The message sent from the Cabinet Council of September 8th was evidently
the precursor either of peace or of war. The cloud must burst or blow
over. As the nation waited in hushed expectancy for a reply it spent
some portion of its time in examining and speculating upon those
military preparations which might be needed. The War Office had for
some months been arranging for every contingency, and had made certain
dispositions which appeared to them to be adequate, but which our future
experience was to demonstrate to be far too small for the very serious
matter in hand.
It is curious in turning over the files of such a paper as the 'Times'
to observe how at first one or two small paragraphs of military
significance might appear in the endless columns of diplomatic and
political reports, how gradually they grew and grew, until at last the
eclipse was complete, and the diplomacy had been thrust into the tiny
paragraphs while the war filled the journal. Under July 7th comes the
first glint of arms amid the drab monotony of the state papers. On
that date it was announced that two companies of Royal Engineers and
departmental corps with reserves of supplies and ammunition were being
dispatched. Two companies of engineers! Who could have foreseen that
they were the vanguard of the greatest army which ever at any time of
the world's history has crossed an ocean, and far the greatest which a
British general has commanded in the field?
On August 15th, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a
very serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein conference and
the dispatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the British forces in South Africa
were absolutely and absurdly inadequate for the purpose of the defence
of our own frontier. Surely such a fact must open the eyes of those who,
in spite of all the evidence, persist that the war was forced on by the
British. A statesman who forces on a war usually prepares for a war, and
this is exactly what Mr. Kruger did and the British authorities did not.
The overbearing suzerain power had at that date, scattered over a huge
frontier, two cavalry regiments, three field batteries, and six and a
half infantry battalions--say six thousand men. The innocent pastoral
States could put in the field forty or fifty thousand mounted riflemen,
whose mobility doubled their numbers, and a most excellent artillery,
including the heaviest guns which have ever been seen upon a
battlefield. At this time it is most certain that the Boers could have
made their way easily either to Durban or to Cape Town. The British
force, condemned to act upon the defensive, could have been masked and
afterwards destroyed, while the main body of the invaders would have
encountered nothing but an irregular local resistance, which would have
been neutralised by the apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists. It
is extraordinary that our authorities seem never to have contemplated
the possibility of the Boers taking the initiative, or to have
understood that in that case our belated reinforcements would certainly
have had to land under the fire of the republican guns.
In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been
sent from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir W. Hely
Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office. It was notorious that the
Transvaal was armed to the teeth, that the Orange Free State was
likely to join her, and that there had been strong attempts made, both
privately and through the press, to alienate the loyalty of the Dutch
citizens of both the British colonies. Many sinister signs were observed
by those upon the spot. The veld had been burned unusually early to
ensure a speedy grass-crop after the first rains, there had been a
collecting of horses, a distribution of rifles and ammunition. The Free
State farmers, who graze their sheep and cattle upon Natal soil during
the winter, had driven them off to places of safety behind the line
of the Drakensberg. Everything pointed to approaching war, and Natal
refused to be satisfied even by the dispatch of another regiment. On
September 6th a second message was received at the Colonial Office,
which states the case with great clearness and precision.
