South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 26

[Sidenote: Resolutions of the House of Commons of Canada]

The House of Commons of Canada, July 31, 1899, adopted the following:

"1. Resolved, That this House has viewed with regret the complications which have arisen in the Transvaal Republic, of which Her Majesty is Suzerain, from the refusal to accord to Her Majesty's subjects now settled in that region any adequate partic.i.p.ation in its government.

"2. Resolved, That this House has learned with still greater regret, that the condition of things there existing has resulted in intolerable oppression, and has produced great and dangerous excitement among several cla.s.ses of Her Majesty's subjects in Her South African possessions.

"3. Resolved, That this House, representing a people which has largely succeeded, by the adoption of the principle of conceding equal political rights to every portion of the population, in harmonizing estrangement, and in producing general content with the existing system of government, desires to express its sympathy with the effort of Her Majesty's Imperial authorities to obtain for the subjects of Her Majesty who have taken up their abode in the Transvaal such measure of justice and political recognition as may be found necessary to secure them in the full possession of equal rights and liberties."

[Sidenote: A Characteristic Article]

The Boer organ, _The Rand Post_, December 28, 1898, had an article on "The Rebellion," which was very abusive of the pet.i.tioners, whose paper sent to the British Government, so greatly irritated President Kruger, who described it as "the lying and libelous pet.i.tion"; and we quote:

"The hand on the rudder! It is more than time! Now once for all, an end must be put to such exhibitions as that of Sat.u.r.day's, by reason of which the English Government will contend is not capable of exercising authority, not in a position to insure the safety of personal property.

In the interests of the country such little upheavals must be vigorously suppressed. From henceforward public gatherings of a semi-political character in Johannesburg must be absolutely forbidden and prevented, because here (in Johannesburg) such gatherings lead to confusion and disorder. The 400 or 500 policemen are sufficient to exercise authority, and especially to prevent such open-air gatherings, and to prevent further flag waving by English ladies taking place before the door of the English Consulate. Mounted police can and must disperse such gatherings, and, if necessary, there must be some shooting done. n.o.body should find that in any respect very terrible.

In other countries that happens now and then, and the public well know beforehand that taking part in such gatherings is forbidden, and that force can be used for dispersing such gatherings. Those who then take part in them do so at their own risk. The Government must not proceed further under a Commandant who is hooted by the burghers, but appoint a Commandant who will have the esteem of the burghers. Commandants of neighboring districts should also be in complete readiness with their burghers. Immediately anything happens, the Government must take vigorous action. The Government must show that it is master of this town, and not unsuccessful men of business, and cowardly political wire-pullers, who shelter themselves behind the guns of Her British Majesty, not the men who in their quality of British subjects, and under cover of lying pet.i.tions bring to light their hatred of the Boer.

To this Johannesburg Rebellion an end must be put once and for all.

The well-meaning portion of the population, a very considerable part, wishes nothing else. Let us shoot down a pair of these wire-pullers, and thereby spare ourselves a formal war."

[Sidenote: A Whole History of Outrages]

This is expressive of the venomous intensity of the press of the Boers.

In the same article there are very broad hints to President Kruger that he had been going too far in the conciliation of the British. There are in the Blue Books many instances of personal outrage, violence, insult, oppression and murder, with a view to the intimidation of the "strangers," the "newcomers," those who were crowding themselves into "the blood-bought land" from mere sordid motives of course in gathering gold and diamonds, and being more numerous than the Boers, and having more money and fixed property, were even not content with the simple office of the payment of taxes and submission to the Boers as an inferior caste. In order to emphasize this spirit of exclusion of those who were actually representing the progress of civilization, and doing vastly more than the Boers ever did to improve the country and make it prosperous in all the ways of advanced civilization, a fort was erected and so located as to bring the business centre of the Uitlanders directly under the guns of the Boers, who not satisfied with the menace of personal outrages and the denial of public rights, had to have a fort from which they could fire into the city, in which their policemen were constantly guilty of extraordinary brutalities. There is a whole history of these outrages that would make good reading for sentimentalists.

