The Story of an African Crisis and of The Jameson Raid F. E. Garrett UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES xiL~f THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS NEW ENLARGED AND REVISED EDITION WITH APPENDICES AND INTRODUCTION THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS Bni.NC THE TRUTH ABOUT THE JAMESON RAID AND JOHANNESBURG REVOLT OF 1896 TOLD WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE LEADING ACTORS IN THE DRAMA ^ BY EDMUND GARRETT EDITOR OF THE " CAPE TIMES," AUTHOR OF " IN AFRIKANDERLAND," ETC AND E. J. EDWARDS ASSISTANT EDITOR OF THE " CAPE TIMES," SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT AT JOHANNESBURG DEC. 1895 AND JAN. 1896 WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS 1S97 0EO1920 no A I. Butler & Tanner, The Sp.iavoou Pkinting Wohks, Fkome, anu London. Preface to the Present Edition STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS ^A I AHE part of this little book which deals with the House cJs I of Commons Inquiry is new. The part which tells >- the Story of the Raid and Revolt is also new to the g English public, and has been in the hands of the South E2 African public not many weeks. "The Story of a Crisis," published as the 1896 Christmas Number of the Ca/>e Times, was intended for both these audiences ; but the whole edition was exhausted by Cape ^^ Town, or at least by Cape Colony, eleven thousand copies ^ being bought on the day of publication. Thus England was 5£j left practically unsupplied, though the reviewers have written rH very kind things already on the strength of the few copies that ^jwere accessible. By permission of the proprietors of the ^ Ca/>e Times, I have therefore arranged with Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co. that they should issue the Story in its present form, adding, besides some documentary Appendices which I hope will be found useful for reference, an Introduction deal- ing with the immediate developments of the hour. ^ As to the division of authorship, I am indebted to my friend Q and colleague, Mr. E. J. Edwards, for the most part of Chai)ters *C ix., xii., xiv., xv., the idea throughout being to make the narra- tive as far as possible first-hand. F. E. 0. 08 165^ i Preface to the African Edition " T "T THAT an interesting story it would all make, if one W could only get at the truth about it ! " has been a common expression ever since the South African Crisis of last New Year first electrified the world. For a long time the truth was difficult to get at, and on some points impossible to publish ; but the psychological moment now seems to have come for telling the story. The Jameson trial is over ; the Reform trials are over ; the Cape Select Committee has published its Report ; the British Government has published Blue-books, and the Transvaal Government Green-books ; the English Inquiry, by common consent, has little left to discover, and cannot well report till that little has become ancient history. We are far enough removed now from these astonishing events for the story to be no longer sa^ judice ; we are near enough to them still for memories to be fresh and first-hand evidence accessible. The exact meaning of our phrase, " with the assistance of leading actors," is simply that the narrator has talked over crucial points, or secured communication, with almost every single man who could be so described ; and he believes that the result takes fairly into account all the conflicting versions, as between the Reformers and the Imperial Government, the Reformers and the Raiders, the Raiders and the Boers ; as to the relations between Rhodes and Jameson, and the other vexed questions. Most of these have been winnowed through the columns of the Cape Times during this stirring year, and the truth about some of them was first published in those columns. But many interesting details appear here for the viii PREFACE TO THE AFRICAN EDITION first time, especially as to that political and personal side of the Crisis, the scenes of which were Cape Town and Pretoria rather than Johannesburg or Doornkop. The story, dictated in the intervals of other work, makes no literary pretentions. The teller had to consider two classes of reader : those in South Africa, and those in England. As "The Princess" has it, — "And I, betwixt them both, to please tliem both, And yet to give liie Storj' as it rose, I moved as in a strange diagonal. And maybe neither pleased myself nor them." The attempt has been to make the story readable and in- telligible. If that much has been attained, the defects incident to haste, a late change of plan, and the unresting wheel of a ckiily paj)er, may pcrhai)s be overlooked. Contents Introduction The Prelude to a Crisis, as told dy Mr. Chamber LAIN 1. "On the Most Friendly Footing II. " ClIVE would have DONE IT " III. The Perversion of Mr. Rhodes . IV. The Plot Thickens. V. The Arming of Johannesburg VI. Conspiracy by Telegraph VII. A Hitch, and a False Start VIII. The Great Fiasco .... i.x. Johannesburg takes its Coat off X. The Irene Mystery and the Nacht.m XI. A Premier's "Apple-Cart" . xii. A Boom in Revolutions XI I I. The Story of the Proclamation. XIV. A " Slump " in Revolutions . XV. Johannesburg puts its Coat on again XVI. Scenes at Pretoria, Cape Town, and Elsewiikk xvii. Picking up the Broken Crockery \al SURI ISE TAGB xi 1 7 28 33 42 53 6o 7S 87 123 142 147 161 1 84 201 214 233 252 Appendices : — I. The "Letter of Invitation" 271 II. The National Union Manifesto .... 273 III. Statement of the Reform Leaders at the Trial 287 IV. The Convention of London (1S34). (Critical Clauses) 292 v. Cecil Rhodes and his Policy 296 Introduction WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS INQUIRY SINCE the Story set out in the following pages was written, a distinct change has come, not over the facts them- selves, of course, nor even over the facts so far as ^., C-, .• known to the writer and here set out, but over 1 he SituaUon . ' . . of the the face and public colour of the Inquiry which oment. -^ ^^^^ beginning. In this Introduction I propose to deal with the history of this change, and with tlie true inwardness of the new issues which it raises. The centre of gravity has changed from Cape Town to Lon- don, and it has come to seem, for the moment, as if the man who must stand or fall by the Committee were not Mr. Cecil Rhodes any longer, but rather Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. Around Mr. Rhodes' figure the air has cleared. In spite of the obstinate, year-long silence that he has kept, it is be- ginning to be fairly understood what his relation- Position'^^ ship to Dr. Jameson's venture was, and also what it was not. The whole episode is seen more in relation to the rest of Mr. Rhodes' extraordinary career, and to the permanent factors in South African politics. In South Africa men have already made up their minds about Mr. Rhodes^ action, and, sensibly or insensibly, taken sides upon it. I do not think this Intjuiry is likely to touch his position there, either for good or evil, except transiently. xH INTRODUCTION Very different is the case with Mr. Chamberlain. If the rumour now revived were made good, and the strongest of Colonial Secretaries, equally with the strongest laiii's Position' ^^ Colonial Premiers, proved to be '* in it up to his neck," he would be " in " a deep slough indeed. \Miat matters more, what matters incalculably, he Would have carried England " in " with him. In the game of cards that is playing between Mr. Kruger and Mr. Chamberlain, there are two trumps yet unplaycd. The Chamberlain trump card would be the conviction of the President of complicity in the Berlin intrigue begun by his State Secretary and rashly signalized by the Kaiser's telegram. The Kruger trump card would be the conviction of the Colonial Secretary of complicity in the Jameson Raid. And this, if we are to believe the gossip which has now cir- culated to every corner of the world, is the card which is about to be put into Mr. Kruger's hand by a Select Committee of the British House of Commons ! After Mr. Chamberlain's despatches, if not before, it is quite impossible to conceive anything more crushing to his personal reputation, or more damaging to perfidc Albion on the Conti- nent, to "the Inqjcrial Factor" in South Africa. The history of this gossip so far is as follows. 'J"he first emergence of tlie rumour at tlic time of the Crisis is duly chronicled in the Story. Up to December, 1895, there 'I'liL' ^^'^^ "*^ xdi^i'x abroad in South Africa at large of any Binf,'ia|)liy of change in the traditionally "correct" attitude of a uinour. ^j^^ ("olonial Office to the I'illandcr agitation in the Trans\aal. 'i'lie action taken on tlu' I )iiris (Jiiestion ' seemed to Ijc strictly within the four corners of the Doiuloii Convention, and was not taken as promising any interference with the Transvaal internally. At llie lime 'jf tlie Crisis, however, there was undoulitedly .1 ' Cliap. i., pp. 2Z, 2 J. INTRODUCTION xiii firm impression among those who were " in the secret," or even on the outer fringes of the secret, alike at Cape Town and at Johannesburg, that Chamberlain was behind Rhodes, just as Rhodes was behind Jameson ; in short, that " Chamber- lain," as it was commonly put, was " in it up to his neck." It was but a whisper that had been passed round, till the " prompt and vigorous action," so much applauded by Mr. Chamberlain's colleagues and countrymen, provoked the less discreet confederates to babble.' In those first days the public mind was not familiarized with the distinction between what Dr. Jameson actually did and what Mr. Rhodes had been ready to sanction his doing. The first murmurs at Johannesburg seemed to blame Mr. Chamber- lain for " deserting" a blunder which even Mr. Rhodes had to disavow. By the Transvaal Boers it was assumed, as a matter of course, with or without any rumours to fan the ever-ready Boer suspicion, that Jameson's policemen embodied a Suspicions. British official plot. Krugersdorp was to them another Laing's Nek, and Doornkop the second Majuba. Hence the cry that Oom Paul should tear up the Convention ; and there was a juncture at which a very ugly situation might easily have arisen, but for the credit which Sir Hercules Robinson commanded with Afrikander leaders. That one fact entitles Lord Rosmead to our gratitude.^ Has it ever struck the reader what the position would have been if (for instance) Mr. Hofmeyr and the Acting President of the Free State had suddenly joined President Kruger in an appeal from the perfidy of the British Government to the united moral sense of Europe ? When Englishmen are facing a world in arms, they do like to be able to think they are in the right. Thanks to Sir Hercules' private influence and the uncom- promising correctness of Mr. Chamberlain's public action ' Oiap. xii., p. 167. - Chap, xiii., p. 182. xiv INTRODUCTION The Rumour ^g^J^st, "ot the Raiders only, but Mr. Rhodes and killed in the Chartered Company, all this gossip soon died a natural death in South Africa, despite some efforts of the Pretoria Government's Reptile Press to keep it alive. A Colonial Minister (Sir James Sivewright), in the course of the debate on the Charter in the Cape Assembly, made a rather mischievous reference to what has been called the clairvoyance of Mr. Fairfield ; ^ but nobody took much notice. The very complete telegraphic finds of the Transvaal Government compromised no Imperial official, save one Bech- uanaland magistrate, and the anxiety of some members of the Cape Select Committee to drag in the Imperial Secretary (Sir Graham Bower) ended in disappointment. Meanwhile, the rumour which died a natural death in South Africa was being galvanized into artificial life in England. For the numerous political enemies of Mr. Chamberlain there were obvious temptations, and equally for the friends of „ . , . Mr. Rhodes : but those who first succumbed fall Revived in . . . . _ lingiand by stnctly under neither of these designations. It the Raiders. ^^^^ reserved for those who commanded (so far as anybody did command) in the Raid itself— those British officers, or ex-officers, at whom already " all the world won- dered," not quite in the Balaclavan seise — it was reserved for these strategists to show what kind of a hand they could make in /a haute politique, by first giving body to the nine days' gossip of Johannesburg. The impression wliich bad got nuiiid aiiKuig the plotters before the Crisis as to Imperial backing jjievaik'tl among the confederates at Pitsani, as weL' as at Johannesburg and Capi' 'J'oWll. It w,is in the mind f)f Major " Bobby " NMiiti-, no (loiibt. as lie piilliil on lii^ lidiiig gloves ami (.illcd out lo liispecior fillliT of the (';i|ie I'oliee, "It's all ri.uht, oM ( 1ki|> : \ ou can do what you like: the wires are cut ! " It w.is tin- idea ' I''nr |iri>lial)Ii; cxiilaiKilicm sec rhaji. vi., p. Uz. INTRODUCTION x> which Dr. Jameson and Sir John Willoughby, in perfect good faith, conveyed to officers and men ahke, as they " ga'ed o'er the border " ; and it is just conceivable that it survived eyen the delivery to each several officer of a several note from the High Commissioner, bidding him to stop, '* on pain of rendering yourself liable to severe penalities." ^ It is just conceivable, I say, that Sir John Willoughby and his officers dismissed this explicit wai.ning at all parts of the game. It is quite possible to admire them for deciding, since they had got so far, that they must now go through with it, and trust to success to cover up a splendid indiscipline. That one can understand. What puzzles is why, if all this was to be part of the game, it should not be equally part of the game to pay the forfeit of failure smiling. "Victory or Westminster Abbey " was Nelson's word ; Jameson's men might, at least, have accepted the alternative, " Johannesburg or HoUoway ! " But that was not the view of all of them. " Cast off by everybody, on they went, a fair mark for every Boer rifle. Careers and commissions they threw to the winds." So I remember writing of them in their '^PosltioTi!'^^ darkest hour, — a little rhetorically, no doubt, for we were all a good deal moved. But, lo ! it turns out that to throw careers and commissions to the wind was the last thing that some of these gentlemen, or their friends, and advisers, and spokesmen, contemplated. In the Pretoria gaol, the first cell occupied by the four Johannesburg leaders was one just vacated by the Raid officers ; and they found scribbled on the vermin-haunted wall the Essex-Elizabeth couplet : " I fain would climb, Init I fear to fall ; If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all." The controversy between Raiders and Reformers — idle, indeed, where there were so many mistakes on both sides — has • Bluebook, c. 7933; Nos. 5, 7, 8, 10, and 220 § 16-1S. See also Story, p. 91. xn INTRODUCTION happily ended without any pubHc laundry of soiled linen. But that mural taunt does suggest one odious comparison. In the matter of the alleged Imperial complicity, as in others, the " cowards " held their tongues and took their beating : it was the " heroes " who peached ! No doubt, to plead that they thought certain things is not exactly the same as pleading that certain things were so ; but for all practical purposes it was impossible for the Raiders to shelter themselves or each other in any way under the magiii iiominis umbra of Mr. Chamberlain, without embarrassing their country in exact proportion as the plea availed to save them- selves. Yet it was actually proposed by some of their advisers that they should make the plea at their trial under the Foreign Enlistment Act. Dr. Jameson put his foot down on 'Traih' ^ ^'^^^' ^^^ ^'^^* ^^^^ °f thought betrayed itself more than once during the proceedings, and no doubt accounted for the indeterminate muddle which the defence, \vith all its galaxy of legal talent, somehow gave the effect of. It is said, by the way, and I believe truly, that on the evidence Major Raleigh Crey and one of the others ought to have got clear off. That, however, is common fortune of law. They being convicted with the rest, the A\'ar Office could l)ut retire them with the rest. The next step was to try the effect on the \\'ar Ollice of tlie plea which had almost come into open court. Sir John W'illoughby made the plea confidentially, on behalf War Office. ^^ ^^^'^ Others. For himself, he said, he did not greatly care whether he was retired or not. He h.nl large financial interests to attend to, but he iVlt Ik.uikI to declare as Commanding (Xlirir iliai he h.iii -^\w\\ certain assurances to those iiiuler his orders, lie luliewd at the time that he had Imperial warrant for his proceedings, and he told the others so. The chain of conuuunication suggested is Cliambi-rlain — Rhodes — Jameson — AN'illoughby. This stateMK.'Ut of Sir John W'illonghby was backed by INTRODUCTION xvii Dr. Jameson in so fur as it referred to himself. Rightly or ■^ , wronjzly, he had believed himself able to uive the Dr. Jameson. ° ■" . . . ° assurances which Sir John Willoughby passed o"i to the officers. Confronted by a plea of this kind, what ought the \Var Office to have done ? AV'hat Lord Lansdowne did was simple and obvious. To Mr. Chamberlain the whole Waroffice! ^'^'■y traced back : to Mr. Chamberlain he referred it. The Colonial Secretary was absent from Eng- land at the time. Lord Lansdowne communicated with him, told him the story, and asked plainly whether there was any- thing in it. Mr. Chamberlain replied by telegram, with equal plainness, that there was absolutely nothing in it whatever. The officers were retired accordingly, and forthwith friends and relatives and admirers and solicitors began to buzz it about that they had been monstrously hardly dealt with. Hardship there was, undoubtedly. The gaol was a horribly dull experience. Enforced farewell to the army was still more serious. Few of these gentlemen, probably, are well equipped for making a living in any other profession. But if it was bad for them, it was, at least, as bad for Colonel Rhodes, who shared the same fate for the part he played at Johannesburg, to say nothing of a ;^2 5,000 fine, and twenty-four hours passed under sentence of hanging. Colonel Rhodes has seen service, and won the D.S.O. He had some sort of a military career to lose. And he said nothing. " A monstrous hardship ! " My mind goes back to one dismal day when the Colony realised that these gentlemen, who had ridden across the Border, had surrendered to Presi- dent Kruger, that they were at the mercy of his burghers. We admired their pluck — the first accounts, indeed, were heroic. We respected their motives. We felt that in deciding their fate their Boer captors were deciding whether the Englishman in South Africa should or should not feel a quiet life worth living on the morrow. And we made haste to frame petitions and send up one united voice from British South Africa to the b xviii INTRODUCTION Queen's representative that he should put the Hves of these men before any franchises or diplomacies in the world. It was not Holloway that we thought of then. It was hanging, rather. What a bathos, if we had been asked to commiserate the probable loss of their commissions ! Apparently, the contention of the officers' friends and spokes- men was that the ^Var Office ought to have held a sort of full- dress rehearsal of the present Inquiry — to decide the question, one might say, whether the Raiders should have to retire from the army, or the Colonial Secretary should have to retire from public life. One zealous lawyer carried on a correspondence with Mr. Chamberlain which almost took on a tone of threatening. Mr. Chamberlain is a bad man to bully, and he broke the cor- respondence off after what he indignantly described as "a blackmailing letter." Meanwhile, the air was thick with hint and innuendo. Never was more done in the way of " pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, as, JFe//, ivell^ we knotv ; or, We could, an if we would ; or, J/ we list to speak ; or. There be, an if tJuy might." At last, we in South Africa were astonished to learn by cable of an actual newspaper discussion on the ijuestion whether the War Office had not done a flagrant injustice to British officers by dismissing, without full incjuiry, an allegation that they thought they had Imperial warrant for raiding the Transvaal. During most of this time the officers themselves were in Holloway, where two of them are still completing their sen- tences. It would be pleasant to be assured that iVrS Secret ^^^^7 '^^^^ '^'' ^'"^ "^ responsibility for all this. I, for my l)art, am most willing and anxious to be- lieve that, after the lirst incliscretit)n of the leading Raiders in presenting the plea, the exi)loitation of it has lain at other doors. And I wish to make it clear beyond possibility of mis-' conception that I am not charging these gentlemen with mis- statement. The whole point of my commentary is precisely INTRODUCTION • xix the opposite. What they say about their own beiief at the time is true past a doubt. I shall discuss, in a moment, what there was to lend colour to the belief. But assume, for the argument, that it was in fact a true belief, justified up to the hilt. Assume that all apparent veto upon the Raid was neutralised by a nod or a wink, so to speak, from Downing Street. Assume that these officers were the secret agents of a Machiavellian British policy, playing a sinister game such as Russian officers have played in the Balkans, or such as in- triguing kings and cardinals in Dumas are always sending adventurers to play. Then I say if that was the game, if they took that to be the game, why not play it according to the rules ? On those Dumas adventures, he who succeeded was enriched and decorated, indeed ; but he who was unlucky enough to fail was always cheerfully disowned. And he was expected not to render up his secret though torn to pieces by wild horses before the Queen-Mother with a Duchess of Guise, dressed as a page boy, among the sightseers, laying her finger on her lip. Perhaps Sir Jdtlu Willoughby found himself torn to pieces by wild asses, and the strain became insupportable. At any rate, it seems to me that the best and only defence of soldiers who disclose a State secret is the one which I set up — to wit, that there was not really any State secret to disclose. And now, what 7vas the allegation ? What does the suggested chain of communication — Cham- berlain, Rhodes, Jameson, Willoughby^amount to ? The question brings us to the next step in this Bio- PublSuSn! S^'^^P^y of a Rumour: Mr. Stead's " History of the Mystery," which, in the form in which it finally met the public eye of England, might rather have been called, "The Mystery of a History," but which has probably made the most that ever will be made of " the skeleton in Blastus's cupboard." As to the mischievousness of that publication there seems to have been an almost universal consensus. Unfortunately, a similar consensus sometimes has greeted audacities of Mr. XX • INTRODUCTION Stead's that were in their essence brave, useful, and patriotic. Nobody who has once worked under that Dr. Stockmann of EngUsh journaUsts — an experience which is a Uberal education in itself — can ever again feel quite happy on finding himself in a majority. Personally, nothing would be more to my liking than to stand beside Mr. Stead in a minority of two. But an offence is not necessarily Socratic because the whole city pre- scribes hemlock for it ; a bad argument is not made good even by crucifixion ; and in this case I must repeat, even though everybody agrees with me, the opinion that Mr. Stead's " His- tory " of " the Skeleton in Blastus's Cupboard," as heralded and projected, was from every i)oint of view (save, perhaps. Dr. Leyds') a most mistaken and unfortunate effort. One thing, and one thing only, can turn the tables on Mr. Stead's critics. He started from certain postulates about the Inquiry and its coming disclosures. If he was right about the disclosures, he was unquestionably right also in thinking that there was not a day to lose for any apologist who meant to try putting a good face on them. Well, the Select Committee is sitting. Its composition is a guarantee that there will be no mawkisli anxiety to suppress any disclosures. Its proceedings will decide, perhaps almost as soon as this is in the reader's hands, whether it is Mr. Stead or noi/s nu/ns who must look foolish. The serious thing about all this " lllastus "' business was the inference naturally drawn as to the attitude and intentions of Mr. Cecil Rhodes. Anyiliing which rests on Mr. Rhodes' word is apt to be found true and to become rather important. Mr. Stead was known to be a great friend of his ; Mr. 1 lawksley, who was evidently behind, was the ("harlcictl ("iimpany's solicitor ; it was whisijcred, among those who were likel)' to knt)W, thai we had here another outcome of the headstrong inspira- tion of " Dr. Jim" himself. In reality, Mr. Rhodes was away on the veld or in the Matoppos, li\ing in the saddle, sleeping in the air, discoursing to w\k\ iiulunas, declining (in his own way anil Mr. I'arneirs) to open a letter ; and none but a clair- INTRODUCTION xxi voyant could say what his attitude and intentions might be. Mr. Hawksley is a very clever lawyer, but he was hopelessly wrong. Dr. Jameson is a man who, throughout the great country which he helped to add to the Empire, is beloved with a kind of fond extravagance ; but here he was ending i8g6 with a blunder only second to the one with which he began it. As for Dr. Harris, the other putative ftvther of the rumour, he it was, it seems, whose protests compelled Mr, Stead to the extraordinary course by which, at the last moment, he made his " Mystery " literally blacker still, and so attained — in psrfect good faith — the maximum of suggestion with the minimum of plain statement. The " blotting out " of " State secrets " was at that stage the only alternative to complete suppression ; but I can recall nothing in the unexpurgated text, as I saw it, that was as bad as the blots. Happily, however, in the meantime the cat was out of the bag, and proved to be only a cat after all. Mr. Stead had been corresponding with me about the plan and plot of his Story, and had borne with exemplary good humour my continued pro- tests against it. On the eve of publication he favoured me with advance proofs, humorously remarking that I now knew the worst, and could proceed to " slate " him. I did proceed to slate him. On the day when the History was published in London, the Cape Times quoted what seemed to be the gist of it in Cape Town, reviewing it with a judicious mixture of sorrow and anger. And, by a misunderstanding the blame of which (if any) was wholly mine (but how could one have guessed that incredible " blacking-out " expedient ?) the very chapter quoted in Cape Town was the one " blacked out " on the machine in London ! South Africa — -and later London — was thus apprised that what the whole Mystery amounted to was simply that Mr. Rhodes, and through him others, had been led to camVto^ form an exaggerated view of the extent of Mr. Chamberlain's cognisance and approval of their plans, owing to the terms in which friends or agents in London xxii INTRODUCTION reported the tenour of conversations at the Colonial Office, mainly or partly in connection with the negotiations for transfer of the Protectorate, and of the duty of policing the Protectorate, to the Chartered Company. I think that will be accepted as a fair summary : a f;iir prose translation of Mr. Stead's ingenious and poetical fantasy about the Cable-Serpent, which drags its slow length through the At- lantic ooze, and tempts the denizens of a political Eden by repeating broken whispers and condensed perversions of each other's thoughts. " Is that all ? " was the universal remark of the Cape Town reader. For Mr. Stead's oceanic " Serpent " had been carry- ing us a great many echoes of the trumpets preliminary. I stated then, in reviewing this suggestion of compromising cables, and I repeat my belief now, that I have known for nearly a year the tenour of these much-talked-of cables, and that they are not really compromising enough to " hang a dog." By this I mean that they are susceptible on the face of them of a perfectly innocent and proprr cxplanatioii : like so many other expressions or actions on the eve of the Transvaal Crisis, wliich, seen after the event, in the distorting search-light thrown by the event, got quite a sinister look. Any one who, like myself, has had to study the history of this affair at all closely, could mention some absurd illustrations (\{ this phenomenon. The Transvaal Government put into a greenbook a telegram of my own, which to this day (in all probability) they fumly believe to implicate thr imperial (lovernment. They, no (loul)t, will display all the inductive certainty of .Sergeant lUizfuz if somebody slmuld ])H)ve to have cabled "chops ;iii(l tomatt> sauce." \\'hat any l>o(l\ ili,l cable wi- shall all know soon ; lor the CoiiuniUi'c will oi(l(i- the ( "able ( "onipany to i)ro(liiec thedoeii ments. 'J'iie Company's rule, I belii-ve, is to di-slroy copies of messages after one year; i)ut Sir William llarcourt, like a sli'Utliliound on the promising scent, sent round a w.uiiing some liiiii- a^o, and sa\cd any "good copy" wliich may be going. INTRODUCTION xxiii But for this certainty that the whole matter must needs come to light in a few days, and that the time of rumour and the poring dark is at an end, I should not have said so much unless I had leave to say all. I wish I had leave. But the few who know the exact truth are of two classes. There are those who hold their tongues for obvious and proper reasons ; but there are also some who cry " Hush ! " because they have already, in an indignant phrase of Mr. Chamberlain's own, "worked the thing for all it was worth." Omne ignofian pro terribili. What I believe the inquiry will show to be the truth about the affair is set out partly in the Narrative, and shall now be What is the stated explicitly. 'I ruth? Much has been conjectured as to the part played in the communications by Dr. Harris — the Dr. Cactus of Mr. Stead's pages — who was South African Secretary of the Chartered Company, and confidential secretary of Mr. Rhodes, and was in London during much of the territorial negotiations with the Colonial Office which went on between August and November, 1895. The reader will notice passages in the following narrative— especially in chapters iv. and vi. — written before the present discussion arose, which bear on this point. I have not been favoured by Dr. Harris with his version. But it seems to be forgotten, by those who expect tremendous cable finds, that Dr. Harris left England and re- turned to Cape Town in the middle of December, well liefore the crisis ; so that if Mr. Chamberlain really had a mania for sending compromising messages through Dr. Harris at that 1 time, he might just as well have sent them by word of mouth. / The way in which the minor confederates in South Africa telegraphed about to each other has astonished the world ; i but a British Colonial Secretary, if he took to conspiracy, \ could hardly do it (juite Hke that. " Reference to possible developments, however discreet, was bound to l)e made during those prolonged negotiations about the Border territory," it is pointed out in chapter iv. I have xxiv INTRODUCTION ascertained that the prospect ^\. Johamicslnu-g (not \\\q. Jameson part) was much better known beforehand by certain high officials of the Transvaal — by one high official, at any rate — than by sympathetic journalists, politicians, Cape folk, and well-informed South Africans generally. I think it will be found that the Colonial Office's Intelligence Bureau was in the same position as these high officials of the Transvaal. One sees at once, therefore, the temptation to an audacious and sanguine confederate in the Jameson part of the arrangements, who felt himself and his friends to be about to do so much better for England tlian she had ever done for herself, to stray tentatively at the Colonial Office off the legitimate ground into that where no Imperial official may tread. It will be found, I think, that Dr. Harris did once begin to do so. Mr. Chamberlain is a very unconventional offirial, and he was new to his work ; but he certainly is no fool. He checked the indiscreet discussion, and Dr. Harris, who is also no fool, dared not return to it ; but he was not quite sure how far he had carried Mr. Chamberlain along with him. Now, those who have once tested the matter know well that no two men ever have just the same identical memory of a conversation. So much, in all talk, depends on the ellipses. Thenceftuward even a chance-dropped phrase in conversation where other parties where; present — conversation, perhaps, on quite another subject — came to be scrutinized in this light. How much did the Colonial Secretary know? How much would he consent to? ^V<)ul(l he give Mr. Rliodes and Dr. Jameson carte bla)iclic ? Not Dr. Harris only— tlie Story casts him altogi'ther too much for the \illain, or if you like the hero, of llie piece — not Dr. Harris only, but all kinds of insiders and outsiders who had an inkling : the liannful necessary journalist, the s\ nipa- tlielic irresponsible who really cannot com[)romise anyi)0(ly but himself: became the means of conveying to Mr. Rhodrs or to Johannesburg, or to sonic om- or other of the re\ritish South Africa Company's police (including the ex-B.B.P.) — a force subject, but not quite so directly subject, to the High Com- missioner's orders — to be assembled in the same way and for the same purpose as above ; the possibility of such measures being called for being indirectly* recognised in liTriturial ar- rangements some time beforehand. 3. What Mr. Rhodes ivas probably prepared to sanction: — Upon advices from Johannesburg leaders to Jameson (who should help to arm tlnin, largely at Mr. I\h(i(l(^>" rxpeiise) that tile rising would be on a certain day ; antl u|)on a distinct staliineiit from these leaders that they called upon the Com- ' I liilitvc lliat Mr. Cli.imhcrlain (laliy denies llial it was diiccdy re- CD-rniscd. INTRODUCTION xxvii pany's troops to come in and " i^rotcct life and property " at the moment of the upheaval ; to allow the use of the police, assembled as above, almost simultaneously with the action within the Transvaal, Mr. Rhodes to secure High Com- missioner's assent as best he could. 4. JVhat Jameson actuary did : — To act on the concert just described, and about the time first fixed upon, although the concert had been broken off and the day countermanded, Mr. Rhodes accordingly joining with the Johannesburg leaders in forbidding the use of the police. Now, it will be seen at once that between 3 and 4 there is a gulf. But between i, 2 and 3 there is really only a sheet of paper, if we put aside one feature. That one feature is Mr. Rhodes' assistance to the Johannesburg revolution beforehand. Had Mr. Rhodes resigned his Premiership and Charter Director- ship l)efore, instead of after : the affair of the arms would have been hailed as exhibiting all those qualities which Johannesburg has been reproached for lacking. For this is covered by " the sacred rights of revolution " ; the question of raids, which have not yet established any " sacred rights," is quite apart from it. And, leaving aside this one point, as I say, it is possible to state the positions of Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir Henry Loch, so that there shall seem to be only a sheet of paper between them. The difference between going in to help a revolution, and going in to " restore order," or " prevent a riot," or " protect life and property," is one which in practice it would have required superhuman ingenuity to maintain. The question, just how much should happen before the border might decently be crossed, is another point which must always have been left to circumstances. When the Johannesburg leaders took the responsibility of the provisional appeal to Jameson, they took also the responsibility of a signal. The High Commissioner's mediation, backed by material xxviii INTRODUCTION support if necessary, was also a feature common to all four positions or policies. Though Sir Hercules Robinson never dreamed, of course, of the use which was made of the under- standing in reassuring timid Reformers at Johannesburg, I have no doubt that he had fully arranged to go up and mediate, and that it was only the compromising of the situation by Jameson's act which made him so slow to offer his services when the time came. Such action by the High Commissioner, upon any such long-expected crisis arising, had been a Downing Street South African axiom for years. Sir Hercules Robinson's appoint- ment was defended in the Press on the ground of his special fitness for such a task. I remember a conversation with Lord Ripon at the Colonial Office at that time in which this was made clear ; and if it had been a few months later, and I a confederate in the "complot," I might have rushed away and telegraphed that " Ripon is in it up to his neck." Yet (let me hasten to add) the late Colonial Secretary said no single word to which Dr. Leyds or Baron Marschall von l>ieberstein, note- book in hand, could have taken exception. (iiven this general prcarrangement for a crisis ; given Sir Hercules Robinson's particular consent to it beforehand ; given the foreknowledge of Mr. Chamberlain's Intelligence Bureau that a crisis was brewing for this particular time — the end of December — for that much I am sure he will boast with some departmental pride ; given the precedent of Lord Loch's assembling of the police to lend moral or material su[)port, and the provision of Mr. Chamberlain, when the police were passing out of direct Imperial control, to facilitate any similar assembling of them under altered conditions in the future : given all these things, it will be seen at once how easy it would be to ffiakc Mr. Chamberlain seem to have been " u|i to his neck," if Mr. Rhodes tried to shelter himself (as some of his friends would have him do) behind the ('olonial Office. I am able to say that In- will do nothing of the kind. "How ran he," asks somebody, "if, as you say, thrn's noihiiig in it?" INTRODUCTION xxix He could very easily, as I have shown, if he set himself lo emphasize and enlarge on all the ambiguous little things that went to form or bear out the impressions which I have described. It would be very unpatriotic, and very selfish ; and no doubt exi)loring party men on the Select Committee can do a great deal of mischief yet by pressing such ambiguous points, which, when pressed at all, require pages of ex[)lana- tion to clear up their suspiciousness. Mr. Rhodes has the gift of silence. But I bjlieve I have riglitly represented what his impression was in December, 1S95. I am also in a position to affirm, from personal assurance, tliat Lord Rosmead was not resjwnsible for that impression, and that Mr. Chamberlain was not responsible. I have here tried to account for the divergence, and though the enquiry drag on for months I believe this is the conclusion it will have to come to. Mr. Rhodes did not plan or foresee the Raid. Rut he was willing for Johannesburg to engage Jameson for a " raid " of a certain kind. Mr. Chamberlain was also willing to arrange for a "raid," something between Lord Loch's and Mr. Rhodes'. The raid he never dreamed of. The "sheet of paper " may not be thick enough to please some swashbuckling polemists, to make Mr. Rhodes a criminal or Mr. Chamber- lain a model of what I might call unctuous correctitude ; but it suffices, unless one or both of two high servants of the Queen have lied as English gentlemen do not lie, to keep clear in a situation of unique difficulty the honour and good faith of England — never more indispensable as an element in the South Africa hurly-burly than they are to-day. This Introduction is not concerned with the position of Mr. Rhodes. For that the reader is referred to the pages that follow. In them I have done his position, if any- R^'^d'" thing, a little less than even justice. As an incurable English Radical, and in other capacities, I have had and shall have many occasions to differ from Mr. Rhodes, and to criticise him with, I hope, plenty of zest and vigour. But this is not the place or the moment for such XXX INTRODUCTIOxN criticism, and, I would add, England is not the country. Afrikanders of Republican sympathies have a good right to challenge him — those who have ever worked with him in the Colony — on the connection between the wild venture of 1895-6 and the British flag. His only answer to them is i\\c p/cl>iscite ; ^ his " treachery to the Republic " consisted in bargaining that its future relation to a United South Africa under the British flag should be put to the vote of all its white inhabitants. But if it be true of Mr. Rhodes' divy-dreams that they turned upon something grander than merely " substituting President Barnato for President Kruger," in his own phrase, at least it is nut for Englishmen to make that a reproach. " \Vhat will you do if you have to go to prison ? " I asked Mr. Rhodes on his way to England on the Dunvegan Castle. " If I have to go to prison ? Well, I once read eight hours a day for my degree. I haven't had much time to read since then : I think I'd take on a course of reading." That is exactly what Wools Sampson has done in Pretoria tronk. I hope Mr. Rhodes' answers to the Committee — they are likely to be frank even to l)rulality, for he never conceives tluit anything he has done can be wrong — will not lead to that " course of reading." Ruat ai'Iiim, of course ; but even the hungry exultation of Hollanders and Germans and Boers will hardly compen.sate us for the sullen feelings which we should have to rouse throughout British South Africa. At any rate, while Dutchmen denounce the raid as privateering for the Union Jack, it seems a little squalid that some Englishmen sliDukl \k- denouncing it as "a stock-jobbing speculation." There are still many who believe that " Rhodes sent Jameson in " : there are not a few who hug the notion that what he sliU him in fdi" was to seize, in some unexplained and inexplicable way, tlie auriferous con- glomerate of the Rand, dt to merge with the I'.oer Rii)ublic the land which he has toiled for nearly twenty years to add lo the Empire. Well ! Shrewtl judges estimate that the Raid ' Cli.Tp. iii., p. 34; sec ;ilbu cliap. vli. INTRODUCTIOxN xxxi and his friends' part in it cost Mr. Rhodes a quarter of a niilHon, first to last ; and a good part of the rest of his fortune is locked up in Rhodesia, the future of which, as a factor in Africa, will be the romance or the tragedy of one man's life- work. I demur to that Continental sneer about " unctuous rectitude," but I do sometimes wish that my countrymen, and especially my fellow Liberals, had a little more imagination. F. Edmund Garrett. London, February, 1897. The Prelude to a Crisis AS TOLD ]5Y MR. CHAMBERLAIN (Extract from the Dispatch of Feb. 4, 1S96) kOR a proper apprehension of tlie events which have led up to the Crisis, I must go back to the period im- mediately succeeding the conclusion of the Convention of Pretoria in i88r. At that ])eriod, and for some time afterwards, the population of the South .\frican Republic was comparatively small, and C()mj)osed almost entirely of burghers and their families. The British element in it was made up of traders, a handful of farmers or landowners, and a small, and not very thriving, body of gold-miners, living chiefly in the neighbourhood of Lydenburg. The revenue was meagre, and hardly sufficient for the barest needs of Government. About ten years ago the discovery of gold deposits at the De Kaap Fields gave indications of a new state of things, and a little later came the discoveries of gold at the Witwatersrand, which worked a complete revolution in the situation of the Republic, both financial and political. The discovery of the Reefs at the Rand gave rise to the inevitable gold fever, followed by the usual reaction. From such reaction the in- dustry was saved by the foresight and financial courage of certain of the capitalists most interested, and since 1890 the progress has been uninterrupted and rapid. Owing to peculiarities of temperament and circumstance, participation in the new industry had no attraction for the C 2 THE STORY OF burgher population. It remained almost entirely in the hands of new-comers, commonly known as " Uitlanders," and a sharp line of cleavage was thus created within the Republic — the Uitlanders being chiefly resident in the industrial and mining centres, whilst the burgher population remained absorbed in its pastoral avocations and dispersed widely through the country districts. It is very difficult to arrive at any exact idea of the numbers of these two classes of inhabitants. But I conceive that I am well within the mark in estimating the white population along the Rand at something like 110,000, and it may safely be said that the aliens (the large majority of whom are British subjects) at the present time outnumber the citizens of the Repul)lic. The political situation resulting from these conditions is an anomalous one. The new-comers are men who were accus- tomed to the fullest exercise of political riglits. In other communities, where immigration has played an important jurt in building up the population, it has been the policy of the Legislatures to make liberal provision for admitting all new- comers who are desirous of naturalization, after a comparatively brief period of probation, to the rights and duties of citizen- ship — a policy which, so far as national interests were con- cerned, has been fully justified by the event, for experience shows that tlie naturalized alien soon vies with — if he does not outstrip — the natural-born citizen in the fer\()ur of his patriotism. In the South African ReiJublie, lunvever, different counsels have prevailed witii those who were the de[)osilories of power. More than one law has been enacted, rendering more (liiruull the res, the High Com- missioner incited the deputation to this course, 'i'hat, of course, is from the home of canards. But on his own showing ho found the prospect so likely that he found it necessary to dis- suade them fron) it. To (jiiole again his House of Lords statement : " To strengthen my position to the deputation I asked thi'iu \\hal anioiuit of arms they had at the time in Johannesburg. Tliey told me they had a thousand rifles, and at the outside ten rounds of anununilion |ier rille. I then pointed out to them, not as an encouragement to resist, but to show them what a futile measure it would be, if any action on llieir part brought about disturbances, and as a consei|uence an aUack upon Johaniiesliurg. I Mk. CECIL J. RHODES '-'rotn a Photograph by Messrs. 13ASSANO, OU llond Street IS THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 15 also pointed out to tlicm that, if I went there, and they would admit it, there would be a danger of disturbance arising, and if disturbance arose the Government of the Transvaal would be justified, under all the circum- stances, in putting it down with very stringent hands. . . . They saw the force of my reasons." Sir Henry was quite prepared, by the way, for a kind of authorized raid from Bechuanaland, as well as a revolution in Johannesburg, on this occasion ; but of that, more anon. The strained relations of the Transvaal at the close of 1895 were external as well as internal. The Republic had become the one supreme obstacle to South African unity. The inter- state politics of South Africa are, and will remain until it becomes united, largely Customs politics and Railway politics. Ever since the failure of Lord Carnarvon's attempt to rush Federation, and especially since the failure and reversal of the Transvaal annexation, it is to a loose union of the States and Colonies as regards their fiscal and railway systems that most statesmen have looked forward when they used the formula of an United South Africa. That it was possible to link together a reptiblic and a colony for friendly co-operation by this means was shown by the Customs Union which has existed between the Cape and the Free State since 1889. That Union, being based on a protective system made to please the farmers, while the Natal system is dominated by the importers, Natal could not join ; but a still stronger reason was that the Transvaal would not join, and Natal lives on the Transvaal trade. Now, why would not the Transvaal join ? Certainly not because it considered the interests of the Uitlander consumer class more than those of its pastoral burghers. The continued preference of the Transvaal for " splendid isolation " is at bottom due to the fiict that those who govern it have never really given up the hope which is enshrined in the title of South African Republic. British statesmanship has long realized that it is not practicable politics to try and turn the Republics into Colonies ; but Pretoria statesmanship has never quite given up the dream of turning the Colonies into Republics. At first the i5 THE STORY OF developments which the Rand gold led to seemed likily to revive the former hope and to Anglicise the Transvaal ; but as President Kruger found by experience that he could hold the English-speaking population down, while the State was strength- ened by their wealth, that development has tended in the opposite direction, and the hope of absorbing the Free State and eventually dominating all South Africa has once more inspired Transvaal policy. It has been assumed, and it cannot be denied that so far the assumption has worked, that the Englishman in Africa can be treated as a negligible quantity, save as a revenue producer. Accordingly, to unite upon such terms as are practicable — i.e., upon Customs and Railways and the like — has become, in South Africa, a Ikitish formula ; while it has become the Trans\"aal formula, or at any rate guiding spirit, to decline union upon such half measures at all. Thus it comes about tliat Mr. Rhodes has consistently worked for a united South Africa of some kind, while " closer union with the Free State " is the nearest aspiration of the sort attributable to his great ri\al. Mr. Rhodes' polic)' was for years directed to redressing the balance, to neutralizing the Transvaal superiority of wealth, to keeping open way to the North as against Transvaal raiders, to surrounding and embrac- ing the Republic with territory which, like it, should contain great gold-fields and great populations, and shoukl go into the British side of the balance when the hegemony of South Africa comes to waver between the two. So far Mr. Rhodes as the opener of the North. Meanwhile, Mr. Rhodes, as the Premier of the Cape, was set ui)on these minor measures of union which have been described; and it was after a stormy interview with President Kruger late in iSc)4 on the ('ape-Transvaal relations that he finally made \\\\ his mind that it was ho|)eless ever to look for the conversion of the jjresent rulers of the Transvaal to any such modest programme of South African co-operation. Tliey had often cofiueltcd with the idea of joining a Customs Union, but had always treated it as a favour to the Imperial, AN AFRICAN CRISIS 17 Government, a favour which must be bargained for by giving Swaziland, or a way to the sea, or some other advantage. It is a striking proof, by the way, of the i)urely South African motives of Great Britain's poHcy in South Africa that a Cus- toms Union, under which British trade would be handicapped by high tariffs, sliould be treated as a goal of British diplomacy. In this sense it was treated for in one abortive Convention about Swaziland, which, however, w'as rejected by the Raad. Eventually Swaziland was bargained away for another con- sideration, and then Oom Paul used the same bait, the idea of the Transvaal entering a Customs Union, in order to obtain the littoral beyond Swaziland, and there make his own Port. In the interval, however, a maladroit speech of his on the Kaisers birthday had focussed attention on his policy (dis- approved in every other .South African country) of bartering trade advantages for politic^al support from Germany, with the result that Great Britain in the course of 1895 declared a Pro- tectorate, and blocked his right of way to the littoral in question. At an interview with which Oom Paul favoured the present writer in 1889 His Honour drew an idyllic picture of the general South African amity and Customs Union which would follow when he was given Swaziland. At another interview in 1895 he tooK the line that Swaziland in itself had never been of any import- ance ; what he wanted was the littoral beyond, from which he had then just been headed off. To the interviewer it seemed only a following out of the previous British policy to take him at his word, and give him his territory, his Port, or rather the somewhat otiose permission to get a Port out of a spit of sand if he could, and to get in return Customs and Railway Union both for a substantial term of years, only insisting in this case on " cash down " — that is, immediate fulfilment of the bargain. The way in which this policy, as sketched, was received in 1895, first by Oom Paul, and secondly by Mr. Rhodes, is perhaps, in the light of after events, significant of the lines on which their minds were developing. Oom Paul lost his tem- per, and was for breaking off the interview when he was pressed c iS THE STORY OF for a straightforward disavowal of any intention of bringing in the German factor in the way which has been described, while Mr. Rhodes abruptly treated the whole spirit of the bargain proposed as one out of date and impossible. It was univer- sally assumed that the sudden blocking of the Transvaal's way to the sea was done upon ]\Ir. Rhodes' prompting, and that it marked the end of the policy of sops to the Transvaal. It remains to add that the Transvaal is the only one of the States and Colonies which has persistently declined even to be repre- sented at a Customs Conference, and that one of Ooni I'aul's worst blunders, from his own j)oint of view, has been the illiberal treatment in this regard with which he has rewarded the support of Cape Afrikander farmers in 1881, a support which had more than anything else to do with Great Britain's decision to restore the Republic's independence. It was Railway politics, however, rather than Customs politics, which brought about the strained relations at the close of 1895, and led to the almost war measure, as it was considered, of the Closing of the Drifts. The essence of the Railway (Question is simple. Kiuiberley was once, Bulawayo may become some time, the magnet which attracts the iron rails, but at present, and for the last six years, the great loadstone is the Rand. The Transvaal Boer does not belong to the railway epoch. Left to himself he would not have had a yard of railway in his Republic to-day, but the Uit- lander came in and developed the mines and created a com- munity which could not be fed or served by ox-wagon. T'or some time the Government compelled it to make shift with the ox-wagon as best it could. A rail\va\- whirli sliould toucli the sea at Delagoa Bay, the natural port of the couiitr\. had been a dream of President ]5urgers. The fact that it need not touch British territory, though it nuist cross that of another ICuropean power, made it a dream dear to the heart of President Kruger. but the national prejudice against the iron horse, aided by in- competence and apathy, had prevented the dream coming much nearer to accomj)lishment till the time when Cape Colony AN AFRICAN CRISIS 19 forced the Government's hand by thrusting up its own raihvay through the Free State to the very border of the RepubHc, only fifty miles from the mines. Mr. Rhodes was then Prime Minister. Despite having got the Free State as partner, thus securing Republican backing, the enterprising railway manage- ment of the Colony found itself blocked at the Vaal by Presi- LORD RUSMEAD. (formerly sir HERCULES RODINSON.) From a Photcgyaph hy Messrs. ELLIOTT & THY. dent Kruger's declared determination to allow no other railway into the country until, in process of years, the Delagoa Bay line were completed to Pretoria. Drought, which struck at the transport by oxen, threatened famine in Johannesburg literally as well as industrially, and at a moment when revolution, or at any rate riot, seemed imminent, the hand of the Government was forced by the agitations from outside and inside, and the British Colony saw its enterprise rewarded by the completion of raihvay communication from Table Bay to Johannesburg. 