Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 2

Here his responsibilities would have ended. The High Commissioner and the Imperial Government would have done the rest. To indulge in metaphor, the Imperial locomotive was to be set going, but the lines on which it was to run were those laid down by Mr. Rhodes.

[Footnote 13: It is worth noticing that even the presence of the German Marines at Delagoa Bay was counterbalanced--whether by chance or design--by the coincidence of the arrival of a British troopship with time-expired men from the Indian garrison, off Durban.]

If this was the essence of Rhodes's plan, it would matter comparatively little whether the Reformers had, or had not, completed their preparations, or whether Dr. Jameson had 1,200 or 500 men.

Certainly some such a.s.sumption is necessary to account for the fact that Rhodes treated his confederates at Johannesburg as so many p.a.w.ns on a chess-board. It is equally necessary to account for Dr. Jameson's action. "Twenty years friends, and now he goes in and ruins me," was Rhodes's comment on the news that Dr. Jameson had "ridden in," in spite of his own orders to the contrary and the message to the same effect which Captain Heany had delivered on behalf of the Reformers.

But what if Dr. Jameson knew, or thought that he knew, that Rhodes's object in forcing the insurrection was not to make the Uitlanders reduce Kruger, but to compel the Imperial Government to step in? In this case he may well have thought that what was essential was not that the rising should be successful, but that there should be a rising of any kind; provided that it was sufficiently grave to arrest the attention of the world, and claim the interference of the Imperial Government.

According to Mr. Chamberlain the continued inaction of the Imperial Government in the eighteen months that had pa.s.sed since Lord Loch's visit to Pretoria in June, 1894, was due to two circ.u.mstances. In the first place, "the Uitlanders and their organs had always deprecated the introduction into the dispute of what is called in South Africa the 'Imperial factor'"; and in the second, the "rumours" of violent measures "were continually falsified by the event." Obviously, if Rhodes forced an insurrection with the intention of removing these obstacles--if, that is to say, the intervention of the Imperial Government, and not the success of the insurrection, was his primary object--the temerity of Dr. Jameson's invasion is materially diminished. Now Mr. Chamberlain's statement, made under date February 4th, 1896, _i.e._ five weeks after the Raid, is perfectly consistent with the view of the att.i.tude of the Reformers expressed by Rhodes on the day before the Raid took place.

[Sidenote: The reformers divided.]

Dr. Jameson's force, it will be remembered, started on the evening of Sunday, December 29th, 1895. Up to three days before--the 26th--nothing had occurred to interfere with the final arrangement, telegraphed to Dr. Jameson from Capetown, that the movement in Johannesburg would take place on Sat.u.r.day, the 28th. The circ.u.mstances which caused the Reformers to alter their plans were explained by Rhodes in an interview with Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary, at Capetown on the same Sat.u.r.day, the 28th, with his accustomed vivacity. The Johannesburg insurrection, he said--

"had fizzled out as a damp squib. The capitalists financing the movement had made the hoisting of the British flag a _sine qua non_. This the National Union rejected, and issued a manifesto declaring for a republic. The division had led to the complete collapse of the movement, and it was thought that the leaders would make the best terms they could with President Kruger."

The telegrams which reached Dr. Jameson between the 26th and 29th contained the same facts, with the further information that Captain Heany was travelling by special train to him with a message direct from the Reformers. In these circ.u.mstances it is said that Rhodes at Capetown imagined as little as the Reform leaders at Johannesburg that Dr. Jameson would cross the frontier. That, however, there was another point of view from which the situation might present itself to Dr.

Jameson is shown by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain, in reply to the High Commissioner's telegram reporting the substance of Rhodes's statement to Sir Graham Bower, at once[14] inquired of Lord Rosmead, "Are you sure Jameson has not moved in consequence of the collapse?"

[Footnote 14: Afternoon of Monday, December 30th.]

Was Mr. Chamberlain right? Did Dr. Jameson see in the fact that the Reformers were divided on such an issue only an additional reason for carrying out a plan which had for its object to compel the Imperial Government to intervene in the affairs of the Transvaal before it was too late; that is to say, before the British population had definitely committed itself to the policy of a purged republic, but a republic under any flag but that of Great Britain? Such a policy was not merely possible. It seemed inevitable to the vivacious French observer who wrote, not from hearsay, but "with his eyes upon the object," in December, 1893:

"The Transvaal will never be an English colony. The English of the Transvaal, as well as those of Cape Colony and Natal, would be as firmly opposed to it as the Boers themselves, for they have never forgiven England for letting herself be beaten by the Boers at Majuba Hill and accepting her defeat, a proceeding which has rendered them ridiculous in the eyes of the Dutch population of South Africa.... With me this is not a simple impression, but a firm conviction."[15]

[Footnote 15: "John Bull & Co.," by "Max O'Rell," 1894.]

[Sidenote: Jameson's decision.]