The policy of the Boer President and people in the negotiations that had so unhappy a termination was, throughout, marked with all the worst characteristics of the Boer race. The President of the South African Republic had promised in London, where he appeared as the head of a commission when the British attempted the alleged sublime policy of magnanimity in refraining from pushing the war, after the miserable slaughters and skirmishes culminating in the Majuba Hill insanity and ma.s.sacre--that the Government of the "Republic" would be most considerate in protecting the rights of the British subjects in the Transvaal. Doubtless it was the remembrance of his responsibilities thus undertaken that aroused the violent spirit in the Boer Dictator when he met the British High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, in the Bloemfontein conferences--so that he vehemently denounced the true pet.i.tioners of Johannesburg as falsifiers in appealing to the British Government for belated protection. It was the pleasure of President Kruger, who had himself in London promised his protection, that those who told the plain truth as to the oppression of the European people were "libelous liars." The Dictator, whose official t.i.tle was that of President, and who undertook to be the representative of the implacable, domineering spirit of the Boer minority in the Transvaal, in his personal declarations disregarded all civilized amenities, and grossly insisted upon the humiliation of England in the very matter of which she has been most justly proud and won the highest regard of all enlightened peoples, and that is, of seeing at whatever cost that British subjects shall be respected everywhere in their personal rights.

[Sidenote: England's Determined Protection of Her Subjects]

Mr. Chamberlain was well within the line of established truth when he said, if the English Government had no rights in the Transvaal other than those arising from the duty of demanding plain justice from an independent government, be it republican or monarchy, the treatment of the Uitlanders at the hands of the Boers required remonstrance and demanded consideration. Of course, the logic of this statement was that if there was not a remedy for the great and bitter wrong inflicted upon one of the most important communities in the world, and far the most important in Africa, the British Empire would have to interfere.

The claims of England that British subjects should be respected in personal rights have been many times vindicated, and the fact that the whole world knows the high principle and firm policy of the British in the determined protection of its subjects is one of the glories of the Empire. The President of the South African Republic flinched from his own word of honor and responsibility given in London, and rudely a.s.serted that the majority of Europeans in the Transvaal had no rights he was bound to respect. He did not use precisely that form of speech, but it was that substantially, and the meaning of it was that the English-speaking population that had sought the Transvaal because there were there the greatest gold discoveries ever made were to be treated by the Boers as exactly on a level with "n.i.g.g.e.rs." It was the President's persistent a.s.sumption and unconcealed purpose that the minority of the people of the Transvaal he controlled must be supreme over two majorities,--one the natives who had precedence of the Dutch in possession of the country, and the other the newcomers who were there on the business of civilized mankind--the Boers being a semi-barbarous minority between the two--holding with a small fraction of the population a half-way fortification from which to order and command. President Kruger wandered constantly in his conferences from the discussion of the franchise, showing an imperious temper and an inordinate and reckless, domineering propensity.

[Sidenote: A Reasonable and Just Proposal]

The proposal made by the British Commissioner for a settlement of difficulties was plain, reasonable in all respects, singularly careful of all the just susceptibilities of the Boer Government. It consented to the maintenance of the dominance of the minority, except in requiring respect for personal and public rights accorded to individuals in all civilized governments,--and in the declaration of the strict rights of British subjects consent was given to the theory of the utter independence of the Boers. There was a careful limitation here, so that even the vanity of the semi-barbarians, who a.s.serted that they were and must be always the exclusive rulers, was not to be suddenly and in a hostile sense disturbed. There was much conceded merely to save the excessive and savage self-esteem of the Boers, who, however, positively refused justice and demanded without mitigation exercise of a despotism so unwarranted and wicked as to be intolerable to civilization. The Boer statements, soliciting sympathy, circulated in the United States have dwelt upon the a.s.sertion that the British subjects, who meant to reside permanently in the Transvaal, refused to become citizens of the South African Republic on any conditions. This way of putting the case was misleading, and purposely so. The British subjects did not agree to renounce their character as subjects, until a.s.sured they could be citizens of the South African Republic so far, and _that the large majority of the Europeans, the white men in the Transvaal, might have a small minority of representation in the Volks Raad, and this upon the belief that if a very few members of that body who knew the truth of the conditions were able to speak it in public and officially, there would be a mitigation of the remorseless tyranny under which the Uitlanders had been suffering_.

[Sidenote: Boers Positively Refuse Justice]

The Boer President refused to think of this, on the precise and often expressed ground that the Uitlanders were a large majority of the people, and there could be no safeguards for the Boer Government if these outsiders and strangers were permitted to have any political rights whatever. The President held indomitably that the "newcomers"

and "strangers" should not occupy and possess the country to any degree by force of numbers or merit of industry and property. They were in the "blood-bought land"--that is truthfully applied, especially the native blood, and British blood had been shed copiously, and the land was b.l.o.o.d.y enough in that sense; but the condition of English-speaking people and all white immigrants in the gold fields, the richest in the world, and the diamond fields, also the richest ever known--the whole output amounting to more than one hundred millions of dollars a year--should be abject submission to an extortionate, tyrannous and brutal caste that respected no human rights and revelled in selfishness, sordidness and personal and racial insolence. [Sidenote: Mr. Kruger's Views on the Question] The initial point at which President Kruger stood through these negotiations, in which he had ample and honorable opportunities to make peace, was that the great communities of English-speaking people were composed of strangers and aliens who must be inferiors. This amounted to a presumption, officially and peremptorily and continuously a.s.serted, that the Boers must, though a minority, and _because they were a minority_, be consecrated by "blood" a ruling caste, a caste whose authority it was impious to dispute, and that they must have confided to them exclusively and forever commanding powers held sacred over the natives they had enslaved; and the English-speaking people they taxed, a.s.sessed and restricted, insulted and humiliated with ostentation at their sovereign, savage pleasure. It is a mild and gentle form of expression to say that the behavior of the Boers has been that of a barbarous tribe, and that their conduct has had a nearer correspondence with Zulu savagery than with Christian civilization, and totally lacks the kindliness of the Hottentot. The Boers forced the war with England in the spirit of haughty, tribal, cla.s.s, racial, contemptuous hostility, and would have it so throughout the Conferences.

[Sidenote: The English Language not Permitted]

After the Conferences between the British Commissioner and Governor of South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner and President Kruger, the peace-making efforts lacked acute interest, but were perseveringly continued. The latest concession of the Boers was that if the "people"--and by the "people" were meant the burghers of the Transvaal--approved, and the Government would try to get them to do so, a "retrospective five years'

franchise" would be granted, and the amount of it was that of two-thirds of the white men of the Transvaal were to have one-fourth of the representation in the Volks Raad, but by no possibility, it was a little later explained, could the English language be permitted in that august body--the barbarous jargon of the Boers being the official language and the only tongue to be spoken. The President of the Orange State, as the gravity of the situation increased played a raucous second fiddle to President Kruger, and busied himself against the English, constantly professing friendliness to excess, working upon the line of securing the acceptance of an impossible complacency by the majority of white men in the Transvaal, in reference to the policy of their own subordination. That sort of submission is not according to the inheritance of the blood or the antecedent history of the English-speaking race, and the Uitlanders were not effusive with satisfaction even at the last Boer effort to make peace by offering a fractional representation in a body while they must listen to an unknown tongue and not be permitted to speak in the "Republican"

parliament the language of the majority of the tolerably white men dwelling in the territory of the Republic.

The utility of the hysteria of the President of the Orange State was in the warning his frequent and voluminous impracticable suggestions gave, that peace could only be preserved by another case of sublime magnanimity like that of Mr. Gladstone, whose Christian benevolence had given the Boers confidence in their own invincibility and also in the timidity of the British, who were supposed to be most happy when dealing in generosities toward enemies in arms and victorious over the generous. Suddenly the peace-maker, President of the Orange State, s.n.a.t.c.hed the British gold in transit, arrested or expelled British subjects by countenancing and justifying a panic that led them to take flight from his peaceable State, at the same time commandeering the burghers in force, a.s.suming that this was done in a purely pacific way; and on the fourth of October this man of peace wrote to Sir Alfred Milner that he must urge the "urgent necessity of intimating to me without further delay whether Your Excellency sees your way clear to give effect to these my views and wishes."