26 THE STORY OF The result was, of course, tremendous traffic, the industrial salvation of Johannesburg, and the filling of the Cape Treasury and that of the Free State, its partner, out of the carrying trade to the largest goldfields in the world. Three years later the Delagoa Bay line was completed ; and later that of Natal. The Johannesburg importer had thus the choice of three lines offer- ing various advantages. On the first glance at the map it v.-ould seem impossible for the others to compete with the Delagoa line, which is much the shortest. Natal is handicapped by steep gradients ; Delagoa Bay by malarial fever, necessitating double staffs, and by the Portu- guese ; while the Cape Ports, though further from Johannesburg by land, are some days nearer England b)' sea. The adjust- ment of the shares which each line should eventually carry would, no doubt, have been settled by simple competition at cutting rates if the rival companies had been simply companies and not States. In the case of Natal and the Cape, however, the railways are a Government concern, and the aid which they at present give to the Treasury, thus lightening taxation, re- presents the chief way in which the colonies are able to share in nature's bounty to the inland Republic. The Free State was then in the position of a sleeping partner, the Cape Colony providing the capital, taking the risks and working the line, but it, too, is now taking over its railway to work on its own account. The Transvaal railway is a State railway with a difference. The Republic is essentially the home of conces- sions, and of course it gave a concession for the railway. The entire railway communication of the State is in the hands of a company domiciled in Amsterdam, and working upon such terms that its interest is to swell its profits by all possible mean.s, looking only to the present in order to get bought out by the State at a fancy price when its yoke has become intoler- able. The railway is one of the chief fi)rtressos of Hollander officialdom in the Transvaal, and thus again it falls in with President Kruger's idea of filling all those offices in the State household which 'IVansvaal burghers are not competent to take AN AFRICAN CRISIS 21 with Continontal Dutch si)eakers instead of with English-speak- ing Afrikanders. This Hollanderism of the Netherlands South Africa Railway Company adds an embittering factor to the situation, as it makes it a most powerful engine of Dr. Leyds' policy of setting the Transvaal and the neighbouring States by the ears while looking for support to Continental Europe. It was found, when all the railways began working together, that the Cape line still held its own, and that the devolution of traffic was extraordinarily slow. For the first few months the Cape carried 83 per cent. It was undoubtedly a disgrace to the Portuguese and the Netherlanders alike that their geo- graphical advantages should have been so slow in making themselves felt. Failing fair competition, they proposed to bring the Colony to a suitable mind for Convention purposes by throttling the Colonial line by means of the clutch upon its throat afforded by their position. The Cape-Free State line to the Vaal is carried to Johannesburg by a Netherlands line only fifty miles long. The first act of the Netherlands Company was to pile up the rates for this short length so high as to frighten away traffic to the Natal and Delagoa lines ; it increased its rates over this piece of line from is. to is. 8d. per hundred pounds. Experience, economy in working, the slowness of trade in transferring itself, and the urgent need for quick de- livery in the stage of industrial development in which Johannes- burg was, enabled the Cape to lower its rates and keep the traffic, while still retaining a margin of profit ; but to such a pitch did the Netherlands handicap attain that it actually paid to unload goods at the Vaal River and send them the rest of the way by the old, traditional ox-wagon. The strip of veld between the terminus of the Cape-Free State line and the con- suming centres of the Rand became the only spot on the surface of the earth, probably, which witnessed an actual competition between the ox and the steam locomotive. Such was the state of affairs when the Transvaal summoned a Railway Conference at Pretoria for October, 1895, and if the Cape was to be brought to its knees some more extreme expedient must be thought of. 22 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS It was actually determined to invoke the power of the Republic to close the two drifts by which the wagons crossed the \'aal against the importation of goods which the Cape Covernment Railway dumped down on the further bank. In August the Transvaal published a proclamation in the Staafs Courant notifying that these drifts would be closed against over-sea traffic on the first of October. The distinction between over-sea traffic and other was meant to square the Free State farmer, who would have used very strong language against the neigh- bour Republic if he had found his produce shut out of the Johannesburg market. It was supposed that he would not so much object to the remoter injury of bleeding the Free State Railway returns. The proclamation made a sensation through- out South Africa, for, when it was issued, the incompetence of the Netherlands Railway to cope with the traffic they already had, to say nothing of monopolising the rest, was causing a tremendous railway block on the border, and something like a paral}'sis of trade was threatened. As the day for closing the drifts drew near, agitation grew more and more intense, the Rand Chaml)er of Commerce used strong language to the Government from the consumer's and importer's point of view, while the indignation of the Cape Colony from llie puinl of view (jf the railway carrier and forwarding agent was ccluied from Bloemfontein. A tleputalion of the Chamber of Com- merce of the Free State capital waited on President Reit/, to protest against the neighbour Repul)l'c's action, and President Reitz, though he shrugged his shoulders and asketl what he could do, publicly stated that he shared the views of the de- jjutation. The Free Stale had telegrai^hed to ihf 'i'rans\aal (l(jvernment expressing regret, and remarking that they had not been consulted or recognised at all, and had not even got a reply. Rut J'resident Kruger and his advisers slop|K'd lluir ears. "You fellows have iiad enough of the Johannesl urg trade," the I'resident had declarrd lo Mr. Simits, an .\frikand(.'r niiiiibrr of the ("a])i_' 1 louse of Assembly, who lold the slory to liie Cope y'iiiu's. " 1 have made up iu\- mind thai tiu' 1 )ilagoa DR. L. S. JAMESON. Front a rortrait by PROFESSOR IlERKOMEK, 1855. 2.S THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 25 Bay line shall have the lion's share, and what there is to spare I shall give to Natal. You Cape Colonists must be content with the crumbs which fall from the Natal table." The drifts were closed, and the block was piled up worse than ever. Firms at Johannesburg were in despair. Truck- loads of goods accumulated undistributed. There was only one hope, since the commercial and industrial community had no say in the Government of the Transvaal, while the burghers were about the only class of people in South Africa unaffected. l"he one hope was the London Convention. In giving back the independence of the Transvaal, while the Republic was al- lowed the fullest liberty internally, one or two small guarantees were kept against extremes of action prejudicial to the rest of South Africa. Those guarantees of the Convention of Pretoria were reduced in 1884 in the Convention of London, but Article 13 of the latter instrument did give a certain security against preferential measures taken to handicap British or Colonial trade. The relevant part of Article 13 runs as follows : " Nor will any prohibition be maintained or imposed on the importation into the South African Republic of any article coming from any part of Her Majesty's dominions which shall not equally extend to like articles from any other country or place." The closing of the drifts was dead against the spirit of the C'onvention ; the question was, did it luckily happen to be provided against by the letter of this Article ? Thanks to the word " over-sea " it did. The Cape Attorney-General, Mr. Schreiner, then Mr. Rhodes' right-hand man, but an Afrikan- der whose prejudices were all against anything like unnecessary Imperial interference in South African affairs, decided that it did, and Sir Hercules Robinson, at the request of the Cape Government, drew the attention of the Transvaal Government to the Article. The question was referred to the Law Officers of the Crown at Home. Meantime, the date appointed for the Railway Conference at Pretoria drew near, and the Transvaal Government having shown that it could put on the screw, announced the re-opening of the drifts as a temporary measure 26 THE STORY OF on the 30th of October. To fiicilitate friendly discussion at the Conference, they were to be opened on the 5th of November and to be closed on the 15th. It was clear that the Govern- ment saw it had gone too far, and hoped to make the Cape accept the Netherlands terms at the Conference by simply holding the drifts /;/ terrorem. But the issue was to be taken out of its hands. On the very day of the meeting of the Con- ference, as it happened, a sensation was caused throughout South Africa by the announcement that Her Majesty's Oovern- ment had informed that of the South African Republic that tlie I'roclamation closing the drifts violated the Convention, and that it was not competent for them, after the 15th of November, to close the drifts again, which must be allowed to remain open for all time. The interventions of the Imperial Government are so rare as regards the actions of the Transvaal, and the tone of them usually so different from that of this peremptory insistance on a Treaty ol)ligation, that President Kruger and his advisers were dumbfounded. Speculation turned eagerly on what answer they would make, but it was soon announced that they had accepted the situation with a wry face, and undertaken " never to close the drifts in future without first consulting Her Majesty's Government." The Conference broke up without lining arrived at any basis of agreement, but the key of the railway situation was no longer in the pocket of the Netherlands Company. The prestige of the President had suffered a severe shock, and although the ultra-republican Press muttered threats of resist- ance and gnashed its teeth over the vigorous resurrection of the Imperial factor, these mutterings were drowned in the (.'olonial and Uitlander jubilation, and South Africa as a whole iiailed with relief and gratitude the trrniination of a dangerous deadlock. It will thus be seen that it was the action of thr Transvaal itself, under the direct incitalion of its Ilollaiider advisers, which first made acute the question botii of inler-slale relation- ships and f)f Uitlander grievances in the closing months of 1895. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 27 It is not suggested that there was any direct connection between the drifts incident of October and November and the conspiracy during the same months which was being promoted by certain movements of troops on the western border of the Republic. What the events just described did do was to foment the angry state of public disquietude, and to prepare insensibly for what followed, ^^'e find meetings of the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Mines, and the Mercantile Association, protesting in the most determined tone against the Covernment treating the Rand community with contempt, and thanking the ('ape Ciovcrnment for its efforts. Sucli a meeting was presided over by one of the four Reformers on whom a death sentence was afterwards passed. The link is significant. Throughout South Africa papers freely discussed the remedy of force as one certain to be resorted to in the long run by a community whose industry was being threatened. \\'hen in the following month Johannesburg capitalists began openly to talk sedition, and when a manifesto of revolutionary tone was issued by the National Union, nobody was at all surprised. There was a feeling that matters were coming to a climax, and the only question was not how far the Rand was justified, but how far it was competent. Note. — Since the above was written Mr. Stead has made known (under guise of fiction) a more striking ilhistration of the extent to which the Transvaal had alienated Afrikander feeling at the time of the Drifts incident. It seems that Mr. Chamberlain made sure of the support of Cape Colony before issuing his ultimatum, and that Mr. Rhodes' Ministry secretly pledged itself not only to carry free over the colonial railway any troops with which the Imperial Government might have to follow the ultimatum up, but actually to share the expense of any such measures ! I think the Ministiy would have had a rather lively time with its Dutch supporters when the Colonial Parliament came to consider*tfii?*fKi!i?^Hapi)ily the drifts were opjned peacefully. l!ul I he agiccr.icnt, assented to by such a Republican sympathizer and ' I'ull-blouded^jy'rikanUf-'r-^,^". Mr» W. P. Schreiner, is an eloquent fact. :^ ^''Ai^^^^x^' " '■*. X 28 THE STORY OF Chapter II "CLIVE WOULD HAVE DONE IT" ANO\'ELIST would begin this Story of a Crisis from the following incident which, be it premised, is absolutely authentic, and comes from one who was present. One day, long before the very earliest hint of a beginning of the " complot " as shown by any evidence which is before the worKl, a man sat on the stocj) of (iovernniL'nt House, Bula- wayo, smoking cigarettes and reading a Life of Clive. A rather short man (the novelist would tell us) whose head, growing a little bald, was noticeably broad and rather too noticeably squat ; what is called a bullet-headed man in short, with a firm jaw, firm chin, short nose and moustache, keen eyes, and a general air of good-natured, forcible abruptness. This, of course, was Dr. Jim, officially known as His Honour Leander Starr Jameson, M.D., (".!>., Administrator of Matabeleland. It was about the time of one of those excitements which kept convulsing South Africa, as we saw in the last chapter, over some special display of autocratic insolence on the part of the Pretoria Government towards its UitUuukrs and its neigh- bours. The papers were all loud with it, and a great deal of ineffectual froth was being pouri'd out. Suddenly lauu'son looked up iVom his book and cxclainu'd, "I have a jolly good mind lo march straight down off the j)lal('au with the men I li:i\r lure and st'tlU' the thing out of liainl. 'i'lii- idea of South Aliici going on being trodden upon li\ this Pretoria gang is absurd. I ha\e a good mind to get ill.; I( Hows together and start to morrow, 77'./ Tati." AN AFRICAN CRISIS 29 Now the men to whom Ji^meson referred were only al)out a couple of hundred M.M.P., and the time that it would take them to carry out this airy programme, marching down off the plateau, would be two or three weeks, during which the national and international situation would be rather peculiar, the disbanding of the forces by cable, not to say the cancelling of the Company's Charter, being probable incidents of the . march. Dr. Jim's interlocutor somewliat drily [)ointed this out, and a little argument ensued. "Well," said Jameson at last, banging down the book on his knee, " you may say what you like, but Clive would have done it." I remember in the early day;- after the raid talking to j\Ir. Ilofmeyr one day, when he said, " Rhodes fiattered himself he was going to be a kind of Clive and Warren Hastings rolled into one." What actually Rhodes did flatter himself is a difficult question, but the above incident shows that the Clive inspiration was actually working long before the raid in the mind of another chief actor. Does the germ of the whole inscrutable business lie between the leaves of Jameson's " Life of Clive " ? ***** Dr. Jameson, like Mr. Rhodes, like two members of the present Cape Ministry, and many other prominent South Africans, went to South Africa for his health. He had been a brilliant London medical student. He reached the head of his profession in South Africa, having special repute as a surgeon. Settled at Kimberley, he was one of the most in- timate personal friends of Cecil Rhodes, and the confidant of his large Imperial schemes at a time when the outside world only knew Mr. Rhodes as a young man speculating in diamonds, with a genius for finance and amalgamation, and a curious fad of sending himself to Oxford and going backwards and for- wards between the hum of the washing gear at Kimberley and the silence of the courts of Oriel. Jameson knew more than 30 THE STORY OF that, and, like so many doctors who have come to Africa, he determined to j)lay a part as a man of action, and play it in his friend's schemes. A trait in Jameson's character was shown in a lialf-forgotten incident of his life as a Kimberley doctor. A disease broke out among the natives working in the mines. AN'as it small-pox, or was it a comparatively harmless malady which on black skins was known to counterfeit small-pox ? Other doctors diagnosed the former, Jameson the latter. Most men would have hesi- tated, and given the public safety the benefit of the doubt; but Jameson stuck to his own opinion in the teeth of every- body, declaring that where the thing was so perfectly clear it was absurd to dislocate the mining industry by a panic quar- antine. This element in the affair— the fact that sce})ticism as to the small-pox suited the book of the great capitalists — ■ embittered the controversy, for it made Jameson's obstinacy take on a flavour of too little scruple as well as too little caution. But to appreciate the doggedness of the thing, and its value as a present illustration, it need only be added that Jameson's opinion turned out to be absolutely wrong. After the risk of si)reading the infection through the colony had been incurred it was proved beyond doubt that the disease was small-pox. But such an incident as tb.is was soon to be overlaid by a series of achievements in which boldness was so well mixed with foresight as to make the idea that Jameson could act recklessly, foolishly, and obstinately become incredible. The chance of the medico to turn man of action came when Mr. Rhodes occuj)ied the Transvaal hiiilcrland in the name of lirilish South Africa. Jameson luiiud out to be an .\(iministrator with an extraordinary gift for dealing with men and attracting their enthusiastic loyally. I remember, at the time of Jameson's sentence, a groom at a stable asking me eagerly for news. I said, "You seem interesteil in Dr. Jim." "Interested?" said he ; "whatever '(juod' he gets I'd gladly do half of it for him. 'i'hat I would." This groom had once broken his leg in a race at Kimberley, and the Doctor had AN AFRICAN CRISIS 31 attended him in the hospital. That was all. But it is the same with all sorts and conditions of men whom " Dr. Jim " has come in contact with in other ways. This gift is as useful to an Administrator as to a doctor. At the time of the Matabele ^\'ar Jameson was able to add yet a third role. The credit of the campaign rests with his military advisers ; still Jameson had an intoxicating taste of the great war-game, and civilian as he was, it was he who galloped across country to effect a junction between the two columns so admirably timed to meet each other. It was he, too, who precipitated the war. The Company meant peace till the Matabele made development impossible, and gave the Mashonaland settlers " the jumps," in the Doctor's phrase, by raiding into their very streets ; whereupon the Company, or rather the Doctor for them, determined that the golden occasion should be seized An impi was driven headlong, war preparations hurried forward, and war became inevitable. The war itself, waged against the most formidable military tribe left unbroken, was the most rapid and brilliant in the history of South African native wars. The heroic death of Wilson's patrol, on a daring quest which was more due to Jameson's inspiration than to that of Major Forbes, might have taught a lesson. But then the daring was so nearly rewarded by success (and 7vhat success !) — that the lesson may well have missed its mark. Intimates declare that " Rhodes was really more cut up than Jameson." It was Jameson, too, who met and stopped the " trek " of Boers who had the audacity to dispute the Company's title. He met them with a few police troopers, just as they were about to cross the Limpopo. He was authorized to try per- suasion, failing that not to hesitate to shoot. They knew that he would not hesitate to shoot; and he persuaded so well that he turned them back peacefully. Up to December, 1895, Jameson's career was one unbroken success. He had tasted the stern joy of extreme responsibility ; had held in his hand the issues of peace and war ; had found it easy to carry through dangerous d'?cisions; to foresee and 32 THE STORY OF even to command events almost equally v.ith men ; to exact implicit confidence and to justify it. He was as one clothed in tlie strength of his own will. He had come to believe in his star, and his friend, the Managing Director, and all South Africa, and a good part of England, had come to believe in it also. Such was the man who had cast for himself, or for whom others had cast, the leading part in the strangest adventure of the century. However the plot originated, a matter which perhaps even the actors in it would find it hard to determine exactly, it became irrevocable when once it was committed into the hands of a man of this temper and these antecedents. Dogged inflexibility, reckless of life, moving with intense force in a narrow groove not broad enough to take in scruples, which to him would seem mere infirmity, unsparing of himself and having an irresistible grip on his confederates : such a man, thrust by fate into the right epoch at the right turn of affairs, might make a dint in the world's history, and go down to posterity as a Carlylean hero. Here were all the materials for a great achievement in action — or a greater failure. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 33 Chapter III THE PER\'ERSION OF MR. RHODES THE Johannesburg Capitalists, who were capitalists first and politicians afterwards, thought twice and thrice before they could bring themselves to call in the aid of that dangerous political Pict, Cecil Rhodes. This, like some other things equally foreign to the Govern- ment's purpose, was well illustrated as the result of its raid on the private correspondence between Mr. Lionel Phillips and the heads in London of the great firm of 'W'ernher, Beit & Co. Even the excerpts picked and paraded by the Government show clearly that it was only the hopelessness of Reform Avhich ever drove these rich Johannesburgers to coquette with Re- volution. For years it was the reproach of the National Union against them that they, the natural leaders of the industry, would not come into line, preferring to take their chances under the system of autocracy tempered by corruption, rather than run the risks incidental to any political upheaval. The Phillips letters of 1894 exhibit the transition from this attitude to that of being driven into politics, by the Govern- ment becoming a distinct menace to the industry, in which men and masters were alike concerned. "The old man is in no case a friend to the industry," he writes in June to "my dear Beit." " He has the most per- verted ideas of political economy, suspects that we are working in concert with his old opponent C.J.R., sees imaginary com- binations looming in the distance and the country bought up by Rhodes." " I don't of course want to meddle in politics, and as to the franchise, do not think many people care a fig D 34 THE STORY OF about it." So an English capitalist and employer would have written about his men's aspirations during the Reform Agitation in England. However, Mr. Phillips was probably right in assuming that a yearning for citizenship would never enter the head of the Johannesburgers as a whole, if they could get the treatment they wanted from Government without voting, par- ticularly without voting on the arduous terms on which alone there seemed any chance of the franchise being extended to them. " If events fulfil appearances," he writes in another letter : — " It means ultimate frightful loss to the industry or revolution. Now of course our mission is to avoid both. The Gold-fields people urged me to go down to Capa Town and talk over matters with Rhodes. I felt inclined to do this, but two considerations deter me. istly : If it were for a moment conjectured that I had approached Rhodes, I should incur the most virulent revenge from the Government, and perhaps justly ; and 2ndly, sliould I be wise to trust Rhodes' advice ? " " If you trust Rhotlo.s, and cable ' see Rhodes,' I will run down." And again, later : — " It seems that the British Government means to have a say here, and it is about lime. What I fear is that they may put the brake on one tiling, and we may be more oppressed by some devilment of the Government in another direction. The Government is absolutely rotten, and we must have reform. Tiie alternative is revolution or English interference. Krugcr seems beyond himself, and imagines he is guided by Divine will." In July, " My dear Beit . . . Politics. Just got your cable reading ' Don't see Rhodes,' etc., of which I am rather glad. Things are quieter, but I think a good many men are buying rifles in case of contingencies." The same letter contains a sigh of regret that the mining companies do not possess the Government advantage of a secret service fund. The letters also contain hints of corruption affecting both the legislature and the judiciary, hut these are not to our present purpose. In August he writes : — " I will also see wlicllier it is not possible, without creating unnecessary riliiiii li'ic. or aclivc steps in I'rctoria, to !'(■( the Comp.mics to possess AN AFRICAN CRISIS 35 themselves of a few rifles, etc. One thing is certain. The Boer prowess is much overrated since they licked our troops, and in the Malaboch cam- paign they distinguished themselves by making the Pretoria contingent do any of the risky business, and appear generally to have behaved badly. If they knew there were 3,000 or so well-armed men here, there would be less talk— anyhow less real danger — of wiping out Johannesburg upon occasions like the recent incident. In addition to that we can never tell when some complication with England may arise, and this place ought to be prepared to hold its own for a few days at least. If the spending of money does not bring reform, the only alternative is force, and that will come in time." \yhile Johannesburg leaders were thus screwing up their courage for the plunge from finance into politics, as understood at Groote Schuur, what was Mr. Rhodes' attitude towards them ? Mr. Hofmeyr has put it on record that during all his intimacy with Mr. Rhodes he never heard him drop one word of sympathy with the rights of the Uitlanders. Certain it is that Mr. Rhodes is neither a radical nor a democrat. He accepts government by the people as he accepts any other part of the great British system spread over the world, but it was a well-known belief of his that all this is only an outer cloak for the inner reality of government by a few. There are only a certain number of people in the world who matter, and in any given part of the world one or two of these can pull the rest almost any way if they only pull together. That is his faith. He accepts the present phase of democracy just as he accepts the present phase of competitive capitalism, as being the latest arrangements evolved by humankind for so shaking up the great mass that these few who matter can conveniently come to the top. His sympathy for English miners held under at Johannesburg by a minority of Boers was certainly more for the Englishmen than for the miners. Even with friends much less intimate than Mr. Hofmeyr then was he would discuss, for years past, the impossibility of a majority of such men, whether or not they " cared a fig for the fran- chise"/^/" se, being permanently governed by a Boer oligarchy. The whole thing presented itself to him as a matter of power, 36 THE STORY OF of the fitness of things, of conformity to the working theory of the British Empire, rather than as a matter of abstract right- high sentiments, " Uberty, equaHty, and fraternity." In the muddle of South African poUtics, it has been a common saying that two men at least knew their own minds, Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. Mr. Chamberlain remarked lately that had these two men agreed together they could have settled the immediate future of South Africa with the most happy results. And in those unifying measures, discussed in a previous chapter, IMr. Rhodes long hoped to get his great rival to work with him. A stormy interview towards the close of 1S94 between the two men has been mentioned already as the turning-point. After that he gave up Paul Kruger as hopeless. From that time he seems to have begun to make his account, not with the Government of to-day, but with the Revolutionary Government of to-morrow. Capitalist, and in a sense Johan- nesburger, as he was, many of his sympathies were rather with the old than with the new population. Conservative and protectionist by habit of mind, it was as a leader of the Old Colonists rather than the new that he had gained at the Cape the ascendency which was to give him a leading voice, he hoped, in piecing together the fragments when the Trans^•aal crash "should come. Perhaps it was distrust of the new popu- lation at Johannesburg, as much as sympathy witli it, that led him eventually to venture all in their cause. If the power I)assed in a day from the hands of the old burghers into those of the Rand cosmopolites, lunv would it he usetl ? ^\'hat if the new 7rg!me, flushed with \i(tor\-, ;ind ( onlHlcnt from tlie great wealth lying at its IcL-t, cIiom' to take up ;is doniineenng, as separatist, as anti-Cai)e and anti-Prilish a policy as the old ? The finger of Johannesburg might well jirove thicker than Pretoria's loins. liad Mr. Rhodes' career been cast in the Transvaal instead of in the Colony he would have thrown him- self into the cause, no doubt, trusting to keep the direction of the new order after throwing off the old. I lis plan would AN AFRICAN CRISIS 37 have been to utilise the commanding position of the Trans- vaal to squeeze all the rest of South Africa into union. The task would have been comparatively easy if the future United States of South Africa were to be separated from the British Empire. As it happened his dream was the opposite, and the base he had to work from was the Cape. Of course if the Johanncsburgcrs should make good their revolution with the Union Jack flying over it, and confront the rest of South Africa with the faii accompli, that might be one solution of the prob- lem. But could Johannesburg ? And, if it could, did it want to ? No man could tell what the revolution would bring forth ! If it succeeded too easily, it might go to extremes hardly less dangerous than its failure. In short, Kruger was forcing things not only out of his own control, but out of that of Cecil Rhodes, who had come to think himself indispensable to the destinies of South Africa. The conclusion was, in plain lan- guage, that, at all hazards, he must have a finger in the pie. The Johannesburg leaders wanted mainly four things for their movement, two within the Transvaal and two outside, In Johannesburg they wanted arms and they wanted enthusiasm. Outside they wanted some colour at least of armed support should it come to a tussle, and they wanted an influence which would gain over, or at least neutralize, Afrikander sympathies in Cape Colony. One of these things, the enthusiasm, Mr. Rhodes could not supply. He could tell the Johannesburg owners and managers that if they wanted their men to be as solid with them as his men were at Kimberley, they must take as much interest in them, their housing, and their well-being generally, as he had done. The white miners of Kimberley live in a model village. But apparently the idea in Johan- nesburg was that a revolution, like everything else, could be ordered for money. They tried to close the ranks too late. AV'hen Mr. Rhodes' brother, in November, proposed to the employes of one of the companies most under Mr. Rhodes' control a plan based something on the Kimberley model the men were quick to catch at motives behind. The plan fell •181658 38 THE STORY OF through owing to the frank opposition of the men. But while Mr. Rhodes could not supply this one prime necessity, the enthusiasm of the masses in Johannesburg, he could supply all the other three wants — the arms within, the armed support without, and the spiking of the Afrikander gun in Cape Colony, and some months before the end of 1S95 he had pledged him- self to do so. The plot, concisely stated, was this : Johannesburg was to formulate an ultimatum. On its being treated with contempt the revolutionary party was to take possession of Johannesburg one fine night, declare itself the provisional Government of the country, and the same night pay a surprise visit to Pretoria, seize the State arsenal and the seat of Government, and issue an appeal to South Africa and the world proposing to submit its acts and grievances, and the future of the Transvaal, to a plebiscite^ of the entire white population of the country. It was calculated that with proper organization the coup could be accomplished almost without firing a shot, and the great point then would be to prevent the burghers rushing to arms all over the country. For this the conspirators relied partly on the breathless surprise of the fait accompli^ the sympathies of a. large part of the burghers, which would rather be attracted than alienated by the proof that these new-comers were really in earnest about their rights, and the moderation of the appeal which the provisional Government would make to Uillander and Boer population alike, but most of all they relied on a diversion from the border. For a year or two years past the Johannesburg leaders had been sounding the Colonial Office at home as to what it would do, in the event of this or that happening on the Rand, and for many reasons they had always got the same answer, which was a discouraging one. Alternately with intimations that no I )own- ing Street interference was wanted by Johannesburgers, who could look after themselves, some at least of the leaders had given Downing Street to understand that not a finger could be raised or would be raised without the assurance of some back- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 39 ing. Downing Street always shook its head, having learnt something in South Africa from past blunders. It always told the sounders that it could not interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal on their behalf, and that if they accordingly took MR. LIONEL PHILLIPS. From a rii^lcsiaph by DUFFUS BkOS., Johannesburg. Steps to win their rights for themselves, Great Britain could only interfere by way of keeping the peace in South Africa, and not at a time or in a way which could be construed as assisting them to break it. To the leaders thus repulsed, and 40 THE STORY OF to Rhodes and Jameson, the machinery of the British South Africa Company, which had already ser\-ed once to make short work of international red tape in the case of the Portuguese in East Africa, offered an excellent means of doing for Great Britain what Great Britain declined to do for herself. From nowhere could external support, moral or actual, be better rendered than from the Company's new territory touching the western border. The moment uproar began, and life and pro- perty were in danger, a plausible excuse would be created for the interposition of any organized British force which was within two days of striking distance. The pretext for its action would be the jeopardy of British lives, property and interests, the interregnum in the country, the necessity for the preserva- tion of order, and an emergency of a kind to justify acting first and asking leave afterwards. The exact method and moment of such action were ne\-er clearly fixed, but the idea was that Jameson would be there, and that Jameson was Jameson, and that a diversion of some kind, with a vague background of support from the Company's other forces farther north, might at least serve to secure to the revolutionary caviarilla a pause and a breathing space before the burghers closed in upon ihom. That breathing space meant everything. Civil war would be imminent, and for that very reason the hand of the British Government, it was calculated, would be forced. Intervene they must to part the combatants, and to avert chaos. The moment these events took place South Africa would be plunged from end to end into a maelstrom of conflicting sym- pathies, and much would turn on the attitude of the Cape Government. Here came in Mr. Rhodes' part. Sticking like glue to his Premiership he was to fling all his official and unofficial advantages into the scale. His personality was to make the Government weather the storm long enough for him to advise the High Commissioner, who is also the Governor of the Cape, to proceed at once to the 'I'raiisvaal as mediator, accompanied by Mr. Rhodes himself. 'J'he rest of the pro- gramme is easily imagined. Thus the man who was at once AN AFRICAN CRISIS 41 Premier of the Cape, and uncrowned king of John Lull's modern " John Company," besides being head of some great capitalist amalgamations, proposed to add the roles of arming a revolution, of succouring it with troops from the border, of "facing the music " when the crash came, and governing the extraordinary situation which would ensue as the one man who could mediate between Dutch and English Cape Colony, and between England and the Transvaal. Upon this hazard he staked the most brilliant and promising career boasted by any contemporary politician in the British Empire. On the obvious weaknesses of this amazing scheme, con- sidered simply on a balance of probability, it is unnecessary to dilate here. Events have done that. The question which forces itself upon us is ; how on earth could a man of the caution, the patience, and the foresight of Cecil Rhodes have made up his mind to shut his eyes to them ? The answer of the present Premier is a simple one. All those months when the plot was brewing Mr. Rhodes was miserable with the well- known nervous sequelce of influenza. " He was not himself," Sir Gordon Sprigg declares. " Whatever part he took in the thing was simply due to the influenza." A solution which has all the charm of simplicity. 42 THE STORY OF Chapter IV THE PLOT THICKENS AS the Uitlander demands made themselves more and more vocal at the time of the Drifts incident, the Government made it clear that it was providing itself with the last argument of kings. For weeks it brought offen- sive arms to bear on Johannesburg. The Uitlander saw con- tracts entered into for building, with his money, forts on the latest pattern of scientific destructiveness, which could be aimed only at himself: a fort at Pretoria at ;^25,ooo, and site chosen for another openly commanding Johannesburg. A Mr. Van Zwieten, one of Oom Paul's Hollanders, was sent to Europe, as it was understood, with credentials to the military authorities of Germany, and instructions to engage expert tuition for the shooting of Uitlanders on the latest European methods. While the conspirators were smuggling up Maxims in oil tanks, the Government was laying in two for every one of theirs by Delagoa Bay. Orders for heavy artillery and quick- firing guns were placed with the German firm, Krujip, and a battery of quick-firers was established on the Hospital Hill, directly overlooking the streets of Johannesburg. Ever since the raid these aggressive military preparations have been spoken of as a painful necessity to be numbered among its consequences, but in strict chronology it was the Government which armed itself first, while the Uitlanders, as a body, were still on constitutional lines, and when the Government, by its own account, had not the slightest knowledge of tlie i)lut in which a few of them afterwards proved to have been engaged. It became ch.'ar to the leaders that if Pretoria was to be taken by surprise, it must be taken (ini( kly. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 43 At the same time events were forcing on tluit transfer of the Protectorate which was destined to put the IJritish South Africa Company in charge of the western border. In its 1895 Session the Cape ParUament had closed a bargain with the Imperial Government for the southern part of Bcchuanaland — the Crown Colony. The reversion of the northern part of Bechuanaland, the Protectorate, had long been promised to the great Company which to north of it already spread away across the Zambesi to Lake Tanganyika, and which was pushing on the railway which could alone make Bechuanaland productive. The claims of certain native chiefs, Khama and others, had at the same time to be safeguarded. Mr. Chamberlain settled with them in September and October, and on 7 th November the rest of the Protectorate was transferred to the Company.^ Already in October the Company had come to terms with the two smaller chiefs, Montsioa and Ikanning, and had accordingly got its administration of their territory proclaimed (i8th October). These two petty chiefs owned a part of Bechuana- land, close to the railway extension on the one hand, and on the other in contact with the Transvaal border. It was here that the conspirators chose the swooping point for the raid ; and everything fitted in so conveniently that, when the swoop came, and before the Imperial Government had spoken, no wonder that many jumped to the conclusion that the British Government was a party to the preparations. The truth about this appears to be quite simple. To understand it the first thing is to put out of one's mind what actually did happen and to imagine what observant people fully expected to see happen at the time of the events already described. In handing over the territory the Imperial Government disbanded the troops ; but had it retained them, and if the High Commissioner had held them in readiness to intervene in case of a kind of Alex- andria riot suddenly supervening in Johannesburg, he would only have been doing exactly what his predecessor did at the * The transference was not completed when the crisis came, and has not been carried out now. 44 THE STORY OF critical period in 1S94. What that was let Lord Loch himself describe : — "My lords, I may porh.ips be permitted to add a few words to wliat I have already said. In consideration of the excited state of the city of Johannesburg at that time, with the probability— the near possibility at one time— of an insurrection arising in Johannesburg, I felt it to be my duty, in the position I filled as Her Majesty's Tligh Commissioner, to take steps, if necessary, to protect the lives of the British subjects and property of the British subjects in Johannesburg (cheers). The steps I adopted were in connection with an assembly at certain points of the British and Imperial Bechuanaland police. My intention was that, if disturlxances had arisen in Johannesburg— disturbances resulting from the administration extended by the Republic towards the ' Uitlanders ' in that city — it would have been my duty, I considered, to have informed President Kruger that he would be held responsible for the safety of the lives and property of British subjects in the country. I further conceived it to be my duty to inform President Kruger that, if he ha;l failed to provide the necessary protection for the lives and property of British subjects, I should have felt myself at liberty to have taken such steps as I may have felt expedient to give that protection which he failed to give. I think it will be admitted that a statement of that kind, coming from me as High Commissioner represent- ing Her Majesty's Government, was a very different act from the unfor- tunate action which has recently taken place, and which has brought about so much sorrow and trouble on the whole of South Africa " (cheers). In this connection there is a notable i)assage in Mr. C'liani- berlain's speech on the Address when rarUanient met after the raid : — "My hon. friend opposite (Mr. Buxton) will bear me out that in July, 1S94, there was a disturbance in Johannesburg, and an outbreak was expected at any moment. What happened ? The Britisli Bechuanaland police were collected and concentrated at Mafeking, and other forces were under orders to move. Was this wrong ? Of course this was done by the Higli Commissioner; but was it wrong? Certainly not. In my opinion it was aljsolutely right and justified liy the circumstances. When your neiglibour's house is on fire you are quite right to get out your apparatus in order to extinguish it, and nobody can accuse you, unless tjicy can prove lliat you arc bringing it out not with the object of sto|)ping mischief, of preventing damage, of interfering with general consent, but with the deliberate intention of promoting tlic mischief that you profess a desire to prevent." AN AFRICAN CRISIS 45 In this sense, it would seem, Mr. Cliamberlain spoke, not only in the House of Commons after the raid, but also to agents of Mr. Rhodes and of the British South Africa Com- pany before the raid, when the negotiations were proceeding between the Company and chief Khama. These negotia- tions were made more difficult by what is called in South Africa an "Exeter Hall outcry" for specially generous terms to the chief. Khama was encouraged to hold out for high terms. There was long higgling at the Colonial Office; and agents as clever as those who represented Mr. Rhodes, urged on as they were by impatient cables from Cape Town to get the bargain struck quickly, were not likely to overlook so useful an argument towards expediting matters as was supplied by the disturbed situation just across the border. Troops and territory both changing hands, and a prolonged state of unsettled jurisdiction as between the British Government and the British Company were obviously undesirable at a time when it might at any moment become necessary to repeat the precautions taken a year before by Lord Loch. Reference of some sort to possible developments, however discreet, was bound to be made during these prolonged negotiations about the border territory ; and it was only in conformity with the principle habitually acted on for years by the Colonial Office in dealing with the Transvaal and native neighbours, when the Company induced Mr. Chamberlain to make it " 'Warden of the Marches," and to arrange that, whatever territory Khama got, the Com- pany should secure for its railway, and for the purposes of its ward upon the border, the strip of country fringing the Trans- vaal. To the conspirators, however, these convenient arrangements for the fire-extinguishing apparatus, to adopt Mr. Chamber- lain's metaphor, were pleasantly indistinguishable from their own plans of " promoting " (to quote him again) " the mischief that you profess a desire to prevent," — or at least running the most reckless risk of promoting it. They were in high feather. The bargain was struck, and the " Wardens of the Marches " 46 THE STORY OF proceeded to take advantage of it with all their energy : a legend gradually growing up among conspirators — who had a hint from So-and-so who had a wink from Such-and-such — that " Chamberlain was in it up to his neck." There were painful surprises in store for these gentlemen. To the High Commissioner the sole reason given for form- ing a police camp at Pitsani Pothlugo was the need for pro- tecting the railway works. To him not a word was ventured about the Border \\'atch. The High Commissioner found the arrangement a most natural one, and Sir Sidney Shippard, the Administrator under the Imperial Government, then about to be supplanted by the Company's Administrator, was enjoined to facilitate arrange- ments with Montsioa and Ikanning. Sir Sidney inspected a site " for a camp and a seat of Magistracy " in Colonel Rhodes' company, and wrote for Major " Bobby " White a letter of introduction to " Ikanning, Chief of the BamaUte." The farm eventually taken was not this one, but another near Pitsani Pothlugo in Montsioa's territory, but here again Sir Sidney's aid was invoked. " Saw Silas Molema, nephew to the Chief Montsioa," says " Bobby " White's day book, Octo- ber 30th ; " This man gives us the farm ' Maliete ' near Pitsani, in exchange for two farms which will be given to him under promise from Sir S. Shippard." It was just these official routine transactions which to Transvaal eyes after the raid seemed confirmation strong as Holy Writ of Imperial com- plicity. The cami) being fixed, then came the gradual and (juiet moving down of the troops into it. From the 20th to the 29th the Company's force, the Mashonaland Mounted Police, were being drafted from Bulawayo to Pitsani, in all 250 men, 293 horses, 168 mules, 6 Maxims, and 2 field guns. On 15th November the Imperial Oovernment in handing over the Pro- tectorate to the Company, was to disband the Bechuanaland Border I'olice, a force of rather better stuff than the Company's and numbering a few hundred. It was indispensable lluit AN AFRICAN CRISIS 47 these troopers should be got to re-enlist in the Company's force, and so swell it. On the day before the disbandment, Jameson had the satisfaction of hearing from Major White that " majority B.B.P. will be pleased to join." From the middle of November, Mafeking was li\ely with the passing through of recruits, all eii route to the Pitsani camp. Sir John Willoughby writes to Major White, November iSth, from Bulawayo, chafing that " he " (the Doctor) "will not let me move yet." " Mind you and Harry drill the men inside, out- posts, and advanced guards, skirmishing, etc." On the i8th November Jameson arrived at Mafeking from Bulawayo, in- spected the new camp, talked over matters, and hurried down to Cape Town. Thence he wired that he was sending up equipments and all that was needed, and estimated that " we shall have 600 men and 700 horses." The Doctor not only sent up equipments, but also a cer- tain number of picked men from the Colonial Volunteers (D.E.O.V.R.) at Cape Town. From Cape Town he hurried up to Johannesburg to settle the details of the plot with the leaders there, and arrange a signal. It was agreed that Jameson should move in response to a written appeal prepared beforehand as soon as the appeal was tonfirmed by telegram. As to the written appeal, Jameson's argument was that he must have something to read to the men when asking them to volunteer for so hazardous an expedition, while at the same time it was obvious that such a document would be his only possible answer to the astonished questions of the directors and shareholders whose troops he was to use, and to all and sundry who might suspect him of dashing into the Transvaal on a mere annexation project of his own. So one day, during his visit to Johannesburg, Jameson set Mr. Charles Leonard, President of the National Union, down at a table with pen, ink, and paper, and the result was the famous Letter of Invitation in which Johannesburg, on the eve of a mortal struggle, in which it was not made clear whetlier they 48 THE STORY OF were the threateners or the threatened, sent forth a cry to the nearest British troops not to desert them in their extremity, and made use of the phrase about rescuing women and children which it is impossible to quote now without wincing. "^^'e guarantee any expense," the letter concludes, " that may reasonably be incurred by you in helping us, and ask you to believe that nothing but the sternest necessity prompted this appeal." The letter put the basis of co-operation in black and white once and for all, and though Jameson probably had no very fixed plan in his own mind as to what use to make of it, he regarded it as a great stroke to have secured it. The next afternoon Mr. Charles Leonard went round to the Uoctor to ask for the letter back, as on second thoughts he had concluded that it was a mistake. " Awfully sorry, old man," said the Doctor drily, '' but it has gone down to Cape Town by the last train." Mr. Leonard protested and hesitated, but the Doctor took him by the arm, gave vent to his usual interjection — an abbre- viation of the