Cornell University Library DT 926.B86 Briton and Boer; 3 1924 028 747 123 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028747123 PllESIDENT KEUllRIi BRITON AND BOER BOTH SIDES OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION BY RIGHT HON^MES BRYCE, M.P. SYDNEY BROOKS; A DIPLOMAT DR. F. V. ENGELENBURG; KARL BLINDj-XnDREW CARNEGIE FRANCIS CHARMES; DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER; MAX NORDAU PROF.ESSOR HANS DELBRUCK VLADIMIR HOLMSTREM; PRINCE OOKHTOMSKY ; EDMUND GOSSE NEIV AND ENLARGED EDITION WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS Reprinted by permission from The North American Review NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS i^oo Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1899, 1900, by The North American Review. All n^kts reserved. PEEFAOE Briton and Boer has met with such approval among the readers of this country and England that still another edition has been found neces- sary, and the publishers take occasion in issuing it to add several important chapters which will give increased value to the new edition. The Eight Honorable James Bryce, M.P., needs little introduction to any reader to-day. He is one of the most distinguished members of the British House of Commons, has served on sev- eral commissions relating to British colonial af- fairs, and is one of the ablest writers on political science and government to-day in any country. He has held positions in the British" Foreign Of- fice and in the British Cabinet, and is probably as well fitted as any one to express an opinion on the causes which have brought about the war in the Transvaal. Dr. F. Y. Engelenburg, on the other hand, is PEEFACE the editor of the VolJcsstem, published in Pre- toria. This paper is the Government organ of the Transvaal, and Dr. Engelenburg, therefore, in his chapter on " A Transvaal View of the South African Question," gives the Boer side, and pre- sents to the reader what is practically the view of President Kriiger himself. Mr. Sydney Brooks, in his article on " England and the Transvaal," is eminently fitted to express the personal side of some of the leaders in this war. He is the son of a member of Parliament, and from the opportunities which he has had for observation and acquaintance with men like Cecil Khodes and Joseph Chamberlain, he is enabled to give a more or less intimate expression of the individual views held by such men on episodes which are taking place in South Africa. Professor Karl Blind, the veteran revolution- ist, who, after the German uprising in 1848, sought refuge in England, and who has been a lifelong champion of human liberty, is most competent to present the general opinion of the Transvaal war which is held in Europe. Pro- fessor Blind avows his warm sympathy with the Boers in their determination to preserve their independence, and denounces the action of Eng- land as being a violation of treaty obligations. PEEFACE It is interesting in this connection to know that in 1884 he was in close contact with the Trans- vaal Deputation which negotiated the Conven- tion that year in London ; and that he was a member of the Executive of the Transvaal Inde- pendence Committee in London in 1881, which endeavored to bring about the restoration of the Boer commonwealth. Mr. Andrew Carnegie needs no introduction to American or English readers ; but his chapter on "The South African Question" is of great value, because of Mr. Carnegie's broad view on such subjects. His intimate acquaintance with Englishmen as well as Americans places him in a position to express a general Anglo-Saxon view of the war. Francis Charmes is a well-known French statesman, who for a number of years was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and who is recognized throughout Europe as a publicist of the first rank. He is at present the foreign editor and one of the leading contributors to the Revue des Deux Mondes. As an authority on the question of international politics his opinion is respected throughout Europe ; and in his chapter on "Will the Powers Intervene in the "War?" he takes a broad view of the Transvaal war with PKEFACE reference to the European Powers, and makes an extremely suggestive statement of the influ- ence on European affairs which such an under- taking on the part of England may have. Demetrius C. Boulger is an English writer, who, from his residence in European cities, is in a position to look at the Transvaal war both from the point of view of an Englishman and from the point of view of a European. His con- tributions to. leading journals on matters relative to military questions between the Powers have made him an authority on such matters, and his opinion as to whether there is a possibility of a Continental Alliance against England at the pres- ent moment must necessarily, therefore, carry great weight with it. Professor Max Nordau, well known as a writer on popular philosophic subjects, was born in Buda- Pesth, but has lived in recent years in Paris. In his chapter in this book on " Philosophy and Morals of "War," he suggests a very interesting line of thought on the question of war in general. ' Of the chapters which have been added to this new edition, the one entitled "England, the Transvaal, and the European Powers," by Pro- fessor Hans Delbriiok, is especially worthy of at- tention. Dr. Hans Delbriick is at present pro- PEEFACE fessor of history at the University of Berlin, and editor of The Preussisohe Jahrbucher — the North American Review of Germany — and one of the most brilliant German writers of the day. As a young man he took part in the Franco- German war, and was promoted to officer's rank after the battle of Gravelotte. His fearless opin- ions have already brought him on several occa- sions into conflict with the Government, and un- til recently he sat in the Reichstag as independent member of the Conservative party. He has been a voluminous writer on the history of the Con- stitution and on military topics, and his lectures on the Franco-German war have attracted wide attention. Between the years of 1874 and 1879 he was the private tutor of the present Emperor of Germany. The article entitled " Great Britain on the "War-Path " is written by Yladimir Holmstrem, a leader-writer in the Viedomosti, the Govern- ment organ at St. Petersburg. It will be noticed that the editor of the Viedomosti, Prince Ookh- tomsky, adds a note at the end of the article vouching for the opinions expressed by the author, and, therefore, giving this chapter of the book the character of an official communication from the Eussian Government. PREFACE Edmund Gosse's article on Sir Eedvers BuUer is a character study of one of the leading Eng- lish generals in the Transvaal war, which is of value, as Mr. Gosse, the eminent English essay- ist, is able to present to the reader a more or less typical portrait of the kind of military man with whom the Boers have to cope in this war. CONTENTS FACE The Historical Causes op the Present War in South Africa. By the Right Hon. James Brycb, M.P. .' ;.,i ... 1 England and the Transvaal. By Sydney Brooks 47 A Vindication op the Boers (a Rejoinder to Mr. Sydney Brooks). By a Diplomat . . 77 A Transvaal View op the South Aprican Ques- tion. By Db. F. V. Engelenburg, Editor op THE Pretoria Volkssibm 103 The Transvaal War and European Opinion. By Karl Blind 133 The South African Question. By Andrew Car- negie . . . 164 Will the Powers Intervene in the War 1 By Francis Charmes, Foreign Editor op the Rsrns bus Dmtx Mondbb . . .... . 177 A Possible Continental Alliance Against Eng- land. By Demetrius C. Boulgbr 198 Philosophy and Morals of War. By Max Nordau 330 England, the Transvaal, and the European P6WERS. By Prop. Hans Delbruck .... S52 Great Britain on the War-Path. By Vladimir Holmstbem and Prince Ookhtomsky .... 269 Sir Redvers Buller: A Character Study. By Edmund Gossb • • 387 ix ILLUSTEATIONS PRESIDENT KRUGEB ... A boee's fikst homestead ... DINGAAN AND THE MUKDBR OP THE BOER EMISSARIES . A MATABELE NATIVE . ... OFFICE OP THE REFORM COMMITTEE DURING THE JAMESON RAID MAJUBA HILIi, THE SCENE OP THE BRITISH DEFEAT m 1881 . . .... RT. HON. CECII, JOHN RHODES, P.O. ... 1 RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. . . . ) A TREKKING OUTFIT . TRADING FOR ZULU LABOR THE WAR-DANCE OP THE ZULUS JOHANNESBURG DB. WILLIAM J. LBTDS BRINGING IN THE HAIDERS TO JOHANNESBURG PIETERMAEITZBUBG, THE CAPITAL OF NATAL. DB. L. 8. JAMESON GENERAL PIET JOUBERT M. T. STEYN LADYSMITH . ■ . . . xi Frontispiece Fencing p. 4 13 30 34 48 60 73 86 106 130 136 143 160 190 318 333 ILLUSTRATIONS LOUD EOBEKTS OF KANDAHAB, V.C., G.C.B., G.C.I.E Facing p. 360 MAJOR-QBNEEAI, LORD KITCnBNEK . . . " 370 LIEUTENANT -GENERAL SIR RBDVERS HENRY BULLEB, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C.B., V.C. . . " 388 MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. F. GATACRE .... " 396 MAP OF THE BOER REPUBLICS BRITON AND BOER BRITON AND BOER THE HISTOEICAL CAUSES OF THE PRESENT WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA The events which have led up to the present conflict in South Africa, which I am asked to sketch in outline for American readers, cannot well be understood without some little knowl- edge of the physical configuration of the country and the character of its people. It is a great, wild, dry, bare country, with an exceedingly small population of white men, and a population of blacks which is not large in comparison with its area. This area, taking South Africa to be the region which lies south of the Zambesi, is some 1,400,000 square miles, and within its limits there are much less than one million of white men, Dutch, English, and Portuguese, with a handful of Germans — that is to say, less than BRITON AND BOER the population of Philadelphia. Nearly one-half of that area is desert — by which I mean a prac- tically waterless tract, no better for ranching or agriculture that the sagebrush deserts of Nevada. Of the rest, by far the larger part is much too dry for agriculture, but fit for sheep and cattle, resembhng, roughly speaking, the ranching dis- tricts of western Nebraska or "Wyoming. There are fertile valleys near the south and southeast ooast, because the heat is there not so severe and the rainfall more abundant ; but the interior is an elevated plain, where the strong sun rapidly dries up the rains of the summer months, so that cultivation must, nearly everywhere, be carried on by means of irrigation. Now there are very few places in South Africa where it pays to irri- gate the soil ; and, consequently, there is, except here and there towards the coast, a very small number of persons engaged in agriculture. Nei- ther are there any forests worth mentioning, nor any manufactures, except small local indus- tries in the few towns. Till very recently, the whole occupation of the country, and that where- in its wealth lay, was the rearing of sheep and cattle. It is an occupation which gives employ- ment to very few persons in proportion to the surface over which flocks and herds feed; and CAUSES OF THE WAE this is why the population has grown so slowly during the last two centuries and a half. For South Africa is by no means a new Euro- pean colony, like Australia. It was discovered at the end of the fifteenth century by Bartholo- mew Diaz, six years before the discovery of Amer- ica. The first European settlement was planted at Sofala, on the southeast coast, by the Portu- guese in A.D. 1505, the next by the Dutch at Cape Town in 1652. The Portuguese, however, never succeeded in establishing any hold upon the interior, and the extreme unhealthiness of the region where their posts were placed blighted the growth of their settlements, which are to- day quite insignificant, and will probably some day pass into the hands of stronger Powers. Be- sides, their blood has become mixed with that of the natives to an extent which has caused the race to deteriorate. The Dutch settlement advanced very slowly for many years. It was governed by a company whose aim was rather to make money by trade than to develop the country, and maladministra- tion produced a discontent which had begun to reveal the bold and restless character of the set- tlers. When England captured the Cape during the great war against Napoleon (in 1806), there 3 BRITON AND BOER were only some twenty-seven thousand whites in the whole colony. After the war was over, and when England, which had in 1814 paid six mill- ions sterling to the Dutch for the country, was firmly planted there, some English settlers began to come in, as others have done from time to time ever since. But the influx of these settlers has been less than the natural increase of the Dutch population, so that in Cape Colony the inhabitants of Dutch, stock to-day outnumber those of English stock, ^nd the Dutch language is (except in the towns) more generally spoken than is the English. These two stocks have so much in common that it might have been expected that they would readily amalgamate, and at any rate would, as the Dutch and English, did long ago in New York, be on good terms with one an- other. They are akin in blood and in speech. They are both Protestant. In character and in habits, and, indeed, in appearance also, one may note many resemblances between the peasant of Holland and the peasant of East Anglia. If the English Government had been wise in its meas- ures, if it had understood the country better and been careful to send out only sensible and sym- pathetic men as governors, the Dutch of South 4 J ^llt..i.L I _^jBasr. CAUSES OF THE WAR Africa, who had no attachment to Holland, might soon have become attached to England, and would at any rate have been, though they are naturally of an independent spirit, quiet and peaceable subjects. England, however, man- aged things ill. She altered the system of courts and local government, reducing the rights which the' people had enjoyed. She insisted on the use of the English language to the exclusion of Dutch. In undertaking to protect the natives and the slaves, whom the Dutch were accused by the English missionaries of treating very harshly, she did what was right, but the farmers complained that the missionaries sometimes ma- ligned them and greatlj'^ resented the attention which was paid to the charges. Finally she abolished slavery, and allotted a very inadequate sum as compensation to the South African slave- owners, much of which sum never reached their hands, because it was made payable in London. These grievances, coupled with displeasure at the unwillingness of the Government to prosecute the troublesome and costly wars against the south- coast Kafirs, who frequently raided cattle and burned the houses of the farmers on the frontier, determined a large body of Dutch farmers and ranchmen to quit the colony altogether, and go 5 BRITON AND BOER out into the wilderness which stretched far away to the northeast, much of it, especially that which lay to the north, a waterless desert, but the eastern part reported by the few hunters who had traversed it to contain plenty of good past- ure. About ten thousand thus set off, and, when they had advanced beyond the borders of the colony, spread themselves over a tract of coun- try some seven hundred miles long by three hun- dred broad, between the Orange Kiver on the west-southwest and the lower course of the Lim- popo Kiver on the north-northeast. Parts of this country lay empty of all inhabitants. Parts were inhabited by savage Kafir tribes, the more warlike of whom attacked the emigrants, and were defeated, and in some cases expelled by the latter, whose valor, whose firearms, and whose horses enabled them to overcome enormously more numerous hosts of undisciplined natives. This emigration of 1836 is known as the Great Trek, and the Dutch who formed it are usually described by their own name of Boers, a word meaning farmers or peasants. It is convenient , to call them by this name for the sake of dis- tinguishing them from the more numerous and more sedentary Dutch who remained behind in Cape Colony as British, though, strictly speak- 6 CAUSES OF THE WAE ing, every farmer or rancliman would be described in the Dutch language by the name of Boer. This Great Trek of 1836 has been the source of all subsequent troubles between the Dutch and English races in South Africa. The circum- stances attending it developed in the minds of the emigrant Boers three passions which have characterized them ever since, and which must be understood, because they are the key to the subsequent history of the country. One_of these is a deep dislike to the British Government, which they conceived to have forced them to quit their old homes by a course of injustice and oppression. Another is a love of independence for its own sake, a sentiment which is in their Dutch and Huguenot blood (for some of the leading families were sprung from French Hu- guenots who had gone to Africa from Holland after the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes), and which had shown itself, even before England took the Cape, in risings against the Govern- ment of the Dutch East India Company. A third is an ardent attachment to their Calvin- istic faith and to their old habits and usages. Cut off from all the influences of Europe, and leading a rude and solitary life on their enormous ranch- ing farms, they were, when they went out into BRITON AND BOER the wilderness, nearly two centuries behind the people of Western Europe in the thoughts, as well as in the arts, of naodern civilization. The conditions of their warlike life among hostile savages after the Trek kept them so backward that they might really be said to belong rather to the seventeenth century than to the nine- teenth. Their virtues, as well as their faults, were of a seventeenth-century type, and have remained, in the more remote and thinly peopled regions, still of that type — a fact which came into sharp relief when, within the last few years, a new crowd of English gold-seekers poured in among them. The old type has partially survived even among the more civilized Dutch of Cape Colony, and this has helped to keep up the sense of brotherhood between the emigrant Boers and their kinsfolk at the Cape. Before I describe the relations of these emi- grants to the British Government from 1836 to the present day, it may be well to say a few words about the natives, who constitute the vast majority of the inhabitants of the country. When the first European settlers came, they found three races in the country — the Bushmen, a low type of aborigines, who hved by the chase; CAUSES OF THE WAR the Hottentots, savages of a somewhat higher order, who had sheep and cattle, but did not till the ground, and the Kafirs. The Bushmen were very few, and have now almost disap- peared. They could not learn civilized ways or survive contact with a civilized people. The Hottentots, too, vanished, many tribes being swept off by small - pox, while the rest have either died out or become mixed with the negro slaves whom the Dutch brought from the coasts of Guinea. The Kafirs, however, have held their ground and even multiplied. The Dutch, and afterwards the Enghsh, have carried on many sanguinary wars with them, for they are fierce in fight, as well as strong, muscular men. The last of these wars was that which the Brit- ish South African Company waged against the Matabele in 1893, renewed by a native revolt in 1896 ; and it may be hoped that it is the last that will have to be waged, at any rate to the south of the Zambesi Kiver, for the tribes have now begun to realize the hopelessness of resist- ance to the discipline and the superior arms of the white men. These wars were, all of them, except that against the Matabele, fought out along, or not far from, the coasts of the Indian Ocean, because the northern parts of the country. BRITON AND BOER or both sides of the lower and middle course of the Orange Kiver, is a desert region, which has no inhabitants, save a few wandering Hottentots and Bushmen. The result of the wars was to make the English masters of the whole country (except, of course, the Portuguese and German territories) which lies along the coast from Cape Town as far as the neighborhood of Delagoa Bay. The natives never took partJn any of the conflicts between the English and the Dutch, to which I am going to refer, but their presence in several instances affected those conflicts, because the English more than once stopped the Boers when the latter were conquering some native tribe, and because the English Government sometimes declared that the relations between the Boers and the natives constituted a danger to the peace of the country generally, which made their own interference necessary. It must, there- fore, be remembered that the rivalry between the Boers and the English, the course of which is now to be sketched, went on, not in vacuo, so to speak, but in the presence of a native population far outnumbering the English and the Boers taken together. "When the Boers trekked out in.o the wilder- ness in 1836, the British Government, thougu 10 CAUSES OF THE WAR sorry to see them go, did not follow them. It did not wish- to possess the interior of South Africa, because it did not think the country worth having. It valued the Cape chiefly as a half-way house to India, for in those days the Suez Canal had not begun to be even talked of. Neither in those days had the passion for acquir- ing territory outside the pale of civilization seized upon the European Powers. Least of aU did they desire African territories, because all Africa (except the strip along the Mediterranean) was believed to be either hopelessly barren or hope- lessly unhealthy, the parts which were unin- habited, worthless; the parts which were in- habited, full of savages whom it would be costly to subdue, and from whom, when they had been subdued, little profit could be drawn. Accord- ingly, the British neither sent troops after the departing emigrants, nor deemed the emigrants to be acquiring the interior for Great Britain. Still, they did deem the emigrants to be still British subjects, for, as they had not become sub- jects of any other State, it was held they must still owe allegiance to the British Crown. This not' 41 has in a vague sense never quite vanished from the British mind ever since. The emigrants, hfiwove", held that when they went out they re- 11 BRITON AND BOER nounced their British allegiance, and forthwith began to set up rude republican governments for themselves, governments which were man- aged by a meeting of all the adult males (called a Volksraad or People's Council), and in time of war — nearly all times being times of war — also by a smaller elective committee called a Council (Krygsraad). As the emigrants were scattered over an area of some three hundred thousand square miles, and were, even in 1846, ten years after the first of them left the Colonj"-, less than twenty thousand in number, all told, it was im- possible for them to have one Yolksraad or one Government for the whole body. The various parties or communities, when they began to crys- tallize into comrnunities, got on as they best could, each with its own Volksraad. After a time this became a small representative body, but when it was a primary assembly, the number of persons present was usually smaller than that of a town-meeting in rural New England. The British Government soon found itself, or thought itself, compelled to abandon its original policy of indifference to the doings of the emi- grants, and so there began that struggle for ^he possession of the extra-colonial po,rts of South Africa, which has been the centred stream o^ 12 ^. DINGAAN AiNT THE MUIUlEK OP THE BOER EMISSARIES CAUSES OF THE WAR South African history for more than half a cen- tury. The first collision took place in what is now the Colony of Natal, a region then separated from Cape Colony by a mass of independent Kafir tribes, and itself ruled by the Zulu king Dingaan. Hearing of the fertility of this re- gion, which is indeed one of the richest and best watered parts of Africa, a large body of Boer emigrants, who had been wandering over the great interior plateau, descended into it in 1838, and after a short but terrible struggle with Din- gaan, who had treacherously massacred two par- ties of them, built the village of Pietermaritzburg (now the capital of Natal), and set up a republic which they called Natalia. This disquieted the British authorities at the Cape, who did not wish to see any non-British State established on the sea-coast. The interior they did not much care about, because in the interior the Boers would be in contact with the natives only. But an inde- pendent republic on the coast, flying its own flag, was another affair. They were, moreover, afraid that trouble between the emigrants and the coast Kafirs might breed further trouble between the coast Kafirs and themselves. Accordingly, they sent (in 1842) a small British force to Durban (then called Port Natal), the best harbor on the 13 BRITON AND BOER coast, though they had some years before with- drawn a detachment which had been placed there, and had not complied with the request of the handful of English settlers who lived there to recognize them as a colony. The British troops were besieged by the Natalian Boers, but in the nick of time received reinforcements, which so completely turned the scale that the Boers presently submitted. The Eepublic of Natalia vanished, and many of the Boer emi- grants returned north across the mountains, prizing their independence more than the good pastures of Natal, and full of resentment at the Government which had stepped in to deprive them of the fruit of their victory over the Zulu king. Thus ended the first of the four armed collisions which have occurred between the Eng- lish and the Boers, the first of their many striv- ings for the possession of the unappropriated parts of Africa. Meanwhile, the interior was in a state of con- fusion and disorder, the Boers being too few in number to reduce to submission their native en- emies, and the half-breed hunting clans called Griquas, the offspring of Dutch fathers and Hot- tentot mothers, who lived in the northeastern border of Cape Colony. The British Govern- 14 CAUSES OF THE WAR ment, after fruitless attempts to create petty semi-independent States out of these unpromis- ing materials, yielded to the pressure of events, and moved forward the frontier of its influence by annexing the country between the Orange River and the Yaal River, thereby asserting au- thority over such of the Boer emigrants as dwelt in this region. They named it the Orange River Sovereignty, and built a fort in it at a spot called Bloemfontein. This took place in 1846. Some of the Boers, unwilling to come again un- der British dominion, took up arras, and with the help of other Boers beyond the Vaal, over- powered the small British garrison. A British force was led against them by the Governor of the Cape, a tried soldier of the Peninsular War, who defeated them in an engagement and re- established British authority. But the troubles showed no sign of ending. A large Kafir tribe, the Basutos, who occupied the mountainous country south of the Orange River Sovereignty, and were formidable both by their numbers and by the difiioult nature of their country, attacked the British force in the Sovereignty on one side, while the Boers from beyond the Yaal threat- ened it on another. It so happened that Cape Colony was at the same time involved in a war 15 ' BRITON AND BOER with the Kafirs of the south coast, so that troops could not be spared for these more remote dis- tricts, while there was not time to fetch any from England, then far more distant than now. Besides, the Government at home were getting tired of the vexations which their presence in the far in- terior caused them. They saw nothing to be gained by the possession of wide, pastoral wastes, where it was extremely difficult to keep order, difficult to control the rough white settlers, diffi- cult to bridle the restless mass of Kafirs. Accord- ingly, the British Cabinet made up its mind to take what would now be called an act of self- denying and perhaps pusillanimous renunciation, but was then regarded as an exercise of obvious common-sense. It resolved to withdraw alto- gether from the interior, release the emigrant Boers from any claim it might still have to their allegiance, and leave them and the Kafirs to fight out their quarrels without further interference. In 1852, a treaty — known as the Sand River Convention — was made with representatives of the Boers who dwelt beyond the Yaal Kiver, which guaranteed to them " the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves ac- cording to their own laws, without any interfer- ence on the part of the British Government." 