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Estate of

Ernst and Eleanor

van LBben Sels

PEACE OR WAR
IN SOUTH AFRICA

A. M. S. METHUEN.

ENGLISH EDITIONS FIFTY-SEVEN THOUSAND.

METHUEN & CO.,
LONDON

ONE SHILLING

(Twenty-four Cents).

American Edition (Reprint)
By

CHARLES D. PIERCE,

Consul General Orange Free State,
136 Liberty Street, - - - New York.

PRICE, TEN CENTS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

This is a reprint of a book written by Mr. A. M. S. Methuen, senior member
of the publishing house of Methuen & Co., of London, England, whose object was
to procure an extended circulation in England and the English Colonies of the
facts therein contained for the purpose of influencing English public opinion
against the prolongation of the war in South Africa. The truth of his state-
ments must appeal to every person not blinded by national prejudice. We reprint
ithe book, with acknowledgement to Mr. Methuen, for the purpose of backing up
the public opinion he wishes to create in England, with a sturdy American senti-
ment against an infamous attempt to deprive a free people of their liberty and
independence.

The solution of the South African question offered by Mr. Methuen in
chapter IX., along the line of what seems to him the "wisdom of compro-
mise," is not in accord with the sentiment of the Boers themselves or their
sympathizers in America. What they desire is not "compromise," but independ-
ence. Their fealty to England cannot be purchased with any such "mess of pot-
tage" as therein concocted.

May this book accomplish in Amer ica what those who love the Boer cause
most ardently desire — the cooperation of American sentiment and English
opinion against the continuance of a war which never had the shadow of a
real excuse for its beginning.

\%ai£u &.\J)jUbc£> %

Consul-General Orange Free State,

Trustee and Treasurer Boer Relief Fund,

136 Liberty Street, New York City.
November 1, 1901.

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iv PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

direct result of the political errors which have prolonged the war beyond all reasonable neces-
sity. But I hope I have not dwelt on them overmuch. They are things which later on we had
better hide in decent oblivion.

It is difficult in the treatment of such a problem as this to write or to speak in terms so
moderate as to win the approval of one's opponents, but I trust they will believe that I have
endeavoured to do justice to views which are honestly, though, as I think, erroneously held.
I cannot hope that those who still advocate hostilities d outrance will accept the arguments
or the proposals contained in this book, but I beg them if they be tempted to call me a Pro-
Boer, 1 and my policy a policy of cowardice, to remember that Lord Kitchener is opposed to "a
fight to a finish," that He is in favour of offering reasonable terms to the Boers and an
amnesty to the Cape rebels, and that of his own initiative he has offered such terms. It is
clear, therefore, that if the advocates of conciliation are guilty of cowardice, they possess this
unfortunate defect in common with the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa. Those who
obstinately oppose the wishes of the one man who is acquainted with the position in South
Africa must bear a terrible responsibility.

I hope that many readers who may not agree with my treatment of the origin and conduct
of this war may be ready to consider with attention the dangers of continued warfare and the
arguments which I have advanced for a policy of peac,e. However divergent our views on
the past may be, we are all bound to frame our policy in the interests of our own country. I
have written neither as a Conservative nor as a Liberal, nor as a sentimentalist, but as an
Englishman who believes that the time has come when all reasonable and moderate men
should attempt to. save their country from the costly humiliations that await her if our Min-
isters pursue their present path. Of one thing I am sure : if the Government is allowed to
follow its policy of mingled drift and violence, the result will be disaster.

In a book which covers a period of time so long and so full of important episodes, it is
probably impossible to avoid errors of fact or inference. I can only say that I have endeav-
oured to be accurate in my facts and fair in my conclusions. A. M. S. M.

May 28th, 1901.

In the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions of this book I have made many additions
and a few corrections.

June 14th, 1901. July 12th, 1901.

June 2gth, iooi. August $th, 1901.

The sixth and seventh editions of this book have been again enlarged by the addition of
many references and of an index. For these I am indebted to the kindness of a friend. I
owe thanks also to the numerous correspondents who have written to me on various points
in the controversy. I am glad to say that in no case have I been called a "traitor" or a
"criminal."

August 30th, 1901. September 15th, 1901.

PREFACE TO THE CHEAP EDITION.

In answer to very numerous requests I have determined to issue a cheap edition of this
book.

October \oth, 1901.

1 This term seems to bear a double meaning. On the one hand it may describe a man who admires
the splendid patriotism of the Boers and who believes that the war was unnecessary. In this respect I
am a Pro-Boer in common with millions of my fellow-countrvmen. This term is also used abusively to
denote a man who wishes to see his country beaten and humiliated, and who is infected by the virus of
antipatriotism. There are not many thousands of such men, and I am not one of them.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

PAGE

1775 AND 1899: A PARALLEL TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION . . .1

CHAPTER I.
THE NATION, 1895-1900 . . . . . . 13

CHAPTER II. f

SOUTH AFRICA TO 1 896 . . . . . . . 15

CHAPTER III.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899 ... . . . . . .25

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAMPAIGN .......... 36

CHAPTER V.

THE ENEMY ......

CHAPTER IX.

PEACE, OR GOVERNMENT WITH CONSENT .

CHAPTER VI.

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA . . . . . .60

CHAPTER VII.

SIR A. M1LNER ......... 62

CHAPTER VIII.

UNREST, OR GOVERNMENT WITHOUT CONSENT . . . . -67

CHAPTER X.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER . . . . . . .81

APPENDICES.

A. Agriculture in South Africa.

B. A- Convention concluded between Her Majesty the Queen, etc., and the South

African Republic.

"In South Africa two races — the English and the Dutch — have to live to-
gether. At the present time the Dutch are in a majority, and it is therefore the
duty of every statesman, of every well-wisher of South Africa, to do all in his
power to maintain amicable relations between the two races. In our own Cape
Colony the Dutch are in a majority. There are tens of thousands of Dutchmen
in the Cape Colony who are just as loyal to the throne and to the British connec-
tion, as, let me say, our French-Canadian fellow-subjects in the Dominion of
Canada. But, at the same time, these Dutch fellow-subjects of ours very naturally
feel that they are of the same blood as the Dutchmen in the two Republics, and
they sympathise with their compatriots whenever they think that they are subject,
or are likely to be subject, to any injustice, or to the arbitrary exercise of force."

Mr. Chamberlain, April, 1896.

PEACE OR WAR
IN SOUTH AFRICA.

INTRODUCTION.

1775 AND 1899 : A PARALLEL.

HISTORICAL parallels are often fanciful, and it is unwise to press them
severely. But history is the best teacher of the present, as it is the best
prophet of the future ; and, though there are many and important points
of difference, the most casual student of history cannot fail to notice the painful
resemblance between the situation, both military and political, of ' 1775 to 1783
and the situation of to-day.

The cause of the war of 1775 may be stated in a few words. The King
and his Ministers claimed the right of sovereignty over the American Colonies.
From this they deduced the right of taxing those colonies for Imperial purposes.
The Americans, admitting the abstract right of sovereignty, denied the right of
taxation by an English Parliament in which they were not represented. The
English Ministers were determined to maintain, defend, and test this right; the
Colonists were equally determined to resist its practical exercise. The English,
believing that the Americans would yield to pressure, proceeded to coercive
measures ; and in six years England was defeated, and her American Colonies were
lost. It may not be uninteresting or unfruitful to examine in some detail the
political and social conditions which preceded and caused the crisis.

The middle years of the eighteenth century were years of gross and material
prosperity. The moral and intellectual aims of the day were low ; the ideal was
languishing; wealth and the influence of wealth were growing; and most of the
population were plunged in torpor and indifference to any but material concerns.
With prosperity came a jealous insolence in the public spirit, a brutality of
ambition which could brook no rival, and a hopeless vulgarity in political thought.
All classes were pervaded by it, from the King to the cobbler. The wealth which
had followed the great conquests of Chatham in Asia and America during the last
years of George II. brought with it extravagant habits of life ; and with them came
the necessity for making money fast, and the temptation to make it corruptly.
The standard of financial morality was steadily sinking lower, and society was
vulgarised by ambitious parvenus from the East and West Indies. The old and
respectable ideals of commerce were rejected in favour of swifter and more ques-
tionable ones. Men and women in the highest ranks of society thought it no
shame to consort with vulgar millionaires who had fattened on war contracts, with
stock-jobbers who had made vast fortunes by dishonest means, with speculators
and slave-drivers and usurers. Serious observers, who saw the frantic and suc-
cessful efforts which the over-gorged and bloated "peculators of the public gold"

1 The War of the Revolution in America.

2 PEACE OR WAR.

made to enter high society, felt something of the indignation which inspired
Juvenal's burning satire.

The increasing luxury and the rise in the price of the necessities of life drove
our public men to seek sources of revenue which their forefathers would have
scorned. The sale of public offices, of seats in Parliament, and of influence, had
created a system of jobbery so gigantic that it is to-day almost impossible to
appreciate its far-reaching effects. The Paymaster of the Forces thought it no
disgrace to use hundreds of thousands of pounds of the public money for private
ends; Ministers did not shrink from open bribery, from receiving fees and per-
centages, and from sharing the profit on contracts of every kind.

The picture is not an exaggerated one. The memoirs, letters and novels of the
day paint it in even stronger colors, and there is no reason to doubt that in 1770
public morality and public spirit were at their lowest ebb.

On the other side of the Atlantic a new race, sprung from the same stock,
was making for itself a very different social scheme. The American Colonists,
in whose blood the stern love of civil and religious liberty which inspired Crom-
well's 'troopers had lost none of its strength, had passed through long and
bitter struggles. They had emerged from the first phases of colonisation. The
New England States were beginning to show signs of prosperity and of an ordered
civilisation. Agriculture was flourishing, public schools and libraries were being
established in every town, and in 1775 the population of the Colonies was not less
than two millions.*

The character of the American Colonists has been drawn for us in its main,
and, it may be added, in its most pleasing, features by Burke. The dominant note
of the American character was a fierce love of freedom, a love so strong that it ill
bore any restraint, and would brook no coercion. The Colonists were, in many
cases, descendants of men who had left their homes in England because they would
not suffer the persecution of the Church and Monarchy. That stubborn spirit,
which gave them the courage to brave tempestuous seas and the perilous unknown,
.they bequeathed to their heirs, together with a religious creed which, hard and
narrow, was yet a source of strength, an inspiration, and a vital force. They had,
through their provincial assemblies, practically acquired the right of self-govern-
ment and self-taxation. Living at wide distances from one another, they
gained the strength and self-reliance which isolation often brings. Life on their
farms and the chase of wild animals gave them vigour and a sturdy spirit, while
in the Southern States the possession of large bands of slaves made them haughty
and impatient of control. Travellers in America were unanimous in their eulogy
of American hospitality, kindliness and simplicity. The extremes of wealth and
poverty were, in most States, absent. Every one seemed comfortable, courteous
and dignified.

The defects of the Americans were the defects of their qualities. They were
stubborn, litigious, and bitterly suspicious. Strenuous and active in their daily
lives, they made no allowance for the temptations of a civilisation which was some
centuries older than their own. They were adepts at driving hard bargains, and
their methods were not always consistent with the highest commercial honour.
They yielded with a bad grace, and could not bear defeat. In a word, they were
not an easy or pleasing people in their business dealings, and they were a most
dangerous people with whom to embark on a political dispute.

There could be little sympathy between such men and the English Ministers.
To the officials who had been sent to America because their debts or their amours
made England too hot for them, their austerity was odious and ridiculous. To
them the Colonists appeared as did the Roundheads to the Cavaliers — canting,
hypocritical, and cowardly. The Colonists, on their side, chafed under the
unsympathetic hands of the English Governors ; they were repelled and shocked by
a profligacy and want of principle to which they were unaccustomed, and they
were angered by the constant, if petty, invasions of rights which they held dear.

INTRODUCTION. 3

For England and the King, as the impersonation of all that was highest and
best in the English character, the Colonists entertained a warm and pathetic
affection. They had been oftentimes willing to shed their blood, to give their
money and their time, for the Imperial interests of England. They did not under-
stand, and they could not believe, that the policy which was so fast making them
into rebels proceeded from the King's obstinate character, and they discriminated
between the King and his officials.

From such a body of men, so simple and yet so shrewd, so fierce and yet so
affectionate, with all its crude qualities so attractive, the United States of America
have sprung ; and what soon will be the mightiest nation on earth was lost to the
English Crown by the perversity of a foolish King and the obstinacy and ignorance
of an English Cabinet and English officials.

The war between England and her American Colonies was the culmination
of a discontent which might be traced back at least eighty years.. America had
long fretted under the regulations of the English Parliament. Whether these
regulations were justifiable or not, is beside the question; they were vexatious,
and they bore no fruit but irritation. The Colonists complained that their trade
was crippled by the Mother Country, that customs and duties were forced upon
them, that they were expected to maintain a large number of English troops, and
that they were charged with the salaries of English Governors and officials. The
imposition of the Stamp Act of 1765 was received by the Americans with an
indignation which found vent in serious riots, and though this Act was repealed in
1766, the good effect of the repeal was soon nullified by the imposition of new
duties on the import from Great Britain of various articles of commerce, including
tea and glass. The duties were both irritating and barren. The Colonists
quickly found means of evading the imposts, either by legal methods, in which
their skill was supreme, or by declining to allow the import and use of the articles
on which the duties were laid. The English officials were forced to retire dis-
comfited from the unequal contest, and their defeat begat in the minds of the King
and his Ministers the conclusion that force was the only remedy.

The earnest protests of the Colonists were received with little consideration.
• They were not in accord with the temper of the time, and the King regarded them
as a derogation of his sovereign power. He saw in the action of the Colonists the
misconduct of rebellious and forward subjects. He read in their irritation a
desire to break away from the British Empire. He was told that a great conspiracy
was on foot, and that the leaders of American opinion were definitely aiming at
complete freedom from English control. Unwise counsellors assured him that the
repeal of the Stamp Act and a policy of magnanimity had already created a danger-
ous insolence among the Americans, and that if he did not decide to stem the rising
waters of insubordination, America would be lost to the Empire.

There were a large number of Colonists who were unwilling to oppose the
King's policy, either from a sentiment of pure loyalty or because they were political
opponents of the champions of American rights. These men were called Loyalists,
and their counsel was for stern measures. They assured the Ministers that they
had only to be firm to conquer, that the "traitors," haughty as they were in
speech, were cowards at heart, and that chastisement with a high and unsparing
hand was the only cure for an intolerable position.

In vain did Benjamin Franklin warn the Ministers that it was dangerous to
place too great a strain on the loyalty of the Americans. He was heard before the
Privy Council, and was answered and attacked by Wedderburn with studied inso-
lence. The Privy Councillors shook in their seats with laughter. Franklin said not
a word, but stood composed and erect. He wore a full dress suit of velvet, and
the next time he wore that suit was when, in 1778, he signed the treaty with France
which gave to the United States the rank of an independent nation.

The decay of public morality and public spirit is generally accompanied by
the decay of Parliament. The authority of the House of Commons was at a low

4 PEACE OR WAR.

ebb; and the Ministry, backed by a powerful and submissive majority, did not
ponceal their contempt for the representatives of the people. The fortunes of
England were in the hands of her King. George III. had become not only King of
England, but the absolute ruler of his Ministers. They were his servants, trained
to execute his decrees, and to sink their will in his. North, who had become Prime
Minister after the retirement of Grafton in 1770, was a man of considerable parts
and of a kindly nature. He was uneasy about the King's policy, and the most
respectable members of his own Cabinet had similar misgivings. But North's char-
acter was fatally weak. In the House of Commons he was constantly asleep, and,
gifted though he was with clearness of vision and common sense, he was too proud
or too indolent to assert his own will. Such men are not rare in our political
history, and their tenure of office has not infrequently been a time of national
disaster. They yield their own prudence to the rash obstinacy of a stronger and
less refined will. The dangers, which they foresaw, approach, the storm rises,
and the rocks appear ; they wring their hands, the rudder slips from their grasp,
and the ship is wrecked.

Rigby, Wedderburn, and Thurlow, the three chief advocates of the Ministerial
policy, were men of great ability, considerable force of character, and absolutely
unscrupulous methods. Wedderburn's career was typical of the political standards
of the day. He was an apostate from the Whigs because he saw among the Tories
higher hopes of success. He soon justified his promotion by his violence. His
tongue was as bitter as his character was corrupt. Master of lucid and incisive
speech, he was able to dominate a weak House of Commons and to hide his
ambitions under the mask of patriotism. He had no sense of political morality.
To him the highest form of Parliamentary success was to browbeat those whose
arguments he could not refute, and to denounce as traitors men whose characters
were, as compared with his own, as white as snow. He had not even the excuse of
ignorance. Before his apostasy he had been a determined opponent of that de-
testable policy of which he was now the champion, and the speeches which he
had in his saner days delivered against this policy would have formed a com-
plete armoury for the Opposition. His own party feared as much as they admired
him: his opponents hated him: no one trusted him. In the bitter phrase of
Junius, there was something about him which even treachery would not trust.

A determined and united Opposition would have prevented the approach of
the crisis. But in 1773 the Whigs were divided by jealousies and disheartened
by constant defeat. It requires a high degree of moral courage to stand up
night after night in the House of Commons in opposition to a powerful Ministry,
when that Ministry is unscrupulous, and when it has the enormous advantage
of being able to say that any opposition is unpatriotic and a direct incentive to war.

We need not be surprised, therefore, that the Opposition was languid and
impotent. Rockingham and Richmond were men of the highest honour; but
they withdrew in despair from the hopeless contest. They confessed that nothing
would restore common sense to the country "except the dreadful consequences
which must follow from the diabolical policy of the Government." Horace Wal-
pole, in a pungent sentence, disposes of the charge that Colonists were strengthened
•in their resistance by the Whigs. "The cruellest thing that has been said of
the Americans by the Court is that they were encouraged by the Opposition. You
might as soon light a fire with a wet dish-clout." Burke in vain attemped to rouse
both the Opposition and the public from their apathy. He advocated the
assertion of the great principles of liberty and justice which had brought England
to her present supremacy. The people, he said, were asleep or intoxicated ; they
were not answerable for their supine acquiescence ; God never made them to
think or act without guidance. But the guides were cowed into silence.

There were, indeed, noble exceptions. Chatham, the most splendid and
generous of our Ministers, was beloved by the Americans as the incarnation of
all that was great in the English character ; and though by the irony of fate the

INTRODUCTION. 5

Ministry of which he was the nominal head imposed the duty which was the
penultimate cause of the rebellion, he continued to advocate their claims to our
sympathy, to attack with fierce eloquence and scathing irony the Ministers who
were drifting nearer to ruin, and to denounce the use of German mercenaries and
Indian savages against an Anglo-Saxon people. He defended the action of
the Americans. "I rejoice that America has resisted," he said; and his brave
words were received with a torrent of abuse by the Ministerial party and by the
petty scribblers of the day. But Chatham was undaunted. Again he attacked
the policy of the Ministers. It would be "an impious war," he said, "with a
people contending in the great cause of public liberty. All attempts to impose
servitude upon such men — to establish despotism over a mighty continental nation
— must be vain and futile. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract
when we can, not when we must."

Two years after the war had begun, he used words which came naturally from
the mouth of a noble and chivalrous Englishman: "If I were an American, as
I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never
would lay dorvn my arms — never — never — NEVER."

Burke, the wisest of our political writers and the greatest of English orators,
was equally outspoken. He defended the right of the Colonists to resist an attack
on their liberties, and inveighed against the "impious" demand of the Ministers
for "unconditional submission." In two speeches which contain the very essence
of political wisdom, he laid down the rules which should govern our relations with
our Colonies, rules which must remain for all time the basis of our Imperial
system. With that clear insight into the phenomena of the moment which dis-
tinguished him, he saw that the Americans were fighting the battle of civil liberty
all over the world ; and two years after the war had begun he dared to say that
he could not wish the Colonists to be subdued by arms. He knew that such a sub-
jugation could only be effective by maintaining a great body of standing forces,
and perhaps of foreign forces. He foresaw the growth of military influence with
results fatal to English interests and English liberty.

Charles James Fox spoke with a voice as clear and vigorous. Brushing
aside the cheap fallacy that any opposition to the Ministry of the day is
unpatriotic, he attacked the insane policy that was leading England into a dis-
astrous war. He did not hesitate to express his admiration of the American
leaders, and to compare their resolute and heroic struggle for liberty with the
fatuous mixture of violence and weakness which was dignified by the title of the
Ministerial policy.

These great men, refusing to prophesy smooth things to a blinded public,
and courageous to hold their own country in the wrong, were shouted down
in Parliament, and assailed with every form of virulent abuse by the supporters of
the war, who had few facts to bring forward and no arguments to interpret those
facts. They were called "traitors," "friends of the Americans," * "enemies to the
King," "enemies of England," and "emissaries of the enemy."

It is too true that these violent counsels were popular both in high social
circles and among the body of the people. The English public was intensely
irritated by what it considered a purely vexatious resistance on the part of the
Colonists. The average mind has no means of testing the statements of inter-
ested officials ; the newspapers of the day gave little guidance ; and what guidance
they did give was in the direction of a "strong" policy. The most potent cause
of political error is ignorance. Involuntary ignorance is comparatively harmless,
and can be cured ; but wilful ignorance, the ignorance that results from prejudice
and passion and foolish pride, has generally been the parent of grave national dis-
aster. The ignorance which despises every other nation, which closes its eyes to

'Burke was even called "an American" (Letter to the Sheriffs'). There was apparently
no use of "pro-" then.

6 PEACE OR WAR.

every danger, which refuses to receive warning or advice, was the direct cause of
the disaster of 1775. The King and the Ministry knew nothing of the temper of
the American Colonists ; and all their information was derived from officials. These
officials were either the victims of the grossest illusions or guilty of the grossest
falsehood. The language in which they described the character^of the Colonists,
their disloyal ambitions, their dishonesty, their hypocrisy, and the certainty of their
submission at the first stroke of the whip was both ludicrous and tragical.

An English officer wrote : "As to what you hear of their taking arms, it is
mere bullying, and will go no further than words. Whenever it comes to blows
he that can run fastest will think himself best off. Any two regiments here
ought to be decimated if they did not beat in the field the whole force of the
Massachusetts province, for though they are numerous, they are but a mere mob
without order or discipline, and very awkward in handling their arms." According
to General Gage, the Bostonians were "sly traitors" and "turbulent puritans,"
"scoundrels," "ruffians," and "cowards," "the worst of subjects," and the most
"immoral" of men. With that extraordinary facility for saying the wrong thing
which always distinguishes the foolish ruler, he issued a Proclamation against
Hypocrisy : a characteristic example of the tact and consideration of the English
Colonial Governor of that day.

In vain did those who knew the American spirit and character warn the
public and the Ministry of the dangers of their policy. General Lee wrote that
(there were 200,000 able-bodied men, hardy, active, ready to encounter every danger
Ifor their liberty. The Government, ignorant and self-complacent, sent 10,000
men to Boston, reinforcements numerous enough to irritate the Colonists, but
absurdly inadequate to hold down a district so vast and a people so valiant. The
King readily believed what he wished to believe; the Ministry followed his
wishes ; and the public received its instructions from the Ministers.

Many of the English officials were men of high character and ability. But
they were utterly deficient in common sense and imagination and they took their
ideas from the Loyalists, whose violence and folly saw in a "strong policy" the only
cure for political trouble. Of the English Governors and officials Franklin wrote :
"Their office makes them insolent ; their insolence makes them odious ; and,
being conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice
urges them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to Admin-
istration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to en-
h courage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. Gov-

ernment believes all ; thinks it necessary to support and countenance its
officers. Their quarrelling with the people is deemed a mark and conse-
quence of their fidelity. They are, therefore, more highly rewarded, and
this makes their conduct still more insolent and provoking."
Ignorance so enormous, misinformation so wanton, miscalculation so gross and so
disastrous, have probably been displayed by a political party only at one other
period of English history.

Meantime, the temper on both sides was rising fast. The Ministers were
discussing preambles when they should have thought of conciliation, and logic
when they should have looked to facts. In Parliament coercive measures were
passed by large majorities, strong bodies of troops were despatched to America,
and the King and Ministers were determined to teach the Americans "a sharp
lesson." On the other hand, the Colonists, threatened by penal and coercive meas-
ures, lost neither their dignity nor their courage. They recognised that their
choice must lie between submission with its infamy and ruin, and resistance to
the enormous power of an Empire which had beaten every rival. Boston, with her
5,000 citizens able to bear arms, did not take long to make her choice. Quietly,
but firmly, she prepared for what seemed to her the inevitable conflict. The
various townships of the Colony were not slow to promise their assistance, and the
other States, under stress of common menace, prepared to take their stand with

INTRODUCTION.

ph'ies which BX#« ha<l used thousands of years before were

their career of shame and disaster. narrate in anv detail the histpry of

It is not necessary - ou^ Purpose tonarr ate m^ny and ^ W

the American War It is a war ^"f stin £ . „ enera l reader it is the narrative
and particularly to the political stu den , bu g for 1 * e f ^^ e indined now to one
of a long and tedious struggle in which the balance ot «»y were

side and now. to the other; ™J^*^CT e ^^KS,ald avoid exhau^

i^ir^^^ ^ ° pthe war of i775

micrht have been different. ^. mr> „ a He could count on only a

Washington's difficulties were enormous He ~«W^co ^ ^

section of the American population, at leas on <^ al1 bootless, his

His numbers continually sank from 15,00c to ^ 5,000, *g™ hifd man

as Washington's, and finally pr j»ved ata 1 The ; bore ^ between large
It was at one time and in one dist net a r ^uiar w f At another

bodies of troops, and according to the XTature of aVuerilla war waged by
time and in another district 1 .partook of the ^^Y 6 ^^ ^

small and mobile columns of he enemy against a foe ^om X ^^ R

to defe tV ffi£Tit£^^ to these minor opera ;

,s possible that the Americans ° we ° ™ as the persistent onset of

tions. Nothing so quickly dishea ^ s -^/^^ the JJ de li V ers a swift

1SST2 'Sfifi with' e^alTapfdity, leaves his unwieldy enemy impotent
- d SfflStt Army ^l^^^^i^VS^^,

its frequent reverses. Officers and 1 ^P 8 ^Jg ated and maddened by the
the set rules of war se Jdo jm knei de ^J^e rr {armers They

elusive tactics a^.W^Sit the Colonists were a rabble

!l l d been ,^ d ot a s n hoot ey that their roTps were mere bands of marauding mis-

bloody experience of Bunker s ^1, and the ^«nde r g , § ^ ^.^

S? ^yt^SZt^ * their politicians,

and Thf^^w^onSeTwHh'the greatest rigour, and menacing proclama-
tion,™' ™cl£e^^^ The English Ministers, alarmed at the long

8 PEACE OR WAR.

continuance of the war and the entry of France into the struggle, sent a Peace
Commission to America. But it was now too late, and terms which a year ago
might have been accepted were declined by the Colonists. In revenge for this
rebuff, the Commissioners flew to violence. The Colonists were described as
an "infatuated multitude" who ''affected" to fight against the royal troops.
Those who, even at the eleventh hour, were wise enough to desert their "mis-
guided leaders" would be pardoned by their royal Master; but for the leader
themselves the proclamations held out no hopes of mercy. If, on the other
hand, the Colonists neglected "the forgiveness offered by a considerate
monarch," it would be necessary for his generals to devastate America, and to
render it useless both to the Colonists and their allies.

The brutal and deliberate policy of devastation, by which the Government
attempted to intimidate a foe whom they could not conquer, was supported by
the Tories on the ground of "military exigencies." Even the clergy and
bishops, degenerate servants forgetful of the precepts of their Master, approved
these barbarous methods. There were indeed two noble exceptions — the
Bishops of Peterborough and St. Asaph. The former attacked the barbarous
and cruel policy of the Government and the generals.

"It is principally owing to the mild influence of Christianity that every
nation professing the belief of it, as it were by common consent, set
bounds to the savage fierceness of revenge and cruelty. Shall we,
then, be the first among the nations of Europe to forget so very essential
a part of its excellence as the humanity and benevolence it inspires?
Shall we, I say, be the first to establish desolation upon system? And,
to gratify an impotent resentment, deal fruitless destruction on the
wives and children of an enemy we cannot conquer, and of friends we
can no longer protect?"
And again —

"If such is the Christianity we are to propagate among the natives, it is
better for their teachers, and better for themselves, that they should
live and die in ignorance. If they are to be involved in our guilt, take
not from them their plea for mercy. Let them still have it to urge at
the Throne of God that they have never heard the name of Christ."
Two years before the same wise Bishop had pointed out the folly of the
Ministers, who hoped to hold in subjection a race so stubborn as the Americans.
"Experience must surely have convinced us that it is not a single battle or
campaign that, as among the effeminate inhabitants of Asia, is to decide
the fate of the Western world. The vanquished must fly, but they will
rally again; and while the love of liberty remains, there will be some
sparks of courage ever ready to take fire on the slightest occasion.
The cities must be burnt, the country laid waste, and many a brave man
must perish, ere the miserable remnant is brought to absolute submis-
sion; and when that is done what advantage can we expect?"
Such a policy deserved to fail, and it did fail. 1 It is needless to say that the
sight of their burning farms and ruined villages inspired the Americans with a
hatred more bitter and a determination more stubborn. They wreaked their
vengeance on those unfortunate Loyalists who, confiding in the ultimate success

1 "Indeed, our affairs are in a bad condition. I do assure those gentlemen who have
prayed for war and obtained the blessing they sought that they are at this instant in very
great straits. The abused wealth of the country continues a little longer to feed its dis-
temper. . . . But America is not subdued. Not one _ unattacked village which was
originally adverse throughout that continent has yet submitted from love or terror. You
have the ground you encamp on and you have no more. The cantonments of your troops
and your dominions are exactly of the same extent. You spread devastation, b.ut you do
not enlarge the sphere of authority."

Edmund Burke.
(Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777.)

INTRODUCTION. 9

of England, had refused to join the ranks of the Colonists. The position of
these men was a difficult and a painful one. On the one hand, if they aided the
English army they were liable to be shot by the Americans, and on the other, if
they assisted the Colonists they were liable to be hanged by the English.

At home it was necessary to sustain the fast-waning interest of the public.
The most atrocious calumnies were spread abroad concerning the conduct of
the war by the Colonists. They were said to be cruel to their prisoners, and to
break the rules of honourable warfare. It was asserted that poisoned bullets
had been found in the pouches of the rebels. The Ministry went so far as to
publish in the London Gazette an official statement that the Americans had
scalped the wounded. 1 The condition of the American Army was represented
to be hopeless, and the most sanguine reports were laid before the English
Ministry. It was stated on the authority of the English generals and Governors
that the Colonial troops were discontented and ready for mutiny; that they
could secure no recruits; that their army was perishing of starvation and
fatigue; that they had few supplies, and that for these they were obliged to pay
ir. depreciated paper money. The public were regularly and constantly assured
that the war was practically over; that the Colonies were awaiting an opportu-
nity to submit to the King's authority; that it was only with the greatest
difficulty that Washington was able to prevent his officers and his army from
deserting to the royal troops, and that the desire for peace was universal.

The real position of the English Army was carefully concealed from the
public. The awful wastage which a long and indecisive campaign in a distant
country always brings, the fever, the fatigue, the heart-sickness, were producing
their inevitable effect on the unhappy English forces. Ministers were obviously
uneasy, and it was difficult to obtain from them either precise information or a
general estimate of the military situation. Where they had no comfortable
news to give, it seemed to them an impertinence that the Opposition should
demand facts.

In September, 1780, the English Parliament was suddenly dissolved; and
though the resentment of the country at the mistakes of the politicians and the
prolongation of the war was considerable, the Opposition was still weak. The
Ministers demanded that their hands, in view of the dangers which threatened
England, should be strengthened, and the Ministerial party was returned by a
slightly increased majority. The Ministers regarded their victory at the polls
both as a condonation of any mistakes they might have made and as a mandate
for the vigorous prosecution of the war. In vain the Opposition pleaded for a
return to common sense and for the opening of negotiations with a foe whom
they could never hope to conquer. Fox's motion of conciliation was rejected
bv a large majority, and the Ministers proceeded on their policy of violence and
drift. „

But in their very hour of triumph the crisis was approaching. It is possible
that neither the Ministry nor the public appreciated the enormous difficulties
against which the English generals had to contend, difficulties which were, in
fact, insuperable, and which made success almost impossible. In the first place,
the English were fighting against the most dangerous foe whom they had
hitherto met, a foe of their own blood, of the same stubborn spirit, and with the
same unconquerable love of freedom. Though there were many cowards and
incapables among the Colonists, it is certain that, man for man, they were
superior to the English soldiers in intelligence, in physique, in skill with the rifle,
in knowledge of the country, and in a passionate and individual devotion to their
cause. They had, too, the enormous advantage which the English Army did

' As a matter of fact, the English officers and privates who had been taken prisoners by
the Colonists, loudly praised the tenderness and care with which they had been nursed by
their "savage" enemy.

io PEACE OR WAR.

not, and could not, possess; they were fighting in their own country and for their
freedom; they were filled with an enthusiasm which was not only patriotic but
religious, and which made the struggle bear in their eyes the character of a
Holy War.

The English Army, though of a considerable size, was scattered over a vast
district, with bad roads, and sparsely populated. It was obliged to operate
against an elusive foe and among a hostile population. It was difficult to bring
the enemy to decisive action; the capture of an important town, which in a land
of higher development would have been a blow at the heart of the country, had
no lasting effect; and the English were quite unable to follow up their, successes.
The great towns of the Colonists fell one by one into the hands of the English,
but the struggle continued, and the Americans hung still at the very gates.
Great tracts of country submitted to the English troops, but, on their retire-
ment, fell away from their allegiance. The English could not effectively occupy
the country, and where that is impossible, ultimate success is impossible.
Above all, the labour of* feeding a large army in scattered positions at great
distances from their bases and depots was a task of supreme difficulty.* These
bases were 3,000 miles from England: the lines of communication were imper-
fectly held, and were liable to interruption by a mobile foe at any moment.

It was beginning to be seen, even by the King's advisers, that to conquer
such a country was almost beyond their power, while to hold in subjection a land
so vast, so thinly populated, where more than half of the fiercer spirits of the
population would be permanently disaffected, would require an immense army,
and would entail the greatest dangers and an enormous expense. They were
anxious for peace, and for any honourable means of escape from an impossible
position. But the Americans could accept nothing less than independence, and
this the King refused to grant.

The English Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Clinton, saw at last that the
operations of his troops at great distances from the sea were involving him in
serious difficulties. In the autumn of 1781 he recalled Cornwallis, who, at the
head of 7,000 troops, had been laying waste Virginia with fire and sword, and
ordered him to retire to the sea and fortify himself in York Town, where it was
hoped that the British fleet would be able to co-operate with him. To York
Town Cornwallis retreated, followed by Lafayette, who, later on, was joined by
Washington with a considerable body of troops. The end was near. Corn-
wallis was invested from the land side, and from the sea he was blockaded by a
powerful French squadron, which had been able to forestall the English fleet
and to take up its position at the mouth of the harbour. Against such odds it
was impossible long to struggle, and, on October 19, 1781, after a siege of 21
days, 6,000 English troops and 100 guns surrendered to Washington.

The disastrous news of the surrender of York Town reached England a
month after the event. When the intelligence was taken to North he burst into
an agony of grief. "It is all over," he cried. The Ministers and the public
recognised that it was indeed "all over," and the Opposition redoubled their
efforts and assailed the Ministry with the utmost violence. The King himself
displayed a courage which it is impossible not to admire. He would never yield
to America or encourage the traitors who formed the Opposition. To acknowl-
edge the independence of America was to acknowledge that the sun of England
had set for ever. We should be humiliated in the sight of the whole world, we
should lose the West Indies and our Indian Empire, we should sink to the state
of a third-rate Power, and be confined within our own shores. But the King
could find no one to support him against facts so stubborn and so overwhelming.
He accepted the resignation of North's Ministry, and a Whig Ministry was
formed. Negotiations were opened with America, and, after the signature of

* So it is in South Africa.

INTRODUCTION. n

preliminaries of peace, a final peace was signed in 1783 by which the independ-
ence of the American Colonies was fully recognised.

The defeat of the English had been ascribed to many causes. The Min-
isters attributed it to the incapacity of the generals, and the army to the
mistakes of the politicians. The English generals were, indeed, men of inferior
capacity, and deserved North's pathetic reproach: "I do not know whether our
generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they frighten me whenever I think
of them." As Pitt said, the war was "a series of ineffective victories or severe
defeats." Carlisle, in 1778, speaking of the great scale of everything in America,
wrote:* "We have nothing on a great scale with us but our blunders, our
misconduct, our ruin, our losses, our disgraces, and misfortunes."

But the army might have retorted with equal justice that never had generals
been so badly supported by Government. The Ministers made nearly every
mistake which it was possible for Ministers to make. They had hopelessly
underestimated the strength and determination of the Colonists. They sent out
incapable generals, and they failed to feed the army with a constant flow of rein-
forcements. They conducted their peace negotiations as though they were
certain of military success, and their warfare as though peace were a matter of
to-morrow. No estimate or prophecy was fulfilled by events, and they seemed
inspired by a weak and incurable optimism which always saw in the coming
week a decisive victory and the end of the war.

The partial loss of the command of the sea was a disastrous blow to Eng-
land. It was difficult enough to feed and reinforce a great army at such a
distance; but when a foreign fleet could interrupt our supplies and blockade our
troops, the position became almost untenable. We must not, however, assign
too high an importance to the intervention of France. The essential difficulties
of the situation were enormous, and though the entry of France and Spain and
Holland into the struggle undoubtedly hastened the end, the ultimate failure of
England was certain. It is true that Washington's army was in the last stage
of exhaustion, and it is possible that if England could have raised and
despatched another army, and had been willing to continue hostilities for one or
two years more, the submission of the Colonists might have been secured. But
such a submission could only be temporary. From the day when the first blood
was shed at Lexington, America was lost to England. It was impossible to hold
America without the consent of the Americans.