word balderdash — and managed the Chairman of the National Union in his usual style. The signatures to this letter give us the ringleaders in Johannesburg. Mr. Charles Leonard, a successful and well-known solicitor, born a Cape Colonist, had succeeded his brother, Mr. Jim Leonard, Q.C., as President of the National Union, the body which for some years had carried on all the political work that had been done on bdialf of the Uitlander cause, the holding of meetings, the printing of pnmjililets, and working of \)vU- tions to the Raad. Mr. Leonard comes of a stock noted in South Africa for great al)ilities, great amenities, but not equal strength of character ; he was, howevrr, \ fry sincL'rely liked and respected as a good fillow and mi IkhusI, clever, professional man. And as an Afrikander (a Cai)e Dutch word originally used to imply an African native, then a half caste, then a South African white of Dutch speech and sympathies, and now liccoming ciilargcd to mean any South African-born AN AFRICAN CRISIS 49 white) he was a suitable figure-head for the constitutional Uitlander movement. A less apt man to cast for the part of President by force of arms of an insurrectionary RepublV, it would be hard to find. Mr. Lionel Phillips is a financier born. He is of the great financial race. He has been through the mill, first at Kim- berley and then at Johannesburg, and has come out of it with a large fortune. He is a prop of the great " Corner House " of Eckstein, Johannesburg, and of ^^■ernher &: Beit, London. A shrewd, clever, organizing man, full of go and of s{)irit, he admirably represents the better type of Johannesburg money maker. Politics came to him as a late ambition ; revolutionary leadership as a still later one. John Hays Hammond represents the American mining expert. It is a successful South African type, and he has been the most successful of them all. His retainer as Con- sulting Engineer of the Goldfields of South Africa (Limited) is alone a President's salary. A man of simple and attractive character, he also was a popular Johannesburger, and is trusted to an extent which, for an expert, is quite extraordinary. His health and his nerves were not made for stormy times, but there is a background of American grit. George Farrar came of Yorkshire stock, and spent his youth in Cape Colony. As a youth he was a great athlete, he and his brother winning many triumphs on the running path. A wiry, sharp, determined - looking man, he is, as Managing Director of various large companies, the largest direct em- ployer of labour on the Rand, and in far more direct touch than any of the others with the miners who were expected to play a part in the revolution. \V'ith them, despite the rooted local suspicion of capitalists, he is popular, being referred to commonly as " George." He has the temper and the tenacity for a tough fight. Colonel Francis Rhodes, late ist Dragoons, is the best known of Mr. Rhodes' brothers in the army. He has over twenty-three years' service, and has smelt plenty of powder. He was in the E 50 THE STORY OF Soudan and Nile expeditions, was at El Teb and Tamai, and at Abu Klea ; had several horses shot under him, got several clasps and mentions in despatches, and in 1891 the Dis- tinguished Service Order. As to Civil appointments, he was with Sir Gerald Portal in Uganda, on Lord Harris's Staff in Bombay, and served a term as Acting Administrator in Mashonaland, where he was much liked. It is easy to imagine things so turning out at Johannesburg as to put him into his right metier, but Fate was unkind, or he was not quite equal to her. The " best of good fellows " and one of the most popular officers in the service, he is competent in his own calling — which is not that of a revolutionary. It may be convenient to add here, though it does not appear among the signatories whom the Letter of Invitation well nigh hanged, the name of Mr. Percy Fitzpatrick, who acted as Secretary of the Reform Committee. Percy Fitzpatrick was a Barberton miner before he came to the more placid camp at Johannesburg. He is younger than the others, or seems so by reason of his impulsiveness and enthusiasm, and less the Capitalist and more the Politician demanding his vote. He is not always discreet, a virtue cheap at Johannesburg, but he is loyal and j)lucky. Such were the ringleaders in Johannesburg, and though, when their names appeared, it was murmured that there was too much flavour of Rhodes about the list, it makes, take it all round, a good representative selection. So the plot thickened. AVe have seen the preparations for the troops. In the next chapter we shall see the arming of Johannesburg. Let this one conclude with the arrangements connecting the two points. For a dash across country it would be convenient to be able to dispense with commissariat. On tiie pretext of establishing a coach service between Mafeking and Johannesburg a line of stores at intervals of a few hours' ride were built and stocked with food and forage all the way from Mafeking to Krugcrsdorp. One Dr. ^Volff, another old Kimbcrley doctor, was told off by Jameson for this work, and AN AFRICAN CRISIS 51 figured for the purpose as the Rand Produce and Trading Syndicate. No part of the plot seems at the first blush cooler and more barefaced than this elaborate collection of stores for the baiting of men and horses along the whole line of invasion. The road, however, was becoming a frequented one. The pretext was plausible enough, and it was only certain Boers who noticed the presence of " bully beef " among the so-called produce stored in these sheds, whose suspicions began to be aroused. Under the same pretext Dr. Wolff bought up some hundreds of horses for remounts from the well-known Johan- nesburg coaching firm of Heys, and these horses were stationed midway on the intended line of march upon a farm which actually belongs to a member of the Transvaal Volksraad. In all, Dr. Wolff's part of the business cost over ^18,500. The best index to show the point to which Jameson brought things upon his Johannesburg visit when he obtained the Leonard letter is afforded by the following letter, in which he assures " Bobby " White that the almost certain date will be 26th December : — •'[Private.] "JOHANNESBURG, " Nov. igt/i, 1S95. " Dear Bobby, — " Hope by the time you get this you will have our men in camp — also about a hundred from Stevens and I shall get a couple from Grey when I arrive in about a fortnight or a little longer. The almost certain date will be 26th Dec. From Willoughby's wire to me there ought to be 150 complete equipments on the way down — you better find out from him when they are likely to arrive ; but I have wired to Willoughby that he is not to send down any men or anything further, as those people up there have been blabbing and here they are still getting letters on the subject — there- fore I wired to Willoughby to stop all drilling — give out all the horses, etc. VV. himself must not come down till much later, though I know he does not like it. Now you see the force ought to be about six — if short of saddles after finding out all Grey has in reserve, then tell Stevens and he must get them below. I don't see that you can want any more uniforms or horses, but if required they would also have to come from Stevens. Of course efficiency and proper equipment are important, but what is much more important, in fact, vital, is that suspicion should not be raised in any D- THE STORY OF way. I am going to the Cape on Friday, and shall be a week there before coming to Mafeking unless some unforeseen blabbing occurs when we might have to huny things. Wolff will tell you rest, "Yrs., " L. S. J.' Soon after Jameson telegraphed up to Sir John ^^'illoughby, his mihtary adviser, whom he still kept chafing up at Bula- wayo : — " Caratulero carcaras prognare dijudicor egclatus scjuinanzia polyiicdral Zegeling." Which being translated is : — " Date fixed is 2Sth of December to start from here, do not want small Lee-Metford Rifles." AN AFRICAN CRISIS 53 Chapter V THE ARMING OF JOHANNESBURG WHILE matters on the border were thus pressed forward by Dr. Jameson and his officers, Col. Rhodes had been sent up to Johannesburg to assist in the organization at that end. Another soldier brother — Captain Ernest Rhodes — was just leaving the Rand after a term of directorship at the " Goldfields " offices. The Colonel took his place, and soon set to work to get in arms. October 20 is the date of his first draft on the B.S.A. Company for the " New Concessions Account," alias " New Concessions Syndicate," alias " Development Syndicate," and later " Relief Fund," which was drawn on as the ^Var Chest of the Revolution. About the same date began the forwarding of arms under the Company's auspices to Kimberley and M'afeking, and the drafts and the forwarding went on busily during the next two months. It is curious, by the way, that with all the crises and riotous " incidents " of several years past, Johannesburg men had done so little to arm themselves.' Many of them quite expected that some day a street brawl or a row with the police would end in shooting. That, though not a set revolution, was often in their minds. And a good number of men in offices must have lived in country districts, perhaps been born in country districts, where every grown man has his rifle or his gun as a matter of course, and where the accomplishment of guiding a horse across the veld, and carrjing arms at the same lime, is as a thing that comes by nature. One would have expected such men to have a gun for shooting birds, if not a rifle for buck ; for even * See passage in Phillips" letter, Ciiapter IV. near beginning. 54 THE STORY OF the Johannesburg stockbroker goes shooting in the country sometimes. The outside world had never supposed there would be any difficulty about arms at Johannesburg ; it was assumed that arms would turn up all right when arms were wanted. Johan- nesburg leaders seemed to share the illusion. Months before the raid and revolution were being plotted, I remember talking to a couple of the leaders in what was then the constitutional movement, and their remarking in the most positive way that matters would come to an open breach with the Government eventually ; whereupon I said, " If I were in your place, I should not take another step till a store of rifles had been got in " : and they replied in a way and with an expression which made me drop the matter at once and assume copious under- ground arsenals. Yet the crisis found Johannesburg without even a nucleus of men who could shoot and had weapons. How was this ? The obvious expedient for giving force to a Rand agitation for a kind of Grattan Parliament, would have seemed to be to form a kind of Cirattan ^'olunteers. There are Yolunteers (Vrywillige) in Johannesburg, but they are a Government force, recruited largely from Germans and Hollanders, armed by the Govern- ment and paid in perquisites. The nearest thing to a Uitlander force was the Rand Rifle Association, which languished under the lack of enthusiasm and the difficulties with which the Government surrounded the ])rocuring of permits for getting in a single rifle. And it must be remembered that the Afrikan- ders on the Rand were largely of the town-brod kind. A Cape Town Afrikander is no more a shooter than a ("apr Town Englishman, lately a Cockney. He all this as it may, it is clear that Johaniushurg kaders did not only ai)peal to Mr. Rhodes to sujjport them from with- out : they appealed to him to arm them within. I'roltably liiere were few I'itlander sympathisers in the Colony who would not have Ijecn glad to help Uitlander friends on the Rand to provide themselves with arms and anmuniilion. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 55 Nobody could be surprised if Cecil Rhodes, the private individual, saw to it that a brother of his on the Rand should get a rifle before incensing by a Declaration of Right the armed Government and the rifle-carrying burghers. For Mr. Rhodes, the Premier of Cape Colony, to take sides in the same way was another matter. He had his official position ; and it is one of the propositions always assumed in this discussion that he could not have done what he did with- out that position. As far as this refers to his position as Minister of the Colony, it is (juite untrue. Rhodes the Premier helped Rhodes the Conspirator in no way. Rhodes of the British South Africa Company, of De Beers, and of two large gold-mining properties at Johannesburg, was more indispensable. But on reading the evidence of the casual, irresponsible way in which all sorts of people co-operated in forwarding arms and incurring expenses, one sees at once that what helped most of all was a certain idiosyncrasy of Cecil Rhodes the man. The evidence shows that many conversations must have takf-n place something upon this model : — "You are to go here, see this man, say that, and spend so-and-so." " By whose orders ? " " Never mind. You won't be ' left ' " — and an expressive look. The person instructed says to himself at once " Rhodes," — and goes ahead with confidence. He requires no written guarantee. He has per- fect confidence ; he knows that even if there has been some misunderstanding, the man whose plans he thought he was facilitating will "see him through." There are few millionaires who inspire this peculiar con- fidence, not only among their creatures, but in independent men of business. It has far more to do with the man than with his money. Take the case of more than one South African money-bag, much fatter than Mr. Rhodes, and try whether you can get business connections or underlings to 56 THE STORY OF commit themselves for sums of money and other responsihiHties without security in black and white. Rough-and-ready, non-legal informality, has been part of Mr. Rhodes' business methods throughout his career ; it cannot be denied that the peculiarity, eccentricity almost, came in ex- tremely handy when he turned conspirator. IMr. F. F. Rutherfoord was examined by the Select Committee as to the way in which he signed cheques in INIr. Rhodes' name for the B.S.A. Company. Apparently, some years before, he had been told verbally that he could sign anything put before him by the officials of the Company, and initialled by oiie of them. The War Chest cheques to Colonel Rhodes he signed in this way, without asking questions. " Do you make any inquiries as to the cheques you sign? — No, none whatever. I go over to the Company's office at two o'clock and sign the cheques put before me. " Did you never communicate with anybody about those drafts of Colonel Francis Rhodes ? — With not a soul. " Mr. Schreiner. — Then Mr. Stevens, an estimable gentleman no doubt, could draw a cheque for ;,f20,ooo in his own interest and place it before you, and you, as representative of the managing director, would sign it with- out making any inquiry, and the next you might hear of him was that lie had ' gone to Guam ' ? — If the cheques are initialled by Mr. Stevens or by Mr. Berrj', I make no inquiries. " Though you are the representative of the managing director ? — When I see the stamp with Mr. Rhodes' names on the cheque I sign . . . " Air. Jones. — If a cheque for a hundred thousand pounds were presented to you, would you sign it without inquiry ? — I signed a checjue for very nearly that amount the other day, and I did not ask any questions . , . " Vour signature purports to go through as ihe signature of the managing director, and you undertake a responsibility to the managing director by agreeing to give your signature to the chetjues. Now what instructions did you receive relative to that frnni the managing direclor ? — I have had none from the managing director. " Who g.ive you the original instructions ? — I was told " By whom? — I cannot tell you whether it was Dr. Harris, but I can tell you that it was not Mr. Kliodcs ; I liad no ronuiiunicatinn wiili him at the lime. "ThiM if it was not Mr. UJKxIes, who was it? — I lainiol recall it. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 57 It is some years ago. I went down to the Standard Bank and Mr. Michell told me that my signature would be recognised. I do not think I have any written authority, nor luivc I had any communication with Mr. Rhodes on the point." But to the arms. The B.S.A. Company had been in the habit of importing arms freely ever since the first Matabele War. There was nothing pecuUar in cases of arms addressed to them, being cleared at Cape Town and forwarded to Mafeking, or housed in the De Beers stores tn route, to be sent on as required. Kimberley, therefore, was chosen as the centre from which to arm Johannesburg. During November, the hospitality of the great Diamond Company was freely drawn on by stuffing one of its store houses with rifles and ammunition, some of which came down the line from Mafeking, and some up the line from Cape Town. The law in South Africa places restrictions on moving arms about the country. A statute, originally passed to check the forbidden but lucrative practice of supplying arms to native territories, requires a permit to be obtained before even a single rifle can be taken from one district of Cape Colony to another, ^^'ith the purpose for which it was passed, this law had fallen into desuetude. Officials wink at evasion. After the raid, fines of ^^50 were imposed on the Manager of De Beers, and on Mr. Rutherfoord, a forwarding agent at Cape Town, for treating these particular arms just as they would have treated any others. It is clear, however, that no suspi- cion would have been aroused had permits been got for every rifle. The trouble was only when it came to getting them into the Transvaal. The leaders at Johannesburg put off the solution of this problem till rather late. Mr. Farrar, the last of the five leaders to be taken into the plot, was one of the largest employers of labour on the Rand, and in direct touch with the work 58 THE STORY OF of importing machinery. His adhesion soon removed the difficulty. The arms were smuggled in as mining material in bulk. Some of them were sent direct from Kimberley to Johannes- burg by rail under the rather flimsy pretext of De Beers sup- plying the Simmer and Jack mine with coke suddenly re- quired. Five sheep)-trucks were thus got through, in which 800 rifles were thinly heaped over with coke. Other consignments were sent in oil-drums, each with a nice little tap oozing oil. The drums were sent from Kimberley to Port Elizabeth, and thence by a forwarding agent — as if they had come over sea — up to Johannesburg. They contained 3 Maxims, 125 cases of ammunition, and 1,800 rifles. The oil-tank forwarding went on from November 6th, and Dr. Jameson had the satisfaction of seeing some of the trucks, when he was visiting Johannesburg during that month, stand- ing innocently on the Simmer and Jack siding. He recalled the fact when Johannesburg leaders complained of being taken unprepared ; but the fact is, they left the unloading of the trucks to the last minute, because of the risk of discovery in disposing the arms. Discovery of any single batch of the arms imported would have "blown on" the whole revolutionary design. That is why the arming was left so late. The " coke-trucks " actually only arrived at Johannesburg on the 26th December, three days before Jameson crossed the border. The balance of the guns, the Maxims, and bulk of the aniniunilion only arrived on the Tuesday, two days after his crossing. A few arms came a day after the fair, and were seized by Government. The smuggling was one of the few things which were really well done. " Everything seems to be going right," Dr. Jameson wrote from Kimberley, " especially (Gardner Williams's part of it." " Holden " (one of the B.S.A. Com- pany's officers) " is here, and is doing very good work. He is a capital ehaj)."' (aptaiii llolden certainly knew iiow lo hold his tongue. As an illiislration of this part of the work, some AN AFRICAN CRISIS 59 evidence of Mr. Pickering, the Port Elizabeth forwarding agent, may be quoted here. The subject is the oil-tanks : — " How did you become aware that the trucks were consigned to your firm? — A gentleman, named Ilolden, I think, waited upon me. " And informed you of what? — That trucks with tanks of oil were con- signed or were to be consigned to me. "By De Beers ? — He did not say De Beers. " Did you ask him by what authority? — I did, and he asked me to ask him as few questions as possible. "As a business man, did you not think it necessary to ask him where these trucks had come from? — I did not ask him. " Vou did not know where they came from ? — I am not prepared to say what I thought. " But you knew that the consignment had relation to the disturbance at Johannesburg ? — There was no disturbance at the time. " Say the threatened movement, then? — I knew nothing of the move- ment. " Did you not know tliat this consignment was going up in relation to that ? — I knew that it was a consignment going up to the mines, and I thought things were in a very unsettled state. " And that it might be necessary to pour oil on the troubled waters. You knew that those tanks did not contain oil ? — I had a very strong suspicion. "And that suspicion was awakened by what took place between you and Holden ? — Yes. " You had no communication, telegraphic or in writing, relative to this matter ? — No. "That is very unusual, is it not ? — Not necessarily. I simply forwarded the stuff as a forwarding agent. " Where did Holden come from when he came to you ? — I had no idea. " You did not inquire ? — No. " You had never seen him before? — He was most extraordinary. I liave never found a man so silent before. He was like an oyster." So the arming of Johannesburg went on apace. 6o THE STORY OF Chapter VI CONSPIRACY BY TELEGRAPH " T TPIINK," wrote a well-known Englishwoman after the I publication of the famous cipher telegrams, " that our English people have no gift for conspiracy. On the whole, I think I am rather glad that they have not." In one respect these particular conspirators did show some gift. Con- sidering how many people were privy to the scheme, the secret was well kept. But meantime some of them were committing every detail of it to paper with the particularity of an office ledger. Was a compromising letter written ? A copy was filed by the writer, and another by the recipient. Was a tele- gram loaded with secret meanings received ? It was docketed and put away in a despatch box. AN'as the precaution used of writing in cipher? The cipher chosen was the Bedford McNeil Mining Code, a copy of which is to be found in every telegraph office in South Africa. ^^'erc names and other special matter confided to a more special code ? Copies of the key were carefully secreted by the recipient along with his copies of the messages, as if the anxiety were far less for ilie secrecy of the plot than for the curiosity of the future historian or the legal exigencies of a j)rosecuting (lovernment. Surely, except on the stage, where it is somelimes nect'ssary for a situati(jn that conspirators should walk about with tlu-ir sinister designs neatly engrossed on vellum and sticking out of their pockets, never was plot plotted in the niaiuu r of ihis plot ! It was a system of conspiracy by double enlr\. Had it been merely the business men ol Johannesburg who carrietl tliese admirably systematic methods from the (H)unting- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 6i house to the revolutionary camarilla it would seem more natural ; but it was in camp at Pitsani, not in ofifices at Johan- nesburg, that these things were done. The Johannesburgers destroN'cd nearly all their papers. The person whose name is dotted about the Green Books attached to almost every compromising document in the hands of Government was a more or less young Guardsman. " Gevonden in de trommel van R. White " is the foot-note painfully iterated through pages of discovery, " R. \\'hite " being the invariable" Bobby " of so many messages. He it was who, in an airy way, to oblige the Pretoria State Attorney signed an affidavit when in gaol after Doornkop certifying as genuine the copy (of course a copy was carefully taken to the field of battle) of the Leonard letter, which then proved the sole and the almost sufficient piece of evidence to hang its signatories. But this is anticipating. For the most part the mania exhibited by Major the Honourable R. White for keeping and filing every- thing, and carrying it about with him, seems to have been due simply to the conscientiousness of a not very brilliant officer, who felt that he must supplement his deficiencies by using double care in routine details. The code key which revealed to Pretoria most of the personal names used was Jameson's own. The Doctor tore up an important despatch on the field of battle so roughly that it was afterwards picked up and put together, and he supplied further finds by sending a despatch box round by train, labelled, apparently as if for the express convenience of the Government. It would be ungrateful to complain of all this, for but for the quires of letters, telegrams, etc., which have come to hght how could the Story of a Crisis be written? As it is, there is an emiuxrras de richesses in the way of documents, and chief among these are the Cipher Telegrams. As the time for action drew near, when Jameson had finished his flying visits to Johannesburg and Cape Town, and was waiting the signal at Pitsani like a dog straining at the leash, the telegraph wire became the medium of communication be- 62 THE STORY OF Uveen the three foci of the plot. Johannesburg and Cape Town, Cape Town and Pitsani, wired to each other from day to day under the nose of the Government they were plotting against, in the thin disguise of an easily read code and a not very abstruse metaphor, in which political and military con- ceptions were translated into terms of company-promoting. Revolution became " flotation " ; troops on the border were "foreign subscribers," and held "shareholders' meetings"; a manifesto was a "directors' circular," etc., etc. In these terms Johannesburg and Jameson corresponded, mostly via Cape Town through the Chartered Company's offices. More rarely Johannesburg and Jameson wired to one another direct across country. At the Cape Town end the communication was lat- terly in the hands of Dr. F. Rutherfoord Harris, Secretary in South Africa of the British South Africa Company, and like Dr. Jameson and Dr. Wolff, a Kimberley medico who had not stuck to his last, being both clever and ambitious. Dr. Harris was then a member of the Cape House of Assembly, and a whip of Mr. Rhodes' party there. As a whip he was very successful. He could generally, it is said, make a hesitating member agree with him, or believe that he agreed sufficiently for the division or the purposes of the moment. It was a defect of this quality, however, that the sanguine and per- suasive diplomatist would sometimes come away convinced that the person he had talked to accepted his point of view, and that all was understood and settled between them, when nothing really was further from the case, the other man having been simply not ready enough or not determined enough to contradict. It is obvious that this was a drawback U^\ the pur- poses of a go-between in delicate and important negotiations. In much of what Dr. Harris did, then and at other times, he was undoubtedly the perfect agent of his chief. But he was fjuitc capable, at a critical period of South African history, of taking larger responsibilities and aspiring to a more command- ing ro/c. It was he, by the way, who negotiated with Mr CliambiTlaiii the Kliania scttU incnt. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 63 The Stevens of the telegrams, whom the Cape Select Com mittee found a )ion mi rkordo witness of amazing powers of oblivion, is the confidential assistant in the Company's Cape Town Office, and acted as intermediary till Dr. Harris returned from England. The telegrams which passed between the three points of the conspiratorial triangle for a week or two before the crisis have left a record day by day like that traced by the needle of some meteorological instrument. Their significance in some respects is still to be decided ; for instance, as to the division of responsibility between Secretary and Managing Director. Their chief value for solving the evergreen enigma of imme- diate responsibility for the crossing of the border consists in the clear way in which they show Jameson forcing the hand alike of Rhodes and of Johannesburg. As the date drew nearer which had been arranged on for action when Jameson was at Johannesburg the leaders there began to be sensible that the heaviest part of their work was still before them. They could not take the people into their confidence, and by mere vague phrases they could not rouse the necessary enthusiasm. Now was felt the want of the steady political work which should have been done in the past when capital was still "sitting on the fence." After years of easy-going agitation — a meeting here, a pamphlet there — you cannot rush a population to the white-heat point of revolt in a few weeks. Besides, the material organization was in arrears, and as little by little new men were taken into the plot the seeds of disunion and irresolution began to sprout. On the 7 th of December Colonel Rhodes wired from Johannesburg to Major White at Mafeking : — " Tell Zahlbar (Jameson) Ihe Polo Tournament here is postponed for one week, or it would clash with the race week." " Polo tournament "—a sporting metaphor varying from the commercial one — evidently meant the same as " flotation " in subsequent messages Major White replied next day : — 6-1 THE STORY OF " Hope [? no] delay, do not alter unless obliged according original understanding. Considerable suspicion already, therefore any delay would be most injurious."' A few days later " Zahlbar " himself wired to Stevens, Cape Town, to : " Tell Mr. Rhodes ever}thing is very satisfactor}-, also ready here. The entire journey occupies two and a half days."' On the nth Colonel Rhodes again strikes the note of delay to RIajor White : — " Inform Dr. Jameson, do not send any more heroes before January, no room for them. I am sending Captain R. M. Heyman to Graham's Town for next fourteen days. " For " heroes " some have conjectured horses. The context makes it more probable that the term was a code word for the picked men whom at that date the Doctor was recruiting in Cape Town and Kimbcrley — old soldiers and others — and sending up to Johannesburg, as well as to Pitsani. About 120 were so sent. The " eleven fine diamonds from De Beers " (Volunteer Corps?), whose sending Dr. Harris advised just before the crisis, were similarly metaphorical. 'I'o wliich '' Zahlbar" next day replies : — " Have everything ready here. Hope your telegram received yesterday Bobby White does not imply any delay, because any delay would be most injurious. Dr. Wolff leaves to-morrow, will explain." And at the same time Jameson sent a more urgent and plain message v/d Cape Town : — " Send following message to Col. F. Rhodes : (begin) tlrave suspicion has Ijcen aroused. Surely, in your estimation, do you consider that racos is of the utmost importance compared to immense risks of discovery, daily expected, by which under these circumstances it will be necessary to act prematurely? Let J. II. Ilanunond inform weak partners [thej more delay [theJ more danger. Dr. WollT will explain fully reasons to antici|xile ratlier than postpone action. Do all you can to hasten the completion of works." AN'hat sort of suspicions those were that were aroused one AN AFRICAN CRISIS 65 gathers from hints scattered through letters of earher date : "So-and-so has been l)lahbing," " fellows have been stupidly talking," "it is more important to avoid exciting suspicion than to go on drilling," and other sentences to like effect. It is in evidence, also, that the presence of bully beef among the so- called " produce " at the stores between Mafeking and Kru- gersdorp had not escaped notice. But there were also other suspicions elsewhere, as we shall see. No wonder, with all this on his nerves, Jameson thought it a frivolous pretext to adjourn a revolution for a race-meeting. At Johannesburg, on the other hand, it was considered that to have the town swarm- ing with the number and the kind of strangers always attracted by the races would be a most awkward complication. But it is incredible that any one of the various successive reasons assigned for delay would not have been brushed aside had Johannesburg been ready and united for the tremendous enterprise. On the 13th Stevens dul\- passes Jameson's urgent message on, and adds : — " The London Times also cables confidentially lo that effect. Postpoiie- mcnt of meeting would be a most imwise course." ' Here is a new element of mystery, ^\'hat could happen in England to affect the matter ? And what is the Times doing in that gafcre} Pressed before the Cape .Select Committee Mr. Stevens could not recall knowing of any such Times message, and its seems likely that this particular message was dictated by Mr. Rhodes. The Times is evidently used loosely for somebody more or less connected with that journal, or using Times information. The paper itself denies having ever sent any such message ; that is, presumably, the Editor denies that he ever sent or authorized it. Note that the thing sent is also very loosely indicated. Any news which, to the recipient in South Africa, bore on the question of delay, would satisfy ' From appearance of cipher it should be decoded "to effect that post- ponement," as in Dutch version. F 66 tHE STORY OF the terms of this reference. The present writer has no doubt that the solution of this mystery, which has greatly fluttered the Fleet Street dovecots, is something as follows : A great paper like the Times has writers who make a speciality of colonial subjects, who stretch out tentacles touching Johannes- burg, Cape Town, Rhodes, and on the other hand the Colonial Office, clubland, officialdom. In South Africa the gossip and guesses of the young troopers and officers at ]\Iafeking and at Pitsani were beginning to make people talk. In London, especially in the Service clubs, letters were received in which the writers airily announced as undoubted facts that they were going to eat their Christmas dinner in Pretoria. Upon such talk Mr. Fairfield, of the Colonial Office (a Permanent Secre- tary whom one would enjoy seeing cross-examine some of the South Africans who talk about the *' ignorance of Downing Street "), was moved to give that warning to his chief which set Mr. Chamberlain cabling anxiously to the High Commissioner just as Jameson was preparing to trot over the border. The Times Colonial Intelligence Bureau would soon note that people at the Colonial Office were in this frame of mind, and one or other of them, on friendly terms with Mr. Rhodes or Dr. Jameson, would send the " tip " by cable. It might be a very vague " tip," but to the conspirators in South Africa it would mean a threat of disbandment and the ruin of their schemes. The moment attention was called in England to the troops on the border, and to any rumours about their object, there was a risk of inquiries and prohibitions by cable, such as were actually sent while Jameson was, so to speak, in the act of starting. Apprised of such warnings as this (and of a similar one conveyed from a similar source to Johannesburg), Jameson quickly made up his mind that unless he soon started he would never get the chance of starting at all. Dr. Wolff, however, found the prospect at Joliannosburg belter than was expected, and wired t(i I'itsaiii on the iSth, " there is not likely to be post[)onemciU," adtling a reciucst for surplus aninuinii'on to be sent round (to Johannesburg) by AN AFRICAN CRISIS 67 way of Gardner Williams at Kimberley. But repetitions of Jameson's warning about the danger of delay continued to be sent on from Cape Town by the Secretary of the B.S.A. Com- pany to Col. Rhodes, and by Mr. Beit (of Wernher, Beit & Co.) to his colleague, Mr. Phillips. Messrs. Beit and Harris had just arrived together from England, and they evidently shared Jameson's fears of awkward incjuiries by cable. On the iSth Hammond had wired to Mr. Rhodes at Groote Schuur : — ■ " Cannot arrange respective interests without Beit, flotation must be delayed until his arrival. How soon can he come ? " The phrase " respective interests " has been caught at, like other company-promoting metaphors of the correspondence, to show that there was some stock-jobbing " deal " on hand. In reality, the division in question was not one of spoils, but one of expenses. Mr. Phillips wanted further authority as regards Mr. Beit's contributions to the War Chest, then swimming in tens of thousands. Mr. Beit replied (19th) to Mr. Phillips, not in code, but using a few private code words of the firm : — " Cannot come at present owing to health. Wire where is the hitch. San/>V!^ [= ]a.mcson ?] very impatient, cannot ua/terzi/j; [ = give extension ?]. Our schallhoni [ = foreign ?] supporters * urge immediate flotation." Next day he again wired that he was worse, was in fact laid up and ordered to the seaside. He was too ill to be of any use, but — " Most anxious that you should not delay flotation of new Company on my account a day longer than necessary. Immediate flotation is the thing most desired, as we never know what may hinder it, if now delayed." Poor " Herr Beit ! " as Mr. Labouchere will call him. He really was ill — at least, he looked it — ^and he really did recruit at Muizenberg. The cool nerve which had ruled markets and manoeuvred huge financial operations was now undergoing a • " Foreign supporters" elsewhere = the allies on the border, and once (to Jameson) the Jchannesburgers. 68 THE STORY OF new strain. But no one could suppose Mr. Beit, millionaire speculator as he is, to be devoid of the ambition to manoeuvre men, as well as markets, who saw him during the first Matabele war, following every telegram and moving little paper flags or pointers over a map in his office on the Viaduct, as the forces of " John Company " Secundus pushed across the veld. Mr. Beit may not be a soldier, may not be a statesman ; but he has been fairly caught up at the chariot wheels of Mr. Rhodes, with his grand political schemes. Mr. Beit's telegram to Mr, Phillips was followed (21st) by another from Dr. Harris to Col. Rhodes, in code, drawing attention to it, and adding : — " Reply wlicn you can fluiit in your opinion, so that I may advise Dr. Jameson." At the same time Dr. Harris wired to Jameson, telling him what he and Beit had done to hurry up Johannesburg, promis- ing to telegraph answer promptly, and adding, "Zoutpacht [Paul Kruger] is returning immediately to Pretoria." But Colonel Rhodes was very far from being able to " name a day." The party of delay had just disco\'ered reason for another hitch, and the Colonel had to cross Dr. Harris's request with the following : — " Please inform C. J. Rhodes : it is stated that Chairman will not leave unless special letter inviting him. Definite assurance has been given hy all of us, that on day of fl(jtation you and lie will leave ; there must absolutely be no departure from this, as many suljscribcrs have agreed to take .sharcs on this assurance ; if letter necessary, it can still be sent, but it was agreed documents left with J. A. Stevens was suflicient, and that you arc respon- sible for Chairman's (k']iarturc. It is very imporl.fnt to put this riglit ; reply to Lionel riiilliiis. "' What (lid all this uumu ? Wiio was " Chaii m.iii " ? It will l)e remembered, from the earliest sketch of the rrwihitionary plot, what stress was laid on tlic " breathing spat e ' to be .secured by forcing the Imperial (Government to intervene as mediator. Mr. Rhodes, as ("ape Premier, was to advisL> Sir Hi-rculcs AN AFRICAN CRISIS 69 Robinson to go up to the spot at once. The Johannesburg leaders were to appeal to his intervention if necessary (and eventually did) ; but Mr. Rhodes was relied on to see that the appeal was responded to. It was, of course, absolutely the right thing to do, and the High Commissioner eventually did it with the full approval of Mr. Hofmeyr ; but his feelings may be imagined wlien he found long after how his action had been counted on and made capital of to assist in " floating " the revolution. This particular reason or pretext for delay was soon cleared up, Harris telling Col. Rhodes (23rd) : — "A. Beit telegraphed L. riiillips assuring iiim that Chairman starts immediately flotation takes place. No invite necessary." Readers with a turn for puzzles may like to see the message from Beit referred to ; it is in the private code to which the key has not been found. "Have seen Saufinder mitzdruse to Schaffiger bleimass absolutely that Chairman hablohner on flotation no request or letter is hobelspane as anlegespan is ausgerodet as previously angelstern." And now comes a strange thing. We have seen Harris on the 2ist asking Colonel Rhodes to name a day for " floating." We have seen him on the 23rd, so far from getting the date he asked for, having to send a message of reassurance about another hitch. On the very same day, the 23rd, without any message from Johannesburg to go upon so far as the Pretoria Detective Department and the Cape Select Committee can tell us, is sent the following telegram, as if everything were settled : — «' From " To Harris, Cape Town Jameson, Pitsani. " Company will be floated next Saturday, 12 (twelve) o'clock at night : they are very anxious you must not start before 8 (eight) o'clock and secure telegraph office silence. We suspect Transvaal is getting aware slightly." 70 THE STORY OF It is not clear whether 8 means 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. " Tele- graph office silence " probably means cutting the wire to Pre- toria, rather than that to the Colony. But where is the authority for these precise arrangements ? \\'hen the liberation of Sicily was hanging in the balance, the Sicilians were ready to fly to arms if Garibaldi landed, but Garibaldi, unlike Jameson, determined not to move till they gave proof that they were in earnest. Crispi invented a despatch from Sicily which gave Garibaldi his proof and started him on his road. It was not true, at that moment, that Sicily had risen ; but it rose like one man the moment Garibaldi landed. The deadlock was forced. The cause was won. Sicily was liberated. Is it conceivable that Dr. Harris sent this message " off his own bat," consciously or unconsciously emulating the spkndide metidax Italian statesman ? Or was he, or one of the others, or Mr. Rhodes himself, simply bent on quieting Jameson and gaining time ? Was this message meant, as others which followed it obviously were meant, to stop the firebrand on the border from despairing of his con- federates and breaking away ? People in writing to an im- patient correspondent are apt to speak of things as already arranged which they are only arranging. Of course it must be remembered tliat as long ago as the 19th of December we had Jameson writing to " Bobby " AVhite, "almost certain date will be 26th December," and soon after telegraphing to Sir John Willoughby, "date fixed is 28th of December, to start from here," — the 28th being the very "Saturday" now named by Harris.* Be this as it may, next day, tlic 24th, Harris returns to the charge and tries to prevent Jameson going off at a tangent ui)on Dr. Wolff's reports of Johannesburg vacillation: — " \'oii must nf)t move heforo Saturday nij^lit : \vc aio ffclinp; confident it will take place .Satuiday nigiit. Since Dr. Wolfl' left feeling our subscribers yreally impruveil." While Cape 'I'own was thus holding back Pitsani with one ' Wlio says lie liid it !■>• woi'.l of mnulli from , fresh from Joli.iiincsliurg. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 71 hand, it was trying with the other to bring Johannesburg into Una with Pitsani. On the morning of the 26th Colonel Rhodes received the following from " Cactus," one of Dr. Harris's code names :— " Dr. Jameson says he cannot give extension of refusal for flotation beyond December, as Transvaal Boers opposition shareholders hold, meet- ing on Limpopo at Pitsani Mackluke." The effect of this message was the opposite of what was in- tended. Now that the fatal day was almost upon them, with the terrible Doctor on the border straining at his leash, the party of delay at Johannesburg, which had made hitches already about "races," about "Chairman," and about Beit's authority, had just seized occasion, by raising the " Flag Ques- tion," which shall be entered into in another chapter, to make the last and the greatest " hitch " of all. A secret conclave was held on Christmas Day, which could agree upon nothing except to gain time. Two messengers — Holden and Heany, both Chartered Company officers — were sent across country, one by road and one by rail, to entreat Jameson to hold his hand. Other two messengers — Messrs. Leonard and Hamilton — were sent to Cape Town to entreat Mr. Rhodes to add his voice peremptorily to theirs. Finally, as the result of " Cactus's " message just quoted, the following decisive telegrams were despatched on the 26th December. The first from "Toad," Johannesburg (Toad being one of the code names for Colonel Rhodes, dating from a schoolboy perversion of his name at Eton), to Charter, Cape Town : — " It is absolutely necessary to postpone flotation. Charles Leonard left last night for Cape Town." The second from Jameson's brother at Johannesburg, S. W. Jameson, to Pitsani : — " It is absolutely necessary to postpone flotation through unforeseen cir- cumstances here altogether unexpected, and until we have C. J. Rhodes' absolute pledge that authority of Imperial Government will not be insisted ;7a THE STORY OF on. Cliarles Leonard left la?;t night to interview C. J. Rhodes. We will endeavour to meet your wishes as regards December, Init you must not move until you have received instructions to. Please confirm." In forwarding " Toad's '" message to Jameson, Dr. Harris accepts the delay implicitly, however regretfully, adding: — "Charles Leonard will tlierefore arrive Cape Town Saturday morning; s-o you must not move until you hear from us again. Too awful. Very sorry." He telegraphs again next day : — '■^ Re Secheleland Concession shareholders' meeting postponed until 6lh day of January ; meanwhile, circular has been publicly issued and opinion of all interested will then be taken and then action decided upon. Charles Leonard arrives here to-morrow morning. We must wait patiently, and will do our very utmost, but am beginning to see our shareholders in Mala- bcleland concession were very different to tliose in Secliek-land matter ! "' " Secheleland Concession " is evidently our old friend " fiota- lion." The circular publicly issued is the famous manifesto, signed Charles Leonard, Chairman of llie National Union, which was published on the morning of the 27th calling a meeting for the 6th January. The melancholy last sentence of the telegram seems to institute a feeling comparison between the delays and vacillations at Johannesburg and the unity and promptitude wliich carried the first Matabele war to victory. Meanwhile, Mr. Rhodes" anxiety was all to prevent Jameson going off at a tangent ; for on the heels of these regrets Dr. Harris sends another telegram beginning with the code formula for '' Mr. Rhodes says," the idea ol the message ol)viously being l(j show Jameson that he iiei-d not be in such fear of the rumours and suspicions whicli had been excited, as he has a perfectly good excuse to give for keeping the tr()i)])s there if necessary till the Day of judgment : " Mr. Kliodc's says : Do nut be alarmed at our lia\ ing 600 men at Titsani ^^a(.•kluke ; we have ihe right to have them ; y care- fully arranged for a surprise ; but if need arose they need have no fear of being left to fight it out alone. There were two thousand armed men in Johannesburg ; the Cape Mounted Rifles would rush to the rescue ; to say nothing of the Im- perial forces in Natal, and the Rhodesia Horse in the north. There would be a bonus for the special service, and, in short, if any one's heart was not in it let him fall out and stay behind. Jameson wanted no flinchers. Then there were more cheers, and doubters and grumblers fell into the background. How could a lot of English lads, careless fellows with rifles and a belt full of ammunition, refuse a madcap adventure proposed by a man in authority, — and such a man as " Dr. Jim " ? And so they started, and trotted in the moonlight over the level veld, across the invisible line which separated a camp of exercise from an incredible violation of international comity. Before the start (says the Dutch legend) the canteen was thrown open and the troopers were made free of it, to imbibe what it is a special irony under the circumstances to call " Dutch courage." The effects of which (continues the same authority) were grotesquely visible at the start. Some of the riders fell off their horses, and rifles, saddles, and bandoliers were picked up along the first few miles of the route next day. This last statement is well witnessed. Perhaps some few men deserted during that first night. When the columns met next morning, no trooper was minus any of his accoutrements. And the free drinks are mere legend. The canteen was open in the usual course for the men to buy. Here is something else, however, which is credibly attested. An essential part of the plan was the cutting of the telegraph wire — " Secure Telegraph Office silence," as one of the cipher telegrams puts it. And one wire was cut, sure enough. The southward wire to the Colony was cut south of Pitsani, and again south of Mafeking. But the really important wire, running to Pretoria by way of Zeerust and Rustenburg, was 90 THE STORY OF not cut, by reason of the trooper who was sent to cut it being, in plain words, drunk. He started on his errand carrying with him the most elaborate and detailed instructions. He was to cut the wire in two places, so many yards apart, take it so far into the veldt, and bury it so deep. He did cut certain wire, and he did make an effort, at least, to bury it in the veld. But the wire which he cut was that of the peaceful railing by which a farmer kept his cows in. Then with a good conscience he reeled back. In the whole tragi-comedy there is no grotesquer touch than this, which the writer had from a resident on the spot. The two columns effected their junction at the village of Malmani, 39 miles from Pitsani, less from Mafeking. It was five o'clock on a Monday morning, and great was the surprise of the few folks who were stirring. The united force numbered some 512 men, all mounted, with about 30 pack horses and a posse of Kafirs leading them, with eight Scotch carts and three Cape carts drawn by horses or mules and loaded with ammunition and with a small amount of pro- visions, with eight M.H. Maxims, one i2i-pounder and two 7-pounders.^ Besides Dr. Jameson, the officers apparently in command were as follows (the local rank is put first, that in the Ser- vice given in brackets) : Lieut. -Col. Sir John Willoughby, Bart. (Major), Royal Horse Guards (in general military command) ; Major Hon'ble Robert White (Captain), Royal Welsh Fusiliers ; Fieut.-Col. the Hon. Henry F. White (Major), CJrenadicr (kiards, in charge of M.M.P. ; Lieut. Col. Raleigh Grey (Cajjlain), 6th Dragoons, in charge of B.B.P. ; The Hon. C. J. Coventry, a Militia Officer, added another title, and several Guardsmen were attached to the Staff. One invalid ufliccr who happened to be staying at ' The force was under 600, counting the .seventy odd native drivers, leaders, etc. Men and natives carried 50,000 rounds of anuiumition, and there was the like anunint in the carls. Tliere were also some 45,000 rounds for the Maxims, and for the other guns about 120 each. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 91 Mafeking for his health, went along in his own cart in civilian clothes " to see the fun." Sir John ^Villoughby was in some ways the most seasoned of these warriors. He had acted in the vague capacity of adviser to Jameson at the time of the Matabele War, and had a hunting reputation and a Derby win to his credit. But taking the otificers as a whole it cannot be said that Jame- son had surrounded himself for his enterprise with the fighting flower of the British Army. Rather the Company had got a jovial lot of titled young Guardsmen " seconded," dwelling upon that fringe of civilization which parts Society from Bohemia. One of Cromwell's psalm-singing Ironsides would have loved, especially in view of the sequel of the combat, to draw an edifying contrast between these cavaliers, with their rackety troop of young ne'er-do-weels, and the pious fathers of gross families speaking the nasal speech of modern Roundheads, who were to give them their Dunbar. A certain number of the troopers, no doubt, perhaps a half, were fairly seasoned South African irregulars. They were spoken of at the time as " the lads who smashed Loben- gula"; but this was not correct. Most of those who fought in the first Matabele War were settlers, or became settlers. The " Rhodesia Horse," up at Bulawayo, had more title to such a description. The backbone of the column was the B.B.P., or stricdy, the ex-B.B.P. Of the M.M.P., the Company's force proper, a surprising proportion were very young, from 18 to 25 ; and of these many were recent arrivals in South Africa, some of them, indeed, quite green, but for such drilling as they had got in camp during the last few weeks. There was a sprinkling of Afrikanders, a few of them with the typical Franco-Dutch names. The route from Malmani to Krugersdorp may be followed in the map prepared beforehand by Major " Bobby " White, who had gone over part of the ground in October, besides visiting Pretoria and making elaborate sketches of the environs with military topographical annotations ; all which maps and 92 THE STORY OF plans, needless to say, were duly carried along and found among his papers. The distance to be covered must not be thought of as a stretch of trackless veld. From Malmani a plain road ran straight before them and they followed it as far as Krugers- dorp. A road — that is to say, a South African cart-track of the usual kind, a strip of ruts and horse-tracks, with a little something done to make the bad places passable, pick out the drifts, etc. On this road there is a canteen of some sort every two hours on horseback ; and the Boer legend has it that the column stopped and drank at every store. Were that true the march would have been a wonderful performance indeed. Of the stores specially built for the column, as we have seen, four were passed on the journey. Here and there appear the homesteads belonging to the farms along the line of country An ordinary South African traveller on horseback, decently mounted and in the habit of riding journeys, not one of a troop, would cover the distance from Mafeking to Krugersdorp (somewhere between 120 and 140 miles at most) in two days to two and a half days, sleeping most of the night. The column went along with scouts, advance guard, and flanking columns, the artillery and Scotch carts in the middle. The order of the march was as clearly laid out beforehand as the route. I'^laborate instructions for Quarter- master, for Transport Officer, and so forth were also among the papers, signed " J. Willoughby, Colonel, O.C Column." Here is a memorandum marked — Orders for Intelligence in charge of Scouts {special party). 