[Sidenote: The President of the Orange Free State as Peace Maker]

It will be remarked that there is found in the Orange President's literature the same sort of note that Aguinaldo was in the habit of putting in his proclamations expressions of his intense pa.s.sion for pacification when he was plotting the burning of Manila and the ma.s.sacre of the American army. President Steyn had just stated that the South African Republic would not "make or entertain proposals or suggestions unless not only the troops menacing their State were withdrawn further from their borders, but an a.s.surance given" that all increase of British troops in South Africa would be stopped and those on the water not landed "or as far removed as can be from the scene of possible hostilities;" and then if the Orange State President was to do anything more for peace he must now--this was the evening of October 5th--"if this preliminary but absolutely essential matter can be regulated between this and to-morrow." This shows that the professional presidential pacificator had received due notice of the purpose of the Boers to rush a declaration of war.

CHAPTER V

The Boer Declaration of War and the Gathering of the Armies.

[Sidenote: Both sides Surprised]

When the Republic of South Africa and the Orange Free State, after a conspiracy of the two Presidents, rushed their armies into what they believed a campaign of conquests, the surprise of the Boers and their allies that they gained so few and small advantages after elaborate preparations and careful openings of their opportunities in striking first, was as at as that of the British that they, indifferently provided and hastily thrust into hot places, could not march headlong in solid columns, storming fortifications, to easy victories.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAST LETTER HOME. An incident at Ladysmith. Red Cross Nurse writing a message of love from a dying soldier.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GUARDS TERRIFIC CHARGE--BATTLE OF BELMONT]

The Boer ultimatum, ordering the British to flee, for waiting on the frontiers would be regarded a "declaration of war on the part of Her Majesty's Government," and that within forty-eight hours, was promulgated on the 9th of October. The material part is in the following words, as per a.s.sociated Press report:

THE TRANSVAAL'S ULTIMATUM,

which is signed by F. W. Reitz, State Secretary, is as follows:

"Her Majesty's unlawful intervention in the internal affairs of this republic, in conflict of the London convention of 1884, by the extraordinary strengthening of her troops in the neighborhood of the borders of this republic, has caused an intolerable condition of things to arise, to which this Government feels itself obliged, in the interest not only of this republic, but also of all South Africa, to make an end as soon as possible, and this Government feels itself called upon and obliged to press earnestly and with emphasis for an immediate termination of this state of things and to request Her Majesty's Government to give a.s.surances upon the following four demands:

"First--That all points of mutual difference be regulated by friendly recourse to arbitration or by whatever amicable way may be agreed upon by this Government and Her Majesty's Government.

"Second--That all troops on the borders of this republic shall be instantly withdrawn.

"Third--That all reinforcements of troops which have arrived in South Africa since June 1, 1899, shall be removed from South Africa within a reasonable time to be agreed upon with this Government, and with the mutual a.s.surance and guarantee on the part of this Government that no attack upon or hostilities against any portion of the possessions of the British Government shall be made by this republic during the further negotiations within a period of time to be subsequently agreed upon between the Governments, and 'this Government will, on compliance therewith, be prepared to withdraw the armed burghers of this republic from the borders.

"Fourth--That Her Majesty's troops which are now on the high seas shall not be landed in any part of South Africa."

To these demands is appended the definition of time limit for a reply:

"This Government presses for an immediate and affirmative answer to these four questions, and earnestly requests Her Majesty's Government to return an answer before or upon Wednesday October 11, 1899, not later than 5 o'clock P.M.

It desires further to add that in the unexpected event of an answer unsatisfactory being received by it within the interval, it will, with great regret, be compelled to regard the action of Her Majesty's Government as a formal declaration of war, and will not hold itself responsible for the consequences thereof, and that in the event of any further movement of troops occurring within the above mentioned time, in a nearer direction to our borders, this Government will be compelled to regard that also as a formal declaration of war. I have the honor to be, respectfully yours,

F. W. REITZ, State Secretary."

To the above, Great Britain replied that the demands were such as could not be discussed, and instructed the British agent to apply for his pa.s.sport, which he did.

On the following day, October 11th, the proclamation of war was formally issued at Pretoria, the Boer capital, and the Orange Free State openly took its place as an ally of the South African Republic, appointing General Petrus Jocobus Joubert Commandant-General of its forces. Both the Transvaal and Free State Boers promptly invaded Natal and took strong positions.

[Sidenote: Centers of combat quickly Defined]