In any case the weariness of the public forbade the prolongation of the
struggle. At its beginning and in its first stages the war was popular, but the
supply of volunteers had soon ceased, and the hire of German mercenaries and
Indian auxiliaries, and the cruel devastations of the English geenrals, had given
to the struggle an odious character in the eyes of the English people. A very
different spirit indeed was seen when France and Spain entered the lists. The
whole country rose in loyalty; and the men who would not volunteer for service
in America came forward in tens of thousands to defend their country against
their hereditary foes.

The English people had at least awakened from its apathy. It was disgusted
by the miscalculations and the falsified prophecies of its leaders. It had been
told, day after day, that the conquest of America was practically complete, and
the disappointment was bitter and overwhelming. Six years of war, of ever-
increasing debt, 1 of shocking loss of life, of a never-ending series of disasters,
and of increasing dangers from our continental rivals, had completely weaned
the public mind from its early affection for the war. It saw, too, that a tem-
porary victory at the cost of further sacrifices would be unavailing. It saw that

* History repeats.

'The war cost England over £100,000,000. The cost of the war against the Boers has
been over $1,000,000,000, and the end is not yet.

12 PEACE OR WAR.

to hold America in subjection it would be necessary to maintain there a large
standing army amid a hostile population, nursed in bitter hatred of our rule,
3,000 miles from England: a population waiting silently but eagerly for the
moment when European complications might bind our hands. A rebellion
raised at such a time it would be impossible to resist, and Great Britain would be
obliged to retire in defeat and in a humiliation more bitter and more costly than
the humiliation of the present peace.

Thus ended the most unhappy war that England had ever undertaken. It
was a war which in its inception and its conduct owed most of its disasters
to the obstinacy and incapacity of its King and his Ministers.* Their first mis-
take was to insist on the enforcement of a right which was both vexatious and
unfruitful. Their second error was to trust to the advice of ignorant and preju-
diced officials. The third mistake of the Ministers was to present to the Ameri-
cans the alternative of starvation or rebellion, of unconditional submission or a
war of extermination. Their final folly was the failure to recognise that they
had wholly misjudged the character and resources of the Americans. They had
raised a problem which, deficient as they were in imagination and common
sense, they were unable to solve. They were unwilling to face stubborn facts,
and to proportion their policy to their strength; they were, therefore, compelled
to continue a policy of drifting impotence, of which the end was disaster.

* A parallel case is the war with the Boers.

CHAPTER I.

THE NATION, 1895-I9OO.

WITH the close of the nineteenth century England seemed to many
observers to be entering on a period of decline. From every quarter
and in every society the same ominous tale was told. Some lamented
an England of little men; the overgrowth of Cabinet rule; the decay of represen-
tative institutions; a Parliament of mediocrities; a Ministry of blunderers, likely
to perish by virtue of its very size; an Oppostion weak, timid, and divided; the
absence of efficiency in the public service; a growing expenditure and a lessen-
ing trade; a declining birth-rate; an army unequal to its task. Others lamented
an England no longer supreme in Asia, threatened on the seas by France and
Russia, in its commerce by Germany and America. They foresaw graver troubles
in the future: constant retreats and constant rebuffs, India threatened by Russia,
China absorbed by the same devouring colossus, Germany cold, France hostile,
and England isolated and hated by every nation. The weary Titan was becom-
ing conscious of his burden. A disquiet, indefinite but profound, haunted the
minds of men.

By the idealist a similar decay was discerned in the moral sphere. The
material side of life was victorious; religious faith was weakening. Money had
brought luxury and enervation, and the desire of money was gratified by
crooked paths. The vast wealth of cosmopolitan speculators was spreading
everywhere its influence, sometimes by open bribery, often by methods more
subtle but not less dangerous. The golden calf was openly set up in the temple,
and the high-born thronged to worship. The standard of political life had
declined. It was no longer held ignoble for politicians to traffic in contracts,
and the sensitiveness which felt a stain like a wound was out of favour. Great
nobles thought it no humiliation to sell their titles for gold, and thousands of
men and women were decoyed into ruin by the glamour of a great name.
Gambling and betting were the amusement of multitudes and the business of
not a few.

Things were seen in false perspective. The education which was to be a
source of refinement seemed rather to have brought the capacity to admire
wrongly; and the cheap journalist corrupted and degraded whatever he touched.
Hence sprang the worship of the violence which masquerades as strength: of
the vulgarity which passed for native force. In our eagerness to be sincere we
had thrown off the conventions which redeem life from half its grossness. It
was in politics as in literature, in social life as in international intercourse. The
sober ideals and decent modesty of our forefathers were to us mere cant and
sentiment. The simple formulae of life which sufficed for them were not good
enough for us. Force was held the only remedy: material success the only
standard.

We saw the other nations pressing at our heels: we must be up and doing.
A. restless and suspicious egotism possessed us; the dignity and self-control and
proud patience of the English seemed lost gifts. Hence came the neurotic
excitement of our crowds, the hysteria of the music hall, the sensations of the
cheap paper, the violence of our fashionable politicians. Hence, too, came our
impatience with all that is not born of strength, our scorn of the ideals which
inspired our fathers and made possible the splendid activities of a past genera-

14 PEACE OR WAR.

tion. Hence came our contempt for the rights of small nations whom once it
was our pride to defend, our irritation with the stubborn race who turned a deaf
ear to our counsels and demands. We could not bear to find a little nation
in our path: self-conscious and irritable, we saw in them only vermin to be
exterminated from the face of our earth. On them was vented the resentment
which we had been bearing within our bosoms since first our pre-eminence was
questioned by our rivals.

Such is the picture which men painted as their own special fears affected
them. It is needless to say that it was too dark. That there were grave
symptoms in the social organism and the political outlook of 1895-1900 is true.
But each man exaggerates his own particular hopes or fears, and in the main
England is as sound to-day as she was fifty years ago. Our worst enemies can-
not deny that we bore the first disasters of this war with a self-control which did
honour to our race. To see things as alarmists see them is to lose proportion. If
the perfectly good man or the perfectly wise nation does not exist, yet experi-
ence tells us that the majority of mankind are passably good and moderately
sensible, that they do not consciously act from wrong motives, and that, where
they err greatly, they err through ignorance. The English people have always
been an honest, a shrewd, and a generous people; and at the worst the fault
which has been at the root of the troubles of the last two years is the fault from
which we have suffered and recovered before. We have been weakened by a
certain lassitude, born of past energy, and, it may be, of too much prosperity: a
good-natured indifference which did not permit us to examine with intelligence
the statements and the counsels of our advisers, and which has left us the easy
victims of hare-brained adventurers.

It is an old tale, and will be told again when another century has passed
away. A nation lives by successive periods of strength and weakness, of energy
and languor. The costly results of our error we are now beginning dimly to
see, and we shall quickly become again the England which after 1781 arose from
its sleep: the England alert, strong, silent, and self-controlled, which was able.
after countless humiliations, to save herself by her exertions and Europe by
iier example.

CHAPTER II.

SOUTH AFRICA TO. I896.

THE history of South Africa is in the main the history of the antagonism
of the English and the Dutch and of the dealings of the two races with
the natives. From the interconnection of these two causes have sprung
nearly all the troubles which have made South Africa the despair of statesmen
and the grave of reputations, and which seem likely for many years to make it
a land of racial unrest.

The first discoverers of South Africa were the Portuguese, who, neglecting
the healthier districts of Cape Colony, made their settlements on the southeast
coast in a district which they still hold. In the middle of the seventeenth
century a Dutch crew, who had been shipwrecked in Table Bay, bore to Hol-
land a glowing description of the great advantages of such a port as a half-way
house to the East Indies. The Dutch East India Company sent out a body of
settlers who raised a fort, and in 1689 the number of the colonists was increased
by three hundred French Huguenots who were flying from the persecutions
which seemed to await them in France. The Dutch and the Huguenots soon
blended by intermarriage, and the whole body of settlers, casting off those ties
of home and blood which bind most emigrants to the mother country, formed
a new nation with individual characteristics and a patriotism of its own.

They were a pastoral people, not given to agriculture in the strict sense of
the word, but living isolated lives, and journeying in their waggons from spot to
spot with their flocks and herds. They became rearers of cattle and great
hunters, and they developed not only the qualities of self-reliance and courage
which were necessary to their lives, but also that stubborn love of freedom
which has given them both a stamp of individuality, and an impatience of
control, and has made them the most difficult of subjects. They became
known as Boers; i. e., farmers or peasants, and though they were ruled by a
Dutch governor, they were continually at issue with their rulers until, during
the Napoleonic war, an English force was in 1806 landed at Cape Town, and
in 1814 the Colony became a part of the British Empire.

It does not appear that during the early years of the British occupation the
Dutch were treated with harshness, but in the years from 181 5 to 1836 constant
disputes arose, caused in the main by a misunderstanding nf the Dutch character
and by an unwillingness on the part of the English to frame their- policy in
reasonable accordance with the prejudices and wants of the governed.

The emancipation of the slaves 1 throughout the British Empire, a measure
framed with the best intentions, was worked in South Africa without discretion
and without fairness. There was a general willingness there to abolish slavery ; *
and measures were voluntarily taken to extinguish it by making all female
children free at birth. But our officials aimed rather at coercion than at persua-
sion! The crowning evil was that of the inadequate sum allotted to the compen-
sation of slave-owners at the Cape — £1,200,000, instead of the £3,000,000 to

1 It may be noted that when the British first sought the lordship of the Cape they
promised to maintain slavery, as against the French, who were then proposing to abolish it.
Comp. Theal's "History of South Africa," ii. 293-4, 314-5; iii. 79; and his "History of the
Boers," 1887, p. 64.

1 Theal, "History of the Boers," p. 64.

*° PEACE OR WAR.

which they would have been entitled at market rates— only a fraction was really
paid, by reason of the utterly unjust method of payment. All claims had to be
presented in England, so that every claimant was obliged to forfeit a large
proportion to agents and speculators, and many never received anything, some
disdaining later to accept the fractions offered them. The whole process of
agriculture was upset and paralysed by the act of emancipation, and most of
the natives refused to do any further work. The Dutch found themselves
deprived of the labour that was necessary for the rearing of their cattle, and
they were threatened with ruin. 1

Within a period of a few years nearly ten thousand Dutch left Cape Colony
to seek a new home in an unknown land. Many of them perished by the way
of fever or starvation or at the hands of natives. The greater number
crossed the Orange River, passed through the great plains of the land which
became afterwards the Orange Free State, and advanced northward until they
came in contact with the Matabele. With this brave and savage tribe they had
many a battle, finally defeating and driving them beyond the Limpopo River,
where they set up a new kingdom which lasted until its destruction in 1893 by
the British South Africa Company.

Of the territories thus left vacant by the Matabele, territories now known
as the Transvaal, the Boers took possession. Another body of Boers, under
the guidance of Pieter Retief, made a trek into the southeast of the country
now known as Natal, and established there a Dutch republic. But this action,
which gave the Dutch a dangerous command of the sea, alarmed the Govern-
ment at Cape Town, and the English drove the Boers from these districts and
proclaimed them a British Colony. 1

The Boers who dwelt between the Orange River and the Vaal River,
and those who made their homes between the Vaal and the Limpopo, gradually
came to form two separate communities, each composed of still smaller commu-
nities united by the slender tie of mutual protection.

The Southern Boers who bordered on the British territory of Cape Colony
were of weaker fibre than their northern kinsmen, and were unable to keep
order among the natives who surrounded them. The English Governor held
that their weakness was a menace to the peace of Cape Colony, and he annexed
their land to the British Empire in 1848, under the name of the Orange River
Sovereignty." But the annexation brought little peace, and, not wishing to be
troubled by refractory subjects, the Government in 1854 guaranteed the inde-
pendence of the country, to which the name of the Orange Free State was
given.' The history of this State up to 1899 was one of peaceful progress. It
was fortunate in securing as its first President a man of great tact and prudence;
and it has been always distinguished by the purity of its administration and the
excellence of its institutions.

The Boers north of the Vaal were of a more warlike and determined char-
acter, and the English Government, unwilling to increase its responsibilities,
determined to allow them also to work out their destiny alone. In 1852 the
Sand River Convention was concluded, by which the British Government guar-
anteed independence to the Transvaal Boers.

Their history is chequered. Jealousies arose among them; and in 1852
they were divided into four communities or republics. But self-interest and
the necessity for common action were gradually forming these communities into

1 Comp. Theal, "Hist, of South Africa," iii. 413 sq.; Cloete, "Hist, of the Great Boer
Trek," ed. 1900, pp. 35-58 ; Theal, "History of the Boers," pp. 60-70.

2 Of this episode a full and apparently fair narrative is given in "The Great Boer Trek,"
by Cloete. Comp. Theal's "History of the Boers." ch. v.

* Theal, "History of South Africa," vol. iv. ch. xlvi.

4 This policy was only after long dispute decided on by the British Government. See
Theal, iv. 491. It was strongly opposed by many of the Cape Dutch. Id., p. 534.

SOUTH AFRICA TO 1896. 17

one; and in 1864 M. W. Pretorius was chosen as President of the South African
Republic, while a body of law and a constitution were drafted and adopted by
the Volksraad.

The white population of the South African Republic in 1864 was about thirty
thousand; and the ties that bound the population together were somewhat loose.
It was difficult and almost impossible for the central Government to collect
taxes and to carry on the administration of the country. In 1872 Pretorius
was obliged to resign his office, and was succeeded by Mr. Burgers, a Cape
Dutchman, a man of upright life but of little force of character. The financial
position of the country was becoming deplorable; there was little trade; and the
Kaffirs at various points menaced the sparse population with invasion.

The welfare of the Boers of the two Republics was naturally a matter of
concern to the Dutch population of Cape Colony. The Boers were in many
cases their brothers and sisters or sons and daughters, and the claims of blood
and race are paramount. On the other hand, the English population of Cape
Colony regarded them with unconcealed dislike. The Loyalists, as those of
English birth were called, formed the smaller section of the inhabitants of the
Colony, and they had not been long enough resident in Africa to acquire a local
patriotism. They were therefore still in close touch with English politicians.
There had always been a rivalry, tacit or expressed, between the English and
the Dutch, and this rivalry gradually became rather political than racial. On
the whole it may be said that the Loyalist party consisted of townsmen engaged
in trade, while the Dutch were the country gentry and the agricultural
population. Thus to the cleavage of race there was added a divergence of life
and occupation, and it is necessary to bear in mind these essential differences,
for they go far to explain the unhappy rivalry which has brought ruin on South
Africa.

The difficulties of the Boers were purposely exaggerated by those colonial
politicians who had for some time seen in the straits of the Boers a ground for
intervening in their affairs and annexing their land. While Shepstone is charged
with telling the Boers that if he "too_k his hand from the Zulus" the latter would
overwhelm them, he has put on record, by way of disproof of the charge, the
statement that the Boers, to his knowledge, had no fear of the Zulus, consid-
ering themselves perfectly able to defeat any native attack. And as it is certain
that no considerable body of Boers ever petitioned for annexation, the
summing-up of history must be that the achievement of that process by Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, with the reluctant and bewildered consent of President
Burgers, was a result of the sheer lack of organisation incident to the first
stages of a pastoral community with an unpractical and unpopular head, and
was due neither to the absolute needs nor to the avowed wishes of the people.

The annexation of the Republic in April, 1877, was scarcely noticed in Eng-
land, and though it was resented by the Dutch in Cape Colony, it seemed likely
that its results would be those which had followed a hundred similar actions,
and that our new subjects would accept the situation and the privileges of
English citizenship. But the fatal ignorance that has generally dogged the
steps of English statesmen in their dealings with South Africa did not permit
the English Ministry to see that the Boers preferred freedom and their own
constitution to the most civilised government in the world. A series of mis-
takes resulted in a dangerous outbreak. The Transvaal Boers were indignant
that their Republic should have been annexed without their consent and against
their will. Their indignation increased when they were refused the representa-
tive institutions which Sir T. Shepstone had definitely promised; 1 and, moved
by a destiny which seems omnipotent and omnipresent in our dealings witR

1 See the admissions of Sir Bartle Frere in a letter of April 20, 1879. "Life of Sir
Bartle Frere," 1895, ii. 311. Comp. p. 306.

i8 PEACE OR WAR.

South Africa, the English Government had chosen as administrator of the
Transvaal a military officer who may have had admirable qualities in his own
profession, but who was, from his want of sympathy and of adaptability, totally
unfit to rule men of the temper and character of the Boers. 1

The new Liberal Ministry of 1880, though they had opposed the annexation
of the Transvaal, found themselves in a difficult position. They sought the
advice of the South African officials, and were assured by them that the discon-
tent in the Republic was factitious and of no account. The Dutch, they were
told, were prone to patriotic meetings, but were quite unwilling to fight; and a
little timely severity and the parade of a few hundred British troops would soon
bring them to their senses. The Boers, therefore, were told that the annexation
of their Republic could not be annulled.

But the English Government did not know with what men they had to deal.
In December, 1880, the Boers chose three leaders, M. W. Pretorius, Paul
Kruger, and P. Joubert, and proclaimed the revival of the South African
Republic. The Boer farmers rose to a man in support of the triumvirate, and
the isolated bands of British troops were soon defeated or besieged. Sir George
Colley, the Governor of Natal, raised a body of troops and marched to the
border, but he was defeated by Joubert at Laing's Nek, and later on at Ingogo.
On February 26th our forces were completely routed on Majuba Hill, and
Colley himself was killed.

The British Government despatched considerable reinforcements and
appointed Sir Frederick Roberts as Commander-in-Chief. What the final issue
would have been, if the campaign had been allowed to proceed, it is difficult to
say. The British troops were numerous, their commander was a skilful and
successful soldier, and the Boers were few in number and not used to regular
warfare. But, in spite of their detractors, they were splendid fighters, admirable
marksmen, filled with the fire of patriotic and religious fervour, and they were
fighting in a country of which they knew every inch. 2 It is almost certain that
they would have been assisted by their brothers of the Orange Free State; and
they would undoubtedly have received the passive, if not the active, assistance
of their kinsmen in Cape Colony. The English Ministry, faced by such a
resistance, realised that the annexation of the South African Republic had been
undertaken in ignorance and through imperfect information. They recognised
that the temporary conquest and submission of the Boers would inevitably lead
to permanent disaffection in the Transvaal, to another rising in ten or twenty
years, and to a dangerous resentment among the Dutch in Cape Colony. They
accordingly determined that a policy of "magnanimity" was both more prudent
and more honourable than the policy of crushing the Boers with an overwhelm-
ing force. An armistice was arranged, and a fortnight later preliminary terms
were settled by which the Transvaal State recovered its independence under the
suzerainty of the British Crown. These terms were formally inserted in the
Convention of Pretoria of 1881.

The effects of this act of "surrender" are somewhat difficult to estimate.
The supporters of Mr. Gladstone's policy have always pointed to the danger of

1 See the admissions made by Mr. J. S. Fitzpatrick in "The Transvaal from Within,"
ed. 1900, pp. 14, 21, 25.

2 "It has been proved to us that the Boers are at all events brave soldiers ; that they
are skilled in the use of arms: that they are physically at least a match even for English sol-
diers. The Transvaal is a country as large as France — a wild and difficult country — and it
is perfectly evident to every one that if we are to hold it down by force we must perma-
nently maintain a number of troops at least equal to the number of our possible opponents.
Well we know also that the Orange Free State, which is a neighbouring territory, would make
common cause with their co-religionists and men of the same nationality in the Transvaal ;
and therefore I say that it is perfectly certain that not less than from 15,000 to 20.000
English troops must be permanently stationed there if we are to hold the country by force
against the will of the inhabitants." Mr. Chamberlain, 1881.

SOUTH AFRICA TO 1896. 19

a racial conflict which the Convention removed; while the opponents of the
Convention have deemed it a proof of weakness, a loss of prestige, and a direct
cause of all the troubles which have clouded the history of South Africa during
the last twenty years. 1 There is much to be said for either view. On the one
hand, England, both by tradition and sympathy, has generally protected the
rights of free communities; and it was contrary to her ideal that she should
annex a free nation against the declared wishes of a vast majority of the popula-
tion. Four facts, which confront us to-day, support the practical side of the
"surrender" policy: the extraordinary strength of the Boers in war, the support
of the Orange Free State, the undisguised sympathy of the Cape Dutch, and the
difficulty of holding a vast and disaffected district.

On the other hand, the Loyalists and their supporters in England held that
England had forfeited her high place among nations by submitting to the dis-
grace of Majuba; that the Boers would not appreciate a policy of magnanimity;
and that every concession would increase in the Boer minds the sense of their
own importance and their contempt for their English neighbours. The bitterness
of this mortification has remained to the present day; and it has been turned
to account with fatal effect by the South African Press in their support of a
policy of "firmness."

It is the duty of a cool observer to attempt to disentangle facts from preju-
dices, to allow sentiment its due weight, and above all things to let common
sense be the basis of decision. That the policy of the British Government was
a proof of its weakness is scarcely true. It is too often assumed that the
Ministry did not think of negotiating with the Boers until after the disaster at
Majuba, and that the policy of generosity was born of defeat. This is incon-
sistent with the facts. The fault of the Gladstone Ministry was that it accepted
too implicitly the assurances of Sir Owen Lanyon; but when the Boers rose in
revolt and it was certain that the Boers were in earnest in their desire for inde-
pendence, the Government were at once committed by their pledges at the
General Election to a policy of compromise. Negotiations had begun even
before Laing's Nek, and the negotiations after Majuba were not the beginning
of a new policy but the continuation of an old. It would have been far easier
for the Ministers to continue the war, to yield to the pressure of the Loyalists
in Cape Colony and of the war party at home. They chose the more difficult
part, and the one which would almost certainly bring upon them the greater
unpopularity. On the whole, it seems that in very difficult circumstances, and
where the wisest could scarcely forecast the future, they arrived at the more
prudent decision. This opinion at the present moment may be an unpopular
one; but it is probable that, when the history of the last two years comes to be
written, our embarrassments will justify the unwillingness of the Gladstone
Ministry to continue a policy which threatened to embroil the whole of South
Africa.

The history of the South African Republic during the next few years is
chiefly concerned with attempts on the part of Boer adventurers to enlarge
the territory of the Transvaal and to seek an outlet to the sea — attempts which
were in every case successfully opposed by the British authorities. It was held
to be necessary that the Transvaal should not be permitted to annex territory
which might give her a seaport and enable her, in union with a European
Power, to become a serious menace to British interests.

In 1884 a deputation of Boers came- to London to secure a modification of
the Convention of 1881. Their representations were successful; and Lord
Derby, the Colonial Secretary, drew up, in concert with them, a new Convention
which is known as the Convention of London of 1884. In this treaty the

1 It is instructive to remember that the repeal of the Stamp Act was regarded by the
foolish counsellors of George III. as a cause of the American rebellion.

20 PEACE OR WAR.

Articles of the Convention of 1881 were replaced by a new set of Articles, in
which the declaration of the control of Great Britain was considerably modified.

The most important point, and the one which bears most directly upon the
diplomacy precedent to the present war, is the omission of the word
"Suzerainty" which appeared in the preamble to the Convention of 1881. It is
certain that Lord Derby absolutely omitted that preamble and replaced it by a
new preamble. In the draft of the Convention which is now in the possession
of the Transvaal Government, and a facsimile of which was printed in a
despatch from the State Secretary, Lord Derby's ipsissima verba are quoted.
He says that the preamble of 1881, being enclosed "within a black line," is
proposed to be omitted. Moreover, the following words in the preamble of
1881, "subject to the Suzerainty of Her Majesty, her heirs, and successors,"
have been crossed through by Lord Derby's pen. 1 This evidence is clear, and it
seems to be an unanswerable refutation of Mr. Chamberlain's argument, in his
despatch of October, 1897, that Her Majesty's Suzerainty still existed, and that
it justified the action of Great Britain and her refusal to submit the questions at
issue to arbitration. It is necessary to lay stress on this matter, for a study of
the despatches will make it quite plain that the claim of Suzerainty and the
consequent fear and suspicion which such a claim engendered among the Boers
were a powerful obstacle in the path of a friendly compromise, and of a peaceful
issue to the negotiations.

In 1885 occurred an event of cardinal importance in the history of South
Africa. The gold beds of the Witwatersrand were discovered, and the immigra-
tion of aliens made enormous strides. Within ten years from this date there
were nearly one hundred thousand men, women, and children of European or
American birth at Johannesburg and other mining towns, while the Boers —
men, women, and children — hardly numbered seventy thousand souls.' An
influx so overwhelming was not welcome to President Kruger and to the ruling
class, while the pastoral Boers looked upon the new-comers with undisguised
dislike. They were men of various nationalities, - shrewd, keen, and pushing.
It would be extravagant to expect a high code of social or financial morality
among the inhabitants of a new mining town; and the men who were fast
making of Johannesburg the greatest and richest town of South Africa were, it
must be allowed, a somewhat motley crew. The greater number of them were
British subjects, a fact which in itself was sufficient to alarm the Boers, while
those who came from other countries were in many cases men of questionable
antecedents. Those of the new-comers who seemed likely to gain the greatest
influence and the greatest wealth were Jews. The Boers quickly found that
their officials and the members of their parliamentary assembly were being cor-
rupted by the money of the new-comers, and they viewed with alarm the time
when the aliens should secure the franchise and completely outvote the old
citizens of the Transvaal. They could not prevent or delay immigration, and
they took in self-defence the only step which seeemd to them possible. Altera-
tions were made in the franchise, and the term of years which had been neces-
sary to qualify for this franchise was gradually extended until it was impossible
for a stranger to acquire the full rights of citizenship before he had been in the
country fourteen years. The inevitable results followed. The Outlanders, as
they were called, resented a legislation which was obviously aimed at them, and
they were irritated by a number of vexatious restrictions and petty grievances,
of which, though the individual item might be small, the aggregate effect was
serious.

1 See the reduced facsimile of the alterations.

1 According to the census of 1890 — imperfect, but the chief source of knowledge — the
white population of the whole Republic then was only 119,128, of whom 66,498 were men, and
52,630 women. Johannesburg had only 70,000 — i. e., men, women, and children. Mr. Cham-
berlain puts it at that figure in a despatch of January 15, 1896.

SOUTH AFRICA TO 1896. 21

Though the limitation of the franchise was in no way a contravention of
the Articles of the Convention, 1 it was an unfortunate policy, and the President
would have been better advised if he had allowed the inhabitants of Johannes-
burg to elect some members to the Volksraad. It is not difficult, however,
to appreciate the reluctance of the Boers to admit new-comers to the franchise.
They distrusted the English, who had conquered their ancestors and driven
them out into the wilderness, who had annexed their country and had closed
them in from the sea. They believed, and honestly believed, that England
was on the watch to absorb the Transvaal Republic, and they were unwilling
that it should be absorbed either by arms or by the slower but no less sure
process of legislation.

The difficulties of the situation increased, and the leaders of the mining
industry, for the most part rich German Jews, endeavoured to secure by bribes
that which they could not secure by constitutional methods. Transvaal officials
were corrupted, and the natural slowness of a primitive community to effect
reforms in sanitation and changes in its laws was sought to be overcome by
financial pressure of all kinds. As a matter of fact, reform after reform was car-
ried; and it has been avowed by many Outlanders that the Transvaal laws for the
control of natives were substantially in the interest of the mine-owners, and that
the much-debated liquor law was, on the whole, as well worked during the last
two years as the difficult circumstances permitted. But other grievances of
various sorts remained. The Outlanders complained of heavy taxes, of the
dynamite monopoly, of the unjust railway charges, and of a system of State
education which made inadequate provision for the teaching of the English
language. 2

The agitation was at first confined to the middle class of the Outlanders, nor
did the great capitalists, until 1895, take any open part in it; while it is doubtful
whether the English miners ever felt any enthusiasm for the franchise or much
resentment against their Boer rulers. In 1895, however, the leaders of the
mining industry began to be alarmed by the growth of a movement which was
causing a dangerous unrest in their industry. The rapid increase of mining
profits and the growing hope that the future would disclose even greater sources
of wealth, induced them to throw in their lot with the agitators, to endeavour
to reduce the burden of taxation, and particularly to secure such regulations for
the control of native labour as would ensure both a plentiful supply and a lower
rate of payment. It is easy to see that the second reform was in the eves of the
capitalists far more important than the other, and it is natural that this should
be so. It was calculated that by a judicious application of force the natives
might be obliged to work for such low wages as to increase the profits of one
of the great companies by at least two millions a year.

The mine-owners took advantage of the growing quarrel between England
and the Transvaal to urge upon the English Ministry the necessity of an
unyielding attitude. Their motives were obviously and naturally selfish. Their
only ambition, in a word, was to increase the profits of the mines. The leader
of the financial group said openly that he "did not care a fig" for the franchise.
Mr. Hays Hammand's utterance in London on November 18, 1899, is
significant," and Mr. Rudd, a colleague of the above gentleman, took no pains

'As to this, it has to be noted that a new franchise law, effecting a restraint, was passed
as early as 1882, under the first Convention, and that no objection was ever made to this
by the "Suzerain" power.

1 No English children were forced to be taught in the Dutch language.

* "There are in South Africa millions of Kaffirs, and it does seem preposterous that we
are not able to obtain 70,000 or 80,000 Kaffirs to work upon the mines. . . . With good
government there should be an abundance of labour, and with an abundance of labour then
will 'be no difficulty in cutting down wages, because it is preposterous to pay a Kaffir the
present wages. He would be quite as well satisfied — in fact, he would work longer — if you

22 PEACE OR WAR.

to conceal the policy of the capitalists, a policy which was practically a system
of slavery. 1

We may, therefore, without injustice, regard the wages question as the
most powerful motive of an agitation which involved the Transvaal in the
calamity of the Jameson Raid in 1896 and in the South African War of 1899.

The leaders of the capitalist party had intimate relations with Mr. Cecil
Rhodes, who was Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Managing Director of the
British South Africa Company, and a Director and a large shareholder of one
of the great mining and finance companies of the Rand. Mr. Rhodes was
apparently encouraged by many Imperial officers in South Africa, and, it has
been persistently stated, by the English Colonial Office. He obtained permission
from the Colonial Secretary to incorporate a corner of Bechuanaland into the
territory of the Chartered Company; and this position was chosen as the head-
quarters of a body of troops raised by the Company and under the command of
English regular officers.

It was arranged that the capitalists should gather together and arm a force
of volunteers in Johannesburg, and that on the ground of a possible danger to
the peaceful inhabitants an invitation should be sent to the Imperial troops. A
particularly nauseous element in the conspiracy was the concoction of a letter
some weeks before the proposed outbreak, signed by the principal conspirators,
imploring help for the sake of the defenceless women and children. This letter,
cunningly calculated to appeal to the credulity and pity of the English public,
was placed in the hands of the leader of the Imperial troops to be dated and
published when occasion should serve. A touch of comedy was given to the
tragic event by its premature publication in an English paper. On a given day
the English troops were to start from Pitsani, ride rapidly across the Transvaal,
and arrive at Johannesburg at the moment when the Outlanders had arisen in
rebellion. A coup d'etat would then be effected, the Boer oligarchy would be
taken by surprise, and the conspiracy would meet with immediate success.

It is unnecessary to relate the circumstances which led to a ludicrous but
well-deserved fiasco — how the troops started before the Outlanders were ready:
how they were met at Krugersdorp by a small body of Boers, defeated in a few
hours, and taken prisoners; how the Outlanders, who had little courage and no
discipline and were torn by internal dissension, were forced to surrender
their arms.

Their leaders were arrested, tried, convicted of treason and sentenced to
very moderate punishment; while the troopers themselves, by the exercise of a
clemency on the part of the Boer President no less magnanimous than diplo-
matic, were handed over to the English authorities on the understanding that
they should receive a trial and the proper punishment for their misconduct.
They were conveyed to England, and after a trial the rank and file were acquitted
and the officers sentenced to short terms of easy imprisonment from which they
were soon relieved. The sympathy of the public with the ill-starred expedition
made it practically impossible for the Government to impose any other than a
nominal penalty. An inquiry into the origin and conduct of the Jameson Raid
was made by the Cape Parliament, and it was proved that Mr. Rhodes, in spite
of his position as Prime Minister of Cape Colony, had, without the knowledge

gave him half the amount. His wages are altogether disproportionate to his requirements."
1 "If they could only get one-half the natives to work three months of the year, it would
work wonders. He was not pleading for the mines, or urging the views of capitalists, but
from the point of view of progress, agriculture, public works, mines, and the general pros-
perity of the country. They should try some cogent form of inducement or practically
compel the native, through taxation or in some other way, to contribute his quota to the
good of the community, and to a certain extent he would then have to work. ... If
under the cry of civilisation we in Egypt lately mowed down 10,000 or 20,000 Dervishes with
Maxims, surely it cannot be considered a hardship to compel the natives in South Africa
to give three months in the year to do a little honest work."

SOUTH AFRICA TO 1896. 23

of his colleagues, made arrangements for the invasion of a friendly country.
Another inquiry was instituted by the British Parliament, but little new
evidence was discovered; and various documents, which might have thrown
light on the movements of the organisers of the Raid, were withheld in spite of
the protests of some of the members of the Parliamentary Committee.

The result of the inquiry was profoundly unsatisfactory. It was felt by
every one that facts of supreme importance were hidden from sight ; and dissat-
isfaction was increased when Mr. Chamberlain, who had concurred in the
condemnation of Mr. Rhodes's treachery, rose in the House of Commons to
deliver a eulogy on that gentleman which was inconsistent with the verdict of
the Committee and was apparently unnecessary.

It was asserted at the time, and the assertion has been persistently repeated,
that the Jameson Raid was arranged with the cognisance of some of the officials
of the Colonial Office 1 and not without the support and sympathy of august
members of English society. It was stated that Mr. Rhodes's friends had
threatened to make known the complicity of the Colonial Office unless Mr.
Chamberlain consented to whitewash Mr. Rhodes in the House of Commons
and to reinstate him in the position which he formerly occupied in the regard
of the British public. It is impossible to separate facts from fiction in a
mystery so dark; but one thing is certain. There was a secret which it was
deemed impolitic to expose, and its concealment had the worst possible effect
in increasing the suspicion and resentment of the Transvaal people.

Probably no event has ever wrought such mischief in South Africa as the
Jameson Raid of 1896. Its immediate effect was the fall of Mr. Rhodes from
power, the resignation of his English Ministry, and the alienation of Dutch
support and sentiment. For some years previous to this event the two races
had been slowly but surely drawing together, 2 and Mr. Rhodes, with a prudence
and a tact which his subsequent error throws into strong relief, had taken every
means to conciliate the Dutch and to secure the support of the Afrikander Bond
to his political measures. English and Dutch, though still in some measure
distinguished by differences of temperament, arising out of different modes of
life, were learning to respect one another, and most observers thought it not
too sanguine to look forward to the time when the races would be united in
common political aims and would consent to work together for the prosperity
of South Africa. In a moment the whole edifice of conciliation was cast to the
ground; and like a storm from a summer sky, the sinister episode of the Raid
fell upon a quiet land. Every bitter suspicion, every fear, every feeling of
jealousy, which the events of the last few years had apparently laid to rest, was
reawakened in Cape Colony.

The Orange Free State, which had for some time consistently urged reforms
upon President Kruger, and which was before this date more in sympathy with
the progressive policy of Cape Colony than with the policy of the Transvaal
Ministry, put aside all its hesitation and concluded a defensive alliance with the
State which had been so treacherously invaded. In the Transvaal the Progres-
sive party, which had long advocated the adoption of moderate reforms, was
silenced by the unwarrantable attack on the liberties of their State. Mr.
Kruger believed, and the majority of the burghers were of his opinion, that the
Jameson Raid was the indirect, if not the direct, outcome of British policy.
He saw in it the preliminary to a stronger and more dangerous onslaught, and
he determined that, come what might, any future attack should find the Boers
united, ready and strong. Fortifications were built, immense quantities of arms

1 Miss Flora Shaw's evidence at the inquiry apparently favours this theory.
'This is admitted by Mr. Fitzpatrick, ed. cited, p. 48.

24 PEACE OR WAR.

were imported, and from the beginning of 1896 till the declaration of war in
1899 the Transvaal was arming with quiet determination. 1

It cannot be denied that such preparations were both prudent and reason-
able. The Boers were justified in their suspicion, for no impartial man who
remembers that the Jameson Raid was organised by the Prime Minister of an
English colony; that Imperial officials of high rank in South Africa were directly
implicated; that the troopers of the Chartered Company were under English
regular officers, and had encamped on land which had been granted by the
Colonial Office to Mr. Rhodes for this special purpose; that the good-will, if not
the collusion, of the Colonial Office had been secured; that the troopers haa
been pardoned and the officers had been punished with nominal penalties; that
the instigator of the conspiracy had been welcomed with effusion by English
society and defended with unction from his place in Parliament by the Colonial
Secretary — no reasonable man can deny that a chain of circumstances so strong
must inevitably engender in the minds of the Boers the fear that England had
designs upon their independence. That this fear was much exaggerated is true.
The British Government, as a whole, had no wish to attack the independence
of the Transvaal; but that Mr. Rhodes and the English in South Africa, sup-
ported by a powerful body of opinion in England, were watching the opportu-
nity to annex to the Empire the Transvaal with its gold mines, is equally true.

Thus the two powerful and fatal motives of hatred and suspicion were at
work; and every advance or proposal made by the British Government was
regarded by the Transvaal rulers as either a piece of hypocrisy or a veiled
attempt upon their independence. These suspicions proved the most potent
cause of the misunderstandings which have borne their fruit in the war of 1899.

1 Some arming there was shortly before the Raid, the "Drifts" question having had a
serious aspect, and the Boer Executive having reason to apprehend some outbreak; but the
main process of armament occurred later. See p. 32 and p. 45. See also Mr. Fitzpatrick's
final admissions, "The Transvaal from Within," p. 98.

CHAPTER III.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899.

IN 1896 the horizon seemed to be clearing. In Cape Colony the only serious
point at issue between the Dutch and the Ministry in England was the atti-
tude of Great Britain towards the two Republics. On all other points the
Dutch were devoted subjects and good friends; and the future of Cape Colony
and South Africa depended entirely on the willingness of the English Ministry
to take up a conciliatory attitude towards the Transvaal, and to avoid every
suspicion of an encroachment on its rights. The Dutch saw that the Loyalists
in South Africa were open advocates of a coercive policy which might lead to
annexation, and they were suspicious of the attitude of the English officials;
but, though the Colonial Secretary was in no favour, they had complete con-
fidence in the noble character of the Queen and in the honour of the English
Ministry as a whole.

The situation of the English Ministers was a difficult one. It was believed,
and honestly believed, that the Transvaal was too weak to resist pressure con-
tinuously and firmly applied; and Mr. Chamberlain determined that, though it
would be injudicious and ungracious 1 at such a moment to insist on a reorganisa-
tion of Transvaal methods, he would lose no opportunity of pressing reforms on
the Boers. Lord Rosmead retired in 1896, and with the cordial approval of
both political parties in England, the Colonial Secretary appointed Sir Alfred
Milner to be Governor-General of Cape Colony and High Commissioner of
South Africa.

It is not known, and it probably never will be known, what instructions
were given to the new Governor-General. He was probably instructed to
acquaint himself with the salient facts of the situation, to find out how strong
were the feelings of the Loyalists, and how far the English Government could
safely go on a path of coercion. He was probably told that it was time now for
the English Government to cease from ineffectual criticism and protest, and to
take its stand on its rights under the Convention as the paramount power in
South Africa.

In the Transvaal the storm had apparently subsided. The failure of the
Johannesburg conspiracy and the punishment inflicted on the ringleaders pre-
vented for some time any further extension of the capitalist agitation. But
fierce fires were burning under the quiet surface. The financiers who controlled
the gold mines of the Rand were not inclined to overlook any means which
might make their industry more profitable. Armed conspiracy had proved a
dangerous method, and they now turned to two other courses, which were in
the end fatal to peace. They determined to secure the support of the South
African Press and with it of the English Press, and to obtain the sympathy and
influence of the new Governor-General of Cape Colony, and, through him, of the
English Ministry.

The financial leaders of Johannesburg were men not only of considerable
business capacity: they were absolutely unscrupulous. They were determined
to gain their ends by any means within their power, and, though it would be

* As a matter of fact, Mr. Chamberlain cabled to Sir H. Robinson (Lord Rosmead) on
January 7, 1896, that the Ministry were considering the advisability of sending considerable
forces to South Africa.

26 PEACE OR WAR.

ungenerous to accuse them of indifference to the loss of thousands of human
lives, it is certainly true to say that the risk of a terrible war did not affect their
calculations. Most of them were cosmopolitan financiers, and, being men of no
country, it was natural that they should not regard with much compunction the
risk of a war which might involve the ruin of the whole of South Africa, and
might plunge England into a struggle, the end of which no one could foresee.

The control of the South African Press gave the capitalists an enormous
advantage. It was the policy of Mr. Rhodes and the Rand leaders to buy -up the
established newspapers in Cape Colony, Natal, and the Transvaal, or to found
others, in order that their political views might be promulgated. Editors were
appointed and instructed to press for reforms, especially for the removal of the
present burden of taxation and for the better regulation of native labour. In
order that these demands might be supported and that the public both in Eng-
land and in South Africa might be informed of the enormities of the Transvaal
Government, every grievance was exaggerated, and petty acts of misconduct
on the part of the Boers were magnified into gross outrages on British subjects.
It is not too much to say that during the nine months before the outbreak of
the war the South African Press became a manufactory of outrages. No story
was too absurd or too improbable to be printed with an appropriate com-
mentary; and passions were excited to a dangerous point.

It is also to be noticed that the editors of the newspapers owned by the
capitalists were in many cases the South African correspondents of the great
London newspapers. Each outrage, therefore, served a double purpose. It
inflamed public opinion in South Africa, and it was telegraphed over, with
indignant protests, by the South African editors to the English Press, where
its recital prepared the minds of the public for Mr. Chamberlain's diplomacy.

The next development of the situation was the successful attempt of the
mining leaders to secure the adhesion of the Imperial officials in Cape Colony.
In many cases such support had been long secured. There is probably no country
in the world in which "influence" plays so powerful a part as in South Africa.
The natural instinct of loyalty and nationality, the resentful memory, still acute,
of the "surrender" of 1881, and the social power which can be exerted by rich
men who will allow no obstacle to frustrate their ambitions, were sufficient to
predispose the English officials in favour of the demands of the capitalists. The
latter were able to employ all the arguments of patriotism to support the claims
of finance. They painted in strong colours the intolerable grievances of the
Outlanders, the growing contempt of the Boers, the dangerous unrest of the
Transvaal, which would certainly bring in its train a corresponding disquietude
in the surrounding colonies. Their editors pictured an England of waning pres-
tige, flouted by a Dutch Republic of 100,000 souls, and exposed to the jeers of a,
scornful world.

The negotiations which had been passing between Mr. Chamberlain and
the Boer Government since the Jameson Raid had therefore little practical
result. Suspicion and misunderstanding were rife on both sides. In 1897 the
Colonial Secretary made a false step which had the most fatal results. In
answer to a despatch from the Transvaal Government, offering to submit the
various points at issue to arbitration, he claimed that it was impossible that a
Suzerain Power should submit to arbitration matters at issue between herself
and her vassal. 1 To those who remember the negotiations' which preceded
the annulment of the Convention of 1881 in favour of the Convention of 1884,
the general claim of Suzerainty must appear preposterous, and it is difficult to
understand by what arguments Mr. Chamberlain could justify the assertion of
such a claim. Nothing can be clearer than that Lord Derby cancelled the

'Bluebook C. 8,721, No. 7, October, 1897.
* See Note, pp. 19-20.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899. 27

preamble of 1881 in which the statement of Suzerainty occurred. The word
itself was crossed through by his pen, and the whole preamble was definitely
omitted. For Mr. Chamberlain to reclaim Suzerainty in the face of such
evidence of its withdrawal was to convict himself either of ignorance or of insin-
cerity. It was, as Sir Edward Clarke declared, a claim "made in defiance of
fact, and a breach of national faith."

Driven from this position, Mr. Chamberlain claimed that Suzerainty was.
though not mentioned in the Convention of 1884, carried over from the Conven-
tion of 1881 into the second Convention. Such a claim. can be justified only by
a quibble which to the ordinary mind seems not only foolish but dishonest.
Even if the claim of Suzerainty could be sustained, it is guite clear
that such Suzerainty related only to the power of the Republic
to make treaties with foreign nations, and that its power is limited by the fourth
article of the second Convention. Even if the word "Suzerainty" had occurred
in the preamble of the second Convention (and as a matter of fact it was care-
fully eliminated by Lord Derby), its use would have afforded no justification
for any interference with the internal politics and arrangements of the Trans-
vaal, and the British Government in several despatches expressed their opinion
that it possessed no such right. 1

The Colonial Secretary, finding that the assertion of this claim had pro-
duced a most unfortunate effect, and finding also that it was impossible to
sustain it in international law, did not press it. But the effect remained, and it
was to the Boers another proof of the intention of the English Ministry to
interfere with their Government and to undermine their independence.

For some time the public heard little of the new Governor-General, and
it was hoped that the grievances of the Outlanders and the suspicions of the
Boers were being allayed by mutual consideration. Sir Alfred Milner, to whom
the friends of peace looked with eager hopes, returned to England in 1898, and
his interviews with Mr. Chamberlain evidently resulted in instructions from the
British Government to take strong measures and to insist with firmness and, if
necessary, with menace, on the removal of grievances and the necessity of
reform. When Sir Alfred Milner returned to South Africa it was easy to see
that his new instructions were likely to be carried out to the letter. He seemed
like a man determined to provoke a quarrel. His attitude to the Dutch in Cape
Colony became critical and even unfriendly.* Soon he threw himself, without
reserve, into the arms of the Loyalist party. He listened to their advice, and
in his despatches quoted their journals as oracles of colonial wisdom. He
eagerly snatched at the tittle-tattle of officials and Loyalists, and embodied their
gossip in his letters to the Colonial Office. Sir Alfred Milner's "diplomatic"
correspondence with the Transvaal Ministry was becoming more embittered,
and in the beginning of 1899 the situation was evidently one of tension and
growing danger. On the one hand, the Cape Dutch resented the partisan
attitude of the Governor-General, while the Transvaal Boers held firmly to the
belief that he was, in conjunction with the capitalist conspirators of Johannes-
burg, preparing new methods of sapping the independence of the Transvaal.
On the other hand, the English in Johannesburg were humiliated by the failure
of the Jameson Raid, and irritated by the non-removal of their grievances; while
the Loyalists in Cape Colony and Natal, moved by sympathy with fellow-

1 See Mr. Chamberlain's express statements in his speeches of February 13 and April 12,
1896. Even under the first Convention Lord Kimberley declared that "entire freedom of
action will be accorded to the Transvaal Government" apart from the rights "expressly
reserved to the Suzerain power."

* Comp. the letter of the Cape Town correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, published
July 27, 1899, and the statement by Mr. James Molteno, M.L.A., as to Sir Alfred's avowed
determination to "break the dominion of Afrikanderdom." These words the Governor has
officially repudiated, but they express his clear and declared policy.

28 PEACE OR WAR.

Englishmen, suspicious of Dutch ambitions, and maddened by the ferocious
incitements of the capitalist newspapers, were urging Sir Alfred Milner to make
fresh and stronger demands. They assured him and the English Ministry that
the Boers had become lazy and effete, that their military system was antiquated
and useless, that their older men had forgotten and their younger men did not
know how to handle the rifle. The Boers, they repeated, would yield to
pressure, and certainly to a display of force. They were cowards and corrupt,
and at the firm touch of Mr. Chamberlain's hand the whole rotten edifice of
Transvaal misgovernment would fall to the ground.

At the beginning of 1899 Sir Alfred Milner had openly undertaken the cham-
pionship of the Outlanders, and in March a petition was presented to the Queen,
through him, signed by over 21,000 British residents, reciting their grievances
<and praying Her Majesty to intervene for their removal. A counter-petition,
signed by as many Outlanders, expressing themselves satisfied with their position,
was presented to the Transvaal Government. Probably a large number of signa-
tures were obtained on either side by bribery, and it would be wise not to attach
decisive importance to either petition.

It is undeniable that many of the grievances were vexatious, and that a wise
government would have removed them. But the Transvaal Government was not
a wise one. It was obstinate, narrow, and to a certain extent corrupt. The
municipal administration of Jahannesburg was inefficient, and there were numer-
ous petty burdens which were both irritating and unnecessary. As a matter of
fact, the majority of the Outlanders did not desire the franchise, per se; and a large
number would not have taken it. They asked for it in order that they might,
by pressure in the Volksraad, be able to remove some of the minor grievances
which weighed upon them in their daily life. Those of the Outlanders who
Jcared nothing for the franchise and only wanted to make money under an
efficient administration were driven to agitate for a franchise which they despised.
The chief grievances of the Outlanders were therefore such as might have been
removed by any clear-sighted Government with a business capacity. It was
absurd for the President to say that the Outlanders need not come unless they
liked, or that they knew what to expect when they did come. He was trying to
make the best of two worlds, to get all that he could out of the Outlanders and
to refuse them the privileges which most civilised States would have granted
them. He was unwilling to learn the lessons of history, and to recognise the
fact that misgovernment is generally more fatal to the governor than to the
governed.

On the other hand, those who will take the trouble to put themselves in
President Kruger's place will admit that he might reasonably fear trouble from the
sudden admission to the franchise of a large number of Outlanders, many of whom
had openly avowed their hope that the British flag would again fly over Pretoria.
The situation, in short, was made the worst of on both sides, the Outlanders
showing no consideration for the difficulties of a small State confronted by a
perplexing problem, and the Boer Government failing to realise the danger of
delay in solving that problem. It is impossible to acquit President Kruger of
a very considerable share in the responsibility for the events which preceded and
followed the Conference and for the hostilities which ensued. But if we are to
apportion the responsibility, it is difficult not to assign the greater weight of it
'to the English negotiators, or to deny that Mr. Chamberlain's diplomacy was
either ignorant or insincere. He had a good case, but he preferred to spoil it
by over-statement, by a want of proportion, and by an apparently wilful ignorance.

That the general administration of the South African Republic was faulty
and below the standard of some European countries is true. But it was a little
State, and it has been very poor. The administration of justice was good, and
the educational system was advancing swiftly. The Transvaal Government was
able to point out to Mr. Chamberlain that though the gold industry was heavily

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899.

taxed, at all events the burden of taxation was much lighter in the Transvaal
than in the territories of the Chartered Company, where the mines were liable to
be taxed by a royalty of 50 per cent., or even in England, where the small amount
of gold produced in Wales some years ago was taxed by a royalty of 25 per cent.
The taxation in the Transvaal was not more than 5 per cent, on admitted profits,
or about one-seventieth of the total value of the annual output. In like manner,
when Mr. Chamberlain complained of the excessive cost of the necessities of
life, the Transvaal Secretary met his statement by the crushing rejoinder that
whereas in the Transvaal the duties on bread stuffs were only about "j\ per cent.,
the duties imposed in Cape Colony were at least 30 per cent. He also pointed
out that the charges of the Netherlands Railway and the heavy price of dynamite
had been considerably reduced.

On May 5, 1899, Sir A. Milner sent to Mr. Chamberlain a long and sensa-
tional cablegram, in which he set forth the grievances of the Outlanders, the
necessity of a reform in the Transvaal franchise, and the intolerable position of
Englishmen, who were treated as "helots." He demanded from the Queen's
Government "a striking proof" of their paramount power in South Africa.

On May 10th Mr. Chamberlain, in the course of a despatch to Sir Alfred
Milner, laid before the Transvaal Government his opinion of the political situation
and called for a removal of the grievances of which the Outlanders complained.
He suggested that a meeting should be arranged between President Kruger and
Ithe High Commissioner in order that the situation might be discussed "in a
Conciliatory spirit." The invitation was accepted by the President, and a con-
ference was held at Bloemfontein on May 31st.

The legal position of the British Government was a somewhat difficult one.
In the first place, the Convention of 1884 entitled her to complain if any articles
of that Convention had been broken to the prejudice of her subjects, and she
had the right to remedy such contravention by force. But it is clear that most
of the grievances of which the Outlanders complained did not come under the
scope of any of the articles of that Convention. They were vexatious, and it
js possible that the burdens laid on the mining industry were too heavy. Life '
land property, however, were practically as safe in Johannesburg as in London;
and it was somewhat ludicrous that capitalists who were making millions out
of gold mines, and were living in Corinthian luxury at Johannesburg, that traders
and miners who were making money and earning wages which enabled them to
live in comfort, should complain of the intolerable burdens which a corrupt Govern-
ment imposed upon them.

The only title which England possessed was the right which any nation
possesses of protesting against a state of unrest at its very gates. If political or
social agitation were to assume an acute form on the French frontier of Germany,
and were to threaten similar unrest in a German province, the German Govern-
ment would be quite within its rights in protesting against the continuance of
such a state of affairs. It would earnestly counsel the French Government to
take measures, not only for its own safety, but for the safety of its neighbors;
and if the French Government, through apathy or impotence, were to allow a con-
tinuance of anarchy, the German Ministers would be entitled to take such measures
for self-defence as seemed to them necessary.

In the same way, the English Government were entitled to protest against a
state of affairs in the Transvaal which were productive of unrest, and which
threatened to produce an agitation dangerous not only to the interests of the
South African Republic, but to peace and good feeling in the adjoining English

1 The importance of the Edgar case has been ludicrously exaggerated. The facts are
simple. Edgar, an English Outlander, had quarrelled with another Outlander, and had
struck him blows so severe that he died. Edgar was pursued into his house by the police, and
attacking them with a life-preserver, was by them, in self-defence, shot. It was an unfortunate
incident, but to call it murder is foolish.

30 PEACE OR WAR.

territories. How far the English Government were justified in following up their
protests by military action, whether their vague rights as to the paramount power
entitled them to make war upon the Transvaal if their protests were unheeded,
is a question which probably most men will answer in accordance with their
political or racial sympathies. It was, however, pre-eminently a question of pru-
dence, and it was absolutely necessary for the British Government, in making
such protests and following them up by energetic action, to remember that it
was a great Power dealing with a small Power, and that this small Power had
been recently and unjustly attacked by English soldiers and officials. Above all,
England had to remember that the great attraction of the Transvaal was its gold,
and that any attack made by the Empire on the Boers would be at once and natu-
rally interpreted by every foreign nation as a move for the possession of gold mines,
rather than for the redress of grievances. It was her manifest duty and interest to
see that she did not confirm the suspicions of her malicious rivals. There was, too,
it must be confessed, some lack of humour in Mr. Chamberlain's demand. We
who, before the great Reform Bill, had taxed our own citizens of Manchester and
Birmingham without giving them representation, were demanding of the Trans-
vaal Government at the point of the sword the extension of its franchise to a
cosmopolitan band of adventurers. British Columbia has drawn to it a sudden
influx of American miners. Would the American Government be justified in our
eyes if they demanded from them with threats the franchise of the Canadian
Dominion ?

One thing is certain: England had no right, either by the Convention of
1884 or by any claim of paramountcy, to insist on a reform of the Transvaal
franchise. She therefore took up a position which it was extremely difficult to
sustain, 1 for if a demand for the reform of the franchise could be urged by England
only as friendly counsel, it is clear that she could not morally or legally enforce
her counsel by a threat of war or by war itself.

In spite of these obvious considerations, and perhaps because they could not
sustain some of their other important criticisms, the British Government deter-
mined to make a reform of the franchise their specific demand and the test of their
paramountcy. But in pursuance of the haphazard methods which distinguished
Mr. Chamberlain's diplomacy, no clear statement of the British demands was laid
before the Boer Government, and no basis of discussion at the Conference of
Bloemfontein was arranged. It was reasonable to suppose that Sir Alfred Milner
and President Kruger were to negotiate concerning the points of difference and
difficulty, but Mr. Chamberlain had determined that only one matter should be
discussed, and that nothing less than an absolute surrender on the part of the Boers
on this point should be accepted.

As we have seen, it was impossible for an alien to obtain the franchise under
a residence of fourteen years, and the High Commissioner demanded at the Con-
ference that a law should be passed, enabling the Outlanders to become full citizens
after a residence of five years. President Kruger, with that genius for bargaining
which has always distinguished the Dutch, offered a term of seven vears. But
Sir Alfred Milner refused, in language the reverse of "conciliatory," to discuss

1 "We did not claim, and never have claimed, the right to interfere in the internal affairs
of the Transvaal. The rights of our action under the Convention are limited to the offering
of friendly counsel, in the rejection of which, if it is not accepted, we must be quite willing
to acquiesce." Mr. Chamberlain, May 8, 1896.

"A war in South Africa would be one of the most serious wars which could possibly
be waged. It would be in the nature of a civil war. It would be a long war, a bitter war,
and a costly war. As I have pointed out, it would leave the embers of a strife which I
believe generations would hardly be long enough to extinguish. To go to war with Presi
dent Kruger, to force upon him reforms in the internal affairs of his State, in which Secre
taries of State, standing in this place, have repudiated all right of interference — that wouM
be a course of action as immoral as it would have been unwise."

Mr. Chamberlain, August, 1896.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899. 31

the matter any further or to enter into a consideration of any other points in
dispute. The Conference was abruptly closed.

The chief responsibility for the failure of this Conference must fall upon the
English Government, which had laid down no basis of discussion, and had sent its
envoy into the Conference with instructions to make a demand which could not
be justified under the Convention, and to retire from the Conference if that demand
were not at once granted.

The Boers are by nature suspicious bargainers. They enjoy haggling over a
matter which most Englishmen would settle in five minutes, and in the present
instance it is only reasonable to allow that they had substantial gruonds for their
suspicion. The whole history of South Africa, from 1802, seen through their
eyes, was one long narrative of the duplicity and oppression of the British. They
recalled their conquest in 1802, the injustice they had suffered at the hands of
English officials, and their long and lonely trek into the desert. They repeated to
.themselves countless acts of violence ; how Natal, which they had conquered from
the natives, had been taken from them; how their country had been annexed
against the wishes of the vast majority of their nation ; how the solemn guarantees
of representative government had been broken by the English. Above all, they
remembered the Jameson Raid of 1895, the complicity of the British officials and of
a Colonial Prime Minister, and the attempt which Mr. Chamberlain made to
impose upon them the status of a vassal.

The Conference having thus failed, the situation was obviously more danger-
ous than before. Such a failure was disastrous for the cause of peace, and it
made the gulf between the two parties wider than ever. But it was unhappily a
source of pleasure to the agitators in Johannesburg and in Cape Colony. They had
now come to the conclusion that further negotiation was futile, and that the knot
^could be loosened only by the sword. Sir Alfred Milner, inspired by his con-
viction that the Boers would shrink before a firm and consistent pressure, urged
an unyielding policy and a display of force. Every misunderstanding and check
in the negotiations was welcomed by the organs of the capitalists in South
Africa and in England.

When the English Ministry found that they were likely to be involved in a
war for which they could give no rational cause, they were forced to seek other
grounds. They manufactured the fable of a Dutch conspiracy. They asserted
and they encouraged the Press to argue that a fight for supremacy in South Africa
had been long "inevitable," that it was President Kruger's ambition to make of
South Africa a Dutch Republic, and "to drive the English into the sea." The
negotiations, they said, had all along been unreal, and the real question was
whether the Dutch or the English were to have the upper hand in South Africa.

It is not necessary to discuss at great length a statement which rests on no
evidence. It is true that the statement has been made again and again ; and men
who repeat an assertion to themselves a hundred times, at length begin to believe
in its authenticity. Here it is only necessary to say that a charge of such tre-
mendous import needs to be supported by convincing evidence. Of such evidence
there is no sign. Those who bring the charge, when asked for proof, make it
a fresh grievance against the Dutch that they are cunning enough to conceal every
trace of universal conspiracy. Of documentary proof, or of relevant testimony
there is not a shred.

On the contrary, the evidence is on the other side. As we have said
before, up to the year 1895 the Dutch had gradually grown more ready to accept
the rule and customs of the English. Mr. Rhodes, English of the English, was
supported by the Afrikander Bond. The Cape Assembly had voted a considerable
sum for Imperial purposes. The narrow policy of the Transvaal rulers had alien-
ated the sympathy of the Cape Dutch, who resented the decision of Mr. Kruger
to employ officials from Holland rather than kinsmen from Cape Colony in the
public service of the Transvaal. The leaders of the Dutch Afrikander party had

32 PEACE OR WAR.

strongly urged upon Mr. Kruger the advisability of making concessions to the
Outlanders, and it is clear that if they wished for war they were adopting the
worst methods of hastening it. The President of the Free State and his advisers
were also urgent in the cause of peace. It is surely no proof of a Dutch conspiracy
jthat after the Jameson Raid the Raads of the two Republics urged upon the
British Government the advisability of placing under the direct rule of Great
Britain the territory of the Chartered Company.

The theory of a gigantic Boer conspiracy received a very simple test and a very
ample refutation in December. After the three reverses of Stormberg, Magersfon-
tein, and Colenso, the English troops were absolutely at the mercy of the Boers and
their Dutch sympathisers. If the Dutch in the Colony had risen, the position of our
armies would have been precarious in the extreme, and in a few months the Dutch
could have swept the whole Colony from end to end. But with the exception
of a few hundred rebels on the frontier, and in spite of the strong sympathy which
blood brings, the Dutch remained passive and peaceful.

It may be that some of the Dutch had entertained dreams of a United South
African Republic, in which the Dutch element would be preponderant both in
population and political influence. But there is no evidence to show that such
dreams had ever inspired a considerable fraction of the race with a desire to break
away from English rule, and it would be as absurd to mistake the bombast of a few
vapouring Dutchmen for the sober ideals of a nation as it would be to mistake the
.theories and menaces of Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett for the settled policy of the
majority of Englishmen.

The Boers themselves had nothing to gain from the war and everything to
lose. They disliked war, as they disliked everything that took them from the
tranquil life of their farms. It was only the overmastering belief that England had
designs upon their independence which induced them to take up arms in defence
of their country.

The statement that the Boers had been secretly arming for many years before
the Raid is disproved by numerous witnesses. Colonel Younghusband, who was
in Johannesburg in December, 1895, states that the Boers had no serious arma-
ment ; and Major White, who took part in the Raid, and had made secret inquiries,
has given a list of the few guns possessed by the Boers in 1895. Dr. Jameson
himself made a similar statement * at Kimberley a few months ago. A report on
•the military resources of the Boer Republics was compiled by the Intelligence
Department of the English War Office in June, 1899, and portions of it, the authen-
ticity of which has not been questioned, have been published. This official report
states that —

"Of the enormous quantity of rifles now in possession of the South African
Republics, only some 13,500 Martini-Henry rifles were in the country before the
Jameson Raid. The whole of the remainder have been purchased since that date
'm England, France, Germany, and Belgium" (p. 11). The report also states that
in January, 1896, the strength of the Staats Artillerie was nine officers and one
hundred men, with a reserve of fifty men, but that "immediately after the Raid
the corps was increased in strength to about four hundred," with a larger reserve.

Further proposals followed, but the despatches on both sides were awkwardly
worded, and serious misunderstandings arose. Every day increased the dangers
of the situation. The demand for a speedy and final surrender was being urged
on the Transvaal Government. The English Government did not desire war,
but they determined to enforce their demands by war. It is clear from the
statements of Lord Wolseley in the House of Lords, in March, 1901, that war
was regarded as likely, and a definite plan of campaign was in June, 1899, laid

1 "Apart from the rifles in the hands of the burghers, the whole armoury of the Trans-
vaal was contained in the so-called Pretoria Fort, guarded by, he believed, three Staats
Artillerie men, and its sole protection a broken-down corrugated iron fence."

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899. 33

before the English Ministry, by which the subjugation of the two Republics was
to be effected by November of that year. The Cabinet was driven by the suc-
cessive errors of the Colonial Secretary into a position from which retreat on its
part became impossible without humiliation ; and a violent end could be avoided
only by the surrender of the Transvaal Ministry.

In July the Transvaal Government offered a seven years' retrospective fran-
chise, and Mr. Chamberlain was inclined to accept the concession. But the Loyal-
ists and Sir Alfred Milner were inflexible.

Finally the Transvaal Government offered a five years' franchise on certain
conditions, the most important of which was that the British Government should
make no further attempt to interfere in the domestic affairs of the Transvaal. The
conditions were reasonable, but the prospect of a compromise was displeasing to Sir
Alfred Milner, to the South African Loyalists, and to the advocates of violence
in England. Sir Alfred Milner cabled a demand for "extreme measures," and the
Press urged that the concessions should be rejected. Mr. Chamberlain, yielding to
;the clamor of the war party, appeared, in an ambiguous despatch, to decline the
terms and the conditions. How ambiguous the despatch was may be judged from
the fact that the Boer Government interpreted it as a refusal of their offer ; while
the Colonial Secretary regarded it as a qualified acceptance. 1 By a studied refer-
ence to the Conventions rather than to the Convention which gave England her
right to interfere, he again put forward the claim of Suzerainty which had tacitly
been allowed to lapse. Shortly after sending this despatch, Mr. Chamberlain
delivered a violent speech at Highbury in which he compared Mr. Kruger to
a sponge, out of whom concessions had to be squeezed. Such a speech could
only lead the Boers to think that Mr. Chamberlain was set on war. On September
1 2th he telegraphed that his Government must now "reserve to themselves the right
to reconsider the situation de novo, and to formulate their own proposals for a
final settlement," which proposals they would communicate to the High Com-
missioner in a later despatch.

This despatch was in essence an ultimatum, and as such the Boer Government
regarded it. In the meantime the English Ministers summoned Parliament for
the granting of supplies, the reserves were called out, an army corps mobilised,
and a large number of transports were chartered to convey troops to South Africa.
The days passed, and the Boer Government could obtain no definite reply to
their inquiries as to the meaning of Mr. Chamberlain's last despatch. The Boers,
irritated by the concentration of a large force of English troops on the Natal
border, and learning that an army corps was embodied and ready to sail, deter-
mined to take the only step which a weak nation can take against a great one
threatening force. It issued an ultimatum, couched in peremptory terms, claiming
that Her Majesty's troops should be withdrawn. Mr. Chamberlain refused to
acknowledge the Boer ultimatum, and hostilities commenced on October 9th.

The Boer ultimatum made escape from war impossible ; it was a despatch
which no Government could accept. But though its terms were arrogant, it would

1 Mr. Chamberlain : The hon. member harps on the word acceptance. He must remem-
ber he asked me the question what we intended. I myself should have thought that the
Boers would have taken it as an acceptance, but I suppose it may be properly described as
a qualified acceptance. We did not accept everything, but we accepted at least nine-tenths
of the whole.

Sir E. Clarke: Really this becomes more and more sad. (Loud Opposition cheers.)
It is dreadful to think of a country of this kind entering upon a war, a crime against civilisa-
tion, when this sort of thing has been going on. (Opposition cheers.) Why, in the very next
sentence the right hon. gentleman says: "It is on this ground that Her Majesty's Govern-
ment have been compelled to regard the last proposal of the Government of the South Afri-
can Republic as unacceptable in the form in which it has been presented."

Mr. Chamberlain : In the form.

Sir E. Clarke: It is a matter of form? -

Mr. Chamberlain: Yes.

{House of Commons, Oct., 1899.)

34 PEACE OR WAR.

be unfair to say that they were in their essence unreasonable. Mr. Chamber-
lain, in his despatch of September 22nd, had broken off negotiations and had told
the Boer Ministers that he would now formulate his demands and his scheme for
a final settlement of the issues. It was impossible for the Boers to mistake the
significance of the English despatches and our warlike preparations. They
could only mean that England had determined to make peremptory demands,
and to back up these demands with a large army and a declaration of war.
There were, in fact, two ultimatums, the first one from Mr. Chamberlain, con-
taining a menace that warlike measures would be shortly taken; the second from
the Boers, who were determined not to await the advent of an overwhelming
force. The Transvaal doubtless made a diplomatic mistake in issuing its ulti-
matum, but the step was one which would probably have been taken by any
other States in the civilised world, similarly placed.

The Boers had made concessions which were, in fact, genuine, and substan-
tial. Mr. Chamberlain had rejected these concessions, and had threatened, in
no ambiguous phrase, new demands. These demands he refused to disclose
until an English Army Corps was ready to enforce them. Would any State wait
patiently while hostile forces were gathering to crush its independence? It is
clear, therefore, that war was forced upon the Transvaal Government, and the
chief responsibility of the tragedy must fall upon the English Ministers. 1

There were, as is always the case, grave faults on both sides. On the one
hand, the Boer Government allowed its suspicions to prevent the frank and full
acceptance of the English demands which they were afterwards willing to grant.
On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain, who neither by education nor tempera-
ment is fitted to carry on a delicate diplomacy, despised the position and the
resources of the Transvaal. He was unable or unwilling to make his meaning
clear, and he adopted an attitude, a method of argument, and an insulting form
of words, which were unpalatable to a proud and stubborn people, and which no
free Colony of ours could have borne for a day. He thought, and he assured
the Opposition, that the Transvaal would yield to pressure; and he honestly
believed that the despatch of an army corps would bring the Boers to their
senses. In spite of the warnings of those who knew South Africa better than he
did, he refused to believe that the Transvaal would resist, and that the Free
State would help her sister. He had determined to crush the Boers and sooner
or later to bring them under the British flag. Of a diplomacy, conducted in
such a spirit, war was obviously an "inevitable" result. The farewell words of
Sir Alfred Milner at Cape Town on May 7, 1901, are significant of the aims of the
two statesmen, and prove that no concessions on the part of the Boers would
have availed."

It is certain that even at a late period of the negotiations there was little to
prevent the success of the diplomacy, and it seemed that negotiations were
broken off because President Kruger would not yield all that Mr. Chamberlain
demanded. Mr. Chamberlain himself allowed in the House of Commons that
of the final proposals of the Boers, nine-tenths were satisfactory to him, and

1 Neither is the opinion of some of the schoolmen to be received, that a war cannot
justly be made, but upon a precedent injury or provocation; for there is no question but a
just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.

Francis Bacon, Essay on Empire.

'Flinching from no sacrifice and turning a deaf ear to people whose endeavour was ever
tending to confine and smother the one cardinal point in a mass of side issues, the British
people had gone straight upon the way on which they had set out from the first, to makt
an end of the business once and for all, to make South Africa one country under one
Hag and with one system of law and government.

Sir Alfred Milner at Cape Town, May 7, 1901.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1896-1899. 35

that the other one-tenth was not worth fighting for. 1 His diplomatic methods
were so inept that he was obliged to allow in the House of Commons that,
though he meant to accept the Boer proposal, he sent a reply which could be
interpreted as a refusal. His despatches were wanting in frankness, and several
of them contained a hint or menace of further demands which would follow when
the points under immediate discussion had been gained.

Mr. Bryce justly points out that the British Government went into the war
without having formulated a casus belli. They had not demanded redress of
the grievances of which the Outlanders complained, and they could not make
the restricted franchise a cause for war. They had not presented any demands,
but had made vague menaces. They had thereby exposed their country to the
malicious comment of foreign nations, and had brought on a war without any
definite grounds.

The Transvaal Ministers, therefore, remembering the attempt which had
been made upon their independence, in which the Colonial Office, justly or
unjustly, had been held to be an accomplice, sincerely believed that Mr. Cham-
berlain's diplomacy was empty and insincere, and that it was both an attempt to
assert a Suzerainty which they denied, and a pretext to gain time for the prepa-
ration of an overwhelming military force.

The attitude of the South African and English Presses during the negotia-
tions had been significant. The capitalists, through their editors and the South
African League and the Outlander Council of Johannesburg, added new
demands to the old ones, and openly expressed their hope that the negotiations
would be vain and that force would take the place of conciliation. The final
failure of diplomacy was hailed with relief in England; and, just as George III.
welcomed the outbreak of hostilities in America as the close of an intolerable
position, so many of the leaders of public opinion- in South Africa and in Eng-
land expressed their satisfaction that the negotiations had failed, and that the
sword would now have the opportunity of doing what the pen and the tongue
had failed to effect.'

1 On October 25, 1899, the following conversation took place in the House of Commons : —

Mr. Courtney : My right hon. friend sent an answer intended to be an acceptance. (An
Hon. Member: No, no!) My right hon. friend is quite equal to denying my statement if
it is wrong.

Mr. Chamberlain: Oh, well, then, I will deny it. I did not think it worth while to
interrupt my right hon. friend because he must know that I have said over and over again a
"qualified acceptance," and he always omits the adjective.

Mr. Courtney: You said nine-tenths. Is a question as to one-tenth worth war? Tell
us what the tenth is.

Mr. Chamberlain : I do not think it was worth war.

Mr. Courtney : Tell us what the one-tenth was.

Mr. Chamberlain : Why did not President Kruger give way?

Mr. Courtney: Because you did not explain the despatch. It was never explained to
him. The whole point is, Are we to go to war on the tenth part? As to that, history will
judge. I am too confident, unfortunately, of what the result will be.

* Mr. Chamberlain has more than once expressed his pride in the war, and has stated
that if, as his opponents asserted, he was the author of the war, such an exploit would be "a
feather in his cap."

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAMPAIGN.

IT is not necessary for our purpose to narrate in any detail the events of the-
Boer war. It falls naturally into three divisions. In the first the Boer
invaders were everywhere successful, and, inflicting on us three defeats in
one week, might have carried their victorious arms to the sea but for a lack of
enterprise natural to a citizen force and for the heroic defence of the garrison
of Ladysmith. The second is the period of our success to the occupation of
Pretoria. The third, and the most painful of all, is the period of stubborn and
tedious warfare which has lasted, without any considerable success on our side,
from August, 1900, to the present time.

The first period of the war was a lamentable one for our armies. It would
be ungenerous to criticise the strategy of Sir Redvers Buller, for it was thrust
on him by circumstances, and was not his free choice, and the force which was
entrusted to him was utterly inadequate to its task. The expectation held out
to the public by a thoughtless Press and shared by a thoughtless Government,,
that General Buller's army corps would be able to advance through the
Republics, to sweep aside any resistance that the Boers might offer, to occupy
Pretoria and Bloemfontein, and after a few easy successes to dictate terms of.
peace, is, in the light of our later experience, seen to be ludicrous, and can only
be compared with the parallel hope of Mr. Rhodes in 1895, that Dr. Jameson,
with his five hundred troopers, would overthrow the Republic.

The mistakes which General Buller made were due to political misdirection
and to political necessity rather than to any miscalculation on his own part.
The beginning of the mischief in Natal was the Government's promise to defend
the Colony with the whole force of the Empire. This promise held Sir George
White to the defence of Dundee, and this in its turn made the siege of Lady-
smith inevitable. If the cry of Ladysmith could have been resisted — and it could
not — the promise would still have compelled General Buller in honour to go to
Natal. The knots in the fatal entanglement of Ladysmith were thus tied by the
politicians, not by the soldiers. It was the same in Kimberley. Mr. Cecil
Rhodes was besieged in the town, quarrelling with the military officers in com-
mand. Needs must be, therefore, that a body of English troops should at once
set out to its relief. The disaster of Magersfontein was the result. The Min-
istry had rushed into war without making adequate preparations for the defence
of its own frontier in Cape Colony, and Kimberley and Ladysmith between them
had deprived Sir William Gatacre of his due share of the army corps. He
attempted, with inadequate forces, to drive back the Boer invaders. The
tragedy of Stormberg was the result.

The second period of the war began in January, 1900, when at last the
Ministers became alive to the danger of the situation. Lord Roberts and Lord
Kitchener, with an enormous force, which ultimately increased our army to
250,000 men. were sent out to retrieve the errors of our politicians rather than the
mistakes of our generals. Then followed a series of successes. Kimberley and
Ladysmith were relieved, Cronje's force surrendered, and, by a rapid movement,
Lord Roberts was able to occupy Bloemfontein without much serious resistance.

The Government had now its golden opportunity. We had driven the
Boers from our territories, we had avenged the insult of their ultimatum, one-

THE CAMPAIGN. 37

of their capitals was in our hands and the other would soon be at our mercy.
Their army was in flight, and their citizens were demoralised.

