South Africa and the Transvaal War Volume I Part 21

"1. All duly qualified persons can get the franchise without any unnecessary expense, trouble, or delay, and without being subjected to any kind of intimidation.

"2. Those who have got the franchise shall be able to use it effectively.

"3. Redistribution of seats shall take place periodically by automatic arrangement, and representation shall bear some definite relation to the number of electors.

"Having regard to the recent history of the Government of this country, and the facility with which even fundamental laws are and may be changed, the Uitlander Council are convinced that no settlement will be of any value unless its permanency is guaranteed by an understanding between the Imperial Government and the Government of the South African Republic.

"Further, knowing by past experience that every effort will be made by means of the existing Government machinery to obstruct and pervert even the smallest measure of reform, and bearing in mind the immense discretionary power accorded by the laws to all Government officials, the Uitlander Council are strongly of opinion that the understanding between the two Governments should provide for such immediate changes in the present laws of the country as would make it possible to carry out Sir A. Milner's scheme, not only in the letter, but also in the spirit.

"The outcome of the understanding between the two Governments should be the inclusion among the permanent and fundamental laws of the South African Republic of a Reform Act embracing, in addition to the clauses providing for naturalisation and redistribution on the lines already indicated, the following among other provisions:

"1. No burgher or alien shall be granted privileges or immunities which on the same terms shall not be granted to all burghers.

"2. No person shall, on account of creed or religious belief, be under any disability whatever.

"3. The majority of the inhabitants being English-speaking, English shall be recognised equally with Dutch as an official language of the State.

"4. The independence of the High Court shall be established and duly safeguarded.

"5. Legislation by simple resolution (_besluit_) of the Volksraad shall be abolished.

"6. The free right of public meeting and of forming electoral committees shall be recognised and established.

"7. The freedom of speech and of the press shall be a.s.sured.

"8. All persons shall be secured in their houses, persons, papers, and effects against violation or illegal seizure.

"9. The existence of forts and the adoption of other measures intended for the intimidation of the white inhabitants of the country, being a menace to the exercise of the undoubted rights of a free people, shall be declared unconst.i.tutional.

"10. Existing monopolies shall be cancelled or expropriated on equitable conditions.

"11. Raad members must be fully enfranchised burghers and over twenty-one years of age. Any candidate for the Presidency must be a fully enfranchised burgher over thirty years of age, and have been resident in the country for ten years.

"12. All elections shall be by ballot and shall be adequately safeguarded by stringent provisions against bribery and intimidation.

"13. All towns with a population of 1000 persons and upwards shall have the right to manage their own local affairs under a general Munic.i.p.al Act. The registration of voters and the conduct of all elections shall be regulated by local bodies.

"14. A full and comprehensive system of State Education shall be established under the control of Local Boards.

"15. The Civil Service shall be completely reorganised, and all corrupt officials shall be dismissed from office, and be ineligible for office in the future.

"16. Payments from the public Treasury shall only be made in accordance with the Budget proposals approved by the Raad, with full and open publication of the accounts periodically.

"17. No person shall become a burgher, and no fresh const.i.tuency shall be created except in accordance with the lines herein laid down, and officials shall have no discretionary power in this or any other matter affecting the civil rights of the inhabitants of the country."

The Conference was a complete failure. Mr. Kruger obstinately refused to make the proposed concessions, and Sir Alfred Milner would be contented with nothing less.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir ALFRED MILNER, K.C.B.,

High Commissioner for South Africa.

Photo by Elliott & Fry, London.]

The President afterwards agreed to grant a "seven years'

Franchise" on terms that were scarcely practicable, while the Secretary of State for the Colonies held out for the five years'

Franchise at first demanded. The bargaining was pursued for some weeks with considerable animation, and in the end Mr. Kruger offered to allow the five years' franchise on what he knew to be the impossible condition, that the question of suzerainty should be entirely dropped.

The mobilisation of the burghers, which had been secretly on foot for some time, was forthwith carried on apace, and later--much too tardily--British patience gave way, and troops were despatched to South Africa. Then followed, on the 9th of October, an insulting ultimatum from President Kruger, demanding the immediate withdrawal of British troops from the Transvaal border, and an a.s.surance that no more should be landed. In default of this a.s.surance, he declared that at 5 P.M. on the 11th of October a state of war would exist. To such an ultimatum only one answer was possible. British troops at once started for the Cape.