16 CAUSES OF THE WAE It was also thereby declared that no slavery should be permitted or practised by the Boers beyond the Vaal. Two years later, after a troublesome war with the Basutos, in which the British general narrowly escaped a serious re- verse, had confirmed the disposition of the Gov- ernment to withdraw, another Convention was made at Bloemfontein, by which the Boers liv- ing in the Sovereignty between the Vaal and Orange Elvers were "declared to be a free and independent people," and the future indepen- dence of the country and its government was guaranteed. The British garrison was there- upon withdrawn from the Sovereignty, which was left, to set up a government on its own ac- count, subject, however, to a provision forbid- ding slavery and the slave-trade — a provision not superfluous in either Convention, for the Boers were suspected of practising a system of ap- prenticing native servants which was with diffi- culty distinguishable from slavery. Both the great English parties were concerned in this abandonment of the interior, for the Convention of 1852 was approved by the Cabinet of Lord Derby; that of 1854 by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. Neither Convention excited any re- monstrance in England, so little did men then B 17 BRITON AND BOER care for colonial expansion in general or African territory in particular. From these two recognitions of Boer inde- pendence there sprang up two Boer republics. After sixteen years of practical but legally un- acknowledged independence, the emigrants who lived beyond the Vaal, and now began to be called Transvaal people, were at length masters of their own destinies. They were, however, divided into several small communities, as well as into numerous contending factions, and did not finally unite into one State till 1864. The Orange Eiver farmers were less quarrelsome and better educated, and, as they lived nearer the Colony, they were less rude, being, moreover, mixed with a certain number of English settlers. Their Eepublic took the name of the Orange Free State, and gave itself a very short and simple constitution, which has worked smooth- ly. It was for a time plagued by wars with the Basutos, but since the British Government as- sumed control over that tribe in 1869 these have ceased. The country is mostly too dry for agri- culture, but it is covered with excellent pasture, which supported, until the great cattle plague of 1896, vast herds of cattle. Fortunately, no gold mines have been discovered, and only one dia- ls CAUSES OF THE WAR mond mine, so the temptations of wealth have not corrupted the simplicity of these republicans, who lived happily together till the outbreak of the present vrar, Englishmen sharing with Boers the oiEces of the State. The Transvaal Republic was less fortunate. Its people were rather fewer in number, and were scattered over a wider territory. They were much rougher in habits, much more igno- rant, much fonder of raiding the natives, and more prone to discord among themselves. What with their intestine divisions, their native wars, and their unwillingness to pay taxes, their Gov- ernment was carried on with great difficulty, and had, in 1877, become not only bankrupt, but virt- ually unable to enforce obedience. The British Government, which thought, rightly or wrongly, that the weakness and disorder of the Republic constituted a danger to the surrounding territo- ries by inviting native attacks, sent a Commis- sioner to Ihe Transvaal, who, in April, 1877, used the discretion which the Colonial Office had intrusted to him to proclaim the annexa- tion of the country to the British Crown. It was a high-handed act, for the Republic had enjoyed complete independence, and Britain had no more legal right to annex it than she had to 19 BRITON AND BOER seize the neighboring territories of Portugal. The only justification was to be found in the circumstances of the State, which had only three dollars in its treasury, with no prospect of obtaining any more, because the citizens, who distrusted the President, on account of his sup- posed theological errors, seemed to care very lit- tle whether they had a government at all, and were certainly unwilling to contribute to its support. It was believed that Cetewayo, the powerful and martial Zulu king, was likely to attack it, and the Commissioner doubtless believed that the public opinion of the Boer people, of whom there were now some forty thousand, would approve — or at any rate would not actively resent — his conduct in placing them under a power which would defend them against Cetewayo and spend money on their country. The event, however, proved that he had acted foolishly, because precipitately. If he had wait- ed a few weeks or months longer, it is possible, indeed probable, that the Boers would have asked him to promise them a British protectorate. But they did not like to have it thus thrust upon them ; and, while the authorities of the Eepublic entered solemn protests, a memorial was drawn up and signed by a large majority of the citizens 30 CAUSES OF THE WAR addressed to the British Government, and pray- ing that the annexation should be reversed. Britain, however, refused to give way, believing that the opposition of the Boers would soon dis- appear, especially when they saw that English rule must conduce to the material prosperity of the country. Unfortunately, the Colonial High Commission- er and the Colonial Office at home did not take the obviously proper steps to conciliate the peo- ple. They sent an arrogant and politically in- capable military oflBcer to govern men in whom the sentiment of democratic equality Avas ex- tremely strong. They levied taxes stringently. They delayed so long in giving the free local government they had promised that the people despaired of ever receiving it. The passive dis- pleasure which had at first showed itself now turned to active discontent ; and when the lead- ers of that discontent found that the new Eng- lish Ministry which came into power in April, 1880, just three years after the annexation, re- fused to reverse the act of their predecessors, they prepared to recover their independence by force of arms. In December, 1880, an insurrec- tion broke out. The insurgents were few in number, but the British troops in the country 31 BRITON AND BOER were still fewer and wholly unprepared, so they were obliged to surrender or were shut up and besieged in a few fortified posts. A Boer force seized the chief pass leading from the Transvaal into Natal, because this was the route which an English army coming to reconquer the country would be sure to take. Here they repelled a small English force, for the English had as yet very few soldiers in Natal, and shortly afterwards (February 26, 1881) defeated and killed the Eng- lish commander, General Colley, who, with a want of prudence that has never been accounted for, led a detachment to the top of a mountain (Maju- ba Hill) commanding the pass, without taking proper steps to guard the position or to secure support from the rest of his force. There were loud cries in England that vengeance should be taken for this defeat, which could easily have been avenged, for in a few weeks reinforcements arrived far too strong for the Boers to resist. But the British Government, much to its credit, gave no heed to these cries. It was to blame for having failed sooner to discover the real state of things in the Transvaal, and for not having done its best, by a prompt removal of grievances, to appease the discontent of the people. But, now that it knew the facts ; knew 23 CAUSES OF THE WAR that the hasty annexation had been a blunder • knew how much the Boers valued their inde- pendence ; knew how strong was the sympathy felt for them by the Dutch element all over South Africa — a sympathy which might have ended in a war with the Free State and a civil war in Cape Colony — they determined to undo the annexation of 18T7. A convention was ac- cordingly concluded in August, 1881, with the provisional government which the Transvaal people had set up. By this instrument, Britain recognized the Transvaal State as autonomous, reserving to herself, however, the control of all foreign relations, and declaring the suzerainty of the Queen. The Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone was warmly attacked in England for its action in thus, as its opponents said, weakly surrendering to rebels, while others held that it had not only acted magnanimously, but also wisely, since the evil of a race conflict between English and Dutch in South Africa far outweighed the ob- jections to sitting down under a defeat, especial- ly when all the world knew that the defeat could have been easily avenged, were mere vengeance a proper object of war. Men still wrangle over the question in Eng- land, and may long continue to do so, for it is to 33 BRITON AND BOER some extent a moral as well as a political ques- tion, and diflEerent minds view moral problems differently. Kegarded as a pure matter of politics, it may be pronounced to have been right, upon the data which the British Govern- ment then possessed, for there was nothing to be gained by reconquering a large country of slender value, and by undertaking to rule over a mass of disaffected subjects, while the danger of a race war in South Africa was to be at all hazards avoided. Nevertheless, as things have in fact turned out, much of the good which was then reasonably expected has failed to be secured. The Boers who deemed, and were indeed justified in deeming, the annexation of 1877 to have been an act of pure force, which gave the British Crown no de jure title to their allegiance, thought that when the insurrection had succeeded, their Republic ought to have been replaced in its old position under the Sand Eiver Convention, a position of perfect indepen- dence. They, therefore, showed little gratitude for the concession of practical autonomy, and did not resign the hope of ultimately regaining com- plete independence. Besides, though they could not but see that the British Ministry had refrain- ed from using their superior power to take ven- 24 CAUSES OF THE WAR geance which might have been easily taken, they knew that the clanger of alienating the Cape Dutch had been one of the motives which deter- mined its conduct. However, the whole question might, and probably soon would, have lost its importance but for an event which happened four years after, the discovery in the Transvaal of a gold-field unique in the world. When the Transvaal Boers had recovered their rights of internal self-government, they immedi- ately began to work for two things : the conces- sion of complete independence, such as they had enjoyed under the Sand Kiver Convention, and the extension of their influence over the native territories that lay around them. Their War of Independence had stimulated in an amazing de- gree their national feeling, and had revived in them that bold and venturesome spirit which marked the first years after the Great Trek. Ter- ritorial expansion is, moreover, almost a necessity to them, because they live entirely by ranching, and need fresh pastures as the population in- creases. They began to spread out to the south into Zululand, and succeeded in establishing a petty republic there, which was afterwards ab- sorbed into the mother State.- They attempted similar tactics on the west in Bechuanaland, but 25 BRITON AND BOER here the British Government interposed. It had been appealed to by the English missionaries, who disliked the Boers because they dealt harshly with the natives; and it was unwilling to see a' region which might become important as opening a path from the Cape to Central Africa closed against it by the presence of another Power. Ac- cordingly, an expedition was sent which chased the Boer adventurers out of Bechuanaland, and placed the Kafir tribes who dwelt there un- der British protection. There now remained only the country to the east and to the north of the Transvaal to be contended for by the Dutch and English races. To the east the Boers suc- ceeded, after a long diplomatic controversy with Britain, in getting hold of Swaziland, a small na- tive territory inhabited by a branch of the Zulu race. They would have liked to go still farther and reach the coast of the Indian Ocean, but Britain anticipated them by stepping in to pro- claim a protectorate over the Kafir chiefs, who held the unhealthy little strip of land that lies between Swaziland and the sea. This was in 1894. On the north the British Government, who had again begun to doubt the wisdom of annexing huge slices of Africa— though the tide of English sentiment was now setting strongly 26 CAUSES OF THE WAR for expansion — refused to occupy the country Avhich lay between the Limpopo Eiver and the Zambesi. , But it did not refuse to allow one of its enterprising subjects to obtain a charter from the Crown founding a company intended to ac- quire land and work mines in that country. Mr, Cecil Khodes, an Oxford graduate, and spn of an English country clergyman, who had made a fort- une at the Kimberley diamond mines, was thei person who conceived this plan, and by whom' the charter creating the British South Africa Company was procured. Under his auspices, a band of English settlers entered the unappropri- ated and little -known regions of Manica Land and Mashonaland, and, in 1890, set up a govern- ment there. They were just too quick for the Boers, who had meditated a trek into the same region, where there is plenty of good pasture. Three years afterwards the company established its power over the wide area of Matabeleland, west of Mashonaland, by a war with the martial tribe of Matabele, whose king, Lo Bengula, fled away and died. With these events the long ri- valry for the possession of the interior between Dutch and English came to an end, and the Transvaal found itself surrounded on all sides' by British territory, except on the northeast, 27 BRITON AND BOER where it abuts upon the dominion of Portugal. Those dominions, however, it could not acquire from Portugal, even if Portugal were willing to sell them, because Britain has by treaty a right of pre-emption of the district round Delagoa Bay, the harbor which both the Boers and the English would be so glad to obtain. On the whole, there- fore, the English came off winners ; for, whereas the Boers get only Swaziland and part of Zulu- land, their rivals secured the vast areas of Bechu- analand on the west, of Mashonaland and Mata- beleland on the north. In its other aim, the recovery of independence, the Transvaal Government had a nearly complete success. In 1884 they persuaded the late Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary in the British Cabinet, to agree to a new Convention, whose arti- cles supersede those of the Convention of 1881. This later instrument sensibly enlarges the rights and raises the international status of the " South African Eepublic " (a title now conceded to what had been called in 1881 the " Transvaal State "). Under the Convention of 1884, the British Crown retains the power of vetoing any treaties which the Eepublic may make, except with the Orange Free State. But the Eepublic is entitled to accredit diplomatic representatives to foreign 38 CAUSES OF THE WAR courts ; the protection of the natives is no longer placed under the care of a British Eesident ; the internal administration of the State is left en- tirely free from any sort of British control. The Eepublic is, in fact, with the important exception of the treaty-making power, to all intents and purposes independent. Most people in England now blame Lord Derby, who was certainly an unlucky Colonial Minister, for making this Con- vention. But his error — and it was an error — would have signified comparatively little, but for the event which befell immediately after it was committed. The Convention was signed in 1884. In 1885 the auriferous conglomerate beds of the "Witwatersrand were discovered in the southern part of the Transvaal. They form not only the richest gold-field in the world, but a gold- field unlike any other in giving a fairly uni-i form and certain yield of so much gold, rather! greater in some beds, rather less in others, to the ton of ore. Until this discovery, the Transvaal had been, though a few gold -reefs were being worked in the mountains on its east- ern border, really a vast pastoral wilderness, very poor, and with only about one and a half white inhabitants to the square mile, most of them semi- nomad ranchmen. It was a country somewhat 29 BRITON AND BOER like New Mexico, though the population was smaller and the pasture thinner. Now a stream of immigrants from the rest of South Africa, from Europe, from Australia, from North Amer- ica, began to rush in, so that within a few years the white population more than trebled. The first result of this great and sudden change was to enrich those few of the Boer farmers who had owned and who now promptly sold the land where the gold-beds were worked, and also to Tjenefit a somewhat larger number by creating a market for agricultural produce. The revenue of the State, which had been trifling, began to rise rapidly. This was so far good. But the Gov- ernment soon bethought themselves that the new-comers (most of whom were British), when they had become citizens and began to cast their votes, would constitute a large section, and be- fore long a majority, of the voters. They would then be able, by electing persons like themselves to the Assembly and to the executive offices of the State, to revolutionize it completely, swamp- ing the old citizens, getting rid of the old-fash- ioned Boer ways— in fact, making the country an English instead of a Dutch country. From this prospect they recoiled in horror. It was not in order to be overrun at last by a crowd of 30 A MATABKLli NATIVE CAUSES OF THE WAE English, Australian, and American miners, em- ployed by capitalists, mostly of Jewish extrac- tion, that they or their fathers had trekked out of Cape Colony, fought and vanquished the hosts of heathen Kafirs, founded their own Eepublic, thrown off by their valor the yoke which Eng- land had for four years laid upon them. To keep out the immigrants and forbid the work- ing of the mines might be diflBcult, and this course would, moreover, sacrifice the growing revenue which was raised from the mines. They, therefore, resolved to keep the immi- grants, but to exclude them, at least for a good while to come, from exerting political power. This was done by lengthening the period of residence and other formalities prescribed for the acquisition of burgher rights and therewith of the electoral franchise. The method has been much denounced, and it has turned out badly, as the sequel has showed. But it was an obvious form of self-preservation. Those who have made a country, and are ruling a country ; those who like the country as it is and object to new- fangled ways, cannot be expected to open their arms to new-comers and invest them with the fulness of their own political privileges. The immigrants complained bitterly that every- 31 BRITON AND BOER where else in South Africa a settler from Eu- rope could get a vote after two or three years' residence ; why, then, not in the Transvaal also? The answer was that the Transvaal was the only part of South Africa where the new settlers were becoming more numerous than the old citizens ; where, therefore, admission after three years' residence might mean a complete transfer of po- litical control to a wholly new set of people, dif- fering in thoughts, habits, tastes, and language from the folk that had theretofore possessed the land. "What are the "natural rights" of these two sets of persons, and by what kind of com- promise the justice of this very exceptional case ought to be met, is a question which I leave to the reader. But unluckily for both the old Boers and the immigrant settlers (or Uitlanders, as they are commonly called), the matter was complicated by another fact. The Boers were an ignorant and rude people. They were skilful hunters, strenuous fighters, pious Calvinists, and endowed with many excellent qualities. But they were quite without the sort of knowledge and skill that are needed to administer a modern State, and especially one which, having become the field of a great industry, was swiftly growing in CAUSES OF THE WAE wealth and population. Accordingly, the ad- ministration which they provided for the new- settlers was very inefficient and very costly. Moreover, the virtues which had adorned their rustic simplicity yielded, in too many in- stances, to the temptations presented by the con- trol of a large revenue, and by the power of granting valuable concessions. Thus the Ad- ministration became not only inefficient, but to some extent corrupt. As measles, which in civ- ilized countries is only a passing childish ail- ment, has sometimes proved, when introduced among savage peoples, a deadly plague, so the bacillus of pecuniary corruption, which the great States of "Western Europe have pretty well ex- tirpated from their civil services and legislatures, sometimes appears as a virulent malady in com- munities where there had previously been too lit- tle wealth for the formation of a nidus fit for its growth. Thus it came to pass that, while the ma- terial prosperity of the Transvaal increased, its Government, so far from improving, became worse than before. It did not supply what a progressive industrial community needs; and it was certainly not altogether pure, though how far the impurity went is a matter of so much controversy that I will not venture to express a positive opinion. c 33 BRITON AND BOER Under sucli conditions, it was not strange that the new settlers should have soon become dis- contented. They complained that they were given neither good administration, nor any con- stitutional means of securing it. Being far rich- er than the old burghers, they paid nearly all the taxation, but had no voice in the disposal of the revenue. If the Administration had been (reformed, their exclusion from the franchise I would have sunk to a mere theoretic grievance. llf the franchise had been granted to them, it would have been their own fault had the Admin- istration remained unreformed. But, as things were, thej'- felt aggrieved, and found no means of removing their grievances. Constitutional ag- itation was tried, but as they had few sympa- thizers in the Legislature, which consisted chiefly of old-fashioned Boers from the country, nothing came of it. Then a few of the leaders formed, in the end of 1894 or beginning of 1895, a secret plan for rising in arms against the Government. The objection to this plan was that while the Boers were all expert riflemen, few of ■ the Uit- landers had arms, and still fewer were trained to use them. However, they persevered. Some of the capital istSs came into the plan, for though capitalists do not as a rule favor revolutions, this 34 CAUSES OF THE WAR particular revolution would have benefited the mine-owners, by enabling them to work the gold- reefs more cheaply and develop them more rapidly. Accordingly, they helped with money, and large stores of arms were secretly conveyed into Johannesburg, the city which had suddenly sprung into greatness in the centre of the mining district. Then, too, Mr. Cecil Khodes, at that time Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and man- aging director of the British South Africa Com- pany, came into the plan, and brought into it Dr. Jameson, administrator of the territories of that company, and able to direct the movements of the body of mounted police which the company maintained. In a book called Impressions of South Africa, which was published two years ago, I have, be- sides sketching, the history of the Boers, de- scribed pretty fully the circumstances which led to the formation of this plan, the motives which induced different sections of the inhabitants to favor it, and the causes which led to its failure. The story cannot be told here, for it is very much involved, and hardly admits of being told briefly ; nor is the whole of it yet known to the public, although two Parliamentary Committees, one of the Cape Assembly, one of the British 35 BRITON AND BOER House of Commons, have investigated the mat- ter at great length. The point best worth not- ing is this, that the conspiracy might possibly have succeeded if it had been allowed to remain a pure TJitlander conspiracy at Johannesburg. But there was superadded to it an arrangement that Dr. Jameson, with a force of the company's armed and mounted police, should come in to help the insurrection which was to break out at Johannesburg. The conspirators, finding some difficulties crop up, postponed the day of the ris- ing. But Dr. Jameson, becoming impatient of delay, started on the day originally fixed (in the end of December, 1895), before they were ready to meet or receive him. He was stopped by a rapidly summoned Boer force, and obliged, with all his men, to capitulate. The Johannesburg leaders, who had raised their followers so far as they could at short notice, on hearing of Dr. Jameson's departure, were then also obliged to lay down their arms, and the whole movement collapsed. Its consequences, however, remained, and most pernicious have they been. All the subsequent troubles of South Africa, including the outbreak of the present war, are due to this Johannes- burg rising, or rather to the still more unhappy 36 CAUSES OF THE WAR expedition of the company's police, which is now commonly called the Jameson Eaid. The dis- like which the bulk of the Transvaal Boers felt for the British Government, already sufficient- ly pronounced, was intensified. The reforming party among the Boers, not very large, but in- cluding men of talent and influence, was dis- couraged, and has been able to effect little or nothing ever since. The power of the Presi- dent, Mr. Paul Kriiger, whose strength of char- acter, long official experience, and intimate knowledge of the character of his countrymen, have given him an unequalled influence over them, has been further increased ; and it has un- fortunately been used to arrest all changes. Lit- tle or nothing had been done down to June last, either to improve the Administration or to con- ciliate the Uitlander population by making it easier for them to acquire citizenship, and there- with a permanent interest in the country and a share of political power. The policy of repres- sion had been pursued, not only by restricting the right of public meeting and of writing in the press, but also by the construction of a fort to dominate J.ohannesburg and by the continued importation of large quantities of munitions of war. These latter precautions were perfectly 37 BRITON AND BOER natural. Any Government which had escaped destruction so narrowly as did that of President Kriiger in December, 1896, would have done the like. The mistake was, that measures of reform were not made to go hand in hand with meas- ures of defence. If the Uitlanders were not to be admitted to citizenship, they ought at least to have been given a better administration. By this time they vastly outnumbered the Boers. Nobody knows the exact figures, but it is con- jectured that the total number of Transvaal burghers and their families does not exceed eighty thousand, while that of the recent immi- grants may reach one hundred and sixty thou- sand. Most of the former are scattered thinly over the country ; nearly all of the latter are gathered in the mining district round Johannes- burg, which is practically an English, or rather Anglo-Jewish, city, with a sprinkling of Aus- tralians, Americans, Germans, and Frenchmen. (Among the Americans there have been some eminent mining engineers, who have brought their Californian experience and skill to bear upon the working of the auriferous strata.) The efifect of the Jameson expedition was no less mischievous in other parts of South Africa than in the Transvaal. It roused Dutch feeling, 38 CAUSES OF THE WAR which as a political force was almost dying out in the British Colonies, into more than its old vehemence. The Orange Free State, which had up till December, 1895, condemned the exclusive policy pursued by President Kriiger's Govern- ment, now rallied to its sister Republic, not only from a sense of kinship, but because it believed its own highly prized independence to be in danger. It concluded a treaty with the Trans- vaal by which each of the two Republics bound itself to defend the other if unjustly attacked. In Cape Colony the two political parties, which had latterly been divided by lines of economic - interest rather than by racial feeling — for the one was the party of the agriculturists and stock- farmers, the other of the commercial townsfolk — became identified with the two races, and pas- sion ran high between them. The Dutch accused the English of desiring to acquire the gold-fields and blot out the two Republics. The English accused the Dutch of desiring to make all South Africa Dutch, and shake off the British connec- tion ; nor were they appeased by the fact that a Dutch majority in the Legislative Assembly, led ^ by a Prime Minister who, though not himself of Dutch stock, had the support of the Dutch party, had in 1898 unanimously voted an annual sum of 39 BKlTON AND BOER £30,000 sterling ($150,000), as the voluntary con- tribution of the Colony to the naval defence of the British Empire. To an Englishman who examines the facts with calmness, six thousand miles away from the heated atmosphere of South Africa, both accusa- tions appear equally groundless. There were, no doubt, some among the English who did desire to seize the richest gold-field in the world, and were working hard to bring on war with that aim. There were other Englishmen, far more numerous, who longed to humble what they thought the arrogance of the Dutch, and, as they expressed it, " to wipe out Majuba Hill," for the English in South Africa, strange as it maj seem, have never forgotten or forgiven that petty re- verse. But the great mass of Colonial English were wholly unaffected by the former, and only slightly affected by the latter motive. What they did wish was to bring down the pride of the Dutch, to vindicate the supremacy of England in South Africa, which they thought endangered, as well as to make the Uitlanders predominant in the Transvaal. With the Free State they had no quarrel. The Dutch, on the other hand, were proud of the existence of their two Kepublics, hoped to see them independent and prosperous, 40 CAUSES OF THE WAR and desired to maintaiu among themselves what they call their Afrikander sentiment. But it was only a few of the more violent and fanciful spirits who dreamt of ousting England and turn- ing all South Africa into one Dutch common- wealth. There is not, so far as one can ascertain from any evidence yet produced, the slightest foundation for the allegation, so assiduously propagated in England, that there was any gen- eral conspiracy of the Colonial Dutch, or that there existed the smallest risk of any unprovoked attack by them, or by the Free State, or by the Transvaal itself, upon the power of England. This was the state of facts in South Africa, these the feelings of the various sections of its population, when the controversy which has led to the present war became acute. I must not at- tempt to describe the negotiations which went on during the summer and autumn of this year, or to apportion the blame for their failure be- tween the British Government and that of the Transvaal. To do so would lead me into a criti- cism of the conduct of the Colonial Office and the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury ; and I do not think it desirable that one who is actively engaged in political life in his own country should address to the public of another country strictures on his 41 BRITON AND BOER political opponents, even when lie believes that party feeling has nothing to do with those strict- ures. I will therefore wind up this sketch by a few words on the legal position of the two parties to the war, a matter which is in the main outside the sphere of party controversy. Under the Convention of 1884, which fixed the relations of Britain and the South African Re- public, the latter had the most complete control of its internal affairs, and Britain possessed no more general right of interfering with those affairs than with the affairs of Belgium or Portugal. The suzerainty which has been claimed for her, if it existed (for its existence under the Convention of 1884 is disputed), re- lated solely to the power of making treaties, , and did not touch any domestic matter. When, therefore, the British Government was appealed to by the Uitlander British subjects who lived in the Transvaal to secure a redress of their griev- ances, her title to address the Boer Government and demand redress depended, primarily upon the terms of the Convention of 1884, any viola- tion of which she was entitled to complain of; and, secondly, upon the general right which every State possesses to interpose on behalf of its subjects when they are being ill-treated in 43 CAUSES OF THE WAR any foreign country. Under these circumstances it might have been expected that the questions which would have arisen before Britain went to war for the sake of her subjects living in the Transvaal, would be these two : First : Were the grievances of her subjects so serious, was the behavior of the Transvaal Gov- ernment when asked for redress so defiant or so evasive as to contribute a proper casus helli? Secondly: Assuming that the grievances (which were real, but in mly opinion not so serious as has been frequently alleged) and the behavior of the Transvaal did amount to a casus ielli, was it wise for Britain, considering the state of feeling in South Africa, and the mischief to be expected from causing permanent disaffec- tion among the Dutch population ; and consider- ing also the high probability that the existing system of government in the Transvaal would soon, through the action of natural causes, break down and disappear — was it wise for her to declare and prosecute war at this particular mo- ment? Strange to say, neither of these two questions ever in fact arose. That which caused the war was the discussion of another matter altogether, which was admittedly not a grievance for the 43 BEITON AND BOEIi redress of which Britain had any right to inter- fere, and which, therefore, could not possibly amount to a canus helli. This matter was the length of time which should elapse before the new immigrants into the Transvaal could be ad- mitted to citizenship, a matter which was en- tirely within the discretion of the Transvaal Legislature. The Boers made concessions, but the British Government held these concessions insufficient. In the course of this discussion the British Ministry used language which led the Transvaal people to believe that they were deter- mined to force the Boer Government to comply with their demands, and they followed up their de- spatches by sending troops from England to South Africa. They justified this action by pointing out (and the event has shown this to have been the fact) that the British garrison in South Africa was insufficient to defend the Colonies. But the Boers very naturally felt that if they re- mained quiet till the British forces had been raised to a strength they could not hope to resist, they would lose the only military advantage they possessed. Accordingly, when they knew that the Keserves were being called out in England, and that an army corps was to be sent to South Africa, they declared war, having been for some 44= CAUSES OF THE WAR time previously convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the British Government had resolved to coerce them. They were in a sore strait, and they took the course which must have been ex- pected from them, and indeed the only course which brave men, who were not going to make any further concessions, could have taken. And thus the question whether the grievances amount- ed to a casus ielli never came up at all. The only casus lelli has been the conduct of the two contending parties during a negotiation, the pro- fessed subject of which was in no sense a casus helli. Some have explained this by saying that a conflict was in fact inevitable, and that the conduct of the two parties is really, therefore, a minor affair. Others hold that a conflict might have been and ought to have been avoided, and that a more skilful and tactful diplomacy would either have averted it, or have at any rate so man- aged things that, when it came, it came after showing that a just cause for war, according to the usage of civilized States, did in fact exist. No one, however, denies that the war in which Eng- land will, of course, prevail, is a terrible calamity for South Africa, and will permanently embitter the relations of Dutch and English there. To some of us it appears a calamity for England N 45 BRITON AND BOER also, since it is likely to alienate, perhaps for generations to come, the bulk of the white popu- lation in one of her most important self-goverriT ing colonies. It may, indeed, possibly mean for her the ultimate loss of South Africa. James Bbyce. ENGLAND AND THE TEANSVAAL The failure of the Bloemfontein Conference is a disappointment that may prove a tragedy. President Kriiger and Sir Alfred Milner, the Governor of Cape Colony, met to discuss the Transvaal question with every external circum- stance pointing to a happy issue. The time, the men, and the place were all well chosen. In the neat and compact capital of the Orange Free State, the Boer President was among friends of his own race, and the British representative was not among enemies. Both commissioners had behind them the free trust of their respective governments. The President, with the help of his more liberal followers, could have forced upon the conservatives of the Old Boer party any agreement he had cared to sign. It was a good omen, after all these years of obstinate warfare, that he had consented to a meeting at all. It was a better omen that he had declared his willingness to discuss " all, all, all, except the independence of the Transvaal." Sir Alfred 47 BRITON AND BOER Milner, as Lord Oromer's right-hand man during the most arduous years of the reconstruction of Egypt, proved himself second only to his chief in farsightedness, tact, determination, and strenu- ous common-sense ; and nothing he has done or said in South Africa has caused the Boers to mistrust him. The portents of international politics were even more propitious. One may doubt whether there has been since Majuba Hill, whether there is ever likely to be again, any such favorable chance for a peaceful settlement of the great issue of South Africa. To Mr. Chamberlain, the success of the conference meant the restoration of personal credit in a matter that has brought him little but discomfiture. Unquestionably, before risking another rebuff, he must have convinced himself that in a friendly debate lay some hope of getting this troublesome mole-hill finally cleared away, and himself left free to make his mark on English history as the first Colonial Secretary with a policy of his own. The people of Great Britain, still somewhat humiliated by memories of the raid, were never less inclined to be over- ' bearing, oi" more anxious to reach a just and pacific solution. There was nothing in the political situation in Cape Colony but what 48 ENGLAND AND THE TEANSVAAL would quiet President Kriiger's suspiciousness and urge him to moderation. His own kins- men, the Dutch colonists, are there in* control of the Government, their racial sympathies all on his side, as against forcible interference in the domestic affairs of the Transvaal, their rough business sense counselling justice to the Uitlanders for the good of South African trade. Nothing was to be feared from the masterful empire-builder through whose " keen, unscrupu- lous course" Great Britain has lost much, even if she has gained more. At the time the con- ference met, Mr. Khodes was not even in South Africa. From Ge^rmanj..camaJio- encouragement to obduracy. The Kaiser, indeed, has long since done penance for his telegram, and given the Boers to understand that he can no longer af- ford to be their friend ; and, unless everything short of official confirmation is to be disbelieved, the Anglo- German agreement of last summer makes provision for the transfer of Delagoa Bay from Portuguese to British hands, and so cuts off from the Transvaal its last hope of reaching the sea. Even the French, who have capital invested in the Eand, have of late put aside their Anglophobia, and have been calling upon President Kriiger to set his house in order. D 49 BRITON AND BOER England and the Transvaal were thus left face to face, with the path towards a reasonable ad- justment of their differences made as smooth as possible. That the conference, with all these circumstances in its favor, should have failed, and failed without a step being gained towards harmonious compromise, is a fact that must cause the gravest apprehensions. The conference broke up over the eternal franchise difficulty, which, while it is certainly .-the crux of the whole dispute, is only one of many points' of controversy that will have to be straightened out before long. What is known as the suzerainty question is almost as important and considerably more interesting, because more abstract, and I do not apologize for going back- ward a little way into history to get its proper bearings. "When Mr. Gladstone made peace with the Boers, a few weeks after the defeat of Majuba Hill, he restored to them their former indepen- dence, subject to the suzerainty of the British Government. This suzerainty was very clearly defined by the second article of the Pretoria Convention of 1881. It consisted of a right to appoint a British Kesident, to whom was given a vetoing power over the policy of the Eepublio 50 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL towards the Kafirs — a very necessary provision, for ttie Boers make Deuteronomy their text-book on all native questions ; a right to move troops through the State in times of war ; and a right to control and conduct all diplomatic intercourse witli foreign Powers. Some such restrictions ■were necessary to make the surrender palatable to the British public, but neither Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary, nor his successors, cared much about enforcing them. The Transvaal was held to be a damnosa hereditas before the dis- covery of gold, and the suzerainty clauses were thrown in to save England's face. They did not work well. The Boers chafed under an arrangement that kept them from dealing vrith the natives in their own way, and dis- putes became so frequent that Mr. Glad- stone proposed a revision of the Convention in 1883. The conference that led to the signing of the London Convention of the following year at- tracted very little notice. The British public was tired of the whole business. The spirit of Imperialism had not yet descended on the Co- lonial Ofl9.ce. The Boers badgered and badgered and got almost everything they wanted. All but complete independence was granted them in 51 BRITON AND BOER domestic affairs. The title of Eesident was dropped to gratify their susceptibilities, and the British representative at Pretoria became a sort of consul-general on a reduced salary. The word "suzerainty" was omitted as offensive to Boer sentiment. The Convention regulated the west- ern boundaries of the Eepublic and pledged the Boers not to seek an extension of them. It laid an interdict on slavery or any " apprenticeship partaking of slavery." In one clause only did the British Government assert its external au- thority. "The South African Eepublic," says this clause, " will conclude no treaty or engage- ment with any State or ISTation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Eepublic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen." This clause again was intended chiefly for home consumption. It was often disregarded by the Boers, and it was not thought important enough to be pressed home by the Colonial Office. The Transvaal in 1884 was a large but barren tract of ground, barely sufficient for the support of one hundred thousand stock-raisers. It had but a small connection with British interests. The one clear thing about it to the mind of Downing Street was that it had given England 53 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL more trouble than it was worth, and that the best thing to do was to leave it alone. But the finding of gold caused British oificial- ' dom to change its attitude with speed. Thou- sands of Englishmen, Australians, and Americans swarmed into Johannesburg, and in a few years converted a bankrupt and disorganized State into the second gold-producing country of the world. The Transvaal and its bewildered burghers woke up to find themselves the centre of European intrigue, and the London Convention was dis- covered to be a document of capital importance. It is, I think, clear by tne terms of the clauses I have quoted that the South African Kepublic is not an independent State. Its freedom of action is circumscribed both within and without its own territory. Its boundaries, at any rate on one side, are not only fi:xed, but fixed im- mutably. In that direction it is forbidden to expand. It cannot, under the clauses of the Con- vention, introduce slavery, either openly or in any of the veiled forms under which the institu- tion is still countenanced. Especially — and this is the hinge of the whole Convention — is its lib- erty of negotiation and diplomacy placed under restrictions. Now, no State can be properly called independent which is prohibited from 53 BRITON AND BOER managing its foreign affairs in its own way. The Transvaal is free to arrange treaties with the Orange Free State. With all other coun- tries, as with all native tribes, to the east or west, its relations are ultimately controlled by the British Government. The exact word to describe the position in which the two countries stand to one another is hard to find. " Suze- rainty " is a doubtful term of loose application in popula r parlance ^and of uncertain standing in international law. The word has simply been adopted as a convenient one to define the pecul- iar relations of England and the Transvaal. To employ it adds nothing to the real efficacy of the Convention of 1884; to drop it does not diminish British authority in any way. Call that author- ity by what name one will — suzerainty, control, or the right to veto — the fact remains that the Transvaal, in some most important branches of its national affairs, is finally subject to Great Britain. The dispute between the two Governments over this point is, therefore, at bottom largely verbal and sentimental. Whether the amount, of control possessed by Great Britain over the Transvaal constitutes a suzerainty cannot be settled until we know exactly what a suzerainty • 54 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL is ; and that nobody can tell us. The really im- portant thing to know is that so long as Presi- dent Kriiger accepts and acts up to the terms of the London Convention, he is bound to the clause which carries with it the veto of the Brit- ish Government on all the diplomatic negotia- tions of the Transvaal, except those connected with the Orange Free State. It is one thing to believe in the reality of British control, and quite another to approve its necessity. The first is a question of fact, the second of policy and opinion. Great Britain stands committed to the maintenance of the Lon- don Convention by the supposed necessities of her position as the paramount Power in South Africa ; and, after the coquetting_betwe,en_Prg§:^- ident Kriiger and the German_Em.pfin)JLlliat fol- lowed the^ameson^ raid_, the fear of Joreign in- trigue is too strong for any British ministry at present to allow the Transvaal the same latitude in foreign, as it enjoys in internal, affairs. The fear may seem unreasoning; to many it does seem unreasoning; but, though less potent to- day than it was three years ago, it is still vivid enough to make the preservation of the Conven- tion appear a sacred duty and any revision of it a sacrifice of imperial rights. There is room for 55 BRITON AND BOER a good deal of regret that this should be so. The London Convention has attained a quite un- deserved and factitious sanctity in the eyes of English people. From seeing their Government constantly at work defending it against real or alleged breaches, they have come to think it something very well worth defending. It is spoken and written of as a sort of Magna Charta of British dominion in South Africa, without which Cape Colony, Natal, and the whole of Ehodesia would fall a ready prey to some de- signing Power in alliance with the Transvaal. The question of its real value and of the possibil- ity of revising its hasty clauses has never been squarely considered. Yet there is not much, either in its inception or after -history, to com- mand such perfervid adoration. It was hurried- ly and carelessly drafted to bring to its quickest end an issue of which every one was wearied ; it was so little thought of that the Boers might claim it has lapsed through frequent unrebuked violations; above all, it dealt with a state of affairs that has altered in every particular since its promulgation. Wherein does its pecul- iar virtue consist ? Most Englishmen would answer, truly enough, in the clause that regu- lates the external afPairs of the Transvaal. But 56 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL what, after all, is that clause worth? It has irritated and humiliated the Boers without bene- fiting England in a single essential. It has forced the British Government to an undignified and unproductive watchfulness over the doings of Transvaal emissaries abroad. If it was de- signed as an effective check on foreign diplo- macy, then the intimate approaches of Germany- proved its worthlessness to demonstration. It is, of course, impossible to believe that any Power that thought it worth while to negotiate a se- cret treaty with the Transvaal would be deterred from doing so by the London Convention ; and equally impossible to imagine that, if any such treaty were to be negotiated, the Transvaal would submit it to the approval of the British Government. The obstacle that keeps foreign nations from intriguing with the Transvaal for the overthrow of British ascendency in South Africa is not a fifteen-year-old piece of parch- ment, but the strength and position of the Brit- ish Empire ; and that strength and position would remain what they are and be a deterrent of undiminished persuasiveness were the Con- vention cancelled to-morrow. Either there is the possibility of foreign interference in South Africa, or there is not. If there is, the London 57 BRITON AND BOER Convention is no safeguard against it. If there is not, the London Convention, or at any rate its most prominent clause, is superfluous. As a matter of fact, we know now that neither Germany nor any other Power had serious thoughts of taking upon itself the tremendous responsibility of an attempt to oust Great Brit- ain from South Africa. The true danger to the British position comes from quite another source, from the continued want of harmony and con- fidence between the English and the Dutch, due to the present turbulent condition of the Trans- vaal. A civil, not a foreign, war is the menace to be dreaded. It is in the power of the Boers to end the uncertainty that paralyzes commerce and provokes racial antagonism and unrest from Cape Town to the Zambesi b_y reforming their internal administration; and, as an inducement to set about the task, a guarantee of independence would be far more pursuasive than the pointed summonses of the Colonial Secretary. It would seem to be at once an act of magnanimity and good policy if the British Government were to renounce its claims to a suzerainty and, if need be, abolish or revise the Convention, in return for the grant of those concessions to the Uitlanders which can alone make the Transvaal a contented and friend- 58 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ly State. The Boers are keenly anxious to have their status as a nation placed beyond question. It galls them, as it would gall any high-spirited people, to find themselves, after all these years of struggle, still in a position of semi-dependence. From the British and imperial point of view, there is nothing in the London Convention to compare with the vital obligation of securing justice for the Uitlanders, and inducing the two races to live side by side in peace. Its abolition would involve the surrender of no right of guar- dianship over British subjects in the Transvaal that the ordinary law of nations does not already secure to the British Government; and the with- drawal of the suzerainty claims, which are an in- cessant source of bickerings between the two peoples, and bring no real profit to Great Britain, would do more than anything else to reconcile the Boers to an adequate measure of reform. On the bare terms of the London Convention, as a matter of technical legal right, it is more than doubtful whether Mr. Chamberlain is strictly justified in protesting against any of the features of the President's domestic policy. Yet no one can doubt that, had the Convention been non-ex- istent, the protests would have flowed in just the same, and possibly with greater force and bold- 59 BRITON AND BOER ness. The Convention, at best, throws but a dubious legality upon a course of action already founded on broad principles of duty and justice. It really hampers, rather than aids, British min- isters in their endeavor to transform President Kriiger's fascinating medievalism into something approaching a modern system of government. ^No sooner ai^e the Uitlanders shackled with fresh fetters than a brilliant and quite interminable debate springs up between the law officers of the Crown and the legal luminaries employed by Mr. Kriiger, as to whether the new imposition is or is not a breach of the Convention ; the fetters, mean- while, remaining where they were placed. The net workings of the Convention have all along favored the Fabian tactics which the President knows so well how to pursue; and, but' for one point, he would probably be quite well satisfied to let it remain as it is. That point is the limi- tations contained in the Convention on the full sovereignty of the Transvaal ; and to sweep those restrictions away and place the Eepublic on an equality with Great Britain, there are probably few concessions which he would not be glad to make. There seems at all events to be here an opportunity for an honorable and satisfactory bargain. An independent Transvaal, with the 60 ENGLAND AND THE TKANSVAAL Uitlanders admitted to the franchise, would be no more a menace to the British position in South Africa than is the Orange Free State. Sir Alfred Milner, of course, went to Bloem- fonteia with no such heroic proposals in his portfolio. In the present state of England's at- tachment to the Convention, one has to admit that no such proposals are possible. National dignity, pride of possession, and fears of foreign interference are too keenly aroused to brook the seeming humiliation of retreat, even from a false and unprofitable position. Too much zeal has been spent on the defence of the Convention to make its surrender seem anything but a gross betrayal. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the conference foundered in part on this very rock. The President proposed that certain of the matters in dispute should be submitted to arbitration. Sir Alfred Milner was obliged to answer, in effect, that on any matter of real im- portance there could be no arbitration between a suzerain State and its dependency. Such pis- tolling diplomacy does not make for a peaceful issue. The concessions that will have to be granted to end the veiled warfare that threat- ens to disrupt the Transvaal and bathe the whole of South Africa in blood cannot be ex- 61 BRITON AND BOER pected to come from one side only. It is the President's misfortune to have put himself morally in the wrong on almost every point of domestic policy. That does not relieve Great Britain from the obligation of considering whether it would not be an act of mingled wisdom and generosity to make the task of ex- trication as easy as possible. The renunciation of suzerainty is the only adequate reward in sight that will atone for the comprehensive sur- renders required for the reorganization of the Kepublic's internal economy. It would remove, in great part, the fearfulness of the Boers lest, in yielding to the demands of the Uitlanders, they imperil their own independence; and it would show, as nothing else can, the sincerity and honesty of purpose which animate the English people in their dealings with the Trans- vaal. In the Transvaal itself the situation is almost too fantastic for serious presentation. The Uitlanders, seven-eighths of whom belong to the English-speaking race, outnumber the Boers by more than two to one. They own half the land and contribute nineteen-twentieths of the public revenue. It is through their brains and energy that the Transvaal has been raised from bank- 63 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ruptcy. into its present prosperity. They are citizens of the most progressive countries in the ■world, accustomed to self-government and intol- erant of any encroachments upon their liberty. The Boers have altered little, if at all, since the days when the Dutch East India Company planted them at the Cape, except to add some of the vices of the nineteenth century to the igno- rance of the seventeenth. " In some of the ele- ments of modern civilization," says Mr. Bryce, a witness of inspired impartiality, " they have gone back rather than forward." A half-nomad peo- ple, of sullen and unsocial temperament, severed from Europe and its influences for over two hun- dred years, living rudely and contentedly on the vast, arid holdings where their sheep and cattle are pastured — each man as far as may be from his neighbor — disdaining trade, disdaining agri- culture, ignorant to an almost inconceivable de- gree of ignorance, without music, literature, or art, superstitious, grimly religious, they are in all things, except courage and stubbornness of char- acter, the very antithesis of the strangers settled among them. The patriarch Abraham in Wall Street would hardly make an odder contrast. The Uitlanders have an even greater share of the intelligence of the country than of its wealth. 63 BRITON AND BOER Nevertheless, they are kept in complete subjec- tion to their bucolic task-masters. They are not allowed to vote, except for a legislative chamber that cannot legislate ; they have no voice in the spending of the money taken from their pockets ; they see millions of dollars lavished on the secret service and fortifications at Pretoria, while Jo- hannesburg remains a pest-hole ; their language is proscribed in the schools and law-courts of a city where not one man in a thousand speaks anything but English ; a clipped and barren dia- lect, as much beneath pure Dutch as Czechish is beneath Russian, is enthroned in its place ; and their children are forced to learn geography and history from Dutch text-books after passing the elementary standards — the President, with a directness that would have come home to the late Mr. Dingley, seeking to popularize his na- tive taal by a tax of one hundred per cent, upon foreign books. It is grotesque to think of Englishmen and Americans being treated in this fashion, and it is quite beyond imagination that they should rest passive in such a house of bondage. The restric- tions on franchise and education fall hardest, not on the capitalists and large mine -owners, who are mostly absentees, but on the lawyers, doctors, 64 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL business men, and the working-classes who have settled in the Kand district less as a speculation than to make it their home and earn a livins: and bring up their families. The recent petition from the Uitlanders to the Queen was entirely the work of professional men and laborers. Neither Mr. Khodes, nor the Chartered Com- pany, nor the capitalists had anything to do with it. It was a genuine and thoughtful pro- test from the average working immigrant against the intolerable oppression to which he is sub- jected. Even raids and poets -laureate cannot weaken the solidity of these grievances. " Dig- gers," ventured an Australian Premier, " have no country." That may hold good for Cool- gardie and the Klondike, but not for the Trans- vaal ; for gold-mining in the Rand is less hazard- ous and uncertain than elsewhere. A payable reef once found, there is little anxiety of its suddenly petering out. Its owner can reckon with some confidence that deep borings will show the same percentage of gold to rock as appears near the surface ; and this unique assurance makes it pos- sible to speculate approximately on the duration of the mines. The opinion of the most competent specialists seems to be that the district, as a whole, will not be exhausted for fifty, and possibly not E ' 65 BRITON AND BOER for seventy or eighty, years to come. This puts the Eand on quite a different footing from the gold -fields of Australia and California. The foreigners who have rushed to Johannesburg are, for the most part, genuine settlers, men who look forward to spending their whole lives either in the employment of the mine-owners, or in the ordinary trades and professions that gather round the centre of a great industry. They are not of the order of speculative transients, whose interest in their new resting-place ceases with the dis- covery and exhaustion or sale of a " lucky strike." In other words, they have a country; and that country is the Transvaal ; and as men who have taken up a permanent residence in it, they de- mand, not unreasonably, that it should be made politically and socially endurable. Before the discovery of gold any settler in the Transvaal could secure the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. The Boers wel- comed the money that flowed into the exchequer when the value of the Hand district became known; but they took instant alarm at the stream of capitalists, engineers, traders, and min- ers — all speaking the tongue of their hereditary foes — that threatened to overwhelm their inde- pendence. To preserve the political status quo, G6 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL they raised the probationary term of quahfication for the franchise, first to five years and then to fifteen. In 1890, as a sop to the inevitable clamor for representation, they created a Second Volks- raad for the members of which aliens might vote after taking the oath and residing for two years in the country. As the Second Volksraad is not allowed to discuss matters of taxation and as all its decrees are subject to the approval of the First Volksraad — which can legislate without re- quiring the assent of the inferior chamber — the concession is not worth much. At present no immigrant can vote for the First Yolksraad un- less he has passed the age of forty and lived for at least fourteen years in the country, after taking the oath and being placed on the government lists, lists on which, according to Mr. Bryce, the local authorities are nowise careful to place him. Even the niggardly reforms proposed by the President at the end of last May were negatived by his burghers. Practically, the Uitlanders are dis- franchised. In every other State, Dutch and English stand on the same equality. In the Transvaal, the English are treated like Kafirs. They have not only taxation without representa- tion, but taxation without police, without sanita- tion, without schools, without justice, without 67 BRITON AND BOER freedom of the press, without liberty of associa- tion. Johannesburg is ill-paved, ill-lighted, and abominably deficient in drainage and water-sup- ply, because it is English. The courts of law have been prostituted to the whims of the Legis- lature, in defiance of the written Constitution of the Republic, that thereby the English might be deprived of their one legal remedy against injus- tice. Education, except in the Boer taal, is for- bidden above the third standard, in the hope of forcing the English to unlearn their native tongue. And these indignities are put upon the men who are the source of all the country's prosperity, and its saviors from internal dissolution. There can be little doubt that, had President Kriiger yielded to the demand for the franchise when it was first made, he would have to-day, in the gratitude and contentment of his new citizens, the best guarantee for the independence of the Republic. The suspiciousness and conservatism of the Boer character dictated a policy of refusal and delay and unfulfilled promises, from the ef- fects of which the State has been saved more by the mistakes of its opponents than by the Presi- dent's own shrewdness. If the existence of the Republic seems to be imperilled to-day. Presi- dent Kriiger has chiefly himself to thank for it. 68 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL His resistance to a just demand has driven the Uitlanders, by a process common to most politi- cal agitations, to put forward other and less rea- sonable claims. A section of the excluded set- tlers has started the theory, based on Great Britain's suzerainty, that the taking of the oath of allegiance to the Transvaal does not involve the surrender of British citizenship. If the con- tention were sound. President Kriiger would be well within his rights in refusing the franchise to all such hybrid citizens. But the argument will not hold water for a moment. Mr. Cham- berlain and all the best legal authorities in Eng- land have condemned and disowned it. A Brit- ish subject on swearing the oath of allegiance to the South African Eepublic, or any other State, forfeits at once all his rights of British citizen- ship, and becomes, suzerainty or no suzerainty, a foreigner. It is a pity a contrary plea was ever urged. It has only served to misrepresent the intentions of the ayerage Uitlanders. As a body, the Uitlanders demand, firstly, such an altera- > tion of the present franchise law as will give them at least an effective minority representa- tion; secondly, permission to educate their chil- dren in their own tongue ; and thirdly, a rear- rangement of the tariff. The present tariff 69 BRITON AND BOEE mulcts the whole of Johannesburg for the benefit of a few Boer farmers, and forces the price of the necessities of life to an inordinate figure. Between the omnipotence of a few large capital- ists and the fiscal exactions of the Boers, which press as hardly upon JSTatal, the Orange Free State, and Cape Colony as upon Johannesburg, the middle and working classes in the Band dis- trict, in spite of the high rate of wages, are hard put to it to make both ends meet. The capitalists have grievances of their own, which their enormous influence in a country of poor men has managed to keep well to the front. The nature and continuance of these grievances show to what lengths the distrust felt by the Boers towards the British will carry them, even to the detriment of the national exchequer. The Government of the Transvaal has made it its policy to hamper in every way the development of the mines from which the public treasury is filled. A French expert has calculated that bet- ter legislation and administration would decrease the cost of production by about thirty per cent. Heavy duties are levied on machinery and chem- icals ; the tariff more than doubles the price of maize, which is the chief food of the native work- men ; and the liquor laws, by making it easy for 70 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL Kafirs to get drunk, reduce, the supply of regular labor, and greatly increase the number of acci- dents. But the loudest complaints are directed against the dynamite and railroad monopolies, from the first of which the State derives not a penny in compensation, and from the second a mere fraction of the sum that goes into the pockets of German and Dutch stockholders. The dynamite monopoly was granted to a Ger- man firm some years ago, and securely hedged around by a prohibitive duty on the imported article. The usual consequences have followed. The dynamite is poor in quality and nearly fifty per cent, higher in price than it ought to be. The Netherlands Company, which owns all the railroads in the Transvaal, joins in the merry war of extortion with a series of outrageous freight charges. Taken altogether, these impo- sitions make a difference of three or four per cent, on the dividends of the best mines, threaten the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and make it useless to persevere with those of a still lower grade; the State treasury, of course, suffer- ing in proportion.* One most unwholesome result * I am indebted for these and other facts to Mr. Bryce's Impressions of South Africa, a book the value and thor- 71 BRITON AND BOEK of this policy is that the rich mines, which can bear the exactions, buy up the poorer ones that cannot, and so tend to bring almost the entire Kand into the hands of two or three capitalists. It must not be supposed that President Kriiger has carried with him the unanimous support even of his own countrymen in making repression the key-note of his policy. There has always been among the Boers a small and liberal minor- ity that favors reforms, and sees in the per- sistent refusal of the franchise a weapon of offence placed in the hands of their enemies. This minority is still further incensed by the President's importation of Hollanders to fill the government offices, and by his reckless defiance of the Constitution in making the Supreme Court subservient to the Yolksraad. Nor have the more enlightened Dutch of Cape Colony and the Orange Free State stood unreservedly on the side of their northern kinsmen. It is true that if any attack were made on the independence of the Transvaal, their racial sympathies might bring them to the support of the Boers ; but they are hardly less desirous than the Uitlanders of see- oughness of which are hardly to be inferred from the modesty of its title. 73 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ing the unrest at Johannesburg put an end to. The heavy tariff on wool, wines, brandy, and food-stuffs all but closes the richest market in South Africa to their staple exports ; and they, like every one south of the Zambesi, feel the effects of the discontent that radiates from the Transvaal, paralyzing commercial enterprise and development, and wrapping the whole country in a cloud of uncertainties. While opposed to any forcible interference with .the domestic af- fairs of their kinsmen, they have used their in- fluence more than once, but never with much effect, in the direction of peace and moderation. The President's strength lies in the aptitude of his appeals to the spirit and prejudices of the Old Boer party. These stalwart conservatives concentrate all their hatred and contempt for foreign ways and customs upon the British, the only enemies they have known. It was to escape from British rule that their forefathers struck out from the Cape, across the wilderness, and founded a Republic of their own. The incidents of the Great Trek in the thirties, of which the President is the last survivor, are still held in patriotic memory. The British annexed the new-born State under pledges delayed so long that the Boers took up arms to enforce them 73 BRITON AND BOER m and won back their old independence. The British stopped the expansion of the Transvaal on the north by occupying Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and on the west by pouncing upon Bechuanaland. It was with British gold, and under the command of British officers, that the raid of 1895 was planned and carried out. Small wonder that the Boers saw, and still see, in the demand for the franchise only another British plot to rob them of their independence. The TJitlanders had come into the country uninvited and undesired, seeking only gold, and with full warning that it was a Boer Kepublic they were entering. By what right could these strangers of yesterday claim to be put on a level with the old burghers, who had fought and bled to keep the State free from alien control? And what Boer, looking to the past experiences of his people with the English, could guarantee that their capture of the franchise would not lead to their capture of the entire State, that the Eepub- lic would not become an English Republic with an English President, and its original founders a despised and oppressed minority ? It would have been a high achievement in diplomacy if Sir Alfred Milner could have per- suaded the President, and through him the 74 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL Boers, that their fears, if not baseless, are very unlikely to be realized. So long as the reason- able grievances of the Uitlanders are met with an obstinate non jpossumus^ the Transvaal runs the risk of perishing suddenly and in violence. The danger can only be avoided by altering the franchise laws to give Johannesburg a voice, not necessarily a preponderating voice, in the gov- ernment of the country ; and by removing the barriers upon the education of English children in English. A revision of the dj'-namite and rail- road monopolies, and a rearrangement of the tariff schedule, would give the capitalists all the privileges they care for, and at the same time add largely to the revenue of the Eepublic. It is clear that the old suspicious policy of denial and opposition has only endangered the security it was foolishly meant to safeguard. The best hope for the independence of the State must lie in the happiness and contentment of its citizens ; and that contentment can only be reached by abolishing racial discriminations and putting British and Boer on an equality before the law. Under a regime of frankness and conciliation, the two peoples will be able in time to forget their former animosities and come together in harmony and good-fellowship, as they did in the early days 75 BEITON AND BOEE of the American colonies, as they still do in Cape Colony. The newly enfranchised citizens, no more the victims of a mediaeval oligarchy, will then be as little tempted to hoist the British flag over Pretoria as the French in Canada to return to their old allegiance. The people of England have no hostility towards the Boers, and no am- bition to annex their country. They have, on the contrary, an uncomfortable feeling that, in their clashes with the Transvaal, the British rep- utation for fair-dealing, which so long as it is de- served is the backbone of the Empire, has not been altogether maintained. They admire the old President's pluck and shrewdness and wish him well in his struggle, even where they have to condemn his methods of carrying it on. They cannot find much in his policy that is defensible except its object, and yet they feel that, were they in his place, they would have done much as he has done; and it is because they are sincere in wishing the Transvaal to outlast the lifetime of its rugged champion, that they look to him even at the eleventh hour to overcome prejudice and rebuild his State on the only foundation that h^s in it the promise of permanence. Sydney Beooks. A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS A REJOINDER TO ME. SYDNEY BROOKS Oira; of the principal arguments used against the Boers is that they are not only a stationar^^, but a positively retrograde, people. Among the proofs adduced to substantiate this charge, no one has thought, " etpour cause" of mentioning the fact that they are totally ignorant of the art of using the press as a means of influencing pub- lic opinion. The English, with whom, through centuries of initiation, the press has become such a mighty instrument of combat or propaganda, have flood- ed the world with a mass of publications de- signed to ruin the Boer cause in both hemispheres. The success of this campaign has been facilitated by the fact that foreign interests in the Trans- vaal, other than English, could only hope to benefit by it simultaneously with the English interests. Thus, the United States and even France have indorsed the British view of the 77 BRITON AND BOER question. On the other hand, the Boers have done nothing to meet their adversaries on this most important field of international warfare. Trusting exclusively to diplomatic action and military resistance to foil the purpose of the English — with what success in the former line the ostentatious passage of the German Em- peror from sympathy to indifference, and the open opposition of France to their claims, have already told us ; and, in the latter line, England's determination makes it only too easy to predict — they have totally neglected to enlist public sym- pathy in foreign countries on their side ; and yet their case offers aspects which, properly pre- sented, could not fail to cause the impartial mind to pause and deny the righteousness of the Eng- lish demands. Whether this feeling would take the form of any practical advantage to the Boers, is more than questionable ; but it is always de- sirable for a nation, if only in the interest of morality and its own reputation, to establish its innocence and proclaim the guilt of the aggressor. It has struck the writer of these pages that what the Boer G-overnmeut and citizens have re- frained from doing, a foreigner, totally uncon- nected with them, might think of achieving, prompted thereto simply bj' his sympathy with 78 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS the persecuted, and by the innate impulse of man to disprove error and combat injustice. By placing myself on the broad grounds of public and international law, natural equity and his- tory, I hope to cover the whole subject of the debate now raging between the " Paramount Power " in South Africa and the Boers, and so help in popularizing the conclusion that the Transvaal is only fighting for dear life against a foe who is meditating a crime nearly as great as was the suppression of Poland. Before going deeper into the matter, I should like to express the sentiment that, in constitut- ing myself the champion of the Boers, or rather of international faith and honesty, in a United States Review, I address myself more particu- larly to that section of the American people whose inborn love of truth and justice will not allow their judgment to be obscured by sym- pathy of race, or by a certain analogy of situa- tions and methods of solution between what was the Cuban Question for the Americans, and what is the Transvaal Question for the English. The July number of the North American Re- view contains a very interesting article by Mr. Sydney Brooks, dealing with the subject we have in hand from the English point of view. BRITON AND BOER It has occurred to me that an excellent way of carrying out my object is to follow Mr. Brooks in his very complete statement of the case, es- teeming that, if I can prove the appreciations of this earnest and well-equipped upholder of the Uitlander Credo to be false, I shall have achieved a suflBcient triumph for the Boers. After deploring the breakdown of the nego- tiations between President Kriiger and Sir Al- fred Milner, in which sentiment everybody must join, Mr. Brooks prefaces his account of the pres- ent condition of affairs in the Transvaal with a short review of what is known as the Suzerainty question. From this description we gather that, as a result of a struggle reaching far back into the beginning of the century, and marked by the pas- sionate attachment of the Boers to their inde- pendence, and by a lesser tenacity of feeling on the part of the English, two conventions were concluded — one at Pretoria, the other in London, the last of which, although giving away a great deal of the authority maintained by England over the Transvaal, notwithstanding the defeat at Majuba flill, still kept the Republic in a state of subjection to English control in one or two things. Mr. Brooks goes on to say, and he proves it vigorously, that this right of partial SO A VINDICATION OP THE BOERS control — call it "suzerainty" or anything else, the term has no importance — to which England clings with great fervor, especially since the dis- covery of gold in the Transvaal, constitutes a worthless instrument in her hands, whereas it is wormwood and gall to the Boers. Finally Mr. Brooks suggests — and this suggestion should be particularly noticed, because it embodies his idea of a solution of the Transvaal question — that the total surrender of this right of control on the part of the English should and might be a means of achieving a settlement of the affairs in dis- pute, because " there are probably few conces- sions President Kriiger would not be glad to make, in order to sweep away the limitations on the full sovereignty of the Transvaal and pkce the Kepublic on an equality with Great Brit- ain." Now, here I part from Mr. Brooks. If it is an illusory advantage for England to claim su- zerainty over the Transvaal, as granted by the London Convention, it would be no less illusory a concession to the Republic to free her from the effect of mere empty words. Undoubtedly the Boers would derive a moral satisfaction from the proclamation of their complete independence; but, before making a bargain in that direction, F 81 BEITON AND BOER President Kriiger, of whose shrewdness Mr. Brooks is rightly assured, must see to it that he does not give very valuable wares in exchange for false coin. Why, if the proposition of Mr. Brooks means anything at all, it signifies that the privilege of freeing itself from an insignif- icant state of dependency is to be acquired by the Transvaal for the enfranchisement of the Uit- landers — that is to say, for a weapon with which the English will obtain a complete mastery over it. There is mockery in Mr. Brooks's advice; although he may deny this by saying, as in fact he does say in the course of his argument, that the enfranchisement of the English will not lead to any substitution of authority in the Transvaal. He may say so ; but who can help smiling at such a declaration ? However, this aspect of the case should not concern us just yet. Let us first look into the matter of enfranchisement, consid- ered as a grievance of the Uitlanders, and speak of it together with their other complaints. The whole Transvaal issue hinges on one ques- tion : Have the Boers the right to govern them- selves as they choose ; or, rather, have the English the right to interfere with the form of govern- ment, administration, and life that the Boers have chosen for themselves ? The answer to this query 82 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS involves considerations of public and international law which are of great importance. It is the practice of those Powers who have embarked on colonization to occupy territories belonging to savage or semi-savage populations, without much reference to the lawfulness of the operation. In this way, England, France, Ger- many, ill-advised Italy, and, recently, the United States have spread their dominion over immense tracts of country. Challenged to prove the jus- tifiableness of their conduct, they will begin by solemnly invoking the clauses of conventions con- cluded with local potentates ; and, when the flimsiness and utter hypocrisy of this line of de- fence are denounced — for we all know the part that intimidation and gin play in these transac- tions — they faU back on the plea that they are acting in the name of the higher interests of hu- manity; nay, some say, and they have said it in verse {vide Kipling's poem on "The "White Man's Burden "), that they are saorifioing themselves in behalf of a high notion of duty. Thus, quite a new doctrine has sprung up. Undoubtedly the substitution of enlightened European or Ameri- can rule for the primitive and too often fero- cious modes of savage a^inistration benefits mankind and the natives themselves, for whom 83 BRITON AND BOER it is not much of a gain, but still a gain, to die from gin instead of by murdering one another. Yet it would seem that there is something lame in the colonial doctrine, since, even in the most flagrant cases of incapacity on the part of bar- barous races to govern themselves, the violent or stealthy occupation of their territories causes a secret unrest to the public conscience and mind. This uneasiness does not result so much from the long-standing conviction, confirmed by the accu- sations imprudently hurled by the Powers against one another in their spiteful moods, that national, and sometimes only personal, greed is at the bot- tom of colonization, as from a deeper, though vaguer, source of misgiving. If we exert our minds to give body and shape to this feeling, we recognize in it the instinctive revolt of our nature against anything that threatens the foundations of society ; and this the colonial doctrine does, because it is the indirect negation of the principle of property, whether individual or national. That this is so, and that it contains the germ of shock- ing disturbances to the peace of the world — a germ whose growth helps to render even more farcical the meeting of the conference which re- cently sat at The Hague — is strikingly proved by what is going on in China, and, what is of more 84 A VINDICATION OF THE BOEliS special interest to us, by the events hurriedly pre- paring in the Transvaal. From being applied only to the savage popu- lations of Africa and Asia, the principle of the rights of superior races and civilizations has come, by a steep incline, to mean also that it has reference to countries like the Celestial Em- pire and the Boer Republic. Between the Zulus and the Boers, what is the difference? Only one of degree. Fine reasoning clears the way for tlie perpetration of any outrage on the liberty and sovereignty of minor or weak States. I do not mean to contradict my former state- ment, which is sincere, notwithstanding the irony it seems to contain, regarding the general profit arising from the substitution of civilization for barbarism — especially when the barbarism is of a sanguinary kind — and the justification of trans- fer of territory in such cases; but what I want to point out is that, invented in an hour of need, a principle has been laid down which is false, because it is loose in its aim and wording, and thus leaves the door open to abuse. "We are thus confronted with the angry claims of the English to govern in the Transvaal — enfranchise- ment means nothing else — followed by threats of war if they are not satisfied. BEITON AND BOER The demonstration of the inferiority of the Boers is eagerly undertaken by Mr. Brooks, who calls the situation in the Transvaal " al- most too fantastic for serious presentation." On the one hand, we are presented with a bright sketch of the qualities and achievements of the Uitlanders ; on the other, with a sombre picture of the Boers, which represents them as being in a semi-barbarous condition. Mr. Brooks says : "A half-nomad people, of sullen and unsocial tempera- ment, severed from Europe and its influences for over two hundred years, living rudely and contentedly on the vast, arid holdings where their sheep and cattle are pastured — each man as far as may be from his neighbor — disdaining trade, disdaining agriculture, ignorant to an almost incon- ceivable degi'ee of ignorance, without music, literature, or art, superstitious, grimly religious, they are in all things, except courage and stubbornness of character, the very antithesis of the strangers settled among them.'' And yet, horrihile dictu, these strangers are kept " in complete subjection to their bucolic task-masters." Thus, out of the superiority of the Uitlanders arises a demand for a share in the legislation of the Transvaal; and, because this is opposed, it becomes an additional grievance — the principal one. Now, what are th& specific grievances origi- nally formulated by the Uitlanders ? Mr. Brooks 86 TRADING FOK ZUI.U LABOK A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS speaks of bad administration, as illustrated by the absence of sufiBcient police and sanitary ar- rangements, by the prostitution of the law-courts to the whims of the Legislature, and by the adoption, of prohibitive measures against com- merce and industry, and the spread of the Eng- lish language. Even if this is a correct repre- sentation of the state of things in the Transvaal — and it may be, except in its refei'ence to jus- tice, which is susceptible of reservations — the English cannot make it a plea for the suppres- sion of Boer government, because that gov- ernment, although primitive and slowly progres- sive, as I can afford to admit it is, does not come within the^lass of institutions which are an outrage to the moral feelings of mankind and provide the only excuse a State can invoke for the suppression of another State. No English- man, I hope, will deny that the essential notions of morality, if not of civilization, pervade the Transvaal State. "What is missing in it is a set of institutions and ideas productive of well-being and luxury. The faculty of a people to dispense with these calls forth the frequent commendation of the English themselves in their political and social literature, as well as in their current talk, with the help of expressions such as " healthy 87 BIIITON AND BOEE simplicity of life," "freedom from the enervating and corrupting influences of civilization," and so forth. Besides, the unfriendliness of the soil, as well as the geographical situation of the Trans- vaal, together with other circumstances, conspired to maintain the Boer community in the state of primitiveness to which it adhered as a matter of temperament, as well as of social and religious principle. If, even after the discovery of the gold-mines, it did not adopt the Anglo-Saxon ideal of a State, it was — supposing there be any necessity to justify a belated form of exist- ence in a nation on other grounds than that of its right to shape its destinies as it pleases, pro- vided it does not tend to become a source of im- morality — it was, I say, because, by opposing the spread of what is called civilization within its confines, it hoped to discourage the influx of foreigners, in whose presence, especially in that of the English, it immediately detected the germ of a great danger to its independence. In fact, the inertia of the Boers in the matter of reforms, and their activity in creating obstacles to the de- velopment of industry and commerce and to the use of the English language, are inspired as much by this thought as by their constitutional aver- sion to what the English are free to call " the A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS blessings," and what they are free to call "the curses," of civilization. If there is one duty to which a State is more particularly pledged than to any other, it is the obligation to maintain its existence, and to prefer its own interests to those of other Powers. With this object in view, the Boers are distinctly justified in overlooking the complaints of the British ; and there are States which have gone a much greater length in their indifference to the choice of means in devising plans for the national safety, without interng,- tional law allowing of interference on the part of their neighbors. The safety and interest of the State are the supreme law of nations. The methods it suggests very often take the form of downright unscrupulousness and cruelty, which is far from being the case in the Trans- vaal ; and, if any great Power ever thinks of making representations to another on this head, which it can only do in a friendly and officious way, it is because it does not see the beam in its own eye. Need I quote Eussia and Germany in this connection ? Need I quote the United States? Nay, need I quote England herself? Who is ignorant of the painful aspects of the " language " and " religion" questions in the Em- 89 BRITON AND BOEIi pire of the Eomanoffs, and in that of the Hohen- zollerns? Are the United States free from the pangs of conscience in the matter of the Indians; and, in excluding a whole race, the Chinese, from establishing thernselves in American territory, have they not used incomparably more rigor, in order to defend the economical situation of the countr}'-, than the Boers in putting difficulties in the way of English immigration, in order to de- fend the very existence of the State? Or is Great Britain less open to criticism in this rela- tion — she, who is the essence of liberalism when her own people are concerned, but who does not scruple to practise the most despotic principles, when it suits her purpose, in dealing with con- quered and alien races ; she, who, to quote a curious instance of inconsistency on her part, thunders against the intolerable abuse of the quarantine system in other countries, and yet applies the same system herself in Malta? If the Transvaal State is against the develop- ment of commerce and industry on principle, it is within its rights to be so, as much as the United States in adopting the McKinley and Dingley tariffs. It is a matter of opinion, moral or social in the Transvaal, economic in the United States. If the English were more logical and 90 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS more careful to avoid the reputation of being overbearing with the weak, they would no more think of calling the Transvaal to account for its economic policy, than they would of challenging the United States for theirs. What Mr. Brooks calls the prostitution of the law courts to the whims of the legislature, does not apply to the ordinary dealings of justice in the Transvaal, but to the political situation, which, as we have ex- plained, must be governed by the principle of the safety of the State. Finally, if the police and sanitary arrangements are not better, Mr. Brooks himself offers us the best possible explanation: it is because the Boers, in order to defend their threatened independence, are obliged to spend nearly all their money on fortifications and the secret service. Because they cannot obtain redress, tlirough the Boers, for their imaginary grievances, the English claim a share in the government of the Transvaal, insisting that they have a right to be represented in the Raad ; and, being denied tliis privilege, they make it their principal grievance. On what is this claim founded ? Certainly not on the doctrine or practice of other States. I defy anybody to prove that any State or, for that mat- ter, any theory of international law, considers it 91 BRITON AND BOER an "obligation" for governments to enfrancliise aliens,- however great their services to the country in which they reside, however great their contribu- tions to its exchequer, however marked their su- periority over the natives. Eepresentation, where it exists, is a consequence of citizenship. " Well, then, we have a right to Transvaal citizenship, say the English. Again, why ? Some States sho w a tendency to favor the naturalization of foreign- ers, especially the American Eepublics, others, like Eussia, are opposed to it ; and some, like France, from being very liberal in this matter are now undergoing the effects of reaction. In Eng- land, a clause of the law on naturalization pro- vides the Home Secretary with the power to ulti- mately use his own discretion. But, even in those countries which are most distinctly favor- able to naturalization, the practice of adopting aliens is in no way viewed as resulting from an obligation, moral or other, but from the considera- tion of their own convenience and interest, and it is subject to their own conditions. Nay, in the matter of naturalization, the opinion of the State is so absolutely considered to be all, and the opinion of the individual nothing, that the alien is often naturalized against his will, as is the case in the South American Eepublics. In fact, the- 9J A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS question is one that is connected to such an ex- tent with the rights of sovereignty, that it can be only regulated by treaty. There is no treaty binding the Transvaal on this head ; therefore, the Boers are perfectly free to oppose the Eng- lish demands. But, says Mr. Brooks, the English are two to one in the Transvaal. If anything, that is an additional reason for refusing to nat- uralize them, and we know why. That a major- ity should be governed by a minority is an anom- aly; but it is an admitted situation in public and international law. In India, a handful of Englishmen govern 300,000,000 of natives. In the Transvaal, the case of the governing minority is strengthened by the fact that their authority does not proceed from invasion and conquest, which is a vitiating element in the position of England in India, but from a prior establishment in the land, and is exercised against the majority in the defence of a settled order of things, which has received the sanction of international law. I leave it to the appreciation of my readers to decide whether the foregoing pages do not con- tain sufficient proofs of the unrighteousness of the quarrel England has picked up with the Transvaal, and of the justifiableness, nay more, the positive meritoriousness of the attitude of the 93 BRITON AND BOER Boers, whom no generous nation can do other- wise than admire for the pluck and stubbornness with which they are defending their sovereign- ty. Might I explain here that I have purposely adopted the darkest colors of Mr. Brooks's palette to reproduce the picture of the Transvaal, in order to strengthen my argument, by showing that, even if things are quite as the English rep- resent them to be, the Uitlanders cannot make out a case for themselves. Asa matter of fact, the Boers, whether they will it or not, are submitting much more than the English will admit to the intrinsic force of modern ideas. They are cer- tainly not in a hurry to made a, complete surren- der to the tide of innovation and reform ; but to depict them as radically refractory to the notions of progress is an injustice. The political situa- tion is more to blame for their backwardness than their old-fashioned conservatism ; and, as to the bitter complaints concerning the want of proper administration in the Transvaal, these might be proved on closer inspection to be con- siderably exaggerated, and to be more the re- sult of the animosity of the English against the Boers, than of a real sense of annoyance and dis- comfort on the part of men who belong to a class accustomed to rough it, and who, moreover, 94 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS knew exactly what they had to expect in crossing the borders of the Eepublic. I think it is also necessary to recall to mind that, notwithstanding the depth of his convictions in his differences with the English, and however great his stubbornness at heart in thwarting their purposes, Mr. Kriiger has not pressed his case with all the force it derives from absolute legiti- macy and from the importance of the points at issue ; and that he has not only avoided provoca- tive forms, but has actually made concessions, the value of which may be a matter of discus- sion, but whose existence is nevertheless proof of his desire to spare the pride of a great nation. I will now revert to the important question of the franchise — the one that dominates the whole situation in the Transvaal and has absorbed in itself all the other grievances of the Uitlanders. Following Mr. Brooks, I have once or twice taken up a stand on his own ground, that of the harmfulness or innocuousness of enfranchisement granted to the English. Although I have been hitherto more concerned with the legal aspects of this question, a practical view of it forced itself upon my attention at an early stage of this discussion, and I contended against Mr. Brooks, apart from all considerations of legitimacy or 95 BRITON AND BOER non-legitimacy, that, as a matter of opportune- ness, the franchise should not, be granted by the Boers to the English, because it would lead to the loss of their independence. I will now prove it. When representation is claimed, it is done with the idea that it will be efficacious ; else why claim it ? When the English demand representa- tion in the Boer Parliament, they do so with the intention, not of satisfying a whim, but of modi- fying the legislation of the Transvaal in a way to make it meet their views. They cannot hope to do so without having a majority. Therefore, they aim at outnumbering the Boers in the Eaad ; and, once this desideratum has been fulfilled, the government of the country will have passed into the hands of men who, following the ordinary impulses of flesh and blood, will transform the Boer State into an English dependency — not- withstanding any assurances to the contrary or even the taking of the oath of allegiance. Can anybody contest this view? Is it at all conceiv- able that a large body of Enghshmen, invested with the power to rule in the TransVaal, will continue to submit to the direction of a Presi- dent and Government representing a helpless minority, and belonging to what they consider an inferior race? In many things the enfran- A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS ' chised Uitlanders may quarrel with one another, but they will act like one man to Anglicize the State. Is the contrary technically possible in a State founded on the play of liberal institutions ? Besides, do not circumstances point to the ex- istence of a deep-laid scheme, on the part of Eng- land, to annex the Transvaal ? Has it not been made evident that, in pursuance of a gigantic conception, England is forging the links of a dominion that will extend from the North to the South of Africa, and that the Transvaal will be the next of these links ? The Eepublic is an ob- stacle — geographical, ethnical, and political — to English expansion. Even if it did not stand seriously in their way, history teaches us that it would yet be impossible for the English to resist the temptation of occupying, for convenience' sake, a country that, being weak, is at the same time deprived of the traits that might render it sacred — as Greece is, for example — in the eyes of the world, and provide it with friends in the hour of need, even among the Philistines them- selves. There is, what for want of a better and less flattering term I will call a sense of the ar- tistic and aesthetic in the spirit of expansion, a sense which revels in conceptions of beautifully rounded and delicately finished frontiers, and un- G 97 BRITON AND BOER interruptedly national tracts of territory; and the Transvaal, if for no better reason, is marked out for suppression, because, in the eyes of the English Imperialist, it takes the aspect of an ab- surdity and an eye-sore in the midst of uniformly British possessions, and spoils the whole map of South Africa with the glare of its color imper- tinently asserting itself within a huge mass of British pink. I shall make myself better under- stood by recalling the instinct of the individual landed proprietor, who is not happy until his es- tate shows continuity and unindented lines. Mr. Brooks aflBrms that the English have no designs on the Transvaal ; yet, at the same time, with a contradiction which does not in the least disturb his equanimity, he endorses the appre- hensions of the Boers. "What he says is too precious not to be literally repeated : "The President's strength, lies in the aptitude of his ap- peals to the spirit and prejudices of the Old Boer party. These stalwart conservatives concentrated all their hatred and contempt for foreign ways and custonls upon the British, the only enemies they have known. It was to escape from British rule that their forefathers struck out from the Cape, across the wilderness, and founded a Kepublic of their own. The incidents of the Great Trek in the thirties, of which the President is the last survivor, are still held in patriotic memory. The British annexed the new-born State under 98 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS pledges, delayed so long, that the Boers took up arms to en. force them and won back their independence. The British stopped the expansion of the Transvaal on the north by oc- cupying Matabeleland and Mashonaland and on the west by pouncing upon Bechuanaland. It was with British gold and under the command of British officers that the raid of 1895 was planned and carried out. Small wonder that the Boers saw, and still see, in the demand for the franchise only another British plot to rob them of their independence. The Uitlanders had come into the country uninvited and un- desired, seeking only gold and with full warning that it was a Boer Republic they were entering., By what right could these strangers of yesterday claim to be on a level with the old burghers who had fought and bled to keep the state free from alien control, and what Boer looTcing to the past experi- ences of his people with the English, could guarantee that their capture of the franchise would, not lead to their capture of the entire State, that the SepuMic would not become an English Bepublie with an English President and its original founders a despised and oppressed minority ?" rollowing up this amusing piece of treachery, of which he is unwittingly guilty towards him- self and his thesis, Mr. Brooks goes on to say that it would have " been a high achievement of diplomacy if Sir Alfred Milner could have per- suaded the President, and through him the Boers, that their fears, if not haseless, are very unlikely to be realized." I need not point to the delicious eflEect of the words, " if not baseless, are very un- 99 BRITON AND BOER likely to be realized." But the crowning point of Mr. Brooks's originality is to be found in the f oUowing passage : "The people of England have no hostility towards the Boers and no ambition to annex their country. They have, on the contrary, an uncomfortable feeling that, in their clashes with the Transvaal, the British reputation for fair-dealing, which so long as it is deserved is the backbone of the Empire, has not been altogether maintained. They admire the old President's pluck and shrewdness* and wish him well in his struggle, even when they have to condemn his methods of carrying it on. They cannot find much in his policy that is defensible, except its object ; and yet they feel that, were they in his place, they would have done much as he has done. ..." If ever there was truth in the saying, " I can cope with my enemies, but, oh, God! save me from my friends," it would be in its application by the English to Mr. Brooks. To quote this gentleman's words for the last time, he says that " so long as the reasonable grievances of the Uitlanders are met with an ob- stinate non possumus, the Transvaal runs the risk of perishing suddenly and in violence." In other words, it is threatened with war. Therefore, it is a choice of two evils for the *I wonder what else " shrewdness " means here but the faculty to see through English schemes. 100 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS Transvaal, of suicide or death at the hands of another. One way or the other, whether they yield or appeal to arms, the Boers are doomed ; for, in case it is war, England is determined to bring all her might to bear upon them this time, and then aU their bravery and military capacity will not save them from defeat and destruction. They can hope to achieve new distinction by a heroic resistance, by gaining some battles, but this will be of no material avail to them, as they must be overpowered and beaten in the end. With the confidence and increased energy of pur- pose derived from her triumphs in Egypt, Great Britain means to settle the South African prob- lem in her own way and at any cost. Whatever the choice of the Boers, the end seems to be fast approaching. Most of us will probably live to see the curtain fall on the last act of the tragedy now enacting in the Dark Continent, the sup- pression of the Transvaal. Europe will look on, but will not stir; and« Great Britain, at the zenith of her power and glory and prosperity, will con- tinue to shoot in the skies of international pol- itics, a fiery and uncontrollable orb, until she meets the star that is rising from the East, borne on the wings of Autocracy and Orthodoxy, and which is slowly but steadily moving on the same 101 BRITON AND BOER path. Then the heavens will ring and shake with the tremendous clash, and we shall witness the truth or falsehood of the proud English creed that there is no end to the mission of Great Britain, that she can only grow and spread her Empire, and that, superior to Rome, she will achieve durability in the midst of supreme power. A Diplomat. A TRANSVAAL VIEW OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION South Africa is poor, extremely poor, in spite of its gold output of nearly two millions per month and its diamond export of five millions per year. The disabilities from which South Africa suf- fers are manifold. The climate is glorious, the soil fertile, but the rainfall is uncertain and ir- regular. There are large tracts where rain falls only once every four or five years ; and, where circumstances are more favorable, there are no natural reservoirs in which water can be stored, or certainly none to any appreciable extent. The rivers, dry in summer-time, become foaming torrents in the rainy season, and pour the whole of their waters into the sea. If the "Wit waters- rand were not situated alongside an extensive formation of dolomite, which absorbs rain-water, and stores it up like a sponge, it would have been utterly impossible for its unrivalled gold industry to attain its present condition, and the 103 BRITON AND BOER Boers to-day -would be enjoying the rest and peace which they have ever longed for and de- serve. In addition to the dearth of water, South Africa has had to contend with many other drawbacks, resulting from its clumsy topo- graphical configuration. On its northern con- fines, it is defenceless against the ravages of nature, wtich sweep like a whirlwind through the whole of the southern continent. From olden days, Africa has be,en known as the land of plagues and calamities. Rinderpest sweeps down from the north, and its latest attack, in 1896, brought ruin to both white and black ; from the north, too, come the locusts and other noxious in- sects ; from the north, come the hot tropical winds, bringing drought and warding off the beneficent rain ; and from the north have many clouds arisen casting sinister shadows on this part of the continent. The clumsy configuration of South Africa, to which I have alluded, is the natural result of its plateau - form, with its abrupt de- scent to the Indian Ocean. The region is devoid of navigable rivers ; the sea-coast is an endless, monotonous line without fiords, without estuaries, without inlets of any kind, and therefore without harbors. The west coast is, moreover, separated 104 A TRANSVAAL VIEW from the interior by wastes of sand-duues ; the east coast is unhealthy and haunted by the tset- sefly. Nc wonder that Phoenicians, Arabs, and Portuguese, after their first experience of the country, had little inclination to colonize it, and to make it their home. The only white men who manage to adapt themselves to the exigencies of the southern continent and build up a stalwart nation are the Afrikanders. They are destined to occupy the land forever, and to thrive here when diamonds and gold shall be things of the past. And the blacks? I have already said that South, Africa is poor, and has never possessed any large population, for the reason that it could not support it. The Bushmen live like beasts of prey in the wilderness; the Hottentots were sub- ject to continuous decimation through sickness and famine. When the warlike Zulus, several centuries ago, came down along the east coast, they drove before them the few handfuls of hu- man beings they encountered, like leaves before the wind, became masters of the best subtropical portion of the eastern provinces, murdering and slaying like swarthy Huns, and pressed down to Natal. But although their social organization was higher than that of the nomadic tribes which they superseded, the poverty of South 105 BRITON AND BOER Africa constrained them to continue war among themselves. As soon as one Zulu tribe com- menced to thrive and increased in wealth of cattle, it became necessary to obtain more land — in other words, to wage war against its neigh- bors ; for South Africa was not able to give shel- ter to any dense population. That is why the Zulus could only manage to exist either by in- ternecine strife or by occasional emigration, to the natural detriment of the weaker races. Both the legendary and documentary history of South Africa's blacks tends to prove that, when sickness had not to be reckoned with, war inevitably became the means of reducing, the population of this region to its normal sustaining capacity. In recent years, the su- premacy of the whites has materially affected in- ternecine war as a limiting factor with regard to native population ; but its place has been filled in some measure by disease and drink. There is no d6ubt, however, that the black population is greatly on the increase, now that they are not permitted to indulge in war among themselves. But, at