'The Prime Minister desires me to urge upon you by the unanimous advice
of the Ministers that sufficient troops should be dispatched to Natal
immediately to enable the colony to be placed in a state of defence
against an attack from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. I am
informed by the General Officer Commanding, Natal, that he will not have
enough troops, even when the Manchester Regiment arrives, to do more
than occupy Newcastle and at the same time protect the colony south of
it from raids, while Laing's Nek, Ingogo River and Zululand must be left
undefended. My Ministers know that every preparation has been made, both
in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which would enable an attack
to be made on Natal at short notice. My Ministers believe that the Boers
have made up their minds that war will take place almost certainly, and
their best chance will be, when it seems unavoidable, to deliver a blow
before reinforcements have time to arrive. Information has been received
that raids in force will be made by way of Middle Drift and Greytown and
by way of Bond's Drift and Stangar, with a view to striking the railway
between Pietermaritzburg and Durban and cutting off communications of
troops and supplies. Nearly all the Orange Free State farmers in the
Klip River division, who stay in the colony usually till October at
least, have trekked, at great loss to themselves; their sheep are
lambing on the road, and the lambs die or are destroyed. Two at least of
the Entonjanani district farmers have trekked with all their belongings
into the Transvaal, in the first case attempting to take as hostages the
children of the natives on the farm. Reliable reports have been received
of attempts to tamper with loyal natives, and to set tribe against tribe
in order to create confusion and detail the defensive forces of the
colony. Both food and warlike stores in large quantities have been
accumulated at Volksrust, Vryheid and Standerton. Persons who are
believed to be spies have been seen examining the bridges on the Natal
Railway, and it is known that there are spies in all the principal
centres of the colony. In the opinion of Ministers, such a catastrophe
as the seizure of Laing's Nek and the destruction of the northern
portion of the railway, or a successful raid or invasion such as
they have reason to believe is contemplated, would produce a most
demoralising effect on the natives and on the loyal Europeans in the
colony, and would afford great encouragement to the Boers and to their
sympathisers in the colonies, who, although armed and prepared, will
probably keep quiet unless they receive some encouragement of the sort.
They concur in the policy of her Majesty's Government of exhausting all
peaceful means to obtain redress of the grievances of the Uitlanders and
authoritatively assert the supremacy of Great Britain before resorting
to war; but they state that this is a question of defensive precaution,
not of making war.'
In answer to these and other remonstrances the garrison of Natal was
gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly by the
dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd Berkshires,
the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters, and the 2nd Dublin
Fusiliers arrived in succession with reinforcements of artillery. The
5th Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers, and 19th Hussars came from India, with
the 1st Devonshires, 1st Gloucesters, 2nd King's Royal Rifles and 2nd
Gordon Highlanders. These with the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of
Field Artillery made up the Indian Contingent. Their arrival late in
September raised the number of troops in South Africa to 22,000, a force
which was inadequate to a contest in the open field with the numerous,
mobile, and gallant enemy to whom they were to be opposed, but which
proved to be strong enough to stave off that overwhelming disaster
which, with our fuller knowledge, we can now see to have been impending.
As to the disposition of these troops a difference of opinion broke out
between the ruling powers in Natal and the military chiefs at the spot.
Prince Kraft has said, 'Both strategy and tactics may have to yield to
politics '; but the political necessity should be very grave and very
clear when it is the blood of soldiers which has to pay for it. Whether
it arose from our defective intelligence, or from that caste feeling
which makes it hard for the professional soldier to recognise (in spite
of deplorable past experiences) a serious adversary in the mounted
farmer, it is certain that even while our papers were proclaiming that
this time, at least, we would not underrate our enemy, we were most
seriously underrating him. The northern third of Natal is as vulnerable
a military position as a player of kriegspiel could wish to have
submitted to him. It runs up into a thin angle, culminating at the apex
in a difficult pass, the ill-omened Laing's Nek, dominated by the
even more sinister bulk of Majuba. Each side of this angle is open to
invasion, the one from the Transvaal and the other from the Orange Free
State. A force up at the apex is in a perfect trap, for the mobile
enemy can flood into the country to the south of them, cut the line
of supplies, and throw up a series of entrenchments which would make
retreat a very difficult matter. Further down the country, at such
positions as Ladysmith or Dundee, the danger, though not so imminent,
is still an obvious one, unless the defending force is strong enough to
hold its own in the open field and mobile enough to prevent a mounted
enemy from getting round its flanks. To us, who are endowed with that
profound military wisdom which only comes with a knowledge of the event,
it is obvious that with a defending force which could not place more
than 12,000 men in the fighting line, the true defensible frontier was
the line of the Tugela. As a matter of fact, Ladysmith was chosen, a
place almost indefensible itself, as it is dominated by high hills in at
least two directions.