Naturally the whole of Great Britain was in a state of turmoil, and the vast mult.i.tude of people--"the men in the street," so to say--were inclined to express surprise that the question of two years' difference in the terms of obtaining the franchise should have been made into a _casus belli_. To all thinking men it was patent, however, that the quibble about the franchise was merely a Boer _ruse_ to obtain time for the carrying out of a long-concerted scheme for the elimination of the British from the Cape to the Zambezi. These were aware that the military methods of the Transvaal were under process of reorganisation, and indeed had been readjusted gradually ever since 1896, and that the simple methods of 1881 had been superseded by newer and more modern principles of warfare. It was known that great additions had been made to the warlike resources of the Republic, and that the President of the Free State was, if anything, more bitter than Mr. Kruger in his hatred of Great Britain and all things British, and that the two Republics would make common cause with each other against a mutual enemy. It was also known that foreign experts were imported, and foreign stocks of war material--material of the newest and most expensive kind--were prepared in antic.i.p.ation of war, and that even such a thing as tactical instruction--a thing hitherto ignored among the Transvaalers--had been acquired from accomplished German sources, and all this for one sole purpose--war with Great Britain. In order that there may be no doubt that the Boers were completely prepared and determined to fight long before the insolent Ultimatum was published, it is desirable to read a letter which appeared in the _Times_ of the 14th of October 1899. This epistle, which was appropriately headed "Boer Ignorance," emanated from a Dutch writer, whose address was in a well-known part of Cape Colony. It runs:--

"SIR,--In your paper you have often commented on what you are pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do not change it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind tool of our far-seeing and intelligent President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambezi to the Cape. All the Afrikanders in Cape Colony have been working for years for this end, for they and we know the facts.

"1. The actual value of gold in the Transvaal is at least 200,000 millions of pounds, and this fact is as well known to the Emperors of Germany and Russia as it is to us. You estimate the value of gold at only 700 millions of pounds, or at least that is what you pretend to estimate it at. But Germany, Russia, and France do not desire you to get possession of this vast ma.s.s of gold, and so, after encouraging you to believe that they will not interfere in South Africa, they will certainly do so, and very easily find a _casus belli_, and they will a.s.sist us, directly and indirectly, to drive you out of Africa.

"2. We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the great peace party, will raise the question of expense, and this will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working cla.s.ses, who will never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire, or even to preserve your existence as a nation.

"3. We know from all the military authorities of the European and American continents that you exist as an independent Power merely on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor William can arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the earth.

They can at any time starve you into surrender. You must yield in all things to the United States also, or your supply of corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working cla.s.ses would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather than do that they would have civil war, and invite any foreign Power to a.s.sist them by invasion, for there is no patriotism in the working cla.s.ses of England, Wales, or Ireland.

"4. We know that your country has been more prosperous than any other country during the last fifty years (you have had no civil war like the Americans and French to tone up your nerves and strengthen your manliness), and consequently your able-bodied men will not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and they are deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in all the qualities that make good fighting men.

"5. Your military officers we know to be merely pedantic scholars or frivolous society men, without any capacity for practical warfare with white men. The Afridis were more than a match for you, and your victory over the Soudanese was achieved because those poor people had not a rifle amongst them.

"6. We know that your men, being the dregs of your people, are naturally feeble, and that they are also saturated with the most horrible s.e.xual diseases, as all your Government returns plainly show, and that they cannot endure the hardships of war.

"7. We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth-rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds whom you carefully nourish and preserve.

"8. We know that nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials, military and naval, are suffering from kidney diseases, which weaken their courage and will-power, and make them shirk all responsibility as far as possible.

"9. We know that your Navy is big, but we know that it is not powerful, and that it is honeycombed with disloyalty--as witness the theft of the signal-books, the a.s.saults on officers, the desertions, and the wilful injury of the boilers and machinery, which all the vigilance of the officers is powerless to prevent.

"10. We know that the Conservative Government is a mere sham, and that it largely reduced the strength of the British artillery in 1888-89. And we know that it does not dare now to call out the Militia for training, nor to mobilise the Fleet, nor to give sufficient grants to the Line and Volunteers for ammunition to enable them to become good marksmen and efficient soldiers. We know that British soldiers and sailors are immensely inferior as marksmen, not only to Germans, French, and Americans, but also to j.a.panese, Afridis, Chilians, Peruvians, Belgians, and Russians.

"11. We know that no British Government dares to propose any form of compulsory military or naval training, for the British people would rather be invaded, conquered, and governed by Germans, Russians, or Frenchmen, than be compelled to serve their own Government.

"12. We Boers know that we will not be governed by a set of British curs, but that we will drive you out of Africa altogether, and the other manly nations which have compulsory military service--the armed manhood of Europe--will very quickly divide all your other possessions between them.

"Talk no more of the ignorance of the Boers or Cape Dutch; a few days more will prove your ignorance of the British position, and in a short s.p.a.ce of time you and your Queen will be imploring the good offices of the great German Emperor to deliver you from your disasters, for your humiliations are not yet complete.

"For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and your yoke at the same instant, and 300,000 Dutch heroes will trample you underfoot.

"We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you have got it.--Yours, &c.,

P. S.

"_October 12._"