1. A party of 12 picked men will be det.iilcd for advanced patrol. 2. Captain Lindsell will be in chartje, 6 men will be empKiycd and accompany him unless more are dctaileii. 3. Captain Lindsell's party will always start i iKUir by day and \ of an hour by night before the column moves. 4. lie will report himself to O.C. Column bcfnie niovinq; nlV. 5. This party marches independent of the main body, and will ri|nilate its pace to about 5 miles per hour. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 93 6. The party will halt at places named by O.C. Column. 7. One man of the party will march about lOO yards ahead of the re- mainder and one man 100 yards in rear. 8. A guide will accompany the party. 9. The ofticer in charge will endeavour to obtain all the information he can of the road ahead, and will warn all stores of the approach of the column, so that forage and food may be prepared ready for issue on the arrival of the column. He will inform all persons he may meet, that if they keep quiet they will not be molested in any way, and that the column has no hostile intentions against the inhabitants of the country. In case of any hostile demonstration, he is to fall back, send- ing back a message with the fullest information as to nature of such ; and any important information, as to any movements of armed bodies, should also be sent back at once to O.C. Column, stating whether the in- formation be hearsay or otherwise and from whom obtained. The message should state e.xact time, place of its despatch, if possible, in writing. This party is not to scout to the flanks, as this will be done by the advanced guard, but caution must be exercised in approaching a village, defile, or any awkward piece of country. Ascertain about water, how far and how many horses can be watered at same time. See that water is boiled for coffee, etc. Everything, however, was not done quite so much " according to Cocker" as all this. In particular, the halts made at the stores were not long enough to allow the men to eat the bully beef and biscuits provided. It was a case of off-saddling, standing about, sitting, or lying to rest for a while without sleeping, and off again. Two hours was about the longest halt, save once in the dark when the road was lost. So the column jogged along, walking, cantering, and trot- ting by turns. From Malmani the column pushed on in order to pass a defile, noted as dangerous by the topographical " Bobby," at the Lead Mines. This was achieved at a scamper, soon after five p.m. Otherwise, the only incident of, Monday was the first official challenge. A quaintly formal comnnuiication came to hand from the Commandant of the Marico district^ to the Head Officer of the expedition of armed ^ Under the old South African Burgher Law, each district has a Com- mandant, a permanent official, who " Commandeers " in any emergency a 94 THE STORY OF troops at IMalmani Eye, warning him to retire with his force over the frontier and not conflict with the law of the land, with the Convention, and with international laws. A characteristic Jamesonian Gomposition was the reply : " Sir, — I am in receipt of your protest of above date, and have to inform you that I intend proceeding with my original plans, which have no hostile intentions against people of Transvaal, but we are here in reply to an invitation from the principal residents of the Rand to assist them in their demands for justice and the ordinary rights of every citizen of a civilized State. — (Signed) Jameson." On Tuesday morning the column reached the farm of Mr. Malan, a Volksraad member and near connection of General Joubert, where the remount horses were in readiness, as before described, and the worthy raadslid himself came out to ex- press his astonishment and anger at the apparition. He did so quaintly enough. Approaching Jameson, he exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, " Jameson ! what do you come bothering me like this for ? " He might well resent the service which, all unwittingly, he had been made to render the column ; but, as it turned out, it was no service at all. The horses, as we have seen, were a job lot bought up from a coaching company. Many of them were probably quite unused to the saddle ; and either because they proved intractable, or because they could not be caught, or because it was not thought worth while to stop long enough for the exchange, little advantage was taken of their presence, and the column rode on mostly with the same horses. That morning the column was caught up by a mounted messenger, one of the trooi)crs who had declined to join, riding post haste with the first word from the High Commis- sioner, telegra[)hed up to Mafeking on Monday to tlie Resident Commissioner. He had ridden after them for eiglily miles, all night, and would have caught them some hours sooner, but certain prdpinlinii of men from liis district, sending round from farm to farm. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 95 2^ " 96 THE STORY OF that he himself was caught by a party of Boers on the border — a party which at first meant to follow Jameson, but received orders from Pretoria by telegraph to await some imaginary supports which were expected to pour into the country in Jameson's wake. A Landdrost had opened his despatches and read them, with the natural result that he was forthwith allowed to proceed. The column was halted wlun the messenger came up with it. He carried a separate despatch for each officer, as well as one for Dr. Jameson. In these Mr. Newton, the Resident Commissioner at Mafeking, simply repeated the High Com- missioner's brief message, directing Dr. Jameson to return immediately, saying that the violation of the territory of a friendly State was repudiated by Her Majesty's Government, and adding, for the benefit of each several officer, that they were rendering themselves liable to severe penalties. There was no eagerness to peruse these billets. The messenger found his way to one of the officers, who said, " Take them to Sir John Willoughby." Willoughby said, " Take them to Dr. Jameson." Dr. Jameson said, "Take them back to Sir John Willoughby ; he is in military command." After half an hour the messenger got his answer that " The despatches would be attended to " — and the column moved off. A more picturesque meeting was that about three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon with a grandson of President Kruger, a lieutenant {Ang/icc, inspector) of police at Krugersdorp. This young man, formerly a Government clerk, has military ambi- tions, and once went spying to Mafeking with absurd results. He is a favourable specimen of the young Transvaaler of the new generation, and was quite lionised by the interviewers lately in England. Hearing a rumour of the advancing force, young Eloff rode out burning to distinguish himself, coolly went uj) to the column when at Mrs. Boon's farm, and was passed through to the officers, whom he asked by what right were they entering the Transvaal with an armed force. The question was somewhat diffirull lo answer, and it was evaded AN AFRICAN CRISIS 97 by putting the young gentleman under arrest and taking away his arms, with the remark that they would be returned to him at Johannesburg. Eventually he was treated with all due courtesy, his arms were returned to him, and he was left behind on parole to remain rooted to the spot for an hour after the column left. His next appearance was after Jameson had fought and lost, when he led a detachment of burghers into the streets of Johannesburg, where they let off their feel- ings and a quantity of blank cartridges. New Year is a great visiting-time for the Boers, who make up parties and go round to friendly homesteads. One or two parties of this kind were descried, and at first taken for a hostile force. Only at midnight on Tuesday (New Year's Eve) came the first sign of hostility from the Boers who were hang- ing about the column. A few score men were keeping it in view and retiring before it as it advanced. As the column reached a place where the road mounts some rising ground, a few Boers shot in among them from over the brow. It was a brief and dropping fire, and only one man was wounded. The reply in the midnight darkness was rather a matter of form, though the guns were got into play in one minute. Early on Wednesday morning the column received despatches both from the British Agent at Pretoria and from the leaders at Johannesburg. A messenger with a safe conduct brought from Sir Jacobus de Wet a more peremptory veto telegraphed up by the High Commissioner : — " Ilcr Majesty's Government entirely disapprove your conduct in invading Transvaal with armed force ; your action has been repudiated. You are ordered to retire at once from country, and will he held personally respon- sible for the consequences of your unauthorized and most improper pro- ceeding." This time Jameson wrote his reply, and a very characteristic one it was : — " Dear Snt, — I am in receipt of the message you sent from His Excel* lency the High Commissioner, and beg to reply, for His Excellency's information, that I should, of course, desire to obey his instructions, but, H 98 THE STORY OF as I have a very large force of both men and horses lo kx(\, and having finished all my supplies in the rear, must perforce proceed to Krugersdorp or Johannesburg this morning for this purpose. At the same time I must acknowledge I am anxious to fulfil my promise on the petition of the prin- cipal residents on the Rand to come to the aid of my fellow-men in their extremity. I have molested no one, and have explained to all Dutchmen met that the above is my sole object, and that I shall desire at once to return to the Protectorate. — I am, etc., Jameson." The Johannesburg despatches were brought in soon after by a couple of cyclists, who met the column about ten o'clock with a scribbled note from Colonel Rhodes, and a scribbled postscript by Mr. Phillips, which will appear in another chapter. This scrap of paper told Jameson, reading between the lines, that he was taking the Johannesburg leaders by surprise, that they had not yet made any overt move against the Govern- ment, but that they had armed a number of men, and were prepared to applaud his audacity, and to suggest explanations of his action. The note ended by asking whether they should send him out men to show him a suitable place to pitch his camp at the outskirts of Johannesburg, where he was expected to arrive that evening. He was not offered any military help ; evidently there was not the barest idea of his requiring any. In reply to tliis note Jameson at first said in an off-hand way, " No. It didn't matter." Then, after consulting with \\'illoughl)y or one of the others, he added, as a kind of after-thought, "Tell Colonel Rhodes we are all right. The only thing is, it might be as well, perhaps, to send out an escort, say a couple of hundred men, to conduct me in, just to show that I am not coming as a ])irate." On their way bat k with this message the cyclists were ca]i- tined in the liocr lines, then closing upon the colinnn, and the message was not received at Johannesburg till four days afterwards. To return lo the coluiun. Tlio exact teiiotir of the cyclists' despatches was not com- municated, but it went round that Johannesburg had .sent welcoming messages, and there was some ehee'ting. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 99 About midday the column came in sight of Krugersdoip, the western terminus of a raihvay line which runs along the "reef" through Johannesburg, Johatuiesburg itself being fifteen to twenty miles away. The gold reefs on which Johannesburg is built are generally described as running along for fifty miles from east to west. The village of Krugersdorp (about 1,500 to 2,000 souls) is a kind of western outpost of that line of reef. As the column sighted Krugersdorp it would also sight in the neighbourhood the signs of mining : headgear, heaps of tailings, etc., and would feel as if it were now really at the beginning of Johannesburg. But if Krugersdorp had rousing associations for the raiders, so it had for the Boers, who were now cantering up from dis- trict after district on their sturdy little ponies to this appointed meeting-place. For, by a dramatic coincidence, which must have inspired the farmers with patriotic memories, within gun- shot of the Krugersdorp market-square rises the stone obelisk of Paardekraal, commemorating the struggle and triumph of their " War of Independence " against British troops in 1881. The cyclists had warned the column that soms few hundred Boers were waiting for it at Krugersdorp, and as small parties were also seen hanging upon its skirts, and as the formation was hampered at this point by a quantity of wire railing, the approach to the little town was made warily. Four or five miles off was the last store that the column was destined to touch at — Hind's store ; and here it enjoyed, for an hour and a half, its last quiet rest. For some reasons, however, the arrangements for feeding men and horses were a failure here. Neither got much to eat. Close to the store the column surprised a party of Boers watering horses. These were not fired on with rifles or Maxims, and had made off long before the field guns, now pushed forward, reached the advance guard. A few rounds were fired after the retreating party. The column learnt at the store that the Boers before them were now nearer Soo than 300. 100 THE STORY OF The country here rolls in low downs or ridges across the route. At the entrance to the town from the west the road, mounting one of these ridges, forks ; the north fork (to the column's left front) leading between the houses ; the south fork (to the right front) leading round among mining properties. All along the ridge was seen from a mile away to be occupied by Boers. After reconnoitring the north fork, the column took the south one. A little to the north (left) of this, on the top of the occupied ridge, conspicuous to the column on the sky line, stood a disused " battery-house " of the Queen Mining Company : that is to say, an iron-roofed shed which had con- tained ore-stamping machinery. Surrounded by heaps of " tailings " — the mud-heaps left by ore crushing and washing — this formed a natural fort with earthworks ready made ; and the trained eye of old Cronje, the Commandant of Potchefstroom, had hit upon this as the place to hold. Moreover, the road to it was flanked at longish range by a farmhouse and plantation to the north, and by some old prospectors' cuttings — ready-made rifle-pits — to the south. These on the rising slope : in the depression midway between this ridge and that on which the column now faced the Boer lines lay a " vlei," or stretch of standing water, crossed by the road at a narrow drift. Before a shot had been fired, Sir John AN'illoughby sent a messenger under a flag of truce carrying this (juaint message : — " 1st Januar)', 1S95. — To Comniandant-in-Cliicf, Krugcrsdorp, from O.C. of the friendly force eii route to Johannesburg. " SiK, — I have llie honour to inform you tliat in the event of my meeting with any liostilc opposition in my advance llirougli Krugcrsdorp, I shall be bound to slicll the position and the town, and hereby give you due warn- ing so that peaceable inhabitants and women and chiUlren may leave before 4 p.m. to-day. " I have the honour to be, sir, yours, "John \Vii.i.ouc.iii;v, Li. C.C." The Coniniand.nU Malan of Kustmburg --relurnetl no answer, ^\ll(•^ the time had elapsed, the guns were brought to bear, and presently a hole was neatly knocked right throng!) AN AFRICAN CRISIS loi the gable of the battery-house, which tlie few Boers who were in it hastily vacated. None of them were hurt. The artillery fire was next turned along the ridge where puffs of smoke told of a line of invisible sharp-shooters, and a large quantity of shrapnel shells were blazed away, the artillerymen, under Captain Gosling and Captain Kincaid Smith, making good practice in bursting the shells just over where the puffs of smoke were. The Boers, who had no artillery up as yet save an old 7-pounder, replied with rifle fire ; and desultory firing went on at long rifle range from both sides, till presently Col. White (in charge of the advance guard of about loo men) ordered it to advance and charge the Queen battery-house position. We say " Colonel White ordered." The responsibility is not quite clear. The officer commanding the column was, as we have seen, Sir John Willoughby ; but a difference as to seniority in command had arisen between him and Major White, and as the operations proceeded it became more acute (if troopers' gossip is accepted). In fact, according to the descriptions given by some troopers, it was never quite clear throughout the whole march who was in command. Some- times Dr. Jameson would give an order, sometimes Sir John Willoughby, sometimes one or other of the Whites, and some- times Major Grey. Whoever ordered the charge, it is dubious what the troopers were intended to do upon reaching the ridge. They had no swords, and could only have fallen upon the Boers with the butt ends of their rifles. The idea seems to have been that they had only to gallop forward and rush the position and the Boers would jump up and run away, exposing themselves to the fire of the troopers and making way for the column. However, the question what they should do when they reached the Boers was not destined to arise. The Boers, lying prone along the ridge, protected by stones and the lie of the ground, had no intention of getting up and exposing themselves. Most of them were protected by a line of rock " outcrop " : a natural I02 THE STORY OF rampart which, in the geological formation of the Transvaal, creates endless positions of defensive strength. Then, at the battery -house, there were the " tailings," and southward there were the prospectors' trenches already mentioned : which, by the way, served in the sequel for burying some of the dead. MR. JOHN HAYS HAMMOND. Fromn rhoto~rnfliby nui-l'lis Bros., y.nglish type, saw a cart containing at least lliree or four dead bodies in unmistakable Boer clothing. " But are you sure they were all dead ? We know there were AN AFRICAN CRISIS 121 five wounded in Krugersdorp Hospital, one of wlioni died afterwards." "You cannot mistake the way a dead man lies. I saw their hands wagging, so , as the cart moved," with a gruesome realistic gesture. " But why should they conceal ? How do you explain the discrepancy ? " " I don't explain. I am simply telling you what I saw. I don't trouble my head about it." The only motive suggested to counterbalance the natural wish of the aggrieved Republic to pile up its case for blood- money is the policy of cultivating the idea that God fights for the Boers. The extraordinary disproportion in killed which has marked all fights between Boers and English in the Trans- vaal, has made some of the more ignorant and superstitious farmers firmly believe that the Lord of Hosts would be con- stant to the side of the small battalions were their country invaded by the French and German armies together. Two, say the sceptics, is a favourite official number of Boers killed. It was two at Majuba. The ineradicable doubt had to be recorded here ; but the writer, on a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and thanks Heaven the kill was not larger. The cover, and the defensive tactics, explain a great deal. The only use of Jameson's Maxims, but a very substantial use, was in keeping up such a clatter and sputter at the edge of the Boer positions as to spoil their shooting, hence the comparatively small death-roll of the column. The Maxim, in fact, was a weapon rather of defence than of offence. The net result on the mind of a plain man from discussing with experts why Jameson's invasion of the Transvaal was a dead failure, is that it failed simply because it was an invasion. Completer surprise might have saved it, but when once a few Boers had time to choose a position and mass, the odds were tremendous, even had the column been twice as big. In a battle of sharp-shooters, with the geological formation of the Transvaal, the man who can sit still is equal to ten men who 122 THE STORY OF have to move. Had it been the Boers who must expose themselves and get past at all costs, and Willoughby who had only to play the waiting game, the result would have been exactly the opposite, whatever the numbers. Perhaps, with modern arms of precision, the battle tends to be more and more with the defence force in any country, unless that force is reduced through its belly. Which is, perhaps, just as well for the cause of peace. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 123- Chapter IX JOHANNESBURG TAKES ITS COAT OFF [The thread will now be taken up by turns by the Special Correspondent of the Cape Times despatched to Johannesburg in December when everything seemed to be threatening an outbreak. On the 20th Mr. Lionel Phillips made his speech at the opening of the new Chamber of Mines, fearing that unless the Government came to terms with the industry, " it would end in that most horrible of all possible endings — bloodshed." A more rattling speech made by Mr. Fitzpatrick at the Old Barbertonians' dinner about the same time helped to show that there was something more than the usual grumble in the air. Looking back now, we connect Mr. Phillips's speech with Jameson's visit at the same date to Johannesburg. But at that time nobody dreamed of any link between Jameson and Johannesburg further than that both began with a J. What all South Africa did conclude at once was that the capitalists had at last thrown in their lot with the National Union, and that some unusual demonstration was being pre- pared for. The Cape Times, taken somewhat by surprise, hailed the conversion of Capital to Reform, and described the Kruger-Hollander regime as the " Sick Man of South Africa," declaring that, as with the Sick Man of Europe, the one anxiety of neighbours now was to get the break-up decently and peace- fully over. Both Sick Men have somewhat taken up their beds and walked since then — thanks to the disunion of their heirs presumptive. But at the close of December, 1895, it seemed the enterprising journalistic thing to send a Special Correspondent to the Rand, in time for the obseciuies ; and 124 THE STORY OF the Assistant-Editor of the Cape Times went up accordingly. He came in for a stirring experience. The " I " of any per- sonal reminiscences is, therefore, in the Johannesburg chapter?, not the Editors, but his.] I REACHED Johannesburg at sunrise on Christmas Day A great meeting of the National Union had been adver- tised for two days later. Trouble looming, the people of the great mining town seemed to draw nearer to Church. Many a non-attendant became a church-goer at Johannesburg on Christmas morning. A " cab round " convinced one that all the churches were crowded. At the English churches there was an inspiriting heartiness about the services ; one could not but be struck by the emphasis with which the prayer for the Queen's Majesty was intoned, and at the vigour of the congregational response. Devotions over, the people of Johannesburg spent the Chris- tian festival in quite the orthodox way — in home gatherings and veld outings, winding up with a sacred concert at the Wanderers' Club, and the usual singing of " God Save the Queen " at the close. Next day a special National Union Manifesto, signed by the President, Mr. Chas. Leonard, was put into people's hands just as they were streaming out to the racecourse at high noon. The manifesto set fortli the Uitlander grievances in plain terms, and pointed out the duty of the Government in ecjually emphatic language ; but postponed the mass meeting to January 6th. Generally, the tenour of the manifesto may be sunnncd up in the following concluding paragraph : — " \Vc Ikivc nmv only two questions to consider : ( of i oo \nv cent, in the |)riee of the most essential arlicles of food ; bakers doubled the price of bread— from 6,7. to i^-. per i lb. loaf; all credit was sus[)en(led, and orders for supplies coming forward from the [)orls were AN AFRICAN CRISIS 135 countermanded. Hour by hour tlie commercial panic raged, and in the afternoon flour reached looj-. per bag; forage, loos. per 100 lb. ; and so on. The news from Pretoria was more hojjcful. Government was disposed to be conciliatory. President Kruger even went so far as to inquire of a Rand American deputation what he should do to avert a revolution. " Make the best possible terms with the National Union," sententiously replied the deputation, and forthwith returned to the scene of tumult. The homogeneity of opinion on the Rand, and the well-circulated report that the leaders could back their words by blows had great moral force at Pretoria. President Kruger received Rand deputations freely, and was by no means niggardly in his promises. The news came that the Executive Council at the morning meeting had decided to remove the special duties on foodstuffs forth- with. Johannesburg accepted the removal of the duty as one instalment of reform demanded by the manifesto. Pretoria vacillated — Johannesbur-g " bluffed." The panic amongst the less confident spirits grew propor- tionately in intensity, and the exodus assumed the look of flight from a plague or a siege. Women and children left by the thousand ; Cornish miners from the East Rand took to their heels, not stopping for their pay, to be presented with derisive white feathers ; thousands of natives, mine and house boys cleared, and racehorses were sent far from the reach of the field-cornet on commandeering purposes bent. The deter- mination with which the movement was being pursued at the mines along the Reef was shown in the arrival in town about noon of wagon-loads of women and children and household goods. Shelter for the fugitives was quickly provided. The W^anderers' Club gave up their magnificent hall, the East Rand Proprietary Mines gave up their building and offices for con- version into bedrooms, and the Turf Club vacated Tattersall's with the same humane object. All was enthusiasm ; the una- nimity was wonderful. Recruiting for town protection and for district duty went on all day, and good care was taken that 136 THE STORY OF Pretoria was kept well informed of it. Miners and artisans thronged the town, and everywhere there was exeitenient and ferment. There was, of course, much opposition to extreme measures, especially on the part of property-owners and trades- men ; but the events of the day had greatly popularized the National Union Manifesto ; people regarded the Union as the winning side, and flocked to it accordingly. All was going merrily, when at five o'clock in the afternoon, the leaders of the movement received the news of Dr. Jame- son's entry into the llepublic. The Reform Committee, as a body, did not yet exist. Although there had been much anxiety in the inner circle about Jameson's impatience, they had been so reassured by their Cape Town confederates so fully and so lately that the news that Jameson had broken his tether came with a shock. On the previous morning — the very morning of the day when Jameson started — the reassuring messages reported in an earlier chapter had culminated in the receipt of a cipher message, never hitherto published, addressed to Mr. Percy Fitzpatrick by one of the two emissaries in Cape Town sent down to get the flag difficulty settled and Jameson checked. This important uni)ublished cipher was to the following effect : — - ll'e have jxccived the necessary assura/iccs from KhoJes. Evidently the misunderstanding is in another quarter. [The reference here was to one of those loose impressions current at the time, as fully explained in a former chapter, about the sup- posed attitude of the ]}ritish Covernment towards the con- spirators or towards any outbreak in the Transvaal.] Go on quietly with preparations without any haste. N'ew programme agreed on. It is a curious and significant fact that the first actual news of Jameson's movement reached the Reform leaders neitluT from iiiin nor from their own Jiilelligem.-e J )eparluu'iil, hut from a (iovernment (jfticial at Pretoria, who coineyed the news wishing to sound the leaders as to their altitude. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 137 Later, Mr. A. Baik-y received a wire from Cape Town — yet another of the few cipher telegrams that have never yet seen the light cither in newspaper, Blue-book, or Green-book. I obtained a copy of the message the day after. It ran thus : — The Veterinary Surgeon has left for fohanneshurg with some good horseflesh, and backs himself for seven hundred. [= with 700 men.] In these bizarre terms was conveyed news of a proceeding that was to set armies and fleets in operation, and to disturb the relationship of two of the great world-powers, to say nothing of the peace of South Africa. The only other intimation of the move sent to Johannes- burg from Pitsani or Mafeking was the telegram recorded in a previous chapter, which said that " Dr. ^Volff will understand that distant cutting." (This active go-between was now in Johannesburg.) Ur. Wolff, unfortunately, denied that he understood anything of the kind. Teeling that Jameson had " put them in the cart," the ring- leaders hastened to in-span other people. Let the representa- tive breadth of their own Johannesburg movement be put on record at once! The "Reform Committee" was formed. And here let one telling fact be mentioned to show that Jameson's audacity did inspire, if it also amazed and alienated. Threats and persuasions were needed to get some Committee men's names down, till the Jameson news leaked out ; and then they " came tumbling over one another to join," says an eye-witness. By Tuesday the Committee numbered sixty-four of the leading men of Johannesburg. The position of the leaders was one of painful perplexity. Some explanation they must give about the Jameson news to the crowd of leading residents who kept pressing for priority of position on the " Reform Committee " roll. Men of various races and creeds were banded together, and while some were swe]3t off their feet by the proof that somebody at least was in deadly earnest, others were certain not to welcome the new development. The American section of the Committee, for 138 THE STORY OF instance, hot from the ^^enezuela excitement, would scarcely relish any seeming association with the Imperial factor. The Committee, in short, were at sixes and sevens on this pt)int. For some hours after its receipt the news was kept within the Reform Committee circle, and prej)arations calculated to strike the eye and to reassure were feverishly pressed forward. When, late at night, the news was published throughout Johannesburg, the dominant note was rather anti-Jameson than pro-Jameson. There was a revulsion against outside in- terference, which by many was construed as from an Imperial quarter. Johannesburg, as the news spread, was dumb- founded by the audacity of the thing. There was a babel of dubious comment. " ^\'ho told Jameson to come in?" " Whose quarrel is this : ours or the Charter's ? " These questions were bound to be asked. Feelings were further damped by the news of a terrible tragedy which had marked the panic-stricken exodus by rail. A packed train which left Johannesburg for Natal the previous evening had run off the rails near Glencoe, injuring thirty-one and killing twenty-one of the fugitives, men, women, and children. Distraught relatives were naturally inclined to hold the Reform leaders vaguely responsible, though the accident was more directly traceable to the deficiencies of the Nether- lands' cars on the train — and therefore to a characteristic feature of the Unreformed Transvaal. The worst thing was the leaders' utler niiliiai y unreadiness. When the news came the conspirators had hut 1,500 rifles in their possession, of which only 500 were unpacked. The balance of the guns, and the majority of the Maxims did not reach the Simmer and Jack Mine until tlu' following day — at the moment when Jameson daslied across the border the Maxims were en route to the Rand concealed in consignments destined for the .Simmer Mine. There was wild unpacking that Mond.iy night, leading Re- formers pulling grease-covered rifles out of secret places till tlK'ir arms aehcd. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 139 The Hon. "Charlie" White, and Captain Heynian, two of Jameson's officers wliom the surjjrise move found still at Johannesburg, swore that nothing would stop Jameson in his march to the Rand — not even 10,000 men. This assurance was contagious ; the Committee took heart, and awaited developments. In the meantime wagon-hjad.s of rifles and tons of ammunition were brought into town from the Simmer and Jack Mine, and stored in the " Goldfields " building. Three Maxims were brought in and located at the Rand Club for general exhibition. No attempt was now made to conceal the real state of affairs, so far as the intentions of the Com- mittee were concerned. The rumour that the town had plenty of guns acted as a great public stimulus. More ma-j3 meetings weij held, and more corps formed — of course, all for " the i^rotection of life and property," and the defence of the town. Defence, not defiance, was still the watch- word. The Scottish Brigade was formed on this eventful day, a brigade which before many days were over numbered 1,100 men, none of whom ever shouldered a gun. The cyclists of the town, a large athletic body, likewise formed a Women and Children Protection Brigade, and further decided to s'and up for their rights. The Anglo-Saxon section of the Uitlanders remained loyal towards the Cause, and towards one another. The " Moder- ates " hedged once again. This section, largely composed of German members of the Stock Exchange and merchants, held another meeting, and decided to approach the Govern- ment and beg it to appoint a Commission, to be presided over by Chief Justice Kotze, to report to the Volksraad at the special session opening on the 9th January, then ensuing, upon the following matters : (a) the amendment of the Grondwet ; (/>>) the alteration of the law with regard to the franchise ; and (r) the granting of further privileges in con- nection with education. The most prominent people con- cerned in this movement were Mr. Langcrman (Mr. J. B, 110 THE STORY OF Robinson's representative), Mr. S. B. Joel, and jNIr. Harold Strange. What attitude the Government assumed was indicated in the following proclamation issued in a " Gazette I'^xtraordi- nary,'' and published by the Government AA'ar Commission at Johannesburg late on Monday evening : — " ^^'^lereas it has appeared to the Government of the South African Republic that there are reports in circulation to the effect that earnest endeavours are being set on foot to bring into danger the good order at Johannesburg ; and " Whereas the Government is convinced that should such reports be of a truthful nature, endeavours of such a kind can only emanate from a small portion of the population, and that the greater portion of the Johannesburg population is desirous of maintaining order, and is pre- pared to suppoit the Government in its endeavours to exercise law and order : "So it is that I, Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, State President of the South African Republic, with the advice and consent of the Execu- tive Council, according to Art. 913 of the Minutes thereof, 30th December, 1859, hereby earnestly warn those evily disposed and com- mand them to remain within the bounds of the law, the alternative being that those who do not hearken to this caution must answer to it on their own risk ; and " I further make known that life and property shall be protected, where attacks thereupon may be attempted, and that every inhabitant of Johannesburg who is desirous of maintaining order, to whatever nationality lie may belong, is hereby called upon to support and assist nic, and the officials are ordered to do the same. " And, further, I make known that the Governnicnt is at all limes pre- pared to duly consider all grievances which are laid before it in a projier manner, and to lay the same for treatment beft)rc the Legislature of the country wiliiout dtlay. "god save COUNTRV ANM) I'l'DlMK." The leaders of the movement nu'l late in the evening at the " (ioldfields " to discuss the silualion as it a|)|)carc(l in the liglit of the Jameson development ; Iml nolhing di rniilc was dec iilcd. The only game that the hesitating Comniiltee could play was the wailing one. As to their own status and AN AFRICAN CRISIS 141 position, however, the Committee spoke with no uncertain voice. They formally declared themselves the Reform (sometimes called the " Defence ") Committee of Johannes- burg, and thus constituted, they awaited the arrival of the morning's news from Pretoria. The gradual formation of the Committee and its programme as first adopted, are shown by the following message and the names appended to it ; it was despatched to the High Com- missioner on Monday night : — " JoilAXNESEURG, SoUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC, " December 30, 1895. " Whereas certain deputations which proceeded to-day to Pretoria have returned with unsatisfactory answers and promises of inconsiderable con- cessions, this meeting resolves to abide by the manifesto issued by the Chairman of the National Union and to send a deputation of represen- tatives to-morrow to request from the Government to give a definite answer within twenty-four hours, failing which this meeting decides to approach the Government of Her Majesty to secure its intervention for the purpose of establishing rights and averting internal strife. " (Signed) Francis Rhodes, Lionel Diillips, A. P. Ilillier, W. F. GilfiUan, V. !\r. Cement, Gordon Sandilands, Alje Bailey, II. A. Wolff, S. W. Jameson, II. A. Leith, F. R. Lingham, Max Langermann, A. L. Lawlcy, J. J. Lace, W. St. John Carr, George Farrar, J. Percy Fitzpatrick, Walter E. Hudson, John Hays Hammond, Jolm G. Auret,' E. P. Solomon, J. ^V. Leonard." Thus, on Monday, 30th December, did Johannesburg take off its coat to begin. 142 THE STORY OF Chapter X THE IRENE MYSTERY AND THE NACUT.MAAL SURPRISE BUT what, the mindful reader will ask, what has become all this time of the surprise attack on the Pretoria arsenal, which, according to Chapter II., was to have been almost the first move in the revolution ? It will be remembered that it was Johannesburg which was to have the controlling hand in its own challenge to the Government. Jameson's part, so far as it was ever clearly arranged at all, was to be merely a diversion, and a diver- sion which could be carried off under the pretext of an emergency police incidjnt for the protection of life and property. When the existing Governnunt was paralysed, and its police withdrawn (as did actually occur) ; when a Provisional Government was declared at Johannesburg ; when the im- provised forces of this Provisional Government were occupied at Pretoria or on the Pretoria Road ; a case would be created, plausible enough, for the Johannesburg leaders accepting the services of certain police, lately the Chartered (^omiriny's, who would then come in to police Johannesburg. It is one tiling to start a revolulion in a comjiiunity like Johannesburg. It is another thing to direct it. \\nu-n the Government withdrew its police, if anything like an .\K\an- dria riot had su|)ervened the case for tlirowing troop-; in from outside would have been so cogjnt lliat, failing Jameson's police, Imperial forces would probably have had to AN AFRICAN CRISIS 14.-5 be moved up. The emergency once provided for by Sir Henry Loch, in fixct, would have arisen. It is only by remembering this point about the original plot that many things in what actually happened become intelligible : such as the uncertainty of Jameson's destination, when he moved of his own accord, whether Johannesburg or Pretoria ; the entire absence of any arrangement for effecting a junction with Jameson, or for Johannesburg forces going out oa that side at all ; the construction of defensive works and posting of forces upon a design evidently framed with an eye towards Pretoria, not towards Krugersdorp ; and last, the Mystery of the Irene Estate, which greatly puzzled and alarmed the Pretoria Government at the time, and the story of which is here told for the first time. "Why was no step in the Pretoria part of the plot ever taken ? " One step was taken. Johannesburg, in fact, threw out its outposts as flir as the Irene Estate, almost within gun- shot of the church steeples of Pretoria. Almost immediately after the issue of the manifesto, steps were taken to store rifles and ammunition at this convenient spot. The Irene Estate, formerly the property of the late Mr. Nellmapius, was now in hands sympathetic to the Reform movement (though it does not follow that the owner was necessarily more cognisant of the way in which his property was to serve the revolution than worthy Volksraad member Malan in the matter of Jameson's remount horses). The estate was a very handy depot. The expedition to it was placed in charge of the son of a well- known ex-commandant of Colonial forces, who, however, like nearly everybody else in the affair, was not taken fully into the confidence of the conspirators. At the time of starting, he was told that he was to go in charge of a trading expedition, and to take with him a couple ot men of the farming class who could speak the taal and give the time of day to any Boer they might encounter in their travels. The expedition consisted of a couple of well-laden " buck- wagons " drawn by oxen. These left Johannesburg on th*- day 144 THE STURV OF following the issue of the manifesto. The first haliing-place was to be the Irene Estate, and the expedition \vas to await at that spot further instructions. Arriving at the farm, the expedition received orders to off- load, and store their goods in buildings on the estate. They did so, and during the work the men first learned the nature of the expedition in which they were engaged. They rose to the situation, did their work wilh speed and with a will, and soon had everything in apple-pie order. Then the)- awaited develop- ments. Strange to say, on the Tuesday following, orders came that the goods were to ba loaded up again and returned to Johan- nesburg with all possible despatch. Again the men worked like Trojans, and had their wagons full and their teams inspanned in double-quick time. But how to reach Johannesburg unseen by the Boers ! For the country was now all astir from the news of Jameson, and the splendid rally of the Boers to cut him off. The Pretoria road was likely to be much frequented, and by just the sort of parties that the pretended traders did not want to meet. The happy thought struck the young Englishman, or rather Welshman, in charge of the expedition, to avoid the President's highway, and striking across the veld hit an ordinary farmer's road leading to the Rand. Thanks to this idea, and good luck, and hard work, he managed to reach Johannesburg without encountering any too infiuisitive parly. The wagons passed the toll gate on Hospital Hill lalo at niglit, and proceeded to ihc " (loKlsrKKls "' building, where llie "goods" were again off-loaded - and were su])i)osed b\' the crowd to be part of the warlike stores brought noetunially iVoni the Simmer and Jack Mine. The men in charge had a narrow escape of cajjlure. \\'liat- evcr the source from which Pretoria drew its ct)gnisance ol the revolutionary plans, that cognisance was specially and anxiously alive to the menace to the scut of Government. The informa- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 145 lion even covered the fact that there was cause for search at "Irene." And on the Tuesday morning a small force under Mr. Malan, son-in-law of General Joubert, was sent out to in- vestigate. When the party reached Irene, the birds had flown. The high rt)ad was scoured — but, as we have seen, tlie birds had flown otlicrwise. And that is the Irene Mystery, which there is now no harm in telling. Dut the nerves of Pretoria were still fluttered, and it was not till Thursday morning that President Kruger would let the artillery go out of the capital, even to meet Jameson. General Joubert, who has been accused of treason for not responding to the urgent messages from the front, had actually given orders to the artillery to start, when the President interposed to stop it. He could not have the capital exposed to assaults from Johannesburg Now, why was the assault from Johannesburg never at- tempted ? Why were arms ordered out to Irene, only to be ordered back again, like the men of the " gallant Duke of York " ? The reason is simple ; even to absurdity. The Johannes- burg leaders had just discovered that the Boers keep Nacht- maal ! Christmas and New Year are great times to take com- munion. At the end of Decenil)cr and beginning of January, Church Square at Pretoria is white with the tents of outspanned wagons. Bearded farmers, and fat frows, and families, by scores of wagons, drawn from the Pretoria district up to several days' journey distant, have come to town to partake of Nacht- maal ; and in each wagon, along with the Bible, comes the rifle — in case of game on the way, or thieves, or other need. At any rate, those who had no rifle with them could soon be supplied. It was a ready-made garrison ! So when Jameson suddenly precipitated matters, and Jolian- L 146 THE STORY OF nesburg sent to spy out the land at Pretoria, lo ! the Church Square was tliick with Boers. The Pretoria sur[)rise was a wild and hazardous idea in any case. But with Pretoria full of Boers, it dissolved into thin air. To this day there are many, eager revolutionaries at the time, who do not know that it was ever dreamed of. ^Vs it was, the preparedness of the Government shows that the scheme was confided to one too many. But had it been confided to two or three more, surely some one or other would have known his South Africa well enough to remember the institution of Nachtmaal ! As it was, the geese of the Capitol were not more useful to Rome than the Boers in the Church Square were to Pretoria. •''Once again," the Boer historian of the future will remark, " we wore saved by our religion ! ^' AN AFRICAN CRISIS 147 Chapter XI A PREMIER'S " APPLE- CART" THE news of the raid uslicrcd in a drama at Cape Town scarcely less moving than that enacted at Johannesburg, save that at Cape Town the action was mostly behind the scenes. At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, the 29th of December, the telegraph office opened, and, to quote the words of the Cape Committee of Inquiry, " it is in evidence that the telegram from Dr. Jameson of the evening of the 29th, as well as that of the morning of the 29th, were both handed to an official of the Chartered Company some time between ten and eleven a.m. on that morning." Imagine the feelings of Mr. Stevens when he decoded, one on the top of the other, the message, " I shall go unless I hear," and the message, " I shall go in any case this even- ing ! " He took a cab and dashed off to Three Anchor Bay, where Dr. Harris lived. He found Dr. Harris breakfasting. The Secretary of the British South Africa Company took Mr. Stevens' cab and posted out to Groote Schuur, while Mr. Stevens was despatched to the telegraph office to " kciep Mafe- king open." But the operators could not ring Mafeking. At Groote Schuur Mr. Rhodes, closeted with the two Johannesburg emissaries, to whom was shown Jameson's startling messages as soon as he could escape from a mad- dening tablefuU of guests at luncheon, walked up and down with his hair roughed up, repeating mechanically from time to time : " Now just be cool. Let's think this thing out. Now just be cool," and so on. It" seems clear that Jameson's two messages threw Mr 148 THE STORY OF Rhodes into a kind of fatalistic vacillation. An impulse of irritation with his old friend for breaking away was followed by a rush of confidence that the man who was neither to hold nor to bind had flung himself into a great enterprise, and would somehow carry it through. Between three and four o'clock Dr. Harris returned from Groote Schuur to Cape Town with a message signed " Unbe- gangen," a private code name for Mr. Rhodes, as follows : — " Heartily reciprocate your wishes with regard to Protectorate, but the Colonial Oftice machinery moves«fclowly, as you know. We are, how- ever, doing our utmost to get immediate transference of what we are justly entitled to. Things in Johannesburg I yet hope to see amicably settled, and a little patience and common sense is only necessary. On no account whatever must you move. I most strongly object to such a course." The reader's first thought will be, how oddly worded the beginning of the message is as a reply to Jameson's breathless telegrams, with no part of which it seems to connect. The Cape Committee of Inquiry were fairly puzzled by this Pro- tectorate reference. It might even be suspected that the intention of the first ])art was to detract from the emphatic veto of the second part and turn the whole telegram, on some pre-arranged plan of interpretation, into a blind. lUit apart from any other reason against this, the tek'grani was never made use of as a blind, nor shown to any one in justilication during the ditficult days which followed. I.ong afterwards, it came to light without Mr. Rhodes' approval by a sort of accident.* More plausible, ])erhaps, is the theory that the veto was genuine, and that the cahu and philosophic beginning of it was deliberately calculated as a cold douche for the ardent recijjient. If Jameson was " bluffing," the best way was to dismiss his tiux-at of going in as nonsense. If he was not bluffing, but really meant what he said, then any \eto at this point was a mere matter of form. • Mr. Stevens gratified the curiosity of the Sekrl Cninmilde by pnMhicing the draft, and his su|x;ri()rs seem to liave disajiproved the disclosure as prejudicing Jameson, whoso trial was then imminent. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 149 Whatever the intention of the telegram, it was never sent. When Mr. Stevens took it to the office on Sunday, the Une to Mafeking was still closed. He tried and tried again, until late that evening. Early next morning he again took the telegram to the office, and ascertained that the wire had been cut. In the end he did not leave the telegram at all at the office — another evidence, by the way, that it was not a sham veto in- tended merely to be put on record. By the time that commu- nication with Mafeking was restored matters had passed into a new phase, Mr. Rhodes having folded his hands and left every- thing to Fate and the High Commissioner ; and Mr. Stevens seems not to have sought or received any further instructions. At eleven o'clock that Sunday night the Imperial Secretary, who had gone to lied, for vSouth African hours are early, was roused by an urgent message from Mr. Rhodes. He hurried to Groote Schuur. Mr. Rhodes at once told him of Jameson's telegrams received that morning. He mentioned in a general way that he had tried to stop Jameson, but could not com- municate, said that there was a chance that the messengers from Johannesburg, who would have reached the Doctor aft(T the despatch of his morning telegram, might have changed his mind, but did not conceal the fact that he fancied Jameson would now stop for nobody. At that season of the year the Governor abandons Govern- ment House for a country villa at the suburb of Newlands. From his midnight interview at Groote Schuur the Imperial Secretary went home to spend a few sleepless hours before going to Newlands House to rouse Sir Hercules Robinson untimely from his slumbers. A phrase in the following note has become historical : — " Newlands House, " Monday, December '}pth, 1S95, 5 a.m. " My dear Sir Hercui.es,— " I hope you will come to town early. There is, I fear, bad news from Jameson. He seems to have disobeyed Rhodes, and to have taken the bit between his teeth. "Yours, etc., Graham Bower." ISO THE STORY OF Sir Hercules Robinson did "come into town early" that Monday morning, and confronted with admirable coolness the perplexed situation. The first thing was to find if Jameson had actually started. He telegraphed to the Resident Com- missioner, Mafcking, mentioning Jameson's violation of the border as a rumour, asking if it were true, and directing Mr. Newton, if so, to send a special messenger on a fast horse ordering him to return immediately, and carrying appropriate warnings, peremptory in tone, also to Jameson's officers. It was the first message to go through on the restored wire. Thanks to the success of the troopers sent to cut the south- ward wire, and the drunken failure of those who should have cut the wire to Pretoria, Cape Town, like Johannesburg, had its first authentic news of the raid from President Kruger's capital. Earlier on Monday morning the British Agent at Pretoria, Sir Jacobus de ^Vet, had sent a telegram which puts on record what a tension public feeling had reached already before Jameson's move was heard of: — "Great excitement prevails here, and a feeling of disturbance and in- security is very strong on both sides. Rumours of fully armed strong force of burghers freely circulated. Disturbance may happen at any moment ; it is a critical state of afTairs. Should I call on President South African Republic, and ask him what provisions have been made for protection of law-abiding British subjects ? " This Sir Jacobus followed up by anolhiT telegram, ri.'Count- ing that the President had just sent for him, when ("leneral Joubcrt had read a telegram from the Landdrost of Zeerust, giving the news. Sir Jacobus de AN'el had assiued the Presi- dent that he could not believe the force consisted of ICnglish troops. General Joubert said they might be Mashonalatul or Bechuanaland Police, but whoever they were, he would take immediate steps to stop them. 