Our Ministry professedly went to war either to relieve the grievances of the
Outlanders or to secure for them the rights of the franchise, or to assert British
supremacy in South Africa. We did not go to war in the first instance to annex
the two Republics or to take from them their gold mines. But whatever was
the motive of the Ministers, there was, after the fall of Bloemfontein, no reason
to doubt that they had secured each and all of the possible objects of the war.
It was therefore the duty of the conqueror to impose certain terms on the con-
quered, and it was in accordance with the dictates both of reason and humanity
that these terms should be possible ones.

The two Boer Presidents saw, after the capture of Cronje and the fall of
Bloemfontein and the relief of Ladysmith, that it was no longer possible for the
Boers to contend on equal terms with Great Britain. They therefore, in a joint
telegram to Lord Salisbury, sued for peace, and begged to know what terms the
English Government proposed. It would have been right and reasonable of the
English Ministry to have answered this appeal by laying down certain terms
which, though they might have been severe, would have preserved to the Boers
their national life, their laws and customs and representative institutions. They
might have demanded that the armaments which the Boers had accumulated
during the last few years should be given up, that the grievances of the Out-
landers should be at once and wholly abolished, and that an indemnity should be
paid; nor would any reasonable man have opposed the suggestion that the two
Republics should pass as protected States under the supremacy of the British
flag.

When a State is at war with another State, it is not usual for the conqueror,
even when his enemy has declared war upon him, to annex the whole of his
territories and to declare that in the future his enemy shall cease to exist as a
nation. There is, except the case of Poland, no example in modern history
of the policy which we have to our sorrow pursued. But the English Ministers,
puffed up by success and urged forward by the passionate outcry of their igno-
rant advisers in South Africa and at home, refused to listen to the Boer appeal.
Lord Salisbury told the Presidents that there could be no discussion of terms,
that the two Republics must make an unconditional submission and must accept
whatever fate the English Ministry accorded them. He added further that no
result would be satisfactory to England which left to the Boers a shred of inde-
pendence.

The inevitable result followed. The Boers were made desperate by Lord
Salisbury's threats. They saw that they were fighting, not against defeat by an
ordinary foe, not against disarmament, not against the demands of the mine-
owners; they were fighting for their national existence. The English Ministers
and English public must have been whollv blind not only to the dictates of com-
mon sense, but also to the traditions of their own glorious history, if they did
not see that their enemy would fight desperately and would be right in fighting
to the death for the noblest of all causes.

But when passion and prejudice obscure the vision, it is almost useless to
ask men to see facts as they are. The evil genius which has inspired our Gov-
ernment from the beginning still tracked its footsteps, and the opportunity was
lost. From the infatuated policy of the English Ministers, difficulties and dis-
asters followed thick and fast. The enemy, who had before this shown signs of
wavering, at once grew firm and unanimous in their determination. Shortly
after the rejection of the Presidents' overtures, Sanna's Post made De Wet
famous. Already at Bloemfontein the difficulties of the army were so great that
nearly two months went by — months of mishaps and regrettable incidents —
before a further advance to Pretoria was possible. Again the advance was suc-
cessful. Lord Roberts rushed his army through the northern part of the Free

38 PEACE OR WAR.

State, still leaving a population in his flanks and rear unsubdued and hostile.

Again the error, we may assume, was rather political than military. Sir
Alfred Milner has confessed in his despatch of February 6, 1901, that the great
object of Lord Roberts was to save the gold mines, which, as a matter of fact,
were in little danger. It must be remembered that Lord Roberts has never
before served against a white foe, and that all his triumphs have been won
against the semi-barbarous peoples of India and Afghanistan. But he is a
brilliant soldier and he recognised the risks of his rash strategy. He knew that
among the rules of warfare none are more important than those which warn a
general not to lose his line of operations, to keep his troops well together, not
to march about in small bodies or to hold small garrisons at great distances
from his centre. To proceed in a haphazard way without a proper centre, and
to risk the loss of his communications, or to risk the constant breaking of those
communications, is in Napoleon's opinion to be guilty of a crime. That master
of war advised his generals always to place their troops in such a way that, what-
ever the enemy might do, they might be able to have their forces united in a few
<lays. Lord Roberts knew all this; but he failed to see that Lord Salisbury's
declaration had completely changed the whole character of the war; that we
were no longer fighting Governments, but a people, and that what we had now
to subdue was not the capitals but the spirit of freedom in the heart of the
individual Boer. There was a time when the occupation of Pretoria might
have ended the war, but that was before Lord Salisbury's declaration.

The consequence was that the rapid march of Lord Roberts and the occu-
pation of Pretoria only involved our army in further difficulties. Our huge force
now found itself in the heart of a hostile country dependent for its very exist-
ence on thousands of miles of railway open to the attacks of an active foe. The
Boers again and again attacked our communications and swooped down upon
isolated posts. Once more De Wet appeared as Nemesis. We had already
annexed the Free State, and the Transvaal was presently to follow; but the
annexation was on paper, and had no effective value until we could occupy the
whole of these territories and until we had defeated, killed or captured the strong
and determined bodies of the enemy who were defying and harassing us.

When the attacks on his flanks and communications began, Lord Roberts
at Pretoria was in an anxious and difficult situation. It was an exact reproduc-
tion of the dangerous position of our army in the American War of Independ-
ence. The Commander-in-Chief had staked almost everything on the chance
of ending the war at Pretoria. For some time he clung to the idea that it was
over, despite the facts. He had rushed through the country in his rear ; instead
of leaving garrisons he had imposed an oath of neutrality on those burghers
who had not gone north with the main Boer army; he had thrown over the
slower methods of formal conquest; and now the country was up in his rear and
on his flanks. The Governments of the two Republics were not unreasonable
in regarding the oath of neutrality as unpatriotic and as taken under compul-
sion, and, therefore, as void; and since the English troops were not able to
occupy the country effectively, it became a regular occurrence for an English
force to leave a town on one day and for a Boer commando on the next day to
appear and force the unfortunate burghers to join it. The weakness 01 our
position deprived us of the power to protect those burghers on whom we had
forced the oath of neutrality. The whole fabric of our military power in South
Africa, hurriedly raised, as we have seen, under complete political misapprehen-
sion, began to crumble at its base. The occupation of Pretoria marked the
climax of our power: from that date it began to ebb and wane.

The spectacle of our unfulfilled hopes and prophecies drove us to the absurd
conclusion that the resistance of the Boers was confined to the scum of the
population or to foreign mercenaries. Our pride refused to allow that the
-entire population of the Republics was united against our wish to make them

THE CAMPAIGN. 39

British citizens. We had deceived ourselves; but anxious to find a scapegoat,
we declared that we had been deceived. And now began the cry for personal
chastisement of the Boers. At first directed only against those, Boers who
had — in the majority of cases, as Lord Roberts has admitted, unwillingly —
violated their oaths of neutrality, our indignation gradually became more and
more collective, until it threatened to visit all Boers without distinction.

Bewildered and embarrassed, Lord Roberts began to wage war by procla-
mations. It was perhaps the most fatal mistake of all, and again it was political,
not military, in its origin. Many in number and inconsistent in policy, they
proceeded from clemency to sternness and from sternness to clemency. The
earlier proclamations were in accord with the rules of civilised warfare; but the
later ones breathed a spirit of anger and revenge utterly opposed to the views
which the English delegates had put forth at the Hague Conference of 1899.
Sir John Ardagh, at that Conference, had brought in a motion, asserting that it
is the right of the "population of an invaded country to fulfil its duty of opposing
the invaders by all lawful means by the most patriotic resistance." Nothing can
be clearer than this statement, which represented the traditional policy of a free
England, ever ready in its sympathy with the cause of small nations. But in a
proclamation dated from Johannesburg on July 1, 1900, Lord Roberts warns all
the inhabitants of the Orange River Colony who should be found in arms four-
teen days after the date of the proclamation that they would be liable to be dealt
with as rebels and to suffer in person and property accordingly. Lord Roberts
and the Ministers probably argued that, the Orange Free State having
been annexed to the Crown of England, every citizen still opposing the English
army became, by the mere issue of a proclamation, a rebel and a traitor. It is
not necessary to comment further on this proclamation, because on September
1st the Ministers and Lord Roberts acknowledged its illegality and repealed it.'

Other proclamations described the penalities to which the Boers rendered
themselves liable by the continuance of the struggle for independence. It
became the custom first of all to burn farms from which a treacherous attack
was made upon our troops, then to burn all farms within a radius of ten miles
from any point on the railway at which an attack was made by the enemy, then
to confiscate or burn anything which was the property of any Boer fighting for
his country." These measures are harsh and inconsistent with the traditions of
the British army, and nothing has shown more clearly the want of intelligence
on the part of our Ministers and civil and military advisers than this policy of
devastation. If anything has been proved in history, it is that such a policy
cannot be followed up by a free nation fighting another free nation. It might
be pursued by Russia against Central Asian babarians; but we are not Russians,
and England has noble and generous traditions. The same blind fury which
animated Lord North's Ministry and his generals in 1777 has animated our Min-
istry during this unhappy war. We have had no fixed policy, but, like a foolish
mother, we turn from blandishment to menace, and from stripes to caresses.
We forget that which in our reason we should readily allow: that nothing makes
men more irreconcilable than to see their houses burnt, their private property
looted or confiscated, and their women turned out homeless and defenceless.
The devastation was unwise on other grounds. Our great army found itself
tied to the railway, unable to move quickly through a district where many of the

1 Lord Roberts unsuccessfully pursued a similar policy and issued a similar procjamation,
against the Afghans in 1879. His action was severely criticised in a petition signed by
various eminent men, among whom was Mr. J. Chamberlain.

'According to a Parliamentary Paper just issued, the number of farms and houses
burnt in the Republics, from June, 1900. to January, 1901. was 630. The return is obviously
incomplete, and the number must be at least double. Of this number 189 were burnt in
October, and 226 in November, when the war was "over." A large number of the farms
were burnt because the owners were on commando.

40 PEACE OR WAR.

houses had been burnt, much of the food destroyed, and the cattle driven away.
Our columns could not move without large convoys and their mobility was lost.
As our difficulties increased, it became clear to our advisers that their severe
policy was having an effect contrary to their hopes, and by subsequent procla-
mations in November, 1900, the Commander-in-Chief promised that for the
future promiscuous farm-burning should be stopped, while the regulation of
compelling residents to travel in military trains had been long before repealed.

It would be unjust and untrue to charge against the honour of the army the
policy and the scenes of desolation which have been one of the most unfortunate
features of this campaign. The policy had a political rather than a military
inspiration. It was unutterably odious to thousands of our soldiers, and it
increased their disgust with a campaign which was now being carried on by
methods contrary to the high-spirited traditions of the British army. Even
after the horrors of the Indian Mutiny our soldiers spared the farms and villages
of the enemy, and the houses and supplies which a hasty and angry general
might have destroyed, saved many of our columns from distress. We know
that our officers and soldiers are men of generous instincts and chivalrous
demeanour. This war has left us few illusions, but, at all events, let us retain the
faith that our soldiers are just and merciful, that they do not of their own initia-
tive make war on women and children, and that it is no part of a British soldier's
duty or pleasure to lay desolate the houses and towns of the enemy whom he
cannot capture. We must seek the origin of this ruthless policy in the civilian
mind. The same error which appears to have debauched the minds of so many
respectable citizens both in South Africa and in England, and which assured us
that the Boers were cowards who would yield and bandits and murderers wno
must be shot like vermin, doubtless impressed upon our Government that, as
vermin could not be killed until their nests were destroyed, so we should never
conquer the Boers until we laid low their habitations, made their country a
desert, and carried their women and children into captivity. Let us then hold
the army innocent.

It was stated on some authority that before the severe proclamations of Lord
Roberts we had at least one-third of the Free State burghers on our side and
willing to submit. Lord Roberts's change of policy immediately turned the
majority of these men into bitter opponents. Every day increased our difficulties
and hardened the determination of our enemy. Every act of harshness was car-
ried, coloured, and monstrously exaggerated to our Dutch subjects in Cape Colony.
The two Republics were become deserts with blackened farms and ruined towns,
and in Cape Colony the old loyalty towards the English Crown was fast dying out
and was being replaced by a sullen hatred which might burst at any moment into a
dangerous flame. But the path of folly ever leads downward, and, as the dangers
and the difficulties grow, the unfortunate traveller finds that to step back is
impossible and that to grope blindly in the darkness is his only course.

The war on private property failed, as the policy of a rapid advance on the
enemy's capitals had failed. The position of our army was becoming dangerous,
and, though Lord Roberts after a long wait at Pretoria threw out columns and
seized the Delagoa railway, he was unable to advance any substantial distance
north of the railway line. More than half the Transvaal remained untraversed
by our troops, and the main Boer army, with its Commander-in-Chief and the
Ministers of the late Republic, were left free to move about at their will.

At length the Government and Lord Roberts began to understand that they
had completely misunderstood both the character of the Boers and the difficulties
of their own position. The English public, too, grew sensitive about the policy
of devastation in which our premature advance and annexation had involved us ;
and Lord Kitchener, who in the beginning of December, 1900, succeeded Lord
Roberts, was instructed to issue a proclamation by which an amnesty was offered
to all who undertook to surrender. It was promised that there should be no more

THE CAMPAIGN. 41

indiscriminate burning of farms — for indiscriminate it had become, thanks not so
much to the deliberate policy of Lord Roberts as to the series of irreconcilable
proclamations which confused a dozen policies ; and it was further recognised that
we had no right to exact an oath of neutrality and penalties for its violation unless
we offered those who took it adequate protection. As it was impossible to give
this protection to burghers in the country, a new system of refugee camps at
various points on the lines of communication was started.

Into these camps were gathered women and children from the country dis-
tricts, and all the burghers who surrendered voluntarily. In effect, the new plan
was the concentration system of General Weyler in Cuba, with this distinction, that
we undertook the responsibility of feeding the refugees. The advantage of this
system was that it enabled us to distinguish between combatants and non-com-
batants, and to devastate the country outside the refugee camps with a clearer
conscience. But the strain on the railways was greatly increased by the new
responsibility.

Another serious and obvious disadvantage was that, with all the good will in
the world, it was difficult to feed and care for the numerous occupants of these
camps. Hosts of delicate women and children were living under insanitary con-
ditions and on bad or insufficient food, 1 and Lord Kitchener added to the danger
by lowering this poor standard of comfort and placing on reduced rations the
women and children of the burghers who were still in the field against us. 2 Even
under improved conditions the mortality is appalling. Since February, of the 20,000
occupants of these camps the deaths were — men, 41; women, 80; children, 261."
If this system of reconcentration is continued for two years, a considerable portion
of the non-combatant population of the two Republics will be dead. It is hardly
necessary to say that the effects of such a policy if continued will be disastrous to
our good name.

But the third policy of the Government was as unsuccessful as the former two
policies. The Government appears to have been inspired throughout this cam-
paign by the madness which it is said the gods inflict on those whom they intend
to ruin. It was still unable to grasp the difference between unconditional sub-
mission and submission on reasonable and honourable terms. They imagined that to

1 The following is the official report of the Medical Officer : —

"Johannesburg,

"January gth.

"This is to certify that I have carefully examined: (a) a sample of mealie meal num-
bered 1 ; (b) a sample of mealie meal numbered 2; and (c) a sample of sugar numbered 3.

"Sample I is mouldy, contains mite, and is unfit for human consumption.

"Sample 2 contains mite, but I could not discover in it living mite. It is, however,
dangerous as human food.

"Sample 3 is a moist sample of brown sugar. The smell is somewhat sour, but micro-
scopically I could not find ferment or other foreign matter except water. The sugar is
unfit for the use of young children.

"If the meal and the sugar from which the samples are taken are used as human food,
they are liable to produce diarrhoea, especially to children. I have sealed the samples with my

seal after examining them.

"D. W. Johnston, F.R.C.S., D.P.H., &c."

1 Mr. John Ellis asked the Secretary of State for War whether the women and children
confined in camps were placed on full rations if they voluntarily surrendered, but on reduced
rations if the husbands and fathers did not surrender.

Mr. Brodrick — I am in communication with Lord Kitchener on this subject. The diffi-
culty of feeding the very large number of persons coming into these camps is very great;
and I understand that a distinction has been drawn between those who surrendered with
their husbands and fathers and those who come in to be fed while their relations are still
in the field ("Oh.") The information, however, at my disposal is not sufficient to enable
me to give an exact answer at this moment. [Mr. Brodrick has since informed the House
that this odious method of conquest has been repealed— obviously m deference to the protests
of honourable men.]

'Mr. Brodrick in the House of Commons, May, 1901.

42 PEACE OR WAR.

annex two countries and peoples was to secure the surrender of their armies, and
they vacillated between a policy of devastation and a policy of sugar-plums. They
made the further mistake of attempting to use the refugees to sow dissension
amongst the burghers in the field; and the bitterness of the struggle was ex-
asperated by the execution, real or alleged, of some of these so-called "peace
envoys" by the Boer leaders.

Though it could no longer be concealed that the military position in South
Africa was steadily growing worse the Government determined to end the war
on paper and to conquer the Boers by a General Election and by rhetoric on the
hustings. Lord Roberts was rash enough to proclaim that the war was over,
and the Government, urging the electors that a Ministerial victory would smother
the dying embers of warfare, obtained a great majority. It is not easy to under-
stand by what arguments Lord Roberts pursuaded himself that the active cam-
paign was at an end. To unprejudiced eyes it was clear that the enemy was still
unconquered, and that our army was in difficulties was proved shortly after Lord
Roberts's departure by the evacuation of many of the posts our troops had been
holding. In his despatch of February 6, 1901, Sir Alfred Milner points out that
the six months after July, 1900, had been months of military "retrogression," and
Lord Roberts's optimism in December — at least four months after that "retrogres-
sion" had commenced — was clearly founded on no sound basis. His declaration is
only to be explained first by his characteristic tendency to look on the brighter
side of events ; secondly, by his wish to comfort the Government and the public ;
and thirdly, by a not unnatural desire to prove to the world that he had completed
the work which he had not been allowed to complete "nineteen years ago." But
such a declaration was eminently unfair to his successor, who would be held by
the public to have failed in the easy task which, according to Lord Roberts, had
been left him. Lord Kitchener indeed deserves the sympathy of all generous men.
His difficulties, caused in a great degree by the rash strategy of his predecessor,
have been enormous, and if he fails the fault will not be his.

The military methods of the Government were therefore as unsuccessful as
their political efforts. They believed what they wished to believe, and assuming
that the war was practically over, they neglected to feed their wearied army with
a steady flow of drafts and recruits. A considerable number of soldiers were with-
drawn from South Africa, and in December the position of our forces, which had
been growing steadily worse since the occupation of Komati Poort, began to be
most serious.

After the fall of Pretoria, it was hoped that the enemy would submit ; the
Boer forces seemed to be scattered and to have lost their capacity for sustained
or concentrated movement. But it is doubtful whether the campaign has ever
presented the true form of guerilla warfare. That class of warfare is confined to
the action of small bodies under independent leaders, possessing no cohesion and
displaying no organised methods for the attaining of a common end. Moreover,
guerilla warfare is almost invariably accompanied by great cruelty on the part of
the guerillas and by an ostentatious neglect of the honourable conventions of war.
Those who have followed intelligently the course of the campaign since the fall of
Pretoria will allow that the Boer plan of campaign, far from being the fortuitous
product of independent bands, has been inspired not only by remarkable boldness
and originality but by strategical skill and methodical aims.

The Boers, who had at the commencement of the war been wanting in dis-
cipline and initiative, were becoming veterans, seasoned, bold, and able to take
the offensive without hesitation. Although their food supplies must have been
very scanty and their ammunition could not have been superabundant, they
seemed to have enough food and enough ammunition to continue a campaign which
was exhausting and dangerous to our army. Their generals began to display, in
addition to the extraordinary mobility which had always characterized them, a
tactical and a strategical skill which extorted the unwilling admiration of their

THE CAMPAIGN. 43

enemy. In fine, the proposition in January, 1901, was in its essence, if not in its
outward aspect, more dangerous than the position in January, 1900. At the latter
date we had not exhausted our regular forces, we had still 200,000 men on whom
we could draw, we had still in reserve the skill and the prestige of Lord Roberts
and the administrative ability of Lord Kitchener.

The greater part of our army consisted of infantry, and out of 200,000 men
whom we had in South Africa 100,000 must have been tied down to the railway
and the important strategical points, while perhaps 20,000 or 25,000 were sick of
fever and of the fatigue which a long campaign inevitably brings. We probably
had no more than 20,000 mounted men to throw upon the Boers at any given point,
and, in a word, our great army, which outnumbered the Boers by ten to one, was
thrown on the defensive. In January, 1901, our regular reserves were exhausted,
Lord Roberts had returned, and Lord Kitchener seemed embarrassed by the coil
of untoward circumstances. We had only the patriotism of our citizens and
of our colonies to depend upon ; and if the supply of volunteers were to fail, we
should be left impotent in the presence of the greatest military danger that
England has ever faced.

The military situation was in the middle of December made worse by the
sudden irruption of several Boer commandoes into Cape Colony. It is not at
present clear what object the Boers had in this invasion ; but we may without much
risk assume that they were determined, by enlarging the area of the war, to draw
a great portion of our army from Pretoria to the south. The Boers had countless
sympathisers in the Colony, and they probably knew quite clearly what their
reception was likely to be. They did not expect to be reinforced by a large
number of Colonial Dutch, though some recruits were certain to join their forces.
Their chief objects were to collect supplies and horses and to raise a new campaign
in Cape Colony, a thousand miles from the main body of our troops in the Trans-
vaal, and to force the English general to choose between abandoning the Colony
and abandoning the Transvaal.

They argued that Lord Kitchener, whose troops were barely sufficient to hold
their present positions with success, would certainly not be able to continue the
campaign in the Transvaal and to offer any resistance to them in Cape Colony.
By this extraordinary and brilliant feat the Boers at once practically doubled the
area of the war, and an army which was impotent to hold the two Republics was
obviously incapable of entering into serious offensive measures against the Boers
both in Cape Colony and in the northern Transvaal. From Cape Colony we have
not yet been able to drive the invaders, and our inability to capture or defeat
them is a measure of our weakness.

The tactics of the Boers became more daring. Every day some point of the
railway was cut, small posts were overwhelmed, and the casualty lists became
alarming in their length. Enteric fever and the diseases which come of exhaus-
tion and insufficient food began to tell upon our army. The men were growing
"stale" and dissatisfied. But the Government made no sign. Whether they
still hoped that Lord Kitchener, by a supreme effort, would be able to shake off his
indefatigable foes, or whether they believed that the sudden activity of the Boers
was but the last flicker of the lamp before extinction, we do not know.

The one fatal and radical error of the Government is that they have been
without a definite policy from the beginning, unless we dignify by that term
their threat to force the Boers to unconditional submission. It is the business
of Ministers to have a serious plan of settlement, but no vestige of such plan
has been vouchsafed to us by Lord Salisbury and his colleagues. To put the
matter briefly, ever since the occupation of Pretoria the Ministry has been drifting.
The one thing which the Ministers ought to have done, if they still remained
firm in their demand for unconditional submission, they did not do. It was their
obvious and absolute duty to send out to Lord Kitchener such large reinforce-
ments of mounted men as would take the place of those soldiers who were becom-

44 PEACE OR WAR.

ing useless from fatigue, and would enable the Commander-in-Chief to assume
the offensive. It is impossible for a large army to remain for an indefinite
period on the defensive, exposed to the galling attacks of an active foe whom it
cannot pursue, and devastated by the inroads of disease.

At length, seriously alarmed by the activity of the Boers and the impotence of
our army, the Government in the early days of February called for more volun-
teers and announced to the public that they were about to send out to Lord
Kitchener 30,000 mounted troops. At the end of the same month, too, the demand
for unconditional surrender was relaxed. Despairing of bringing the war to an
early close, and, as we may believe, actuated by a genuine desire to bring peace to
South Africa, Lord Kitchener proposed to General Botha, through his wife, that
a meeting should take place to discuss terms of surrender. The meeting took place
on February 28th, and Lord Kitchener laid before General Botha the various
conditions which, in his opinion, the English Ministry would impose upon the
Boers. These terms were, from Lord Kitchener's standpoint, generous, and,
though General Botha pleaded for complete or modified independence, he seemed
not unwilling to recommend Lord Kitchener's suggestions to his Government.
Unfortunately, these suggestions, when referred to the English Ministry, were
altered and hardened to such an extent that they held out to the Boers no hope
of anything but despotic rule for an indefinite number of years. The terms, thus
modified, were proposed to General Botha, who summarily rejected them, and the
fair hopes of all who were working for peace were rudely dashed to the ground.

To enumerate and explain the causes of the failure of our army in South Af-
rica would be a difficult and painful task. The causes are many and various. They
are moral and physical, political and military. The first two factors we will discuss
later. Of the latter two it may without hesitation be asserted that the blunders
of our Government have cost us far more than the errors of our soldiers or the
difficulties of the invaded lands.

Of the military causes of our failure it is too early to speak in definite
language. Our generals and our soldiers have done their best, and it may be that
no other European army would have achieved a greater success. At the same
time, it would be insincere to conceal the fact that the strategy of Lord Roberts
was founded on a false estimate of his enemy's strength and was disastrous in its
ultimate effects. His rapid march to Bloemfontein was attractive to the super-
ficial observer, but it was wrong in principle, and could only have been justified by
its results. He lost nearly the whole of his convoy, and he exposed his men to the
risk of starvation. It was impossible in such a rapid movement to carry with
him the proper medical equipment, and the burden of fatigue which was laid
upon the army was a direct cause of that terrible outbreak of disease which swept
away the men in hundreds. The "regrettable incidents" which followed in quick
succession were the necessary outcome of a movement which, brilliant as it
seemed, was the negation of military prudence. The advance on Pretoria, under-
taken in the same rash spirit, produced similar results. We entered the town, but
we did not capture the forces of the enemy. Again, our flanks and rear were
left open to the Boers, and it was impossible properly to feed a force which ad-
vanced more rapidly than its supplies. As Lord Roberts has himself confessed,
for a day it seemed that the army would have to choose between starvation and
retreat.

The very high estimate which the public has formed of the achievements
of Lord Doberts in South Africa has undoubtedly, and not unnaturally, been
founded on the immense change which his advent at the head of an enormous army
wrought in the military position in the early days of 1900. The nation had passed
through an ordeal of suspense and sorrow, and it was profoundly grateful to the
general who had so quickly transformed the aspect of affairs. Courteous and
brave, he is the most popular soldier of the last fifty years, but the historian will be
forced to explain this popularity on the grounds we have suggested, and by the

THE CAMPAIGN. 45

fascination of his personality, rather than by the lasting success of his strategy. The
full history of the campaign will not be written for many years, and the natural
tendency of the military chronicler to minimise ugly facts, to gloss over mistakes,
and to explain defeats, may perhaps conceal the full measure of our failure. The
greatest commanders of history have not seldom possessed the highest political
instinct,- but Lord Roberts was unable to appreciate the political factors of the
situation; while the military risks which he deliberately accepted were so dis-
proportionate to their possible advantages and so disastrous in their results, that
it is impossible for the cool observer to deny that the career of Lord Roberts in
South Africa has been unequal to his renown.

But let it not be forgotton that our failure in South Africa has been a political
rather than a military failure. The politicians have set the soldiers to do a work
of enormous difficulty with insufficient material. The ill-informed criticisms which
were showered on our army during the period of our disasters, the attacks on our
artillery — the very branch of the army whose services have been most heroical and
distinguished — on our officers and our soldiers, do not touch the root of the
matter. If the soldier has failed, it is because the politician has blundered.

We have seen how the insistence on unconditional submission has prolonged
this war; it is not less evident that its early disasters were due to political in-
capacity. The Government entered upon this war in wilful blindness. For many
months it must have been clear to them that in insisting upon a reform of the
franchise in the Transvaal they were offering to the Boers an ultimatum, and
that it would be necessary for them, if their proposals were declined, to enforce
them by armed measures. That they prepared for a warlike issue we have re-
cently from the lips of Lord Wolseley, who has told us 1 that in June, 1899, he
frequently and earnestly urged upon the Government the necessity of seizing
Delagoa Bay, and of preparing a large force to protect Natal from invasion.

In June, 1899, four months before the outbreak of the war, an interesting
little volume was issued by the Intelligence Department of the War office to
a considerable number of officers. This book is entitled "Military Notes on the
Dutch Republics of South Africa." It contains 119 pages, and is divided into
twelve chapters.

One of the most remarkable features of this little book is its accuracy.
Its conclusions are often wrong; but as a collection of facts — and after all the
business of an Intelligence Department is to provide trustworthy materials for
judgments, and not relieve all the other departments of State from the
necessity of thinking — the book is beyond praise. We have been assured by
the Government that they were completely surprised by the warlike attitude of the
Boers, by their strength, and by the perfection of their armaments. Yet this book,
which is the official publication of the Intelligence Department of the War Office,
estimates that the Boer forces would, in the case of war, number about 56,000
men. This number is, if we regard only the forces of the two Republics, somewhat
exaggerated; but if in it we include a considerable portion of the Outlanders
fighting for the Boers, it has been proved moderately accurate.

Lord Salisbury has told us that the Government was astonished at the exist-
ence of modern guns among the Boers, and that he presumed they had been
smuggled into the Transvaal in boilers and locomotives and piano cases. This little
book, however, gives full details of the Boer artillery, and of its origin and
manufacture. It is interesting to read the statement that only some 13,000 rifles
were in the country before the Jameson Raid and that the whole of the remainder
have been purchased since that date in England, France, Germany, and Belgium.

When war seemed imminent, the Prime Ministers of our Colonies made to the
Colonial Office offers of patriotic assistance. The Government acknowledged these
offers in suitable terms, and stated that unmounted men would be preferred.

1 House of Lords, March, 1901.

46 PEACE OR WAR.

Three months after the war had begun, Mr. Balfour stated in terms of pathetic
astonishment the astounding fact that the Boers had horses. It is clear that the
Ministry had taken no trouble to learn the lessons drawn from the last war
by the Intelligence Department, who were in no ignorance of the advantages
possessed by the Boers as an army of mounted infantry. Mr. Balfour had evidently
not read the following passage : —

"As regards mobility, it may be recollected that the force which was defeated
at Laing's Nek and Ingogo was operating on foot, with practically no
mounted men, against men whose hunting experience had taught them to
get the utmost advantage out of the use of their horses in approaching,
surprising, and surrounding large herds of antelopes. Moreover, South
Africa is, of all countries, the most dangerous in the world for infantry to
operate in without a screen of mounted troops in their front and on their
flanks. The tactics employed by the Boers were, in fact, such as they had
learned by hunting experience on the veldt. Alike in attack and defence,
they acted on the same principle. Containing the enemy's front with a
thin but well-posted body of skirmishers, they utilised every fold of
ground to gallop unseen round his flanks, and then, leaving their horses,
which are trained to stand without holders, under cover, gradually con-
centrated a ring of overwhelming fire on their objective."
Mr. Balfour, at the end of November, 1899, stated that if he had been asked
two months ago whether it was likely that they would be at war with the Orange
Free State, he would have answered, "You might as well expect us to be at war
with Switzerland." The little book of the Intelligence Department issued in the
previous June would have instructed his amiable simplicity. Here it is distinctly
stated —

"There can be no question that if war ensues between the Transvaal and the
Suzerain Power as a result of the differences made apparent at the Bloem-
fontein Conference (1899), the Free State, who has already declared by
the mouth of her Raad that she entirely approves of President Kruger's
proposals, will undoubtedly throw in her lot with the sister Republic."
What an Iliad of woes sprang from the neglect of this plain warning!
Mr. Balfour, in January, 1900, described the entanglement of Ladysmith as
being beyond the reasonable calculations of the Government. The Military
Notes would have given him definite warning on this point, for in them it is
distinctly stated that the Transvaal Boers intended to concentrate with the Free
State force west of the Drakensberg and to advance on Ladysmith through Van
Reenen's Pass.

The Government have excused the miserable imperfection of their medical
equipment on the ground that no reasonable person could have expected a
grave outbreak of enteric fever. The Military Notes contain a distinct warning
that enteric fever, which had been in past campaigns prevalent among our
troops, was a danger against which every precaution should be taken.

I have made these quotations from the Military Notes because they go far
to prove the statement that the failure of our campaign has been due rather to
the ignorance and blindness and carelessness of our Government than to the
blunders of our army. There is in the Cabinet a small body of men called the
Defence Committee. It is the duty of these Ministers to meet from time to
time, to consider those measures which are necessary to safeguard the military
and naval interests of our Empire and to lay before the Cabinet the various pro-
posals which seem to them necessary. It is therefore reasonable to expect that
this Committee, before engaging in a war with another Power, should acquaint
itself with the obvious facts of the military situation and with the resources of
the Governments opposed to us. If Mr. Balfour and his colleagues did not
make themselves acquainted with the warnings and the statements contained
in the official Notes of the Intelligence Department, or if, having read them,

THE CAMPAIGN. 47

they failed to appreciate and to act upon them, they have been guilty not only
of a blunder but also of a crime, and on them must fall the greater portion of
the responsibility for the disasters and the prolongation of this unhappy war.

But we have had to combat foes more terrible than the errors of our
politicians or than the skill and courage of the Boers. To the invader of a
country the forces of Nature have generally been more deadly than the forces
of man. The Transvaal and the Free State form together an enormous
territory — rugged, desolate, sparsely peopled, with few good roads and
few large towns. A hostile army cannot live in such a country. It
is therefore dependent for its very existence on its lines of communi-
cation, and such lines must be guarded with the utmost care. The strength of
these lines is the strength of their weakest part, and a temporary interruption
may involve a month's delay in the advance of the army or the semi-starvation
of thousands of troops; and no communication is more delicate than 2,000 miles
of a single railway line which is the sole means of feeding an enormous force.

The climate, benign to the native of the country, is unkind to the stranger,
and foreign troops can ill bear the sudden changes from heat to cold, from
deluges of rain to parching drought. The enormous labours of a protracted
campaign in such a country lower the physical strength of the soldiers and bring
in their train fever and dysentery and languid depression. Nor are the horses
less liable to disease than the men, and the horse sickness of South Africa is so
deadly that 75 per cent, of the animals attacked perish of the malady. We have
been fighting Distance and Disease, and these two foes have often conquered
the conquering invader.

A country so vast can therefore be defended by a relatively small force, and
can only be effectively occupied by an enemy if it possesses an immense army.
The issue of a campaign of this character is not decided by the aggregate num-
bers of the invading force, but by the rapidity with which they can bring at a
given moment a considerable number of men to bear on a given point. To dis-
tribute a large force evenly over an immense surface is to lose effective power
and the ability to crush your foe.

The magnitude of the task of our troops in South Africa may be realised
from the following figures of the areas included in the theatre of war : —

Square Miles.

Cape Colony 277,151

Transvaal 113,640

Orange River Colony 48.326

Natal ' 18,913

Total 458,030

Any one who will take a large scale map and will measure the distances in
miles between the various small towns and villages which we have occupied and
held will appreciate the immense difficulties which our army has experienced
in protecting and feeding the posts distant from the main lines of communica-
tion. We have destroyed the food which otherwise might have sustained our
troops; we have therefore to despatch at frequent intervals convoys of food,
which, slowly and laboriously moving, are ever liable to the attacks of the
mobile Boers. The detachments which hold the outlying posts are constantly
on short rations and always in a tense and nervous strain. Wherever
there is a British post, there a mile or so off hovers a shadowing commando.
After some months the position becomes intolerable, and, to save a breakdown
of the garrison, the town is evacuated and the troops are moved to a position
of greater security. At the beginning of 1901 a large number of the towns
formerly held by our troops were evacuated and the immense districts round
them passed again into the hands of our enemy. This process of evacuation is
styled "concentration," and, though the policy which dictates it is a sound and

48 PEACE OR WAR.

a prudent one, it is also a definite proof that we are endeavouring to occupy a
half-conquered country with a diminishing and hopelessly inadequate force.

No event is the outcome of a single antecedent circumstance. We may
blame the incapacity of our Government and the errors of our generals, our
want of mounted troops, the vast distances, sickness and climate. But causes
are moral as well as physical; and we must not forget the moral causes — our
own pride and the character of the Boer. With a flippancy and shallowness that
cannot be too strongly condemned, the Government assumed that the enemy
was not really in earnest, that he did not mean what he said, and could not do
what he would. A nation cannot dispense with the quality of pride; but the
pride which disdains facts and prefers to run it head against any obstacle rather
than to use its eyes, always has led and always will lead to disaster. It was
pride of this kind that caused us to misjudge the character of the Boer, to
underestimate his resources, and to decry his military skill.

We may justly assume that British infantry have suffered no considerable
deterioration since the days of Wellington, and we must seek in the qualities
of our foe one of the causes of our failure. The extraordinary mobility of the
Boers, their rapidity of movement, and their skill in the management and
'preservation of their horses, have proved of enormous advantage to them.
They are born hunters and soldiers. It is a simple fact that only twice in our
history have British infantry been unequal to the task assigned them. In 1775
our army was defeated again and again by a force of farmers who had had no
military training and little experience of warfare. A hundred and twenty-five
years later the same infantry again met an army of warlike farmers, inferior to
numbers to our American colonists and outnumbered by us in the proportion of
ten to one, and our army again proved unequal to its task.

To forecast the future of the campaign would be foolish and presumptuous.
It may, however, not be out of place to offer a general estimate of its probable
course: later we will examine the expenditure in money which it must necessi-
tate. In the first place, we may assume that the only thing that can bring the
war to a speedy end is the general surrender of the Boers, either unconditionally
under compulsion, or through the offer to them by the British Ministry of such
terms as they will accept. It is not rash to dismiss each of these alternatives
as unlikely. General Botha's rejection of Mr. Chamberlain's proposals was
definite and summary, and Mr. Chamberlain is not likely at present to stultify
himself by making a more generous offer to the Boers. He might indeed — and
we hope that he will — keep the door open for negotiations on the lines already
laid down; and no doubt if we are able to keep up the pressure on the Boers the
time may come sooner or later when they would accept the terms they have
rejected. But there is a powerful feeling that the rejection by the Boers of our
terms should be made an excuse for withdrawing all such offers for the future.
If that spirit prevails we have to face the indefinite prolongation of this war.

The factors of failure of success are uncertain. We do not know how far
the national spirit of the Boers will carry them and to what extent their stock
of ammunition, food, and horses has been exhausted. On the other hand, we do
not know, and we are not likely to hear, except through indirect sources, what
further hardships our own army can endure without breaking under the strain.
The duration of the war, therefore, depends on conditions which it is impos-
sible to define. One thing seems clear. We shall make no real progress
towards peace until we can effectively occupy the country. Annexation on
paper is of no practical value. It places us in a ridiculous and humiliating posi-
tion. We occupy a town and hold it for four or five days. Circumstances then
force us to evacuate the town and to move to some other point. A Boer com-
mando follows close on our heels and takes our place until it in its turn is
succeeded by another British detachment, which, after a stay of a few weeks,
gives way to a Dutch force. Thus the war goes on revolving on its own axis.

THE CAMPAIGN. 49

At times the momentum seems less, but no sooner have we vowed that the war
is at last going to stop than the revolutions begin again and the old familiar
names — Lindley, Wepener, Rustenburg, Zeerust — fly round faster than ever.
There is no ordered march towards peace, no steady reduction of difficulties, no
gradual contraction of the area of war.

It must not be forgotten that a lengthy campaign in a foreign country is not
always terminated by a decisive victory of one side. One of our gravest errors
has been to compare in our own minds our struggle against the Boers with a
war which Germany might wage against France, or Italy against Austria. We
have hoped that the flight of the enemy's main bodies or the occupation of their
capitals would imply their submission or subjugation as a nation. But the
Boers are not a European nation. Their order of civilisation is not that of a
European country where the chief population is gathered in towns and where
to capture the great cities is to annihilate the resistance of the Governments.
The Boers are farmers, and to capture Pretoria or Bloemfontein is not to sever
a main artery and destroy the life of the State. In a highly developed State
organism the life of the parts depends on the centre. Not so in the Boer
Republics. Each part as it is severed seems capable of separate life, and our
task is comparable to the labour of Hercules in his bouts with the Hydra. Nor
has the resource of Hercules availed us much. We have indeed destroyed the
greatest number of their farms and attempted to clear their lands of cattle and
standing crops, just as Iolas in the fable applied the burning iron to the wounds
of the Hydra as each head was cut off. But it is impossible to kill all the
sources of life, and it is probable that there still remains in the two territories
sufficient to feed the Boers for several years.

If a man asks what reasonable hope we can form of ending the war without
negotiations within a definite period, we are bound to answer that our final
victory must be measured by the annihilation of the Boers. While a thousand
Boers remain with bandoliers full and biltong enough to keep body and soul
together, so long will they resist our occupation and so long will our victory be
incomplete. If we are to estimate the resisting power of our foes we must, to
a certain extent, calculate by the methods of arithmetic. Most of the prisoners
whom our flying columns have lately captured have been old men or boys or non-
combatant Boers; but let us assume that we catch or kill 300 fighting Boers in
a month, and to this number let us add a further 150 incapacitated by wounds
or disease. If we multiply 450 by 12 we arrive at a total of 5,400; and if we
assume that the number of Boers still in arms against us is 15,000 men, we find
that at the end of a year we shall have accounted for about a third the number
of our enemy. Nor must we forget that the operations of small bodies of Boers
are almost as dangerous and disconcerting to the peace of the country as the
movements of larger bodies.

In estimating the duration of Boer resistance, we must be careful not to
adopt the standards which we should apply to a European race. The Boer is
not an Englishman or a Frenchman; he can live where an Englishman would
starve. Wellington said that an English soldier moved on his stomach; but the
Boer can carry in his saddlebag sufficient food for a fortnight. He can ride all
day or all night without tiring his horse, and can keep it going for a fortnight.
He is accustomed to a life of hardship in the open air. Nor must we place too
much confidence on the probable failure of his food or ammunition.

The Boers have not, indeed, operated in considerable bodies, but their
generals have commanded and are commanding in several places forces which
number from 2,000 to 4,000 men, and as the whole force of the two Republics
did not, in the first instance, number more than 45,000 men, and as their forces
are now spread over a large extent of country, it is not incorrect to say that a
force of 2,000 Boers is, in relation to the numbers at their disposal, as regular
and substantial a body of men as an army corps would be in relation to the

So PEACE OR WAR.

aggregate forces of France or Germany. That this war, if it is continued, will
degenerate into a guerilla war is true. But it does not follow that because
it will so degenerate it will become less difficult. It is a historical fact that no
war is so difficult to suppress as the irregular warfare which the population of
a vast country, fighting for its independence, is able to carry on against the
invader.

A guerilla war can be extended for an indefinite period by a brave and
hardy race without any visible means of subsistence. Food and ammunition
find their way through a hundred unknown approaches. Sympathisers at home
and abroad never cease to send the necessaries of life and warfare, and hundreds
ot willing and adventurous hands will furnish the foes of England the means
which they require. The country is enormous, the population is sparse, and the
difficulties of policing it will be almost insuperable. The Boers will have three
great factors in their favour. They will have time, and distance, and the char-
acter of their people. Time will exhaust our army through disease and weari-
ness; distance may increase our difficulties to the breaking point; and the
character of their people will preserve in their hearts the undying hope of
freedom. Against them are the fewness of their numbers and their isolation
from the rest of the world.

The recent examples of such warfare are ominous ,and the fact that the
Minister of War thought it necessary to mention these examples in December
is evidence that the Ministry have at last begun to take a serious view of the
prospects of a speedy pacification of the two provinces. The war which Spain
waged for many years in Cuba and the Philippines had no result save that of
exhaustion for Spain. Napoleon in Spain found it impossible to suppress a war
which the guerillas waged without cessation against his finest troops; and the
third Napoleon saw his army consume away under the incessant attacks of the
Mexicans and the slow inroad of disease. America is experiencing the humil-
iating difficulties which we, if we are unwise, are likely to experience in South
Africa. It is true that the Russians were able to subdue and to hold Poland;
and that Austria, after many efforts, has pacified Bosnia; and that England
holds Ireland in comparative peace. But the conditions which obtain in these
instances are absent in the case of South Africa. Poland is on the frontier of
Russia, Bosnia is on the frontier of Austria, and Ireland is but a few hours
distant from England. The three subject territories can therefore be invaded
at a few hours' notice by the conqueror, and the army of occupation can be fed
and reinforced with as little difficulty as London can send provisions to Edin-
burgh. The two annexed territories are not on our confines. The land which
borders them on the south is now disloyal and hostile, and the two Republics
and Cape Colony are 6,000 miles from our shores.

What is now the military situation in South Africa? In spite of the opti-
mistic telegrams of correspondents and the hopeful outlook of Ministers, it
cannot be denied that the situation is dangerous. The simplest test of our
success is our power of effective occupation. There is little practical value in
the seizure of a town or position by an army if that army is obliged to evacuate
it in a short time; nor was it necessary to have Sir Alfred Milner's confirmation
of our worst fears to know that we hold now in the two Republics far less terri-
tory than we held in August, 1900.

The simple fact is that, as our two maps will show, 1 with a few exceptions,
the only posts held by us in the Transvaal and the Free State are our positions
on the various railway lines, and a belt, a few miles wide, on each-
side. The northern portion of the Free State, in which are situated
such important towns as Heilbron, Winburg, Vrede, Lindley, Lichten-
burg, and Hoopstad, is obviously in the possession of the Boers; and

1 These maps can, in the nature of the case, be only approximately accurate.

50a

<
2

THE CAMPAIGN. 51

though these districts are at intervals visited by flying columns of British
troops, they are three weeks out of four, for all practical purposes, under Boer
jurisdiction and are administered by Boer commandants. The southern district
of the same State contains such towns as Wepener, Helvetia, Smithneld, Philip-
polis, and Fauresmith; and we have been informed in successive despatches that
all these places have been evacuated by British troops, and that the British
magistrates have been superseded by Boer landdrosts.

In the Transvaal, where there is obviously a greater force of British troops,
there is probably a somewhat more effective occupation, but even here our posi-
tion is extraordinary and somewhat ludicrous. We have been told that under
the new civil administration of Sir Alfred Milner, resident magistrates will bef
established in Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Johannesburg, Krugersdorp, and Boks-
burg. These five towns are important, and to the casual reader it might
appear satisfactory that we are now in a position to make them centres for our
magistrates; but it is not difficult to see the motive of their choice. They are
all on the railway and are therefore under the protection of the British troops
which guard that railway. The other chief towns of the Transvaal, important
either for local or strategical causes, such as Ventersdorp, Bethel, Rustenburg,
Zeerust, and Lichtenburg, are either in the possession of the Boers, or their
British garrisons are besieged by the Boers. Our present forces, even in their
full fighting strength, are not numerous enough to hold a country so vast, so
hostile, and so sparsely peopled; exhausted as they are by disease, by constant
marching, exposure, and want of food, they are unable to do much more than
hold the railways, which are to them the indispensable conditions of their
existence.

Lord Kitchener has, indeed, a certain number of mounted troops whom he
can, after certain periods of rest and refreshment, send forth against the too
mobile forces of the Boers. What success these operations have attained, any
one who has carefully followed the events of the last three months may easily
appreciate. We know now that General French's great converging movement
in the Eastern Transvaal was, from the military point of view, a failue. He failed
to surround the main body of the Boers, and in spite of his enormous captures
of stock, the enemy still manages to subsist in the districts he denuded. The
same thing has taken place in the south-east corner of the Orange State. Our
failed to capture De Wet and his commandoes is not exceptional, but typical.
We have won isolated triumphs against De La Rey and other Boer leaders; and
we are constantly capturing or. receiving the surrender of small bodies. But of
victory on a large scale, of the gradual envelopment of the chief fighting forces
of our enemy, there is no sign.

We are winning, but can we afford to win so slowly? What will be the state
of our own army at the end of another year of unceasing warfare? 1 That is a
question which few men are able, and some would not dare, to answer; but we
must face it. We are losing now by death, wounds, and sickness from 2,000 to
3,000 men a month.' Nor will the approach of winter be greatly in our favour.
The growing exhaustion of the army will render it more susceptible to disease,
which, working on weakened constitutions, the cold intensifies. We do not
know how many of our 250,000 soldiers are efficient, but we do know that 20,000

'It is bare justice to say that at one time quite alone among a chorus of optimistic
prophets one military critic has from the first foretold the dangers of this campaign. Colonel
H. B. Hanna, in various letters and articles, was wise enough and courageous enough, eve«
at the time of our triumphant advances, to say that our elation was premature, and that
distance, disease, and depression were foes more difficult to conquer than the Boers. He
pointed out that the invaded territory was one which it would be impossible effectively to
occupy without an enormous army, and that in a land so vast and hostile it would be
impossible for an indefinite period to feed such an army.

* The following table gives the total number of casualties reached month by month from

52 PEACE OR WAR.

are in hospital; we may assume that 100,000 are guarding the line9, and that
hundreds are being incapacitated every week by despair and weariness for the
performance of those labours which are only possible to men of unimpaired
physique and undaunted spirit. We know that Lord Kitchener is eager that this
war should cease on terms honourable to the Boers. He knows what his army
can do; he knows what it cannot do.

If this war is to end in a complete victory for our forces we must recruit
those forces with substantial reinforcements. It is useless to send out men in
hundreds, for the wastage of our army proceeds at such a rapid rate that even
if we despatch 3,000 men on a given day, they will not be sufficient to fill the
gaps caused by. sickness in the army while they are on the high seas. War is
not altogether a sum in arithmetic. The most deadly foe of an army is one
whom we cannot see and whom no words can adequately describe. It is called
by many names — exhaustion, weariness, depression, heartsickness, staleness;
but by whatever name it is known, it is invincible. If it is true that this enemy
has found an entrance into the hearts of the British army in South Africa, we
may be sure that no general of ours can conquer it. It can only be cured or

the beginning of the war to April, 1901. In this table the prisoners recovered are deducted
from the totals : —

Missing
Killed in Died of and Died of Sent home

action. wounds, prisoners, disease, invalided. Total.

Oct., 1899, to Feb., 1900 1,652 264 3,244 723 2,306 8,237t

March 2,130 461 3,476 1,207 4.004 11,687

April 2,221 533 3,958 1,909 6,149 14.824

May 2,369 588 4,526 3,173 n,343 22,045

June 2,634 657 1,687* 4,100 17,142 26,298

July 2,731 732 2,818 4,867 23,655 34,803

August 2,880 811 2,833 S.363 28,497 40,561

September 3,037 911 819* 5,903 31,626 42,296

October 3,204 982 829 6,270 34,499 45,784

November 3,329 1,044 x ,25o 6,719 37,009 49,728

December 3,540 1,132 903* 7,181 38,624 51,687

1901.

January 3,680 1,184 937 7,793 40,798 54,724

February 3,824 1,284 800 8,385 42,357 56,95°

March :. 3,936 1,301 775* 8,893 45,426 60,625

April 4,022 1,345 781* 9,181 47,739 63,498

* Reduction in number of prisoners due to release.

t The discrepancy between these totals and the sum of the items given is due to the
deaths from accidents, which have not been set out in detail.

t The total of prisoners taken during the war, not deducting those recovered, is 8,703.

Note — The war in South Africa has added over $1,000,000,000 to the taxation of Great
Britain, and is costing at the present time over $1,000,000 per day to support troops in the
field and the Boer prisoners at St. Helena, Ceylon and the Bermuda Islands. The failure
of the British army to open the Kimberley and Johannesburg mines has deprived British stock-
holders of dividends on securities listed at $850,000,000, reduced the output of diamonds
and gold $284,000,000. These tremendous sums subtracted from British resources have
resulted in the impairment of the values of many kinds of securities dealt in by London
stockbrokers, and are the superinducing cause of numerous bankruptcies in British financial
circles. The diamond and gold mines are idle ; they are not producing a dollar. Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in presenting the budget in the House of
Commons, April 17, 1901, said : "The war can no longer be considered a small affair, as it
has cost the government £146,567,000 ($732,835,000), double the cost of the Crimean War,
and the end is not yet.

Since the beginning of the war Great Britain's loss in killed, wounded, died of disease
and invalided home exceeds 100,000 troops, not including 25,000 prisoners that have been
captured by the Boers.

British Consols in 1900 were rated above par (104), and although bolstered up by manipu-
lation stand to-day (November, 1901) at <B|: while French Rents are above par and United
States bonds are at 120. a -

THE CAMPAIGN. 53

vanquished by the despatch of new bodies of men to take the place of those
worn out by its attack, by the exhilaration which comes of winning definite vic-
tories, by better food, by rest, and by the ceasing of the aimless pursuit of a
phantom foe.

The review of the whole situation, of the lessons of the past and of the
prospects of the future, forces us to conclude that unless the Boers surrender in
a body, or unless we are able by a succession of striking victories to capture
their main commandoes, we shall be obliged to avoid the exhaustion of our own
forces by offering to the Boers such terms as may induce them to lay down their
arms. In theory we can continue the war indefinitely until every Boer is either
dead or in prison. But in practice such a process may demand sacrifices so
enormous that the tardy conqueror may well ask himself whether the result will
be worth the cost.

It is impossible that the present situation can last indefinitely. Sucn a
situation does not automatically improve: on the other hand it automatically
becomes worse. Time solves many problems; but is time really on our side in
this war? When every week of war means the loss from one cause or another
of five hundred men and of more than a million and a half, of money, bids fair
to ruin three British Colonies, decreases the efficiency and popularity of the
army, aggravates the difficulty of working our voluntary military system, and
maims our policy in all parts of the world — will ultimate victory be other than
Cadmean?

CHAPTER V.

THE ENEMY.

NO nation can be just to its foes. The passions of war inflame our minds,
and prejudice obscures the truth. Thus we have conjured up for our-
selves a fantastic and outrageous image which we call a Boer. This
savage being was hideous in form, unkempt and unwashed, 1 violent, hypocritical,
a persecutor and an assassin 2 of the English. He abused the white flag, he used
explosive bullets, and he was altogether outside the pale of civilised nations, a
swindler, a coward, a brigand.

A paper of the highest position described the Boers as "brigands,"
"dacoits," "marauders," "ruffians," "filibusterers," "banditti," "mobs of despera-
does," "midnight marauders," "squads of caterans."

Another paper asserted that the Boer was a semi-savage; another com-
pared him to a pickpocket or a burglar; yet another spoke of the Boers as
"hounds," and of their conduct as "devilish."

Inflamed and maddened by the telegrams of excitable correspondents,
irritated by the prolongation of a war which had long passed its allotted span of
six months, alarmed by thejiumerous disasters which we could only assign to
malign influences, the public began to clamour for severity." The unexpected
difficulties which followed the occupation of Pretoria and the extraordinary
activity of the Boers excited some of our advisers to further violence. The
public was told that too much leniency had been shown, that war is not made
with rose-water, and that a ruthless policy is in the long run the most merciful. 4
Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener were urged to proclaim a policy of "No
quarter" and to "shoot at sight" as a rebel every Boer who fell into their hands. 5

'A great London newspaper printed a description of the surrender of Cronje, in which
his followers were described as "cowardly," "shuffling," "unpatriotic," "cunning," "boorish,"
"ungrateful," "shifty-eyed," "clod-hopping," "cruel," "clumsy," "greedy," "cheating," "mean,"
"underhand," "foxy," "savage," "dull-witted," "misshapen," "treacherous," and "brutal,"
and they were compared with pig-dealers, money-lenders, oxen, and orang-outangs.

* A circumstantial description was circulated in the daily papers of the slaughter of
refugee women and children during the first few days of the war, followed by an account
of the murder by the Boers at Harrismith of an Englishman named M'Lachlan who was shot
for refusing to fight against England. M'Lachlan was in excellent health six months after
this. It was stated in a weekly journal that the Boer women made a practice of killing the
wounded. It was stated in another paper that Mr. Kruger had wedged a young girl between
two pieces of wood and had sawed both the wood and the girl through with his own hands.

* "Not only should he be slain, but slain with the same ruthlessness that they slay
a plague-infected rat. Exeter Hall may shriek, but blood there will be, and plenty of it,
and the more the better. The Boer resistance will further this plan and enable us to find
that Imperial Great Britain is fiercely anxious for the excuse to blot out the Boers as a
nation, to turn their land into a vast shambles, and remove their name from the muster-roll
of South Africa."

* A well-known paper censured the mildness of Lord Roberts's policy and advised that
the whole country should be cleared, and that women should be "transported or despatched."
Many months ago, a correspondent in a well-known paper suggested, with editorial approval,
that the war should be "smothered with women."

*A great paper in October denied that the Boers in the field were entitled to the rights
of combatants. They were brigands; and they were compared to the agrarian murderers in
Ireland. It was stated that a point had now been reached when the services of the Provost

THE ENEMY. 5S

It is needless to say that few of the grosser charges which have been
brought against the Boers have been confirmed or justified. There have, no
doubt, been instances of brutality and treachery, of the use of expansive bullets,
and the abuse of the white flag.' But we must remember that the whole Boer
population — high and low, virtuous and vicious — has been in the field, and every
nation holds some villains. On the whole, the Boers have observed the hon-
ourable traditions of warfare, they have not shot our prisoners, and nearly every
piece of evidence which comes to us from a respectable quarter proves that if
there is one virtue in the Boer character, it is their tender care of the wounded."

It is significant that in very few cases have English soldiers been guilty
of calumny towards a brave foe fighting against enormous odds." Gallant and
chivalrous Englishmen have not been backward in defending their stubborn
adversaries. General Porter, who has recently returned from the front, bears
this witness: "The Boers are a brave nation who fight gallantly and well.
They have treated British prisoners with every consideration, and the wounded
with the same care as they would their own. On a few occasions the white flag
was abused, but in what large community would they not find a few
miscreants?"

Mr. Conan Doyle, who was with Lord Roberts during the early part of the
war, speaks thus of the Boers: —

"Whatever else may be laid to the charge of the Boer, it can never be
truthfully said that he is a coward or a man unworthy of the Briton's steel. The
words were written early in the campaign, and the whole Empire will indorse
them to-day. Could we have such men as willing fellow-citizens, they are worth

Marshal were necessary, and when the prompt and ruthless punishment of every insurgent
burgher caught in delicto was required.

A popular paper, commenting on the rumour that Lord Kitchener had issued orders
that no quarter was to be given, remarked, "We should like to believe it. If the British
authorities could make up their minds, once and for all, to treat De Wet and his banditti
as banditti should be treated, much bloodshed, Boer and English, would be avoided, and
the war would be brought to an end much sooner."

1 Very few instances of this can be definitely proved ; and it is well known that where,
as in a modern battle, the line of fighting is long and irregular, it is almost impossible for
combatants at one end of the line to see the sign of surrender at the other. It may reasonably
and fairly be allowed that in all wars such charges and recriminations are frequent, that
the greater number of such acts of apparent treachery are the results of a natural misunder-
standing ; and that most of them exist only in the imagination of those who did not see them.

2 The following case is characteristic of the heedless levity with which outrages are
manufactured in South Africa : —

Captain H. G. Casson, South Wales Borderers, writes from Krugersdorp, under date
March 14th : —

"The following Reuter telegram appeared in the Times weekly edition of February 15th,
under heading 'The Military Situation' : —

" 'Krugersdorp, February 2nd. — It is stated that Dr. Walker, who was among the killed,
had received three bullet wounds, but was finally despatched by a Boer, who battered in
his skull with a stone.'

"As I was in command of the post captured at Mo'dderfontein, I trust that, in common
fairness to the enemy, and with a view to minimising as far as possible the pain that must
already have been caused, you will allow me to offer an unqualified denial to the above state-
ment. Dr. Walker was hit once only, and by a stray bullet, on the early morning of January
31st while it was still dark; he died the same afternoon from the natural effects of the
wound.

"Every possible kindness was shown to the wounded by the Boers, who posted a sentry
to see that no one came near or otherwise interfered with them. The Boer commandant
present at the time expressed to Dr. Walker his sorrow that he should have been wounded,
and later in the day the Boer General himself personally expressed to me his deep regret
for the sad occurrence, while many of the burghers, when conversing with my men, also spoke
to the same effect."

*"We admire the Boers awfully, and a large number of us are pro-Boers." (Extract
from a private letter.)

56 PEACE OR WAR.

more than all the gold mines of their country." Mr. Doyle has further said:
"The Boers have been the chief victims of a great deal of cheap slander in the
Press. The men who have seen most of the Boers in the field are the most gen-
erous in estimating their character. That the white flag was hoisted by the
Boers as a cold-blooded device for luring our men into the open is an absolute
calumny. To discredit their valour is to discredit our victory."

The wild and violent attacks on Christian Ue Wet have been unspeakably
repugnant to reasonable and chivalrous Englishmen, whose indignation is
aptly reflected in the following letter by Mr. Erskine Childers, who fought in
the ranks of the City Imperial Volunteers: —

"It is time that a word was spoken in opposition to the idea that General
Christian De Wet is a man of brutal and dishonourable character.
Those who, like myself, have served in South Africa, fought against
him, and frequently met men who have been prisoners under him,
look, I believe, with shame and indignation on the attempts made to
advertise and magnify such incidents as the alleged flogging and shoot-
ing of peace envoys, so as to blacken the character of a man who
throughout the war held a reputation with our troops in the field of
being not only a gallant soldier, but a humane and honourable gentle-
man. We may deplore the desperate tenacity of his resistance. Our
duty and effort is to overcome it by 'smashing' him in the field. We
gain nothing and only lose in self-respect by slandering him.

"But the stories may be true, and in their worst complexion. My point is
that the character he has won is such that nothing but the clearest
proof, after full inquiry, of his complicity in or responsibility for bar-
barous and dishonourable acts should be for a moment listened to by
fair-minded persons.

"His whole career gives the lie to such aspersions. It was in May of last
year, ten months ago, that he first gained prominence. Since then he
has fought scores of engagements with us, some successful, some
unsuccessful, never with a suspicion of dishonourable conduct. He
has had at one time or another some thousands of our men in his
hands as prisoners of war. Many of them I have myself met. At
second or third hand I have heard of the experiences of many others.

"I never heard a word against De Wet. When men suffered hardships
they always agreed that they could not have been helped. But on the
other hand I have heard many stories showing exceptional personal
kindness in him over and above the reasonable degree of humanity
which is expected in the treatment of prisoners of war.

"I believe this view of him is universal among our troops in South Africa-.
It makes one's blood boil to hear such a man called a brigand and a
brute by civilian writers at home, who take as a text the reports of
these solitary incidents, incomplete and one-sided as they are, and
ignore — if, indeed, they know of it — the mass of testimony in his
favour."

Mr. Childers adds that the same may be said, indeed, of the whole impres-
sion of the Boers received by the public in England, perhaps because it seems
impossible to admire them without being thought to sympathise with them.

This testimony is amply supported by numerous letters from officers and
private soldiers which have been published, in which the highest possible char-
acter has been given to De Wet on the score of his heroism and his chivalrous
behaviour to our sick and wounded.

In the Standard of August 7, 1900 (p. 7), is given part of a letter from Lieut.-
Col. Stonham, "in command of the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at the front,"

THE ENEMY. 57

to Lady Georgiana Curzon. He had been taken prisoner at Roodeval, and thus
stated his experience: —

"The Boers allowed us to take comforts, &c, from the station before they
blew it up, but unfortunately a truck we had loaded was also blown up.
General De Wet personally stated to me, when I went to his laager,
how much he regretted the accident; and to compensate for it gave me
fifty sheep, which he had sent his men to round up and drive into the
camp. The Boers allowed us to keep all the tents of the 4th Derbys
for our hospital use. They came the next day to see the wounded,
and expressed to many of them, and to us, the regret they felt. Gen-
eral De Wet gave me a safe-conduct for any convoy we might wish to
send. . . . He also said he would give us timely warning of any
impending action. . . . They gave us a written order, which I
could show to any Boer approaching our camp, to the effect that none
were to enter for fear of disturbing the sick. ... I could mention
many other instances of consideration we have received at their
hands. . . ."
To the British army no more cruel insult can be offered than the advice
that our prisoners of war should be shot 1 because they refuse to abandon their
struggle for freedom. The soldier knows the worth and valour of the enemy
whom the civilian calumniates, and it is an unhappy compliment to our army to
denounce as imbeciles and poltroons and marauding bands a foe which has held
at bay for over eighteen months the greatest army England ever sent from her
shores.

Most of the blunders which have characterised our South African policy
during the last thirty years have resulted from want of sympathy and of accurate
information. We have relied on blind guides and on prejudiced witnesses. The
faults, and they are many, of the Dutch have been monstrously exaggerated;
and their virtues, and they have many, have been obscured. It is time that we
try to understand the men who are fighting against us. We have determined
to subdue them and to rule them, and, if we are to rule them with success, we
must learn something of their nature. Understanding comes of knowledge,
and there will be no peace for South Africa until the two races come to know
one another. In the first place, therefore, they are men of like passions with
ourselves. The Boer is very much like an Englishman. He prefers being led
to being driven; he answers to the whip by stubbornness, but to tact and sympa-
thy with loyalty and devotion. He is the most stubborn of enemies, but the
most faithful of friends; impressionable as a child, a hostile touch makes him
strong and hard as adamant. Keen in business, he has an added dash of cun-
ning which makes him a difficult partner. Born of a little nation whose fate it
has been always to struggle for its existence against mighty foes, he is sus-
picious, perverse, and intractable.

The English in South Africa haunt the towns; the Dutch people the country
districts. The townsman, with quicker wits, despises the farmer; the farmer
suspects the townsman. 1 The average Boer is very much like the average

1 Common sense may convert those whom chivalry does not influence. To put the
matter on the lowest ground, if we were to shoot all Boer prisoners, we should lose more
than we should gain. If De Wet and the other Boer generals had shot all our men who sur-
rendered to them, we should have lost by this means alone from the beginning of November,
1900, to March, 1901, nearly two thousand English soldiers.

2 The life that their fathers and grandfathers led does very well for them; they are
content to live and die on their farms, content to live in rough comfort and to die with the
assurance (not always forthcoming in these latter days) that those they leave behind will
walk in their footsteps. Ambition is a thing they know nothing of; the advantages of
wealth, and all that money can give to its possessor, do not seem to appeal one jot to the
bulk of them. ... If times are hard and comforts scarce, the Boer takes his bad fortune

58 PEACE OR WAR.

Englishman of country birth and agricultural surroundings; and a group of the
better-class Boer farmers might be with difficulty distinguished from a group of
English farmers. You have in the men themselves the same qualities, the same
simplicity and frugality, the same stubbornness, the same narrow views and
suspicions, the same strong affections and strong prejudices, the same loyalty
and the same tenacity. 1

The Boer women display a stubbornness and a courage equal to their hus-
bands. Herded together in refuge camps, fed on scanty rations, and often
parted from their children, they retain an invincible faith in the ultimate freedom
of their race. "Go and fight," said a Boer woman to her husband; "I would
rather see you dead, and all my children dead, than that you burghers should
cease the struggle." These women are the mothers of the next generation. Is
it wise that England should tempt them to nurse their children in bitter hatred
of our race?

It is a fashionable belief that all Dutchmen are lazy and retrograde, that
they sleep in a waggon all day, and that their civilisation is mediaeval. The
extraordinary activity and hardihood of the Boers in war is sufficient to cast
doubt on the charge of laziness, and it is a fact that nearly all the agricultural
progress of South Africa is due to the Dutch; all the wheat and tobacco, and
the vines, are grown by these worthless sluggards. The Orange Free State was
a characteristic example of Dutch work, and it was a model for any Govern-
ment in the world. From a desert it was made into a prosperous agricultural
State ; bridges and roads were made ; a complete system of national education
was provided; while telegraphs and railways and an excellent judicature were a
proof of a high order of civilisation.

_ That the Boers have ill-treated the natives is to a considerable extent true,
but it is doubtful whether the native has fared worse at their hands than at the
hands of their English masters. 2 To any South African a black man belongs to
a lower order of humanity, or, to be quite frank, to no order of humanity; and
those who know South Africa assert that the natives live longer with a Dutch
master than with an Englishman, for though the former may treat them more
harshly, his instinct or his experience gives him a greater success as a master."

The radical fault of the Dutch in our eyes is that they dislike the English.
But this is a fault which cannot be cured by a policy of abuse or dragooning; it,
is to be cured only by the lapse of time, by sympathy, and by the frank admis-
sion of high qualities in our opponents. The Dutch are less progressive than
the English, and Dutch civilisation is undoubtedly behind the civilisation of
England. But if we are wise we shall carry our thoughts back to England of
1830, and remember that a great nation whose national existence was then to

philosophically ; next year may be a good one. His one desire in life seems to be not to
be disturbed, to continue on the even tenor of his way without external interference. The
busy strife, the eager competition, the unending nervous strain of modern civilisation, he
regards with horror ; his very soul rises up in revolt against it." — Macmillan's Magazine,
May, 1901.

'Major Spencer Browne, a Queensland contingent officer, writes in the Brisbane
Courier: "I never want to meet kinder, more hospitable and more comfortable people. True,
some of them are poor and ignorant, but the general run of them live comfortable, rear their
families well and with fair education. They are the reverse of what we have been taught
to consider them. It will be a happy day for Australia when our pastoral country is settled
by as fine a class of people."

2 "They appeared to be under the impression that the Boers in the Transvaal were
fierce and unjust aggressors, and that they dispossessed the natives of their territory, and
brutally ill-treated them afterwards. He wished hon. members would read the papers before
they came to this rash and inconsiderate conclusion. The absolute reverse of this was the
fact." Mr. Chamberlain, 1881.

'It is a significant fact that among the enactments issued in March, 1901, by Sir A.
Milner for the administration of the new Colonies, is one which ordains the punishment of
Kaffirs by twelve to twenty-five lashes.

THE ENEMY. 59

be counted by centuries was in constitutional and social reform far inferior to
the Boer States of 1899.

There is one element in the Boer character of which we seem to have taken
little account, though it has puzzled and irritated us. It was the spiritual factor
which won Cromwell his triumphs, and which helped to win for the Americans
their independence. It is the spiritual factor which has nerved the Boers
against a great empire. That which material force cannot do, spiritual strength,
the ordered strength which comes of deep religious and patriotic fervour, can
effect. The Boers are mystics, as were the Roundheads and the early colonists.
Shrewd and active in the conduct of their business, they pass much of their life
in communion with the Unseen. Now a man who passes his whole life in such
communion will make an erratic soldier; but he who to spiritual exaltation adds
shrewd instinct and business capacity is a dangerous foe. The practical mystic
is invincible by ordinary odds.

We are told that the Boers are hypocrites, and their religion is a mere
cloak of deceit. That statement may contain an element of truth, but as a
generalisation it is false. We too often regard religious people as simpletons
in business; and when we are worsted in a struggle by shrewd piety we resent-
fully suspect a fraud. But the implication is unfair, for why should a religious
man be an imbecile?

Many Boers may be hypocritical, many are superstitious; but the Boer race
is religious with a simple fervour and an unsophisticated creed. Their life
under the lonely stars and silent hills gives their thoughts a solemn colour
which is absent from the minds of those who dwell in populous cities.. Our
soldiers who know them well, and who have been their prisoners in this war,
bear witness that their religion, austere and hard as it is, is part of their nature
and of their life. The hymns they have sung over our buried dead are no empty
lip-service, but the sincere utterances of brave men who feel the sense of tears
in human things, and can swiftly pass from the stern horrors of the battlefield
to communion with their Maker. To call such men hypocrites is to insult
humanity.

Their history, written in tears and blood, will be an eternal inspiration to
generous minds. In an age when the ideal has little influence and little value,
they have struggled for the sake of freedom against overwhelming odds for
nearly two years. They have seen their wives carried into captivity, their
children dying, their homes burnt, their property confiscated; but they have
not flinched. When peace and the ordered ease of English rule were offered
them if only they would forswear their country, they refused the temptation and
were strong to fight on. Are we not chivalrous enough to acknowledge
that these men are heroes and worthy of our steel and our regard? Let us,
in Burke's noble phrase, refuse to draw up an indictment against a whole nation.

We, whose pulses have thrilled at the heroic story of our own land, we
who have wept over Poland and Hungary, can we not spare a sigh for the long
agony of this unhappy race? Rough and unlettered they may be, but they have'
given us an example of high and splendid faith; and when the day of our own
Armageddon comes, we shall utter no better prayer than to face our destiny
with a courage as dauntless and serene.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA.

IT is no travesty of the utterances of the capitalist party to say that to them the
Transvaal takes the form of a huge mining and land company. They issue

a prospectus in which they offer to the British public "the most splendid terri-
tory in the world," a land full of gold and diamonds, iron and coal, a land flowing
with milk and honey.a land yielding rich crops of wheat, where flocks and herds
multiply, where generous nature fills the lap of the prosperous settler with richness
and plenty. The promoters of this company point to the eminence of the
Board of Directors and of their advisers, where sit many financiers whose genius
is undisputed.

If a sceptical inquirer objects that the expenditure has been excessive, the
promoters may allow that it is somewhat high. It is true that the maintenance
and protection and development of the new possessions will cost twice as much as
the possession for many years will yield. It is true that the struggle to obtain
it will cost £200,000,000 and, say, 20,000 lives, and the desolation of a country
as large as France, and the permanent hatred of more than half of our fellow-
subjects in Cape Colony, and more disasters than an English army has ever suf-
fered. But England is rich and can afford to pour out her money like water ; the
disasters are "incidents" ; and as to loss of life and loyalty, these are "irrelevant" 1
and mere trifles compared with Prestige. The unhappy public is convinced, the
capitalists float their company, and England pays her £200,000,000 and 20,000
lives and her bitter humiliation.

The basis of statesmanship is common sense, and common sense requires that
we should examine carefully the glittering prospects which are held out to us.
On a calm consideration they lose some of their glamour. The fortunes of
South Africa are determined by its physical character and nature, and it is
not likely that where this factor is a permanent one, progress can be more rapid
than in the past. Agriculture, in the strict sense of the word, is impossible over
the greater part of the country. Much of the land is practically desert, the rainfall
is irregular, and the climate dry. Without an elaborate system of irrigation, it
would be quite impossible to grow more than enough corn to satisfy the wants
of the South African population.

The difficulties of agriculture have driven farmers to devote their attention
to the rearing of cattle and sheep. Most of the farms are very large, and some
are enormous in size, covering as many as sixteen thousand acres, while many
of the Dutch farmers have a very large stock of animals ; but the pasture is thin
and droughts are frequent. The profits are so small and the life is so isolated
that it is certain that few Englishmen will consent to lead it. Nor could they
cultivate large farms without a considerable capital. The South African farmer
has to combat many difficulties. He has either no water or too much ; parasitic
pests destroy his crops, and locusts his fruit. Horse-sickness, caused by feeding
on dew-drenched grass, is a disease of extraordinary virulence, and in an epi-
demic a loss of 50 per cent, is by no means uncommon.'

The great wealth of South Africa lies in its mineral resources. The Wit-

1 Mr. Chamberlain in the House of Commons.
' See Appendix A.

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA. 61

watersrand, which was discovered in 1885, is probably the richest gold field in
the world, and it has the great advantage of affording a perfectly regular supply.
But the life of a gold mine is short, and the introduction of modern machinery
tends to lessen it to an extreme degree. If we allow that there still remains
in the beds of the Rand gold to the value of £700,000,000 sterling, we shall adopt
a generous estimate. It is certain that the population of the Rand will grow,
and that with a more plentiful supply of labour and the introduction of improved
machinery an output of £25,000,000 sterling per annum is assured. It is there-
fore equally certain that the gold mines of the Rand will be exhausted in thirty
to forty years. There will probably remain a number of smaller and poorer
mines which will be worked at a lower profit ; but for all practical purposes, and
unless a new and as yet unknown gold bed is discovered, the Transvaal will be
exhausted of its gold by the middle of this century. With this exhaustion will
disappear the population of Johannesburg; and it is probable that before 1950
it will present the melancholy spectacle of a town living on the memory of its
vanished glory.