the same time, the importation of foreign "mealies" (maize) — the staple food of the Kafirs — has also steadily increased ; in 1897, the South African Eepublic imported nearly 36 million 106 THE WAR-DANCK (JP TOE ZULUS A TRANSVAAL VIEW pounds of mealies ; in 1898, the total importa- tion had risen to over 44^ millions. There will come a day when the natives will cease to get work at the mines, when the mines will be ex- hausted. Then the importation of South Amer- ican cereals will fall off, and South Africa will be expected to provide food for its own native population. Will it be equal to the task ? The history of the past supplies an eloquent answer. But with the industrious European colonist, schooled and disciplined by labor, can South Africa not produce Avhat is necessary for his support? The white population of this part of the world amounts, in round numbers, to two millions — a very generous estimate — inhabiting a vast extent of country, larger than France, Germany, and Italy together. This population is dependent on the outside world, not merely for the products of technical industry, but also for those of agriculture. We import potatoes and frozen meat from Australia, wood from Canada and Norway, eggs and butter from Eu- rope, meal and mules from America. The sugar and tea grown in Natal cannot compete with the products of Mauritius and Ceylon, without the aid of protection. In order that these two mill- ions of whites may be commercially accessible 107 BKITON AND BOER to the outside world, and that this huge import trade may be practicable, more than fifty mill- ion pounds sterling have been devoted to railway construction. Every week sees numerous steam- ers arriving from all parts of the world, laden with every conceivable kind of goods, to supply the limited South African community with many necessaries of life. Should this means of supply ever be cut off, a large portion of our white and other population would simply starve, or at any rate be deprived of the comforts of life. Only the Boers, who eke out a frugal existence on their secluded farms, and have not yet become depend- ent on frozen meat, European butter, American meal, and Australian potatoes — only the Boers, who, with rare endurance, the heritage of their hardy race, boldly face years of drought, rin- derpest, locusts, and fever, could survive such a collapse of the economic machinery of a coun- try so severeljr dealt with by nature. The re- maining Europeans would gradually disappear, just as the Phoenicians and the Arabs disappeared in the days long past. As long as the gold-mines and the diamond-mines can be worked and made to pay, so long will the abnormal economy of South Africa preserve its balance ; but as soon as South Africa has swallowed up its capital to the 108 A TEANSVAAL VIEW very last bit of gold, the Uitlander will have to seek for fresh fields for the exercise of his nervous energy, and the Afrikander will be abandoned to his struggle with the inimical elements, as has ever been his lot in the past. By the sweat of his brow he will have to lead his carefully stored- up water to the fields continuously threatened by locusts, he will have to shield his flocks from plague and theft, he will have to preserve contin- ual watch against the inroads of the ever-increas- ing blacks. The Boer — that is, the agriculturist — is destined to be the Alpha and Omega of South Africa's white culture ; he alone, in this quarter of the globe, can save civilization from the ultimate gulf of bankruptcy. To say that South Africa is a rich land, or to paint its fut- ure in glowing colors and to dilate on the brill- iant prospects that it offers to an unlimited white population, is only possible to an extraordinarily superficial observer, to an unscrupulous com- pany promoter, or to an over-zealous emigration agent, whose salary is in proportion to the num- ber of his victims. The first European Power which acquired a firm footing in the East Indies, the Portuguese, simply ignored South Africa. The Portuguese were succeeded by the Hollanders, who, not until 109 BRITON AND BOER after much hesitation and two futile attempts to conquer Mozambique, decided to take possession of Africa's southern extremity. And the English, in common with the Hollanders, never desired aught but the few harbors which South Africa possesses ; the interior had no value in the eyes of the European maritime Powers, which only looked to the opulent East. A clear illustration of this is furnished by the fact that, although possessing Walvisch Bay, England quietly acquiesced in Germany's protectorate over the hinterland ; and another instance is to be found in the anxiety which England has recently shown to get hold of Delagoa Bay and Beira. The possession of these harbors would give to the British Empire control of the sea-way to the East, and to the English merchants such trade with the interior of South Africa as circumstances might permit. Neither the Dutch East India Company nor the British rulers bestirred themselves in any way, in con- nection with the steady expansion of the white colonists in the hinterland. And this interior colonization had barely acquired any impor- tance before there arose both petty and mate- rial disturbances with the authority representing the purely European factor. This was not at all difficult to understand. The community at the no A TRANSVAAL VIEW Cape was composed of administrators and mer- chants who amassed considerable fortunes by means of the uninterrupted trade between Eu- rope and India; the luxury which reigned at the foot of Table Mountain was proverbial ; all the comforts of European civilization could be en- joyed in sunny South Africa, untroubled by the shadows of the Old "World. In vivid contrast to this luxurious life of ease, the burdens of the inland colonists were, indeed, grievous to be ; borne ; rough, hardy pioneers of the wilderness, their life was one prolonged struggle with pov- erty, with ravaging beasts of prey, and with stealthy Bushmen and Hottentots. No wonder, therefore, that, little by little, a social gulf was created, that a marked dissimilarity of character was gradually developed between the up-to-date Cape patricians, treading the primrose paths of luxury, and the nomadic shepherds of the veldt, independent of aught save their fowling-pieces, and undisputed lords of the limitless plateau behind the mountains fringing the coast. lio wonder, therefore, that the mere handful of con- querors of the Great Karroo had little love for the arbitrary rule of a Proconsul in Cape Town Castle, on behalf of an authority having its head- quarters in Europe. Ill BRITON AND BOER Under the Dutch East India Company friction often arose between the two white elements of the Colony, and when the Cape fell into the hands of the British, in the beginning of the present century, the old antagonism continued to exist. I once heard it said that when Napo- leon surrendered to the British in 1815, there was some talk of assigning to him, as a final resting-place, that pretty country estate of the early Dutch Governors not far from Cape Town, but that this idea had to be given up, on account of distrust of the feelings of the inland colonists, there being some fear that South Africa might see a repetition of the Elba incident. As long as the Imperial authori- ties left the inland colonists to themselves, and only exercised a general repressive control, the relationship between the two white communities of South Africa remained satisfactory, but as soon as the strings were pulled too suddenly from Europe, and the Cape authorities had to carry out a grasping, despotic policy, the two elements inevitably came to loggerheads. The best South African politicians — both British and Boer — are those who have frankly admitted that the politi- cal key to South Africa lies in an intelligent in- sight into the limit which should be allowed to lis A TKANSVAAL VIEW Briton, Boer, and Black. In other words, let each of the three fulfil the mission which nature has allotted to him, and then this much -vexed continent will enjoy the rest and peace of which it so urgently stands in need. Is it necessary to give a resume of the painful episodes which thronged upon one another in South Africa in the nineteenth century? The result of a hundred years of incompetency, weak- ness, vacillation, and reckless greed culminates to-day in the awful probability of an insensate strife between two hardy vital races, races unique by reason of their capacity for colonial expansion, races of similar origin and religion, races whose internal co-operation could have made this coun- try, if not exceptionally prosperous, at least a particularly happy land, so that the dream of one of its most gifted children, Thomas Pringle, might have been fulfilled in gladsome measure : " South Africa, thy future lies Bright 'fore my vision as thy skies." The first beneficent breathing-space which was granted to South Africa by the fatal British policy was when, in 1852 and 1854— after num- berless mistakes had been committed by the Im- perial authorities, mistakes which no historian H 113 BRITON AND BOER now attempts to deny — the South African Ee- public and the Free State were respectfully left to their own resources, by solemn covenants with the British Government — in other words, when the formal principle was adopted by England that the Briton should be "baas" of the coast and the Boer of the hinterland. The circum- stances under which this took place had in the mean time become very grievous : the Boer States never had a fair start ; the British mari- time colonies levied enormous duties on goods consigned to the interior, and squeezed as much out of the Afrikander republics as they possibly could. And thus while the British merchants at Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban waxed fat and wealthy, the Boers became more and more impoverished. But they were sustained in their struggle against poverty by the hardy spirit which was their pe- culiar heritage from their forefathers. And although the Free State and the Transvaal lan- guished in their material development, and Natal and the Cape battened upon them, the Boers were satisfied, like the lean dog in the fable who did not envy the lot of his richer brother, because the latter had to wear a heavy collar of gold. The generous policy of 1852 and 1854 was only 114 A TRANSVAAL VIEW too short-lived. The lucid moments of the Anglo- African politicians have been, alas ! few and far between. First came the ruthless annexation of Basutoland by the British authorities, just at the moment when the Free State had chpped the wings of the Basutos and rendered further resist- ance futile. Then came the unrighteous annexa- tion of Griqualand West, which suddenly found favor in the eyes of the British on account of the discovery of diamonds, and on which arose the Kimberley of to-day. This was followed by the annexation of the Transvaal by Sir Theophi- lus Shepstone, with all the bitter feeling that naturally resulted therefrom. And then the Sir Charles Warren expedition, by which the Boers were deprived of Bechuanaland, because Mr. Khodes — whose fortunate career at the Kimber- ley Diamond Fields enabled him to give the rein to his restless ambition — wanted to open up a pathway to the north, to the Ehodesia of to-day. Then came the establishment of the Chartered Company, followed by the notorious Jameson Eaid. Such petty incidents as the Keate Award, the Swaziland Muddle, the Annexation of Sam- baan's Land, I will pass over, for brevity's sake. In short, the beneficent policy of 1852 and 1854, which was for a moment revived under the Glad- 115 BRITON AND BOER stone Ministry of 1881 — when the independence of the South African Kepublic was restored — has been the exception during the century now speed- ing to its close. British statesmen apparently failed to see that South Africa could only be served by giving each race the domain which destiny had prepared for it, viz., the Boer the hinterland and the Britisher the coast, together with the rights and obligations connected there- with. The welfare of the interior States has ever been the life-buoy to which the whole of South Africa has clung, in times of darkness and de- pression. Let the interior have a fair opportu- nity of thriving as well as the peculiar circum- stances of the country permit, and the subjects of Queen Victoria will be able to enjoy the mani- fold pleasures of life without one drc\p of English soldiers' blood having to be spilled. The immediate motive which prompted Sir Theophilus Shepstone's annexation of the Trans- vaal in 1877 was the commencement made by President Burgers of the long-cherished railway to Lourengo Marques. Natal and Cape Colony were not satisfied with squeezing the inland States by means of heavy duties, high postal tari£fs, and enormous trade profits ; they sought the complete economic dependency of the Ke- 116 A TRANSVAAL VIEW publics, by prohibiting all railway traffic "except through British ports. The selfishness of a com- mercial community knows no limit. The second attempt to annex the South Afri- can Republic — with which the names of British politicians were connected — was not the result of a commercial policy, but it furnishes a striking illustration of the capitalism which has become such an important factor in South African poli- cy, since the amalgamation of the diamond com- panies of Kimberley into one mighty body. The fact that to-day — while these lines are being writ- ten — this unhappy continent is on the, eve of a helium omnium contra om,nes, can only be ex- plained by the overwhelming influence acquired hj CQYt&m^^ nouveaux riches''^ — whose social exist- ence depends upon the Transvaal gold industry — among those who on the British side are shap- ing the fate of South Africa. During the course of the present century, this part of the world has vritnessed a variety of "agitations." It was the negrophilist agitation which drove the Boers in bitterness of spirit be- yond the boundaries of Cape Colony ; and it was an administrative agitation which for a long time impeded their progress and threw all manner of obstacles in their way ; it was the politics of the 117 BRITON AND BOER counting-house which suggested the annexation of the Diamond Fields and the annexation of the Transvaal ; and it is a stock exchange organiza- tion which is pulling the strings of the movement of to-day. Of all these agitations, the last- that of the financiers — is the most despicable, the most ominous, the most dangerous, and the most unworthy of the British nation. The Boers can forgive Dr. Philip for his negrophilistic ardor, fhey can forgive Sir Harry Smith, Sir Philip Wodehouse, Sir Bartle Frere, and Sir Owen Lan- yon for their excess of administrative zeal, but no Afrikander will bow down at the bidding of a group of foreign speculators. When the Witwatersrand gold-fields were dis- covered, the Transvaalers had already had some experience of the advantages and disadvantages attendant on the possession of mineral wealth. In the early seventies, the opening up of the alluvial deposits at Pilgrim's Eest, in the north- east of the Eepublic, was the cause of consider- able immigration. In the eighties, there was a rush to the diggings at Dekaap, of which Bar- berton became the centre, the Afrikander ele- ment being strongly represented. From the very beginning, the law-makers of the Transvaal dealt very leniently with the miners, the vast 118 A TRANSVAAL VIEW majoi'ity of whom were foreigners. The Boers knew of the mineral wealth of their country at an early date, but they never felt constrained to exchange the quietude of their pastoral life for the feverish existence of the gold-seeker. The Boers have never endeavored to turn the pres- ence of gold in their soil to practical account, and make it a direct source of national income ; as, for instance, the Chartered Company has done, expropriating a large portion of the profits of the gold-fields. An instance of this liberal legislation, more striking than a long array of figures, is furnished by the public lottery of gold claims — some of which are extremely valuable — which is now taking place, and in which both burghers and Uitlanders can participate without distinction. The exceptionallj'^ generous legislation of the Boers with regard to mining matters was ef- fected with the sole object of fostering agricult- ure ; this has, however, only been realized in part, owing to the fact that the expansion of the mining industry gradually made native labor dear, and thus heavily handicapped the agricult- urist. The administration of the Boers in the days of Pilgrim's Kest and Barberton compares very favorably with that of the Diamond Fields 119 BRITON AND BOER of. Cape Colony. The Transvaalers were good- natured, but they had no inclination to be trifled with. In those days there was no talk of Uit- landers' grievances, nor even during the early years of Johannesburg. The Witwatersrand is not situated, like Pilgrim's Eest and Barberton, in an unfrequented part of the country, but it lies to the immediate south of Pretoria, between Potchefstroom and Heidelberg, in the very heart of the Boer States. Johannesburg sprang up with astonishing rapidity, and offered special at- tractions to the large number of South African adventurers who, like Mr. Micawber, were only " waiting for something to turn up." From their farms in the Free State, from their way-side stores in Cape Colony, from their plantations in Natal, from their broker offices in the Diamond Fields, they gathered together— men of every type and every class, but united in their feverish thirst for wealth. The expectations of the most sanguine were realized ; they reaped a rich harvest in the shape of large exchange profits, although many of their number knew practically nothing about mining or financial administration. Then came the inevitable collapse in 1889, which only spared the most fortunate ; and the great majority of this strangely mixed community were gradually com- 120 A TRANSVAAL VIEW pelled to make room for more competent men from Europe and America. These brought brains and experience into their work, and placed the industry upon a more solid basis; but they also inoculated the Uitlanders with the hacilU of dis- cord and revolution, much to the detriment of the shareholders across the sea. The appearance of the present-day Uitlander — that is to say, the grievance -bearing, or rather grievance - seeking, stranger — dates from the period when qualified experts satisfied them- selves as to the uniquely favorable situation of the precious metal in Witwatersrand — from the time when wild speculation began to make room for a genuine exploitation of the mines. The preliminary period to which I refer above was the cause of an influx of immigrants into the Ke- public. They spread themselves over the face of the country, penetrating into the most outlying spots, in order to procure material for the flota- tion of mining companies. This period also saw the birth of the " Land and Estate " Companies, who generally bought up the most uninhabited or uninhabitable farms for speculative purposes. By reason of foreign ownership of large tracts of land, the argument is often advanced that an enormous portion of the South African Kepublic 131 BRITON AND BOER no longer belongs to the Boers. It may be re- marked, en passant, that, while the Boer has been severely condemned for his slothfulness in mat- ters agricultural, practically none of the land companies has ever devoted more than a few acres to the growing of crops. When the period of wild speculation suffered a collapse, the TJit- lander no longer spread himself over the whole of the Eepublic. Henceforward, the Witwaters- rand was the exclusive scene of his labors, and here he elected to pitch his tent. Outside the Eand, he confined himself to the ordinary occu- pations of the olden days — that of store-keeper for the folk of the few rustic centres, and bank manager, hotel -keeper, and clergyman in the solitary country towns. After the crash of 1889, Johannesburg slowly became the TJitlander town par excellence. It deserves to be recorded that, as the output of gold began to show a continual increase, the "Uitlander question" acquired a proportionate magnitude. In every country where foreigners are to be found in appreciable numbers, there is an Uitlander question. It exists in France, in regard to the Italians and Belgians living there ; in Japan, in regard to the Americans and Brit- ishers; in London, in regard to the Poles; in 1S2 A TRANSVAAL VIEW the Middle Ages the Jews were in many cases a powerful "Uitlander" element. During the last century the Germans in Eussia have been " Uitlanders," and, according to the Czechs and Hungarians, they are so in Austria to-day. But the Uitlander question in the South African Ee- publio differs from the Uitlander question else- where, as it has been made the cause of an international dispute between two States of unequal strength. In its present form, the Uit- lander question is only the mask of a financiers' plot, of a piece of Exchange jobbery. It has steadily kept pace with the gold output. In 1889, £1,500,000 was produced. In that year, Johannesburg was horrified by a series of stealthy murders which were only explained as the hand- iwork of " Jack the Eipper." No one thought at that time, however, of saddling the Transvaal Government with responsibility for them, or of sending plaintive petitions to England as to the danger of life in the South African Eepublic! Every one understood, then as now, that gold- fields offer peculiar attractions to questionable characters of all classes. In March, 1890, during a visit of President Krijger to the Golden City, the Transvaal flag was pulled down from the Government buildings. It subsequently tran- 133 BKITON AND BOER spired that this was only the work of some drunken rough, and the mining and mercantile communities lost no time in expressing their dis- approval of the incident. The realization of the practical value of the deep-level theory — in other words, the ultimate conviction as to the indispu- table durability and wealth of the "Witwatersrand gold - fields — has, in the mean time, become the signal for an agitation against the Government and the people of the South African Republic. From this period dates England's claim to suze- rainty over the South African Eepublic and the paramount-powership in South Africa, of which hitherto no mention had ever been made. In 1894, the then High Commissioner, Sir Henry Loch, was present at some diamond-drill experi- ments at the Eand, which proved beyond dispute the continuous nature of the gold-bearing reef at a considerable depth, and at an important dis- tance from the outcrop reef. During this visit, Sir Henry Loch made a promise to the mining magnates — as per letter of Mr. Lionel Phillips, then the Chairman of the Johannesburg Cham- ber of Mines* — to stir up the Transvaal Govern- ment on condition that the "Uitlander" agi- * Vide Tranavaal Green Book, No. 3, of 1896. 134 A TEANSVAAL VIEW tation increased in intensity. The Transvaal Green Book provides instructive reading even for to-day ; it contains extracts from private let- ters from Mr. Phillips to his London friends. On the 10th of June, 1894, he vrrote to Mr. Beit : ' 'As to the franchise, I do not think many people care a fig about it." On the 1st of July of the same year, he wrote to Mr. Wernher : "Sir H. Loch (with whom I had two long private inter- views alone) asked me some very pointed questions, such as what arms we had in Johannesburg, whether the population could hold the place for six days until help could arrive, etc., etc., and stated plainly that if there had been 3000 rifles and ammunition here he would certainly have come over. He further informed me, in a significant way, that he had pro- longed the Swaziland agreement for six months , and said he supposed in that time Johannesburg would be better pre- pared — as much as to say, if things are safer then we shall actively intervene." This conversation took place at Pretoria, where Sir Henry Loch, as the representative of Her Majesty's Government, was the honored guest of the Transvaal people ! On the 15th of July of the same year, Mr. Phillips wrote to Mr. Beit : " We don't want any row. Our trump card is a fund of £10,000 or £15,000 to improve the Volksraad. Unfortunate- ly the Gold Companies have no Secret Service Fund." 135 BRITON AND BOER All this happened in 1894, when the gold out- put had alreadj'- reached a total of nearly 7f millions sterling. In 1895 it had risen to 8^ millions ; the " trump card " had also risen and amounted to £120,000, with which sum the Ee- form movement at Johannesburg was partially financiered — a movement which came to an un- timely end at Doornkop. In 1897 the inquiry by the official Industrial Commission took place, the result being a sub- stantial lowering of railway tariffs and import dues. But the " grievances " still remained, and increased in 1897 in sympathy with the gold out- put, which had now reached the large figure of llj millions. Still more " unbearable " were these "grievances" in 1898, during which year 16J millions of gold was dug out of Transvaal soil. This was the year of the Edgar affair and of the Uitlander Petition, and in the same year forty-five gold companies of the Eand (the share capital issued being £20,294,675) paid out in dividends no less than £5,089,785 — an average of 25 per cent. ! The output for 1899 has already been estimated at 22^ millions, and the number of dividend - paying companies increases every month. In 1896 the rural population were visited by 136 A TKANSVAAL VIEW a series of grievous plagues— by rinderpest, by drought, by locusts, and by the dreaded fever. While the Uitlanders of the Rand were reported to be groaning under the oppression of their Egyptian task-masters, and European sharehold- ers were depicted as helpless victims of a corrupt Kriiger regime, the Boers were " taking up arms against a sea of troubles " which threatened to overwhelm them, and of which we heard exceed- ingly little, either in the local papers or in the cable columns of the London press. While thou- sands of Boer families saw the fruit of long years of toil plucked away by the hand of God in a single season, the campaign of libel on behalf of the Uitlanders was vigorously prosecuted with the help of money won from Transvaal soil by mining magnates, the princely munificence dis- played by whom in London and other places out- side South Africa was occasionally referred to in the local papers as a joyous chord between the " grievance " symphonies that were struck in the minor key. I have little inclination to expatiate on the true character of the present movement against the Boers ; but I do say that to support the latest type of agitation against the white population of the interior of South Africa is unworthy of the 137 BRITON AND BOEH traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race. The South African Kepublic is not without political blem- ishes; as in every other country, we have our administrative scandals, both great and small; we have our social and economic plague-spots, which must be made to disappear. Gold-fields never were fountains of pure morality, nor are they so in South Africa. Has one ever pictured the future of the most civilized country of the Old "World if a sec- ond Johannesburg were to spring up in mushroom fashion ? I do not wish to speak evil of the wire- pullers of the present agitation against the Afri- kanders ; but, surely, those persons whose princely palaces have been built with Transvaal gold, and who cry out so loudly against our Government, should be the last to throw stones against the Eepublic. The " oligarchy " at Pretoria — to use Mr. Chamberlain's recent expression — consists of barely a few dozen Boers ; there is, therefore, strong evidence in favor of this " oligarchy " in the fact that it has been able to offer such pro- longed resistance to the well-disposed and un- doubtedly disinterested attempts of such gentle- men as Lionel Phillips to " improve" them from Johannesburg and London. Such an " oligarchy" is without a parallel in modern times. It forms a striking contrast to the worship of the golden 138 A TRANSVAAL VIEW calf on the Witwatersrand, from which Pretoria is only distant about three hours on horseback. Such an "oligarchy" deserves to be carefully preserved rather than destroyed, as we "preserve from total extinction some rare plant or peculiar species of animal. There are undoubted grievances in the South African Republic, but they are not the exclusive property of the Uitlanders ; a discreet silence is observed with respect to the wrongs of the Trans- vaal burghers, and I do not feel it to be my task to dilate upon them now. But still they exist, although the absorbing selfishness of the mining magnates keeps back the light of day : the lust for gold stifles all generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherly love, and respect for the rights of the weak. What Monomotapa was to the Phoenicians and Arabs, Witwatersrand is to our present gold- seekers, and to most of the Uitlanders — a tem- porary land of exile, which they only endure for the sake of the gold. Can we picture the wise King Solomon demanding the franchise for his subjects in the realms of the Queen of Sheba ? South Africa is poor ; it will remain poor in spite of its gold and its diamonds. It will never be able to pay back the cost of a bitter strife, un- less the gold-bedecked princes come forward with I 139 BRITON AND BOER the treasure which they have wrung from the land. As long as the Boers allow the modern Phoenicians to dig the precious metals out of Transvaal soil without heavy impositions, and to have a free hand in the administration of the country and the government of the native pop- ulation, it will be found that the best business policy will be to leave the Boers in undisturbed possession of their country, free to rule it by their own healthy instinct and according to the good old traditions of their forefathers, with their own language, their own rulers, their own as- pirations — even with their own faults and preju- dices. It should not be forgotten that, from the ear- liest days of the gold-fields, the Uitlanders knew that the South African Republic was an " oli- garchy " ; they knew that the Boers were " illiter- ate," " stupid," " ignorant," and a great deal be- sides; they knew that a dynamite monopoly existed, and that President Kriiger was a " hard nut to crack." Notwithstanding this knowledge the " Uitlanders " have flocked in by thousands, and foreign capital has been invested amounting to several hundreds of millions sterling. Dur- ing the first five months of the present year, Transvaal gold and other companies were regis- 130 A TRANSVAAL VIEW tered here with a combined capital of over £15,391,389. la July last— in the middle of the crisis — five new companies were registered with a capital of £1,159,000. And of all the TJitland- ers only a section of the British subjects are genuinely dissatisfied. Notwithstanding that the "oppression" of the Transvaal "oligarchy" has been told and retold, until the world has become sick and weary, immigrants are still pouring in from all quarters of the globe. The Boers do not ask for mercy; they ask for justice. Those who keep up the unfair agita- tion against the South African Eepublio are the last men, however, to listen to the voice of right- eousness, or to be guided by any noble impulse ; political corruption is the seed they sow, and by their unexampled opportunities they feel con- fident of reaping their criminal harvest. Up to the present they have gathered only tears; a still more bitter time of reaping has yet to come. In the past, the Boers have been able to fight against immensely superior odds. They feel that the final victory will be theirs ; for they know they have right on their side. "Well would it be for the British nation if they could but realize the significance of those words of Eussell Lowell : 131 BRITON AND BOER ' Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own." F. y. Engelenbueg. Pbetoeia, August, 1899. THE TRANSVAAL WAR AND EUROPEAN OPINION All Europe is united in condemning the at- tack made by the English Government upon the independence of the South African Eepublic, in violation of the clearest treaty rights solemnly guaranteed in London in 1884. In Germany, men of most diverse parties — from the moderate Constitutionalist, or even Conservative, to the advanced Liberal and Democrat — those that favor a Colonial policy as well as those who oppose or bitterly attack it — are of one mind in this mat- ter. They aU say : The war which is now rag- ing over the fair fields of South Africa cries aloud against the outrageous conduct of those in power in England. The most indignant among them bring to rec- ollection the telegram which Emperor William sent to President Kriiger after the defeat of Dr. Jameson's Kaid. Here T may state at once a 133 ' BRITON AND BOER little-known fact. That telegram, generally sup- posed to have come from the Kaiser's personal initiative, was practically an answer to a message addressed to him by four hundred Germans at Pretoria who had offered themselves to President Kriiger as a volunteer corps for the defence of the Eepublic. They had asked the Kaiser, on the arrival of the first news about the Paid, whether he would not say a word in favor of the threatened Boer Commonwealth. It will be remembered that Kriiger and the other members of the Transvaal Deputation, after having concluded the new Treaty in London, in 1883-4, went to Berlin for a visit. They were received in the most hospitable manner by the old Emperor William I. and his Chancellor ; Prince Bismarck leading Mr. Kriiger, with linked arms, to dinner, and talking to him in Low German, a dialect closely akin to Dutch. From that time the relations between the restored South African Eepublic and the Berlin Government were es- pecially friendly. This emboldened the Germans at Pretoria to send their telegram to William II., at a moment when the existence of the Boer Commonwealth hung in the balance. And it was in reply to their telegraphic question that the young Emperor expressed to President 134 EUROPEAN OPINION Kriiger his congratulation for the, escape from a grave danger. Unfortunately, this single fact was suppressed. Had it been known, the wild, though utterly un- just, outcry which arose in England would prob- ably have been less fierce. Three or four weeks afterwards, when the mail from South Africa came in, I learned the real connection of what had occurred; but in the mean time the worst mischief had been done. First impressions are apt to last ; they are as difficult to eradicate as the proverbial falsehood when it is once fairly, or unfairly, started. What creates dissatisfaction now in Germany is that, during the late diplomatic controversies between England and the South African Repub- lic, the official or semi - official press ,of Berlin should have assumed an attitude which was quite uncalled for. It turned round to an extent which offended the conscience of the nation. Certainly, everybody understood that if war were to break out it was not for Germany to take part in it. At the same time, the mass of the Germans — be- ing " honest men," as Shakespeare says of them in one of his plays — expected that even the Gov- ernment organs would not virtually play into the hands of those in England who were bent upon 135 BRITON AND BOER undoing the guaranteed independence of the Transvaal Kepublic. In all probability the ofB- cial or semi-oflBcial press at Berlin was misled into its utterances by a belief that a compromise between England and the Boer Commonwealth would be effected, and that such a compromise would be promoted by taking sides, in a certain degree, with the demands put forth from London. I may claim to have never shared that view. In a number of articles signed by me I over and over again expressed the conviction that war was the object of the prime movers in England, and that nothing remained for the threatened South African Kepublic — aye, and for the Orange Free State, too, whose fate would also be sealed if the former were subjected — than to defend its rights in alliance with the sister Republic against tre- mendous odds. II In 1896 I was the first, I may truly say, to put the facts of the abolition of the suzerainty — which England had possessed in virtue of the Pretoria Treaty of 1881 — clearly before the public in the North American Review. Having followed the negotiations in 1883-84, when I 136 Di;, WILLIAM J LEYDS European Agent of Hie Trans\'Lial [;o\'uruiiieut EUEOPEAN OPINION was in frequent contact with the Transvaal Deputation (President Kriiger, General Smit, of Majuba HiU fame, and the Eev. I. S. Du Toit, the Minister of Public Instruction), I was able to give even personal testimony on that point. I can further say that when, in 1898, the Govern- ment of Pretoria met the astounding claims of suzerainty — which Mr. Chamberlain suddenly made after a lapse of thirteen years, during which Conservative and Liberal representatives of the Cabinet had openly and repeatedly confessed that no reservation of the Queen's suzerainty was expressed in the new Treaty of 1884 — the argu- ments used by Dr. Leyds, in the name of President Kriiger, were literally, and wellnigh in exactly the same order, given as had been done by me in the pages of the NoHh American H&oiew. The same may be said of the arguments used by Sir "William Harcourt, Sir Edward Clarke (both eminent legists, the latter formerly a Solicitor - General in Lord Salisbury's previous Government), and other Liberal and Conserva- tive leaders. This concurrence of views, and this remarkable coincidence, even in the mar- shalhng of arguments and facts, may seem ex- traordinary. It is, however, easily explainable from the strength of the case. 137 BEITON AND BOER Any one conversant with the text of tlie two Treaties and the negotiations which preceded them — as recorded in the Blue -Books — must literally come to the same conclusion. The pity is that so few politicians will take the trouble of going to the sources. I have discussed this sub- ject for many years with a few members of Par- liament, public writers, and other generally well- informed men. As a rule, I found among them the crassest ignorance on that particular matter. Most of them did not even know then that there were two distinct treaties, one of which had been abolished ! It was Lord Derby himself who, with his own hand, struck out everything referring to suze- rainty from the old Treaty. The proof of it is contained in the Blue -Book. The suzerainty was cancelled and crossed out by him, with black lines, in the Preamble, as well as in the three paragraphs in which it is mentioned. He then offered what he himself called "a New Treaty in substitution for the Convention of Pretoria." A new Preamble was also given to that New Treaty. The Transvaal Deputation had come for the express object of having the suzerainty abolished and a new Treaty put in the place of 138 EUROPEAN OPINION the old one. They had also demanded that their country — which was until then called the " Trans- vaal State " — should be recognized once more as an " independent South African Eepublic," as it had been before the violent annexation which Mr. Disraeli had craftily effected while the burghers of the Eepublic wei:e harassed by ris- ings of the natives. "When the Transvaal Deputation returned to Pretoria, the Volksraad ratified the Treaty, be- cause these objects of its Delegates had been at- tained. Dr. Leyds, and even Sir William Har- court and Sir Edward Clarke, have overlooked one telling fact. It is this : "While the Queen's suzerainty undoubtedly existed between 1881 and 1884, a so-called " Resident" was appointed at Pretoria to represent the British Crown in its suzerain capacity. Now, in 1884 the office of Eesident was abolished and a Consul appointed in his stead. A Resident marks the country in which he acts as a vassal one. In the Parlia- mentary Statutes 52 and 63 Vict. (1889), c. 63, the protected Princes of India are described as " under the suzerainty of Her Majesty " ; and at their Courts there is consequently a British Eesi- dent. But in the Transvaal State, when it was re- 139 BRITON AND BOER stored to its old rank as the South African Ee- publio, the Kesident was replaced by a Consul, who henceforth was no longer a representative of a suzerain Protector, or Protectress, but who was, on the contrary, himself to " receive the pro- tection of the BepubliG." That restored inde- pendent Commonwealth was consequently ac- knowledged, by this fact too, as a foreign Power, no longer under a suzerain. Hence, Mr. Cham- berlain himself, during the Jameson Kaid — that is, evidently, when its defeat was already tele- graphically known in London — declared the South African Republic, in a despatch, to be " a foreign State, a foreign Power, with which Her Majesty is at peace and in Treaty relations." Can anything be clearer, then, than the fact of the suzerainty having been abolished ? Is it not arrant hypocrisy to assert the contrary ? Yet, during all the recent transactions it was con- tinually held as a threat over the Transvaal Ee- public. " Conventions," in the plural, was al- ways the word. Not even when President Kriiger proposed that the controversy about Suzerainty should be " silently dropped " on both sides, so that an agreement about the Suffrage Question might be come to, would the Colonial Secretary avoid the 140 EUROPEAN OPINION mention of the Conventions in the plural, as if both were stiU lawfully in operation! Each time, moreover, the British terms were raised. Ill The Treaty of 188i gives England no right whatever to interfere in the internal affairs of the South African Eepublic. There is not a word in it about the right of foreigners to claim equality of suffrage rights with the native Dutch inhabitants. To obtain such rights, foreigners have to conform to the existing laws. These laws for obtaining the vote were originally even more liberal than those existing in England. They were only made more restrictive — that is to say, a longer term of residence was fixed before a man could become a full burgher — when seditious aspirations for the overthrow of the Eepublic became ripe at Johannesburg. Among the motley crowd of foreigners there, a considerable number, even according to the testimony of the more fair-minded correspond- ents who were sent out by papers of the war party in England, is composed of utterly worth- less characters. "I have never seen," one of 141 BRITON AND BOER them wrote, " within the course of a quarter of an hour, a worse collection of rascaldom of vari- ous kinds." When President Kriiger, some years ago, vis- ited Johannesburg, the British flag was hoisted by such immigrants as a symbol of their insur- rectionary desires. "When Mr. Ehodes organized the Kaid, Johannesburg was in arms, though courage failed the would-be rebels at the de- cisive moment. Was it reasonable, then, to expect that, in dealing with a Suffrage Question, all these oc- currences should simply remain unheeded by the President, the Parliament, and the burghers of the Transvaal? Could they forget the de- struction of their Commonwealth between 18Y7 and 1881? Were they simply to allow their Kepublio to be voted down, after it had been found that it could not be struck down by force of arms ? For all that, in order not to have to undergo a struggle on battle-fields with a World-Empire of nearly 400,000,000, Kriiger and the Yolksraad yielded more and more in the course of the ne- gotiations. It was of no avail. They found themselves pressed each time by increased de- mands, while the English troops, of whom for- 143 BRINGING IN THE KAIDEKS TO J( (IIANNESBU JIG EUKOPEAN OPINION merly there were but 3000 at the Cape, were grad- ually increased to 25,000, and pushed forward to the frontiers of the two Kepublics — with even more troops announced to come afterwards. Thus both Kepublics saw themselves menaced in their very existence, and they took the decisive, in- evitable step. In London, papers hostile to them had, in the meanwhile, before the outbreak of war, boldly declared that not suzerainty, but full Sovereign- ty was aimed at over the Transvaal, and that, though the Orange Free State was, by pubhc law, as independent as Russia, British para- mountcy over it, too, must be set up as a self- understood thing. In short, all respect for treaty rights and the independence of neighbor- ing States was thrown to the winds. In Mr. Chamberlain's recent words, there must be, in South Africa, English " supremacj'^, preponder- ance, paramountcy — call it what you will, call it Abracadabra, if you choose." Out of so con- venient a formula every act of violence may be evolved. Can it be wondered at that foreign nations look with mistrustful amazement upon such a doctrine? "Would any country feel itself safe in the future, would any Government attach the slightest credence to the pledged word of, 143 BRITON AND BOER and the treaty stipulations accepted by, England, if Abracadabra is henceforth to be the parole ? Perhaps I may be allowed to mention here that, whatever I have done, by many writings, in furtherance of the Unionist cause of England, in opposition to Mr. ' Gladstone's fatal Home Kule bill, was once acknowledged by Mr. Cham- berlain in terms of praise at a great public meet- ing. This cannot absolve me from the duty of saying what in Transvaal affairs I hold to be right. Again, I might say that when, in 1881, during the armed struggle of the burghers, there was a dark plan broached in London which would have increased the horrible Irish trouble of that time, I firmly set my face against that scheme, and it was nipped in the bud. It is as a friend of England, therefore, that I express my views. And here I feel compelled to declare that vio- lence is capped by unbearable cant when the hard -driven Republics, around whom the steel net was daily drawn tighter, are charged with having brought on this hideous war. You drive a man, forsooth, into a corner. You hold your fist before his face. You threaten him by say- ing that the sand of the hour-glass is running out, and that, unless he makes haste to kneel 144 EUROPEAN OPINION down, you will use other measures against him. You hold your sword and gun ready to attack him ; and then when he strikes a blow, lie is, of course, the guilty party ! I say all this with a degree of sadness. I have known a nobler England, on some great historical occasions, since I first stepped on her soil as an exile after the great Continental Eevolutions of 1848-49. On not a few occasions I have come forth to defend her cause — certainly not to my personal advantage, but the contrary. But there have not been lacking cases when the policy of England has been such that I could not shirk the duty of opposing it. IV It is the same now. "Who can doubt that this is a war as unrighteous as it is unnecessary, and pregnant with grave perils for England's own future ? Has not General Butler, a man of the fullest personal experience in South African affairs, uttered a serious warning against lighting up such a conflagration? He had to leave his post for giving that wise and earnest counsel. Has not Mr. Selous, the Mmrod of Africa, who was one of the first to open up unknown terri- K 145 BRITON AND BOER tories there, and . who is, according to Lord Crewe's testimony, intimately acquainted with all the leading political personages of the Dark Continent, uttered similar warnings ? Mr. Selous, himself an Imperialist, yields to none in his de- sire for England's greatness. Yet, though one of the very party which wants to have the vast British Empire still further en- larged, Mr. Selous also has given warning which unfortunately was not listened to. In a long letter to the Times, in which he refuted the many calumnies spread about in regard to the character of the Boer population — a letter writ- ten before the outbreak of the war, but the pub- lication of which he was ordered to withhold under an assurance given to him from influential quarters that the war would be avoided at the eleventh hour — he said : " At present I believe that the Dutch population of the Cape Colony are as a body thoroughly loyal to the British Crown ; but it cannot be denied that Dutch Afrikander sen- timent—the idea of becoming an independent nation— which was first aroused in South Africa by the unjust annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, and became stronger in 1880-81, gathered an extraordinary impetus at the time of the Jame- son Raid. A war forced upon the Transvaal now by a demand for concessions which, however moderate they may appear in this country; are yet thought by the leaders of the 146 EUROPEAN OPINION South African Dutch in the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State to be unreasonable, will, as soon as the blood of their kinsmen is shed beyond the Vaal, make one people of them — a people that will be from henceforth bitterly, though possibly for a long time to come passively, hostile to British domination. Such a contingency should surely be avoided if possible, and surely the matter in dispute between Mr. Krilger and the Uitlanders might be settled by a Court of Arbitration formed from among the highest jurists of all the different States of South Africa. But, of course, if all arbitration or discussion of the points in dispute should be arbitrarily refused by the Colonial Secretary, it is difiicult to see how war can be avoided ; for the Transvaal Boers are an obstinate people, and will probably rather flght than climb down very low. In that case we shall have entered upon a course which, though it may give us the gold-fields of the Transvaal for the present and the Immediate future, luill infallibly lose us the whole of South Africa as a British possession within the lifetime of many men who are now limng. Through arrogance and ignorance Great Britain lost her American Colonies, and if arrogance and ignorance prevail in the present conduct of affairs in South Africa, history will repeat itself in that counfrry." Arrogance and ignorance have prevailed. The blood-guiltiness of the war now raging lies, aoj cording to Mr. Selous's showing, at the door of the English Government. Arbitration would have prevented it. And arbitration between foreign Powers — of which Mv. Chamberlain ac- knowledged, in 1895-96, the South African 147 BRITON AND BOER Kepublic to be one — is perfectly feasible. But then he suddenly altered his stand-point. Con- trary to bis own clear assertion, he all at once declared, in open disregard of the Treaty of 1884, that England was the suzerain, the South Afri- can Republic the vassal. [ "When the lives of the captured Eaiders were at stake, and a sentence of death had legally to be pronounced against them at Pretoria, it was found convenient in London to treat President Kriiger with great courtesy. The Eepublic, which had escaped from a great danger, showed itself generous towards the prisoners. None of them was executed. Their sentences were com- muted to fines. Their leader was handed over to England. President Kriiger was praised by the Colonial Secretary for his magnanimity. I may mention here a personal incident show- ing what most people in England expected at the time. The son of a well-known English sculptor had been among Dr. Jameson's men, and was made prisoner at Kriigersdorp. His mother, whom I had met in society, came in great distress to my house, expressing a fear that her son would be shot forthwith ; she en- treated me to intercede with President Kriiger, with whom she had heard I was acquainted. I 148 EUROPEAN OPINION told her I was perfectly sure that no such fate would befall her son, and that the most likely thing — nay, I should say the certainty — was that he, being only one of the men and not an officer in the Eaid, would soon be released. Immedi- ately afterwards the news came that he was set free. In those days it was found useful in England to express hopes of " magnanimous " treatment being given to the prisoners; for everybody knew what would have been done by English justice to piratical raiders that had fallen into its hands. The capital punishment dealt out to raiders and insurgents in the Ionian Islands and in Canada is too well remembered to need spe- cial mention. Fearing the worst for Jameson and his companions, the English authorities were careful not to offend the South African Eepub- lic, but rather tried to humor it, so as to induce it to perform an act of generosity. Years after- wards, however, it was to be pushed into vassal- age, and bullied into armed resistance, so that its gold-fields might be seized after a conquest. It was lightly assumed that this would be an easy war. After recent events, the Times has avowed that the advisers of Government were rather mistaken in their view. 149 BRITON AND BOER "When the South African Eepublic at last mobihzed its militia forces of yeomen in defence of its independence, London papers declared that this was not war, but simply a revolt — a revolt of the vassal. "The Boer Eevolt" was used, day by day, as a title for the war news. The English Government itself refrained from men- tioning the word " war." The supporters of Government asserted that the sending out of 25,000, of 50,000, perhaps of Y0,000, men, or, if need be, eyen. more, was simply " a police meas- ure for the restoration of order " in the revolted territory of the suzerain. Imagine the consequences this would have had for the English soldiers now in Boer captivity if the Governments at Pretoria and Bloemfontein had taken reprisals for such treatment as mere " rebels." Happily, those Governments were more humane, and acted as belligerent foreign Powers towards their prisoners. Compare, again, the refusal of the English Gov- ernment to acknowledge these Eepublics as bel- ligerent Powers with what, in May, 1896, Mr. Chamberlain had said in the House of Commons : 150 EUROPEAN OPINION " In some quarters the idea is put forward that the Gov- ernment ought to have issued an ultimatum to President Krllger, an ultimatum which would have certainly been re- jected, and which must have led to war. Sir, I do not pro- pose to discuss such a contingency as that. A war in South Africa would be one of the most serious wars that could pos- sibly be waged. It would be in the nature of a civil war ; it would be a long war, a bitter war, and a costly war. It would leave behind it the embers of a strife which I believe generations would hardly be long enough to extinguish. To go to war with President Krilger in order to force upon him reforms in the internal affairs of his State, in which Secre- taries of State, standing in this place, have repudiated all right of interference — that would be a course of action as im- moral as it would have been unwise.'' Some months before that speech, which con- firms everything Mr. Selous has said, Mr. Cham- berlain declared in the House of Commons : "I do not say that under the terms of the Convention we are entitled to force reforms on President Kriiger, but we are entitled to give him friendly counsel. ... If this friendly counsel was not well received, there was not the slightest in- tention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to press it. ... I am perfectly willing to withdraw it, and to seek a dif- ferent solution if it should not prove acceptable to the Presi- dent. The rights of our action under the Convention are limited to the offering of friendly counsel, in the rejection of which, if it is not accepted, we must be quite willing to ac- quiesce.'' Mark that Mr. Chamberlain here spoke in 151 BRITON AND BOER February, 1896, of the Convention — not of " Con- ventions." That latter idea came as an after- thought to him in 1897. In 1896, he still again said, when speaking of the Franchise Question : " The answer that has hitherto been given, not on the part of the Government of the Transvaal, but on the part of some of its friends, was that to grant this request would be to commit suicide, inasmuch as, the moment the majority got the franchise, the first use they would make of it would be to turn out the existing Government of the Transvaal and substitute a Government of their own liking. [' Hear, hear,' and laughter.] I confess I thought there was some reason in that objection. It is rather ditficult to attempt to persuade any one so capable as President Kriiger that it would be desirable that he should proceed to his own extinction, and accordingly I brought before him an alternative suggestion which, at all events, would relieve him from that difficulty. . . . The question is, whether President Kriiger will consider that that proposal will endanger the security of the Transvaal Government. If he does, he will be perfectly justified in rejecting it." In subsequent speeches, Mr. Chamberlain once more laid stress on the fact of the Dutch popu- lation being the large majority in South Africa, and on the great danger of the policy of going to war in opposition to the Dutch sentiment in the Cape Colony and in the Orange Free State. Even as late as August, 1896, answering Sir Ashmead Bartlett, Mr. Chamberlain said : 152 EUEOPEAN OPINION "What is the policy which the honorable gentleman would put forward if he were standing here in my place ? We know what it would be. He would send, in the first ^laee, an ultimatum to President Krtlger that unless the reforms which he was specifying were granted by a par- ticular date the British Government would interfere by force. Then, I suppose, he would come here and ask this House for a vote of £10,000,000 or £30,000,000— it does not matter particularly which [laughter] — and would send an army of 10,000 men, at the very least, to force Presi- dent Krllger to grant reforms in regard to which not only this Government, but successive Secretaries of State, have pledged themselves repeatedly that they would have noth- ing to do with its internal affairs. That is the policy of the honorable gentleman. That is not my policy." Is it not ? Instead of 10,000 men, 25,000 are now out there, with double that number, or more, to follow. A vote for £10,000,000 has been taken; and another will, in all likelihood, have to be asked for. All the declarations for- merly made have thus been falsified. VI A word has now to be said about that al- leged Boer " oligarchy " of which men con- temptuously speak, who submissively salaam before the most antiquated forms and institu- 153 BRITON AND BOER tions of a Monarchy which still calls itself " by right divine," though in historical truth it is the issue of a successful Whig aristocratic Kevolu- tion. The Boer oligarchy of the South African Ee- public is composed of simple farmers, every man of whom, from the age of sixteen up to sixty — nay, even mere boys of thirteen and men past seventy — stand together now on blood -soaked battle-fields for the defence of their country. That is their " corrupt " way of doing things. They have to meet the hired soldiers of an Em- pire in which, even after many hard popular struggles, "a hereditary oligarchy" — as Sir Wilfrid Lawson called it a few days ago — still wields an extraordinary political and social pow- er, while the Crown, going on the old Norman maxim, "Dieu et mon droit" declares war and makes peace according to its own fancy. I remember the time — it was long before Mr. Chamberlain had entered political life — when, out of about nine or ten million adult men in the United Kingdom, not more than one million had the vote. Strictly speaking, there were perhaps only eight hundred thousand to nine hundred thousand ; for there were, as there are still, cumu- lative votes which an individual might possess. 