'J'lie Presidt'tit wanted to know what the High Commissioner had to s.iy to it, and the IJritish Agent, poor man, turned upon l)y the I'Aecutive ("ouiuil in its AN AFRICAN CRISIS 151 dismay, was driven almost wild by a block on the wires, which prevented him from receiving the answers from Government House, clearly defining the High Commissioner's attitude towards Jameson, till he had sjnt a number of more and more agitated messages, one of which concluded : " The Govern mcnt has already sent for me twice. Possibly blood has already been shed." Meantime, Sir Hercules Robinson had to deal with Mr. Rhodes, an old political co-worker, to whom he found himself in a tryingly new relation. Mr. Rhodes must be made to range himself either as an ally of the High Commissioner against Jameson, or as an abettor of Jameson against the orders of Her Majesty's representative. Sir Hercules was prompt to present the alternative, but in view of the ascendency which Mr. Rhodes had come to wield alike in the Colony and in Downing Street, he must have been glad to receive, as he did on Monday morning, the remarkable cablegram which Mr. Chamberlain had despatched on the previous day, showing that Sir Hercules would have Her Majesty's Government be- hind him in sternly asserting the Queen's treaty obligations : " (Strictly confidential.) " It has been suggested, although I do not think it probable, that an endeavour might be made to force matters at Johannesburg to a head by some one in the service of the Company advancing from Bechuanaland Protectorate with police. " Were this to be done, I should have to take action under Articles 22 and 8 of the Charter. Therefore, if necessary, but not otherwise, remind Rhodes of these Articles, and intimate to him that, in your opinion, he would not have my support, and point out the consequences which would follow." This message, dated from London, 5.30 p.m., the 29th of December, and therefore despatched just between the time of the parade at Pitsani and the parade at Mafeking preliminary to starting, is an odd coincidence, and sounds like a case for the Psychical Research Society. A Minister of the Colony (Sir James Sivewright) has even had the indiscretion to refer to 152 THE STORY OF it once in debate as matter for inquiry. But, as Mr. Chamber- lain afterwards explained in the House of Commons with great simplicity, it was really due to the fact that Mr. Secretary Fair- field, who has South Africa under his special wing at the Colonial Office, had been led by the publication of the Leonard Manifesto in the Times of the previous day, and by the growing confidence of certain club and private rumours, as described in a previous chapter, to convey an urgent representation to his Chief, which made the latter feel that he must at once put the High Commissioner on his guard. The High Commissioner then took steps to corner Mr. Rhodes at once, but Mr. Rhodes was not to be found. In- stead of sitting in the Premier's Office in Grave Street, besieged by long queues of callers waiting to see him in one or other of his multifiirious capacities, he discreetly remained all day in the umbrageous seclusion of Groote Schuur. Some years ago, when Mr. Rhodes decided to leave off living en ganon at the club, and to take unto himself a house, he bought an old Dutch grange, with rococo gables and a pillared stoep in the ancient colonial style, built on the Ronde- bosch slopes of the Devil's Peak. This he restored, lined it with teak, filled it witli tlie old Dutch furniture n )w becoming rare, and bought up the best piece of Table Mountain to create a free menagerie for all Cape Town to wander in by stocking the labyrinthine glades and woods with antelopes, rare birds, and all the fast disappearing fauna of South Africa. It is his habit to get up at five or six in the morning and go for a gallop along some of the immensely various mountain paths of this great pleasance. On Monday, the 30th of De'Cembcr, 1S95, those wjio sought Mr. Rliodes at Cape Town learnt that he was at Groote Schuur, and those who sought him at Groote Schuur learnt that he was riding the slopes of Table Mountain. The IJlue IJook contains two stiff and foniial Utters from the Imperial Secretary to tlic \\vj}\{ llonourabk- C. Rhodes, Rondebtjsch, of which lliis sciiteiicij strikes the key : — AN AFRICAN CRISIS 153 " I have called several times at your office this morning for the purpose of conveying to you His Excellency's instructions for the immediate recall of Dr. Jameson, but you have not, so far as is known, been at any of the public offices, or at the British South Africa Company's offices. I therefore send this note by special messenger to your private residence." Which two letters evoked the following undated, laconic, and characteristically informal reply : — " My dicar Bower, — "Jameson has gone in without my authority. I hope our messages may have stopped him. I am sorry to have missed you. " Yours, "C. J. Rhodes." Meanwhile, the persistence and reality of the apprehensions roused at the Colonial Office that Sunday and Monday were again shown by the receipt at Government House of a tele- gram following up the warning about Jameson's possible in- tentions. Sir Hercules had crossed the first warning by a message remarking (on the strength of Mr. Rhodes' " damp squib " expression) that the movement at Johannesburg seemed to have collapsed through internal divisions, and that leaders of the National Union would probably now make the best terms they could with President Kruger. To this (Saturday) telegram Mr. Chamberlain now replied : " Are you sure Jame- son has not moved in consequence of collapse ? See my tele- gram of yesterday." It was not till very late on Monday or early on Tuesday morning that Sir Hercules got Mr. Chamber- lain's reply to his definite news of the crossing of the border : " Your action," said Mr. Chamberlain, " is cordially approved. I presume that Mr. Rhodes will co-operate with you in recall- ing Administrator of Matabeleland. Keep me informed fully of political situation in all its aspects. It is not understood here. Leave no stone unturned to prevent mischief."' Mr. Rhodes was not destined wholly to escape being cornered on this first day of the crisis. The first intelligence of the raid to the Cape Government, 154 THE STORY OF Mr. Rhodes' colleagues in the Cape Ministry, came not from him, but in due official course from Mr. Boyes, Resident Magistrate at Mafeking. He wired on Monday to his chief, the Attorney-General, nominally 8 a.m. (received in Cape Town when the wire was restored at i o'clock), reporting the de- parture of the Mafeking part of the column, 150 strong, and stating their intention of joining another column from Pitsani, under Jameson, as a rumour " currently reported." Mr. Schreiner had this about two o'clock, and so utterly scouted the " currently reported " story that he sent back a stiff " snub " — so the magistrate afterwards complained — beginning "your agitated telegram received." But on the heels of Mr. Boyes' telegram came a more detailed one from Inspector Fuller of the Cape Police, and at last, instead of snubs, semi-apologetic instructions had to be sent north. The local officials were advised of the correct attitude of the Colony towards an " un- authorized mad proceeding," and told to keep quiet watch along the border, and telegraph any news. Mr. Schreiner could not believe his eyes, nor could Mr, Faurc, the Minister for Agriculture, the first of his colleagues whom he happened to meet, but the reports were too circum- stantial. None of Mr. Rhodes' colleagues, and few of his friends, have been closer to him than his late Attorney-Cicneral. Of German parentage, but born and educated in the Colony till he went to Cambridge and London, the Honourable W. P. Schreiner, Q.C., is perhaps the sincerest, as he is (luitc the most intellectual, specimen of the young Afrikander patriot in Cape Colony, where those who call themselves by this name are apt to be of no great parts and of still less straightforward- ness. All the Schreiners are clever, are in earnest, are head- strong, fine minded, and a little incalculable. Some of the genius which Olive Schrcimr pui into tlic "Story of an Alrican J'arm " this brother has turned into the thy channel of Ronian- Diitcii law. Another brother and another sister are extraor- dinarily earnest Tein|)erance reformers. A i)rol'ound and subtle AN AFRICAN CRISIS 155 legal scholar, sharing with Mr. Rose-Innes the leadership of the Cape Bar, Mr. Schreiner was carried into politics at the chariot wheels of Mr. Rhodes. He was likely to go far, be- cause his rather paradoxical mind has sincerely arrived by some strange speculative course at nearly all the identical fossilized beliefs which make up the mental equipment of the most ignorant member of the Afrikander Bond. Mr. Rhodes found in him a young lieutenant who would defend all the Afrikander side of his policy with both brains and conviction, while Mr. Schreiner fell in love with Mr. Rhodes' personality ; which, with all its crudities, casts a strange spell on many men of different temperaments. No man in all South Africa was more truly cut to the heart by the Jameson Raid than Mr. Schreiner, but he has risked his ambitions and lost ground with many of those whose leadership he was almost winning away from Mr. Hofmeyr, now out of Parliament, because since the raid, he will insist on speaking of Mr. Rhodes always with sorrow rather than with anger. The critical meeting between the two colleagues was thus one for a psychological novelist. On the fateful Sunday evening Mr. Schreiner had seen Mr. Rhodes for a few minutes and asked : " Have you seen Charlie Leonard ? " " Yes," said Mr. Rhodes indifferently, " I have seen him." " For goodness' sake," said INIr. Schreiner, "keep yourself clear from that entanglement at Johannesburg. If there is any disturbance they are sure to try and mix you up with it." Mr. Rhodes, as Mr. Schreiner observed to the Select Com- mittee, is not a man of many words. He shrugged his shoulders and said, " Oh ! that is all right." On Monday evening Mr. Schreiner hurried out to Groote Schuur with the amazing telegrams from Bechuanaland. Mr. Rhodes was still on the mountain side. Mr. Schreiner left an urgent message asking to see him, and after supper, Mr. Rhodes' confidential man went across and asked him to come over at once. Mr. Schreiner hurried through the wood in the 156 THE STORY OF dark — he lives on the edge of Mr. Rhodes' grounds — Mr Rhodes' man lighting him with a lantern. For three hours the two colleagues were closeted in Mr. Rhodes' library. It was a significant, and in a sense a memorable interview, because it typified the great struggle between Afrikander sympathies with the Transvaal and Afrikander devotion to Mr. Rhodes over which so many friends and supporters have agonized since. The library at Groote Schuur is a cosy, teak-lined room, furnished in keeping with the old-fashioned Dutch style of the house. The principal feature of the book shelves is a unique collection of " cribs " of almost the whole of classical literature, — cribs carefully made and typewritten to Mr. Rhodes' order, and sumptuously bound. On one wall hangs a tattered Union Jack from some scene of battle, also a flag taken from the Portuguese by Mr. Rhodes' pioneers at the time of the "Manica Incident," when that funny little scuffle took place at Massikessi which ended so differently from the scuffle at Krugersdorp. Nothing could be more dramatic, nor, to those who know Mr. Rhodes' manner, more expressively accurate, than Mr. Schreiner's own account of their talk : — " I went into his study with Ihc Iclcgmms in my hand. "The moment I saw him I saw a man I liad never seen before. I lis appearance was utterly dejected and diflerent. " Before I could say a word, he said : ' Ves, yes, it is true. Old Jameson has upset my apple-cart. It is all true.' " I said I had some lelei;rams. " lie said : ' Nevermind. It is all true. <^ld Jameson has upset my apple-cart,' reiterating in the way he does when he is moved. " I was staggered. I said : ' What do you mean, what can you mean ? ' *' He said : ' Ves, it is ((uite true, he has ridden in. do and write out your resignation. CIo, I know you will.' " .^nd so I said: ' It is not a question of my going to write out my resignation ' ; hut I elicited from him a good many facts in relation to this matter, and I told him that it was his duty to convene a Cahinet meeting at once. " During this entire interview Mr. Rhodes was really hroken down. He AN AFRICAN CRISIS 157 was broken down. lie was not the man who could he playing that part. Whatever the reason may have been, when I spoke to him he was bioken down. If it were unfair I woukl not say it, but it is true. He could not have acted that part ; if he did he is the best actor I have ever seen. He was absolutely broken dcjwn in spirit ; ruined. " I said : ' Why do )i)u not stop him ? Althoutjh he has riikkii in, you can still stop him.' " He said : ' Poor old Jameson. Twenty years we have been friends, and now he goes in and ruins me. I cannot hinder him. I cannot go and destroy him.' " That was how he put it. That was the attitude he assumed to me. Much took place between us. I do not want to go into that. I left in very great distress. It was impossible to do anything on that night, and I left with the understanding that the first thing in the morning he would convene the Cabinet. " We did meet. It was never after uncertain, from the moment that we met Mr. Rhodes there, that Mr. Rhodes must resign." It should be added that though Mr. Schreiner frankly told the Select Committee that he was not certain in his own mind that part of Mr. Rhodes' agitation may not have been due to the threatening cablegram which had been communicated to him from Mr. Chamberlain that afternoon, yet that he person- ally had no doubt, after all the subsequent disclosures, that Mr. Rhodes did strongly disapprove of Jameson going in at that time. He added : — " You would ask me for my theory why Mr. Rhodes did not use more energy and vigour in stopping Dr. Jameson. I have given you all that I could gather from him when he, in a heart-broken way, said, ' Poor old Jameson, poor old Jameson, we have been friends twenty years, he is ruining mc now, but I cannot go and pull him liack.' " In short, from Mr. Schreincr's point of ^iew, — • " Ilis honour rooted in dishonour stood. And faitli unfaithful kept him falsely true." When Mr. Rhodes did meet his Cabinet he set himself desperately to hold it together long enough to give Jameson time to get to Johannesburg, and in the secjuel, through a con- 158 THE STORY OF junction of causes, the resignation ^vhich he hastened to place in the Governor's hands, and which neither the Governor nor Mr. Chamberlain would accept as long as there was hope or pretence of Mr. Rhodes co-operating with them against Jameson, was only accepted by telegram when the Governor was on his way up to Pretoria. An emergency Ministry was then gathered together by Sir Gordon Sprigg, lately Mr. Rhodes' Treasurer-General, but a person witli whom the formation of Cape Ministries is almost a habit, antl that Min- istry, having survived the emergency, seems now fairl}- rooted to its bench. With Mr. Hofmeyr soon afterwards Mr. Rhodes was scarcely less frank than with Mr. Schreiner. His two interviews with the Bond Leader, the last they are likely to have for many & long day, may fitly conclude this chapter, the contents of which are mainly personal. The relation between these two men, each so strong and shrewd, and sure of what he himself wanted, has been one of the curiosities of Cape politics, of which for half a dozen years they had been the great twin brethren. The writer well remembers a little birthday feast at Mr. Hofmeyr's house, when a presentation was made to him by Members of Parliament in connection with his retirement from the Chamber where he had so often made and unmade the Ministries he would never enter. It was Mr. Rh(xles who proposed his friend's health. He recalled how, when he him- self first entered Cape Politics, in the first bitterness after the Transvaal struggle, he Vas an arrant rooinek Britisher ; how, in Mr. Hofmeyr, the leader of the op[)osite ])arty in the (^ilony, he had found the faiiLsl of o])poncnts, yil thr slaunc best of allies; how tlicy had gradually conu- lo lind that tluir points of view were not so dissimilar, and al last to work gradually together. "People have disputed whether 1 led Mr. Hofmeyr or Mr. Hofmeyr led me," said Mr. Rhodes in his blunt way. *' I say that our minds worked in the same direction," and then came a curious passage —it struck one hearer, at least, as curious at the lime — "Every man," Mr. Rhodes said in a AN AFRICAN CRISIS 159 hesitating way, " works for personal ends. Mr. Hofmeyr's personal end was, nothing for himself, but it was to get the best position he could for his own people in this country." The speaker paused, and one half expected him to add that his personal end was to do the like for his countrymen, but he broke off, concluding lamely — " and therefore I ask you to drink to Mr. Hofmeyr, as a true patriot," and buried his re- marks in his glass of champagne. Mr. Rhodes did not conceal from Mr. Hofmeyr that he knew more than appeared on the surface about all that had led up to Jameson's move, and Mr. Hofmeyr did not, at that first interview, waste time on reproaches, or moralities, or ejacula- tions about being hoodwinked by his friend up to the very moment of the crisis, ^^'ith that practical mind of his he set himself to induce Mr. Rhodes to come out with a strong public repudiation of Jameson, but Mr. Hofmeyr and the High Commissioner and Mr. Chamberlain together could not wring that out of the Cape Premier. Had they known all, they would not have tried. That Jameson had gone in without his consent; that the sudden move was a surprise to him ; that he had tried to stop Jameson too late; so much Mr. Rhodes would say, but not a word more, nor would he conceal that so far from a spirit of denunciation, he cherished a wild hope that Jameson might somehow win and tumble Paul Kruger down. " You will not pretend to me," said Mr. Hofmeyr, for indeed there had never been any pretences in their relations, "that you have mixed yourself up with this outrage from an over- Avhclming democratic sympathy with the poor, down-trodden, working-men who are now drawing big wages on the Rand ? " " No," said Mr. Rhodes coldly, " I shall not pretend," and they parted, each knowing well that this was the parting of the ways of their two careers. Days afterwards, when the worst was over, friends who could not face the rending in twain of the joint-party which had looked to the two as leaders, contrived to bring them together for another interview. In the meantime Mr. Hofmeyr, already i6o THE STORY OF denounced by the zealots of the neighbouring Republics as one of the Rhodolaters who had brought this trouble on South Africa, had been compelled to make public various bitter expressions. He now justified himself. He spoke with emo- tion. He declared it was difficult not to use the word perfidy. " I could explain better," he said, " if you had ever been a married man. You were never married. I have not yet for- gotten the relation of perfect trust and intimacy whicli a man has with his wife. We have often disagreed, you and I, but I would no more have thought of distrusting you than a man and his wife think of distrusting each other in any joint under- taking. So it was till now ; and now you ha\e let me go on being apparently intimate while you knew that this was prepar- ing, and said nothing." Perhaps Mr. Rhodes felt that the reproach was just. Perhaps he felt that it was over-charged and that Mr. Hofmeyr was pretending to take the poj)ular and conventional view of a position, the tangled casuistry of which he at least might have done justice to. At any rate he was not able or willing to pour forth the exculpation which seemed to be expected of him, and sullenly or stoically he let pass the storm, and with it the opportunity for patching up any kind of peace.^ Mr. Hofmeyr was left free to take whatever steps against Mr. Rhodes might be demanded by just indignation or by political exigencies. He has taken few public steps. Ikit he does not come of a forgiving stock. Such was the upsetting of a PremiiT's a])ple-eart at ("ape Town, ^^'e nuist now go baik to the powder carl at Johan- nesburg. ' It seems thai Mr. IlnfiiH'yr had usid llic saiiu' nialiimciuial ilhistiallon to other less inliinalc pciM.ns, (Hic of wlioiii had uiuatrd il In Mi. Uhndcs just before the meeting with Mr. ll'ifauyr. 'I'Ims the dUct was somcwiiat staled. AN AFRICAN CRISIS i6i Chapter XII A BOOM IN REVOLUTIONS ^'Y^UESDAY, December 31^/.— The last day of the old M year dawned upon a position of unparalleled com- plexity. Here was a town entirely, as events proved, unprepared for the serious work of war, with Jameson march- ing to its relief on the one hand, and Pretoria preparing for attack on the other. Public opinion was bitterly hostile towards Pretoria, yet shrank from joining forces with Jameson. This was in the early hours of Tuesday morning, December 31st. The Reform Committee then made up their minds to accept the situation as just described, and formally repudiated Jameson. Through their organ,^ they disavowed "any know- ledge of, or sympathy with, the entry into the Republic of an armed force from the Bechuanaland side," and denied having been " in any way privy to the lamentable step." At an early hour of the morning the Committee published the following solemn declaration : — " Sir, — I am directed to state for the information of the public that it is reported a large force has crossed the Border into Transvaal territory, and to say that this has taken place without the knowledge of the Committee. A. deputation consisting of Messrs. Lionel Phillips, J. G. Auret, W. E. Hudson, D. Lingham, and Max Langermann is leaving this evening to meet Government in reference to the situation. " By order, " A. Kelsey, " Secretary Reform Committee." ' The Stat- was not officially the Reform Committee's mouthpiece ; but practically it became so, and a very vigorous and eloquent one. M i62 THE STORY OF Unhappily, nobody could yet make up his mind to provide Johannesburg as Pretoria was presently provided, with the simple clue to the mystery, viz., that Jameson had been first invited and then stopped or adjourned. The air thus cleared by simple repudiation of Jameson, the Committee were free to consider again the question " Under which flag," which the new development made again insistent. "Was it to be the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, or the " Vierkleur " ? The matter was a weighty one, and on it the unanimity of the Committee, and, therefore, as it then seemed, the success of the Cause depended. The matter was earnestly debated in the Council Chamber of the " Goldflelds " building. Only the day before Captain Mein of the Robinson, as typical a Yankee as ever chewed tobacco, declared that Americans did not want the British flag, but if it came to a matter of choice between the English flag and the Pretoria Government they would fight for the former. But the Jameson news changed this attitude, and Mr. J. H. Hammond, pressed by excited compatriots, insisted that the Committee should now publicly register the previous formal decision of the smaller junto to abide by the flag of the status quo. But where was the flag to hoist ? Mr. Hammond first tried to borrow a vierkleur from a Government official, who, however, could not be persuaded that the purpose was not one of insult. Eventually, the necessary bunting was secured from a linen- draper. He brought this into the room where the Committee was now sitting in perpetual session, and somebody set the example of signifying allegiance to the flag of the Republic with uplifted hand. At half past eleven a figure was observed by the crowd out- side the " Goldfield '' offices to emerge upon the balcony, and point up at an unfurled vierkleur^ with its red, white, green, and blue stripes ; one or two other figures came out and also pointed up. Such was the formal pul)lic act of dedication. Thousands of people who loitered in the vicinity looked on with silent amazement, not knowing what it all meant. The AN AFRICAN CRISIS 163 " Flag Question " wrangling had never extended to the people at large. Subsequently the flag was hoisted to the roof of the building, and from that position it fluttered unmolested in the breeze until the downfall of the Uitlander cause, when bunting of this particular make became more in request at Pretoria. The " Flag Question " settled, the Committee now turned their attention to a matter of more cogent importance. It was known that the burgher forces had been instructed to repel the invasion, and, although Johannesburg had formerly and officially repudiated Jameson, it was deemed politic to put the city into a state of defence against a possible surprise. Com- promise was now once again in the air, and the bearing of the Reform Committee might be gauged from the following official notice posted on the " Goldfields " doors shortly after high noon : — *' Notice is herel)y given that this Reform Committee adheres to the National Union Manifesto and reiterates its desire to maintain the in- dependence of the RepuliHc. The fact that rumours are in course of cir- culation to the effect that a force has crossed the Bechuanaland border, renders it necessary to take active steps for the defence of Johannesburg and perservation of order. The Committee earnestly desire that the in- habitants should refrain from taking any action which can be construed as an overt act of hostility against the Government. " By order of the Committee, "J. Percy FiTzrAXRicK, '' Strre/arj'." The military preparations were very much e?i evidence now. Throughout the night arms and ammunition had been served out at the " Goldfields " office and at the Simmer and Jack Mine. At an early hour of the morning the townspeople were afforded other signs of the thorough preparedness, as it then appeared, of the Reform Committee. Some strings of horses, between fourteen and fifteen hands, were brought into town, some from the Robinson Mine, others from the Simmer and Jack, the Langlaagte Estate, and other places. The ponies i64 THE STORY OF were taken to Reform Committee stables, where they were saddled and accoutred, and generally made ready for service in the field. There wao a business-like air about the whole pro- ceeding. Colonel E. Bettington, an old Colonial hand, was in charge, and the forces that were being mounted now became known as Bettington's Horse. There were two troops each sixty strong, of as serviceable a body of men as could well be imagined. Their uniform was kharki suits, with leggings, smasher hats with red bands. As fast as companies of twenty or thirty were mounted and accoutred, they departed, and great commotion was occasioned by a body of them riding out in the direction of Viljoen's Drift on the Vaal River — the popular surmise being that they had gone to guard the Vaal River bridge. Recruiting was continued at a brisk pace throughout the day. Nearly a dozen different agencies were employed. Several mines had shut down the previous night, and the men thus liberated flocked into town to enrol in the Reform Com- mittee's forces, to receive arms, and to undergo drill. As the men were enrolled they were formed into companies under commanders, who for the most part had had some experience of Kafir warfare, and were at once marched to one or other of the several squares, and put through their first drill. Offers of outside assistance, from the Colony aiid Natal, poured in upon the Reform Committee, and the puljlication of this fact stirred a lively spirit in town. " South Africa is with us!" The commonplaces about avoiding bloodshed flickered out. The glitter and trai)pings of war caught the popular imagin- ation, and the changing humour of the town responded to the morning s preparations. I?y the luncheon hour, war-tilk held the streets. Men now began to doubt wluthtr, afttT all, the Reform Committee had done well and wisely in repudiating Jameson. Rumour came in that Jameson had engaged a largo nmiibcr of lioers in the course of liis march, and had beaten tlii.in off; that he was ijffssing on victorious towards the AN AFRICAN CRISIS 165 Golden City. " He'll be here on Thursday," was the cry that went up, and the manner of his reception was already being discussed. The ferment increased hour by hour. Tradesmen com- menced barricading their shop windows and doors, and armed their employees for the protection of their premises, while jewellers removed their valuables to safe keeping in the vaults of the Johannesburg Safe Deposit Company. Great excite- ment was occasioned early in the afternoon by the receipt of a wire from Pretoria to the effect that a well-known townsman had met the Executive Council and represented the perfect organization and equipment behind the Uitlander movement. "The President was amazed," so ran the wire, "at the large number of Maxim guns which are at our command, and was especially staggered at the Nordenfeldt guns in the possession of the Reform Committee." He might well be. They had no such thing as a Nordenfeldt among them. The panic of the cautious and the mercantile had its natural sequel in a run on the Banks. All day long the banking halls were thronged by people madly anxious to withdraw money. Nothing but gold would suffice. People who were leaving drew their all. People who had money about them in the shape of paper converted it into sovereigns, and the notes of the National Bank of the Transvaal, so far as street exchange was concerned, were at a discount. The biggest run of all was upon the National Bank, from which, on behalf of the Govern- ment, the Post Office Savings Bank was supplied. Numbers of customers of this institution withdrew their deposits to the last penny. Some at once transferred the gold to the Standard Bank, whilst others took the hoard home and secreted it about their farms. One farmer took three thousand British sove- reigns, which he said he would bury in his land. The National Bank kept open after hours to meet the demand ; but all requirements were satisfied, the Bank receiving a special con- signment of gold from the State Mint. Another development of the situation was the formation of i66 THE STORY OF a field ambulance corps, and a hospital corps. The doctors of the town and district to the number of seventy, met at the Rand Club, and appointed an Executive consisting of the leading medicos. The St. John Ambulance Association undertook to provide nurses, orders were placed for all neces- sary requirements, and the Wanderers' Pavilion, the Rand Club, and the Freemasons' Hall were placed at the disposal of the Committee for hospital purposes. In this connection the following advertisements were published : — AMBULANCE NURSES REQUIRED. All qualified nurses or ladies willing to assist in case of need, please apply, personally, so soon as possible for instructions to Dr. Hunt Phillips, 70, Jeppe Street, or Dr. F. II. SiMMONDS, 87, Jcppe St., Von Brandis Sq. By order, St. John Amhulance Society. AMBULANCE CORPS. Volunteer Stretcher Bearers required for the Ambulance Corts. Apply lo Johannesburg Ambulance Coiumittee, Masonic Hall, Jeppe Street. To the eternal fame of such ladies as slill remained in Johannesburg, there was no lack of offers in reply to the first- mentioned advertisement. Ladies came willingly forward to discliargc their ])art in the national movement ; their names were duly enrolled, and as fir as lime and cirriunstances would permit, they were instructed in the ])rinciples of First Aid. AiioiIk r humane feature of the crisis was the forma- tion of a l-lelief Fund in aid of such as inighl suffer in con- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 167 sequence of the movement. The first subscribers comprise the following : ^ £ H. Eckstein & Co. ... ... ... 10,000 Lionel Phillips ... ... ... ... 5,000 Consolidated Goldfields ... ... 15,000 George Farrar ... ... ... ... 10,000 Lace & Thompson ... ... ... 5,000 Lingham Timber Syndicate, Ltd. ... 1,000 Abe Bailey ... ... ... ... 5,000 S. Neumann & Co. ... ... ... 10,000 Barnato Bros. ... ... ... ... 10,000 Fehr & Du Bois ... ... ... 1,000 H. B. Marshall 2,000 W. D. (" Karri ") Davies ... ... 1,000 W. H. Adler 1,000 Victor Wolff ... ... ... ... 250 Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation ... 100 The disposal of this princely fund was entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Kelly, who discharged his duty to the general satisfaction. With the growing tension of feeling in the streets as the day wore on, a crowd of men, estimated at ten thousand, assembled in the neighbourhood of the " Goldfields," and anxiously awaited some sign from the Committee. A new fear was in the air. The distribution of arms had been suspended, and rumour got abroad that the Reform Committee was not so well prepared after all. The thought was maddening, and there were loud and persistent calls for some one or other of the leaders to come out and explain. " Make J. W. Leonard speak," Jameson had remarked in one of the cipher telegrams ; and the eloquent Q.C., brother ^ As this list is published it should be added that Messrs. Barnato, Bailey, and Lace eventually, on some pretexts about the application of the fund, refused to contribute the second instalment of their donations, and should therefore be credited with only half of the amounts stated. i6S THE STORY OF of the National Union Chairman, now stepped into the breach. Addressing the multitude from horseback, INIr. Leonard de- clared that every precaution that i)rudence combined with capital military knowledge and political sagacity could take had been taken to ensure the safety of the town. There were, he declared, sufficient organized, armed, and equipped men ready to cope with any force the Boers might send against them. There would be a satisfactory settlement of the diffi- culty before long. There was a Reform Committee, which was practically a Provisional Government, consisting of the best and strongest men that could be found in the place, who were taking charge of affairs. The constitution of such a com- mittee was inevitable. It was, however, only provisional, and there was no intention to go back on the feelings of the people of this place or to impose upon them anything of which they might not ultimately approve. Needless to say, these senti- ments were cheered to the echo. There was now a Provisional Covernment, and the first shadow of its autliority appeared almost immediately in the shape of a small detachment of mounted riflemen who rode up and stationed themselves in front of the " Goldfields " building. This informal declaration of a Provisional Government stim- ulated activity amongst Government officials. A meeting was hastily summoned, and at its close the Commandant of Police came outside the Government Buildings and addressed a gathering of some hundreds, chiefly of the Boer class. Amongst other things, he said that they wanted to maintain the independence of the Stale. If necessary, they were pre- pared to resort to force of arms, though they sincerely trusteil that no such ultimatum would \k- uvrvss:\r\. He counselled them all to kcc]) their mouths shut and not create any dis- turbance, 'i'he Government relied upon the townspeople coming forward in case of need, and arms would be served out if necessary. T/wre 7vcn' si'iYm! fhousand J>ocrs outside the toivn in case of emergency, but they trusted they would get over the difficulty without their aid. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 169 This emphatic statement concerning the army of Boers which thus early in the crisis were massed near Johannesburg sounded as if the Government was well prepared beforehand for something, if not exactly for the raid. The next official tribute to the seriousness of the situation was even more striking. The Commandant of Police agreed with the Reform Committee that to "avoid possible collisions," MR. CHARLES LEONARD. he should entirely withdraw the Government police from the town. The Committee undertook to police Johnnnesburg. The first function of a Government was thus deliberately trans- ferred to the rebels. At eight o'clock that evening the S.A.R. police, commonly known as " Zarps," mounted and foot, about one hundred strong, fully armed, were marched from the police station in the town to the police barracks on Hospital I70 THE STORY OF Hill, a position of great strategic importance, which, in the event of hostilities beginning, must have been assaulted by the town forces as a first necessity. The revolutionary plan for such an emergency was a night attack. Here the Zarps joined forces with a number of burghers who were camped in the depressions a little further along the veld. It should be added here that the Committee performed the task which thus devolved upon it, of policing Johannesburg, to admiration. This aggregation of cosmopolites, so often de- scribed as containing some of the scum of the earth, was never governed so orderly, before or since, as during the brief reign of Uitlander authority. The Uitlander Government was pro- hibitionist and martinet. Canteens were closed by absolute fiat. The contents of some were bought up regardless of ex- pense and destroyed. For a few days the chronic scandal of undetected thefts and murders in broad dayliglit utterly ceased. An informal court of first instance was set up under Trimble, the head of the Government Detective Department, lately ex- truded as not being a burgher — an absurdity which had cost the Government the resignation of the last Afrikander State Attorney. This court was summary. One man, caught red- handed breaking half-drunk into a store, was flogged ; and that he did not dispute the justice of his pmiishnient may be as- sumed from the fact tliat when brought up later to testify against the Committee's usurpation of magistracy lie declined blankly to remember either why he was fioggetl or by whom, or anything about it except that he was uncommonly sore next day. As the afternoon closed in, with the Government antl the revolution thus openly in the lists, Mr. J. W. Leonard's oratorical gifts were again called into re(iuisition to give the right bent to the rising fever of excitement. He addressed the " Afrikander 15rigaile." .Some 7,000 or 8,000 ])ersons assembled "between the chains," and Mr. Leonaid spokr from the bal- cony of Eckstein's building. Tliey IkkI, he tlcclarcd, borne AN AFRICAN CRISIS 171 with tyranny long enough, and the people were going to tell the tyrants once for all that they were face to face with the issue. Let them not fear men born and bred on the same soil as themselves. Other speakers followed in similar if less eloquent strain, and the assembly eventually dispersed to the strains of " Rule Britannia." — ^ During the afternoon two remarkable messages reached the Provisional Government of Johannesburg. Mr. Eugene Marais wired an appeal from Pretoria asking the Committee to meet an unofficial deputation representative of the enlightened and educated burghers, to discuss the situation in the endeavour to effect a compromise. The request was at once complied with, and thereupon an intimation was received from the Executive Council at Pretoria stating that the deputation would have official status. President Kruger further wired requesting a palaver, to extend over twenty-four hours, " with the intention of coming to terms if possible." This looked well. The Provisional Government willingly consented to twenty-four hours' palaver. The deputation came over from Pretoria in the evening, Mr. Marais being accom- panied by Mr. Malan, son-in-law of General Joubert. The Conference took place at the "Goldfields," and it was then that Government representatives were first made acquainted with the character of the forces which were behind the Uitlander movement and of the military character of the organization. The members of the deputation were passed into the " Gold- fields " building through an armed guard, and each was furnished with the password for the day. Here it may not be inappro- priate to indicate the means that were taken to guard the head- quarters of the revolutionary party. The building, three storeys high, has its entrance, a fine large doorway set in a framework of ornamental terra-cotta work, on the Simmonds Street side. There is another entrance from the Fox Street side, but this is by means of a narrow doorway, through a tortuous yard and a narrow passage. The main door was closed and barricaded, and so too were the ground floor and first floor windows of the 172 THE STORY OF whole building. Access was, therefore, possible only through the narrow back doorway in Fox Street. But it would probably have been easier for the proverbial camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Reform Committee foe to enter openly the headquarters of the agitation. The place was con- verted into a citadel, impregnable save against the assaults of cannon. It was held day and night by the employees of the Goldfields Company, all armed, and supplied with sufficient ammunition and provisions to stand a siege. The corps in charge, officially enrolled as the Devil's Own, consisted of a grand body of men, not humble quill-drivers, but athletes and men who for the most part had had military training and ex- perience. Amongst them were the " eleven fine diamonds " which were despatched from De Beers a few days before the upheaval set in. No better guard system could have been devised. The visitor had first of all to be provided with the password, which was changed every twelve hours, sometimes, especially during the summit of the crisis, more frequently The password was known only to members of the Provisional Government, and their trusty men. I was fortunate enough to have enjoyed the confidence of the revolutionary leaders, and was notified as a special favour of every change in the sliibbo- leth for the day. So many of the secrets of the "("joklfields " have been made public since those eventful days, that no harm can nov.- possibly be done by disclosing the character of the words which passed one from the vulgar crowd in the street into the innermost recesses of the Reformers' citadel. "Quebec" was one of the first, a curious choice; " Afaxim " was another ; " Citadel," a third ; " Ricochet," a fourlli ; " J''or- tification," a fifth ; and oh ! the grim humour of it, " 1 )()ornkop " was one of the last. There were a do/cn others, but they were for a few hours' duration only, and were upon disuse chased from the memory by more pressing considerations. The pass- word had first of all to be whispered to a double guard on either side of the doorway, and re[)eated every few paces upon the silent demand of one or other of the armed men who lined AN AFRICAN CRISIS 173 either side of the passages and staircase from the street to the rooms where the Executive was to be found. It was under circumstances such as these that the Govern- ment deputation were admitted to the headcjuarters of the Provisional Government of Johannesburg. The password for the night was, if memory serves, " Maxim." Having passed the passage and staircase and reached as far as the inquiry office, the deputation were brought to a standstill, whilst their guide announced their presence to a body of men occupying the board room. After a pause of a couple of minutes the word was passed for the deputation to enter. Messrs. Marais and Malan passed in, and there beheld the conclave, fifty of the leading men of Johannesburg, all the members of the Reform Committee in town, seated round the table. Entering with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, black with grease to the elbow, Mr, George Farrar artlessly begged the deputa- tion to excuse him, " as he had been unpacking rifles for some hours." The deputation gave an account of its mission, which led one of the Committee to sum up, " In short, the Government holds out the olive branch ? " and the deputation accepted that description, though Mr. Marais remarked that Jameson would undoubtedly be stopped with the full force of the Republic. If the Committee would send a deputation to Pretoria, things would be amicably settled, and they would get practically what they asked in the manifesto. The Government offered the two persons of its deputation to Johannesburg as hostages for the safety of the proposed deputation from the Reform Com- mittee ; but the Reformers politely waived that. Messrs. Marais and Malan made it quite clear that they had been commissioned to come by the Executive, and cited as a token of the Government's pacific intentions the fact that it had that evening withdrawn tlie police from the town. The meeting accepted the invitation, and Messrs. Marais and Malan returned to Pretoria by the special train which had been kept waiting. On the way to the station a call was made 174 THE STORY OF at the Rand Club, and there the deputation, in an incidental sort of way, were shown a Maxim. The question in the crowded streets that night was, " Where was Jameson ? " Had he beaten off the Boers ? Would he get through ? " That was uppermost in men's minds, as they saw the Old Year out. The current of public opinion had changed marvellously during the day. In the morning the Reform Committee had repudiated Jameson, and the excited populace had upheld the repudiation. But that was twelve hours ago, and a great deal had happened since then. The Government were afraid ! The Government wanted to palaver ! The Government had made the first overtures ! ^^'hy repudiate Jameson any longer ? W^hy not join forces with him, and bring Oom Paul finally to his knees ? These were the senti- ments one heard expressed amongst the war party in the street. Inside the "Goldfields" building the same sentiments began to take shape. On this night news came that the High Com- missioner was repudiating and recalling Jameson, Mr. Cham- berlain approving the High Commissioner's action. This news at first created consternation ; then indignation. The very men who had found it necessary to repudiate Jameson in the morning — they, a revolutionary camarilla with no inter- national obligations — were now furious with Her Majesty's representative for doing the like. Downing Street, like the absent, is always in the wrong. What made things worse in the inner circle was the rooted impression already referred to, tliat the Colonial Office, at the last moment, had " come in." It had gone round diligently just before this that Chamberlain was behind Jameson. Cham- berlain must be behind Jameson ! Yet here was Chamberlain disavowing Jameson, and spiking his guns. Curses sounded loud and deep. I chanced to be present in the "Goldfields" building at mid- night at this fateful time, and discussed the situation as it now existed, with one of the Executive of the Reform Committee ; AN AFRICAN CRISIS 175 and there could be no mistaking this attitude towards the pro- clamation. Mr. Chamberlain's ears must have tingled for the things said in the " Goldfields " building during the moments while the Old Year passed away, and 1896 was born. IVcd/iesday, New Year's Day. — The Reform Committee loyally observed the compact that had been made overnight with the official deputation from Pretoria. Ere the last wassail- note was sung for a " happy New Year," Messrs. Lionel Phillips, G. Auret, Abe Bailey, and Max Langermann, a repre- sentative rather than a personally powerful deputation, left for Pretoria. Here they were not admitted to the holy of holies. Sir Theophilus Shepstone used to say that you could trust Paul Kruger's word, but you must be extraordinarily careful to tie him down exactly as to what that word was. To facilitate the elasticity on this point, which the Transvaal Government always provides for where possible, the Government appointed a Commission as a buffer between itself and the Johannesburg deputation that it had invited. The Commission consisted of Chief Justice Kotze, Judge Ameshoff, and Mr. Kock, a member of the Executive Council. There were mutual explanations. Friendly discussion of griev- ances and remedies ensued at length, and one momentous admission was made. Mr. Phillips frankly and boldly avowed that the Reform Committee were aware of Dr. Jameson being on the border with an armed force, and had an arrangement with him " in writing " to come to their help if called on, but declared that he had crossed the border witliout their knowledge or consent. Mr. Kock was staggered. " If you have arms in your hands, and have invited Jameson, then you are rebels ! " exclaimed the Councillor. " You may call us what you like ; we only ask for justice, and we shall stand by Jameson,'^ rejoined Mr. Phillips. Then the conversation turned on the (question of stojiping Jameson without bloodshed. The deputation said they had 176 THE STORY OF no means of stopping the Doctor ; but as proof of good faith they offered their own persons as hostages that Dr. Jameson would leave Johannesburg peacefully and retire across the border, if he were allowed to come in unmolested. " Who are the Reform Committee ? " queried one of the Government Commission, and then this guileless deputation, to show, as they said, their bond fides, telegraphed to Johan- nesburg for a complete list of the Committee. The list was sent, and proved very useful indeed when arrests had to be made in the following week. Having elicited all possible information, the Chief Justice declared that he and his colleagues were not authorized to make a settlement. They had simply to report to the Execu- tive Council what had passed. The two deputations separated only to meet again in the afternoon. Then the Chief Justice produced a written statement embodying the decision of the Executive. This document was referred to at the trial of the Reform Committee, and ran as follows : — " Sir Hercules Robinson has offered his services with a view to a peaceful settlement. The Government of the South African Republic has accepted his offer. Pending his arrival no steps will be taken against Johannesburg providing Johan- nesburg takes no hostile action against the Government. In terms of the proclamation recently issued by the President the grievances will be earnestly considered." The Rand deputation believed that their cause was won. The promise just recorded was vague maybe on the larger political question, though clear on the immediate military one. Hut the Government Commission had done iis work so as to convey the maximum of assurance with the minimum in black and white, and at the Pretoria Club a crowd of sympathetic Pretorians was assured, by Mr. Abe IJaiK-y and the others, " We have got all we wanted ! " Many bumpers of champagne were dniiik in honour of the event. --In these terms, with these hopes, anil to these libations, AN AFRICAN CRISIS 177 was concluded that armistice between the Reform Committee and the Government which lias one simple justification. The leaders knew that the town was not really ready to fight, for it had not ammunition to last an hour ! As the plot was first arranged, Johannesburg was to have got in 5,000 rifles, and one million rounds, and Jameson was to have come in with a larger force and a spare rifle to every man in it. Alas ! 