It is difficult and almost impossible to estimate the future of the iron and
coal mines ; but unless new economic conditions appear, and the aggregate popula-
tion of South Africa increases to an enormous extent, it is probable that these
mines will not be developed to a degree which may make them serious competitors
of England or America or Germany. Skilled labour is scarce and dear, and
black labour is unskilled and fitful and bad. With labour which is either dear or
bad it would be impossible for South Africa to appear as a competitor in this
field; and unless a great depression falls on our trade at home it is not likely
that English workmen will emigrate in great numbers to South Africa. The
cost of living is very high, and South Africa is without doubt one of the dearest
countries in the world. White men cannot work with blacks ; and where black
labour is plentiful and cheap white men will never go. Our Colonies in Australasia
and Canada offer to the British emigrant better and more promising fields for
his labour.

South Africa, therefore, at present offers little attraction to a white popula-
tion which has not been brought up in the country. It is, and will be, a country
of a few very rich men and of many poor men. The Europeans who make their
fortune will probably return to Europe to spend it, and there seems little likelihood
of an immigration and a permanent settlement of white people on a large scale.

The country is at present practically a wilderness, with a certain number of
towns of varying size and importance. These towns are for the most part the
centres of the English population, while the Dutch monopolise the agricultural
districts and appear to be the only class of the population both able and willing
to till the soil and to live the lonely lives of cattle rearers. The inhabitants of
the towns are migratory, while the agricultural population is permanent in its
nature.

To sum up, the immediate future of South Africa belongs, so far as we
can estimate at present, to the trading and mining communities ; but when the gold
mines are exhausted (and the traders of the towns will be the first to feel the with-
drawal of foreign capital), the centre of gravity will again reside in the popula-
tion of the country districts. In fifty or sixty years we may expect to see the
Dutch population considerably exceeding the number of the English settlers,
and as it is a population which will steadily grow and is homogeneous in charac-
ter, it will exercise a preponderant influence in politics. Unless we conciliate that
population, we are laying up for our successors a heritage of trouble.

CHAPTER VII.

SIR A. MILNER.

NOTHING in the last two years has been witnessed more melancholy than
the failure of Sir Alfred Milner. His appointment to his great office was
greated with universal praise ; it was thought that one held in such affec-
tionate regard by so many eminent men could not but justify that regard, that a
past so brilliant was an omen of easy and happy success. He had shown high
qualities in Egypt and at the Board of Inland Revenue. He had earned the
reputation of a skilful administrator ; and it was said that under the charm of his
manner reposed the strength of character, the insight, and the discretion which
South Africa demands of her rulers.

How utterly these happy auguries have been fasified the world now knows.
It sees that the Viceroy, who was sent out to secure peace and contentment to
South Africa and to hold the balance between the English and the Dutch, has
made every Dutchman disloyal and has been the chief agent in the inception of the
most bitter and disastrous war which England has waged for one hundred and
twenty years.

We have always relied too much on the testimony of our officials in South
Africa, and it would be well for us to take to heart Lord Palmerston's warning
against "the man who has been there," the man who knows nothing of the his-
tory, habits, or prejudices of those whom he rules.

There have been many unwise and few wise rulers in South Africa. Nearly
all have been high-minded, nearly all have been imprudent; but no one save
Alfred Milner has become to the Dutch an object of personal hostility. Even
Sir Bartle Frere, in 1881, did not lose the private regard and respect of the
Dutch in Cape Colony. 1

Sent out to govern as the constitutional representative of a constitutional
monarchy two races between whom the unhappy events of 1895 had raised a bar-
rier of suspicion and anger, he speedily became the partisan of the extreme Loyal-
ist party.

High-minded, patriotic, and absolutely sincere, Sir Alfred Milner has been
unable to resist the sinister influences of South Africa, and the unhappy result has
come about that by nearly every Dutch subject of His Majesty he is regarded with
bitter hatred. Can we regard without alarm his retention in a land where the
Dutch form the predominant factor in the population?

The secret of Sir Alfred Milner's failure lies obviously in the want of sym-

1 Twenty years ago Mr. Chamberlain demanded the recall of Sir Bartle Frere in
language curiously fitting to the present situation : "No one can doubt the energy of the
High Commissioner — he has energy, and to spare. Indeed, it would have been better for
our South African dominions if he had been a little less energetic. I will not for a moment
presume to doubt the ability of the High Commissioner. In other positions he has shown
it, and in other positions may still show it, in the service of the Crown. I will admit also
that he is a man of high integrity of purpose and great conscientiousness ; but these qual-
ities only make him the more dangerous, because ability misdirected is more fatal than
ignorance itself. The conscientiousness of the High Commissioner can only lead to one
conclusion, that he is not likely to change opinions he has deliberately formed, and which he
has so frankly expressed. It has been suggested that continued confidence must be placed
in him in order that he may bring the present difficulties to a satisfactory conclusion. But
I cannot see the logic of that argument. 1 think that the man who has unnecessarily raised
these difficulties is the least likely person now to allay them."

SIR A. MILNER. 65

pathy and imagination which are necessary to the great ruler. Born and, during
his early years, educated in Germany, he must have imbibed the influences of
German ideas and methods. Admirable as those methods often are, they are
bureaucratic and in their essence autocratic. Repugnant to a multitude of Ger-
mans, they are utterly unsuitable to the management of a free and stubborn
people. Sir Alfred Milner's tenure of office in Egypt and at Somerset House
was not likely to liberalise his views. We hold Egypt, frankly, by force, and
though our rule has been an unmixed blessing to the fellaheen, it is not reason-
able to deduce from that fact the conclusion that the same methods will be suit-
able to the government of a race so perverse and suspicious as the Dutch.

Another factor in the formation of Sir Alfred Milner's character was his
experience on the staff of a popular paper. His despatches, admirably written and
most interesting as they are, offer a clear example of the advantages and
dangers of such an education. They are full of excellent phrases, they are
moving and eloquent ; but in their appeal to an immediate audience, and to popu-
lar prejudices, in their partisanship, in their impatience, and in their shortness of
view, they are the work of an able journalist rather than the documents of a
sober statesman whose strength is quietness and confidence, and who is content to
see in the future the perfect fruition of his patient wisdom.

Sir Alfred Milner, therefore, accomplished and amiable as he was, approached
his task under the grave disadvantages of his official training, of his strong prepos-
sessions in favour of strict rule and order, and of a sincere belief that a firm and
unyielding policy was alone fitted to meet the urgency of the situation. To these
causes we must attribute the grievous errors and strange indiscretions that have
marked the career of this brilliant but unhappy Viceroy.

In 1898 he had evidently made up his mind that a large number of the
Dutch in Cape Colony were disloyal and in treasonable sympathy with the Boers
of the Transvaal and the Free State. It was natural, therefore, that he should
meet with impatience their expressions of loyalty to the throne. 1 He accused their
papers of sedition, 2 and told their deputations that they were the tools of unscrupu-
lous politicians, 3 and that he would no longer submit to the political ascendancy
of the Afrikander party.

In his relations with the Transvaal Government he seemed bent on a policy
of force. We have seen how, instructed as he was by Mr. Chamberlain to discuss
with Mr. Kruger the problems of the situation in a conciliatory manner, he
declined to touch on any other question but that of the franchise, and abruptly
closed the door on further negotiations. He had persuaded himself that nothing
would bring the Boers to their senses but threatening language and the prospect

'"Of course, I am glad to be assured that any section of Her Majesty's subjects are
loyal, but I should be much more glad to be allowed to take that for granted. Why should I
not? What reason could there be for disloyalty? You have thriven wonderfully under that
Government. . . . Well, gentlemen, of course you are loyal. It would be monstrous if
you were not. I am familiar at home with the figure of the politician, often the best of men.
though singularly injudicious, who, whenever any dispute arises with another country, starts
with the assumption that his own country must be in the wrong. He is not disloyal, but,
really, he cannot be very much surprised if he appears so to those of his fellow-citizens whose
inclination is to start with the exactly opposite assumption" (March 5, 1898). The Loyalist
Press alluded to this speech as "a splendid sarcasm."

' "A certain section of the Press, not in the Transvaal only, preaches openly and con-
stantly the doctrine of a Republic embracing all South Africa, and supports it by menacing
references to the armaments of the Transvaal, its alliance- with the Orange Free State, and
the active sympathy which, in case of war, it would receive from a section of Her Majesty's
subjects. I regret to say that this doctrine, supported, as it is, by a ceaseless stream of
malignant lies about the intentions of the British Government, is producing a great effect on
a large number of our Dutch fellow-colonists" (May 5, 1899).

Sir Alfred Milner could produce no proof of this statement except the letter of an anony-
mous correspondent of an obscure paper, the Stellalander.

' See Benjamin Franklin on English Governors, p. 14.

64 PEACE OR WAR.

of armed intervention. His despatches to Mr. Chamberlain, and more particularly
the famous cablegram of May, 1899, in which he called aloud for a display of
force and a "striking proof" of firmness, leave no doubt that this idea had become
fixed and rooted in his mind. We are not therefore surprised to know that he
refused to listen to the entreaties of the leaders of the Dutch party in Cape Colony,
or to forward to Mr. Chamberlain the earnest representations of his own Min-
isters, though they had been frequently and fully laid before him. There is no
word or hint of conciliation in his despatches, no attempt to stay a conflict which
he knew full well might bring ruin on South Africa. In fact, he loudly called
for war.

At the end of August, 1899, when it was clear that Mr. Chamberlain was
inclined to accept the proposals of the Transvaal Government, the High Com-
missioner, dreading a weakening of the Ministerial policy, despatched the following
telegram : "British South Africa is prepared for extreme measures, and is ready
to suffer much in order to see the vindication of British authority. A pro-
longation of negotiations and indecisive result is dreaded, and I fear there will
be a strong reaction of feeling against the policy of Her Majesty's Government if
matters drag." It is possible to argue that Sir Alfred Milner's policy was wise ;
it is possible to argue that it was unwise. One fact, at any rate, is clear : he was
the strong advocate of war.

Sir Alfred Milner had almost from the first decided that the salvation of
South Africa lay with the Loyalist party. It was a belief honestly held, but it
has been fatal in its results. Its first effect was to persuade the Dutch that the
Governor-General was a partisan, and that there was no hope of fair treatment
from him or from the Government whose representative he was. Its second effect
was to throw the Viceroy into the hands of the Loyalist party. Having once
made his choice, he could not without difficulty recede from his position. We have
seen that most of the English newspapers published in South Africa were the
property of the financial group who had organised the Jameson Raid. They had
been bought to further the political and financial aims of their proprietors, and it
is clear that their utterances were to be received with suspicion. Yet Sir Alfred
Milner quoted their opinions as worthy of respectful attention.

A further result was certain to follow. The English party in South Africa is,
in the main, a trading and financial party, and many of its leaders are in close
alliance with the capitalists of the Rand. The fruit of this alliance is to be seen
in the extraordinary appointments which Lord Roberts, presumably on the advice
of Sir Alfred Milner, has lately made to the offices in the two annexed Republics.
Mr. Markham explained to a somewhat scandalised House of Commons that
nearly all the important appointments, civil, legal and financial, had been granted
to men who were either in the direct employ of the financial magnates of Johan-
nesburg or who had been in such employ. Mr. Markham's statements have been
met with some criticism, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not controvert
them, and he could only excuse the appointments on the ground that they were
temporary ones.

Another appointment which Sir Alfred Milner's friends could not but regard
as indiscreet was the selection of Mr. Adrian Hofmeyr, who had been dismissed
from his pastorate for immoral conduct, for an important salaried post at Pre-
toria. Mr. Hofmeyr's duties were to act as intermediary between the English
and the Dutch, and Englishmen who can place themselves for a moment in the
position of respectable Dutch men and women can imagine with what feelings
they would receive the advances of an immoral ex-priest. 1

It would be tedious and ungenerous to continue the catalogue of Sir Alfred
Milner's errors, but it has been necessary to give some few examples of that want
of discretion which seems to mark him as unfitted to hold the difficult and delicate

1 Sir Alfred Milner has acknowledged in a telegram or despatch to Mr. Chamberlain
that he knew that Mr. Hofmeyr had been guilty of scandalous conduct in his parish.

SIR A. MILNER. 65

position which he held at Cape Town, and the even more delicate position which he
is about to hold in Pretoria.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the wise and the clever man.
There are in truth many points of difference, and one is this : The wise man, by
instinct or experience, foresees the future, the clever man lives only in the present ;
the former knows that human nature is not logical, while the latter is bent on
winning a dialectical victory. Men are not actuated by simple motives ; if they
were, it would be easy to govern them. To the acute academic and logical mind of
Sir Alfred Milner the Dutch character is incomprehensible. That complex mass
and curious tangle of bad and good, of strong affection and jealous suspicion, of
inherited traditions and racial prejudices which we call human nature, is a diffi-
cult instrument for the unskilful performer, but the expert will play on it with
ease. A knowledge of human nature is the first attribute of a great ruler. He
will know when to loose and when to tighten the rein, when to be severe and
when to yield. To govern those who have never been free is easy : to govern men
of another race in whose blood runs the fierce flame of inherited freedom has
ever been, except to the ruler of rare genius, a hopeless task.

The character which Burke "drew of George Grenville will apply word for
word to the qualities of Sir Alfred Milner. Burke paid due homage to the
masculine understanding, the stout heart and unwearied application of Mr. Gren-
ville, to his generous ambition and his admirable and laborious life. But the fixed
methods and forms of office had not tended to liberalise Grenville's mind.

"It may be truly said that men too much conversant with office are rarely
minds of remarkable enlargement. Their habits of office are apt to give
them a turn to think the substance of business not to be much more
important than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are
adapted to ordinary occasions ; and therefore persons who are nurtured
in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their common
order ; but when the high roads are broken up, when a new and troubled
scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater
knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of
things, is requisite, than ever office gave or than office can ever give."
The career of such men as Grenville is not seldom a tragedy. Dowered with
every gift that seems necessary to win success in life — a keen intellect and a
winning manner, high culture and patriotic ardour — they yet lack the one quality
which gives the temple its corner-stone. They are without that union of sym-
pathy and imagination and discretion and unerring instinct which marks the
great ruler and the great statesman. Precise and orderly in their intellectual
methods, and always able to frame a brilliant defence of a ruinous policy, they
have every knowledge but the knowledge of the human heart. In a time of
peace and order they prove themselves dignified and able leaders of men, but
when passions run high and the conflicting claims of race and interest cry loudly
for solution, they are bewildered and dismayed. They lose their sense of
proportion. Criticism becomes an impertinence, opposition a treachery.
The whisper of disorder angers and terrifies them ; cunning advisers hint that their
dignity and the safety of the Empire are being compromised ; they tell them that
a "strong policy" will stay the coming anarchy. Every step they take makes
return more difficult and more dangerous, and at last they find themselves con-
fronted by dangers with which they have not the strength to fight. Then,
weary and baffled, they throw themselves into the arms of the class which
flatters them. They have become partisans, and all the good qualities of their
character — their love of decency and order, their culture and simplicity, their
devotion to their country — become instruments of their ruin. In bitter remorse
they see around them the desolation of which they have been the unwilling agents,
and the men whom by their unwisdom they have driven into sedition and war
rise up and curse them.

66 PEACE COR WAR.

It is now clear that at last Sir Alfred Milner recognises the tragical failure of
his policy. Seldom in English history has a statesman been forced to describe
in terms more discouraging' the despair of the present and the ominous prospects
of the future. We know that if Sir Alfred Milner could start again with the
knowledge which painful experience has brought him, he would probably take a
different road, and he would certainly not take with him the companions who have
led him into his grievous indiscretions. But the errors of the past may be the
errors of the future, and difficulties almost as great await him in the new posses-
sions which his policy has added to the Empire and of which he has been
appointed the Governor. He, the chief agent of their misery and their conquest,
has to rule men who will never forget and never forgive — men whom it will be
impossible to convince of his justice or of his mercy or of his truth. Is it wise
that we should place him there? Is it wise that he, of his own will, should be
there ?

The proportion of responsibility we should assign to the Colonial Secretary
and the Viceroy at present we can only guess and we may never fully know, but
Sir Alfred Milner must at all events bear a heavy burden. The position which
he has filled has indeed been one of extraordinary delicacy, and it is one which only
a man of genius could have filled with success. But it is a sound and useful rule
that where a community, large or small — a nation, regiment, or school — sinks to
disorder and anarchy, the guilt shall fall on the ruler rather than on the ruled. If a
surgeon, after a wrong diagnosis, amputates a sound limb, we are not disposed to
pardon his error because his intentions were good or his difficulties great. We
look to each man to carry out successfully the special duty that is ordained of him,
and it is the duty of a statesman to succeed. Circumstances may extenuate his
error, but they cannot excuse his failure or justify his retention.

We are too near the events to judge serenely. History will weigh the facts
and sift the evidence and assign the responsibility, and it may be that she will de-
cide that across the dark stage of South Africa there has passed no figure more
interesting, more pathetic, and more ineffectual for good.

1 Sir Alfred Milner's despatch of February 6, 1901.

CHAPTER VIII.

UNREST, OR GOVERNMENT WITHOUT CONSENT.

THERE are now only two courses open to us. We must either crush the
Boers and compel their submission, or we must offer them as reasonable
terms as they will accept. The first is the policy which the English
Ministry has outlined with complete definiteness through Mr. Chamberlain.
The second policy is obviously favoured by Lord Kitchener.

By the first policy the separate national existence of the two Republics is
annihilated, and by annexation they completely lose their independence and are
incorporated in the scheme of the British Empire. Mr. Chamberlain proposes
that, when the Boers have been utterly defeated, they shall be governed by
military rule for a period of time the length of which shall depend upon their
good behaviour. If the Boers show themselves obedient and well-behaved sub-
jects, military rule will be quickly followed by a period of Crown Colony Gov-
ernment.

This method of government, though not military in its character, is abso-
lutely autocratic, and will be imposed upon the two annexed provinces for a
term of years which, as before, will depend upon the good behaviour of the
conquered peoples. Finally, when the Boers have shown by their acts and their
promises that they are loyal subjects of the British Empire, representative insti-
tutions will be granted to them, and they will be allowed to take their place
as separate provinces of a confederated South African Dominion, owning alle-
giance to the British Crown.

To those who know the character of South Africans, whether they be Dutch
or whether they be English, the mere statement of this policy carries its own
condemnation. The folly of such a scheme is not only ludicrous but tragical.

It is difficult to decide which of the first two methods will beget the greatest
difficulties. England has had little experience in ruling by military force a dis-
loyal white population. The case of Ireland is not analogous, for Ireland has a
safety-valve through her representatives in the British Parliament, nor must
it be forgotten that the position of Ireland makes it possible for us to flood the
country at a day's notice with a mass of soldiery. In the first place, the Boers
will be the most difficult of subjects. We heard eighteen months ago that the
result of this war would be a reconciliation between the two races, that the
Boers would learn to respect us, and that they would accept from us the right
hand of fellowship. That was an estimate which might have been made by san-
guine people at the beginning of the war, but it is not an estimate which can be
now made by the most optimistic.

The war has had many of the features of a civil war, and on the part of the
Boers it has been a war waged by the whole body of their citizens against a
professional army. The difference between a citizen and a professional army is
radical, and where the whole population of a country joins together to defend
its territory and its independence, a bitter national feeling is excited which,
whether victory or defeat await the citizens, will not be allayed for generations.
The last eighteen months, if they have taught us anything, have taught us that
there is in the Dutch nature an invincible passion for freedom, a sullen repug-
nance to the rule of an alien, however generous and enlightened. It is vain to
denounce such stubbornness. It exists, and with it we must reckon. The Boer

68 PEACE OR WAR.

character will never wholly assimilate with the English, and the best hope that
we can entertain is that the two races may come to accept what is best in each
other, and to overlook that part which is unpleasant to them.

It is too much to hope that the memories of this unhappy war will ever fade
from the minds of the Dutch. If we can picture to ourselves England swept
from end to end by hostile forces, her towns ravaged, her villages destroyed,
her farms burnt, her women and children hurried from their homes into camps;
if we can imagine one tithe of the physical pain, the mental agony, and the
undying bitterness which such a war in our own country would engender in our
minds, we shall be able to understand in some faint degree the depth and
strength of the passionate hatred which the Boers of the two Republics will
for many a year feel against their English invaders.

During the period of military rule, we shall have to keep in subjection not
only the Boers but the capitalists and the population of the goldfields. It is
quite certain that we shall not be able to reduce the burden of taxation which
Mr. Kruger imposed on the mines, and it is probable that this burden will be
under our rule considerably increased. We shall have to raise heavy taxes
throughout the provinces, and as none of the Dutch will pay these taxes except
under compulsion, and as many of the English and the foreign inhabitants of
Johannesburg may after a time display a similar unwillingness, we may have to
collect these taxes at the point of the bayonet — we who went to war that the
bright rays of freedom might illumine these sullen lands. The English and
foreign mining population will, if we can trust the lessons of history, bear with
ill grace the vexatious exercise of military authority, and it is by no means
incredible that we shall create among the European and American inhabitants
a hatred of our rule as bitter as the hatred we have inspired in the Dutch. We
will, however, assume that peace is maintained, and that we permit the popula-
tion to enter upon the second period — the period of Crown Colony Government.

The conditions of this form of government are not obvious to men who have
not before been under the sway of an alien Power; and though it will be
accepted by the foreign element as an improvement on the military period, it is
certain that the rule of Downing Street will be almost as vexatious as the
administration of soldiers. Those who have examined the difficult problems of
our colonial system are aware that no danger which has threatened the safety
of our colonial empire is so acute as the danger we have suffered through the
incompetence and narrow obstinacy of our official classes. To a colonial,
whether he be an Australian or a New Zealander, a Canadian or an African or
West Indian, the name of Downing Street is typical of the worst faults of
bureaucratic government, and the slightest suspicion that this hateful instru-
ment is likely to interfere in the government of his country will turn at once the
most loyal colonist into the most bitter malcontent.

The English Ministers will, during this period as during the last, find in the
mine-owners as difficult and probably as dangerous a foe as in the Dutch. The
mine-owners and managers, most of whom are foreigners, will care nothing
about the administration or the safety of the country in so far as it does not
concern their own definite interest. They will be daily pressing upon the Eng-
lish Ministry the necessity of regulating native labour, and fixing by law a price
for such labour, and of importing even against their will natives from the sur-
rounding countries. English Ministers will hesitate to sanction and enforce a
system which has little to distinguish it from slavery; but in their perplexity,
fearing on the one side the disloyalty of the Dutch, and on the other the hos-
tility of the mine-owners, the English Government may find itself obliged to
cultivate the friendship of the capitalists in order to secure the quiet of the
country.

Finally, the period of representative institutions will arrive. It is impossi-
ble for England to govern a white population for any length of time by other

GOVERNMENT -WITHOUT CONSENT. 69

than constitutional methods. Russia might succeed, or Germany; but Eng-
land's traditions and her sympathy with freedom are too powerful to allow her
for ever to dragoon white men into submission. Ultimately, public opinion in
Great Britain will assert. itself, and constitutional privileges will be granted to
the Dutch in the two annexed Republics.

We shall then be met by an obvious but painful dilemma. If it is true that
in fifty or sixty years the Dutch population in these two Republics will out-
number or be equal to the English population, if the passion for independence
which animates the Dutch to-day retains its vigour, it is probable that the Boers
will endeavour by constitutional means to secure their independence. We shall
either be compelled to assent to any demands their representatives may choose
to make, or to refuse to yield to those demands. In the latter case, we shall be
forced back to the odious remedies of military coercion, and shall find ourselves
again obliged to hold down two great territories with an armed force'.

But the cardinal objection to the subjugation of the two Republics, and to
the absolute loss of their independence will be its disastrous effect upon the
loyalty of the Dutch in Cape Colony. The danger which, above all others, an
English Ministry should avoid is that of consolidating the whole Dutch popula-
tion of South Africa by enforcing upon them a racial grievance.

The sympathy of the Cape Dutch with the Boers of the Transvaal and the
Orange Free State is not political but racial. The same blood flows in their
veins, they are related by ties of marriage and kinship, and the sympathy which
they feel for two peoples of the same blood is the sympathy which Englishmen
would feel under the same conditions for men of their blood threatened with
annihilation by a great Power. The Dutch colonists had not shown before
the Jameson Raid any violent sympathy with the Transvaal; on the other hand,
they had displayed considerable hostility towards the political defects of the
Boer Government. They recognised too well the advantages of their position
as an English Colony to wish to join their political fortunes with those of the
Transvaal.

There is then among the Colonial Dutch a passionate feeling of racial
sympathy with the men of their own blood in the two Republics, and all their
leaders assure us, in language of solemn warning, that the Cape Dutch will never
rest until the Dutch in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State enjoy, if only
to a limited extent, the independence which is the breath of their life. So long
as the Dutch of the Transvaal and the Free State are held down as a subject
and conquered race, their position will unite the whole Dutch population of
South Africa, and will create a most dangerous disaffection throughout its
length and breadth. We shall then govern, not only a hostile people in the
annexed Republics, but a more numerous and equally hostile people in Cape
Colony. Through their representatives the Cape Dutch will be able to press
steadily for a reversal of our policy, and to take advantage of our weakness and
its opportunities. We cannot permanently ignore the demands of a Cape Par-
liament, in which the Dutch may be supreme, and we shall either have to gram
these demands or suspend free institutions. The certain outcome of such a
policy would be rebellion and civil war. On the other hand, if we allow the
Boers to retain their own laws and customs and representative institutions, we
shall divert this sympathy, and our colonists, embittered no longer by the sub-
jugation of their kinsmen across the Orange and the Vaal, will return again to
their own political interests.

The military effects of a policy of unconditional submission will be disas-
trous. To hold, without the consent of its inhabitants, a country so desolate,
so barren, so vast, so sparsely populated, and so hostile, will be impossible by
any other than a great military force. England will be obliged to build forts
at frequent intervals through the whole country; she will have to maintain in the
two Republics an army of 40,000 men in addition to a police force of 10,000

70 PEACE OR WAR.

men; and the presence of these troops, and the inevitable friction which will
ensue between the Dutch and English officials, 1 will keep alight a fire which
any sudden violence on our part or any European complication would fan into
inextinguishable flame. Two results at least will follow. A first and immedi-
ate result will be an increase in our standing army, together with an enormous
increase in our expenditure and in the burden of taxation. It will be impossible
for us to maintain an armed force of 50,000 men in South Africa and to
maintain, on the old establishment, troops sufficient to guard India and our
vast interests at home and abroad. There will be a demand on the part of our
war party for conscription or for some form of compulsory service. That the
English nation will permit such service, except under the stress of foreign inva-
sion, is incredible; and when the time comes to choose between conscription
and a conciliatory attitude in South Africa, there is little reason to doubt that
it will be able to make its choice without hesitation. If, on the other hand, we
yield to the clamour of the military party, we shall slowly but surely drop behind
in that race for national and commercial pre-eminence in which even now it is
difficult to preserve our place. The money which we have spent in South
Africa to no purpose would have sufficed to equip in every first-rate and second-
rate town in Great Britain a technical institution which might have been inval-
uable to us in our commercial struggle. South Africa will drain our strength;
we shall lose power and opportunity: we shall bleed to weakness if not to
exhaustion.

In addition to the military and political difficulties, there will arise a finan-
cial problem of great magnitude. One of the many illusions from which we are
slowly awakening is the expectation that we shall be able to recover a consid-
erable portion of the cost of the war from the two Republics. This illusion was
partly based on the hope that a war of three months would find the Boers at
our mercy; but there are still many men sanguine enough to hope that even
after eighteen months of warfare we may still be able to relieve the English
taxpayer from a portion of his burden. This hope must now be definitely
abandoned. 2 The two Republics cannot for many years, and perhaps will never,
bear any considerable share of the cost of the war. This statement is a strong
one and will be a shock to optimists. But we cannot by optimism evade plain
facts, and a recital of such facts will be sufficient to demolish the pathetic hopes
of the English taxpayer.

In the first place, though it is at present impossible to estimate accurately
the cost of the war, we know that in round figures the present expenses of
the campaign vary between £1,750,000 and £2,000,000 a week. If we assume
that the war is only to be ended by the complete submission of the Boers, and
if we also assume that such a submission cannot be obtained in less than two
years from the commencement of the war, we shall obtain an aggregate cost of
£150,000,000. This estimate is a very low one, and it is probable that
when the whole expenses of the war are computed they will amount to
£175,000,000, while if the war lasts for more than two years, the total cost may
be £200,000,000 or £250,000,000 ($1,250,000,000).

The two Republics have been devastated, and very many of the farms in
the Orange Free State and in the Transvaal have been burnt and destroyed.
Many of the smaller towns in the two States have also been sacked, and the
few irrigation works which existed in the country have probably been ruined.

1 What happened after the first annexation is a portent of what must happen after a
second. And now the risks are immeasurably greater.

2 Sir David Barbour, who was sent by the. Government to the Transvaal to report on the
financial situation and on the prospects of a contribution from the annexed territories, has
reported that the Free State will furnish nothing towards the cost of the war and that the
Transvaal, having been brought to the verge of ruin, will not be able to contribute anything
for many years. (Sir M. Hicks-Beach, April 18, 1901.)

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT CONSENT. 71

It will be necessary for us, if we are to govern the country properly, to restore
to it its agricultural and its industrial prosperity. It will be impossible to feed
the inhabitants of the large towns without the aid of an agricultural popula-
tion. We shall have therefore to rebuild and restock the farms which we have
burnt, to redeem them from the Jew mortgagors who will foreclose on the
ruined Boers, and to supply capital to the Boer farmers whom we replace on
their farms. If we confiscate these farms and are able to find Englishmen to
succeed the Boer owners, we shall be obliged to supply such men with even
greater capital. It will also be necessary to take in hand large irrigation works,
and to develop the country by a network of railways and by other necessary but
expensive methods of development. This work of restoration will involve us
in a very large expenditure. To rebuild the farms, to supply capital to the old
or the new farmers, to develop the country by irrigation and railways and to
compensate those of our own colonists who have suffered in this war, will cost
us at the least £25,000,000.

We thus arrive at a capital sum of at least £200,000,000, or it may be
£250,000,000, which will fall entirely on the English taxpayer unless we are able
to lay part of the burden on the resources of the Transvaal and the Free State.
It is necessary, therefore, to examine the resources of the two Republics.

In 1898 the total revenue which the Transvaal was able to raise was, in
round figures, £4,000,000, while the expenditure amounted to the same sum.
Of this sum no less than half a million was spent in armaments, and we may
therefore assume that the civil administration of the country and its various
services cost £3,500,000.

The following is the financial statement of the Transvaal for 1898: —

Receipts.

Fines, &c £90,713

Hut and native tax 110,182

Import duties 1 .066,994

Interest 254,991

Licences 174,383

Postal Department (including telegraphs) 206,331

Prospecting licences 322,748

Revenue, Netherlands Railway 668,951

Sale of explosives 158,973

Stamp dues 285,383

State royalty on dynamite 67,71 1

Stand licences 60,004

Transfer dues 125,439

Other revenue 390,757

£3.083,560

Expenditure.

Education £202,831

Fixed salaries 1,080,382

Hospitals ._. 88,952

Import duties 316,426

Interest 151,146

Diggers' and Prospectors' licences (owners' portion) 178,203

Police and prisons..^ 80,963

Purchase of properties 140,310

Public works 535,502

Special expenditure 211,911

Sundry services 148,874

Swaziland expenditure 148,961

Telegraph Department 92,023

War Department 357,225

Other expenditure 237,765

£3.97M73
Surplus 12,087

72 PEACE OR WAR.

The revenue of the Orange Free State in 1895-96 was £375,000, and the
expenditure was £430,000. The succeeding years showed an increase of the
figures both of revenue and expenditure, but in no year as there any material
surplus of income over expense.

It is difficult and almost impossible to determine whether some of the
items of the Transvaal expenditure are extravagant, and whether some 01 the
receipts may not be increased under British administration. In particular, the
revenue derived from the Netherlands Railway Company will probably show
an increase if we exercise the powers of expropriation which the late Trans-
vaal Government possessed. It is probable that the Transvaal spent on its war
department more than £357,000, and we may assume that the extra expenditure
has been concealed in some of the other items. But it is difficult to see how
the expenses of a Government ruling a huge territory can be materially
reduced in any direction except in that of military supplies, and it is quite
certain that many of the expenses will be considerably increased. The admin-
istration of the Transvaal was inefficient, and even bad, but it was cheap. It
did not employ a host of officials, and the salaries paid were not in the aggre-
gate high.

Putting on one side extravagant expenditure and the amount expended on
armaments, we may assume that the cost of government of the two States did
not in any year exceed £4,000,000; and it is well known that British administra-
tion, though efficient, is extremely costly. Whether the new provinces be undei
military rule or Crown Colony government or representative government, it is
certain that the number of officials will be considerably greater than the number
of Boer officials, and that the aggregate amount of their salaries and of the
general cost of administration will exceed by at least one-half the expense of
the former civil administration of the Transvaal and the Free State. We may
safely assume, therefore, that the civil administration of the Transvaal and the
Free State conducted according to English methods will cost not less than
£6,000,000.

When the submission of the Boers is enforced there is to be a force of
mounted police of 10,000 men. The pay of this police is very high, and amounts
on an average to £200 a year for each man. The expenses of such a force,
including extra allowances, rations, horses, 1 and equipment for the rank and
file, and allowing for the high cost of all necessaries of life, will amount at least
to another £2 a week per man. This police force, therefore, will cost in pay
and keep £3,000,000 per annum.

It will also be necessary to maintain a large military force in the conquered
territories, and it is probable that this force will number for several years at
least 40,000 men. Such a force will, making due allowance for the cost of living
and for the general waste of a large body of men, cost £100,000 a week, or
£5,000,000 a year. Thus the military occupation and the policing of the two
territories will cost £8,000,000 a year, and the whole cost of the civil and mili-
tary administration of the two territories cannot be less than £14,000,000 per
annum.

A moment's consideration will prove to us that it will be quite impossible
to raise from the Transvaal and the Free State more than a quarter of this

' Horse-sickness is one of the greatest plagues of South Africa, and it has been esti-
mated by a writer in the African Review of January 5, 1901, that the average mortality
among the horses in our army of occupation will be at least 75 per cent. Even if we assume
that this estimate is exaggerated, and reduce it to 50 per cent., the result is startling. Assum-
ing that the police force requires 30,000 horses, of these 15,000 will die every year, and,
valuing these at £20 each, the annual cost to the Government in horses alone will be £300,-
000. Moreover, owing to the risks of grass food, the Government will havt to feed at least
half its horses on forage, and, allowing £2 per month per horse for this item, we arrive at an
udditional expense of £360,000. The total expense of the 30,000 horses alone will be £660,-
000 per annum.

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT CONSENT. 73

amount. The taxable value of the Free State was always small, and after the
war it will obviously be bankrupt. The agricultural resources of the Transvaal
will be almost annihilated, and the English Ministry will find that their only
source of revenue left is the mining industry, with the direct or indirect taxation
of commodities.

The Government will be met at the outset by a difficulty of pressing
urgency. For what reason did the Government embark in this war? Our Min-
isters have stated that the object of their policy was to redress the wrongs of
British residents and to enforce British supremacy. If this is so, the war has
obviously been undertaken for Imperial interests, and the Ministers cannot
consistently demand a contribution from the mine-owners, most of whom are
non-British subjects. Nor shall we be able to demand an indemnity from the
two Republics, for we have annexed them. They are our Colonies, and Eng-
land cannot demand an indemnity from her Colonies.

Mr. J. B. Robinson and other mine-owners have, during the last few months,
vehemently protested against the placing of any heavier burdens on the mines,
and the influence and the power of the mine-owners and the necessity of their co-
operation with the English Government will force us to yield to their wishes
and to spare the mines any burden much heavier than they bore under the Trans-
vaal Government.

In 1898 the aggregate .amount of dividends paid by the gold mines was
under £5,000,000, and the taxes on profits paid by them to the Transvaal Gov-
ernment amounted to about £250,000. Making every allowance for an increased
output of gold and lighter burdens, it will be impossible for the English Govern-
ment to raise from the gold mines more than £500,000 a year.

In addition to the sources of revenue which we have given above, there remain
a few "concessions" or mining rights which, having been the property of the
Transvaal Republic, will pass into the hands of its successors. The value of
these rights has been exaggerated, and they probably will not realize more than
£2,000,000, which, at 4 per cent., will yield an income of £80,000 a year.

We will now tabulate the various figures and form an estimate of the receipts
and expenditure of the two States under British administration. Such an estimate
must, in the nature of things, be rough, but it will probably be found that the
aggregate amounts are not far distant from the truth.

Receipts.

Taxation of gold-mines £500,000

Imports 1,000,000

Netherlands Railway 750,000

Dues and licences 750,000

Income from sales of new concessions 80,000

Post Office 220,000

Other receipts 350,000

£3,650,000

Expenditure.

Civil administration of the two provinces £6,000,000

Military occupation 5,000,000

Police force of 10,000 men 3.000,000

£ 14,000.000
3,650,000

Deficit £ 10,350,000

It is possible and probable that this disastrous balance-sheet will be improved
in the course of years, but no material improvement is possible while a military
occupation of the two territories is necessary.

74 PEACE OR WAR.

The capital expense of the war must be met by some sort of loan, whether
wholly by an addition to the national debt of England, or partly by a loan to the
new Colonies under British guarantee. But the result will be the same. The
interest on the money will and can only be paid by the English taxpayer. If the
war is continued for a further considerable period, its capital expense will amount
at least to £200,000,000, which will be increased to £225,000,000 if we assume
that a special loan of £25,000,000 will be necessary for the restoration of agri-
culture and the rebuilding of the burnt farms. The interest on this amount,
allowing for a sinking fund, at 3^ per cent, will be £ 7,875,000, and if we add this
amount to the deficit on the revenue accounts of the two States, i.e., £10,350,000,
we arrive at a total of £18,225,000. Such is the annual burden which our new
Colonies will lay upon us for some years if we determine to secure the submission
of the inhabitants by military methods and to control their disaffection by the
sword.

Of this huge annual expenditure no reduction can be made until the two
provinces become settled and peaceful, and, looking at the future in the light of
the past and the present, it would be imprudent to hope for partial withdrawal
of our military forces and a reduction of our police force within four or five years
from the end of the war.

