies. To emphasise the fact three companies of soldiers were
sent in 1842 to what is now Durban--the usual Corporal's guard with
which Great Britain starts a new empire. This handful of men was waylaid
by the Boers and cut up, as their successors have been so often since.
The survivors, however, fortified themselves, and held a defensive
position--as also their successors have done so many times since--until
reinforcements arrived and the farmers dispersed. Natal from this time
onward became a British colony, and the majority of the Boers trekked
north and east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their brethren
of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.
Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that height of
philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal absolutely
impartially where his own country is a party to the quarrel. But at
least we may allow that there is a case for our adversary. Our
annexation of Natal had been by no means definite, and it was they and
not we who first broke that bloodthirsty Zulu power which threw its
shadow across the country. It was hard after such trials and such
exploits to turn their back upon the fertile land which they had
conquered, and to return to the bare pastures of the upland veldt. They
carried out of Natal a heavy sense of injury, which has helped to poison
our relations with them ever since. It was, in a way, a momentous
episode, this little skirmish of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the
heading off of the Boer from the sea and the confinement of his ambition
to the land. Had it gone the other way, a new and possibly formidable
flag would have been added to the maritime nations.
The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country between the
Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had been
recruited by new-comers from the Cape Colony until they numbered some
fifteen thousand souls. This population was scattered over a space as
large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England. Their form of government was individualistic and democratic to
the last degree compatible with any sort of cohesion. Their wars with
the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the British Government appear
to have been the only ties which held them together. They divided and
subdivided within their own borders, like a germinating egg. The
Transvaal was full of lusty little high-mettled communities, who
quarrelled among themselves as fiercely as they had done with the
authorities at the Cape. Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Potchefstroom were
on the point of turning their rifles against each other. In the south,
between the Orange River and the Vaal, there was no form of government
at all, but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos, Hottentots, and
half-breeds living in a chronic state of turbulence, recognising neither
the British authority to the south of them nor the Transvaal republics
to the north. The chaos became at last unendurable, and in 1848 a
garrison was placed in Bloemfontein and the district incorporated in the
British Empire. The emigrants made a futile resistance at Boomplaats,
and after a single defeat allowed themselves to be drawn into the
settled order of civilised rule.
At this period the Transvaal, where most of the Boers had settled,
desired a formal acknowledgment of their independence, which the British
authorities determined once and for all to give them. The great barren
country, which produced little save marksmen, had no attractions for a
Colonial Office which was bent upon the limitation of its liabilities. A
Convention was concluded between the two parties, known as the Sand
River Convention, which is one of the fixed points in South African
history. By it the British Government guaranteed to the Boer farmers the
right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves by their own
laws without any interference upon the part of the British. It
stipulated that there should be no slavery, and with that single
reservation washed its hands finally, as it imagined, of the whole
question. So the Transvaal Republic came formally into existence.
In the very year after the Sand River Convention, a second republic, the
Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate withdrawal of Great
Britain from the territory which she had for eight years occupied. The
Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and the cloud of a great
war was drifting up, visible to all men. British statesmen felt that
their commitments were very heavy in every part of the world, and the
South African annexations had always been a doubtful value and an
undoubted trouble. Against the will of a large part of the inhabitants,
whether a majority or not it is impossible to say, we withdrew our
troops as amicably as the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the new
republic was left with absolute and unfettered independence. On a
petition being presented against the withdrawal, the Home Government
actually voted 48,000_l._ to compensate those who had suffered from the
change. Whatever historical grievance the Transvaal may have against
Great Britain, we can at least, save perhaps in one matter, claim to
have a very clear conscience concerning our dealings with the Orange
Free State. Thus in 1852 and in 1854 were born those sturdy States who
have been able for a time to hold at bay the united forces of the
Empire.
In the meantime Cape Colony, in spite of these secessions, had prospered
exceedingly, and her population--British, German, and Dutch--had grown
by 1870 to over two hundred thousand souls, the Dutch still slightly
predominating. According to the liberal colonial policy of Great
Britain, the time had come to cut the cord and let the young nation
conduct its own affairs. In 1872 complete self-government was given to
it, the Governor, as the representative of the Queen, retaining a
nominal unexercised veto upon legislation. According to this system the
Dutch majority of the colony could, and did, put their own
representatives into power and run the government upon Dutch lines.
Already Dutch law had been restored, and Dutch put on the same footing
as English as the official language of the country. The extreme
liberality of such measures, and the uncompromising way in which they
have been carried out, however distasteful the legislation might seem to
English ideas, are among the chief reasons which made the illiberal
treatment of British settlers in the Transvaal so keenly resented at the
Cape. A Dutch Government was ruling the British in a British colony, at
a moment when the Boers would not give an Englishman a vote upon a
municipal council in a city which he had built himself.
For twenty-five years after the Sand River Convention the burghers of
the Transvaal Republic had pursued a strenuous and violent existence,
fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes with each other,
with an occasional fling at the little Dutch republic to the south.
Disorganisation ensued. The burghers would not pay taxes and the
treasury was empty. One fierce Kaffir tribe threatened them from the
north, and the Zulus on the east. It is an exaggeration to pretend that
British intervention saved the Boers, for no one can read their military
history without seeing that they were a match for Zulus and Sekukuni
combined. But certainly a formidable invasion was pending, and the
scattered farmhouses were as open to the Kaffirs as our farmers'
homesteads were in the American colonies when the Indians were on the
war-path. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British Commissioner, after an
inquiry of three months, solved all questions by the formal annexation
of the country. The fact that he took possession of it with a force of
some twenty-five men showed the honesty of his belief that no armed
resistance was to be feared. This, then, in 1877, was a complete
reversal of the Sand River Convention and the opening of a new chapter
in the history of South Africa.
There did not appear to be any strong feeling at the time against the
annexation. The people were depressed with their troubles and weary of
contention. Burgers, the President, put in a formal protest, and took up
his abode in Cape Colony, where he had a pension from the British
Government. A memorial against the measure received the signatures of a
majority of the Boer inhabitants, but there was a fair minority who took
the other view. Kruger himself accepted a paid office under Government.
There was every sign that the people, if judiciously handled, would
settle down under the British flag.
But the Empire has always had poor luck in South Africa, and never worse
than on that occasion. Through no bad faith, but simply through
preoccupation and delay, the promises made were not instantly fulfilled.
If the Transvaalers had waited, they would have had their Volksraad and
all that they wanted. But the British Government had some other local
matters to set right, the rooting out of Sekukuni and the breaking of
the Zulus, before they would fulfil their pledges. The delay was keenly
resented. And we were unfortunate in our choice of Governor. The
burghers are a homely folk, and they like an occasional cup of coffee
with the anxious man who tries to rule them. The 300_l._ a year of
coffee-money allowed by the Transvaal to its President is by no means a
mere form. A wise administrator would fall into the social and
democratic habits of the people. Sir Theophilus Shepstone did so. Sir
Owen Lanyon did not. There was no Volksraad and no coffee, and the
popular discontent grew rapidly. In three years the British had broken
up the two savage hordes which had been threatening the land. The
finances, too, had been restored. The reasons which had made so many
burghers favour the annexation were weakened by the very power which had
every interest in preserving them.
It cannot be too often pointed out that in this annexation, the
starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however mistaken she may
have been, had no possible selfish interest in view. There were no Rand
mines in those days, nor was there anything in the country to tempt the
most covetous. An empty treasury and two expensive native wars were the
reversion which we took over. It was honestly considered that the
country was in too distracted a state to govern itself, and had, by its
weakness, become a scandal and a danger to its neighbours and to itself.
There was nothing sordid in the British action, though it may have been
premature and injudicious. There is some reason to think that if it had
been delayed it would eventually have been done on the petition of the
majority of the inhabitants.
In December 1880 the Boers rose. Every farmhouse sent out its riflemen,
and the trysting-place was the outside of the nearest British fort. All
through the country small detachments were surrounded and besieged by
the farmers. Standerton, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Lydenburg,
Wakkerstroom, Rustenburg, and Marabastad were all invested and all held
out until the end of the war. In the open country the troops were less
fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a small British force was taken by
surprise and shot down without harm to their antagonists. The surgeon
who treated them has left it on record that the average number of wounds
was five per man. At Laing's Nek an inferior force of British
endeavoured to rush a hill which was held by Boer riflemen. Half of the
men were killed and wounded. Ingogo may be called a drawn battle, though
the British loss was more heavy than that of the enemy. Finally came the
defeat of Majuba Hill, where 400 infantry upon a mountain were defeated
and driven off by a swarm of sharpshooters who advanced under the cover
of boulders. Of all these actions there was not one which was more than
a skirmish, and had they been followed by a final British victory they
would now be hardly remembered. It is the fact that they were skirmishes
which succeeded in their object which has given them an importance which
is exaggerated.
The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the
Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous
or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is hard for the big man to
draw away from the small before blows are struck, but when the big man
has been knocked down three times it is harder still. An overwhelming
British force was in the field, and the General declared that he held
the enemy in the hollow of his hand. British military calculations have
been falsified before now by these farmers, and it may be that the task
of Wood and Roberts would have been harder than they imagined; but on
paper, at least, it looked as if the enemy could be crushed without
difficulty. So the public thought, and yet they consented to the
upraised sword being stayed. With them, as apart from the politicians,
the motive was undoubtedly a moral and Christian one. They considered
that the annexation of the Transvaal had evidently been an injustice,
that the farmers had a right to the freedom for which they fought, and
that it was an unworthy thing for a great nation to continue an unjust
war for the sake of a military revenge. Such was the motive of the
British public when it acquiesced in the action of the Government. It
was the height of idealism, and the result has not been such as to
encourage its repetition.