1,000,000 cartridges means thirty tons, and all had to come in concealed in machinery ! Nobody had thought of that difficulty. So when Jameson rushed, the Johannesburg leaders doubted, not for a moment his getting through, but their own plight when he did so. The armistice gave them time to turn round they thought. Very early on Wednesday morning a couple of cyclists were despatched from the Johannesburg headquarters to communi- cate with the column. Colonel Rhodes scribbled a note, which, torn up and afterwards recovered from the battle-field, reads in the Green Book as follows : — "Dear Dr. " The rumour of massa . . . Johannesburg that started yo . . . our relief was not true. We a . . . right feeling intense. We have armed . . . a lot of men. I shall be verj' glad to see you. . . . not in possess . . . town. . . . men to . . . fellow . . . " Yours ever, "F. R." " We will all drink a glass along . . . you •' L. .' " 11.30 Kruger has asked for . . . go over and treat armistice for . . . to . . . my view is that they are in a funk in Pretoria and they were wrong to agree from here. "Dr. Jameson. «' F. R." The following is a correct restoration of the torn parts of this document : — " Dear Doctor, — The rumour of massacre at Johannesburg that started you to our r.;lief was not true. We are all right. Feeling intense. We N 178 THE STORY OF have armed quite a lot of men. I shall be ver)^ glad to see you. We are not in possession of the town. Would you like me to send you some men to show you the way ? You are a fine fellow. Here's wishing you good luck. " Yours ever, " F(rank) R(hodes)." " We will all drink a glass along with you. " L(ionel) P(hillips)." " ^isf, 11.30. Kruger has asked for some of us from here to go over and treat for armistice. They have agreed to this. My view is that they are in a funk at Pretoria, and they were wrong to agree from here. "F. R." Mr. Phillips' postscript was scribbled in pencil on Col. Rhodes' note. Col. Rhodes' second note, scribbled while the cyclists were waiting, reflects an impulse of the moment which events have turned into a thoughtful conclusion. Jame- son's reply to these messages has been recorded in an earlier chapter. It, or rather the cyclists carrying it, were intercepted by the Boers. Meanwhile, all was toil and nv.iil this \\'edncsday in Johan- nesburg. Men were astir in the grey dawn, anxious for news of Jameson. No information was forthcoming. The Reform Committee knew nothing. Si.xty hours had passed since Jameson set out on his march to the Rand, but the Reform Committee were utterly ignorant of his whereabouts. There was a vague idea, from the character of the man, that Jameson was " pushing on," and there was unbounded confidence that he would " brush aside," as it was termed, any attempt to arrest his progress. Absorbed in the colossal task of feeding, drilling and organizing Johannesburg, the Reform Committee was l)eliindhan(l with any sort of Intelligence Department to bring in news from outside. Government remained in charge of the telegraph system of the country, and upon the outbreak of trouble had promi)tly sent confidential Hollander telegraph censors to scrutinize all messages sent to or from Johannesburg. Thus, the ordinary channels of intelligence were closed, and no AN AFRICAN CRISIS 179 effectual steps seem to have been taken to utilise, until almost too late, the splendid corps of cyclists which the Wanderers' Club might have furnished. But though news of Jameson's whereabouts was not at hand until late in the day, Johannes- burg made up its mind very early to accept the situation — Jameson and all. The recall of Jameson by the High Com- missioner had rather incited than discouraged the Reform Committee in adopting liim. In their position of wretched impotence — for they had but 2,000 rifles, though more than ten times that number of men — the Committee determined to accept the man whom only the day before they had openly and formally repudiated. The assistance of the column must, it was given out, be accepted in defiance of all consideration, and international jurists might beat the air until they were blue in the face with exertion. Necessity knew no law, and Johan- nesburg's need was great and urgent. As the mouthpiece of the Reform Committee put it : — - "What was initially a grave crime on the part of Dr. Jame- son, his gallant officers and brave men, becomes, by sheer stress of events, a magnificent achievement. Its success will silence all criticisms of his conduct. It will be justified by the event. He may fi\irly claim, if he gets through after repulsing every commando sent to stay his advance, to be the saviour of the situation, because we ardently believe that his presence here, his junction with our own forces, will end the campaign. It will compel an unconditional surrender. The Boer Govern- ment will go down, to be replaced by one of our own creation under the same flag. For the present, as desperate men, we have no time to consider the welter of international complica- tions which may possibly arise. We have to establish ourselves in possession of the reins of Government first; reflection will have to come afterwards. There is no backward path and no returning." It was determined to address the High Commissioner, blandly treating the Imperial Government as responsible for Jameson, and Jameson for the massing of Boers on Johan- i8c THE STORY OF nesburg, calling on Her Majesty's representative to intervene and make peace, and generally putting him, as local slang has it, "in the cart." The following telegram was sent : — " Lionel Phillips, George Farrar, Colonel Rhodes, J. II. ILunmond, Percy Fitzpatrick, and other inhabitants, Johannesburg, to His Excellency the High Commisioner, Cape Town. ''^January \st, 1S96. — Rumour prevalent that Doctor Jameson has crossed the border ; we know nothing of this. The result of this report is massing of Boers, who are threatening Johannesburg. We presume, if Dr. Jameson has left, that it is on behalf of Imperial Government to avert bloodshed here. We invoke your immediate assistance to prevent civil war, and urge you to come up at once and establish peace." No reply was received to this. It puzzled the recipient ex- ceedingly, and well it might, for he had just had put into his hands a copy of the letter of invitation purporting to be signed by the very men who here denied any knowledge of Jameson's actions. Sir Hercules had not the clue to this puzzle, and he let the telegram alone. Presently it was followed up by one still more urgent : — " Percy Fitzpatrick, .Secretary, Reform Committee, Johannesburg, to His Excellency the High Commissioner, Cape Town. ^^ JauKaiy is/. — We have absolute information that large numbers of Boers are commanded to attack Joliannesbmg at once, and are authorized by Commandant-General to shoot at sight all who are concerned in the present agitation. Matters are so critical that we call upon you again to intervene to protect the lives and properties of citizens who have for years agitated constitutionally for their rights." It must l>c understood tliat tlie situation hero di pieled was fully known only to the inner circle of the Reforiu ( 'omiuiltec, f(jr, .save when the full C\)nuniltee were calletl together to impress Messrs. Marais and Malun, the direction of affairs was left in the hands of about a dozen men, who tired themselves out with perjK'tual session, sleeping, some of them, on the floor at the " (joldfields." The masses who thronged the streets were utterly ignorant at the time of the circumstances that had AN AFRICAN CRISIS i8i compelled the Reform deputation at Pretoria to agree to an armistice. The fiction that there were rifles sufficient to arm every man in the town was not yet exploded among the masses, and this, together with the implicit faith that Jameson would be " in " by the morrow, resulted in a great and continued rush to the several recruiting offices. The pay was princely — lo^. a day and all found. This revolution was not done " on the cheap " in any single par- ticular. Some of the corps were billeted at the expense of the Reform Committee on the best hotels. During the morning the several corps paraded, and elected their officers, whilst bands played military airs to keep up the enthusiasm. The scene which Johannesburg presented on this memor- able New Year's day will not soon be forgotten by those who looked on at the strange medley. By noon it was given out at the " Goldfields " that for the present no more recruits would be enlisted, or rifles served out. Then it was that the ugly truth — creeping outwards already from the inner circle— began to dawn on the people at large. The Committee were short of firearms ! Attempts were made to reassure the people, but in vain. The crowds that but now were all enthusiasm began to de- spond, and to throw blame on the leaders. The temper of the crowd began to look ugly, when it was diverted for the moment by an incident which looked like "business." The outposts reported that about 150 Boers were approaching, and were likely to strike the camp at two o'clock. A strong detachment came into town and escorted a couple of Maxims out of town towards Langlaagte, in which direction everybody looked for signs of Jameson's approach. With the arrival of the time for the evening meetings the spirits of the masses rose again. At seven o'clock that even- ing first definite news of the fighting was brought into town by cyclists, and a large body of the Uillander forces, mounted and infantry, were despatched in the direction where Jameson was expected to show himself. Simultaneously it i82 THE STORY OF was known that the Boer forces were closing in on the town from various sides. In the nick of time to reassure tne Committee, Mr. Lionel PhiUips and the other members of the deputation returned to Johannesburg. They arrived about seven in the evening. The Reform Committee met, and readily acquiesced in the terms the deputation had made with the Government at Pretoria. It had been agreed that a member of the Reform Committee should go out and convince Jameson that the armistice was no Government fiction. Accordingly Mr. Lace was sent on this not wholly grateful errand. The stir at headquarters was not lost upon the packed street outside the " Goldfields," and in response to repeated calls Mr Lionel Phillips, shortly before ten o'clock at night, stepped out on to the balcony and addressed the multitude. He said he had just returned from Pretoria, where he had interviewed a Commission appointed by the Government to see if they could not arrange matters amicably. They were informed that Her Majesty's High Commissioner had been invited to come up in order to act as mediator. He had informed the commission that they intended to stand by Dr. Jameson — (immense cheering) — who had come all this way with his brave little band for their succour. If necessary, they were prepared to continue the movement they had seen fit to commence with their guns. (More cheering.) These declarations were received with the utmost enthusiasm. In answer to shouts for Dr. Jameson, Mr. Phillips stated that he was witliin fifteen miles of Johannesburg. Mr. Piiillips called for three cheers for Dr. Jameson, and Mr. J. ^V^ Leonard called for three cheers for Mr. Philli[)s, and jubilation reigned in Johannesburg ; while eighteen miles away the man they were cheering suddenly bivouacked beside the " pan " amid the dropping fire of the Poers. .Such irony of events does not need the bitter cnibtllish- ment of tin: story thai tlie ammunition sent fioin the Pretoria arsenal to ri'pleiiish the Boers at Kru^eisdoip, who were AN AFRICAN CRISIS 183 running short, actually went through Johannesburg in the train which carried the Rand deputation back in apparent triumph from the capital. As a matter of fact, some ammunition went the day before, along with Messrs. Marais and Malan, Field-Cornet Van \Vyk and others, sent from Krugersdorp to procure it. It was thus the Government deputation, not the Rand one, that travelled in the ammunition train ; and those who had guns covered them with their macintoshes, fearing that the presence of ammunition might be discovered. The ammunition which really replenished the Boers when they were running short on Thursday was not taken through Johannesburg at all, but sent by wagon across country. So says the officer who took it. And so that Wednesday evening, the first evening of 1896, the Uitlander cause was cheered in Johannesburg and lost at Krugersdorp, and nobody knew. iS4 THE STORY OF Chapter XIII THE STORY OF THE PROCLAMATION IN Cape Town, Monday, December 30th, was a day of strange, undefined tension of feeling, through the general expectancy strained towards Johannesburg, not towards the border, and although the actual news was known to nobody that day beyond some half-dozen people. So unromantic a person as Sir Gordon Sprigg confessed to " presentiments." But even Mr. Plofmeyr, who was presently to become counsellor-in-chief by telegram to the Pretoria Government, had as yet heard nothing. The writer had been pestering the leader of Dutch Cape Colony for an interview or utter- ance of some kind in sympathy with the Uitlander demand for citizenship ; and late on Monday evening, the town being full of vague rumours of action at Johannesburg, Mr. Hofmeyr was drawn to the Cape Times Office for news. Owing to the block on the wires the evening telegrams had not yet corne in ; one of which, much later, brought the incredible information, and to this alone it was due that there could be pumped out of the reticent Bond leader even the few guarded words of sympathetic interest in the Uitlander grievances which duly a])pcared in print next morning as an interview, concluding as follows : — His views on the franchise demand Mr. Ilofnicyr has expressed years ago. He favoured a compromise llicn, but it found no support at Pretoria. Now it would be useless to offer the compromise which then might have satisfied legitimate aspirations. On reading this over Mr I Fofmeyr found the tone of it expressive only of one side of his feelings in tiiis dift'icult question, in which he AN AFRICAN CRISIS 185 felt liimself, he confessed, pulled both ways ; and he desired the addition in clear terms that in spite of the manner in which his efforts on behalf of the Transvaal had been received, and though he regretted that no statesmanlike compromise had been arrived at, the Transvaal still kept his strong sympathies and affection. " Blood is thicker than water." The point being put that the blood of many young Afrikander " Uitlanders " was closer to many Cape families even than the blood of the Boers, Mr. Hofmeyr admitted the fact. " But then," he said, smiling, " how if those Afrikander ' Uitlanders ' also found that blood was thicker than water ? " " But they are solid with the other ' Uitlanders,' that is just the point," it was rejoined to this ; and the question added : " Suppose war broken out, Mr. Hofmeyr, what would you yourself do?" " God knows ! . . . Try to get peace made as soon as possible, I suppose, like last time," said Mr. Hofmeyr. And not one word could be got out of him. Mr. Hofmeyr gone, enter one of the two Johannesburg emissaries, visibly excited, mysterious as to the reason, but urgent in the same question, " Have you any news ? Enter later the Imperial Secretary, looking ill with anxiety, but constant even then to the habitual officialism which deems it a sin to tell a newspaper anything except what it already knows. His was the same question, " Have you any special news ? " which, by now, it was possible to answer, and from him was eventually obtained the authority to state that the High Commissioner had repudiated and recalled Jameson, an item which accordingly accompanied the brief announcement in Tuesday's Cape Times of what was there called " the almost incredible fact, presumably due to a brave, wild, mad, foolish impulse," and to exaggerated rumours from Johannesburg. These possible excuses for Jameson, by the way, for one must speak by the card in these matters, were no part of what Sir Graham Bower authorized or suggested. The author heard no word from him or any Imperial official during the crisis otherwise than deploring and disapproving of Jameson's action. iS6 THE STORY OF Enter again, still later on that well-remembered evening, the Johannesburg emissary aforesaid, who was provoked to pas- sionate remonstrance by the tenor of a half-finished leading article begun at the very first receipt of the news, in which, while it was remarked that " the first shot fired in the Trans- vaal must needs make many people round its fringes, alike in Colonies and Republic, hard to hold," yet " through all such events the High Commissioner's duty is to stand high above the quarrels — even the just quarrels — of the Uitlanders, for it is to him that all South Africa will look to hold the balance even and to mould the united statesmanship of South Africa into the great settlement which must inevitably ensue upon the struggle." To this, and much more which need not be here repeated in the way of argument against the Imperial Power allowing itself to be in any way implicated in Jameson's mad attempt, the burden of the Johannesburg leader's answer was : ''Then all I can say is— the Imperial Power will lose South Africa." Jameson, he admitted, had precipitated and upset the plans of Rhodes and the plans of everybody, but while admitting all this, the Johannesburg man declared that Jame- son would undoubtedly carry the whole thing through if the Imperial Government would let him, and the policy of repudi- ation and recall would never, he declared, be forgiven by tha Uitlanders. It was hard to see anything clear in that first rush of sur- prise, but one thing did seem clear to the writer, and he clung to it accordingly. Though heart and soul with the Johannes- burg Revolution if only the Uitlanders would make it, he could not see that the Imperial Government had the right to interfere and make it for them. The Johannesburg leader left the office unconvinced and fuming. — The story of how the news came to Cape 'i'own, and how it was received by various people from various points of \\c\\ is one which can best be illustrated by concrete exami)le and personal reminiscences ; hence the.se recollections of one night at a NewspajK-r Office, bringing across the stage as it does so AN AFRICAN CRISIS 187 conveniently a quick succession of figures typical of the differ- ent forces engaged in the crisis. Let me add that at the Cape Times Office this news, that is, the Jameson part of it, and tlie much later discovery of Mr. Rhodes' full relation to that part, was as much a surprise that evening as it was to Ministers and to Cape Town generally when it appeared in print next morn- ing. Let me add also this, that the foregoing conversations, joined to the imperfect knowledge at the time of what might have led to Jameson's act, give all the key that any candid person will require to the following telegram which the writer addressed next day to the Star^ Johannesburg, after hearing of the coming proclamation : — ■ " You must expect, and not misunderstand, a proclamation putting Jame- son formally in the wrong. Imperial authorities have no other course. Don't let this weaken or divide j't>//. This merely for your information." It was merely a private reading of the situation exchanged between two journalists, perfectly understood by the recipient, and conveying a common-sense hint which proved of some small use in the confused brouhaha at Johannesburg. Why it should have been seized on by the Transvaal Government as a great find, and immortalized in a Green Book, and even de- bated in the Cape Parliament, is a mystery only to be explained by the epoch of suspicious unreason which the crisis produced. As all this was done, the matter is just mentioned here. December 2y^st, 1895, /// Cape Town. — At Government House a greai; part of Tuesday was occupied by the great fight about the proclamation. Abundant evidence came to hand during the morning to show what passion and indignation the news of the raid had evoked wherever it was known in Dutch South Africa. A message from the Acting President of the Free State referred to Jameson's cool reply to the Commandant of Marico, and expressed anxiety for the " peace and welfare of South Africa." The Free State, in fact, was up in arms. 1,600 burghers were commandeered to take up a position about sixteen miles on the Free State side of the Vaal, and iSS THE STORY OF mounted expresses scoured the country and the border, and it may be recalled as a significant fact that in one district twice the number of bur/jhers commandeered responded to the call. But it was in thj person of Mr. Hofmeyr that Dutch South Africa really marched into Government House that Tuesday morning. Mr. Rhodes had called and assured Sir Hercules that Dr. Jameson acted without his authority, adding something about the stopping telegram and the cut wires, and offering to resign if either Mr. Chamberlain or Sir Hercules thought it necessary. Mr. Hofmeyr came up scarcely knowing what to think. He openly suspected the attitude of Mr. Rhodes towards Jameson, and covertly, perhaps, that of the Imperial Ciovenuuent. Indeed, he has since confessed that what cleared and com- posed his mind in this matter was simply the transparently candid personality of one man — Sir Hercules Robinson. Mr. Rhodes had said a year before that only one man had enough prestige with Dutch South Africa to be fit to cope with the coming racial crisis and save a war. This one man was now to make good the words — if not (juite to tlie purpose their autlior had dreamed of. It may be said that Lord Rosmead, in South African politics, is now a man of one idea. But the point is that that one idea was, for the beginning of 1896, the right one — the only feasible one. Mr. Chamberlain had to come to see it ; Mr. Rhodes saw it before and probal)ly sees it now again ; perliaps it will (lawn some day even on Lord Rosmead's own countrymen in the colonies, to whom to-day he is even as Mr. Ciladstone once was in the Jingo Parly. The writer had tlu' Dpportunity to see this oUl and ill man in the thick of llie crisis. His was the coolrst luad lluie. " ll is almost impossible to know wiiat to do next," iie re- marked to a visitor at almost the most ])uz/,ling moment of all ; "but I have an old f(jrmula which I have always found come out well in the end —and that is, 'Don't trouble about a " policy,'' lull do the lliii\u that yoii sec to be r/^/i/.^" AN AFRICAN CRISIS 189 The Right Honourable Sir Hercules George Robert Robin- Son, Bart., G.C.M.G., lately created Baron Rosmead of Ros- mead in Ireland and Tafelberg in South Africa, has exceeded the Psalmist's limit of years, and spent more than half of it in viceregal functions. He has represented the Queen in the West Indies, Hong Kong, Ceylon, New South Wales, New Zealand, and South Africa, but his chief work has been done under the shadow of the grand old mountain from which he has chosen part of his title ; and the distinctive note of that work has been to gain and keep for the Queen's Government the confidence of those Afrikanders to whose language that title pays a delicate compliment. He was Governor and High Commissioner during the stormiest years of South African history, and the Transvaal has never forgotten what a good interpreter he was of the spirit of fairness and magnanimity which dictated the retrocession of the Republic. As INIr, Rhodes became a power, and struck the self-same Afrikander note in his policy harmonising with the self-same British Colonial patriotism, the two men seemed to be working per- fectly together. Both had a share in keeping open the north, though it was Mr. Rhodes who alone had the means and the impetus to add " Rhodesia " to the Empire. Both seemed at one for years in the policy which m_ade this process of indirect Colonial expansion palatable to the Dutch, and indeed Sir Hercules Robinson got into sore trouble with Downing Street in 1889 by emphasizing, in a farewell speech after nine years of office, the half truth that there was only place left for the Imperial Factor in South Africa in its form of Colonialism, not in its form of direct Imperialism. In other words, it was the Rhodes kind of Imperialism, the kind implied in his great British-Colonial Company, that would be the real force to meet and conquer the force of Anti-British Republicanism on its own ground. When Sir Henry Loch had to be replaced, the Colonial Office had come round to see what Sir Hercules meant in 1889, just as Mr, Rhodes and others have come, since that I90 THE STORY OF again, to see more clearly the other side of the shield, the direct Imperial side. But it was notorious that only the in- sistence of Mr Rhodes made the Colonial Office insist strongly enough to drag Sir Hercules back to South Africa, the " Grave of Reputations," from his well-earned leisure. There were obvious objections to the appointment, and it was Mr. Cham- berlain, destined soon to become the new Governor's chief, and later his convert, who voiced them in Parliament. Sir Hercules having retired into private life had been elected to various boards of public companies, and of course all his South African directorships and interests had to be given up when he was thrust back into Government House. As it was Mr. Rhodes who pressed the Colonial Office to appoint him, so it was Mr. Rhodes who pressed his old co-worker not to decline. It is even whispered that Mr. Rhodes, fearing that he might now seem to have grown too masterful at the Cape since Sir Hercules and he had last worked together, wrote to Sir Hercules impulsively promising that if they ever came to loggerheads he would admit ipso facto that he must be in the wrong. They did come to loggerheads, for to Sir Her- cules fell the hard task of remaining coldly consistent to Mr. Rhodes' own policy while Mr. Rhodes himself floundered in an impossible departure from it. " Don't altogether desert the Doctor" was Mr. Rhodes' cry, when once his friend had started on the perilous march. But tliat was just what Her Majesty's rc[)rescntative had to do. Five minutes with Sir Hercules Robinson dissipated from Mr. Hofmeyr's mind tlie ugly dream of any complicity on his I)art. But Mr. Hofmeyr at once made it clear that the re- pudiation by the Imperial authority must be made far more public and unetiuivoral than by mere messages sent through Mr. Newton and Sir Jacobus de Wet. Tlie Bond leader en- forced this view with the trenchant decisiveness which he can show on critical occasions. He scouted the idea that Jiime- son would sli)|) for the messages, and pointed out tlial tlie public uoukl not know of these. 'I'hcie nuisl l)c a procla- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 191 mation repudiating Jameson in the name of the Queen, and calling on all British subjects to hold aloof from him. The moment such a proclamation was suggested it was seen to be a necessity, a logical sequel to the Imperial disavowal of the raiders. Sir Hercules called the Imperial Secretary, sat down with Mr. Hofmeyr, and proceeded to draft the proclamation. Mr. Rhodes had gone out of town again, but Mr. Schreiner, the Attorney-General, approved of the draft on behalf of the Colonial Cabinet. Meanwhile, however, representatives ol English, as well as Dutch, Cape Colony had made their ap- pearance. Mr. Hofmeyr had won ready hearing when he described what would be the feeling of his kindred ; but it was impossible to ignore the somewhat different sentiments which the first news of Jameson's act had aroused among South African Britishers everywhere. Remember that it was universally assumed at that time that Jameson had moved upon some definite intelligence which might justify him. Remember, too, that for weeks the pro- vocation had been thought of as coming from Pretoria to Johannesburg, not from Jameson to Pretoria. Remember, too, that it was supposed that at that moment the Uitlanders had struck, were striking, or were about to strike, a blow for rights which commanded general sympathy. Even those English- men who most shook their heads over the immediate outlook, and who admitted that the Imperial Government could not back Jameson, were not prepared for such extreme action on the other side as the practical outlawing of the man in the Queen's name, accompanied by an injunction to the Queen's subjects to stand aside, and apparently abandon their own justifiable hostility to the Government, simply because of Jameson's action. Dr. Harris, and subsequently Mr. Rhodes, whom he fetched post haste back to town from Rondebosch, urged on some such grounds as these that the proclamation should not be issued at all. Failing that, they set themselves at least to gain time. Mr. Rhodes exclamied again and again, very much 192 THE STORY OF moved, " It's making an outlaw of the Doctor ! " His line was, that since his friend had broken away and the deed was now past recall, he should be given a fair field, and perhaps all would yet be well. He took the same line with his colleagues in the Cabinet. But in arguing against the proclamation in toto these gentlemen went too far ; for they cut at the whole position taken up by His Excellency. Repudiation of Jame- son was an international, honourable obligation. Anything else would not only have implied complicity, it would have been complicity. And of repudiation by the Queen a Royal Proclamation, once suggested, was seen to be a logical scquitur. In spite of all that Mr. Rhodes could say, therefore. Sir Her- cules remained firm, and the process of drafting, approving, copying, signing, sealing, j)ublishing, and telegraphing the docu- ment proceeded as expeditiously as such things can in Govern ment Ofifices. A small part of the purpose in which these gentlemen made so little headway was achieved, as it happens, by another agency, acting quite independently of them. Naturally the journalists heard of the coming proclamation as soon as the publicists, and one journalistic caller, known to Sir Hercules Robinson, it may be said, as one who cared for the honour of lingland considerably more than for any conceivable interest of Mr. Rhodes or of Joliannesburg, had the privilege of a conversation with him about the draft proclamation. This caller's criticism was directed solely to that ])art of the proclamation which might be considered as interfering in the internal affairs of the Republic. It was one thing to proclaim Jameson's external intervention. It was quite another thing to use words tantainount to an internal interference between the Transvaal Government and certain Transvaal inhabitants. The Imperial policy towards the JohaniKsl)urg movement per se had been, so far, one of strict impartiality. It could neither promise the Uitlanders support nor could it officiously bid them sit down under their grievances. It might intervene to part the combatints, as the Power mainly responsible for the peace AN AFRICAN CRISIS 193 of South Africa ; or to prevent whichever side won from pro- ceeding to cxlrenie action against the other ; but the conversa- tion of the Johannesburg leaders then in Cape Town sufficed to show liow deeply Johannesburg would resent any act on the part of the Imperial Government that could fairly be described as first leaving the Uitlanders to work out their own salvation against an armed Government, and then stepping in to divide and paralyse their ranks the moment they began to do it. Sir Hercules weighed the English side, as it may be called, as gravely and fairly as he had weighed the Dutch. Unfor- tunately, it was too late to keep raid and revolution wholly distinct, and the proclamation, as finally published, did to some extent discourage British subjects from abetting either. One sentence, however, which was especially obnoxious to this ob- jection disaj)peared from the draft. It was the last, which called upon British subjects even to abstain from demonstra- tions or any action calculated to disturb public order. It was undeniable that an injunction which vetoed even the calling of a public meeting would be, in spirit, a breach of the Conven- tion. Perhaps, in practice, the alteration amounted to little, for Johannesburg would be less influenced by the exact wording than by the general tenor of the Bull issued against their rash ally. But, as it happened, it was this alteration which led to a delay, afterwards the subject of bitter controversy. The idea of the proclamation was Mr. Hofmeyr's ; the first draft had been approved by Mr. Hofmeyr, and it was its prospective issue that led him to co-operate with the High Commissioner in the advice which he was now proffering over the telegraph to Pretoria, particularly as regards the acceptance of the High Commissioner's mediation. The Imperial Secretary, therefore, felt bound to give Mr. Hofmeyr an opportunity of objecting to the alteration, and as Mr. Hofmeyr could not be found for some little time a delay of about an hour and a half was caused. That is the full explanation of an incident which has been o 194 THE STORY OF absurdly exaggerated. A verbatim copy of the proclamation was telegraphed at 4.20 p.m. to the Acting President of the Free State and to the British Agent at Pretoria. It was pub- lished in a Cape Gazette Extraordinary at a (Quarter to six. It was communicated by the British Agent to President Kruger some time after eight, and about the same time telegraphed to the Reform Committee, Johannesburg, who may be regarded as the persons mainly addressed by it. Sir Jacobus got a copy through to Jameson on Thursday morning. When, late that evening, a telegram arrived from President Kruger, e\"idently acting on advice received from Mr. Hofmeyr earlier in the day, asking for a proclamation to be issued, and bringing to remembrance a proclamation of his own which helped "to damp the trek" to INIashonaland in April, 1891, the High Commissioner was able to reply that the President's wishes had been anticipated. PROCLAMATION By His Excellency the Right Honourable Sir IIercui.es Gf.orge Robert RobIxNSON, Baronet, a member of Her Majesty's Most Honour- able Pris-y Council, Knight Grand Cross of the Must Distinguished Order of St. Michael and .St. George, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty's Colony of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and of the territories and dependencies thereof, Governor of the territory of ]?rilish Bechuanaland, and Her Majesty's High Commissioner, etc., etc., etc. Whereas it has come to my knowledge that certain British subjects, said to be under the leadership of Dr. Jameson, have violated the territory of the South African Republic, and have cut telegraph wires, and done various other illegal acts : And whereas the Soutli African Rcpulilic is a friendly State in amily with Her Majesty's Government : And whereas it is my desire to les^iect the independence of the said State : Now, therefore, I do hereby command the .said Dr. Jameson, and all persons accompanying him, to inimedialely retire from the territory of tiie South African l\cpub!ic on pain of the penalties attached to tlieir illegal proceedings. And I do further hereby call upon all British subjects in the South African Republic to abstain from giving the said Dr. Jameson any coun- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 1(^5 tcnance or assistance in liis anr.;d viulalion of the territory of a friendly State. God Save the (^ueen. Given under my hand and seal this 31st day of Djcember, 1S95. Hercules Rodinson, High Commissioner. By connnand of His Excellency the High Connnissioner, Graham Bower, Imperial Secretary. Owing to the extraordinary l)lock and breakdown which, at this crisis, affected alike the wires in South Africa and the cables to England, it was not till Wednesday morning that Sir Hercules Robinson received a message sent by Mr. Chamber- lain in the middle of the day before, which, repeating the warning to Mr. Rhodes about the Chartered Company paying the piper, is also interesting from the hint it gives as to what circumstances might have been taken to excuse the entrance of a force ; a hint fully consonant with the attitude of the Im- perial (jovcrnment as explained in Chapter IV. Here is an extract : — " Vou should represent to Mr. Rhodes the true character of Dr. Jame- son's action in breaking into a foreign State which is in friendly treaty relations with Her Majesty, in time of peace. It is an act of war, or rather of filibustering. If the Government of the South African Republic had been overthrown, or had there been anarchy at Johannesburg, there might have been some shadow of excuse for this unprecedented act. If it can be proved that the British South Africa Company set Dr. Jameson in motion, or were privy to his mai^auding action. Her Majesty's Government would at once have to face a demand that the Charter should be revoked and the Corporation dissolved. " Sir Hercules read this message to Mr. Rhodes when the latter called at Government House during Wednesday morn- ing. In doing so Sir Hercules was urgent with Mr. Rhodes that he should make a public disavowal of all complicity with Jameson, but to all such advances, whether from the High Commissioner, or from Mr. Hofmeyr, cr from Cabinet col- 196 THE STORY OF leagues, Mr. Rhodes was sullenly impenetrable ; his note to the Imperial Secretary — -"Jameson has gone in without my orders " — represented the utmost point of repudiation that he would go to either to save himself or his cherished Company, and in all the mutual recriminations which followed upon so many sides, it is refreshing to notice that Mr. Rhodes never yielded to the temptation to emphasize the long series of messages which, as we now know, were sent to stop the actual raid, nor could Jameson be led, on his- side, to emphasize the degree of Mr. Rhodes' complicity in the plans originally made for a raid of. some sort. The two friends have been strikingly true to each other. Mr. Chamberlain was evidently not quite clear how to take Mr. Rhodes' somewhat mc.igre disavowal of responsibility. Oa Wednesday he cabled : — " Glad to hear of Rhodes' repudiation of Jameson, who must be mad. I see no need for Rhodes to resign. . . . Of course the B.S.A. Com- pany, however innocent, will have to make amends for this outrage. . . . Take all steps you may think necessary in this crisis. I have full confi- dence in your discretion. The chief things are promptitude and vigour." At the same time Mr. Chamberlain was cornering the Uritish South Africa Company on the same point, and by way of encouragement to the Directors to commit themselves, in- formed them that Mr. Rhodes had repudiated Jameson and offered to resign as Cape Premier, but th.at he appeared to him, Mr. Chamberlain, to have done his best to counteract the mischief. On Thursday Mr. Chamberlain cabled to Sir Her- cules to " take strongest line with Jameson, whose continued refusal to obey would be an act of rebellion. Rhodes mtist send message to similar effect, otherwise B.S.A. Company will be held res])onsible for Jameson's action." During all the time of suspense, while news was luomeiitarily expected of a collision between the column and the lioers, the burden of Mr. Rliodes' representations to Sir Hercules Rol)in- son was "Go up to Pretoria." As we have seen, much weight AN AFRICAN CRISIS 197 had been placed by the confederates on Mr. Rhodes' under- taking to press this advice. Events had not fallen out quite as had been counted upon, but there was all the more need for the High Commissioner to get his countrymen out of their pickle. Chief Justice Kotze, of the Transvaal, an astute councillor in whom Afrikander patriotism and reform sym- pathies are subject to a passion for intrigue which seems to nourish on legal soil, strongly opposed the acceptance of such mediation by the Transvaal Government as a sign of fear, and it was some time before Mr. Hofmeyr committed himself at all strongly to the favourable view. However, he did so at last. The High Commissioner received, in the course of Wednes- day, two telegrams from the Reform Committee invoking him " to prevent civil war, and to come up at once to establish peace," and again calling upon him " to intervene to protect the lives and properties of citizens who have for years agitated constitutionally for their rights." The Reform Committee messages, however, were received by Sir Hercules with some reserve, as they were accompanied with expressions disclaiming any connection with Jameson's reported movement, and pre- suming that Jameson must be acting on behalf of the Imperial Govermnent, an attitude which, at the moment. His Excellency was much puzzled how to reconcile with a copy of the historic letter of invitation which had just been put into his hands by the Cape Town confederates.^ However, whatever was the position of the Reform Com- mittee, the duty of the High Commissioner to offer his services as peacemaker was dependent only on the discovery of a decent occasion. If Johannesburg would only do something, however small, on its own account, so that it could be treated as a threatening factor to the public peace ! As an onlooker at Cape Town cynically remarked : " Those Johannesburg fellows might at least shoot one Zarp " {Angiice, * When Jameson "rushed," the Cape Town confederates cabled a copy of llie letter to the Times, London, where it appeared January 1st. The date, left Mank in original, was filled in as December 20th iiy Dr. Wolff. igS THE STORY OF policeman). The Johannesburg rebels did not shoot a Zarp, but their usurpation of the Government of Johannesburg be- came sufficiently overt to lead the special correspondent of the Cape Times to telegraph that the Reform Committee had de- clared itself the Provisional Government. As a matter of fact, the proclamation to this effect was set up, but never printed. However, it was upon this intimation on AV'ednesday morning that the High Commissioner directed Sir Jacobus de Wet to see the President at once, and ask if he would wish Her Majesty's representative to come to Pretoria and co-operate towards a peaceful settlement. At six o'clock that afternoon came the following reply : — "I accept Your Excellency's offer, delivered tome by Sir Jacobus de Wet, to come to Pretoria to assist to prevent further bloodshed, as I have received information that Dr. Jameson has not given effect to your orders, and has fired on my burghers." To any one who knew President Kruger this agitated mes- sage at once betrayed that he was by no means certain of the event. So far, indeed, his only messages from the Comman- dants engaged had a formidal)le ring about them. The column, spread out in the formation which has been described, looked larger than it really was, and the carts and artillery increased the threatening look. The burghers were still retiring before the column. When Mr. Rhodes lirard of Oom Paul's message it seemed as if the clouds lifted. Jameson, after all, was going to pull everything througli ; the burghers were ri'liring before him ; he would reach Johannesburg, which would rise like one man, and then, when the lists were i)itched, the High Commissioner wouUl arri\e to i)i(l both sides lay down tlu'ir arms An(\ I'ffect a settlement which would bring about all that had been counted on. " Kruger's in a light ])lace," he exilaimed. " He comes crying to the High ('onnnissioner, 'IMease come and help me; Jameson has been fuiiig on my poor burghers.'" So lie re- marked to a friend. To \\v lligh ( "ommissioner he urgently AN AFRICAN CRISIS 199 tendered the advice that he should start at once, should order a special train that very evening. Sir Hercules, however, de- cided to leave the following evening, and cabled for Mr. Cham- berlain's approval. Late the next morning official intimation reached Govern- ment House that Jameson had surrendered. The writer remembers vividly seeing Mr. Rhodes issue from Government House just after this news had been received. In Cape Town it was still unknown. His face was horribly changed from the exultant man of the night before. He paused to speak, checked himself, jumped into a cart which was waiting to drive him to Rondebosch, then, as he started, turned the same dreadful face over his shoulder and jerked out in an odd, fiilsetto voice that he sometimes has : — " Well, there is a little history being made ; that is all." It was a most mourn .ul, characteristically English attempt to carry off lightly the sudden, crushing ruin of a career. The bitterest ingredient in the cup just then was the black uncer- tainty as to the fate of Jameson. There was at first some idea of Mr. Hofmeyr accompanying the High Commissioner northwards. Mr. Hofmeyr's own atti- tude to the proposal was uncertain for some time. Sir Hercules had asked Mr. Hofmeyr on Tuesday. Local Afrikanders were anxious that he should have a hand in the settlement, and one at least of the Johannesburg emissaries in Cape Town evidently regarded his moderating influence as an Uitlander asset. The special train on Thursday evening was boarded by Mr. Charles Leonard, of the National Union, and Mr. Graaff, a prominent Bondman, member of the Legislative Council and friend of Mr. Hofmeyr. 'i'hcy begged Sir Hercules to press Mr. Hof- meyr to come, declaring that he would yield to pressure. Sir Hercules did telegraph to Mr. Hofmeyr, en jvuie, inviting him to come up by next night's mail train, remarking that he had never doubted the loyalty and peaceful co-oj)eration of the Afrikander population, and adding that his own desire from the 200 THE STORY OF first to have jNIr. Hofmeyr's help was strengthened by finding that he enjoyed the confidence of the Chairman of the National Union. Mr. Hofmeyr's answer was as follows : — " Thanks kind wire. Owing to physical complaint I shall go only when supreme necessity arises, which is not yet. Am preparing reply to Cham- berlain's wire, which I will send you, and in which intend pressing for searching inquiry into working of Charter and genesis Jameson expedition." In announcing his departin-e the High Commissioner tele- graphed to President Kruger : — " I earnestly entreat Your Honour, for the sake of humanity, as well as tor the sake of South Africa in general, to arrange for a suspension of hostilities till my arrival." This, as we have seen, was done. Having spent Friday and Saturday in the train, Sir Hercules Robinson arrived at Pretoria on the evening of the 4th January. What state of things he found there we shall see presently. Put meanwhile we must return to Johannesbiug. \\'e have only seen the " boom in revolutions": we have to study the "slump." AN AFRICAN CRISIS Chapter XIV A "SLUMP" IN REVOLUTIONS ^ M THURSDAY, Jajuiary 2nd. — The town was early I astir on the following day, Thursday, January 2nd. This was the day when Jameson was to enter the beleaguered city like a conquering hero. And Johannes- burg was going to give him a reception tliat would thrill a continent. All the brigades and all the corps such as were not on duly at the various camps on the outskirts had been ordered to muster at nine a.m. Besides the 'I'own Bodyguard, a thousand and more strong, there were the Afri- kander Corps, 1,100 strong, to which Mr. F. Eckstein had presented a flag — Transvaal colours — the previous night ; there was the Scottish Brigade, reported to be 1,300 strong, and corps and brigades representative of the Irish, the \Velsh, Australians, Americans, the Natal Horse, West Countrymen, North (^ountrymen, and so forth and so on. All were to assemble at nine a.m. ; the Reform Committee were to take formal control and the bands were to play Jame son and his heroes in. The ladies got ready bouquets to shower on them. It should be " roses, roses all the way." That was the programme. Men were up early, and such as were not attached to the military organization betook themselves to the rise at Fords- burg, which commands a magnificent view of the undulating country stretching out towards Krugersdorp. The position was in charge of a troop of Horse, and a Maxim gun scientifically l)laced gave a business-like appearance to the scene. Alas ! during the morning hours when Jameson's triumphal pomp was a-preparing, he was fighting for dear life under the 202 THE STORY OF ridge of Doornkop ; his men had strayed into a rat-trap, and the Boers were " potting " the rats at pleasure. Soon the Hottentot "tanta's " apron would go up at I'armcr IJrink's out house, and all be over. Very early on Thursday morning there did reach the " Gold- fields " offices an authentic word from Jameson. His second message, the verbal one sent by a trooper after the miserable night bivouac under fire, was successfully brought in between six and seven. Colonel Rhotles, who was sleeping on the floor, was the only man in authority on the premises. " The Doctor s all right, hut he says now he would like some men sent out to meet him." Such was the message. It might be wrong ; it might be a breach of the armistice ; it might be bad policy; it might be madness; but Colonel Rhodes could only send one answer. He jumped up, found Bettington, and in as short a time as was needed to get the men together Bettington's Horse — meaning in this case some hundred and twenty mounted men with rifles — start :."d off westward in the general direction where the firing was supposed to be located. Meanwhile the Reform Committee was being got together, and Colonel Rhodes reported what he had done. Immedi- ately there was a tremendous outcry. Johannesburg had maile an armistice. It was not really in a position to resist attack. Jameson was responsible for exposing it to that risk before it was ready. A member of the Reform Committee had gone out, and was perhaps even now meeting Jameson with a copy of the proclamation and a distinct explanation why the Committee could not openly assist liini. llis messenger did not clearly say that he requireil assistance. I'^videiitly he was fighting his way in. The small number of men who had bren sent could be cf no real iiel|) to the column, wliile Joliannesburg would be damned witli the Boer (lovernment as much by tlie sending of I20 as l»y the sending of 2,000. 'J"he idea of sending a larger force, on the other liand, and thus taking away the de- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 203 fences of the town at tlie very time that they were defying the ]>oer Government by breach of the armistice, was equally un- tenable. Either now Jameson was coming in without their help, in which case their arrangement with Pretoria made their leaders hostages for his harmless return, while the Government had practically promised to give them all they wanted ; or in the alternative, if Jameson could not come in, the proclamation and the Reform Committee's messenger gave him a way out of the dilemma. He could surrender honourably to the procla- mation. There was a vague idea that the hostage arrangement with the Government would operate in this case, equally as in the case of Jameson's success, to secure him a safe conduct outside the country. The upshot of it all was that twenty minutes after the troop had started a mounted messenger rode after it and stopped it Ijy order of the Committee. The troop was then among the mines at the outskirts of the town, and though the Government got wind of its having sallied forth, the incident was successfully passed off as a measure for keeping order among the Kaffirs at one of the mines, and in the trials wfirch followed the one tentative effort or impulse of Johannes- burg to send out help to Jameson was, of course, the one thing above all others which the prisoners could not afford to avow. Jameson, the reader will bear in mind, surrendered between eight and nine o'clock. It may well be argued that if Betting- ton's troop had known just exactly where to go, and had suc- cessfully evaded the vigilance of the Boers in reaching a point within earshot or eyeshot of the column, that surrender would not have taken place when it did. They would just have been in time to save it. What the after result would have been is another question. Here the fact is merely put on record that Jameson did, at the eleventh hour, ask help from Johannes- burg, that the decision to give that help was countermanded, and that the Reform Committee is responsible for this decision. It should be adtled that Mr. Lionel Phillips and other pro- 204 THE STORY OF minent leaders readily assume the burden of justifying the decision, and indeed of showing that no other decision could have been justified for a moment in the difficult circumstances ; while one of those clearest upon the point was Jameson's own brother, whose message telling the Doctor to wait for the signal had been the most emphatic, and whose sense of duty to Johannesburg and to his colleagues first and foremost rose above every other consideration at that painful juncture. The rumour that ammunition had been run out to Krugers- dorp by the railway to be fired against Jameson, being bruited about on Thursday morning, caused great excitement. A Reform Committee deputation represented to the " Govern- ment Commission " — a few officials who now alone represented the Govern-hierarchy in the town — that " unless Government stop the use of the railway line in the direction of Krugersdorp they cannot restrain their people any longer, and they will not be answerable for the consequences." Government made no response. It has often been asked why Johannesburg had not even the enterprise to break up this line, and so interfere with the Boer connections. No armistice need have stopped that ! As a matter of fact, an attempt was made, but, as with so much else, not soon enough and not thoroughly enough. A man went out and put a dynamite cartridge on the line, but bungled the job, and the little damage done was soon repaired. The hours wore away, and still no sign of Jameson. The most powerful field-glass could detect nothing in the far dis- tance save three rising wreaths of smoke, such as batlery-house chimneys might send up. As no batteries were working, but one construction could be placed upon this. Jameson had, of course, beaten the ]»oers off, and was resting his men prepara- tory to riding into town. One report, wb.ich was ri'i)ealed with great authority, and purported to be tiie resuU of a reconnais sance, said that Jameson had lost loo men, including Sir John ^\'ilIo^lghl)y, l)ut was forcing his way througli all opposition. News, as it liappened, was more obtainable in town llian AN AFRICAN CRISIS 205 towards Langlaagte. Having the invaders completely hemmed in and at their mercy, the Government had no objection to driblets of news going along the wires to Johannesburg ; and the telegraph agencies published scraps as rapidly as received. The afternoon wore on, however, before anything beyond scraps about the earlier incidents of the fighting had come credibly to hand. However, those scraps were enough to change eager hope to anxiety. The populace clamoured around the " Goldlields '' building, and demanded that word should be given for the town forces to go out to the relief of Jameson, who, as belated rumour had it, was surrounded and in dire peril. In response to the angry demand the Hon. J. W. Leonard stepped to the balcony of the building, and declared that the report that Dr. Jameson was surrounded by 'Boers was not correct. "He w^as not sur- rounded •' (the newspaper report continues), " neither had he surrendered, and he was sure that if his hearers were the men he took them to be, they would believe his statement." One irresistibly recalls " Much Ado " : — ^'Second IVatch. — How if they will not ? " Dogbcny. — Why, then, let them alone till they are sober ; and if tb.ey make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for." " The announcement " (continues the report) " was received with unbounded enthusiasm. Mr. Leonard further stated that Dr. Jameson was within an hour and a half from Johannesburg." It would be cruel to recall some of the details of the fighting as issued from Reform Committee sources on the fatal day, and passed on, some of them, to anxious inquirers at Cape Town and elsewhere. Here are a few extracts from the records of the hour : — " Dr. Jameson is fighting his way into town against heavy odds. Report after report has been brought in by the despatch riders showing that Dr. Jameson is very much nearer Johannesburg than last night, the latest account stating that he is at Roodepoort, and coming in very fast indeed, fight- 2o6 THE STORY OF ing all the time. The Boers are massing behind him, and not in front of nim, as stated, and it looks as if the gallant Doctor will be able to fight his way into town." This was the news which purported to come from the battle-field, and which was published in Johannesburg at two o'clock in the afternoon — ■ three hours after the completion of the surrender. To show in what perfect good faith the Reform Committee passed on these rumours, the question which was now exercis- ing their minds was what action the Committee should take when Jameson joined forces with the Uitlander outposts at Langlaagte. That the Committee were thoroughly competent to hold the town of Johannesburg by their own resources and dis- positions did not, for official purposes, admit of doubt. But suppose Jameson fought his way up to the town outposts, and wanted aid— what then ? It was maintained that there would be no alternative but to lend him all the support possible, and accept the situation in all its entirety. This, of course, would be very improper in view of the armistice agreed upon at Pretoria the day before, but how could desperate men discuss points of international law at the cannon's mouth ? Johannes- burg, as represented by the Reform Committee, abundantly recanted its earlier repudiation of Jameson. This was the knotty point which was under discussion when the Committee learnt beyond the possibility of further doubt that Jameson had surrendered hours before, and, report pitilessly added, had cursed the Johannesburg leaders for a lot of cowards. For, to some one who got a few words from him at Krugersdorp im- mediately after his surrender. Dr. Jameson said he failed "owing to lack of sujjport ex[)ected when the Krugersdorp railway terminus from Johannesburg was reached.'' There had been no arrange mcni for a junction, there or elsewhere, as has been seen in earlier cha[)ters. The fact of the surrender was known to the (loNcniment officials at Johannesburg and llicir Hollander friends l)y two o'clock, and several wine jjarlies were instantly organized amongst this exclusive set. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 207 They soon hastened to crow over the Reform li'aders. The naked trutli was, however, withheld IVuni the masses until very late in the afternoon. ^Vhcn it came out, it was a black hour for Johaiuiesburg. Happily, the mob was unarmed. All the firearms at the disposal of the Reform Conuiiittee were in the possession of the forces encamped at the Waterworks plantation, the Simmer mine, the Robinson mine, Colonel Bettington's, Colonel Wol- laston's, and the Bonanza Corps. The thousands of men who composed the brigades and corps before mentioned carried no more murderous weapons than walking-sticks. All day long the people wandered to and from the Fordsburg eminence. Some camped out there, and others rode out a few miles further, but returned quickly and in haste, lest Jameson should have taken another route to town and they would have lost the opportunity of witnessing the heroes' triumphal entry into the city. It was weary waiting, and as the hours sped on the fear began to seize the patient watchers that Jameson had not, after all, found it suc:h an easy thing to break the Boer obstruc- tion. By five o'clock in the afternoon the report had got well abroad that Jameson had surrendered. An indescribable whirlwind of frenzy seized the mob. All the magnificent order and restraint of the few preceding days gave way to a wild delirium of rage against the leaders of the movement. Ten thousand excited persons clamoured around the headquarters of the Uitlander Organization, vent- ing their rage and shame, and, in the manner of mobs, seeking scapegoats. Why were the forces held in town, when Jame- son wanted relief only a few miles away ? First one, then an- other of the Reform Committee was called on by name to come out and speak. Presently Mr. Lionel Phillips appeared on the balcony and appealed for silence. "In reply to cries of ' Where's Jameson ? ' Mr. riiillips said, 'I'll tell you about that presently.' Continuing, he said many citizens had applied for enrolmcntj but the Committee were now considering that question. 2o8 THE STORY OF With regard to Dr. Jameson, he said tliat a despatch containing the High Commissioner's proclamation had been sent by special messenger to Krugersdorp yesterday. That despatch had been delivered to Dr. Jameson, and he had surrendered to the authority of the proclamation." Later, Colonel Rhodes spoke. It is painful to think of a gallant and popular British officer in such a cruel position. Neither then nor since did he save himself at the expense of his colleagues by trading on the Bettington's Horse incident. " As to the relief of Jameson, they would believe him when he said that if anything could have been done it would have been done. It was only at the last moment Jameson was known to be in the position he was. He thought that with the force Jameson had he would have come in without the slightest difficulty. If they thought that he (Colonel Rhodes) behaved like a cur he was prepared to take the penally of their resentment. The moment he heard of the news of the Jameson disaster was the bitterest of his life. Dr. Jameson and his men had been promised safety." The bitter truth was out at last ! Shouts of derision went up from the crowds in tlie street. They demanded to be taken out, and declared that they would rescue Jameson. It was the case of the Tiber bridge over again : " Those behind cried ' Forward ! ' And those in front cried ' Back ! ' " All doubt as to what course the Reform Committee would take was set at rest by the following official notice which was issued later in the evening : "The Committee recognise that at this juncture the interests of Dr. Jameson arc paramount, and that any ill-considered or aggressive step taken by this Committee will grievously complicate the situation. " Her Majesty's High Commissioner will arrive on Saturday, and the Committee urge upon the inhabitants of Johannesburg the absolute neces- sity for preservation of order. The Government has given an assurance that the marching of troops on Johannesburg is not contemplated, and further stales that it will give no cause for conflict. " Meanwhile, the Connnillee have taken all necessary steps for the public safely. " ]{y order of the Committee, "J. I'liRCV l'"lTZrATRICK." AN AFRICAN CRISIS 209 And again official assurances were repeated of the extent and thoroughness of the dispositions for the town's defence : the total number of men who could be put under arms, and who were mostly at present under arms, publicly and privately, being boldly announced as about 25,000. And thus appear- ances were kept up. But it was not against the Boers that the guards on duty at the " Goldfields " buildings were doubled that night. Were the leaders indeed cowards they would have been trembling within. But they were not really cowards, as they were soon to show under sentence of death. They were only men put by a series of blunders and a dead-set of circum- stances into a horrible appearance of cowardice. So, ex- hausted and miserable, but sleepless, they waited out the night. What an end to the day that had risen in such fine colours ! Friday, January yd. — Morning broke in Johannesburg upon a scene vastly different from those that had ruled during the previous foiu- or five days. There was an ominous absence of the crowds in the streets, of the six o'clock demand for news- papers, and of the bustling to and fro that had been the features of the week. Agreeably to the order of the Reform Committee, the various corps and brigades paraded on Mar- shall Square, and drilling proceeded. The idea was a good one, since it prevented that demoralization that would inevit- ably have set in had the men been left to their own resources. The general public recovered somewhat from the shock of the day before, and crowded into the streets. A demagogue or two mounted a cab and addressed the crowd, denounciny way of further calming public feeling the Reform Com- mittee issued the following notice at noon : — " Kesolve tlie Press. . . ." AN AFRICAN CRISIS 245 Saturday, January /^th. — Dismal certainty about Jameson : but Johannesburg? — Tlie article headed "Revolution by Proxy," given here as a faithful record of the feeling of that black hour, was preceded by a sort of prophetic forenote, which fuller knowledge has since brought to fulfilment. The?i Cape Town, and the world, had not the clue to the " desertion " : — Revolution by Proxy. [" We know there must be brave men on the Rand. We feel that we do not yet know all. We shall always uphold the rights of the ' Uitlanders ' to free government, and we rejoice that more blood has not been shed to win them, so long as they are won. But on what we know we feel im- pelled to express the intensely bitter disappointment of the following article : which, though struck off at heat, certainly voices a feeling universal in the capital. Some day, perhaps, we may be enabled to take back some of our reproaches."] " There is a saying that one cannot make a revolution with rosewater. Johannesburg is to be congratulated on an even more luxurious toitr de force. It has made a revolution by proxy. ' I am not one of those tame moralists,' said one of the most eloquent of Irish rebels in a famous perora- tion, ' who hold that liberty is not worth the spilling of one drop of blood.' The revolutionists of the Rand agree with Meagher. They have found that their emancipation from political servitude was quite well worth the cost of blood — other people's. For weeks past we have been edified by columns of eloquence upon the wrongs, intolerable to manhood, under which they smarted. Their ultimatum to the Government was declared to represent a charter of freedom for which ten thousand men were ready, if forced, to take up arms. With the irony of coincidence, it is to-day that a Times article is telegraphed declaring that while Mr. Leonard's manifesto asked for little more than the programme adopted by the National Union last year, there was this important difference, ' that those who endorse the manifesto of 1895 ^^i'l take the responsibility of enforcing it.' In reality, it appears, the extent of the stern resolve of the citizen army of ten thou- sand was to invite a handful of other men to enforce it for them. We owe an apolog}' to the Kruger Government and to its organs for refusing for a whole night and day to believe their statements of this plain, simple fict. We simply laughed away, as a fantastic fiction, the news that Johanneslnirg had sat inactive for four-and-twenty hours within earshot, ay, almost with- in eyeshot, of the stubborn struggle of a few hundred lads to push their way into town through two or three thousand Boers j that they had 246 THE STORY OF refrained, with a ' calm restraint,' perhaps unparalleled in the records of philosophy, from so much as sending out a patrol to reconnoitre. Before this, when an armistice was suggested to them by the Boer commandant, it does not seem to have occurred to them that an armistice which excludes the only fighting part of your belligerents leaves something to be desired. So they made their armistice, saw the Boers massing at their convenience in Jameson's path, and — made speeches. That was all the support ' Dr. Jim ' got from those ' principal residents ' who, as he wrote in his charac- teristic little scrawl to the Commandant of Marico, had invited him to * assist them in their demand for justice.' "The streets of Cape Town yesterday were a curious sight. People's faces were as gloomy as if everybody had lost a near friend — as, indeed, not a few must have done. The abstract rights of the people of Johannes- burg are the same as ever, no doubt — and the revolutionists by proxy say now that they are all to be conceded. But while the cause is the same, and all Cape Colonists support it, you cannot to-day conjure out of Cape Town the ghost of a cheer for the ' Uillanders' of Johannesburg. It may be wrong, but it is well that Johannesburg should know it, should feel that it lies under a great and grievous need to clear itself before the world. " The whole business is simply incomprehensible. The Reform Com- mittee puts the blame on the High Commissioner's proclamation. Since the Imperial Government disavowed Jameson, they must, of course, follow suit. Did they really expect the Imperial Government to personally con- duct their revolution ? The way the average Johannesburger talks over his drinks never led us to suppose that his political judgment was so fettered by the proprieties of Downing Street. These people, whose representatives invited. Jameson in, can they not see that while it was inevitable for us to disavow him, it was grotesque for them ? It was for us to deplore civil war — which is always deplorable. 'J'hey had declared themselves ready, if forced, to make it. Yet a proclamation addressed to British subjects when they had just sworn allegiance to the Transvaal flag suffices to make them coldly repudiate their ally. The Star, which has been preaching sedition bravely for a week, actually congratulated the forces of the Government on having defeated him, and the whole of Johannesburg looks on unmoved while the Boers draw on the ammunition in the town for those supplies which might have saved Jameson. And then, when the mass of people suddenly realized their disgrace, and in a passion of shame and anguish turn on the Committee, one of these genllcmen looks out of a wine Times at once drew attention to this, and appealed to Mr. Hofmeyr, as the recognised leader of ihr parly of which 0/is Land aspires to be the organ, to speak out and disown the heresy, and Mr. Hofmeyr at once addressed this letter to the Editor : — "Allow me, in connection with your leader of this morning, to say publicly what I have repeatedly stated to friends privately ever since Kaiser Wilhelm's blundering utterances on recent South African occur- rences became known. " I took his interference as mere bluster, not deserving any serious con- sideration, except in so far as it was calculated to create misleading impressions, or to raise false liopes in the Transvaal. Nolxxly knows better than His Imperial Majesly that the first Cierman shot fired against Kngland would be likely to be followed by a combined I'rench and Russian attack on 'das Valerland,' and by the aciiuisition by I'ngland of all (ler- man colonies, Damaraland inchidi'd, which would noi In- an \nuuixed evil for the Cap •. " From that niDincnt the attilndc of Dutch S(uilh AlVica was beyond a doulit, and I )iil< h and I'.ngh'sh united in Mr. Iluf- nit-yi's iinpi ralivc " llancls olf!" AN AFRICAN CRISIS 251 This was the bitterest pill of all that were prescribed for the Kaiser's telegram. It was not till some months afterwards that speeches of the German Foreign Minister, and a published White Book, revealed the fact that Germany's half-avowed denial of British Paramountcy in South Africa included a claim to object to any such South African Customs Union as has been the avowed ideal of South African and British statesmen for many years ! In January the practical reply to the Leyds- Berlin intrigue and the vapourings of the German Press was the prompt commissioning of a special service squadron (" for Delagoa Bay," was the popular guess) in readiness to reinforce any of the fleets already in commission or to constitute a separate force to be sent in any direction where danger might exist. The new scjuadron, which was placed under command of Rear-Admiral A. T. Dale, was composed of two first-class battleships, the Revenge and Royal Oak, the two first-class cruisers Gibraltar and Thesiis, and the two second-class cruisers Charybdis and Hermione — all vessels of recent design and powerful armament, together with a flotilla of torpedo boat destroyers; all duly assembled at Spithead on the i8th fanuary, in complete readiness to proceed to sea. The ease and rapidity with which the dockyard authorities at Portsmouth and Chatham fitted out this squadron without any fuss or special preparation was regarded at the time as showing that our resources in officers and men are larger than some critics have contended, and was quoted as a proof of a vast improve- ment in naval organization of recent years. At the same time the staff of artisans in Her Majesty's dockyards was largely augmented, and tenders were invited from private shipbuild- ing firms for the construction and immediate commencement of ten additional cruisers. The diplomatic situation soon simmered down, but po{)ular excitement continued long after the slightest danger of a rupture had passed away, and the scenes in the London theatres and music halls, where jingoism of a very pronounced type held high carnival, forcil)ly recalled the popular frenzies about Russia and Constantinople. 252 THE STORY OF Chapter XVII PICKING UP THE BROKEN CROCKERY THE pre-occupation of liritish Transvaal diplomacy for the first few months of 1896 was with an invitation to President Kruger to come to England in state in a British man-o'-war, and have a square talk with Mr. Chamber- lain. The invitation arose from the usual "authorized" mis- understandings about the President's own wishes, and the answer to it was for months regarded as the battle-ground of Afrikanders versus Hollanders, the former wanting the Presi- dent to go, the latter resisting a step which might lead to a friendly settlement. P'inally, when the Government had kept the matter hanging on to an insulting length of time, Mr. Chamberlain insisted on " Yes " or " No," and, Dr. Leyds having returned in the nick of time from Germany and Hol- land, the Hollanders won and the answer was " No."' The following was, in brief, the course of the ncgolialions : — " The original invitation to the President in January distinctly men- tioned the con(htion that Article IV. of the London Convention (making Transvaal treaties with foreign Slates subject to British veto) was to he ex- cluded from the discussion. This Mr. Ciiamberlain reiterated. ' Vou should,' he telegraphs a week later to the High Commissioner, ' in order to prevent the possibility of any mistake, repeat the statements . . . tlial we cannot consent to modify the terms of Article 1\\, . . . but other matters arc open to friendly discussion.' The I'resident was inclined to accept the invitation, if he could get the non />os.ui/iius about Clause l\. made not quite as absolute, and if a number of (juestions of his choice were allowed to enter into the discussion, and assurance being given that they would be m.iturely considered ' with an earnest desire to comjily with his wishes.' Of these fjuestions he sent oij the ajlh l'\,lMu,uy a p )rlcntous list. l|is first item Wivs;"-" AN AFRICAN CRISIS 253 " ' The superseding of the Convention of London, \sith the eye, amongst others, on the violation of the territory of the South African Republic : because in several respects it has already virtually ceased to exist ; because, in other respects, it has no more cause for existence ; because it is injurious to the dignity of an independent Republic ; because the very name and the continual arguments on the question of suzerainty, which since the con- clusion of this Convention no longer exists, are used as a pretext, especi- ally by a libellous Press, for wilfully inciting both white and coloured people against the lawful authority of the Republic ; for intentionally bring- ing about misunderstanding and false relations between England and the Republic, whereby in this manner the interests of both countries and of their citizens and subjects are prejudiced, and the peaceful development of the Republic is opposed.' " To this he added a new plea that Article IV. should not be excluded * on account,' as he surmises, * of false representations and lying reports spread by the Press and otherwise to the effect that the Government of the Republic has called in or sought the protection of other Powers.' He denied that he had ever sought ' or would ever seek ' any such thing. I Ic was prepared to ' give the necessary assurances.' (It was not the Press, by the way, but a member of the Executive Council, who ' spread ' this par- ticular calumny by telling the British Agent. It is easy to reconcile the statement and the denial when it is remembered that Dr. Leyds was at Berlin at the time). (2) The second item was the replacing of the Con- vention by something vaguely described as a treaty of amity and commerce, in which, however, England was to get guaranteed on the most favoured nation footing only her 'existing privileges ... of commerce.' {3) Guarantees against any fiiture raid, also against ' unlawful ' military or police or even pri\'ate movements on the border of the Republic. (4) Compensation for the raid. (5) Swaziland to be made part and parcel of the Republic. (6) Ditto as regards Zambaan's land. (7) Ditto as regards Umbegisa's land. (8) Revocation of the B.S.A. Company's Charter. This modest little bill President Kruger thought should be footed without grumbling because he is such an old man : ' considering especially my advanced age,' etc. But he was careful to leave an opening for adding a few more dishes to his Barmec de menu, if he should happen to think of anything later. * The contents of this letter are without prejudice to an eventual ctatement in detail of lawful rights.' " When Mr. Chamberlain got this remarkable draft agenda for the little ' friendly discussion ' that he had so innocently proposed, his comment was evidently ' Phew ! ' What Oom Paul wanted to get was clear indeed but he scoured it in vain for any hint of what Oom Paul proposed to give. All that Mr. Chamberlain had suggested on this side was the consideration of the ' Uitlanders' ' grievances ; and this the letter ruled out — save for a 254 THE STORY OF guarded willingness to receive ' private hints ' — as absolutely as Mr. Cham- berlain had ruled out Article IV. So Mr. Chamberlain steeled his heart even against the President's ' advanced age,' as a consideration hardly relevant to the diplomatist, however interesting to the biographer. He observed drily that the President's letter ' refers only to the concessions which he desires to obtain from Her Majesty's Government, and that he offers nothing in return, except what they already possess under the exist- ing Convention.' He felt sure that His Honour did not 'contemplate dis- cussion on so one-sided, a basis.' But that is exactly what His Honour did contemplate. ' President remarks,' the High Commissioner reported to Mr. Chamberlain soon afterwards, ' that it is not clear to him what is meant by the giving of concession from his side.' That is just it. ' Giving too little and asking too much ' is a characteristic which an English versifier observed in the President's ancestors at an earlier period of their history, and commemorated as a national foible. Having got at last the definite answer he was pressing for, and finding it still ' one-sided,' Mr. Chamber- lain, on April 27th, 'withdrew the invitation, which it appears was given under a misapprehension ' (of the President's attitude)." An incident of the prolonged wrangle was Air. Chamherlain's " Home Rule " despatch, suggesting a scheme of modified autonomy for the Rand, which was accepted by nobody. The original idea of this was Mr. Merriman's. Some fuss was caused by premature publication of the despatch. In March and April, when the delays of the Pretoria Ciovern- ment in answering Mr. Chamberlain were amounting to a grave slight, and it dawned on that " pushful " gentleman that they had merely been gaining time, and had no intention of even discussing reforms with liim, ilie diplomatic situation became for a short time strained, almost to breaking point, and the Jingo part of the Press in London and South Africa ])()ureil forth war-talk. Some excitement (and loud cries of " turncoat " from the pavement politicians of Cape Town) were caused by a series of articles in the Cape Times, in ttie last days of March and early days of April, entitled, "A Fool's Paradise," "A Word to Mr. Chamberlain," etc., in which it was said : — " Mr. C'liambcrlaiil ni;iy (iffcr good advice and pnint out dangers as empliaticaliy as he likes ; but if once he tries to force the Transvaal Government about internal reforms by the threat of war, of which his AN AFRICAN CRISIS 255 mentors speak so gliljly, we tell him plainly that he will have either to fulfil the threat — which is a wicked folly that we do not contemplate — or else to take a humiliating rebuff — which will be less wicked, but scarcely less foolish and mischievous. We hear that the Pretoria Government is very restive under some recent despatches. If Mr. Chamberlain is allow- ing himself to be pushed over the precipice, it is the duty of the High Commissioner, and the Colonial Government, too, for that matter, to pull him up before he gets any nearer the edge. We value the influence of the Paramount Power too highly in the present chaos of South African units to care to see that influence imperilled by a blunder. ... As we have pointed out over and over again, even while the negotiations for the Kruger visit and the Big Deal seemed still practicable, the ' Uitlander ' must not expect that much can be done for his political status at the present moment. The Boer would have to be either a fool or a supreme statesman — and he is neither ; he is a Boer. " Rumour says that in his impatience to get something to show before the Transvaal debate, the Colonial Secretary has been writing himself into a tone of ultimatum. Common sense says that, if he has, he is simply pre- paring for himself a crushing rebuff, to which the only effective rejoinder would be one which no responsible person dreams of." Mr. Chamberlain soon afterwards explained away the lan- guage which the Pretoria Government had taken for that of ultimatum, and the air soon cleared, but not before the Govern- ments of Cape Colony and of Natal had added their protest, and no doubt, though the Blue Books do not seem to repro- duce this, the High Commissioner also. The latter was now summoned home to confer with I\Ir. Chamberlain over the situation created by the refusal of the Transvaal Government to negotiate reforms with Great Britain, and from the date of his visit the Imperial authorities at home and in South Africa have seemed to be at one in accepting a watchful patience as the only possible policy until the crisis of 1896 shall have been obliterated. The Cape Ministry firmly resisted the attempt to get a special session called while race feeling and the personal issue about Mr. Rhodes were at fever-heat. The Colonial Parlia- ment met in May, and the debate on the raid began in the House of Assembly on the 12th on a motion of Mr. Mcrri- 256 THE STORY OF man's, a leading member of the Opposition, pointing at revocation of the B.S.A. Company's Charter — a formula adopted by both Republican Raads. Owing to a tedious notion that each individual member was bound in duty to his constituents to say something about the crisis, the debate lasted nearly three weeks. Mr. Merriman led the attack in a speech of unusual warmth and brilliant declamation, in which he directed every dialectic weapon against the continu- ance of the sovereign rights of the Charter. As to the trading rights, Mr. Merriman contemptuously disclaimed any idea or wish of interfering with them ; but he must have the adminis- trative scalp as vrell as the military one. He concluded by moving *' That in the opinion of this House the exercise of sovereign rights by a trading and financial company such as the British South Africa Company is not consistent with the peace and prosperity of South Africa. That the Queen be requested, by respectful address, to take this matter into her most gracious consideration, and by the revocation or alteration of the terms of the Charter granted to the said Company to make such provision for the government of the territories embraced therein as may seem to her advisable." The practical effect of this resolution would have boon to ask Downing Street to assume the direct responsibility of administering the Chartered Company's territories, a proposal which markedly ignored the opinions and wishes of the colonists in the new country itself. What was more to the purpose, it made no allowance for the keen traditional pre- judice against direct Downing Street rule which prevails among the Afrikander majority in the Cape Parliament. Mr. Merri- man's effort was generally dismissed, in the formula usual in his case, as "brilliant, but— erratic." As the debate went on it became increasingly evident that many a country iiKiiiber who felt angry with Mr. Rhodes and the Chartered Company nevertheless shrank from the grave impolicy of banning alto- gether the only agency which had won the north for Colonial South Africa. In the result Mr. Merriman's sweeping rcsolu- AN AFRICAN CRISIS 257 tion was negatived (May 27th) by sixty votes to eleven, and a judiciously worded amendment by Mr. Schreiner — which de- plored and repudiated the raid, expressed a hope that it would be made the subject of a searching Imperial inquiry, and of steps making the recurrence of such an incident impossible in the future, and resolved on a Cape inquiry by Select Com- mittee — was agreed to without a division. Before Parliament met, the reaction stirred by attacks on Mr. Rhodes in Mr. J. B. Robinson's Cape Town paper, with which Mr. Sauer was closely connected, had led to Mr. Sauer's deposition from the leadership of the Opposition — as since then It has led to the cessation of the journal. Mr Rose- Innes, the new leader, than whom nobody more deplored the raid, took a line nearer to Mr. Merriman's than Mr. Schreiner's ; but his amendment referred (in the most delicate manner possible) to Uitlander grievances and the need for their redress. It was lost by forty-five to twenty-eight. Mr. Schreiner evidently represented the " mixed emotions " of the Cape majority more nearly than any other leading member. The surprise of the debate was its moderation. Marked tact and self-restraint was shown by most of the speakers who followed Mr. Merriman, and especially by Mr. Schreiner, in handling a subject which had caused so lately so much bitter racial feeling. Still there were one or two grievous lapses ; e.g., when Mr. Van Wyk casually expressed his conviction that 50,000 British troops would only provide a breakfast for those brave Republican burghers, and again, when Mr. Merriman lost his temper and stigmatized some provocative reminiscence of Mr. Orpen's as a " deliberate lie." This un-Parliamentary language the Sjieaker — perhaps because he was new to the work — allowed to pass at the moment, but the ame/ide after- wards offered by Mr. Merriman was all the more gracious as it was spontaneous and voluntary. An incident of the debate which was keenly resented, and helped the pro-Rhodes and pro-Charter reaction, was the reading by Mr. Sauer of a tele- gram from the Chief Justice of the Transvaal urging exemplary 258 THE STORY OF steps against Rhodes and the Charter to satisfy Transvaal feeling. At a later date in the session, the Jameson affair cropped up afresh in an indirect way in connection with Mr. Rhodes' leave of absence, which the House granted by a large majority, though subsequently refusing the same privilege to Dr. Harris. In accordance with Mr. Schreiner's resolution, the Raid Select Committee began its sittings shortly after the conclusion of the debate, and the report — a bulky document of some 700 pages — was laid on the table of the House on the 21st July. There were two reports — one signed by everybody, including the Attorney-General (Chairman), subject to his own minority report, and another signed only by the Attorney- General. The majority report established as against Mr. Rhodes nothing beyond what the Cape Times, for instance, had publicly assumed from the time when the crisis disclosed the plot ; ^ but so much it showed very clearly and ably. The report was Mr. Merriman's composition. It made it clear that Mr. Rhodes made some efforts to stop Jameson going in when he did, though he had connived at the earlier jn-eparations ; and the Committee found this, briefly and simply, " incon- sistent with his duty as Prime Minister of this Colony." Everybody was prepared for so much, and more, but hardly for Sir Thomas Upington's rather special {^leading and rather too legal exceptions in Mr. Rhodes' favour. Sir Thomas did not defend his minority report in the subsequent debate, and the other was adopted by the House practically without dis- cussion on a moderate speech by Mr. Sclireiner, which referred with sorrow to Mr. Rhodes' high aims in his wrong-doing, and which was left by the House to serve as a suflicient expression of its feeling. Shortly after tlicir arrival in I'jigland Jaiuesoii and \\\^ officers were quietly smuggled to ]}t)W Street, where on the 25th February they were arraigned before Sir John Bridge on charges framed under the Foreign Enlistment Act, and re- * l''url!i(.T : — Sec, for inslanco, issue of J;iini;uy 61I1. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 259 manded on bail until the loth March, when the Attorney- General (Sir Richard Webster) opened the case at length for the prosecution. The examination of witnesses, many of whom had been summoned from the South African Republic, proved a long and tedious process, and public interest in the pro- ceedings had largely waned when at length on the 15th June, after several intermediate adjournments, the preliminary ex- amination was brought to a close. Jameson, Sir John Wil- loughby, Major Coventry, and the two Whites were committed for trial, the remainder of the accused being discharged by the magistrate. The trial " at bar " of the raid leaders opened in the Queen's Bench Division on the 20th July, before the Chief Justice (Lord Russell of Killowen), Baron Pollock, and Mr. Justice Hawkins, with a special jury. The Attorney-General led for the Crown ; Sir Edward Clarke, aided by Mr. Lock- wood and a galaxy of legal talent, watched the interests of the accused. The trial lasted seven days. Sir Edward Clarke, in a brilliant address to the jury, made the best of what, from a legal point of view, was an intrinsically bad case ; but Lord Russell's masterly summing-up brushed all technicalities aside, and left the accused no loophole of escape. It was, however, with evident reluctance that the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The sentences, pronounced by the Chief Justice, were as follows : — - Jameson, fifteen months; Willoughby, ten months ; "Bobby" White, seven months ; the others five months each, without hard labour. One passage of the stern and masterly summing-up aroused much comment. The Chief Justice told the jury that an offence against the Foreign Enlistment Act has been com- mitted whenever any one has equipped or fitted out or in any way taken part in preparing on British soil an expedition in- tended to operate against a friendly State. It is not even neces- sary, he added, that the expedition should actually start ; the offence is complete when the intention is present. Then he laid 26o THE STORY OF it down that any subject of the Queen aiding, abetting, or pro- curing such an expedition, even from a place outside of Her Majesty's dominions, is equally an offender against the law — a diction which Mr. Labouchere cum siiis has caught at as flinging the net wide enough to take in Mr. Rhodes, Dr. Harris, and even " Herr Beit," who, however, is not yet a naturalized Briton. AVhether the evidence is legally sufficient for this has yet to be seen. Seemingly not, unless by means of Mr. Rhodes consenting to incriminate himself at the London inquiry. Mr. Rhodes' name, by the wa}-, was barcl\' mentioned once in the whole course of the Jameson trial, but on the follow- ing day a letter was published from Mr. Hawksley in the London papers, stating that Mr. Rhodes (who was then romantically risking his life away in Matabeleland, where he brought the harassing rebellion to an end at the famous " indaba " in the Matoj)po Hills) was ready to surrender, come home, and take his trial whenever Her Majesty's Government might think fit to call upon him to do so. The prisoners, in strict accordance with the terms of their sentence, were at first placed under the ordinary convict regime, and for a day or so public opinion was inflamed by the idea of these eminently political offenders sitting cropped and clad in the " broad arrow." But by the exercise of the Queen's prerogative an order was issued from the Home Office in a few days directing their removal to Holloway. where (juarters were provided for them as first-class misdemeanants. Major Coventry's health being endangered by confinement, owing to the troublesome nature of the wound near the spine which he received at Krugersdorp, he was a few weeks later released from gaol. In December Dr. Jameson's release was also forced by his slow recovery from a painful ojieralion, the cau.se aggra- vated hirgely by the effects of confinement on a man used to open air activity. 'i'he five ("hief Ofiicers, as the se(|Uel to lluir sentence, were also retired from the Army, as was Colonel Rliodes. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 261 While the raiders were standing trial in ICngland, tlie eyes of South Africa were steadily fixed on Pretoria, where the spectacle of a great State prosecution — the arraignment of the leaders of a movement which enjoyed in some sense the sympathy of a majority of the people in the Republic — was being gradually unfolded. The preliminary examination of the Reformers began before Mr. Zeiler, the Judicial Com- missioner, on the 3rd February. The chief features of this long-drawn function were that no witness could remember any- thing, and that the State Attorney seemed hardly to know what evidence to offer. It was not concluded until the Stli April, when the accused were formally committed. The actual trial opened on the 24th April, before Mr. Jus- tice Gregorowski, a Free State advocate, who, as the Transvaal judges had been made to act along with the Executive Council in many of the New Year doings, was specially imported to relieve them of an ambiguous position. Though known for severe sentences, one on a Kaffir being notoriously brutal, Mr. Gregorowski was then taken to be an enlightened lawyer. His position, however, was anomalous, as the necessary con- firmation by Volksraad of his appointment was arranged to come after this trial, instead of before it. He was thus " im- ported on approval." At the eleventh hour the whole of the prisoners decided to plead guilty, four to high treason, the rest to /he majesii\ subject to certain reserves which were not ob- jected to by the State Attorney, and evidence being led in as brief and perfunctory a manner as possible, the closing scene was not long delayed. On the 28th the four co-signatories with the absent Leonard of the letter to Jameson — George Farrar, Lionel Phillips, Colonel Rhodes, and John Hays Hammond — were sentenced to death, while the rank and file were ordered to be imprisoned for two years, to pay a fme of ;^'2,ooo each, or an extra year's imprisonment, and to be banished from the Republic for three years. These were the heads of the Republic's one great industry ; the men whom their able counsel, Mr. W'essels, could describe 262 THE STORY OF as "employers of half its population"; the men whose co- operation the Government had bargained for and made use of after Mr. Phillips's admission of their dealings vckh. Jameson. An indescribable wave of feeling swept the packed court, and then the streets. The condemned four kept a right English bearing. The surprise occasioned at first by the plea of guilty ceased with tlie publication by the Pretoria Government of the mass of cipher telegrams laying bare to an astonished world the whole plot which led up to Jameson's march, according to the description of the earlier chapters of this number. It was an early private view of these astounding messages which had led Mr. Fischer, of the Free State, to go back to his Raid soon after the crisis and talk about " the bloody complot " ^ in terms which made all South African flesh creep. At that time, in the first flood of suspicion and sweeping inferences, the Pretoria Government declared that the plot included various heinous elements which there has never been an attempt to prove and which have since been abandoned — such as the arming of Kaffirs on the Rand, the stirring up of the native chiefs to attack the Transvaal or the Free State, and the charge that the raid was in some mysterious and unex- plained way intended to rehabilitate the finances of the Char- tered Company by what Mr. Austin calls " the crushings of all the Rand." Despite the shock of the (■ii)lKr tikgranis, tlie severity of the Gregorowski sentences aroused great public excitement in England and throughout South Africa. It was repeated how the new Judge had asked one of his colleagues for a black cap before the trial even began. It was asserted, even by sober lawyers, that the sentences were simply designed for the Government to make political capital by remitting them in the ])iecemeal way which was eventually adopted. One of Cirego- rowski's colleagues cut him in private life, and there were ' The actual phrase itself was an cniliioidny iipim Mi. I'IscIki's Diitcli wrought hy the fcrvifl pen of tlic I-"rcc Stale /iv/nss. AN AFRICAN CRISIS 263 many other signs of the extraordinary feeling created. Mr. Chamberlain lost no time in informing the Commons (April 2yth) that he had telegraphed to President Kruger, expressing his confidence that the death sentences would be commuted, and adding that he had assured Parliament to this effect. The tension of public feeling was relieved in South Africa on the same day by the news that commutation had actually taken place. Some further intimation of the intentions of the Executive was now eagerly awaited ; but as day after day, and week after week passed without any sign being given by Presi- dent Kruger or his advisers, the public grew anxious and impatient. Meantime, the Reformers were herded together, with every circumstance of discomfort, in a corrugated iron shed, hastily improvised for their accommodation within the precincts of Pretoria gaol. The district surgeon warned the Government regarding the unsanitary condition of the place and the hardships suffered by the prisoners under its baking roof; but his representations passed unheeded, and on the 1 6th May one of the prisoners, whose mind had become unhinged, was discovered to have committed suicide. The tragedy of poor Gray, deepened as it was by the despair of a young wife hopefully awaiting her husband's release at the prison gates, cast a gloom over the whole of South Africa, and was not without its effect on the Transvaal Government. Hollander influences, which had, it was believed, been pro- longing as far as possible the period of suspense,^ recoiled before the genuine sentiment of concern which the Reformer's death aroused among the kindly burghers; and a few days later (May 19th) it was made known that the Executive had commuted the sentences of the leaders to fifteen years' im- prisonment, and that three sick prisoners, Lionel Phillips being one of them, had been sent to the Volks Hospital. The * When the prisoners were being marched off to gaol, and also while those under death sentences were driven past the Government Buildings, Dr. Leyds stood conspicuous with his hands in his pockets and ostenta- tiously laughed at them. 264 THE STORY OF sentences on the other prisoners, with eight exceptions, were reduced on the following day to terms of twelve, six and three months, or rather, they were given to understand that the question of their release would be favourably considered if they petitioned the Executive at the expiration of those periods ; and the eight referred to were set free at once on payment of their fines. Still public sentiment was by no means satisfied, it being too evident that the policy of the Transvaal Executive was to dole out magnanimity by inches, whereas the interests of South Africa required that there should be a speedy amnesty. On the 23rd May tlie Cape Times declared that the policy of silence had failed, and that the Government would make the releases then and then only when it was shown that they would lose more political capital by keeping the prisoners on tenter- hooks than they could possibly make out of them. The 0//t' limes therefore proposed a plan, set forth in an article entitled, " To the Towns of South Africa : An Historical Opi)ortunity," of which the following is an extract : — " Wliat we want to see, then, is that all the towns of South .\fiica — for they are all at one, they only wait for the signal— should, on this sulijcct of the prisoners, speak out and speak together. Suppose that a simul- taneous and unanimous vote were passed hy large and orderly gatherings at Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein, Pretoria, Johannesburg, I'ort Eliza- hcth, Kimherley, Kast London, Queen's Town, King William's Town, Graham's Town, Hulawayo and Salisbury. We have communicated inquiringly with each of these towns, and with others, and the answers already received indicate that a great movement is beginning through the length and breadth of the country, and tliat, if action be not taken unitedly, it will be taken sporadically. "We plead for united action. Let a day be chosen — say, to-day week, next Saturday. I'or that day let meetings be called by the -Mayors or by influential public leaders. Let these secure that the tone set from the beginning is sober and responsible. Let a form of resolution be chosen expressing in general terms the public sentiment in favour of a sjjirit of amnesty in dealing with the still imprisoned Reformers, and let this be submitted to each of the sinndtaneous meetings, subject only to such local alterations as may be necessary to secure genuine unanimity. We would suggest that the resolulicjn itself should slick slri) how shall we get it ? I have stated plainly what our grievances are, and I shall answer with equal directness the question, " What do we want ? " We want : (i) the establishment of this Republic as a true republic ; (2) a Grondwet, or Constitu- tion, which shall be framed by competent persons selected by representatives of the whole people and framed on lines laid down by them — a constitution which shall be safeguarded against hasty alteration ; (3) an equitable franchise law, and fair representation ; (4) equality of the Dutch and English languages ; (5) responsi- bility of the Legislature to the heads of the great departments ; (6) removal of religious disal/ilities ; (7) independence of the courts of justice, with adequate and secured remuneration of the judges ; (8) liberal and comprehensive education ; (9) cftlcient civil service, with adequate provision for pay and pension ; (10) free trade in South African products. That is what we want. There now remains the question which is to be put before you at the meeting of the 6th January, viz., How shall we get it ? To this question I shall expect from you an answer in plain terms accord- ing to your deliberate jutl;..;ment. Charles Leonard, CltairDuvi of the Trans7'aal National Union. ArPENDIX III STATEMENT OF THE REFORM LEADERS AT THE TRIAL For a number of years endeavours have been made to obtain by constitutional means the redress of grievances under which the Uitlander population labours. The new-comers asked for no more than is conceded to immigrants by all the other Governments in South Africa, under which every man may, on reasonable con- ditions, become a citizen of the State, whilst here alone a policy is pursued by which the first settlers retain the exclusive right of government. A petition supported by the signatures of 40,000 men was ignored, and when it was found that we could not get a fair and reasonable hearing, that provisions already deemed obnoxious and unfair were being made more stringent, and that we were being debarred for ever from obtaining rights which in other countries are fully granted, it was realized that we should never get redress until we should make a demonstration of force to support our claims. Certain provision was made regarding arms and ammunition, and a letter was written to Dr. Jameson, in which he was asked to come to our aid under certain circum- stances. On December 26th the Uitlanders' manifesto was pub- lished, and it was then our intention to make a final appeal for redress at the public meeting which was to have been held on the 6th of January. In consequence of matters that came to our knowledge, we sent on December 26th ALijor Heany by train vid Kimberley, and Captain Holder across the country, to forbid any movement on Dr. Jameson's part. On the afternoon of Monday, the 30th December, we learnt from Government sources that Dr. Jameson had crossed the frontier. We assumed that he had come in good faith to help us, probably misled by some of the exaggerated rumours which were then in circulation. We were- convinced, however, that the Government and the burghers would not, in the excitement of the moment, believe that we had not 288 APrENDICES invited Dr. Jamr.son in, and there was no course open to us but to prepare to defend ourselves if attacked, and at the same time to spare no etitort to eftect a peaceful settlement. It became necessary to form some organization for the protection of the town and the maintenance of order, since in the excitement caused by the news of Dr. Jameson's coming serious disturbances would be likely to occur, and it was evident that the Government organi- zation could not deal with the people without serious risks of conllict. The Reform Committee was formed on Monday night, the 30th December, and it was intended to include such men of influence as cared to associate themselves with the movement. The object with which it was formed is best shown in its first notice, namely, — "Notice is hereby given that this Committee adheres to the National Union manifesto, and reiterates its desire to maintain the independence of the Republic. The fact that rumours are in course of circulation to the effect that a force has crossed the Bechuanaland border renders it necessary to take active steps for the defence of Johannesburg and the preservation of order. The Committee earnestly desire that the inhabitants should refrain from taking any action which can be construed as an overt act of hostility against the Government ; by order of the Committee, J. Percy Fitzpatrick, Secretary." The evidence taken at the preliminary examination shows that order was maintained by this Committee during a time of intense excitement, and through the action of the Committee no ag- gressive steps whatever were taken against the Government, but, on the contrary, the property of the Government was protected, and its officials were not interfered with. It is our firm belief that had no such Committee been foimcd the intense excitement caused by Dr. Jameson's entry would have lirought about utter chaos in Johannesburg. It has l)cen alleged that we armed natives. This is absolutely untrue, and is disposed of by the fact that during the crisis upwards of 20,000 white men applied to us for arms, and were unable to get them. On Tuesday morn- ing, the 31st December, we hoisted the flag of the Z.A.R., and every man bound liimself to maintain the independence of the Republic. On the same day the (Jovernment withdrew its police voiimlariiy from the town, and we preserved perfect order. During the evening of the same day, Messrs, Marais and Malan presented APPENDICES IS89 themselves as delegates from the Executive Council. They came (to use their own words) to oflcr us the olive branch, and they told us that if we would send a deputation to Pretoria to meet a Commission appointed by the Government, we would obtain " practically all we asked in the manifesto." Our deputation met the Government Commission, consisting of Chief Justice Kotze, Judge Amcshoff, and Mr. Kock, member of the Executive. On our behalf our deputation frankly avowed knowledge of Jameson's presence on the border, and of his intention, by arrangement with us, to assist us in case of extremity. With the full knowledge of this arrangement — with the knowledge that we were in arms and agitating for our rights, the Government Commission handed to us a resolution of the Executive Council, of which the following is the purport : " Sir Hercules Robinson has offered his services with a view to a peaceful settlement. The Government of the South African Republic has accepted his offer. Pending his arrival, no hostile steps will be taken against Johannesburg, pro- vided Johannesburg take no hostile action against the Govern- ment. In terms of a certain proclamation recently issued by the President, the grievances will be earnestly considered." We parted in perfect good faith \\ith the Government, believing it to be their desire, as it was ours, to avert bloodshed, and believing it to be their intention to give us the redress which was implied in the "earnest consideration of grievances." There can be no stronger evidence of our earnest endeavour to repair what we regarded as a mistake by Dr. Jameson than the ofiter which our deputation, authorized by resolution of the Committee, laid before the Government Commission, " If the Government will permit Dr Jameson to come to Johannesburg unmolested, the Committee will guarantee with their persons, if necessary, that he will leave again peacefully as soon as possible." We faithfully carried out the agreement that we should commit no act of hostility against the Government ; we ceased all active operations for the defence of the town against any attack, and we did everything in our power to prevent any collision with the burghers, an attempt in which our eftorts were happily successful. On the telegraphic advice of the result of the interview of the deputation with the Government Commission, we despatched Mr. Lace, a member of our Committee, as an escort to the courier carrying the High Commissioner's despatch to Dr. Jameson, in order to assure our- U 290 APTENDICES selves that the despatch would reach its destination. On the. following Saturday, January 4, the High Commissioner arrived in Pretoria. On Monday, the 6th, the following telegram was sent to us : — "Pretoria, 6th January, 1S96. — From H.M. Agent to Reform Committee, Johannesburg. — I am directed to inform you that the. High Commissioner met the President, the Executive, and the Judges to-day. The President announced the decision of the Government to be that Johannesburg must lay down its arms unconditionally, as a condition precedent to a discussion and con- sideration of grievances. The High Commissioner endeavoured to obtain some indication of the steps which would be taken in the event of disarmament, but without success, it being intimated that the Government had nothing more to say on this subject than had already been embodied in the President's proclamation. The High Commissioner enquired whether any decision had been come to as regards the disposal of the prisoners, and received a reply in the negative. The President said that as his burghers to the number of S,ooo had been collected, and could not be asked to remain indefinitely, he must request a reply, yes or no, to this ultimatum witliin twenty-four hours.— J. ]>]•; Wkt, Her Majesty's Agent." On the following day Sir Jacobus dc Wet met us in Committee, and handed us the following wire from the High Commissioner : — "High Commissioner, Pretoria, to Sir Jacobus de Wet, Johan- nesburg. — Received, Johannesburg, 7.36 a.m., 7th January, 1896. Urgent. — You should inform the Johannesburg people that I con- sider that if they lay down their arms they will be acting loyally and honourably, and that if they do not comply with the request they forfeit all claims to sympathy from Her Majesty's Govern- ment and from British suljjects throughout the world, as the lives of Jameson and prisoners are practically in their hands." On this, and assurances given in the Executive Council reso- lution, we laid down our arms on the 6lh, 7lh, and Sth January. On the 9lh we were arrested and li.ive since been under arrest in Pretoria— a period of three and a li.iU' months. We admit re- sponsibility for the action taken by us. We ])iartirally avowed it at the time of the negotiations with tlic ( ■|(>\crnnicnl, when we were informed that the services of the High Commissioner had been accepted with a view to a peaceful settlement. We submit APPENDICES 291 that we kept failh in every detail in the arrangement. We did all that was humanly possible to protect both the State and Dr, Jameson from the consequences of his action ; that we have com- mitted no breach of the law which was not known to the Govern- ment at the time ; and that the earnest consideration of our grievances was promised. We can now only put the bare facts before the Court, and submit to the judgment that may be passed upon us. (Signed) LIONEL PHILLIPS, Francis Rhodes, George Farrar. Pretoria, 24M Aprils 1896. I entirely concur with the above statement. John Hays Hammond. Pretoria, 27/// April, 1896. STATEMENT HANDED IN BY THE REMAINDER OF THE COMMITTEE "We have heard the statement made by Mr. Lionel Phillips, and we fully agree with what he has said as regards the objects of the Reform Committee. We have worked with these gentlemen, and the only object all had in view was to use their utmost endeavours to avert bloodshed, but at the same time to endeavour to obtain the redress of what we considered very serious grievances." APP£xnix ir THE CONVENTION OF LONDON (18S4). (CRITICAL CLAUSES.) Article I. (defines Boundaries). Art. II. — The Government of the South African Republic will strictly adhere to the boundaries defined in the first Article of this Convention, and will do its utmost to prevent any of its inhabitants from making any encroachments upon lands beyond the said boundaries. The Government of the South African Republic will appoint Commissioners upon the eastern and western borders whose duty it will be strictly to guard against irregularities and all trespassing over the boundaries. Her Majesty's Government will, if necessary, appoint Commissioners in the native territories outside the eastern and western borders of the South African Republic to maintain order and prevent encroachments. Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the South African Republic will each appoint a person to proceed together to beacon off the amended south-west boundary as described in Article I. of this Convention ; and the President of the Orange Free State shall be requested to appoint a referee to whom the said persons shall refer any ciuestions on which they may disagree respecting the interpretation of the said Article, and the decision of such referee thereon shall be final. The arrangement already made, under the terms of Article XIX. of the Convention of Pre- toria of the 3rd August, 1881, between the owners of tlic farms Groolfontcin and Valleifontcin on the one hand, and the Barolong authorities on the other, by which a fair share of the water supply of the said farms shall be allowed to How undisturbed to the said Baroloni^s, shall continue in force. Art. III. — If a British officer is appointed to reside at Pretoiia or elsewhere within the South .'\frican Republic to discharge func- 39a ATPENDICES 293 tions analagous to those of a Consular officer, he will receive tlic protection and assistance of the Repuljlic. Art. IV. — The South African Republic will conclude no Treaty or engagement with any State or nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen. Such approval shall be considered to have been granted if Her Majesty's Government shall not, within six months after receiving a copy of such Treaty (which shall be delivered to them immediately upon its completion), have notified that the conclusion of such Treaty is in conflict with the interests of Great Britain, or of any of Her Majesty's Possessions in South Africa. Arts. V. and VI. (deal with State financial liabilities). Art. VH. — All persons who held property in the Transvaal on the 8th day of August, 1881, and still hold the same, will continue to enjoy the rights of property which they have enjoyed since the 1 2th April, 1877. No person who has remained loyal to Her Ma- jesty during the late hostilities shall suffer any molestation by reason of his loyalty ; or be liable to any criminal prosecution or civil action for any part taken in connection with such hostilities ; and all such persons will have full liberty to reside in the country, with enjoyment of all civil rights and protection for their persons and property. Art. VHI. — The South African Republic renews the declaration made in the Sand River Convention, and in the Convention of Pretoria, that no slavery or apprenticeship partaking of slavery, will be tolerated by the Government of the said Republic. y\rt. IX. — There will continue to be complete freedom of religion and protection from molestation for all denominations, provided the same be not inconsistent with morality and good order ; and no disability shall attach to any person in regard to rights of property by reason of the religious opinions which he holds. Art. X. (is about graves of British soldiers in Transvaal). Art. XI. — All grants or titles issued at any time by the Trans- vaal Government in respect of land outside the boundary of the South African Republic, as defined in Article I., shall be considered invalid and of no effect, except in so far as any such grant or title relates to land that falls within the boundary of the South African Republic ; and all persons holding any such grant so considered 294 APPEN DICES invalid and cf no effect will receive from the Government of the South African Republic such compensation, either in land or money, as the Volksraad shall determine. In all cases in which any Native Chiefs or other authorities outside the said boundaries have received any adequate consideration from the Government of the South African Republic for land excluded from the Transvaal by the first Article of this Convention, or where permanent im- provements have been made on the land, the High Commissioner will recover from the native authorities fair compensation for the loss of the land thus excluded, or of the permanent improvements thereon. Art. XII. — The independence of the Swazis, within the boundary line of Swaziland, as indicated in the first Article of this Conven- tion, will be fully recognised. Art. XIII. — Except in pursuance of any treaty or engagement made as provided in Article IV. of this Convention, no other or higher duties shall be imposed on the importation into the South African Republic of any article coming from any part of Her Majesty's dominions than are or may be imposed on the like article coming from any other place or country ; nor will any pro- hibition be maintained or imposed on the importation into the South African Republic of any article coming from any part of Her Majesty's dominions which shall not equally extend to the like article coming from any other place or country. And in like manner the same treatment shall be given to any article coming to Great Britain from the South African Republic as to the like article coming from any other place or country. These provisions do not preclude the consideration of special arrangements as to import duties and commercial relations between the South African Republic and any of Her Majesty's Colonies and Possessions. Art. XIV. — All persons, other than natives, conforming them- selves to the laws of the South African Republic, (a) will have full liberty, with their families, to enter, travel, or reside in any part of the South African Republic ; (/>) they will be entitled to hire or possess houses, manufactories, warehouses, shops, and premises ; (f) they may carry on their commerce cither in person or by any agents whom they may think fit to employ ; ((f) they will not be subject, in respect of their persons or property, or in respect of their commerce or industry, to any taxes, whether general or local, other than those which are or may be imposed upon citizens of the said Republic. APl'ENDICES 295 Alt. XV. — (Makes some exemptions from compulsory military service, completed as regards all British suljjects by Lord Loch's 1894 arrangement). Art. XVL— (Extradition). Arts. XVIL, XVIII. — (Pre-retroccssion debts and other con- tracts). Art. XIX. — The Government of the South African Republic will engage faithfully to fulfil the assurances given, in accordance with the laws of the South African Republic, to the natives at the Pretoria Pitso by the Royal Commission in the presence of the Triumvirate and with their entire assent, (i) as to the freedom of the natives to buy or otherwise acquire land under certain con- ditions ; (2) as to the appointment of a commission to mark out native locations ; (3) as to the access of the natives to the courts of law ; and (4) as to their being allowed to move freely within the country, or to leave it for any legal purpose, under a pass system. Art. XX. — (Ratification provision). Signed in duplicate in London this 27th day of February, 1884. (Signed) HERCULES ROBINSON. (Signed) S. J. P. KRUGER. (Signed) S. J. DU TOIT. (Signed) M. J. SMIT. APPENDIX V CECIL RHODES AND HIS TOLICY As Sketched by the Author in 1SS9 90 {Extract from " In Afrikander laiuf.") . . . "There lies before me another curious illustration of the efTorts which, in the anti-English period after the Transvaal war, the Government of the Republic repeatedly made, but made in vain, to conclude arrangements with the IMatabele King. This is a copy of a letter which was sent by General Joubert to Lobengula nine years ago. It was given to me by Mr. Selous, the eponymous hero of the " Selous Road" to Fort Salisbury, the Nimrod of South Africa, the English Pathfinder whose unerring- skill has since guided the pioneers of Mashonaland safely to their goal through the trackless bush. It had never before been published, this strange State paper, and Mr. Selous had become possessed of it as follows : On one of the adventurous hunting expeditions which have chequered the last twenty years of Mr. Selous' life, the young Englishman happened to be up at the King's kraal when the let- ter arrived. It was couched in Dutch, and the messenger could not translate it. At Lobengula's request Mr. Selous took the letter down to his wagon, and there wrote out the very translation which lie showed me in manuscript. The letter is dated " Marico, S.A.R , March 9, 1882," and addressed to "the great ruler, the chief Lobengula, son of Umziligazc, the great King of the Matabclc nation." " Now you must have heard," it runs, "that the English look away our country, the Transvaal, or, as they say, annexed it. \Vc then talked nicely for four years, and begged for our country, liut no ; when an Englishman once has your proj^crty in his hands, then is he like to an ape that has its hands full of jnuniikin- sccds. If you don't beat him to death, he will never let go. And thus all our nice talk for four years did not help us at all. Then the English commoncctl to arrest us, because wc were dissatisfied, and that caused the shooting and fighting. Then the English first ago ArPRNDICES 297 RHODES IN '90] found that it would be better to give us back our country. . And we will now once more live in friendship with Lobengula, as we lived in friendship with Umziligaze ; and such must be our friendship that so long as there is one Boer and one Matabele living these must remain friends." After a hopeful allusion to the time "when the stink which the Englishman brought with him is blown away altogether," this unique document of diplomacy closes with the signature of "The Commandant-General of the S.A. Re- public, for the Government and Administration, P. J. Joubert." . . . "In truth, Mr. Rhodes will only be striking the last, win- ning stroke in a battle which he has been fighting ever since 82-83 — since the time of the filibustering " Republics " of Stella- land and Goshen, the expedition of Sir Charles Warren, and the proclamation of Bechuanaland as a protectorate with Crown colony for base. It was an open eye to the north which made the Govern- ment of the Transvaal turn a blind eye on the west to the irregu- larities of the overflow into Bechuanaland. That overflow would have locked the Republic with German territory, built a Boer wall, as it were, across the continent of Africa, and so fenced us off once and for all from direct expansion towards the interior of the continent. In the firm and timely settlement which checkmated that design Mr. Rhodes had a hand, and struck the keynote of his policy ever since towards the Boer pioneer. " Keep your land titles," he said in effect to the adventurers who called themselves the "-Republic of Stellaland"— " keep your titles, but write them in English instead of Dutch." On the one hand he realized that everything must be done with and through the Dutch ; on the other, he already regarded Bechuanaland as the English high road to Zambesia. " The story of how Paul Kruger vv^as outflanked takes us back to the " Railway Question." . . . Oom Paul would not hear of the Kimberley line being carried forward to the Transvaal goldfields, which were then regarded as its goal. He must first see the com- pletion of the Delagoa Bay railway — not to say the Greek Kalends, or the coming of the Coqigrues. For a time, no doubt. President Kruger simply pleaded precedence for the Delagoa Bay line as a means of delaying altogether the advent of the iron horse. Then he seems to have conceived the idea of Pretoria as a railway capital, the centre of a grand trunk system which would throw out an arm not only to Delagoa Bay and to each of the colonial ports, 29S APPENDICES RHODES IN '90] but ncwthward, vhi the north-eastern gold deposits of the Trans- vaal, to the land of Ophir. " But while Oom Paul, like the marketer in the fable, was de- liberating on the giddy wealth that his crockery ought to bring him in, the pick of the basket was spilt before his eyes. Just when Cape Colony as a whole is beginning to feel heartily sick of being played off against Natal, when even the Dutch farmer of the " Paarl party " is stung with the suspicion that he has been cheaply humbugged by Oom Paul's promises of a favouring tariff — at this psychological moment enters on the scene ISIr. .Rhodes with his concession and Charter. " Kruger will not let us take the Kimberley line into his country ? \'ery well, says the Kimberley Diamond King, then we will take it round him and beyond, on the way to the richer Transvaal of the Zambesi. What is more, here is my Company ready, for a consideration, to undertake the job." A three-cornered bargain between the Imperial Government, the Colonial Government, and the Company is soon arranged ; so much land for taking the line to \^-yburg (where it now is),' so much more for taking it to Mafeking, hitherto the ultima Thule of South African traders — terms on which the Cape Government should raise a loan, and on which it can eventually take over the railway. What does this mean? It means that instead of young Cape Colony seeking careers in the Transvaal, young South Africa, the Transvaal included, will have to seek careers in the great interior under the flag of Mr. Rhodes. . . . Cape Town will have its pull at whatever milk and honey may be tlowing in Matabelcland proper, through that thin strip of territory which was saved fron\ P»ocr clutches in 1S85 as the neck of the bottle. But strategically, in any case, the railway has done its work. It has given into Cape keeping the key to the land of Ophir. Oom Paul has let a pawn be pushed past him, and the pawn, by all tlu' rules of chess, has made itself a (luccn. "You see at once how the situation has been revolutionized. Suppose for a moment lli;il in the long struggle for ascendency in Matabeleland, Boer, and not Ihitisii, had won the day. Sup- pose, in other words, that instead of a Transvaal pent in between the V^aal and the Limpopo, and already overrun with English or English-speaking men, we had now to deal with a Transvaal • It is to reacli I3iilu-.vnyo lliis j-cir. — Feb., 1897. Arr-ENDICES 299 RHODES IN '90] larger than Great Britain, France, Austria, and Italy put together, its boundaries marching on the west with German territory, and on the east with Portuguese, while to the north the Boer pioneer might stand, as the Englishman stands now, and look across the Zambesi to a vista which it will be for future history to limit. Then, indeed, the Transvaal might well call itself the " South African Republic " ; and on what a vantage-ground would it take its stand when the time comes to make terms for the confederation of the future ! At present every community of English and Colonial miners that we plant on Transvaal soil is as a great piece of blotting-paper laid over so much of the map, soaking up the script which marks it alien to England. Within the Republic this al:)sorbent power has well nigh done its work. But if, by a sort of fissiparous birth, a new and a larger Transvaal could suddenly appear clinging to the side of the old, that work would be more than half undone. As it is, the Boer will multiply and spread side by side with the Englishman and the English Afrikander ; but he will do so under the English flag. Among the members of the United South Africa of the future the two premier States have changed places. The dream of a Boer hegemony has melted away. With the gold of Ophir to put into the scale against the gold of the Transvaal, and a territory encircling the two Dutch Republics as the sea washes a peninsula, we hold the balance in our hands. Once again the South African centre of gravity has been moved along its wonted line from Cape Town to Kimberley, from Kimber- ley to Johannesburg, from Johannesburg to Matabeleland, John Bull's " John Company " has brought in a new world to redress the balance of the old. ***** '"II n'y a pas un homme ne'cessaire.' That philosophical apophthegm, like the historical one which says that the moment makes the man, not the man the moment, is only half true. There is no indispensable man — no, not if you mean indispensable to a hemisphere, to an epoch, to a time or an interest large enough to count in the eternal sum of things. But when you come down to such trifles as the interest of the British Empire in a particular century in a particular quarter of the globe, it is difl"erent. From such a point of view as this Mr. Rhodes has been for some years a Necessary Man in South Africa. Of course, the better work he does, the less indispensable will he become every day, as is the fate of necessary 300 APPENDICES RHODES IN '90] men. But I think my nickname will serve him for some time yet. He is still the one common denominator to all the fractions — the Colonial Imperialist, the Federal Home Ruler, the English Afri- kander, the man who can so carry the Union Jack that Dutch Boer will go forward under its folds shoulder to shoulder with Cape Colonist, with Natalian, with Englishman. He alone at the Cape seems able to strike out of his native energy heat enough to bring to the fusing-point those divergent elements — divergent in a low temperature — " Empire and Self-government." " Cecil John Rhodes, the founder and moving spirit of the British South Africa Company, the amalgamator and moving spirit of the De Beers Diamond Mining Company, and the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, is only thirty-eight. A year ago, when Sir Gordon Sprigg resigned office, and Mr. Hofmeyr declined it, and Mr. Rhodes formed a Ministry in twenty-four hours, he had to play for a time yet another part. Forced to add the cares of a grown colony to those of an empire in the making, Mr. Rhodes at first stickled to be " Prime Minister without portfolio." But, an hour before the new Government met Parliament, the Speaker (by an error since corrected) ruled the arrangement unconstitutional ; and I\Ir. Rhodes found himself pitchforked into the Commissioner- ship of Crown Lands and Works. It boasts as much detail as most of the Cape Departments ; but Mr. Rhodes, thus cornered, buckled to his Lands and Works with a will, and never flagged for the rest of the session. " But a mere pluralist is not " Necessary" as such. Even if Mr. Rhodes' otTices were more multiplied and more responsible than all that I have named, they would hardly do more than hint, on the face of them, how much this gentleman of large designs would be missed. The faithful reader who has foUowctl through its intricacies the story of the ICnglish in Ophir will understand how completely the whole gigantic enterprise has pivoted on Mr. Rhodes. A corporation, as Professor Seclcy has said of the old John Company, can neither catch a fever nor be killed in battle. But the fortunes of a corporation can largely be bound up with the life of a man who, though he stands as l)ig as Saul and is as ruddy as David, was hardly expected some thirteen years ago to outlive the voyage to the Cape. Certainly you would not guess it now ; and Mr. Rhodes tells a humorous story of the disromlilure of a certain worthy doctor who had pronounced dooni on him in APPENDICES 36t RHODES IN '90] those youthful clays. " i'ou the same Rhodes, sir? Impossible! According to my books you have been a corpse these ten years. Here is the entry . . . tuberculosis . . . recovery im- possible." "Impossible" is a word wanting in Mr. Rhodes' dictionary. " Cecil Rhodes was only fifteen — a delicate and rather dull lad, "privately educated"— when he sailed for the Cape under such gloomy auspices. His father, for twenty years rector of Bishop Stortford, had a family of six boys. Four of them turned soldiers, and one of them, now with Lord Harris in Bombay, has been through the Soudan. Probably Cecil was the last of the brothers that any one would have picked out for the great career. He began as a planter in Natal, but abandoned cotton for diamonds in the early seventies. At Kimberley he put a few thousands (as many as he could get) into old De Beers shares, and claims, and lands. When the mines fell on evil days he saw that he could unite them into a Golconda ; did so, and made himself a millionaire. "That is an old story, told in an earlier chapter. The curious thing is that even while he was in the first flush of excitement over mining and money-making; the young man determined to send himself to college. Five years he spent hovering between the iron shanties of Kimberley and the grey towers of Oriel. He discovered a new use for the Long Vacation. At Oxford the young colonist and his friend Maguire were the most popular men in a jovial hunting set. Rhodes " kept the drag," but got his pass, and found time withal to go north and study pumping machinery. To-day his entourage finds in him that strange hybrid — an Afrikander and a Diamond King under the old-world spell of a university in the old country. I suspect Oriel and Oxford enter largely into his patriotism ; and a new Oriel and a new Oxford, nestling under the shadow of Table Mountain, are more than mere accessories in his dream of a United South Africa. At twenty-eight the member for the Diamond constituency was what we should call Chancellor of the Exchequer in the brief Scanlen Ministry. The office served his purposes and ours better than appeared at the time. It saved him from being stabbed along with Gordon at Khartoum. Gordon had met Rhodes at the Cape at the time of the Basuto trouble. There was a robust faith in "God's Englishmen," if nothing else, common to the two 302 APPENDICES RHODES IN '90] men; and Gordon took a liking for the young colonist— though he did once flame out at him Goidonesquely : "You are one of those men who wijl never approve of , anything not organized by yourself." From this liking sprang the invitation to come and join Gordon on his mission to Khartoum, which the Treasurer- Generalship happily debarred. From this point, for the last five or six years, Mr. Rhodes has divided with Mr. Hofmeyr the underlying forces of Cape politics. He has done more than any other man for the racial, if not yet for the political, union of South Africa. We have seen him in these pages peace-making in Bechu- analand (in 1884- 1885), or at Blignaut's Pont (last year), where he helped the High Commissioner to strike the Swaziland Con- vention with President Kruger. He was the first to grasp and to' popularize what I have called, for want of a better word, the New Afrikanderism— the conception of Imperial progress made through and for the colony, of Colonial progress made through and for the Dutch, and not merely for the mother country in the one field, and the mother country's scions in the other. All that he has done has been done in touch with the Bond and the Paarl, hand in glove with the "Parnellof the Dutch." Some say Rhodes is using Hofmeyr — some say Hofmeyr is using Rhodes. In either case the result is that we see a Dutch majority in Cape Colony following an English Premier while he takes away the north from their Dutch cousins of the Transvaal Republic, tells these cousins, "As rivals you are stopped, but we want you as helpers," and calls on all South Africa to join in developing the new empire under the British flag. " The Dutch know that if Imperialism meant, as it once did mean in South Africa and elsewhere, the Divine right of Downing Street, the subordination of the sentiments and interests of an embryo nation in tlie New Woild to the convenience of a clicjue of official failures and placc-lnuUcrs in the Old, in tliat moment Rhodes the Imperialist would yield to Rhodes the Republican, and the Presi- dency of the independent United States of South Africa would be the goal of his ambition. Incajiable by temperament of the narrow provincialism which regards the position of a Colonial Switzerland under a guarantee of the Powers as a grander pro- spect than enfranchisement of the Empire, Mr. Rhodes would yet accept that prospect unhesitatiiv^ly as the alternative to com- plete Home Rule. Unity, with complete local self-government of APPENDICES 303 RHODES IN '9Cj the units — it is hard to say which of the two conditions appeals more to Mr. Rhodes where both are attained. It is not hard, if it were a case of one without the other, to say which Mr. Rhodes would choose. "The princely gift to the Irish NationaHst exchequer, a few years ago, while it witnessed the intensity of this feeling, defined it precisely. The declaration by Mr. Parnell which Mr. Rhodes thought worth ;^ 10, coo was an acceptance by the Home Rule dictator of the Colonial, or so called federal, reading of Home Rule. As long as Mr. Parnell was Mr. Parnell, and held by that, Mr. Rhodes would have held by him — the English passion for the finer personal ethics in a politician being a northern exotic which languishes at the Cape. But an Ireland under Separatist Home Rule Mr. Rhodes would fight against as hard as the most fanatical Unionist in the three kingdoms. "Your Bill, sir," he insisted to Mr. Gladstone in one of his stout, outspoken talks, " your Bill of 1 886 would have created a taxed Republic. If I were an Irishman, and it had passed, I would have started a crusade for Represen- tation or Separation the very next day ! " "Mr. Rhodes is an opportunist, yes : in the same sense as Mn Gladstone, or Sir Henry Parkes, or the late Sir John Macdonald. The morality of the thing all hangs on the quality and steadfast- ness of the central idea. Here is a man who spends his time in persuading a great many other men that they all really want the same thing as each other and as himself — a man who one day is in close conference with Unionist aristocrats in a directors' board- room, the next with Home Rule Radicals in the lobby, to-day lunching with a journalist at an hotel, to-morrow dining with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle ; equally at home in a parley at the Foreign Ofifice and at a Dutch dinner in the Paarl. To political purists and doctrinaires at one pole, to political cynics and men of the world at the other, such a man is bound to seem something of a. humbug. All things to all men can hardly be one thing to him- self. The taste for managing men is as dangerous as dram-drink- ing. I can easily believe what Cape gossip says, that Mr. Rhodes has been hard put to it sometimes to cheat that modern understudy of the political conscience — the shorthand reporter. You may accept the most flattering version of the famous ten years' work of Mr. Parnell (also in his day a Necessary Man) without affecting to acquit him of having somewhere fibbed to somebody. But the 304 APPENDICES RHODES IN '90] extreme cynical view of Mr. Rhodes, like the too vaulting ambi- tion and cupidity which it would ascribe to him, o'erleaps itself altogether. I once listened patiently to a detailed dissection of Mr. Rhodes by one who had "seen through" him, in which the only doubt was whether the poor man's politics are a stalking- horse for his finance or his finance for his politics ; the one thing past doubt being the dark, and deep, and devilish nature of both. Not even genius was left — only the City swindlers vulgar art of "squaring the circle." Patiently I listened, until in due course the all-suflicicnt explanation was applied to Mr. Parnell's famous cheque. Then I breathed again. The touchstone of one supreme anachronism and absurdity sufficed for all the rest. A " man of the world " may believe that Mr. Rhodes, who at least is not a fool, sunk ;i^io,ooo in buying a parliamentary support which at any time would be valueless for an object which at that time he demonstrably meant to obtain by extra-parliamentary means. Not so anybody who knows anything about politics here and at the Cape. "The fact is that Mr. Rhodes, like the rest of us, is a bundle of inconsistencies, at once headstrong and politic, keen and lazy, cynical and enthusiastic. With all his finance and his finesse, he can be bluff almost to brutality, l^p to a certain point he is patience itself; no delay fatigues him, no objection proves too great for his accommodating skill. "Now, sir," says he, " you want this ; I want that ; will not so-and-so serve the turn of both of us ?•' But once pass that point, and you might as well try to move the rock of Cashel. About the time of the Kimbcrley amal- gamation he came to Europe to raise a large sum of money, and wasted his time in the ante-chamber of a very high and mighty financier. At last the despot of the bourses said that he would consider the matter, and give Mr. Rhodes an answer in a few days. Now the matter had been well considered already, and this was bldi^ue. "Sir," said young Mr. Rhodes quietly and simply, " I will call again in half an hour. If you are not ready with your answer then, I shall go elsewhere." Mr. Rhodes had not to go elsewhere. First impressions, again, from the heavy buiUl and step, the sauntering manner, and something dreamy in the promi- nent grey eyes, notwithstanding the masterful chin to the con- trary, would put Mr. Rhodes down as a lazy man. A different talc is told, not merely l)y the work he has done, but by his way APPENDICES 305 RHODES IN '90] of doing it. Friends have queer reminiscences of the amalgama- tion years— the years of infinite plotting and plodding which built up " I)e Beers' Consolidated." " We would be riding out to- gether, chatting indiftcrcntly," said one, "when suddenly Rhodes would wake up, as it were, and exclaim, pointing with his whip, ' We must have that property.' The rest of the ride would be a brown study. A week later I would hear that the property was bought." " In the middle of the night," said another and more intimate friend, " Rhodes would jump out of l^ed, come round to me, and wake me up. He would say, * I've just hit on an idea,' and then he would unfold the solution of some knotty problem that had been worrying us for weeks." " Rhodes does half his business in the street," a third observer told me. " He pulls out his cheque-book, and settles a big transaction while other people would be passing the time of day." I have heard Mr. Rhodes defined as a cynic whose one formula for success was " Find the man's price." If you read price in a large enough sense, I am not disposed to dispute that, nor to deny that even when the price is of the most sordid quality^, Mr. Rhodes will often use the man for ends worthy a better instrument. But if he is a cynic, he is also an enthusiast, and he presses the former's quality into the latter's service. Money, either to hoard or to spend, he does not care for. Power is his idol : creative power, efficient energy, control over men and things in the mass. In the British Empire he recognises the most perfect and far-reaching machine for this purpose which the world has yet seen, and the Empire, accordingly, is his reli- gion. " Sentiment," he once said to me, when I objected that some idea or other, on which he laid stress, was " mere senti- ment," " sentiment rules half the world." We have seen what is the sentiment which rules Mr. Rhodes. "The brother who eats a whole country for his dinner," as he was described at Loben- gula's kraal, is a vivid embodiment of the earth-hunger which has set in among the nations, and which in Mr. Rhodes' countrymen at least is more than a mere instinct for idle land-grabbing. "The time is coming," says Mr. Rhodes again, "when every square mile of the earth's surface will be valuable ; " much more, then, every territory where men of the dominant white race can thrive, and work, and dig power out of the earth. For some millionaires it is enough to run a yacht. Mr. Rhodes' hobby is running an Empire. He has that inclusiveness of mind, that passion for the 3o6 APPENDICES RHODES IN '90] grand scale, for generalizing and combining in the gross, which goes to make Newtons, and Napoleons, and Darwins, and Bis- niarcks — each in his own field of thought or action. He is always thinking of the next move but one ; he is the general who carries the whole line of battle in his head. When he was in England, nominally absorbed in the " Manica Question," he was really as full of Canada as of the Cape. No doubt the tariff crisis in the American Continent, taken in its Imperial bearing, was a much Ijigger matter than a wrangle with a tottering Power on the East Coast of Africa. But Mr. Rhodes, at least, might have been ex- cused for not seeing that. The same sense of true perspective serves him as to the relation of names and things. So long as he governs, who will may reign. The opposition of the Pungwe short cut and the Kimberley Railway opposes the Managing Director of the Chartered Company to the Premier of the Cape ; the opposition of the new Wesselton Mine and the De Beers monopoly opposes the Premier of the Cape to the Managing Director of De Beers. To-day all these persons ara one — ^Mr. Cecil John Rhodes. Within the year that may become impos- sible ; then Mr. Rhodes, without a moment's douljt, will resign the Premiership. " The personal charm which Mr. Rhodes seems able to exercise over men of the most various temperaments has nothing to do with that "sugar-doodling" which somebody defined as the secret of the same knack in Laurence Oliphant. He is brusquely frank. With Mr. Gladstone we have seen him. Lord Salisbury bears almost plaintive witness to his " considerable force of character." Sir WiUiam Harcourt he provoked to that amusing parody of his views on the Native Question and Imperial ZoUvcrein : "Reason- able man, Mr. Rhodes— so easily satisfied ! All he asks us is to give up free trade and restore slavery."' He has had many a brush with those "Little England" Liberals who see the town- pumj) of Ballymahooly so out of focus that it dwarfs nations and continents. " Vou make it very hard for us colonists to be Liberals," is a phrase of his. But brusqucric and bonhomie go together. A man in the mines at Kimberley lold me a pleasant talc of a ;tv/tv///n' of his, when new to Kimberley, with the Diamond King incognito. In talk with an unknown visitor, who seemed • I owe tliis story to llic Rr.'ini' 0/ /u-iw'not. APPENDICES 307 RHOnKS IN '90] anxious to learn, my man held forth with the dogmatism of the practical worker on some point or other in which Rhodes was at fault — " this Rhodes, who thinks he knows all about it, I suppose." The inquisitive visitor turned out to be "this Rhodes" himself — but both parties profited by the meeting-. In conversation Mr. Rhodes is no show talker. But he has a zest, a grip, a strong sense, a straightforward heartiness, which are simply irresistible. You feel that he has read (for a business man) much, thought for himself, and knows just what he means. As a public speaker he is much the same. His manner is awkward, his tone colloquial. He is no more an orator than Lord Hartington, but he has Mr, Healy's knack of shoving the gist of the matter into some blunt phrase. His tastes arc simple to a fault. He cares not a pin what he eats and drinks, so there be enough of it, or wherewithal he shall be clothed, so there be not too much of it. The Premier's is the dowdiest hat in the House of Assembly. He lives in chambers and at the club. His unconventionality shocks the sticklers. They were opening an extension of the Cape Town suburban railway the other day — an extension at the edge of one of those tempting blue bights which fret the Cape peninsula. Suddenly the central figure of the ceremonies was missed — and descried a short way off, stalking out of the water to rejoin his clothes. Lastly, Mr. Rhodes is still an unappropriated match, and not, so friends declare, a "marrying man" ; which is a pity, for the man would be none the worse for a few more feminine traits about him. " Such, as well as I can sketch him, is the Colonial statesman who has lately burst upon the public consciousness as in some vague sense " the coming man " ; who a few months ago carried London before him; whose "amalgamating" quality sufficed to bring together round the same table men in society and politics who had not met before for years ; whose praises as an Imperialist were sung in chorus by wiseacres who used to shake heads at him as an Afrikander. They have realized at last that he is the one in spite of the other. Perhaps some day they will realize that he is the one because of the other, and both for the same reasons. "One day, some six years ago, Mr. Rhodes, then busy with the amalgamation of the Diamond Mines, was looking at a map of Africa hung in the office of a Kimberley merchant. After gazing intently at it for some time, he placed his hand over a great slice of Southern and Central Africa, right across the continent ; and, 3o8 ATPENDICES RHODES IX '90] turning to a friend at his side, "There," said Mr. Rhodes, "all that British ! That is my dream." " I give you ten years," returned the friend — who told me the story himself on the very scene of the incident. More than half the allotted term has passed, and more than half Mr. Rhodes' dream is already accom- plished. It is of good omen for the rest. "It suggests that the Necessary Man may crown and complete his work in South Africa while he is yet in the prime of life. That we shall then have a larger use for this Englishman, none can doubt who believes that the problem of reconciling central unity with local self-government is the problem on which our future as a Victor in the world's history depends." llullrr \- T..ni.rr, The Sclwi.ml IVinliiis Worlis, T. By EDMUND GARRETT. '' In Afrikanderland." rublisheis, /W/ J/a/l Gazette Office, i8go " Brand : A DRAMATIC POEM BY HENRI K IDSEN : Translated into English Verse." Publisher, T, Fisher U/mnn, 1894. " Isis Very Much Unveiled : A STUDY LV THEOSOFHISTRYP Publishers, Westminster Gazette Office, 1895. 97 *' The Cape Times. The Leading Paper in South Africa. Guaranteed Circulation Published Daily. Increase during last year : — Daily Edition, 40 per cent. Weekly Edition (Illustrated), 50 per cent. Printed and Published by F. Y. St. Leger, Capetown, Publisher of The Cape Ha/isard, The Cape Law Reports, etc. London Office (G. Trafford IIhwitt, Manager), 61, Corniiii.l. 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"As pictures of IJoer and Veldt life they are convincing."— Land and Water. % Coinplele in Six Foohcap %vo Volume's BoswelFs Life of Johnson Edited by AUGUSTINE BIRRELL Wnii Frontispieces by ALEX ANSTED, a reproduction of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS' Portrait Six Vohiines. Foolscap %vo. Cloth, paper label, or gili exlra, 2s. ncl per Volume. Also half morocco, "^^s. net per Volume. Sold in Sets only " F;ir and away the best I'oswell, I slioulil say, for the orcliiiaiy book-lover now on the market," — Illustrated London Neivs. "... We have good reason to be thankful for an edition of a very useful and attiactive kind." — Spectator. " Tlie volumes, which are light, and so well bound that they open easily any- where, are exceedins;ly pleasant to handle and read."— .S"/. /anus's Budget. " This undertaking of the publishers ou^ht to be certain of success." — The Bookseller. " Read liim at once if you have hitherto refrained from that exhilarating and most varied entertainment ; or, have you read him? — then read him again." — The speaker. " Constable's edition will long remain the best both for the general reader and the scholar." — Kez'leiu of Reviews. Completion of the Issue in 48 Volumes CONSTABLE'S REPRINT OF he Waverley Novels THE F.WOURITE EDITION OF SIR WALTER SCOTT Willi all the orii^iiKil Plates and Vigneltcs (Re-engiavcd). Li 4S Vols. Foolscap Sc'.'. Cloth, paper label title, is. 6 J. net per Volume, or £}, 1 2s, the Set. Also cloth gilt, gilt top, zs. net per Volume, or f,i, i6j-. the Set ; and half leather gilt, zs, dd. net per Volume, or f^d the Set " A delightful reprint. The price is lower than that of many inferior editions." —Athoueuin. " The excellence of the print, and the convenient size of the volumes, and the association of this edition wiih bir Walter Scott himself, should combine with so moderate a price to secure for this reprint a popularity as great as th;it which the original editions long and fully enjoyed with former generations of readers." — JVie Times, "This is one of the most ch.irming editions of the Waverley Novels that we know, as well as one of the cheapest in the market. " — Glasgow Herald. " Very attractive reprints." — Tlte Speaker. ". . . Messrs. Constable & Co. have done good service to the reading world in reprinting them." — Daily Chronicle. " 'I'lie set presents a magnificent ap- pearance on the bookshelf. "^.^VaC/t and nViite. Reflections and Comments BY EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN Crown %vo, "js. 6d. " Mr. Godkin's book forms an excellent example of the best periodical lilciatuie of bis country and time." — The Daily Ncics. '• Mr. Godkin always writes pleasantly and suggestively."— The Times. A NEW AND IMPORTANT BOOK BY EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN Problems of Modern Democracy Croivn 8zv, 7^. 6d. "These admirable essays . . . his handling of the various points and (picstions is marked by real grip, whilst the case and clearn'iss of his style make even the more technical of his essays eminently easy reading." — The Glasgow Herald. •' He talks freely, and always sensibly and to the point, and very often with more than ordinary wisdom." — The Times. •'As an anli-political observer Mr. Godkin will iiilluencc the reading public who, independently uf differences of opinittn, will unite in thanking liim f')r an eminently suggestive book." — Mmuln-^ler Giiordian. "The Ijook ranks with Mr. Lecky's recent volumes." — iVcilator. "An excellent story." — Alhiiuium, "It is not easy to single out the best in a bnuk that is throughout so absorbing and delightful." — LccJs Mcnury. e The Waterloo Campaign, 1 8 1 5 By captain WILLIAM SIBORNE Fourth Edition. Crown Zvo. 832 parses. 13 Medallion Portraits of Generals. 15 Maps and Plans. Pound in Red Cloth, gilt top, ^s. net. ' The best general account of its subject that has been written, whether for a soldier or for a general reader ; and its appearance in the handy and well-printed volume in which it is now issued will be welcome to many." — Scotsman. " It is charmingly written, is graphic, yet precise, and abundantly witnesses to the author's most strenuous endeavour to do justice to every one who took part in that great conflict.'' — Siriniiighain Post. " Many books have been written upon this fertile theme, but it is doubtful if a more faithful and comprehensive account has ever been given to the world, and for this reason we welcome its re-appearance in a fourth edition." — Liverpool Daily Post. "Another notable reprint. . . . There can be no doubt that the narrative is a classic in its way." — Globe. " The most comprehensive account in the English language of the Waterloo Campaign. Tlie editing, as one would expect, is conscientious and accurate, and the volume is well illustrated with portraits and plans." — Glasgow Herald. AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF The Death of Lord Nelson, 2lst October, 1S05. By WILLIAM BEATTY, M.D., Surgeon of H.M.S. Victory. Second Edition. Crozun 8vo. Two Illustrations. 2S. 6d. }iet. " It is an old story, but the account of the Death of Nelson, by Dr. Ecatty, the Surgeon of the Victory, which has just been reissued in Arber's Reprints, is an exceedingly interesting one." — IFcst/iiinster Gazette. " Professor Arber has added an interesting little volume to his series of re- prints. It is the ' Authentic Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson, with the circumstances preceding, attending, and subsequent to, that event ; the pro- fessional report of his Lordship's wound, and several interesting Anecdotes.' . . . The little volume contains several illustrations, two of whicli are very striking. Tliey represent the ball which mortally wounded Nelson, in the exact state in which it was extracted, and the same ball set in crystal, as it is now preserved in the Armoury at ^Vindsor Casde."— Glasgow Herald. 7 THE Brain of the Navy BY SPENSER WILKINSON Crown Sev, \s. "It is an attempt to suggest a better organisation for the Admi- ralty, and to devise an organisation wliicli shall act as a brain to the navy. It is throughout a most useful and suggestive piece of work." — Spectator. "The question of the day is, how the Navy is to be made ready for use. The author of the ' Drain of the Navy ' has endeavoured to answer this question in a very able and clearly written work." — Civil Service Gazette, " We strongly recommend uur leaders to study this book, and so obtain valuable information as to the causes that led to our naval supremacy, and the possibility of its being challenged before long." — Jl'dstcni Morning Nc7i's. " It is not for us to sing the praises of 'Tlio I'.iain of the Navy,' by Mr. Sjicnser Wilkinson, for in doing so we should sing our own, who originally published it. However, we did publish it, and that shows that we were willing to back our good opinion by an appeal to our readers. It appears to us to be a most valuable elucidation of what just now is certainly the most vital need of the Navy, and therefore of the cmuitry at large." — Pall Mall Gazctlc. "It examines, with the same force and clearness as have at- tracted so much attention to that former book, the present admini- strative economy of the N.ivy ; and will interest and instruct any one who believes that Great Britain's power as a nation depends on her naval supremacy, and desires to see that siii)ri.nia'y main- tained." — Scotiiitan. 8 THE Brain of an Army A rOl'ULAR ACCOUNT OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF. By SPENSER WILKINSON. New Edilhm, ivith Letters from COUNT MOLTKE ana LORD ROBERTS. Witli Three Plans. Crown Sz'o, 2s. 6iL "A model of clearness in exposition. There is not a dull pnso in the book."— /'if// Atall Gazette. "The best manual that exists of the functions of a general staff." — Atheiiceum. "We should like to call the attention of our readers to the import, ant preface which Mr. Spenser Wilkinson has added to the new edition of his fascinating and most valuable little book, 'The Brain of an Army.' Mr. Wilkinson's competence to speak on these matters has been vouched for by Moltke himself, and needs no words from us."— From an article on the "Reorganization of the War Office" in the "Spectator." " Not only a popular, but a thorough account of the nature of the German General Staff. ... Its author has entered into the spirit of the German Army in a manner we should hardly have believe,d to be possible for a foreigner." — Deutsche Kiindschau. " He has not only mastered all its material by careful study, but has acquired such a living knowledge of his subject as a foreigner rarely attains. " — Kolnische Zcituug. " A book full of thought. . . . The author shows that he is very intimate with our military institutions as regards the training of the army to be a manageable instrument of war, and the education of officers for the higher commands." — Jahrblichcr fiir die Deutsche Arinee und Marine. "That he most perfectly commands his subject is shown by the opening pages, and the light which he throws upon the German Gene- ral .Staff (which he calls 'The Brain of an Army') loses none of its strength until he has successfully accomplislied in brief and convincing style the task which he has undertaken." — Internationale Revue iiber die Gesaminten Arincen und Flatten. " Deserves to be better known among us than it is, for it presents the essence of that organ, the German General Staff, with rare clearness and accuracy, and with an understanding and a technical knowledge which in a foreigner, and one who according to our notions is not a pro- fessional soldier, are in a high degree surprising." — From an article on Spenser Wilkinson s ivorks in the " Militar Wochenblatt." 9 THE Command of the Sea By SPENSER WILKINSON Crown St'O, Coloured Wrapper^ \s. CONTENTS. Sea Power and Land Tower. National Policy. The Mediterranean. Defence by a Navy. The Secret of Success. Readiness in the Right Place. The Actual Situation. A Specific Proposal. " What is Unionism to an Empire shaken, or Home Rule to four impoverished nations, or an eight hours' day to working classes thrown out of employment, or Socialism to a people fighting for its life? . . . There are still some thousands of Englishmen to v.hom the security of the Empire is dearer than the most highly advertised party nostrums." " Mr. Wilkinson expounds with great force and felicity of illus- tration the true meaning of the strategical expression 'The Com- mand of the Sea. ' " — The Times. " Mr. Wilkinson treats the sul>jcct with a clearness and grasp almost above praise ; within lOO brief pages he condenses all that the average citizen requires to enable him to form a reasonable judgment on the needs of our navy to maintain that command of the sea on which, as he clearly shows, our very existence now de- pends. More than this, he comes forward with a distinct and practical suggestion, which, if adopted by the nation, will ensure the provision of a fleet and army competent to fulfil the duties for which they exist." — The JoiinutI of the Koyal Uuitcd Service Iitsti- Ir.lion. " V^ery able essays."— T/ie United Service dizclle. "Good sense at last." — The Realm, A, coNs'iwni.i: & co., wkstminstkr. 10 The Nation's Awakeninsf o By SPENSER WILKINSON " The essence of true policy for Britain, the policy of common-sense, lies, according to Mr. Wiliiinson, in choosing for assertion and for active defence those points in the extensive fringe of our world-wide interests, and those moments of time at which our self-defence will coincide with the self-defence of the world. This idea he works out in a clever and vigorous fashion."— Glasgow Herald. " He elaborates his views in four ' books,' dealing respectively with the aims of the other Great Powers, the defence of British interests, the organization of the Government, and ' the idea of the nation,' ... he deprecates a policy of isolation, and advocates a closer alliance with Germany." — Scotsman, " We consider Mr. Wilkinson completely proves his case. We agree . . . that Mr. Spenser Wilkinson must make all men think. We welcome the volume, as we have welcomed previous volumes from Mr. Wilkinson's pen, as of the highest value towards the formation of a national policy, of which we never stood in greater need." — Athenaum. " These essays show a wide knowledge of international politics." — Morning Post. BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Volunteers and the National Defence C?'0'tun 8i'0, cloth, is. (yd. The Brain of an Army Ooiun Sz'o, clotJi, 2s. Gd. The Command of the Sea Crown 2)i'0,fapcr, \s. The Brain of the Navy Croxi'Jt Zvfl, paper, \s. a CONSTABLE'S Hand Atlas of India A New Series of Sixty Maps and Plans prepared from Ordnance and other Surveys under the direction of J. G. BARTHOLOMEW, F.R.G.S., F.R.S.E., Sec. In half morocco^ or full hound c/ot/i, gilt top, 1 45. This Atlas is the first publication of its kind, and for tourists and travellers generally it will he found particularly useful. There are Twenty-two Plans of the principal towns of our Indian Empire, based on the most recent surveys, and officially revised to date in India. The Topographical Section Maps are an accurate reduc- tion of the Survey of India, and contain all the places described in Sir W. W. Hunter's "Gazetteer of India," according to his spelling. The Military, Railway, Telegraph, and Mission Station Maps are designed to meet the recjuircnients of the Military and Civil Service, also missionaries and business men who at present have no meaiis of obtaining the information they require in a handy form. The index contains upwards of ten thousand names, and will be found more complete than any yet attempted on a similar scale. Further to increase the utility of the work as a reference volume, an abstract of the 1891 Census has been added. " II is tolerably safe to predict tl1.1t no scnsiMe traveller will gn (o Inilia in future without providing; himself with 'Constable's Hani! Atlas of India.' Nothinj^ half so useful has been done for many years to help both the traveller in India and the student at home. ' Constable's Hand Atlas ' is a pleasure to hold and to turn over." — A(hcii,nim. 18 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below V"iR 2e 1956 MAY 2 '.raw o ^^8^ OCT 2 7 1971) ^I 41987 ""> ■•^MAINLOAN DESK "'_NOV20 1964 iP^fewu.ui;, JflN 28 1965 UNlvtilKS'T:^ dt CALii-OKt^J, LIBKAKY UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 950 183 4 / t PLEA<5r DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD 1 ^^LIBRARY^k- ^ r i- (NJ z .jC> c _ CD vo J J 1 1 m 31 CD VO < o 1- —