If these were the considerations which weighed with Dr. Jameson, his decision to "ride in" was inconsistent neither with friendship nor with patriotism. When Captain Heany had read from his pocket-book the message from the Reformers, Jameson paced for twenty minutes outside his tent. Having re-entered it, he announced his determination to disregard Heany's message no less than Rhodes's telegram. It was a momentous decision to take after twenty minutes' thought. Had he a reasonable expectation of carrying out the plan as Rhodes conceived it, in spite of the change in the position of affairs at Johannesburg?

Had he any reason to believe that Rhodes desired him to force the insurrection in spite of his telegrams to the contrary? It is the answers to these questions that make the Raid, as far as Dr. Jameson is concerned, an "act of monumental folly," or a legitimate a.s.sumption of personal responsibility that is part of the empire-builder's stock-in-trade. The answer to the second question remains a matter of speculation. The answer to the first is to be found in the record of the expedition. Dr. Jameson reached Krugersdorp at three o'clock on Wednesday, January 1st. A few hours before a cyclist had brought him congratulatory messages from the Reform leaders. The goal was almost within sight. What prevented Sir John Willoughby from taking his little force safely over the remaining twenty miles from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg was the merest accident: the few hours' delay caused, naturally enough, by Dr. Jameson's desire that his force should be met and escorted by a small body of volunteers from the Rand. He did not want, as he said, to go to Johannesburg as "a pirate." Sir John Willoughby's evidence is perfectly definite and conclusive on the point. If the force had pushed on by road from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg on Wednesday evening--had not, in Willoughby's words, "messed about" at Krugersdorp in expectation of the welcoming escort--Johannesburg would have been reached in safety on Thursday morning. With Dr. Jameson in Johannesburg and Lord Rosmead speeding northwards in his special train, the way would have been prepared for that decisive and successful action on the part of the Imperial Government which Rhodes had desired to bring about.

[Sidenote: Why the raid failed.]

But, unsuccessful as was the actual expedition, the decision to "ride in" had secured the intervention of the Imperial Government. If intervention could have done what Rhodes expected of it, Dr. Jameson's decision to "ride in" would have gained, at the cost of few lives and no increase of the national debt, what the war gained four years later at the cost of twenty thousand lives and 220,000,000. As it was, it failed to win the franchise for the Uitlanders. Why did not Lord Rosmead, with so strong a Colonial Secretary as Mr. Chamberlain at his back, brush the Raid aside, and address himself to the removal of the greater wrong that gave it birth? If Lord Rosmead had acted in the spirit of Mr. Chamberlain's despatches; if he had reminded the Government of the Republic from the first "that the danger from which they had just escaped was real, and one which, if the causes which led up to it were not removed, might recur, although in a different form"; if he had used "plain language" to President Kruger; and if, above all, he had remembered--as Mr. Chamberlain reminded him--that "the people of Johannesburg had surrendered in the belief that reasonable concessions would have been arranged through his intervention, and until these were granted, or were definitely promised to him by the President, the root-causes of the recent troubles would remain,"--might he not yet have saved South Africa for the empire without subjecting her to the dread arbitrament of the sword?

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain.]

It is in the answer to this question that we find the actual cause of the utter failure of Rhodes's plan. The truth is that success in any real sense--that is to say, success which would have strengthened British supremacy and promoted the union of European South Africa--was impossible. The sole response which Lord Rosmead returned to Mr.

Chamberlain's counsels was the weary confession: "The question of concessions to Uitlanders has never been discussed between President Kruger and myself." The methods employed by Rhodes were so questionable that no High Commissioner could have allowed the Imperial Government to have derived any advantage from them. To have gained the franchise for the Uitlanders as the result of violent and unscrupulous action, would have inflicted an enduring injury upon the British cause in South Africa for which the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt itself would have been small compensation. The disclosure of these methods and, with them, of the hollowness of Rhodes's alliance with the Afrikander Bond, alarmed and incensed the whole Dutch population of South Africa. What this meant Lord Rosmead knew, and Mr. Chamberlain did not know. The ten years' truce between the forces of the Afrikander nationalists and the paramount Power was at an end. To combat these forces something better than the methods of the Raid was required. _Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis!_ No modern race have excelled the Dutch in courage and endurance. In Europe they had successfully defended their independence against the flower of the armies of Spain, Austria, and France. The South African Dutch were not inferior in these qualities to the people of the parent stock. If such a race, embarked upon what it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to be overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as strong.

None the less the active sympathy with the Uitlanders exhibited in Mr.

Chamberlain's despatches was welcomed by the British as evidence that the new Colonial Secretary was more alert and determined than his predecessors. For the first time in the history of British administration in South Africa, Downing Street had shown itself more zealous than Capetown. It was the solitary ray of light that broke the universal gloom in which South Africa was enshrouded by the catastrophe of the Raid.