An armistice was concluded on March 5, 1881, which led up to a peace on
the 23rd of the same month. The Government, after yielding to force
what it had repeatedly refused to friendly representations, made a
clumsy compromise in their settlement. A policy of idealism and
Christian morality should have been thorough if it were to be tried at
all. It was obvious that if the annexation were unjust, then the
Transvaal should have reverted to the condition in which it was before
the annexation, as defined by the Sand River Convention. But the
Government for some reason would not go so far as this. They niggled and
quibbled and bargained until the State was left as a curious hybrid
thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which was part
of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office, and
included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns of the
'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague suzerainty,
the limits of which no one has ever been able to define. Altogether, in
its provisions and in its omissions, the Convention of Pretoria appears
to prove that our political affairs were as badly conducted as our
military in this unfortunate year of 1881.
It was evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an
agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and indeed
the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation was on foot
for its revision. The Boers considered, and with justice, that if they
were to be left as undisputed victors in the war then they should have
the full fruits of victory. On the other hand, the English-speaking
colonies had their allegiance tested to the uttermost. The proud
Anglo-Celtic stock is not accustomed to be humbled, and yet they found
themselves through the action of the home Government converted into
members of a beaten race. It was very well for the citizen of London to
console his wounded pride by the thought that he had done a magnanimous
action, but it was different with the British colonist of Durban or Cape
Town who, by no act of his own, and without any voice in the settlement,
found himself humiliated before his Dutch neighbour. An ugly feeling of
resentment was left behind, which might perhaps have passed away had the
Transvaal accepted the settlement in the spirit in which it was meant,
but which grew more and more dangerous, as during eighteen years our
people saw, or thought that they saw, that one concession led always to
a fresh demand, and that the Dutch republics aimed not merely at
equality, but at dominance in South Africa. Professor Bryce, a friendly
critic, after a personal examination of the country and the question,
has left it upon record that the Boers saw neither generosity nor
humanity in our conduct, but only fear. An outspoken race, they conveyed
their feelings to their neighbours. Can it be wondered at that South
Africa has been in a ferment ever since, and that the British Africander
has yearned with an intensity of feeling unknown in England for the hour
of revenge?
The Government of the Transvaal after the war was left in the hands of a
triumvirate, but after one year Kruger became President, an office which
he continued to hold for eighteen years. His career as ruler vindicates
the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the American
Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this office.
Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an autocrat.
The old President has said himself, in his homely but shrewd way, that
when one gets a good ox to lead the team it is a pity to change him. If
a good ox, however, is left to choose his own direction without
guidance, he may draw his wagon into trouble.
During three years the little State showed signs of a tumultuous
activity. Considering that it was larger than France and that the
population could not have been more than fifty thousand, one would have
thought that they might have found room without any inconvenient
crowding. But the burghers passed beyond their borders in every
direction. The President cried aloud that he had been shut up in a
kraal, and he proceeded to find ways out of it. A great trek was
projected for the north, but fortunately it miscarried. To the east they
raided Zululand, and succeeded, in defiance of the British settlement of
that country, in tearing away one-third of it and adding it to the
Transvaal. To the west, with no regard to the three-year-old treaty,
they invaded Bechuanaland, and set up the two new republics of Goshen
and Stellaland. So outrageous were these proceedings that Great Britain
was forced to fit out in 1884 a new expedition under Sir Charles Warren
for the purpose of turning these freebooters out of the country. It may
be asked, Why should these men be called freebooters if the founders of
Rhodesia were pioneers? The answer is that the Transvaal was limited by
treaty to certain boundaries which these men transgressed, while no
pledges were broken when the British power expanded to the north. The
upshot of these trespasses was the scene upon which every drama of South
Africa rings down. Once more the purse was drawn from the pocket of the
unhappy taxpayer, and a million or so was paid out to defray the
expenses of the police force necessary to keep these treaty-breakers in
order. Let this be borne in mind when we assess the moral and material
damage done to the Transvaal by the Jameson Raid.
In 1884 a deputation from the Transvaal visited England, and at their
solicitation the clumsy Treaty of Pretoria was altered into the still
more clumsy Convention of London. The changes in the provisions were all
in favour of the Boers, and a second successful war could hardly have
given them more than Lord Derby handed them in time of peace. Their
style was altered from the Transvaal to the South African Republic, a
change which was ominously suggestive of expansion in the future. The
control of Great Britain over their foreign policy was also relaxed,
though a power of veto was retained. But the most important thing of
all, and the fruitful cause of future trouble, lay in an omission. A
suzerainty is a vague term, but in politics, as in theology, the more
nebulous a thing is the more does it excite the imagination and the
passions of men. This suzerainty was declared in the preamble of the
first treaty, and no mention of it was made in the second. Was it
thereby abrogated or was it not? The British contention is that only the
articles were changed, and that the preamble continued to hold good for
both treaties. They point out that not only the suzerainty, but also the
independence, of the Transvaal is proclaimed in that preamble, and that
if one lapses the other must do so also. On the other hand, the Boers
point to the fact that there is actually a preamble to the second
convention, which would seem, therefore, to take the place of the first.
As a matter of fact, the discussion is a barren one, since both parties
agree that Great Britain retained certain rights over the making of
treaties by the Republic, which rights place her in a different position
to an entirely independent state. Whether this difference amounts to a
suzerainty or not is a subject for the academic discussion of
international jurists. What is of importance is the fact, not the word.