Such an event as the siege of the town appears never to have been
contemplated, as no guns of position were asked for or sent. In spite
of this, an amount of stores, which is said to have been valued at
more than a million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway
junction, so that the position could not be evacuated without a
crippling loss. The place was the point of bifurcation of the main line,
which divides at this little town into one branch running to Harrismith
in the Orange Free State, and the other leading through the Dundee coal
fields and Newcastle to the Laing's Nek tunnel and the Transvaal. An
importance, which appears now to have been an exaggerated one, was
attached by the Government of Natal to the possession of the coal
fields, and it was at their strong suggestion, but with the concurrence
of General Penn Symons, that the defending force was divided, and a
detachment of between three and four thousand sent to Dundee, about
forty miles from the main body, which remained under General Sir George
White at Ladysmith. General Symons underrated the power of the invaders,
but it is hard to criticise an error of judgment which has been so
nobly atoned and so tragically paid for. At the time, then, which our
political narrative has reached, the time of suspense which followed the
dispatch of the Cabinet message of September 8th, the military situation
had ceased to be desperate, but was still precarious. Twenty-two
thousand regular troops were on the spot who might hope to be reinforced
by some ten thousand colonials, but these forces had to cover a great
frontier, the attitude of Cape Colony was by no means whole-hearted and
might become hostile, while the black population might conceivably throw
in its weight against us. Only half the regulars could be spared to
defend Natal, and no reinforcements could reach them in less than a
month from the outbreak of hostilities. If Mr. Chamberlain was really
playing a game of bluff, it must be confessed that he was bluffing from
a very weak hand.
For purposes of comparison we may give some idea of the forces which
Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn could put in the field, for by this time it was
evident that the Orange Free State, with which we had had no shadow of
a dispute, was going, in a way which some would call wanton and some
chivalrous, to throw in its weight against us. The general press
estimate of the forces of the two republics varied from 25,000 to 35,000
men. Mr. J. B. Robinson, a personal friend of President Kruger's and
a man who had spent much of his life among the Boers, considered the
latter estimate to be too high. The calculation had no assured basis to
start from. A very scattered and isolated population, among whom large
families were the rule, is a most difficult thing to estimate. Some
reckoned from the supposed natural increase during eighteen years, but
the figure given at that date was itself an assumption. Others took
their calculation from the number of voters in the last presidential
election: but no one could tell how many abstentions there had been,
and the fighting age is five years earlier than the voting age in the
republics. We recognise now that all calculations were far below the
true figure. It is probable, however, that the information of the
British Intelligence Department was not far wrong. According to this
the fighting strength of the Transvaal alone was 32,000 men, and of the
Orange Free State 22,000. With mercenaries and rebels from the colonies
they would amount to 60, 000, while a considerable rising of the Cape
Dutch would bring them up to 100,000. In artillery they were known to
have about a hundred guns, many of them (and the fact will need much
explaining) more modern and powerful than any which we could bring
against them. Of the quality of this large force there is no need to
speak. The men were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious
enthusiasm. They were all of the seventeenth century, except their
rifles. Mounted upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a
mobility which practically doubled their numbers and made it an
impossibility ever to outflank them. As marksmen they were supreme. Add
to this that they had the advantage of acting upon internal lines with
shorter and safer communications, and one gathers how formidable a
task lay before the soldiers of the empire. When we turn from such an
enumeration of their strength to contemplate the 12,000 men, split into
two detachments, who awaited them in Natal, we may recognise that, far
from bewailing our disasters, we should rather congratulate ourselves
upon our escape from losing that great province which, situated as it
is between Britain, India, and Australia, must be regarded as the very
keystone of the imperial arch.
At the risk of a tedious but very essential digression, something must
be said here as to the motives with which the Boers had for many years
been quietly preparing for war. That the Jameson raid was not the cause
is certain, though it probably, by putting the Boer Government into a
strong position, had a great effect in accelerating matters. What had
been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when
so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the
preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts
at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that
wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace.
In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was spent in military
equipment.