CHAPTER IX.

PEACE, OR GOVERNMENT WITH CONSENT.

A ~\ J HEN we turn from the lamentable prospects of continued warfare and
Y Y military or Crown Colony rule to a reasonable and generous pol-

icy, we are met by the instant protests of pride. But to propose
terms again zvould be to confess an error, and to suffer a humiliation. There, at
last, we have touched the secret wound. It is our pride and not our wisdom
which revolts. We fear to lose Prestige. Is not England growing a little tired
of this word and of some other sonorous phrases which have been fashionable of
late? Education has brought with it a certain vulgarity not only of thought and
temper but of expression. High and noble words and big sounding phrases are
attractive. They serve to dignify a commonplace thought, and every third-rate
writer or speaker must mouth of Patriotism and Imperialism and Prestige. They
become stale by ignoble use, until sober men are sick of the sound of words
which are as incongruous to their utterers as a Tudor palace to a parvenu.

The old cry is raised again that to oppose the Ministry is to encourage the
enemy. Every argument of the opponents of this war has been met by the same
protest : "The nation is at war ; the Ministry therefore is sacrosanct ;" "Every
vote given to the Liberals is a vote given to the Boers ;" "A whisper of criticism
in England will be heard by the Boer generals." The same poor and futile appeals
were made by North and Wedderburn, and were met by Burke in language as
apt to-day as it was a century and a quarter ago.

"Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are forced into day upon
one point are sure to burrow in another ; but they shall have no refuge ;
I will make them bolt out of all their holes . . . they take other
ground, almost as absurd, but very common in modern practice and very
wicked, which is to attribute the ill effect of ill-judged conduct to the
arguments which had been used to dissuade us from it. They say
that the opposition made in Parliament . . . encouraged the Ameri-
cans to their resistance."
"If this unheard-of doctrine of the encouragement of rebellion were true, if
it were true that an assurance of the friendship of numbers in this coun-
try towards the colonies could become an encouragement to them to
break off all connection with it, what is the inference? Does anybody
seriously maintain that, charged with my share of the public councils,
I am not obliged to resist projects which I think mischievous, lest men
who suffer should be encouraged to resist? ... It is, then, a rule that no
man in this nation shall open his mouth in favour of the colonies, shall
defend their rights, or complain of their sufferings, or, when war breaks
out, no man shall express his desire of peace? ... By such acquies-
cence great kings and mighty nations have been undone ; and if any are
at this day in a perilous situation from rejecting truth and listening
to flattery, it would rather become them to reform the errors under
which they suffer than to reproach those who forewarned them of their
danger."
We may, in the eyes of extreme and truculent partisans, suffer humiliation ;
but can we suffer greater humiliations than we have been enduring for eighteen
months? The greatest Empire in the world has seen the greatest army it has

76 PEACE OR WAR. 1.

ever sent from its shores held at bay by two little nations whose whole population
is beneath that of a second-rate English town. We have a population of forty
millions to draw upon, immense wealth and every source of civilisation ; the Boers
have no reinforcements to look to, and they have no visible means of procuring
supplies and ammunition. Their army is an army of farmers, and when they
have been beaten they have been beaten by overwhelming numbers. If it is only
a loss of prestige that we fear, let us be manly enough to recognise that we are
likely to lose as much by a continuance as by a cessation of the war ; and, at any
rate, it is better to lose a little prestige than a sea of blood.

To open negotiations and to offer honourable terms may disclose weakness ;
but which is the greater weakness — to acknowledge a mistake, or in our foolish
pride to blunder into the dark and difficult future, regardless of the cost, and igno-
rant of the goal ? The strong man can afford to confess his mistake and to turn
back, because he knows that he is strong, that he possesses the capacity of amend-
ment, and that he can redeem his loss. The weak man, like the ill-bred among
aristocrats, is conscious of his weakness, and fears detection. He hopes to cover
his retreat by loud words, and, dreading the jeers of his friends, goes obstinately
along to perdition.

If foreign nations look upon our change of purpose with scorn, let us take
this comfort. In no way can we serve the interests of our rivals better than by
continuing this war. Every pound we spend in South Africa, every man we lose,
is their gain, and while we are bleeding they are watching and waiting. Every
month of war weakens our strength, and sees us more impotent to defend the
manifold interests of the Empire. Is this Prestige?

Statesmanship is common sense touched by imagination and informed by
history; and the very essence of English political wisdom is compromise. It is
common sense in action as opposed to the official mind in action. Real states-
manship is the union of the ideal and the practical, and it recognises that what
may be good for one people is unbearable by another ; that human nature is largely
composed of prejudices, and that to gain one advantage we often have to resign
another; that a strict insistence on abstract rights not seldom results in the loss
of rights more valuable. To carry an argument to its logical conclusion may be in
theory admirable ; in ordinary life, and above all in political life, it is the extreme
of folly. We must take other men and nations as we find them. God made
them as He made us, and they are probably no worse and no better than we.

The wise man understands the limitations of his strength, and he knows that
to aim too high is often to fall. There is in all negotiations the happy moment
when the victor of the hour may secure his reasonable aims : that moment passed,
he may find his advantage gone and his first conditions impossible. The Sibyl has
offered, and will yet offer, her books to others than to Tarquin.

To make a fetish of unconditional submission, to prolong a great and costly
war because our enemy might make submission on certain terms and because
he will not make submission on the terms which we, in a moment of rashness, have
laid down, is obstinacy as criminal as was that of George III., and the result
may be as fatal.

The problem of a practical settlement is obviously difficult from any point of
view save that which recognises no difficulties that cannot be solved by sheer
force. Indeed, it is not unlikely that the very difficulties of the case are among
the main reasons why the British Government chose at first the course of de-
manding unconditional surrender from the Boers, instead of offering them reason-
able terms. To admit this, of course, would be to confess that the war was
forced on without foresight, and has been pursued for no good cause. The easiest
course, at first sight, has seemed to be that of effecting a conquest, and leaving
the settlement slowly to shape itself. Like haphazard methods in general, how-
ever, this course has merely increased the difficulty. The demand for mere sur-
render, and the means taken to enforce it, have made the burghers only more

GOVERNMENT WITH CONSENT. 77

determined, more desperate, more irreconcilable. Without crying, then, over the
spilt milk, let us consider what plan of settlement may be suggested which has
any chance of making peace and keeping it.

It is clear that Lord Kitchener, and in a lesser degree Sir Alfred Milner, is
convinced that for our own sake and for the sake of South Africa this war should
cease. Lord Kitchener himself was willing .to make notable concessions. He
asked General Botha to meet him at Middleburg, and he there submitted to the
Boer leader certain terms which in his opinion the English Government might
be willing to accept. The most important of these were :

1. That military government should cease on the ceasing of hostilities, and
that an elected assembly should advise the Crown Colony administration.

2. That the legal debts of the Republics incurred during the war should be
taken over by the English Government.

3. That a gift of money should be made to repair burnt farms.

4. That the English Government should move the Governments of Cape
Colony and Natal to grant an amnesty to all rebels.

Lord Kitchener's tentative proposals were laid before Mr. Chamberlain, and
they were by him modified and made more stringent on these and other points.
Whether these modifications were unacceptable to the Boer leaders or whether
Lord Kitchener's original proposals seemed to them impossible, we do not know.
All we do know is that on March 16, 1901, General Botha, in a short letter, sum-
marily declined to recommend the terms of the British Ministry to the earnest
consideration of his Government. It is clear, therefore, that no terms at present
are likely to be acceptable to the Boers which do not give them a modified form
of independence.

The simplest, and in the long run, the safest course would be a return to the
status quo ante with such guarantees and modifications as would safeguard the
interests of British subjects and our supremacy in South Africa. Any scheme
which falls short of practical independence must ultimately bear within it the
seeds of its own dissolution : the Boers will never rest until they have regained
the right to manage their own affairs. But in the present temper of the British
public it is beyond the range of practical statesmanship to achieve such a result.

The ground of agreement, therefore, must be sought in the announcement
by Mr. Chamberlain in the House of Commons to the effect that in time the
Boer provinces must have self-governing institutions. This, doubtless, clashes with
language used about the same time by Lord Salisbury ; but there are many reasons
for holding that Mr. Chamberlain's view can carry the day, and it is not consistent
with the terms which Lord Kitchener, obviously with Sir Alfred Milner's ap-
proval, proposed to Botha. In its way, however, stands the serious difficulty that
the time of settlement must on his principles be determined by military consid-
erations. Not till the commander in the field reports tranquillity and security is
the British Government likely to withdraw its forces and to consent to a period of
Crown Colony government, which in its turn is to be followed by such Colonial
self-government as prevails in Canada and Australia. And this, as already sug-
gested, is probably a main reason why, up to last February, Lord Kitchener
had not been authorized to offer terms to the enemy. Such an offer would have
to specify dates ; and to do this, from Mr. Chamberlain's point of view, would in-
volve stipulations for a somewhat prolonged military occupation and autocratic
government before the advent of representative institutions. That the Boers
would accept such terms is somewhat unlikely. Their acceptance would mean their
submission to a martial law administered by the very men whom lately they had
been fighting; and no one who has studied the operation of martial law can well
believe that under these of all circumstances it would be administered in an en-
durable fashion.

Here emerges the fatality of the resort to arms, with its normal sequel of
angry persistence up to the point of partial exhaustion. Terms which might be

78 PEACE OR WAR.

offered and accepted at an early stage are at that stage refused : when they are
offered, the stage of willing acceptance is passed. In the American War of Inde-
pendence, the Ministry of Lord North sent commissioners in 1777 with powers
to make a settlement. Had this been done in 1775 there might have been no
Declaration of Independence ; but in 1777 the concessions offered came too late,
and the war went on. The simple fact is that the temper which makes war blinds
men to the means which can either avert or stop it.

If, then, there is to be any diplomatic arrest of the war in South Africa,
it must be by way of a plan which transcends the difficulties that now hem in Mr.
Chamberlain, yet stands a fair chance of being accepted by the Ministerial party.
We must seek a solution which can be accepted by the Boers as being not worse
for them than a continuance of the war, while at the same time it does not restore
the conditions of unstable equilibrium that led to the war.

To this end the following suggestions are offered with due diffidence, though
they are made after a careful and anxious calculation of all the ostensible possi-
bilities. They are doubtless open to many objections, but they will at all events
serve as a basis of discussion.

( 1 ) Let the Boers be required to disband on the conditions that —

(2) A general amnesty shall be proclaimed both for the inhabitants of the
two provinces and for the Cape rebels.

(3) The former Republics shall be made constituent provinces in a South
African Federation on the lines of that of Australia; each of the Boer States,
however, retaining its local legislature, subject, on equal terms with the other
States, to the common control of the Federation.

(4) Neither Republic shall be at liberty to enter into foreign diplomatic
relations of any kind, or to set up any military organisation save such as may be
authorised by the common Parliament of the Federation, with a view to possible
danger from native races.

(5) Further, not only shall the franchise conditions in the Boer provinces be
pre-determined (either in the common Parliament, under the usual supervision by
the Crown, or by separate agreement), but the fiscal control of the Johannesburg
mines shall be similarly determined, to the end that —

(6) The taxation to be drawn from the mines shall be directed (a) pri-
marily to the repair of all the destruction and impoverishment wrought by the
war, without distinction of race; and (b) secondarily, after such restoration, to
the general development and administration of the federated provinces of South
Africa.

(7) These conditions being agreed to, the Boer provinces shall not be
administered by martial law in the interval between the surrender and the con-
stitution of the Federation ; but the British Government shall be entitled to main-
tain at specified places forces sufficient to preserve order and security, while the
former Parliaments of the two Boer States shall be at liberty to recommence the
normal administration of the country, save and except as regards the former
military organisation.

(8) In order to hasten and guarantee the repair of the destruction and im-
poverishment wrought by the war on both sides, the British Government shall
raise on loan and guarantee a fund (to be specified) at a date not later than six
months after the cessation of hostilities, such fund to be disbursed and admin-
istered by three or four Chief Justices (of South Africa), one British Financial
Expert, two Boers of high station, and two high British officials, one High Com-
missioner (= four Boers and five or six British), as they shall see fit.

(9) On the constitution of the South African Federation, the fund so dis-
bursed shall be recognised as part of the common debt of such Federation, and the
interest upon it shall be met out of the common revenue. The existing debts of
the other provinces shall be treated in the same fashion.

(10) Such constitution of the South African Federation shall take place as

GOVERNMENT WITH CONSENT. 79

soon as is compatible with proper arrangements, and shall on no account be delayed
more than three years from the date of cessation of hostilities.

(u) The seat of the common Parliament of the Federation shall be in a
central place, to be agreed upon by the Parliaments of the four provinces.

(12) The system of education, the treatment of natives, and the use of the
English and the Dutch language shall be, as far as possible, uniform in all the con-
stituent States.

To this line of settlement the most obvious objection is that it commits Cape
Colony and Natal to a Federation on which they have not been asked to pro-
nounce. This, however, may be met by an offer of an immediate armistice to last
for a given period, during which the Parliaments of the two Colonies, and those
of the two Boer States, may vote on the general question of a Federation, leaving
open only such details as cannot be readily settled. As the refusal to accept Feder-
ation all round would mean the indefinite prolongation of a war which in different
degrees is disastrous to all the provinces concerned, as well as to the British Em-
pire, there is fair reason to trust that all would acquiesce. If not, everything would
be recommitted to the fortune of war.

The government of the Rand district must always be a difficult problem,
whether under Boer or British rule. If in the forthcoming settlement some special
arrangement were possible for the administration of this part of the Transvaal,
many dangers of the future would be avoided.

The dangers of a liberal policy are, in the opinion of its opponents, the con-
tinued existence of two hostile States which might become a nucleus of intrigue
against British supremacy and in favour of foreign intervention, while we should
again be exposed in the course of a few years to an increase of the armaments of
the Boers. That these dangers do to a certain degree exist, and that they are likely
to exist for some time is true, but the policy of annexation will rather increase than
diminish them.

It will be impossible to prevent the Boers in the two Republics from arm-
ing themselves with rifles ; and in fact no sane Ministry would, in view of the
dangers which white men must face daily in South Africa, attempt to prohibit the
use of small arms. The larger armaments we could forbid, and we could probably
make our prohibition effective. But if we govern the two Republics either by
military rule or as a Crown Colony, we shall in time unite the whole population
against ourselves, whereas if we allow them to retain a modified independence
we shall escape an enormous annual outlay, many dangers, and countless per-
plexities. The Boers will be the most difficult subjects that the Empire has ever
governed. A continuance of their independence, limited by guarantees and safe-
guards, will convert them from rebels into neighbours, sullen perhaps, but unlikely
to inflict practical injuries upon us. Annexed and held down by force, the Boers
will be ever scheming for foreign assistance. Independent, they will be as hostile
to foreign interference as they have been to British interference.

It is clear that one of the chief difficulties which have faced the Government
and which will face it in the future is the question ' of amnesty for the Cape
rebels. In theory and in logic their offence has undoubtedly merited the severest
punishment. They have been guilty of high treason, and they are therefore
liable to the severest penalty which can be enforced under ordinary law or special
law or martial law. But in matters of practical wisdom there is not so much room
for theory and logic as the unobservant may suppose. History teaches us that the
theorist and the logician are commonly the worst statesmen, and that common
sense is the basis of wise policy. If it is true that the Dutch and the English
have to live permanently side by side not only in the two Republics but in Cape
Colony and Natal, it should obviously be the aim of the wise statesman to
remove all possible causes of friction and discontent. If the Government is weak,
it will yield again to the fierce outcry of those Loyalists in South Africa whose
violence has led our Ministry into its present deplorable position, and will refuse

80 PEACE OR WAR.

an amnesty to those Dutch in Cape Colony who have taken up arms on behalf of
their kinsmen. If the Government is wise it will remember that these rebels
.are men of the same blood as the citizens of the two Republics, that they have
been induced to support their kinsmen by a sympathy which, however wrong-
headed, was at least the result of generous motives. There can be no peace in
South Africa until the two races are brought to live side by side in moderate
friendship. If we keep the wound open by insisting on disfranchisement or im-
prisonment, we are deliberately placing obstacles in the path of a peaceful future.
We can only govern by consent of the governed; and every citizen whom we do
not pardon, whom we leave embittered by the loss of his own political privileges or
of the rights of those who are near and dear to him, is a definite and irremov-
able obstacle to a peaceful settlement in South Africa. The policy of revenge has
been tried, and it has always failed : the policy of amnesty has been tried, and
it has nearly always succeeded.

CHAPTER X.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

WE have now reached the close of our consideration of this great prob-
lem. We have seen that as the war of 1775 arose through the
assertion of a right of sovereignty over the American Colonies, so the
war with the South African Republics in 1899 arose from the assertion of the
right of England as suzerain power to interfere in the internal concerns of the
Transvaal. We have seen how this cruel and deplorable war was the outcome
of grievous mistakes on both sides, of incapacity "and perverse distrust on the
part of the Boers, of gross ignorance and of an insincere and awkward diplo-
macy on the part of our advisers and officials.

We have reviewed the melancholy catalogue of absurdities of statement and
prediction which have marked the history of the last two years. We have heard
the public told that the Boers were a semi-barbaric, unwashed, wholly dishonest
and corrupt race of men who had taken advantage of our ill-timed generosity
to build up on our frontiers a powerful military system and to threaten our Empire
with a malignant conspiracy. We have seen the public believing that the Out-
landers were outraged by these men, that English settlers were humiliated, per-
secuted, robbed and murdered, that they were "helots" in a land which they had
enriched by their exertions, that they were wandering through the streets of
Johannesburg with downcast eyes and speaking with bated breath in the pres-
ence of the tyrant Boers. We were told that at least two great Englishmen had
arisen to say that no longer should such a disgrace rest on the name of the
great Empire.

It is a humiliating task to review the stages of our pathetic optimism. We
were told that Mr. Chamberlain's strong words and Sir Alfred Milner's firm atti-
tude would bring the Boers to reason; that the despatch of a few thousand
troops would prevent a war; that 30,000 men would crush the enemy in three
months; that £9,000,000 would more than cover our expenses, and that the two
Republics would repay us that sum; that 500 killed and wounded would be more
than the total of our losses; that after the first defeat the Dutch would accept
the inevitable and look to us with love and admiration; that the capture of
Bloemfontein was the conquest of the Free State; that the occupation of Pre-
toria was the end of the war; that British troops were securely occupying our
new possessions; that severity would teach the new Boers a lesson, and that the
devastation of their farms would quickly tame their stubborn spirit. Finally,
in September, 1900, we were told by the Government that the campaign was
practically finished, and in November, 1900, we were told by Lord Roberts that
the war was over.

Is it necessary to demonstrate the absurdity of these predictions? We have
sent 300,000 troops to South Africa, we have spent over £100,000,000, and we
now know that no contribution can come from the ruined and devastated prov-
inces; we have lost 15,000 men by death, and 40,000 have left South Africa as
invalids. Are we nearer the end, or are we not losing more men every month
than we lost in the period of our early disasters? 1 Have we not evacuated half

1 The monthly average of our casualties during the first five months of the war was
1,647; the casualty list for April, 1901, contained 2,873 cases.

82 PEACE OR WAR.

the towns we once occupied, and do not Boer commandoes roam at will over
Cape Colony?

The ironies of the war are no less ludicrous. We went to war to extend
the franchise to the whole body of citizens in the Transvaal; we are now told
that the first outcome of the war will be a military government of the two prov-
inces, and that representative institutions may be postponed for generations.
Lord Salisbury solemnly asserted that we sought no territory and no goldfields;
the result of our first victory was an equally definite statement that we intended
to annex the two Republics. The declared ambition of our Ministers was to
bring peace and reconciliation to the two races: the result of the war has been
to generate a most ferocious hatred between the English and the Dutch, and to
deprive our fellow-subjects in Cape Colony of their civil liberties. We were told
that in the Transvaal not the least outrage on justice was the control of the
judges by the executive; we now hear that under the new rule the judges will
be directly under the control of Sir Alfred Milner. It was imputed as a fault to
the Transvaal Government that Dutch was the only language permissible in the
law courts; we are now informed that in a Dutch country the English language
only is to be used. We were told that the elevation of the native was a primary
object of our ambition: we now hear that Sir Alfred Milner will forward that
elevation by a system of lashes.

We have seen the touching confidence of the English people rudely shaken;
we have seen every estimate of our Ministers falsified, every statement dis-
proved, every calculation refuted, every hope shattered, every prophecy unful-
filled. Is not the cup of error full to the brim?

We have followed the course of the war from the disasters of its first
months to the early and brilliant successes of Lord Roberts. We have seen
how, after the fall of Bloemfontein, the golden opportunity of peace was lost;
how, during the last twelve tedious months, the unwearying labours of our
brave army have borne little fruit. We have seen that a policy of devastation
has resulted in a more embittered hostility and a more tenacious determination
on the part of our enemy. We have seen the area of the war, enormous at first,
increased by the invasion of Cape Colony. We have seen that Colony held
down by martial law, distracted by racial hate, and torn by civil war. We have
seen our troops struck down by fever, stale and weary ; we have seen the whole
of South Africa divided into two hostile camps, traversed by hurrying columns,
carrying ruin and desolation to a country which is to add to our prosperity.
We have examined the alternatives that lie before us, how the unconditional
submission 1 which our Ministers still demand will result in permanent disaffec-
tion and danger and in a grievous strain of our military and financial resources.
We have searched for a way of escape from a melancholy future. We have
examined the other alternative which promises reconciliation and peace and
freedom from the dangers which, if we are unwise, we shall lay upon ourselves
and our heirs.

The public has suffered and has learnt much since October, 1899. It is
slowly recovering from the heady fumes of Ministerial wine, and it is now better
able to distinguish between the voice of error and the voice of truth. The Eng-
lish people, agonised, bewildered, alarmed, and angered, is groping towards the

'The solemn appeal which Burke made in 1777 in his letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol
might be made almost literally to-day :_ "I think I know America. If I do not, my ignorance
is incurable, for I have spared no pains to understand it; .and I do most solemnly assure
those of my constituents who put any sort of confidenc m my industry and integrity that
everything that has been done there has arisen from a total misconception of the object;
that our means of originally holding America, that our means of reconciling with it after
a quarrel, of recovering it after separation, of keeping it after victory, did depend, and must
depend, in their several stages and periods, upon a total renunciation of that unconditional
submission which has taken such possession of the minds of violent ir»n."

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER. «3

truth. For not the least danger of prophecy is its nonfulfilment. A falsified
forecast demoralises its utterer, and leads him to seek from every quarter save
the right one the explanation of his error. As one false statement leads to the
manufacture of a second to shield the first, so the error of the bold and unsuc-
cessful prophet leads him into a wilder prophecy and a more dangerous path.
The public sees that it has been deceived by its Ministers, deceived by its
officials, deceived by its newspapers, and it asks itself whether the gigantic
errors of the past may not be ominous of future mistakes as great and possibly
more dangerous.

From the beginning of 1896 it is not too much to say that the history of our
diplomacy is the history of a personal struggle between Mr. Chamberlain and
President Kruger. Such a struggle was certain. Both men belonged to the
same type, stubborn, imperious, and suspicious. A fixed idea inspired both.
Mr. Chamberlain honestly believed that the Boers would yield to pressure and
threats, while the President regarded Mr. Chamberlain's violent methods as
additional confirmation of his suspicions and fears. A vicious circle had been
started. Every minatory speech by Mr. Chamberlain made a return to reason-
able diplomacy on his part less possible, while every proposal of the Transvaal
Government was regarded by him as a new attempt to confuse the issues and
prolong a period of vexatious inaction.

Mr. Chamberlain had determined that there could be only one issue to the
deadlock, and that it must take the form of a complete diplomatic submission
on the part of the Boer Government. He had assured himself, through the
information and counsel which he derived from Sir Alfred Milner, that the
unwillingness of the Boers to meet our wishes, and their open armaments, were
undermining our authority in South Africa. Would it be an exaggeration to
say that England has been involved in a disastrous war because an English Min-
ister attempted by threats to force an ignorant Dutchman into submission to his
will?

The radical error of our Ministers throughout the negotiations of 1899,
and the long war which has ensued, is due to their lack of imagination. They
held that the Boers would yield to diplomatic pressure, firmly and consistently
applied. They believed that the despatch of troops and the embodying of an
army corps would complete the surrender which diplomacy had not been able
to effect. They believed that the men whom defeat in the field had not terrified
would weaken at the sight of their burning farms and their imprisoned wives.
They did not know that a stubborn race could face all dangers and every form
of death for their freedom.

From this lamentable error have flowed all those subsequent troubles and
disasters which have plunged South Africa into desolation and England into
grief: in its train have followed the cruel and odious necessity of making war
on women and children, the bitter griefs of thousands of English homes. The
denial to the Boer Government of the ordinary rights of nations, the insistence
upon unconditional submission and the threat of the total loss of their independ-
ence, were certain to engender in the hearts of the Boer nation a determination
to struggle for their independence until the death. Our Ministers have given us
many examples of their ignorance of the most elementary facts of history and
experience. If there is one thing that brave men will fight for it is for the inde-
pendence of their country. For this they will struggle, and rightly struggle,
against overwhelming odds. If Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain had
been wise in the spring of 1900. we should now have been enjoying peace for
more than a year, and it would have been an honourable peace, which brought
us all we ever asked or claimed of the two Republics, which would have placed
the States under the British flag, and which might have brought about the
federation of South Africa.

From that fair picture turn to this. From end to end South Africa is in

8 4

PEACE OR WAR.

the grip of war. Throughout the two annexed Republics many of the richest of
the farms and villages are charred and blackened ruins. Cape Colony itself is
the scene of civil war, the women and children of our foes are gathered into
refugee camps, and there are learning nothing but bitter hatred of- our rule.
Our army, long since weary of a tedious campaign, sick with disappointment,
and decimated by fever, is still pursuing a phantom foe. Meantime, the war,
which at the end of March, 1900, had probably cost under £30,000,000, has cost
us since that date at least £75,000,000 more, and is costing us over a million and
a half a week. The drain of brave lives is more terrible. On March 17, 1900,
the total number of men taken prisoners, killed in action or by disease, and sent
home as invalids was 13,974. On April 30, 1901, the total list of casualties was
63,498. Therefore the refusal of our Government to grant the Boers reason-
able terms of peace has cost us the lives, or health, or services of over 50,000
men. Each week as it passes now sees the death from wounds or disease of one
hundred and fifty men and the disablement through the same causes of nearly
eight hundred more, while the number of those whose hearts and strength are
failing them of sheer exhaustion and weariness our generals in South Africa
alone can tell. What a commentary on the optimism of our rulers, on the fiction
of a finished war! The tragedy of it, the despair and the folly, are solely due to
the inability of our Government to grasp the truth that a brave people will fight
for its independence to the last cartridge.

Providence has indeed decreed that because man's happiness depends
greatly on his illusions he shall not escape the dangers which are incident to
them. We are facing the dangers now. The policy of our Government is a
failure, self-evident and self-confessed. Is it wise to delude ourselves any
longer with comfortable words from a Fool's Paradise? One by one our illu-
sions are falling from us, one by one our fond and foolish hopes are melting
into grim realities. We are now, at all events, face to face with facts. The
gloomy review of the situation which Sir Alfred Milner, on February 5, 1901,
despatched to Mr. Chamberlain makes it clear that not only are we making no
progress in the two States, but that since August, 1900, there has been a steady
and ominous retrogression. The situation, in Sir Alfred Milner's words, is
"puzzling."

Nor is our own financial danger less ominous. The purely military
expenses of the war amount at the present time to £1,750,000 a week, and in
addition there is the enormous cost of maintaining the 18,000 prisoners of war,
the 30,000 Eoer women and children and non-combatants who are gathered into
refugee camps, the large number of refugees at Cape Town and Durban, and
possibly a considerable number of the native population of South Africa. What
the weekly expenditure on such maintenance may be we can only dimly guess,
but we shall certainly not pass the truth if we put it from £150,000 to £200,000
a week. The expenses of the war, therefore, are now nearly £2,000,000 a week,
and such expenses tend to increase rather than to diminish. 1 ^s

1 The following table will convey to the reader a rougTridoa of the-hTSs"Tn money which
a prolongation of the war will entail upon the British people, assuming that the total ex-
penditure up to April 1st has been £120,000,000, and also assuming that the cost will increase
rather than decrease.

Cost to April 1, 1901 £120.000,000

" July 1, 1901 144,000,000

" October 1, 1901 170,000,000

" January I, 1902 106.000,000

" April 1, 1902 222,000,000

" July 1, 1902 240.000.000

" October 1, 1902 276,000,000

The loss of life, by battle and disease, is at least 120 a week, i. e., 6,000 a year.

The cost of the Crimean war, which we have always regarded as a great and costly
struggle, was only £70,000.000. The twenty years' war against Napoleon added £600.000.000
to the National Debt, and the war of 1775-83 added £70.000.000.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

The most disastrous feature of the whole outlook is that our loss in money
and lives will not cease with the ceasing of the war. If we were engaged in
hostilities with a European nation from whose country we should retire on the
conclusion of peace, we should at all events be able to calculate our expenses and
to feel that our future was to that extent secure and definite. But we are about
to add to the Empire two unwilling colonies; and the maintenance there of a
large military force, combined with the costly re-settlement of a devastated land,
will involve us in an indefinite cost for an indefinite number of years. It is now
acknowledged that the Free State will furnish us with nothing, and that for
many years the Transvaal will be practically insolvent. The peace, when it
comes, will cost us over £18,000,000 a year. Was ever victory so disastrous
or peace so costly?

The financial future is indeed disquieting. It is clear, as Sir Michael Hicks-
Beach pointed out on the introduction of the Budget of 1901, that the extra
taxation which we have been bearing during the last year, and which is now
about to be enlarged, is only sufficient to meet our increased expenditure. If
the war were over to-morrow, we could not remit these heavy burdens. We are
paying war taxes, but we are not paying for the war with them. On the con-
trary, if trade declines to any considerable extent during the next two years we
shall have, unless we reduce our ordinary expenditure, to increase the burden of
taxation. We have increased in two years our National Debt by £120,000,000,
i. e., by one-fifth of its former bulk. Wealthy as England is, she cannot bear for
long a strain so grievous. Our national solvency and credit depends on a
decreasing National Debt, and if the war continues we must increase that debt
at the rate of £100,000,000 per annum. All we can do, if the present policy is
to hold the field, is to pay on, knowing not only that nothing will come back
to us from these provinces which we have annexed, but that they will add an
annual sum of not less than £18,000,000 to the burdens under which we are
already labouring. And this is the financial result of a war which was one of
"practical business.'"

When we shrink from a future so melancholy, when we seek for light on
our path, we are met by the cry that to be prudent is to be weak, that to use our
common sense is to surrender our rights, that we must still continue to shear
the wolf we have by the ears. 2 Our Ministers still urge us to yield our scruples
to their foresight. The road is dark and difficult, and we ask ourselves what

1 Mr. Cecil Rhodes's words.

'Again let Burke speak to us: "But I must say a few words on the subject of these
rights, which have cost us so much, and which are likely to cost us our all. Good God !
Mr. Speaker, are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent
rights! Oh, valuable rights! Valuable you should be. for we have paid at parting with you.
Oh, valuable rights ! that have cost Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, a hundred thousand
men, and more than seventy millions of money! Oh, wonderful rights! that have lost to
Great Britain her boasted, grand, and substantial superiority which made the world bend
before her! . . . What were these rights? Can any man describe them? Can any man
give them a body and a soul, a tangible substance, answerable to all these mighty costs ? We
did all this because we had a right to do it ; that was exactly the fact. 'And all this we dared
to do because we dared.' We had a right to tax America, says the noble lord, and as we had
a right we must do it. We must risk everything, forfeit everything, think of no consequences,
take no consideration into view but our right ; consult no ability, nor measure our right with
our power, but must have our right. Oh, miserable and infatuated Ministers ! miserable and
undone country ! not to show that right signifies nothing without might ; that the claim with-
out the power of enforcing it was nugatory and idle in the copyhold of rival States or of
immense bodies of people. Oh, says a silly man full of his prerogative of dominion over a
few beasts of the field, there is excellent wool on the back of a wolf, and therefore he must
be sheared. What! shear a wolf? Yes. But will he comply? Have you considered the
trouble? How will you get the wool? Oh, I have considered nothing, and I will consider
nothing but my right ; a wolf is an animal that has wool ; all animals that have wool are to be
shorn, and therefore I will shear the wolf. This was just the kind of reasoning urged by the
Minister, and this the counsel he has given."

86 PEACE OR WAR.

manner of men are our guides. It is too late for them to appeal for our silence.
There are times when silence is patriotic; but there is a limit to all things, and
there are times when silence is an abnegation of intelligence. The time has
come when the public must take its fate into its own hands. Our Ministers
have been tried and have been found wanting.

Nor do they see the end. We are drifting now in the blind hope of some
happy chance. Let us at once face facts, and frame a policy which shall meet
those facts. Let us cast off and abjure that incurable levity, that foolish opti-
mism, that weak fatalism which blind men to their own incompetence and to
approaching disaster. The ''inevitable" is the last refuge of the imbecile.

The contest has been raging too long round names rather than essential
principles or the demands of prudence. The good name of a Minister or a
Viceroy is of no account in comparison with the lasting welfare of our country.
These men pass, they become as the shadows of nothing, but England endures.
We must act with a single eye to her interests, knowing that mercy and judg-
ment and honour are in the end identical with good policy. We have made a
gigantic mistake; let us confess our error like giants, and not, like pigmies, seek
to hide it. To return to reason and common sense is no weakness; rather is it
a counsel of black despair which bids us continue to tread the same weary and
costly path which we are treading now.

In such a controversy as we have recently passed through the majority is
not always in the right. The nature of man is prone to violent courses, to
selfishness of aim and to haughtiness of temper. It was a minority which
opposed the policy of North in 1775: it was a minority which attacked the insane
adventure of the Crimea: it was a minority which in 1863 supported the cause
of the North against the South. In each case, the few and faithful men, voices
crying in the wilderness, were assailed by every form of virulent abuse ; but who
will now say that they were in error?

To make an honorable peace with the Boers will indeed disclose a failure.
But it is useless to disguise from ourselves or the world that we have failed.
It is not given to the wisest man or the greatest State always to be wise, always
to succeed. Men and nations often utter rash and proud words of which later
they repent. Are they to be held for ever bound to the performance of a
promise made in ignorance and haste? Let us be manly enough to confess
our mistake and we may be assured that if we are wise in time, it will not count
against us for long in the assize of the nations.

Let us cultivate a historic detachment, and endeavour to review this war
with something of the cool reasonableness with which our sons and grandsons
will regard it, with which we can now criticise the folly of the Crimea and the
blindness of 1775. The tale of folly is ancient as the hills, recurrent as the sea-
sons. That which the apostles of unconditional submission preach to us now,
the apostles of the same policy preached to our forefathers a hundred and
twenty-five years ago. From mercy and reason and good sense they declared
would flow the loss of our Colonies, of our self-respect, of our prestige, of our
place among the nations. The same voice is speaking now from different lips,
and if we follow its counsel we shall suffer as our fathers suffered; and even
as they lost America, so, though we may win the immediate prize on which our
hearts are set, will the future bring its retribution and the loss of the land we
are striving to conquer.

There are dangers and difficulties in a policy of conciliation, but they are
less numerous and less menacing than the dangers of continued violence. If
the Imperial Government and the two races are earnest in their desire for peace
a way will be found out of the difficulties, and safeguards will be devised against
the dangers. To close a terrible and devastating war with a peace which gives
us all we ever claimed from our enemy, which places the two States under the

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

British flag, and which brings about at once a union of South Africa, is surely
no weak or dishonouring surrender.

We must attempt to realise the scenes oi horror and desolation and hatred
with which South Africa is now accursed. The two Dutch Republics are black-
ened deserts, Natal and Cape Colony are divided into hostile camps. A state
of civil discord, almost of civil war, exists. Sons of the same father are fight-
ing on opposite sides; the mother sympathises with the Dutch, the daughter
with the English; the springs of social intercourse are poisoned. For the
Dutch South Africa is almost a hell. And yet the Dutch in Cape Colony are
our fellow-subjects. They have exactly the same rights and privileges as an
ordinary English citizen, and they have been up to the present moment as loyal
to the Sovereign of England as his most loyal subject in Great Britain. If their
loyalty has been undermined, is it matter for wonder? The Dutch in Cape
Colony are, with the exception of the inhabitants of Cape Town, under martial
law, which is in fact the negation of all law. They are liable to severe pun-
ishment if they stir out of their houses after the time of curfew, if they make a
jesting remark to an English soldier. Their horses are taken from them, their
cattle, their forage, and even their boots. Their papers are suppressed, their
editors are imprisoned, their Parliament is indefinitely prorogued, and all their
representative rights are in abeyance. Can we wonder if their loyalty to the
English throne has in this chilling atmosphere grown cold?

The Loyalists indeed are the greatest obstacle to peace. The rivalry
between the Loyalists and the Dutch has been both political and racial; but it
has been chiefly political, and a political party ever resents the domination of its
rival. But such domination implies no political or physical slavery, and to
summon the aid of war to adjust the balance of politics is surely a monstrous
demand. We are told that to concede terms of peace to the Boers is to sacri-
fice the Loyalists in Cape Colony and to sap the foundations of their attachment
to the mother country. Is not this a shameful plea; for what does it mean but
that the loyalty of the Loyalists is a plant of such tender and fickle growth that
it must be watered with the blood and strengthened by the removal of every
rival? The Loyalists have doubtless suffered much, and their fidelity claims our
proper gratitude. But has not England made sufficient sacrifices for the Loy-
alists, and is it not carrying their claims too far to demand that the Empire
shall suffer indefinitely this terrible drain of blood and treasure? Is there to be
literally no limit to our sacrifices? Do the Loyalists insist that we shall see
another 15,000 of our sons completing with their death the subjugation of their
political rivals, another £150,000.000 lost for ever and to no purpose in the
devouring maw of South Africa? Surely we have suffered enough: is this dis-
astrous war to proceed until the Loyalists have their political foes by the
throat? Is not the hour come when England should think of herself?

