Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 11

To Lord Milner's reiterated warnings of the last two years, there was now added the definite advice of Lord Wolseley and the Department of Military Intelligence. In a memorandum dated June 8th, 1899,[82] and addressed to the Secretary of State for War, the Commander-in-Chief advised the mobilisation in England of a force consisting of one complete army corps, one cavalry division, one battalion mounted infantry, and four infantry battalions for lines of communication; the collection of transport in South Africa; and the immediate initiation of all subsidiary arrangements necessary for conveying these additional troops and their equipment to the seat of war. This advice was disregarded; but in place of the immediate mobilisation of the Army Corps the Cabinet decided to increase the efficiency of the existing force in South Africa, and General Butler was informed of this decision, as we have seen, on June 21st. On July 7th,[83] Lord Wolseley recommended, in addition to the mobilisation of the offensive force--which he still deemed necessary--that "the South African garrisons should be strengthened by the despatch of 10,000 men at a very early date." Instead of adopting these measures, the Government confined itself to doing just the few necessary things, both for defence and offence, that could be done without creating any belief in its warlike intentions, and without involving any appreciable expenditure of the public funds. Undoubtedly this latter consideration--the desire to avoid any expenditure that might afterwards prove to have been unnecessary--added weight to the purely political argument against immediate military preparation.

[Footnote 82: Cd. 1,789.]

[Footnote 83: Cd. 1,789.]

[Sidenote: Preparations delayed.]

The course actually taken by the Salisbury Cabinet was this. Instead of the immediate mobilisation of the offensive force, Lord Wolseley was instructed to prepare a scheme for the "const.i.tution, organisation, and mobilisation" of such a force; and to do this in consultation with Sir Redvers Buller, the General Officer commanding at Aldershot, who had been selected to lead the British forces in South Africa in the event of war. Instead of the immediate despatch of additional troops sufficient to render the South African garrisons capable of repelling invasion--which was what Lord Milner had especially desired--the actual deficiencies of the existing Cape garrison[84] were made good by the despatch in July of small additions of artillery and engineers, and by directing General Butler to provide the fresh transport without which even this diminutive force was unable to mobilise. At the same time certain special service officers,[85] including engineers and officers of the Army Service Corps, were sent out to organise the materials, locally existing, for the defence of the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony and the southern districts of Rhodesia; and generally to make preliminary preparations for the provisioning, transport, and distribution of any British forces that might be despatched subsequently to the Cape Colony.

[Footnote 84: Three battalions, 6 guns, and a company of Royal Engineers were all the troops available for the defence of the Cape frontiers at this time (_i.e._ June).]

[Footnote 85: Most of these came by mail boats on July 18th and 25th. Col. Baden-Powell (who was entrusted with the important duty of organising a force for the defence of Southern Rhodesia, and subsequently of raising the mounted infantry corps which held Mafeking) arrived on the latter date.]

These were the utterly inadequate reinforcements sent in response to Lord Milner's urgent appeal, and in disregard of General Butler's protest that they were wholly undesirable--an opinion which was endorsed in England by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, when, on June 17th, 1899, he declared that there was nothing in the South African situation to justify even preparations for war.

During the interval between the Bloemfontein Conference and General Butler's recall in the latter part of August Lord Milner's position was one of unparalleled difficulty. The Cape and Natal garrisons were maintained in a state of perilous weakness by the policy of the Home Government. The measures to be undertaken locally for the defence of the colonies, which the Cabinet had sanctioned, were wholly insufficient in Lord Milner's opinion. And the general execution of these wholly insufficient local measures was left in the hands of a General Officer who had told the Secretary of State that he absolutely disapproved of them on political grounds, since the mere announcement of their being made would "add largely to the ferment," which he "was [then] endeavouring to reduce by every means." The Cape Ministry, with whom rested the disposal of the colonial forces, was a ministry placed in office by the Bond for the especial purpose of opposing British intervention in the Transvaal. In these circ.u.mstances it needed all Lord Milner's mastery of South African conditions, and all his tact and address, to make the relations between himself and his Afrikander Cabinet tolerable; and, above all, in view of the refusal of the Imperial Government to sanction the military preparations advised by the Commander-in-Chief, it required ceaseless vigilance on his part to prevent the acceptance of an illusory settlement which would have sounded the death-knell of British supremacy in South Africa.

[Sidenote: President Kruger's proposals.]

On the last day of the Conference President Kruger had put in a memorandum in which he expressed his intention of introducing his franchise scheme to the Volksraad, and his hope that the High Commissioner would be able to recommend this, and a further proposal for the settlement of disputes by arbitration, to the favourable consideration of the Imperial Government. Lord Milner had replied that any such proposals would be considered on their merits; but that the President must not expect them to be connected in any way with the proceedings of the Conference, out of which, as he then declared, no obligation had arisen on either side.

The Raad met on Friday, June 9th; and on Monday, the 12th--the day on which Lord Milner received the Ebden address[86]--President Kruger laid the draft Franchise law, containing his revised Bloemfontein scheme, before it. On Tuesday, 13th, Mr. Chamberlain's despatch of May 10th, on the position of the Uitlanders and the pet.i.tion to the Queen, was delivered to the Transvaal Government by the British Agent; and on Wednesday, June 14th, as we have already noticed, the Blue-book containing this despatch, Lord Milner's despatch of May 4th, and the whole story of the franchise controversy up to the Bloemfontein Conference, was published in England. As the conditions under which Lord Milner's despatch had been telegraphed to England were now changed, it would have been better if it had remained unpublished, and the stage of fighting diplomacy, reached through the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, had been at once opened--and opened in another way. What Lord Milner had learnt at Bloemfontein was not merely that President Kruger was unwilling to yield, but that he was psychologically incapable of yielding. He had learnt, that is to say, not that Kruger was determined to refuse the particular reform which the Imperial Government demanded, but that his whole system of thought was irreconcilably opposed to that of any English statesman. It is the knowledge which can be obtained only by personal dealings with the Boers, and no one who has had such personal dealings can fail to remember the sense of hopelessness that such an experience brings with it. The Boer may be faithful to his own canons of morality; but his whole manner of life and thought is one that makes his notion of the obligations of truth and justice very different from that of the ordinary educated European. He is not devoid of the conception of duty, but he applies this conception in methods adapted to the narrow and illiberal conditions of his isolated and self-centred life.

[Footnote 86: Expressing approval of the position Lord Milner had taken up at Bloemfontein. See p. 173.]

As for the mediation of the Cape Afrikanders, Lord Milner estimated it at its real value. The Cape nationalists believed that war would result in disaster to their cause; the Republican nationalists did not. They both hated the British in an equal degree. But the Afrikander leaders at the Cape knew that they had the game in their own hands. "For goodness' sake," they said, "keep quiet until we have got rid of this creature, Milner; and the Salisbury Cabinet--the 'present team so unjustly disposed to us'--is replaced by a Liberal Government."

[Sidenote: Lord Milner's task.]

That was the meaning of their mediation--nothing more. Lord Milner acquiesced in the negotiations after Bloemfontein, but what he wanted was a polite but absolutely inflexible insistence upon the Bloemfontein minimum, and at the same time such military preparations as, in view of the clear possibility of a failure of negotiations, seemed to him absolutely vital. This, however, was not the course which the Salisbury Cabinet thought right to adopt; and the problem that now lay before him was to convert the illusory concessions, which were all that Afrikander mediation was able or even desirous to wring from President Kruger, into the genuine reform that the British Government had twice pledged itself to secure.

But Lord Milner had also grasped the fact that the one issue which could drive a wedge into Dutch solidarity was the franchise question.

He had determined, therefore, that nothing that transpired at the Bloemfontein Conference should permit President Kruger to change the ground of dispute from this central issue. During the negotiations between the Home Government and the Pretoria Executive that followed the Conference, and especially during the period of Mr. Hofmeyr's active intervention, his most necessary and pressing task was to prevent the Salisbury Cabinet from being "jockeyed" by Boer diplomacy out of the advantageous position which he had then taken up on its behalf. The pressure of the Hofmeyr mediation increased the difficulty of this task by driving President Kruger into a series of franchise proposals of the utmost complexity. The danger was that Mr.

Chamberlain and his colleagues in the Cabinet, in their earnest desire to avoid war, might recognise some illusory measures of reform as satisfactory, and then, after further consideration, finding them to be worthless, be driven by their previous admission to make war, after all, not on the single issue of "equality all round," but on an issue that might be plausibly represented to South Africa and the world as the independence of the Boers.

[Sidenote: The Draft Franchise Law.]

The period is crowded with demonstrations, despatches, mediations, pet.i.tions, and incidents of all kinds. A t.i.the of these--disentangled from the Blue-books, but vitalised by a knowledge of the master facts that lie behind the official pen--will serve, however, to present the play of the mingling, conflicting, and then frankly opposing forces.

The "formidable personalities" are all in motion. At first it seemed as though the whole weight of the Schreiner Cabinet, acting in conjunction with General Butler's political objection to military preparation on the part of the Imperial Government, was to be thrown into the scale against Lord Milner's efforts. On June 12th President Kruger laid the draft of his new Franchise Law before the Raad, which then (the 15th) adjourned, in order that the feeling of the burghers might be ascertained. On the 17th a great a.s.semblage of Boers met at Paardekraal, and, among the warlike speeches then delivered was that of Judge k.o.c.k,[87] a member of the Transvaal Executive, who "dwelt upon the doctrine of 'what he called Afrikanderdom,' and said that he 'regarded the Afrikanders, from the Cape to the Zambesi as one great family. If the Republics are lost,' he continued, 'the Afrikanders would lose. The independence of the country was to them a question of life and death. The Free State would stand by the Transvaal, even to the death. Not only the Free State, but also the Cape Colony.'" Nor was this boast without some foundation. A week before (June 10th), Mr.

Schreiner had requested Lord Milner to inform Mr. Chamberlain that, in ministers' opinion, President Kruger's franchise proposal was "practical, reasonable, and a considerable step in the right direction."[88] Four days later (June 14th) he further informed the Governor that, in ministers' opinion, there was nothing in the existing situation to justify "the active interference of the Imperial Government in what were the internal affairs of the Transvaal."[89]

And this expression of opinion the Prime Minister also desired Lord Milner, as the only const.i.tutional medium of communication between the Cape Ministry and the Secretary of State, to convey to Mr.

Chamberlain. On the day (June 10th) on which the first of these interviews between Lord Milner and Mr. Schreiner took place, a meeting of five thousand persons--in Sir William Greene's words, "the largest and most enthusiastic ever held at Johannesburg"--pa.s.sed three resolutions which sufficiently exhibit the extent to which the views of the Cape Ministry differed from those of the Transvaal British.

After affirming the principle of equal political rights for all white inhabitants of South Africa, and declaring that President Kruger's Bloemfontein proposals were "wholly inadequate," this great meeting proceeded to place on record its "deep sense of obligation" to Lord Milner for his endeavour to secure the redress of the Uitlander grievances, and its willingness, in order to "support his Excellency in his efforts to obtain a peaceful settlement," to endorse "his very moderate proposals on the franchise question as the irreducible minimum that could be accepted."

[Footnote 87: C. 9,415.]

[Footnote 88: C. 9,415.]

[Footnote 89: _Ibid._]

[Sidenote: Action of Schreiner ministry.]

In other words, the Schreiner Cabinet, immediately after the failure of the Conference, used its influence unreservedly to a.s.sist the Pretoria Executive in refusing the franchise reform put forward by the High Commissioner--a reform which, in the opinion of the community most concerned and most capable of judging of its effect, const.i.tuted an "irreducible minimum" only to be accepted in deference to Lord Milner's judgment, and in the hope of avoiding war. Mr. Schreiner's action on this occasion was characteristic of the blind partizanship of the Cape Ministry. On June 10th, when the Prime Minister pressed his and his colleagues' favourable view of President Kruger's proposals upon Lord Milner and Mr. Chamberlain, the draft Franchise Law, with its intricate provisions, had not been laid before the Volksraad. Mr. Schreiner, therefore, had made haste to bless before he knew what he was blessing. And a few weeks later, as we shall notice, he let his zeal for the Boer oligarchy outrun his discretion in an even more amazing manner.

In these difficult circ.u.mstances Lord Milner displayed the highest address in his relations with the Schreiner Cabinet. Thanks to his mingled tact and firmness, aided by the outspoken support which he received from Mr. Chamberlain, his intercourse with his ministers remained outwardly friendly, while at the same time he had the satisfaction of seeing that during the next few weeks the considerations of policy, which he laid before them with absolute frankness, appreciably modified their original att.i.tude. He had at once availed himself of the one point on which he and they were in agreement. With reference to the first interview with Mr. Schreiner (June 10th), he telegraphed to the Colonial Secretary:

"In reply I told him [Mr. Schreiner] I was prepared to communicate this expression of his opinion, although I strongly held an opposite view, as he was aware.

"He admitted, in subsequent conversation, that the President of the South African Republic's scheme could, in his opinion, be improved in detail; for instance, by immediately admitting men who had entered the country previous to 1890, and by making optional the period of naturalisation....

"In reply, I told him that these were points of first-rate importance and not of detail, especially the latter; and that, since after all he seemed to agree with me more than with the President of the South African Republic, he had better address his advice to the latter, and not to Her Majesty's Government."

And at the long and rather unpleasant interview of June 14th, although, as we have seen, Mr. Schreiner desired Lord Milner to inform Mr. Chamberlain that the Cape Ministry considered the "active interference" of the British Government unjustified, yet he also said "that he and his colleagues were agreed that there were two respects in which the Government of the South African Republic might better their franchise scheme: (1) By admitting to the full franchise at once persons who had entered the country before 1890; and (2) By making it optional to obtain the full franchise without previous naturalisation after seven years' residence."[90]

[Footnote 90: C. 9,415.]

Mr. Chamberlain's reply (June 16th), contained a more direct admonition. Lord Milner was instructed to inform the Cape Ministers that the Government trusted that they would "use all the influence they could to induce the Transvaal Government to take such action as would relieve Her Majesty's Government from the necessity of considering the question of being obliged to have recourse to interference of such a nature."[91]

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._]

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's speech.]

This was admirable backing, and precisely what Lord Milner required to aid him in his two-fold task of bringing both the Cape Ministry and the Pretoria Executive to a more reasonable frame of mind. But Mr.

Chamberlain's next step was one of questionable utility.

In his speech at Birmingham (June 26th), after reviewing the relations of Great Britain with the Transvaal Boers during the last twenty years, Mr. Chamberlain declared that the Imperial Government, although deeply anxious not to use force, must somehow see that things were put right in South Africa.

"We have tried waiting, patience, and trusting to promises which are never kept," he said; "we can wait no more. It is our duty, not only to the Uitlanders, but to the English throughout South Africa, to the native races, and to our own prestige in that part of the world, and in the world at large, to insist that the Transvaal falls into line with the other states in South Africa, and no longer menaces the peace and prosperity of the whole."

This was the kind of speech which would have been suitable and effective, if the South African garrison had been 20,000 instead of 10,000 strong, and the expeditionary force had been mobilised on Salisbury Plain. It was unsuitable and ineffective under the existing circ.u.mstances; when, that is to say, the British Government, by refusing to sanction the measures advised by the Commander-in-Chief, had elected to put themselves at a military disadvantage for the sake of prolonging the stage of friendly discussion and in the hope of gaining their point by diplomatic means. In these circ.u.mstances such speeches were merely food for President Kruger to use in feeding the enthusiasm of his burghers. What Lord Milner desired of the Home Government was, as we have seen, a polite but inflexible demand for the Bloemfontein minimum, coupled with unostentatious, but effective, military preparations. The Home Government, as the sequel will show, were driven by the unpatriotic att.i.tude of the Liberal Opposition into a precisely opposite course in both these respects. Their demand was vague in substance, and irritating in manner; while their inadequate defensive preparations were more than neutralised by the loudness with which, in deference to the views of the Liberal Opposition, they proclaimed their reluctance to undertake military measures on a scale that would really have made an impression on the Boers.[92]

[Footnote 92: _E.g._ Mr. Balfour's statement in the House of Commons that the object of the despatch of the special service officers, and the small additions of engineers and artillery was "to complete the existing garrison." The purchase of transport, he said, had been long ago decided upon.]

[Sidenote: The Fischer-Hofmeyr mission.]

One result which Mr. Chamberlain's speech produced was to bring Mr.

Hofmeyr once more upon the scene. Before this date (June 26th) Mr.

Fischer, apparently considering that the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference cast a reflection upon the statesmanship and influence of the Free State Government, had commenced a second essay in mediation.

Early in June he had paid a visit to Capetown, where he was in close communication with Mr. Hofmeyr and the Cape Ministers, and had twice called upon the High Commissioner. He had left Capetown on the 19th for Bloemfontein; and then proceeded to Pretoria, which he reached on the 25th. At the Transvaal capital he entered into negotiations with the Executive, calling upon the British Agent on the 26th, and again on the 28th, and maintaining communication, through him, with Lord Milner. From Pretoria Mr. Fischer returned to Bloemfontein in company with Mr. s.m.u.ts and Mr. Groebler,[93] on July 1st. Here he met Mr.

Hofmeyr, who, leaving Capetown with Mr. Herholdt, on the same day (July 1st), reached Bloemfontein early on the following morning.

[Footnote 93: Under State-Secretary of the Transvaal.]

Mr. Hofmeyr was in Bloemfontein, because the events of the last few days had convinced him that the only hope of saving the situation--saving it, that is, from the Afrikander nationalist point of view--lay in prompt and energetic action on his part. On June 23rd Mr. Schreiner had been informed by the High Commissioner of the intention of the Home Government to "complete" the Cape garrison; and shortly afterwards the despatch of the special service officers was publicly announced in England. Mr. Chamberlain's speech at Birmingham on the 26th, cabled almost _in extenso_ to the High Commissioner, was communicated to the local press on the 28th. On the same evening a ma.s.s meeting, held in the Good Hope Hall at Capetown, declared its strong approval of the action of the Imperial Government on behalf of the British population in the Transvaal. With these signs of an approaching Armageddon before his eyes, Mr. Hofmeyr had overcome his objection to personal dealings with President Kruger, and had resolved to go to Pretoria to confer with the leaders of the Boer oligarchy.

But, in order to protect himself from the risk of a useless rebuff, he had first arranged to meet Mr. Fischer at Bloemfontein, and obtain through him and President Steyn some definite a.s.surance that his counsels would be treated with respect, before finally proceeding to the Transvaal.

On Sunday, July 2nd, and in these circ.u.mstances, a conference was held between the Master of the Bond and Mr. Fischer and Mr. s.m.u.ts--two men not unworthy to represent the cause of Afrikander nationalism in their respective republics. As the result of their discussions, carried on almost uninterruptedly from the early morning until nearly midnight, Mr. Fischer, Mr. s.m.u.ts, and Mr. Groebler, in the words of _Ons Land_, "knew precisely what had to be done, in the opinion of the Colonial representatives, to gain the moral support of Colonial Afrikanders and to lead in the direction of peace."[94]

[Footnote 94: Article on "The Mission of Messrs. Hofmeyr and Herholdt" in _Ons Land_, of July 11th, 1899, as reproduced in the _South African News_ of the same date. This account of Mr. Hofmeyr's proceedings is presumed to have been published with his approval. C. 9,518.]