But if it was not the raid, and if the Boers had no reason to fear the
British Government, with whom the Transvaal might have been as friendly
as the Orange Free State had been for forty years, why then should they
arm? It was a difficult question, and one in answering which we find
ourselves in a region of conjecture and suspicion rather than of
ascertained fact. But the fairest and most unbiased of historians must
confess that there is a large body of evidence to show that into the
heads of some of the Dutch leaders, both in the northern republics
and in the Cape, there had entered the conception of a single Dutch
commonwealth, extending from Cape Town to the Zambesi, in which flag,
speech, and law should all be Dutch. It is in this aspiration that
many shrewd and well-informed judges see the true inner meaning of this
persistent arming, of the constant hostility, of the forming of ties
between the two republics (one of whom had been reconstituted and made
a sovereign independent State by our own act), and finally of that
intriguing which endeavoured to poison the affection and allegiance of
our own Dutch colonists, who had no political grievances whatever. They
all aimed at one end, and that end was the final expulsion of British
power from South Africa and the formation of a single great Dutch
republic. The large sum spent by the Transvaal in secret service
money--a larger sum, I believe, than that which is spent by the whole
British Empire--would give some idea of the subterranean influences at
work. An army of emissaries, agents, and spies, whatever their mission,
were certainly spread over the British colonies. Newspapers were
subsidised also, and considerable sums spent upon the press in France
and Germany.
In the very nature of things a huge conspiracy of this sort to
substitute Dutch for British rule in South Africa is not a matter which
can be easily and definitely proved. Such questions are not discussed
in public documents, and men are sounded before being taken into the
confidence of the conspirators. But there is plenty of evidence of
the individual ambition of prominent and representative men in this
direction, and it is hard to believe that what many wanted individually
was not striven for collectively, especially when we see how the course
of events did actually work towards the end which they indicated. Mr.
J.P. FitzPatrick, in 'The Transvaal from Within'--a book to which
all subsequent writers upon the subject must acknowledge their
obligations--narrates how in 1896 he was approached by Mr. D.P. Graaff,
formerly a member of the Cape Legislative Council and a very prominent
Afrikander Bondsman, with the proposition that Great Britain should be
pushed out of South Africa. The same politician made the same proposal
to Mr. Beit. Compare with this the following statement of Mr. Theodore
Schreiner, the brother of the Prime Minister of the Cape:
'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in Bloemfontein
between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly after the retrocession
of the Transvaal, and when he was busy establishing the Afrikander Bond.
It must be patent to every one that at that time, at all events, England
and its Government had no intention of taking away the independence of
the Transvaal, for she had just “magnanimously” granted the same; no
intention of making war on the republics, for she had just made peace;
no intention to seize the Rand gold fields, for they were not yet
discovered. At that time, then, I met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to
get me to become a member of his Afrikander Bond, but, after studying
its constitution and programme, I refused to do so, whereupon the
following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has been
indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since:
'REITZ: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take
an interest in political matters not a good one?
'MYSELF: Yes, it is; but I seem to see plainly here between the lines of
this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.
'REITZ: What?
'MYSELF: I see quite clearly that the ultimate object aimed at is the
overthrow of the British power and the expulsion of the British flag
from South Africa.
'REITZ (with his pleasant conscious smile, as of one whose secret
thought and purpose had been discovered, and who was not altogether
displeased that such was the case): Well, what if it is so?
'MYSELF: You don't suppose, do you, that that flag is going to disappear
from South Africa without a tremendous struggle and fight?
'REITZ (with the same pleasant self-conscious, self satisfied, and yet
semi-apologetic smile): Well, I suppose not; but even so, what of that?
'MYSELF: Only this, that when that struggle takes place you and I will
be on opposite sides; and what is more, the God who was on the side of
the Transvaal in the late war, because it had right on its side will
be on the side of England, because He must view with abhorrence any
plotting and scheming to overthrow her power and position in South
Africa, which have been ordained by Him.
'REITZ: We'll see.
'Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have
elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power
in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means--the
press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the
Legislature--until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr.
Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause. Believe me, the
day on which F.W. Reitz sat down to pen his ultimatum to Great Britain
was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one which had
for long years been looked forward to by him with eager longing and
expectation.'
Compare with these utterances of a Dutch politician of the Cape, and of
a Dutch politician of the Orange Free State, the following passage from
a speech delivered by Kruger at Bloemfontein in the year 1887:
'I think it too soon to speak of a United South Africa under one flag.
Which flag was it to be? The Queen of England would object to having
her flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to
hauling ours down. What is to be done? We are now small and of little
importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our
place among the great nations of the world.'
'The dream of our life,' said another, 'is a union of the States of
South Africa, and this has to come from within, not from without. When
that is accomplished, South Africa will be great.'