CHAPTER II

THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS[16]

[Footnote 16: "This is our Afrikander character. The descendants of Hollanders, Germans and Frenchmen inter-married, and are only known at present by their surnames. They form the Afrikander nationality, and call themselves Afrikanders. The Afrikanders are no more Hollanders than Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Germans. They have their own language, own morals and customs; they are just as much a nation as any other."--_De Patriot_, in the course of an article headed "A Common but Dangerous Error"--the error in question being the a.s.sertion that "the Cape Colony is an English colony" (translated and reproduced in _The Cape Times_, September 3th, 1884).]

In the face of the colossal resistance offered to the British arms by the Boers and their colonial kinsmen in the South African War, it may seem unnecessary to produce any evidence in support of the contention that the military strength then displayed by the Dutch in South Africa was the result of long and careful preparation. But the same inability to grasp the facts of the South African situation which kept the Army Corps in England three months after it should have been sent to the Cape, is still to be met with. This att.i.tude of mind--whether it be a consciousness of moral rect.i.tude, or a mere insular disdain of looking at things from any but a British point of view--is still to be observed in the statements of those politicians who will even now deny that any trace of a definite plan of action, or of a concerted purpose, which could properly be described as a "conspiracy" against British supremacy was to be found among the Dutch population of South Africa as a whole, prior to the outbreak of the war. It is for the benefit of such politicians in part, and still more with a view of bringing the mind of the reader into something approaching a direct contact with the actual working of the Afrikander mind, that I transcribe a statement of the pure doctrine of the Bond, as it was expounded by the German, Borckenhagen, and his followers in the Free State. It will, however, be convenient to preface the quotation with a word of explanation in respect both of the text and the personality of Borckenhagen.

[Sidenote: Carl Borckenhagen.]

The pa.s.sage, which is taken _verbatim_ from a work ent.i.tled, "The Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed," is a collection of sentences gathered from Dutch pamphlets and articles "emanating from Holland,"

and translated literally into the somewhat uncouth English of the text. The author of the work, Mr. C. H. Thomas, was for many years a burgher of the Free State, where he shared the opinions of President Brand, and subsequently supported Mr. J. G. Fraser in opposing the policy of "closer union" with the South African Republic, advocated by Brand's successor, Mr. F. W. Reitz. The point of view from which the Dutch of Holland regarded the nationalist movement in South Africa was succinctly stated in an article published by the Amsterdam _Handelsblad_ in 1881.

"The future of England lies in India, and the future of Holland in South Africa.... When our capitalists vigorously develop this trade, and, for example, form a syndicate to buy Delagoa Bay from Portugal, then a railway from Capetown to Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Delagoa Bay will be a lucrative investment. And when, in course of time, the Dutch language shall universally prevail in South Africa, this most extensive territory will become a North America for Holland, and enable us to balance the Anglo-Saxon race."[17]

[Footnote 17: Quoted by Du Toit in _De Patriot_: translation from the English reprint of _De Transvaalse Oorlog_.]

Carl Borckenhagen, who, with Mr. Reitz,[18] advocated the establishment of the Bond in 1881, was a German republican. His name has been a.s.sociated with Mr. Thomas's summary of the Bond propaganda in the Free State, because, as editor of _The Bloemfontein Express_ up to the time of his death, early in 1898, he was probably the most consistent of all the South African exponents of the nationalist creed. Certainly it is no exaggeration to say that he converted the Free State of Brand into the Free State of Steyn.

[Footnote 18: Then Judge, afterwards President of the Free State, and State-Secretary of the South African Republic in succession to Dr. Leyds.]

[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Bond.]

"THE BOND PROGRAMME

"The Afrikander Bond has as final object what is summed up in its motto of 'Afrika voor de Afrikaners.' The whole of South Africa belongs by just right to the Afrikander nation. It is the privilege and duty of every Afrikander to contribute all in his power towards the expulsion of the English usurper. The States of South Africa to be federated in one independent Republic.

The Afrikander Bond prepares for this consummation.

Argument in justification:--

(_a_) The transfer of the Cape Colony to the British Government took place by circ.u.mstances of _force majeure_ and without the consent of the Dutch nation, who renounced all claim in favour of the Afrikander or Boer nation.

(_b_) Natal is territory which accrued to a contingent of the Boer nation by purchase from the Zulu king, who received the consideration agreed for.

(_c_) The British authorities expelled the rightful owners from Natal by force of arms without just cause.

The task of the Afrikander Bond consists in:

(_a_) Procuring the staunch adhesion and co-operation of every Afrikander and other real friend of the cause.

(_b_) To obtain the sympathy, the moral and effective aid, of one or more of the world's Powers.

The means to accomplish those tasks are:

Personal persuasion, Press propaganda, legislation and diplomacy.

The direction of the application of these means is entrusted to a select body of members eligible for their loyalty to the cause and their abilities and position. That body will conduct such measures as need the observance of special secrecy. Upon the rest of the members will devolve activities of a general character under the direction of the selected chiefs.

One of the indispensable requisites is the proper organisation of an effective fund, which is to be regularly sustained. Bond members will aid each other in all relations of public life in preference to non-members.

In the efforts of gaining adherence to the cause it is of importance to distinguish three categories of persons: