CHAPTER 4.
THE EVE OF WAR.
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.