Always the same theory from all quarters of Dutch thought, to be
followed by many signs that the idea was being prepared for in practice.
I repeat that the fairest and most unbiased historian cannot dismiss the
conspiracy as a myth.
And to this one may retort, why should they not conspire? Why should
they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why
should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common
speech? Why should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and
push us into the sea? I see no reason why they should not. Let them try
if they will. And let us try to prevent them. But let us have an end
of talk about British aggression, of capitalist designs upon the gold
fields, of the wrongs of a pastoral people, and all the other veils
which have been used to cover the issue. Let those who talk about
British designs upon the republics turn their attention for a moment to
the evidence which there is for republican designs upon the colonies.
Let them reflect that in the one system all white men are equal, and
that on the other the minority of one race has persecuted the majority
of the other, and let them consider under which the truest freedom lies,
which stands for universal liberty and which for reaction and racial
hatred. Let them ponder and answer all this before they determine where
their sympathies lie.
Leaving these wider questions of politics, and dismissing for the
time those military considerations which were soon to be of such vital
moment, we may now return to the course of events in the diplomatic
struggle between the Government of the Transvaal and the Colonial
Office. On September 8th, as already narrated, a final message was sent
to Pretoria, which stated the minimum terms which the British Government
could accept as being a fair concession to her subjects in the
Transvaal. A definite answer was demanded, and the nation waited with
sombre patience for the reply.
There were few illusions in this country as to the difficulties of
a Transvaal war. It was clearly seen that little honour and immense
vexation were in store for us. The first Boer war still smarted in our
minds, and we knew the prowess of the indomitable burghers. But our
people, if gloomy, were none the less resolute, for that national
instinct which is beyond the wisdom of statesmen had borne it in upon
them that this was no local quarrel, but one upon which the whole
existence of the empire hung. The cohesion of that empire was to be
tested. Men had emptied their glasses to it in time of peace. Was it a
meaningless pouring of wine, or were they ready to pour their
hearts' blood also in time of war? Had we really founded a series of
disconnected nations, with no common sentiment or interest, or was
the empire an organic whole, as ready to thrill with one emotion or to
harden into one resolve as are the several States of the Union? That was
the question at issue, and much of the future history of the world was
at stake upon the answer.
Already there were indications that the colonies appreciated the fact
that the contention was no affair of the mother country alone, but that
she was upholding the rights of the empire as a whole, and might fairly
look to them to support her in any quarrel which might arise from it. As
early as July 11th, Queensland, the fiery and semitropical, had offered
a contingent of mounted infantry with machine guns; New Zealand, Western
Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia
followed in the order named. Canada, with the strong but more deliberate
spirit of the north, was the last to speak, but spoke the more firmly
for the delay. Her citizens were the least concerned of any, for
Australians were many in South Africa but Canadians few. None the less,
she cheerfully took her share of the common burden, and grew the readier
and the cheerier as that burden came to weigh more heavily. From all
the men of many hues who make up the British Empire, from Hindoo Rajahs,
from West African Houssas, from Malay police, from Western Indians,
there came offers of service. But this was to be a white man's war, and
if the British could not work out their own salvation then it were well
that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army
of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same
reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration
for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many
of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears
to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would
have advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed in
the same position.
On September 18th the official reply of the Boer Government to the
message sent from the Cabinet Council was published in London. In manner
it was unbending and unconciliatory; in substance, it was a complete
rejection of all the British demands. It refused to recommend or propose
to the Raad the five years' franchise and the other measures which had
been defined as the minimum which the Home Government could accept as a
fair measure of justice towards the Uitlanders. The suggestion that the
debates of the Raad should be bilingual, as they have been in the
Cape Colony and in Canada, was absolutely waived aside. The British
Government had stated in their last dispatch that if the reply should
be negative or inconclusive they reserved to themselves the right to
'reconsider the situation de novo and to formulate their own proposals
for a final settlement.' The reply had been both negative and
inconclusive, and on September 22nd a council met to determine what the
next message should be. It was short and firm, but so planned as not to
shut the door upon peace. Its purport was that the British Government
expressed deep regret at the rejection of the moderate proposals which
had been submitted in their last dispatch, and that now, in accordance
with their promise, they would shortly put forward their own plans for
a settlement. The message was not an ultimatum, but it foreshadowed an
ultimatum in the future.