Imagination shrinks before the future if we are bent on following our
present path. Another weary year of war, costly with thousands of English
lives and millions of English money; another year of alternate hopes and fears,
elation and despair; another year of weakness in Europe and Asia, of impaired
credit, and of burdensome taxation. And what of the end? Failure it must
be, for, whether we conquer or resign the struggle, we have failed. What can
it be but failure if we have to keep down an embittered population by a standing
army, to rule over two desolated provinces whose exhausted revenues the
British taxpayer must make good?

If the sufferings of South Africa and our own grave national dangers have
little weight with us, shall we pay no heed to the silent appeal of our soldiers?"

' Mr. Chamberlain, indeed, regards all suffering caused by this war as "irrelevant." A
somewhat different view of statesmanship was expressed by Pericles when he boasted that

88 PEACE OR WAR.

It can no longer be hidden from the dullest that our army is worn by constant
labour and fasting, sick with disappointment, and wasted by disease. The high
hopes with which our soldiers entered on their task have long since melted
away, and in their place has come the deadly indifference which is born of inglo-
rious and indecisive conflict. The strain is not for ever endurable by human
beings, and though we know that our soldiers will struggle on while there
remains the shadow of a hope, should we ignore the danger that the fine drawn
cord, of which the bystanders cannot see the slowly weakening strands, may
snap at last? As we think of the brave men and gallant boys who have fallen
to no purpose in this unhappy strife, the bitter and reproachful prayer of the
Roman Emperor rings in our ears — "Vare, redde legiones."

Another consideration should urge us to bring this struggle to an end. We
are in no ordinary case. If we were continuing the war to obtain from the
Boers some gift or indemnity which they are not yet willing to grant, if it was
our policy or our intention to leave the country in the hands of its inhabitants
when the war was over, there might be some reason in our attitude. But we
do not intend to leave this country; it has been annexed by us, and the two
Republics now form part of our Empire. They are our colonies, the inhabitants
are our subjects: we are then devastating our own property and slaying our
own colonists. We have to live with these men for ever, we have to make
them appreciate the blessings of English rule and work together with us for the
prosperity of South Africa. Surely we are marching along a strange path to
this end.

About the great builders of Empire there has always been a certain noble
expediency, a certain simple reasonableness which is infinitely distressing to the
theorist and the bureaucrat. In problems of state as well as of business the
simplest solution is often the wisest. It has generally been found that the
easiest way to make men peaceful is to make them happy, and that the easiest
way to make them happy is to remove all unnatural and artificial restrictions
and to allow them free exercise of their individuality. To restrict such exercise
is to produce a spurious uniformity and to make men slaves or rebels. The
pedant legislates for abstractions, the statesman for living human beings; and
though the methods of the latter may seem illogical and contrary to a priori
principles, they generally have the advantage of being successful.

It is useless to reproach the Boers with their unwillingness to accept our
domination. They are Dutch and we are English: should we under equal con-
ditions display a willingness the absence of. which we resent in them? English
rule is good for us, but need it be good for others? It is right that we should
be proud of our own institutions, but is it necessary that we should seek to
impose them on other races? The Boers may be foolish in that they refuse the
privileges of our Imperial system; but is liberty nothing, is independence
nothing? A poor thing it may be, but it is their own. If men would only use
their imagination to picture what they themselves would do or feel in like cir-

up to that time no Athenian had put on mourning through any act of his. Here may be
quoted Burke|s indignant rebuke to the wanton maker of war : —

"A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He would feel some
apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play without
any sort of knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is
directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save
itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.
But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which in the depth of its wisdom tolerates
all sorts of things) that is more truly odipus and disgusting than an impotent, helpless
creature, without civil wisdom or military skill . . . bloated with pride and arrogance,
calling for battles which he is not to fight. ; . . If you and I find our talents not of the
great and ruling kind, our conduct at least is conformable to our faculties. No man's life
pays the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate widow weeps tears of blood over our igno-
rance." (Letters to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777.)

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER. 89

cumstance our diplomacy would be more reasonable and our demands less
stringent. If England were held by a German army, face to face with the threat
of lost freedom, would Englishmen flinch from a struggle to the death? Would
they consent to negotiate with their German victors terms which would leave
them German citizens, even though such citizenship might bring with it the
improved methods of German bureaucracy? Would Englishmen, for all the
privileges of German civilisation, consent to be ruled by German officials, to be
held in check by German sergeants, to pay taxes for the maintenance of a Ger-
man army? Would the editors of our newspapers become peace envoys from
the Germans to describe to us the blessings of German rule and the hopeless-
ness of our struggle? Would Mr. Chamberlain and the other apostles of
unconditional submission take the oath of allegiance to a German monarch?
To ask these questions is to answer them.

We have had enough of violence: let us now turn to the more gracious
qualities by which we are great: mercy and generosity 1 and reason and the vig-
orous common sense that has kept England alive these many centuries. For
violence will not help us: force is no remedy. Force may be a proper means
to bring a savage race to reason, but it is not a weapon to be used lightly
against a race so spirited and stubborn as the Boers. It is a weapon which it is
easy to take up but hard to lay down. It as frequently wounds him who
employs it as its victim. Its effects are fleeting, and when it is withdrawn, it
leaves the object resentful and unconquered. It ruins the treasure which it
seeks to possess, and if it fails, its failure is disgraceful and absolute.

Force without wisdom we have tested, and its failure is known to all. The
apostles of violence robbed us of our American Colonies. Twenty years ago
in Afghanistan our threats and our violence were followed by a failure absolute
and undisguised. In 1857 the policy of the Provost Marshal delayed the
advent of peace until a wise man inaugurated a clement policy, and a mutiny
which might have lasted for years was calmed in a few months. In Canada
a similar rivalry of race, a similar divergence of language and tradition, bid
fair to distract that province for ever. The same mad policy of force was tried
in vain, and not until a wise statesman took up the reins of government did the
tumult subside.

We are plunging blindly towards an unseen goal. We do not know when
we shall reach it, nor how we shall reach it, nor if we shall reach it. Is this the
majestic progress of a mighty empire? The capture by an army of a town or
territory is not of necessity a conquest. There may be a victory more fatal to
the victor than to the vanquished; there may be a success that turns to Dead
Sea apples in our mouths. The glory of a great empire is not to win isolated
triumphs, but to proportion her aims to her strength, to see with clear eyes
the road along which she means to travel, and to make sure that every victory

1 Burke is out of fashion, but even now it is difficult to read this noble appeal without
emotion :

"All this, I know, well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of
those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us ; a sort of people who
think that nothing exists but what is gross and material ; and who therefore, far from being
qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the
machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles,
which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are
in truth every thing and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom;
and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and
glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate
all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the church, Sursum corda!
We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Provi-
dence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have
turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire ; and have made the most extensive, and the
only honourable conquests ; not by destroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the
happiness, of the human race." On Conciliation with America.

90 PEACE OR WAR.

is a step in the orderly graduation of her progress. That is wise and conscious
effort directed to ends which may be good or may be bad, but which at all events
will be attained.

What can ultimate victory leave us but two ruined lands and sullen peoples?
We may pour army after army into South Africa; we may make a desert and
call it peace; but the peace will not be there. The clumsy and violent methods
which we are using will poison and inflame the wholy body. Men have said
that the epitaph of South Africa should be Too late; but a more just inscription
would be Too soon. It is ignorance and impatience which have inflicted on this
unhappy country those cruel wounds which only tact and time will cure, and
many generations will pass before the bitter memories of these two years are
blotted out from the minds of the Dutch. English men and English women
have suffered great and abiding sorrow, but they have not seen their citizen
soldiers sent captive to a distant land, their country laid desolate, their women
carried into captivity, their independence taken from them.' These things will
never be utterly forgotten, but it may be that their fierce outlines will be
softened by the lapse of years and the wisdom of men. South Africa requires
no "surgical operation," she asks only patience and sympathy and the healing
hands of time.

As we went to war to vindicate a misty claim to Suzerainty, so we seem
likely to remain at war because we have not the clear sight and the moral cour-
age which can see a means of escape from a lamentable complication. It has
been the ambition of every statesman to form South Africa into a federation
under the English flag, and it is the declared ambition of our own Ministers
to endow our new possessions with the largest powers of self-government. If
therefore it is now in our power to end at once this most unhappy and inglorious
war with a settlement which would give us all that the most sanguine ever
dared to hope, what is it but temper and the spirit of revenge which delay the
advent of peace? There is in every heart, expressed or unexpressed, a deep
longing for peace. England requires it, the enemy would welcome it: are we
so set on unconditional submission that peace shall only come to us by that fatal
path?

For what are we fighting now? Is it to vindicate British supremacy in
South Africa? But was that supremacy ever in real danger? No sane Boer
questioned our power or our rights, and on any assumption they are surely vin-
dicated now. Is it to gain the franchise for our citizens, and to undo the griev-
ances of the mine-owners? We can gain the one and undo the other by an
honourable peace. It must be, then, that, as embittered partisans have told us,
we are fighting to force the Boers to their knees, to compel an unconditional
submission, to thrash the remaining life out of this stubborn people who have
defied us so long. Is this a worthy aim for the conquerors of Napoleon? Nor
shall we reach our end. We are essaying now an impossible task. We may
slay the bodies of our foe, but they have something else which is beyond our
reach. You cannot dam the mountain stream or force back freedom to her
source. Inimitable as the rolling veldt, indestructible as the high hills that

1 The words of Paine are as true to-day of South Africa as they were true one hundred
and twenty years ago of America — "We are a people who think not as you think ; and what
is equally true, you cannot feel as we feel. The situations of the two countries are exceed-
ingly different. Ours has been the seat of war; yours has seen nothing of it. The most
wanton destruction has been committed in our sight; the most insolent barbarity has been
acted on our feelings. We can look around and see the remains of burnt and destroyed
houses, once the fair fruit of hard industry. We walk over the dead whom we loved, in every
part of America, and remember by whom they fell. There is scarcely a village but brings to
life some melancholy thought, and reminds us of what we have suffered, and of those we
have lost by the inhumanity of Britain. A thousand images arise to us, which, from situation,
you cannot see, and we are accompanied by as many ideas which you cannot know."

Thomas Paine to Lord Shelburne.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER. 91

nurture it, the national spirit of this people will elude our fetters. Its allies will
be bitter agony and memory and time and hope, and man's unconquerable mind.

The war indeed has long lost its glamour. To a large section of the Eng-
lish people it has always been odious and in the eyes of every foreign nation we
suffer daily humiliation. The support of our Colonies, the patience of our
citizens, the valour of our army, the individual heroism of our soldiers cannot
cleanse it from the trail of finance which has been over it from the beginning.
Can we draw comfort or glory from such a war? Deep down in our hearts is
there not a shrinking shame when our Ministers confess that they have half
starved the wives and children of our enemy; that they have burnt their farms
because they cannot conquer them? Is our brave army to be made the tools
of civil meanness? Is there here the dignity and the chivalry of war? is there
not rather unutterable disgrace?

We hear to-day the old taunt of treachery, the old bitter cry that to oppose
the policy of one's nation is to be guilty of treason. There is indeed no preju-
dice more healthy than the instinct which prompts us to defend or condone
national errors. But there are times when a man may dare to criticise a national
policy; and is it certain that those who counsel chivalry and forbearance and
peace are traitors to England? May not in their veins run as passionate a love
of England as that which inspires the preachers of violence and force? Is there
not an England of Shakespeare and Milton, of Chatham and Fox and Burke, of
Nelson and Wellington and Havelock, and of a thousand others who could live
and die for England with no insult for a brave foe on their lips? There may be
an England which is not the England of Wedderburn and North, of the German
stockjobber and the Jew contractor; an England which is not the England of
the music-hall and of the shouting streets; not the England who lifts her timid
cheek to the strong and turns to crush the little nations. The England of our
history and our hopes is chivalrous and merciful, silent and self-reliant, not
given to vain boasting and abuse, lover of free nations, defender of the weak.

"The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ,
Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

We stand on the threshold of a new century and of a new reign. It is our
duty and our highest interest to husband our resources, to free ourselves from
the gloomy fatalism which has involved us in this war and seems likely to pre-
vent our extrication from its embarrassments. The future is dark and big with
storms. The nations are watching us, and the exhaustion of a great war may be
an occasion for our foes.

Two paths lie open. One seems obvious and broad, and we are treading
it now. It is hard to turn back, but the road turns to ultimate disaster. The
other path is steep and strewn with thorns and stones that wound and mortify
our pride. But difficult though it be it leads straight to peace and honour.
Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

APPENDIX A.
Agriculture in South Africa.

The following is a summary of a paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute by Mr.
R. Wallace, Professor of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh. Mr. Wallace had just
returned from a visit of investigation.

It remains to be decided whether or not South Africa is an agricultural and stock-raising
country capable of great development and of supporting many more inhabitants of European
origin. My personal belief is that South Africa will never be developed through its agricul-
ture, but that development will first come through the mines, not alone of gold and diamonds
but of silver, copper, coal, and many other valuable minerals, which in South Africa seem
to be represented in a manner for variety and extent unsurpassed in any other area of
similar extent. The demands for fruit and vegetable products at the mines will, no doubt,
lead to the extension of market gardening near these populous centres, but the development
of the general agriculture of the country will be a slow process. The chances are that, for
a time, it will go back in the two new Colonies, because the Dutch population will not hence-
forward exercise so much control over the black people who have done this work, and the
area of cultivation will naturally contract. A great deal has been written about irrigation
being the probable salvation of the country. Many small local ventures have been marvel-
lously successful in transforming what was desert into Gardens of Eden. At Douglas, for
example, a prosperous community has sprung up on small plots, many of which were sold
recently at £53 per acre. Land under ordinary farm crops is held at Oudsthoorn at from
£50 to £150 per acre of capital value. Fruit lands of good quality have, in some instances,
run up to several hundreds of pounds per acre, and at Warrenton, in a report issued by
Government authority, the record annual return of £100 per acre is mentioned. A good
many promising irrigation schemes have been examined in various districts of Cape Colony,
but most of them involve the expenditure of a large amount of capital, and will require to
be worked with much skill and care to make them pay. But all the possible schemes put
together would not form a scheme large enough to produce any appreciable difference on the
development of the vast area of South Africa. Admitting that there are many small irriga-
tion ventures that are likely to be financially successful, even with a considerable capital
outlay, it is a fact that no great irrigation undertaking, like those of India, is possible. There
the cause of success of the great canal systems of Northern India is that the inlets are sup-
plied near the basis of the mountains by the never-failing drainage from their ever snow-
clad summits, and most abundantly when the sun is hottest and when water is most wanted.
In South Africa the conditions are quite different. There is no summer reserve of snow.
The torrential rains pass off in a few days by deep channels from which water can only be
taken in limited quantities, at few points, and at great expense. No deep storage dams could
be contemplated in the mountains to supply an area, say, of 100,000 acres, and the shallow
dams which it is possible to form in a flat country, with an evaporation of a depth of from
five to seven feet of water annually, become in a few years salt marshes. This fact has been
abundantly demonstrated at Van Wyk's Vlei, in the dry Carnarvon district of Cape Colony.
The irrigation dam at Beaufort West has also demonstrated that shallow dams in the Karoo
rapidly fill with silt washed in from the drainage area. Without irrigation the extent of South
Africa that is capable of cultivation with satisfactory results is an infinitesimal fraction of
the whole, and even that is subjected to periodical droughts, which at times destroy a whole
season's crop; to destructive hailstorms, which are especially prevalent on the central plateau;
and to fungoid parasitic pests on the common grain crops, which make the growth of
European cereals practically impossible during the wet season of summer. It is highly
probable that among the new disease-resisting breeds of cross-fertilised grains which have
been produced at Newton-le- Willows by the brothers Garton species of both oats and wheat
may be found, on experiment to overcome this difficulty, but still sufficient reasons remain
why South Africa will never be a great agricultural country capable of exporting grain. With
the development of the local irrigation schemes that are possible, and better systems of
management, it may more nearly produce the amount of food requisite for internal consump-
tion. The possible development in the numbers of live stock is, for the present, curtailed by
the prevalence of so many diseases, which reduce profits and introduce an additional element
of speculation, which cannot fail to check the investment of capital in the industry. The
common diseases and parasitic affections are nowhere better represented, but in addition
South Africa has a number of diseases peculiarly her own, for which specifics have not yet
been found. The prospects in the live stock industry are, nevertheless, decidedly more
promising than those of cultivation, but the introduction of means to combat the present diffi-
culties will necessarily be a slow process, involving a period of probably many years. To my
mind the most important question at issue in South Africa is that of labour. Unless some
method be found to induce the black men to work, the development of South Africa in all
but the richest mines will be indefinitely postponed.

APPENDIX B

A Convention concluded between Her Majesty the Queen, &c, &c,
and the South African Republic.

Note. — The words and paragraphs bracketed or printed in italics are fro-
posed to be inserted those within a black line are proposed to be
omitted.

Her Majesty's Commissioners for the settlement of the Transvaal
Territory, duly appointed as such by a Commission passed under the
Royal Sign Manual and Signet, bearing date the 5th of April, 1881, do
hereby undertake and guarantee, on behalf of Her Majesty, that from
and after the 8th day of August, 1881, complete self-government, subject
to the suzerainty of Her Majesty, Her Heir and Successors, will be ac-
corded to the inhabitants of the Transvaal Territory, upon the following
terms and conditions, and subject to the following reservations and
limitations : —

Whereas the Government of the Transvaal State, through its Dele-
gates, consisting of Steplianus Johannes Paulus Kruger, President of the
said State ; Steplianus Johannes Du Toit, Superintendent of Education ;
Nicholas Jacobus Smit, a member of the Volksraad, have represented to
the Queen that the Convention signed at Pretoria on the 3rd day of Aut
gust, 1881. and ratified by the Volksraad of the said State on the 25th
October, 1881, contains certain proyisions which are inconvenient, and im-
poses burdens and obligations from which the said State is desirous to be
relieved ; and that the south-western boundaries fixed by, the said Con-
vention should be amended with a view to promote the peace and good
order of the said state, and of the countries adjacent thereto; and
whereas Her Majesty the Queen, &c, &c, has been pleased to take the
said representations into consideration. Now, therefore, Her Majesty has
been pleased to direct, and it is hereby declared that the following articles
of a new Convention shall when ratified by the Volks-
raad of the South African Republic, be substituted for the Articles em-
bodied in the Convention of 3rd August, 1881 ; which latter, pending such
ratification, shall continue in full force and effect.

Signed at P r e t o r ia London this 3rd d ay of Augu s t , i8 S« ,
HERCULES ROBINSON,

Pre s i d ent an d High Commissioner.
EVELYN WOOL), Major Genorol.
Offic e r A dmin i ctering tha Govornmont.
J, H, de VILLIERS,

We, the undersigned, Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, Ma rt inus
Wesc e l — Pretor i H 6, and Petrus Jarohm Jnnhrrt. as repr e nentativ e dele-
gates of the Transvaal Burphers, South African Republic, do hereby agree
to all the above conditions, reservations, and limitations, under which
B el f governmen t h as been rest o re d t o the i nhab i t a nts of the Tran s v a a l
Territory, cubjoct to tho cuaerainty of Hor MajoGty , H e r Hoirc and Sue
eooooro. and w e agree to acc e pt th e Gov e rnm e nt of th e ca i d Territory,
wi th all righto and obligations thereto appertaining on tho 8th day of
Auguot, 1881, and we pmrnise and undertake that this Convention shall be
ratified by a new l y e l ect ed Volksraad of the Tr a ntva a l Stat e South Afri-
can Republic within t h r te six months from this date.

Signed at P r e t o r ia London this 3 r d da y of August, 18 8 1.

C. J. P. KRUGER,
M. W. PRETORIUB, -
P. J. JOUBERT.

Looting and Burning a Boer Farm.

(An English Artist's Sketch, as published in the London Graphic >

A PICTURE THAT SPEAKS MORE THAN WORDS CAN EXPRESS.

COULD ANYTH1NQ BE MORE HEART RENDING, BARBAROUS OR DESPICABLE?

Permission is granted to reprint with engraving. It is desired that it be given the widest circulation.

Additional copies will be furnished by addressing CHARLES D. PIERCE, Trustee and Treasurer
BOER RELIEF FUND, 136 Liberty Street, New York.

This picture — which is not exaggerated or overdrawn — was published in the London
Graphic and is from a sketch by an English artist, and shows how the British are waging
war against women and children, whose protectors have either been killed in battle or are
imprisoned at St. Helena or Ceylon. There are over 70 000 poor, suffering, homeless women
and children in South Africa, imprisoned in pens and stockades under British guards,
including among them many refined, elderly ladies over seventy years of ago; thousands
have died from sickness, exposure and starvation.

In the illustration is shown the unprotected wife and children, driven from their once
happy home, which is being destroyed; a few articles of furniture, bedding and a trunk are
shown ; the house is in flames ; a British officer is giving instructions to his aides ; two soldiers
are running after chickens; — all in the presence of the sorrow-stricken mother and children.

Much has been said and written concerning the burning of Boer farm-houses by the
British troops in South Africa, accurate accounts of which are constantly being published in
English papers from reports and letters of officers, engineers and soldiers of the British
army, many of whom have Cameras with which pictures were taken to verify reports. Since
Great Britain has found that she is unable to subjugate the Boers by honorable warfare, she
seeks to depopulate their country and starve the people into submission. Orders have been
issued by Lord Roberts and Gen. Kitchener to seize and remove all cattle, sheep, hogs,
chickens, grain, foodstuffs, growing crops, wagons and farming implements from all farms,
and where that is not possible, they are to be destroyed, whether the owner is present or not.
The soldiers are also to blow up and burn all farm-houses and outbuildings, not allowing the
family to remove any of the house furnishings, they being hastily driven away with only
the clothing they have on their backs.

Looting and Burning a Boer Farm. — Continued.

The Boer home is usually a building of one
story, the walls of which are built of blocks 01
stone or bricks. The roof is either thatched or
covered with corrugated sheet iron. The walls
being very strong, it is necessary to use a high
explosive. The officer and his engineer first
enter the house, throwing the carpets, bedding,
curtains and all inflammable material in a heap
in the middle of the rooms. The engineer re-
moves a stone from the inside of the wall; he
then places a high explosive, such as dynamite
or explosive gun cotton, in the opening attach-
ing a fuse. The explosive is covered with earth
and pieces of stone, all of which is tamped hard
in order that the explosion will be most effec-
tive. The torch is then applied to the Inflam-
mabable materials; the entire building is in
flames; there is a powerful explosion, a cloud of
smoke, a shower of stones, and the Boer home
is destroyed beyond repair.

A RELIC OF BARBARISM!

By order of the British Government. V. R. means
Victoria Regina (Queen).

v. R.

(By the Grace of God.)

PUBLIC NOTICE.

It is hereby notified for information,
that unless the nien at present on
commando belonging to families in
the town and district of Kruegersdorp
surrender themselves and hand in their
arms to the Imperial Authorities by
20th July, the whole of their property
will be confiscated, and their families
turned out destitute and homeless.

By Order,
G. H. M. RITCHIE, (Capt. K. Horse).

District Supt. Police.

Krugersdorp, Wijuly, 1900.

Verbatim copy from Johannesburg Gazette, July 21 , 1000.

The following extracts are from newspapers
published in London:

Mr. E. W. Smith, writing in the Morning Leader of
May aist, under date of April 39th, says :

"Gen. French and Gen. Pole-Carew, at the
head of the Guards and 18th Brigade, are march-
ing in, burning practically everything in the
road. The brigade is followed by about 3.5o0
head of loot, cattle and sheep. Hundreds of tons
of corn and forage have been destroyed. The
troops engaged in the work are Roberts' Horse,
the Canadians and Australians. I hear to-day
that Gen. Rundle burnt his way up to Dewets-
dorp. At one farm only women were left. Or-
ders were inexorable. The woman threw her
. arms around the officer's neck and begged that
the homestead might be spared. When the
flames burst from the doomed place the poor
woman threw herself on her knees, tore open
her bodice and bared her breasts, screaming:
'Shoot me! shoot me! I've nothing to live for
now that my husband is gone, and our farm is
burnt and our cattle taken!' "

A lady in Colesburg, thus described the looting of
her home:

"On Friday, March 2. the first body of troops
appeared. Monday, after breakfast, eight men
arrived. They forced the doors, took whatever
they wanted — carts, three saddles, pillows,
blankets sheets, clothing, down to even the
baby's baptismal cloak, Mr. J.'s wedding pres-
ents, family Bible, telescope, microscope— all pic-
tures on the wall and mirrors were smashed.

Writing to his father at Whaplode, Spalding, from
Bnslin Camp, Trooper O. Benton says :

"We burned and blew up some beautiful
houses that the Free Staters have left. You

would hardly believe what furniture they have;
some beautiful pianos— and all the lot go."

A special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian.
after riding from Bloemfonteln to Kimberly, wrote:

"The way is a line of desolation. The farm-
houses have not merely been sacked— they have
been savagely destroyed. The mirrors have been
smashed, the pianos wrecked, children's toys
and books wantonly destroyed. Even the build-
ings themselves have been burned.''

The same correspondent writes May 8th, from Col.
Mahon's headquarters. Dry Harts Siding :

"In ten miles we have burned no fewer than
six farm-houses; the wife watched from her
sick husband's bedside the burning of her home
a hundred yards away. It seemed as though a
kind of domestic murder was being committed.
I stood till late last night and saw the flames
lick around each poor piece of furniture — the
chairs and tables, the baby's cradle, the chest
of drawers, containing a world of treasure, and
when I saw the poor housewife's face pressed
against the window of a neighboring house my
own heart burned with a sense of outrage. The
effect on the Colonial troops, who are gratifying
their feelings of hatred and revenge. Is very
bad. They swarm into the houses, looting and
destroying, filling the air with high-sounding
cries of vengeance."

Private Stanley of the N. S. W. contingent, writes
to the Sydney Telegraph :

"When within 800 yards of the farm we halted,
and the infantry blazed a volley into the house;
we broke open the place and went in. It was
beautifully furnished, and the officers got sev-
eral things they could make use of. There was
a lovely library — books of all descriptions,
printed m Dutch and English. I secured a
Bible; also a rifle, quite new. After getting all
we wanted out of the house, our men put a
charge under and blew it up. It seemed such a
pity; it was a lovely house."

Mr. Porter Smith of New Westminster, writes :

"We are camped with some of the Munster
Fusiliers, doing most of the scouting. They
make great hauls— watches, clothes, money and
jewelry."

A correspondent of the Daily /Tail thus describes
the flight to the Vaal, just before the arrival of the
British troops :

"Huge wagons drawn by full spans of trek
oxen, piled high with farm-house furniture,
where perched wistful-eyed women and children,
with frightened, tear-stained faces; passed de-
serted houses with wide, open doors, and scat-
tered belongings; passed ambulances filled with
groaning wounded. It was bitterly cold. The
wind has a frost edge and cut to the quick.
Thinly-clad women clasped their shivering
babes. Heartrending as was this enforced
abandonment of homes, few hesitated to make
the sacrifice. Anything was better than to fall
into the hands of the hated English."

John N. King, who served with the American scouts
in the Boer army, under Capt. John A. Hassell, writes:

"As to the statement that the women and chil-
dren in South Africa are not needing relief, I
will say that funds were being raised in the
Transvaal before Johannesburg and Pretorfa
fell; that over 15,000 refugees depended on what
the government furnished them, and that wheal
the English took those cities they took all the
provisions we had left and gave them nothing
but cornmeal to eat. There were 3,000 destitute
women and children at Barberton alone, who
had been driven from their homes, and who
depended solely upon the government for their
support."

THE BEST PRO-BOER LITERATURE.

HE BUREAU OF LITERATURE of this office is supported mainly by funds
contributed by friends of the Boer cause, large quantities are distributed
gratuitously ; therefore, in order to maintain this important work it is desired that
readers of this literature and friends of the cause will contribute to this fund.
Remittances for this purpose will be most thankfully received and acknowl-
edged.

The following publications are authentic and among the best published ; they will
be furnished by this office at prices stated, cash to accompany orders, the object being to
furnish literature at as near cost as possible, to disseminate the truth throughout the
United States regarding the war in South Africa, and to enlist from the American peo-
ple a well-deserved sympathy for those brave Boers who are fighting as heroically for
liberty and independence as did the Americans in 1776. If books (or other articles) are
to be forwarded by registered mail, send 10 cents additional for register fee.

"THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLICS," by Charles D. Pierce, Consul-General of the Orange Free State,
a book of 48 pages. A beautiful souvenir, embellished with 40 photo-engravings from original photo-
graphs taken in the South African Republics ; printed on the finest wood-cut paper, the cover in six colors,
showing medallion of Presidents Kruger and Steyn draped with the Boer flags— the Orange Free State flag in
red, white, blue and yellow, and the flag of the South African Republic in red, white, blue and green. The
illustrations are the best and latest of Presidents Kruger and Steyn and General De Wet ; Boer men, women and
children fighting in the trenches ; blowing up, burning and looting of Boer homes by British soldiers, showing
weeping mother and children in the foreground ; the Boer national anthem ; history of both Republics ; war
scenes. Fine engravings showing Martha Kranti, the heroic Boer woman soldier ; the German Army Corps ;
sharpshooters on outposts ; the officers of the American Scouting Corps of the Boer army: Heliograph Signal
Corps ; Colonel Blake and his Irish Brigade ; Boers on the fighting line ; scene on Spion's Kop — British dead
soldiers one day after the battle. Price by mail, post-paid the small sum of 35 cents

"PEACE OR WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA."— A reprint in America of a book written by a liberal-minded
Englishman, A. M. S. Methuen, of the well-known publishing house of Methuen & Co., of London, England,
whose purpose was to Influence English public opinion against the prolongation of an unjust war in South
Africa, voicing the opinion of a large majority of the better class of English people, who are against the jingo
or war party. Mr. Methuen shows a remarkable parallel between the American war for Independence in 1776
and the Boer struggle for liberty in South Africa in 1901, a most striking analogy. Over 50,000 copies of this
book have been distributed throughout Great Britain. The London Spectator says: " We are deeply impressed
by its patriotic purpose." The Manchester Guardian says: "This book is a noteworthy reinforcement to the
cause of England and of justice in South Africa." This book contains 100 pages, 7*10 inches ; has three maps
of South Africa, the first showing the effectual occupation of the British forces on Sept. 1, 1900; the second
showing the ineffectual occupation of the British forces on May 1, 1801; the third showing South Africa where
ineffectually occupied by the British in the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, also the
country which has been invaded by the Boers in Cape Colony, Natal and Zululand. There Is aiso a fine
engraving showing looting and burning of a Boer farm, as published in the London Graphic. A book intensely
interesting to every liberty-loving American and Boer sympathizer. The London price was one shilling

(24 cents) per copy. The price of the American Edition for single copies, not Including postage, is 10

SINGLE COPIES OF THE ABOVE BOOK, postage paid Price, each, .15

THE ABOVE BOOK, IN CLUBS OF 50 OR MORE, postage or express charges paid by purchaser.

Price, each, .07

THE ABOVE BOOK, IN CLUBS OF 100 OR MORE, postage or express charges paid by purchaser.

Price, each, Special

"THE ABSENT-MINDED BUROHER." Poem (a parody on Kipling's " The Absent-Minded Beggar "),

finest Boer Poem published. Grand, sarcastic, witty, truthful. In book form. By mail 15

"THE ABSENT-MINDED BUROHER," poem, on leaflets 05

"THE SOUTH-AFRICAN CRISIS," by Prof. H. Kuyper, D.D., LL.D.. the Holland Premier, one of the
most brilliant writers in Holland. Printed by the " STOP-THE-WAR COMMITTEE " of Lon-
don. 81 pages ; Price, .10

" THE STRUQOLE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLICS," by Charles Bossevain, Editor of Algtmecn Handels-
bladot Amsterdam. Holland, containing a letter to the Most Worshipful Master Masons of the
Lodges in the U. S. of A. 93 pages Price, .12

"OPEN LETTER TO THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE," by Charles Bossevain, Editor of Algcmecn

Ilandelsblad. of Amsterdam, Holland. 63 pages Price, .10

"TRANSVAAL VERSUS GREAT BRITAIN." By Dr. W. Van der Vlugt, Professor at "Leyden

University." Holland, of Amsterdam, Holland. 40 pages Price, .10

For $1 .00 we will send by mail, postage paid, to any address in the United States,
all of the seven publications mentioned above, including the " Leaflets " described
on the other side of this sheet, worth altogether $3.0 0. Price for all only $ 1 .00.

"THE BOERS IN WAR," by H. C. Hillegas. 300 pages, .54 fine illustrations.. .(Add postage, 10 cents.) $1.50

"OOM PAUL'S PEOPLE," by H. C. Hillegas. 308 pages, 8 illustrations (Add postage, 10 cents.) 1.50

" JOHN BULL'S CRIMES ; or, ASSAULTS ON REPUBLICS," by Webster Davis : a book of 400 pages,

illustrated with over 80 full-page engravings. Attractively bound (Add postage, 20 cents.) 2.00

" THE STORY OF THE BOERS," by C. W. Van der Hoogt. 286 pages, 4 illustrations (Postage, 10 cents). .50

FLAGS OF THE REPUBLICS, 4x6 ft, cotton '-SO

" " " 6x10 ft., best bunting 5 '°°

OFFICIAL BADGES OF THE REPUBLICS, enameled in. the colors of the flags— red, white, blue, green

and orange— 15 cents ; same, heavy gold plated *®

BUTTON BADGES, MEDALLION OF PRESIDENTS KRUGER, STEYN, AND FLAOS 10

SAME IN LOTS OF 50 AND OVER •*

Address all orders and communications to

CHARLES D. PIERCE,

Consul -General Orange Free State, 136 Liberty Street, New York, U. S. A.

LEAFLETS

Issued from the Orange Free State Consulate, 136 Liberty Street, New York.

Address All Orders to CHARLES D. PIERCE, Consul-Qeneral.

The largest circulation is desired. A small remittance to cover postage and cost of
printing will be most gratefully received.

Leaflet No. 10 -" LABOR LEADERS AND THE BOER WAR." How Joe Chamber-
lain would cheapen white labor. Reprinted from circular issued in London to 1,000,000
workingmen. t ^ ^ American peop , e Ana | y ,te of the British Conditions of

Peace Offered the Boers-Justification of the Boers for Their Re ect on-Hr. Chaml ber-
lain and Sir Alfred Milner Obstacles to Peace-War of Ruin Unless Stopped by
American People in Interest of British and Boer Alike." By Charles D. Pierce. The
South African War. Views of Samuel W. Pennypacker, presiding judge of the Phila- .

delP No C ir-A f Re°Zrtab2 e rH.toric.l Parallel. Cose analogy between the American
Revolution and the Boer struggle for liberty. The United States Government does not
recoSz s the annexation of thf South African republics to Great Britain. English Soldiers
Pravinz for the End of the War. The Boer Prisoners on St. Helena.

No 15— THE BOER RELIEP FUND OF AMERICA. Duplicate of authority issued by
envovs to Charles D. Pierce, trustee and treasurer. , „ . . , , .

No 16 -ENGLISH BARBARITIES IN SOUTH AFRICA British generals past and
present. Copy of proclamation showing British Treachery Boer women deported

No 17-Copies of Letters from English People-'' DRUNK WITH BLOOD." Boer
women and children bought and sold. Something deplorable.

women an "^ ROBERTS A FAILURE. An English soldier's poor opinion of his

commander-in-chief. Experience of an Arkansas boy who enlisted in the English army,
Bo^r™ remain masters of African situation. English control railroad towns, but Boers hold

"^X^-Ttfe 1 MSPaSq WAR. Many trains derailed. Disasters on the line.
British mails captured. The detention camps for Boer women and children, and the horrors

° f 'nT -Z -^THE fewrmSCHURCH AND HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD THE BLACK

RACE." The racial and religious situation in South Africa, a four-page article by Charles

D No" -THOUSANDS CHEER THAT BOERS MAY FIQHT ON. Speeches of Com-
mandant W D. Snyman, of General De Wefs staff. Story of South African War, four pages.
No 22 -THE BOERS REACH THE SEA, NEAR CAPE TOWN, as cabled Fifteen
Thousand Afrikanders Join Boer Army. Situation In South Africa. British losses

I02 ' 5 N 6 o £38SttXSSSl ^^HdI^^SZ^TSU wounded, missing and

prisoners o^r 10c ,000 men A go^rt^ ^ ^ war Extraordinary letter
from the Church of England What the English press has to say. The better heart of
England T^^^^SomWT BANKRUPT ; CAN'T PAY THE TROOPS Soldiers
desertfne Financial panic feared. The war is all over South Africa. The British refuse
fo let Red Crss nurses attend Boer women and children. Why British soldiers die from
disease Sidelights on the Boer war Comments from twenty-four leading newspapers

exposures. The policy of murder. 109,418 Boers in prison camps. Ill-feeling of the Eng-

liSh r a 5-"T r HrABsVN a f.MINDED BURGHER." a poem, parody on Kipling "The
Absent-minded Beggar." The finest Boer poem published. Grand and sarcastic. The
price that staggers. Pay, pay, pay.

Beautiful Photo-eneravings, on enamel paper, from original photographs of Presidents

KruSr^nd Steyn- 'General Cronje's Last Stand"; Secretary Reitz; Martha Krantz the
KcBoer vvoman'soldilr; the American. German and Irish Commandoes and Officers of the
Boer Armv" Three Generations in the Boer War"; "British Refugees Leaving Pretoria ;
"font Tom" with the Boer forces; Boer Camps; British Prisoners in Boer Commando;
Wa? S g cenes-F7ghting Women and Children in the Trenches; Destruction of Boer Farm;
Houi-burning Iceland many other very interesting pictures of : ^enes during the war 1 n
South Africa suitable for albums, framing, panels, etc. Price, 5 cents each , 50 cents
per dozen.

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DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

NOV 03 1988

oec i^n

1 1 bin

rumJDISaDffil5 '88

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FORM NO. DD6

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
BERKELEY, CA 94720