In the meantime, upon September 21st the Raad of the Orange Free State
had met, and it became more and more evident that this republic, with
whom we had no possible quarrel, but, on the contrary, for whom we had a
great deal of friendship and admiration, intended to throw in its weight
against Great Britain. Some time before, an offensive and defensive
alliance had been concluded between the two States, which must, until
the secret history of these events comes to be written, appear to have
been a singularly rash and unprofitable bargain for the smaller one. She
had nothing to fear from Great Britain, since she had been voluntarily
turned into an independent republic by her and had lived in peace with
her for forty years. Her laws were as liberal as our own. But by this
suicidal treaty she agreed to share the fortunes of a State which was
deliberately courting war by its persistently unfriendly attitude, and
whose reactionary and narrow legislation would, one might imagine, have
alienated the sympathy of her progressive neighbour. There may have
been ambitions like those already quoted from the report of Dr. Reitz's
conversation, or there may have been a complete hallucination as to the
comparative strength of the two combatants and the probable future of
South Africa; but however that may be, the treaty was made, and the time
had come to test how far it would hold.
The tone of President Steyn at the meeting of the Raad, and the support
which he received from the majority of his burghers, showed unmistakably
that the two republics would act as one. In his opening speech Steyn
declared uncompromisingly against the British contention, and declared
that his State was bound to the Transvaal by everything which was near
and dear. Among the obvious military precautions which could no longer
be neglected by the British Government was the sending of some small
force to protect the long and exposed line of railway which lies just
outside the Transvaal border from Kimberley to Rhodesia. Sir Alfred
Milner communicated with President Steyn as to this movement of troops,
pointing out that it was in no way directed against the Free State. Sir
Alfred Milner added that the Imperial Government was still hopeful of
a friendly settlement with the Transvaal, but if this hope were
disappointed they looked to the Orange Free State to preserve strict
neutrality and to prevent military intervention by any of its citizens.
They undertook that in that case the integrity of the Free State
frontier would be strictly preserved. Finally, he stated that there was
absolutely no cause to disturb the good relations between the Free
State and Great Britain, since we were animated by the most friendly
intentions towards them. To this the President returned a somewhat
ungracious answer, to the effect that he disapproved of our action
towards the Transvaal, and that he regretted the movement of troops,
which would be considered a menace by the burghers. A subsequent
resolution of the Free State Raad, ending with the words, 'Come what
may, the Free State will honestly and faithfully fulfill its obligations
towards the Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing
between the two republics,' showed how impossible it was that this
country, formed by ourselves and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel
with us, could be saved from being drawn into the whirlpool. Everywhere,
from over both borders, came the news of martial preparations. Already
at the end of September troops and armed burghers were gathering
upon the frontier, and the most incredulous were beginning at last to
understand that the shadow of a great war was really falling across
them. Artillery, war munitions, and stores were being accumulated
at Volksrust upon the Natal border, showing where the storm might be
expected to break. On the last day of September, twenty-six military
trains were reported to have left Pretoria and Johannesburg for that
point. At the same time news came of a concentration at Malmani, upon
the Bechuanaland border, threatening the railway line and the British
town of Mafeking, a name destined before long to be familiar to the
world.
On October 3rd there occurred what was in truth an act of war, although
the British Government, patient to the verge of weakness, refused to
regard it as such, and continued to draw up their final state paper. The
mail train from the Transvaal to Cape Town was stopped at Vereeniging,
and the week's shipment of gold for England, amounting to about half a
million pounds, was taken by the Boer Government. In a debate at Cape
Town upon the same day the Africander Minister of the Interior admitted
that as many as 404 trucks had passed from the Government line over
the frontier and had not been returned. Taken in conjunction with
the passage of arms and cartridges through the Cape to Pretoria and
Bloemfontein, this incident aroused the deepest indignation among the
Colonial English and the British public, which was increased by the
reports of the difficulty which border towns, such as Kimberley and
Vryburg, had had in getting cannon for their own defence. The Raads had
been dissolved, and the old President's last words had been a statement
that war was certain, and a stern invocation of the Lord as final
arbiter. England was ready less obtrusively but no less heartily to
refer the quarrel to the same dread Judge.
On October 2nd President Steyn informed Sir Alfred Milner that he had
deemed it necessary to call out the Free State burghers--that is, to
mobilise his forces. Sir A. Milner wrote regretting these preparations,
and declaring that he did not yet despair of peace, for he was sure that
any reasonable proposal would be favourably considered by her Majesty's
Government. Steyn's reply was that there was no use in negotiating
unless the stream of British reinforcements ceased coming into South
Africa. As our forces were still in a great minority, it was impossible
to stop the reinforcements, so the correspondence led to nothing. On
October 7th the army reserves for the First Army Corps were called out
in Great Britain and other signs shown that it had been determined to
send a considerable force to South Africa. Parliament was also summoned
that the formal national assent might be gained for those grave measures
which were evidently pending.
It was on October 9th that the somewhat leisurely proceedings of the
British Colonial Office were brought to a head by the arrival of an
unexpected and audacious ultimatum from the Boer Government. In contests
of wit, as of arms, it must be confessed that the laugh has been usually
upon the side of our simple and pastoral South African neighbours. The
present instance was no exception to the rule. While our Government
was cautiously and patiently leading up to an ultimatum, our opponent
suddenly played the very card which we were preparing to lay upon the
table. The document was very firm and explicit, but the terms in which
it was drawn were so impossible that it was evidently framed with the
deliberate purpose of forcing an immediate war. It demanded that the
troops upon the borders of the republic should be instantly withdrawn,
that all reinforcements which had arrived within the last year should
leave South Africa, and that those who were now upon the sea should be
sent back without being landed. Failing a satisfactory answer within
forty-eight hours, 'the Transvaal Government will with great regret be
compelled to regard the action of her Majesty's Government as a formal
declaration of war, for the consequences of which it will not hold
itself responsible.' The audacious message was received throughout the
empire with a mixture of derision and anger. The answer was dispatched
next day through Sir Alfred Milner.
'10th October.--Her Majesty's Government have received with great regret
the peremptory demands of the Government of the South African Republic,
conveyed in your telegram of the 9th October. You will inform the
Government of the South African Republic in reply that the conditions
demanded by the Government of the South African Republic are such as her
Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss.'
And so we have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of the
pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford
and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These
people were as near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They
were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit
of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they were as ourselves. Brave,
too, they were, and hospitable, with those sporting instincts which are
dear to the Anglo-Celtic race. There was no people in the world who had
more qualities which we might admire, and not the least of them was
that love of independence which it is our proudest boast that we have
encouraged in others as well as exercised ourselves. And yet we had come
to this pass, that there was no room in all vast South Africa for both
of us. We cannot hold ourselves blameless in the matter. 'The evil that
men do lives after them,' and it has been told in this small superficial
sketch where we have erred in the past in South Africa. On our hands,
too, is the Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen and led by
officers who held the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame of the
shuffling, half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable business.
These are matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and it is
we who held them. But the fagots which proved to be so inflammable,
they were not of our setting. They were the wrongs done to half the
community, the settled resolution of the minority to tax and vex the
majority, the determination of a people who had lived two generations in
a country to claim that country entirely for themselves. Behind them all
there may have been the Dutch ambition to dominate South Africa. It
was no petty object for which Britain fought. When a nation struggles
uncomplainingly through months of disaster she may claim to have proved
her conviction of the justice and necessity of the struggle. Should
Dutch ideas or English ideas of government prevail throughout that huge
country? The one means freedom for a single race, the other means equal
rights to all white men beneath one common law. What each means to
the coloured races let history declare. This was the main issue to
be determined from the instant that the clock struck five upon the
afternoon of Wednesday, October the eleventh, eighteen hundred and
ninety-nine. That moment marked the opening of a war destined to
determine the fate of South Africa, to work great changes in the
British Empire, to seriously affect the future history of the world, and
incidentally to alter many of our views as to the art of war. It is the
story of this war which, with limited material but with much aspiration
to care and candour, I shall now endeavour to tell.