154 EUROPEAN OPINION Elections not taking place everywhere on the same day, a man might cast his vote here and there, in town and country — as a householder, as a land-owner, as a member of a university, and so forth. "What repeated violent struggles has it cost during the last thirty-five years — not to mention the Chartist agitation between the thirties and the beginning of the fifties — in order to obtain successive small instalments of electoral reform ! I have vividly before my mind's eye the day when London was on the verge of revolution. I saw my friend, Mr. Edmund Beales, the leader of the Suffrage movement, sitting, before the march of the masses to Hyde Park, in the office of the Keform League, pale from excitement, with hat drawn over his brow, expecting, in much anxiety, the very worst. The Queen's troops were lying in ambush to prevent the entrance of the masses into the Park. Blood, it was feared, would be spilled, and unspeakable scenes of riot would then occur in those quarters of the work- ing classes where there is an admixture of the criminal element. The railings of Hyde Park were on that day thrown down by the onset of the tumultuous crowds, an event at which I was personally present. Fortunately, the Queen, at 155 BRITON AND BOER the last moment, countermanded the order for the action of the troops. So I heard afterwards from a friend in the "War Office. Again London had to be the scene of mass demonstrations, years afterwards, in order to carry a measure for the partial enfranchisement of the rural population. To this day, neverthe- less, there is no manhood suffrage. Some three to four millions are outside the pale of the elec- torate. I state this as a simple fact, knowing well enough that an indiscriminate right of suf- frage among the utterly uninstructed may some- times be the very means of overthrowing freedom and hindering intellectual and social progress. But if considerations like these have weight with politicians in England, is a young African Eepublic, in its struggle for life, not entitled to look round as well, in franchise matters, for the sake of avoiding danger ? England has an hereditary House of Lords, which may cancel any Act passed by the Kep- resentatives of the People. Is that oligarchy, or not? Is it right, broadly speaking, to assume that capacity for legislation goes by heredity ? I believe England has escaped from a great public danger through the rejection of Mr. Gladstone's Home Eule Bill. But I doubt whether the House 156 EUROPEAN OPINION of Lords, in thus acting, was moved exclusively by patriotic instincts, so many of its members having landed estates in Ireland, and being rather fond of retaining their oligarchical privileges. Since the Norman conquest, the real tillers of the English soil have been dispossessed of the land. Their number continually decreases. They are mere hands, landless wage-laborers, living in cottages not their own, from which they may be driven out, week by week, if it so pleases the aristocratic land-owner or the large farmer he has put over them. Is it for a country with such feudal land - laws, the like of which does not exist in any European country, to speak of the free yeomen of the Boer Commonwealths as an " oligarchy " ? Again, looking at the ever - increasing prole- tariate in the unwholesomely expanding large towns, to which the landless laborers flock for better means of support, would it not be better to deal in England itself with the root of a crying evil than to fall upon a foreign Eepublic under the false plea of an oligarchy holding sway there ? BKITON AND BOER VII The Dutch people of Cape Colony, according to Mr. Chamberlain's statement, made as late as April, 1896, " are just as loyal to the throne and to the British connection as, let me say, our French-Canadian fellow-subjects in the Dominion of Canada." In a speech made two months be- fore, he said : " We are constantly reminded of the fact that our Dutch fellow-citizens are in a majority in South Africa, and I think I may say for myself as for my predecessor that we are pre- pared to go as far as Dutch sentiment will support us. It is a very serious thing — a matter involving most serious con- siderations—if we are asked to go to war in opposition to Dutch sentiment." , The loyalty of that population at the Cape was publicly acknowledged in England when its Legislature made a yearly grant of £30,000 for increasing the English fleet in view of a possible conflict with France. This is an occurrence'of quite recent date. Yet, all of a sudden, the waters were said to have been troubled, and the world was mysteriously told about a tremendous conspiracy for establishing a vast Afrikander Eepublic, involving the overthrow of English 15§ EUROPEAN OPINION dominion at the Cape ! For which deep reason the Transvaal was to be fallen upon, because there was the high seat of a great ambition. A sorrier farce it would have been impossible to concoct. It is the auri sacra fames, the damnable hun- ger after gold,, which has brought about this ter- rible war, in which, at any moment, the savage native races may come up to play their part with barbarous ferocity, to the terror and destruction of women and children left helpless in solitary farms. Is it to be wondered at that the kinsmen of the Transvaal people at the Cape, and in their original home in the Netherlands, are filled with indignation and deep wrath, and that there is an echo in the indignant voice of the whole civilized world ? Every close observer who has visited South Africa, even when going there with a biased mind, has usually come back with the conviction that it was in England's own interest not to act again as the aggressor towards the Transvaal Eepublio. England obtained forcible possession of the Cape Colony while Holland was overrun by France and lay under her iron heel. The Dutch inhabitants of that Colony, whose fore- fathers had created the settlement and intro- 159 BRITON AND BOER duoed laws and institutions which hold good to this day, felt for a long time the foreign yoke imposed upon them. They, nevertheless, be- came, in course of time, perfectly loyal to the connection with England. This loyalty was put to a severe strain when that section of the Dutch inhabitants which first emigrated to Natal and then to the land beyond the river Yaal was relentlessly pursued by English troops. The strain became still more severe by the lawless overthrow in 1877 of the Transvaal Ke- public, in the midst of its difficulties with the black natives. When in 1881 — after several de- feats of English detachments, chiefly at Majuba Hill — peace was concluded and a compromise effected, the Dutch population at the Cape ap- plauded this tardy and even incomplete act of justice. Tardy and incomplete it was, for Mr. Gladstone, shortly before entering office, had characterized the annexation effected by Mr. Disraeli as a deed of downright " insanity," and acknowledged the right of the Boers to the res- toration of their full independence in the most uncompromising terms. Among those who had opposed the conclusion of peace in 1881 after the battle of Majuba Hill was the late Lord Kandolph Churchill, a Con- 160 EUEOPEAN OPINION servative. Having in later years visited South Africa, he saw his error. This is what he wrote in Men, Mines, and Animals in South Africa : "The surrender of the Transvaal, and the peace con- cluded by Mr. Gladstone with the victors of Majuba Hill, were at the time, and still'are, the object of sharp criticism and bitter denunciation from many politicians at home, quorum, pars panafui. Better and more precise information, combined with cool reflection, leads me to the conclusion that had the British Government of that day taken advantage of its strong military position and annihilated, as it could easily have done, the Boer forces, it would indeed have regained the Transvaal, but it might have lost the Cape Colony. The Dutch sentiment in the Colony had been so exasperated by what it considered to be the unjust, faithless, and arbitrary policy pursued towards the free Dutchmen of the Transvaal by Sir Barlle Freie, SirTheophilus Shepstone, and Sir Owen Lanyon that the final triumph of the British arms, merely by brute force, would have permanently and hopelessly alienated it from Great Britain. Parliamentary government in a coun- try where the Dutch control the Parliament would have be- come impossible, and without Parliamentary government Cape Colony would be ungovernable. The actual mag- nanimity of the peace with the Boers concluded by Mr. Gladstone's Ministry after two humiliating military reverses suffered by the arms under their control, became plainly ap- parent to the just and sensible mind of the Dutch Cape Col- onist, atoned for much of past grievance, and demonstrated the total absence in the English mind of any hostility or un- friendliness to the Dutch race. Concord between Dutch and English in the Colony from that moment became possible, L 161 BEITON AND BOER and that concord the Government of Mr. Khodes inaggurated and has since to all appearances firmly riveted." Lord Kandolph Churchill wrote that before the Kaid which Mr. Rhodes treacherously organized, after having attained to power at the Cape by the Dutch. It is easy to imagine what the late Tory, statesman would have written on that sub- ject after the disgraceful event. The conviction with which Lord Randolph Churchill became imbued, after he had studied matters on the spot, that the Transvaal would have been over- come, but that the Cape Colony might have been lost, is certainly a notable one in a Conservative. One thing only he forgot. Not only had Mr. Gladstone to think of the feelings of the Dutch population in the Colony, but also of the tre- mendous Irish difficulty in which England was then involved. It was a difficulty so great that it could scarcely be mastered by a garrison of 40,000 men in the unruly Sister Isle. Nowhere is greater regret expressed at the ex- isting state of things than among those German Liberal Constitutionalists who until now had steadfastly stood by England, trying to uphold her as an example of representative Government in opposition to their own Government's doings. 163 EUEOPEAN OPINION They now turn away sorrowfully — nay, with ex- pressions of open disgust. It is with a greater sorrow than I can express that I have written all this. I deeply feel the danger to which this country, in which I have spent the better part of my life, has exposed it- self with a light heart, in spite of an ever more darkening prospect of the future. But though so many ties bind me to England — nay, I will say for that very reason — I hold it to be a duty to speak out fearlessly, even as I did against Gov- ernments of my own native country when they outraged right and justice and kept Italians and Hungarians under their iron heel. This is the duty which I owe to the better England; and here I fulfil it. Kakl Blind. THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION In considering this question we must push aside as irrelevant the reason given for the recent demand upon the Transvaal. This, it will be re- membered, was the wrongs of the foreigners there. The negotiation started with the presen- tation of a petition, ostensibly signed by these Uitlanders, imploring the Queen to consider their " wrongs " and to obtain redress. The British Government called the attention of its High Commissioner to this request and asked him to confer with the Transvaal Government. This resulted in a conference. The main demand made by the British Agent was for a shorter residence for these foreigners to render them eligible for the franchise. Britain wished five years' residence; the Transvaal proposed seven. The difference not being great, it was generally supposed that subsequent negotiations would re- sult in a compromise and all would be well. Subsequently, five years was offered by Presi- dent Kriiger, under conditions which the British 164 THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION Agent at Pretoria, Mr. Greene, stated he thought his Government would accept, and which, Mr. Chamberlain admitted, conceded nine-tenths of British demands. This franchise demand was very soon seen to be a flimsy foundation for Britain to rest action upon, because it placed her in the attitude of laboring for increased facihties for her own sub- jects to denationalize themselves and become subjects of the Transvaal. The public in Great Britain, however, did not see for a time that the Uitlanders' wrongs were merely an excuse for raising the real issue. The London Times, how- ever, from near the very beginning, and con- tinually as the negotiations proceeded, did not fail to state that this whole business of franchise for Uitlanders did not reach the problem, which was, in short, whether the British or the Dutch were to control South Africa. When Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Morley, and Sir Edward Clarke demonstrated that " the su- zerainty " of Britain was abolished by the ex- isting Convention, the Times boldly replied that this was a matter not at all depending upon such subtle legal considerations, and stood, as before stated, upon the broad issue, Briton versus Boer. In this the Times was quite right; such is the 165 BKITON AND BOER issue and none other. Hor is it a new one. It was the issue in the last war between Britain and the Transvaal, in which the former was worsted, and there is no other issue in this war. It is the fashion to-day to censure Mr. Glad- stone's decision to end the last Transvaal war, and concede to the Boer, as the practical fruits of victory, the independence of the Bepublio. A party in Britain held then, as it holds now, that the war should have been continued, " Majuba Hill " avenged, and British ascendency then firm- ly established. Mr. Gladstone's critics to-day describe him as having acted under the influence of sentiment as opposed to practical politics and giving way to the natural dislike of a great em- pire to push matters to extremes against a few Boers. In this the writer thinks they do Mr. Gladstone grave injustice as a statesman. Much to this great man's credit, he was more open to the charge of magnanimous treatment of other nations than most British statesmen ; but Mr. Glajdstone had the advice of the ablest men con- versant with the situation in South Africa, when he decided that force, in this case, was no remedy ; that far-seeing statesmanship required that the Dutch element be conciliated, not destroyed, if it were ever to be amicably merged into the 166 THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION British. There have always been two parties advising different courses in regard to this serious question. There were two in Mr. Gladstone's time and there are two to-day — one urging peace, the other war. The situation may be thus described: The Dutch settled in the Cape nearly 250 years ago, and were the dominant power. Britain subse- quently took the Cape as a harbor on the route to India, and has remained in power. The Dutch race has settled there, is to-day increasing rapidly, and has made South Africa its home. Sufficient time has elapsed for successive genera- tions of the Dutch strain to be reared there, who now call themselves " Afrikanders " and have a strong league, the soul of which is the idea that Africa belongs to the Afrikanders — to those who were born there, whether British or Dutch. Britain is too prosperous at home to furnish many emigrants in our day to any foreign lands. The few who do leave Britain usually prefer Canada or the United States, those who land in the former generally gravitating to the more genial south. In the Cape Colony, the principal of the four divisions of South Africa, the Dutch are largely in the majority, which is the case also in the Orange Free State. In Natal there 167 BRITON AND BOER are only a few thousand British. In the Trans- vaal there were scarcely any people but the Dutch, until the discovery of the mines, which have attracted foreigners from all nations, until to-day, by counting all foreigners as British, there may be a small majority against the Dutch ; but these are not all British ; some es- timate that there are not more than six thou- sand Britons among the miners. Those of other nationalities do not side with the British as against the Dutch. The vast majority of these, as well as of the British, are opposed to the present attack upon the Transvaal. Of this there can be no doubt. These people are work- ing in the mines, receiving enormous wages, and only wish to be let alone. They do not wish to become burghers in order to vote ; especially is this true of the British. I have peculiar means of knowing this. Several of the tenants upon my Skibo estates have sons or brothers in the mines, and I have from time to time been in- formed of the letters which they write home. There is one now in charge of an important mine whose letters are most significant. He stated to his father, in one of these, what I have already said, and that the Britons liked the Boers, and did not wish to become burghers. They were 168 THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION there as Britons to make money, and finally to return to their own home. They wanted no franchise. He stated that the petition to Her Majesty praying her to interfere was not gen- erally signed by the Britons, and that many of the foreigners signed the petition believing that it had reference to some dreaded temperance legislation in which they were deeply concerned. I have also met Transvaal students who at- tend the Edinburgh medical schools. One of these was born in Britain, and his parents took him when young to Cape Colony. His father is a judge. Another, who was born in the Cape, of English parents, is the son of a member of the Cape Assembly. These young men have since returned to their homes to fight for the coming " South African Republic," which they expect, and which shall be independent of all foreign Powers, Britain included. Now the question which presented itself to Mr. Gladstone in the last war presented itself to-day to the present Government of Britain, and there were not wanting now, as there were not wanting then, some of the ablest and most experienced British ofiicials who counselled the pursuance of the policy which Mr. Gladstone had adopted. They reason thus: ""We, the 169 BRITON AND BOER British, are in a minority in South Africa, which is becoming greater and greater year by year, as the Dutch residents multiply, and we receive but few of our own countrymen as settlers, most of those who do come being only temporary resi- dents, looking forward always to the arrival of the day when they have secured enough upon which to return to their own home. The home of the Dutch in the Cape is Africa. Our true policy now, the only policy open to us, which promises a chance of our becoming and remain- ing the paramount Power, is one of co-operation and of friendliness with the more numerous and constantly increasing Dutch. We must trust to the superior qualities of our race, peaceably exer- cised, to its ability to rise to the top and to control affairs, and to the merging of the two races into the coming South African, the prod- uct of a union of Dutch and British." The late Commander-in-Chief of the British forces at the Cape, General Butler, was, and is still, esteemed by many as a wise Governor, but he differed from the present Government as to the true policy, and he was called home. The British Agent at Pretoria, Mr. Greene, assured the Transvaal Government that he believed the proposal they made would be acceptable to his 170 N THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION Government. It is no secret that Mr. Greene's policy was not that of Mr. Chamberlain, although while Mr. Greene remains in the diplomatic ser- vice there can be no expression of the difference of his views. Neither can General Butler enter into public controversy with his Government. These are servants of the Government and must be silent, although disgraced. ' The policy now adopted is that of forcing the issue, raising a racial war, and suppressing Dutch aspirations. This policy was attractive when it was believed that the mere decision to send a full army corps of thirty-five thousand men to sup- plement the British forces in South Africa would so appall the Dutch element that it would never raise a finger in the face of such tremendous forces against them, feeling that it would be madness to do so. This was the belief prevalent in England. It was reported that the new Gen- eral-in-Chief assured Her Majesty when he took his departure that the British flag would wave over Pretoria by Christmas. Warnings were not wanting that the conflict might not be restricted to the Transvaal Repub- lic if the race issue were the cry, and that the Orange Free State Eepublic, which is Dutch to the core, might join forces with her neighbor, 171 BRITON AND BOER that thousands of fighting men from the Cape Colony, also overwhelmingly Dutch, might flock to the Dutch standard, were the race question pressed home. The war party took no heed of such dangers, and the able Britons who, knowing the situation, saw these possibilities were only rebuked for their baseless fears. It was believed by most that it would be a mere parade to the Boer capital. Attention was everywhere called to the fact that no such stu- pendous force ever left the shores of England. This was not the opinion of the party who coun- selled the continuance of Mr. Gladstone's pacific policy. These, as it has since been proved, knew the situation. "What they feared has come to pass. To-day a second army corps of thirty-five thousand men is already found necessary, and is soon to sail, Britain thus denuding herself of proper reserves and laying London open, as a French critic has recently said, to an attack by a few thousand men. It is not to be a parade as expected ; quite the reverse. This racial dispute promises to prove as severe a strain upon Britain as the Crimean war, and Lord Salisbury's successor may say of it, as he has recently said of that war, that it 173 THE SOUTH AFEICAN QUESTrON was " one in which Britain put its money upon the wrong horse." That the resources of Britain, if fully drawn upon, can ultimately overpower the Dutch temporarily need not be questioned, but whether the end attained can justify the sacrifice seems open to question. It does not appear to the writer that it can pos- sibly do so, because the suppression of the Dutch element to-day, if such be the result, will accom- plish nothing permanent, if the situation is to remain as before described and the Dutch are to remain in South Africa as residents and increase rapidly, being a very prolific race, and the British are not to emigrate to South Africa in great num- bers, and also settle there and increase. The result must inevitably be that the Dutch will be in a majority, growing constantly greater. Even more important than this is the fact that the peo- ple born in Africa must more and more desire to rule themselves. It will be found very hard to drive out of the mind of an Afrikander, whether of British or Dutch extraction, the idea that the country belongs to those who are born in it. The native-born must inevitably draw together and become one race, firm against any foreign race. Should Britain endeavor to hold sway in South Africa through free institutions — such govern- 173 BEITON AND BOER ment, for instance, as Canada and Australia have — then the Parliament becomes Afrikander, as that of Cape Colony now is, as the Parliament of Canada is Canadian, and the Parliament of Australia Australian — with the difference that in Canada and Australia the people have no cause to be opposed to Britain, and there is no racial question involved. People living in Canada and Australia have not been crushed by a foreign power of different race from beyond the sea, which assumes to dominate them. Besides this, Britain disclaims all wish to hold either Canada or Australia against its will ; for its protectorate over Canada and Australia it has the indispu- table requirement, the consent of the governed. It is there by the wish of all sections of the in- habitants. The war party made much of President Krii- ger's so-called ultimatum, but the wonder is not that this was issued, but that it was so long de- layed. War was practically declared when Britain began the movement of large bodies of troops tow- ards the borders of the Orange Free State, and to points which hemmed the Transvaal in. An English military critic said before the ultimatum came that for the Transvaal to allow these masses of soldiers to press closer daily would be military 174 THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION insanity. The British continued to mass troops, confident that the Transvaal authorities would never take up the challenge. When they did so the British forces were still unprepared. The right of Britain to attack the Dutch simply because they were rapidly increasing in South Africa and promised soon under free institu- tions to regain their lost control, need not be considered. If the real issue be Briton versus Dutch, as it is admitted now to be by Britain, she stands condemned before the civilized world. Her conduct is indefensible and her policy fool- ish. No nation has a right to attack and en- deavor to suppress a people so capable of self- government as the Dutch, and force its own supremacy, although in a minority. So much for the moral question. And as for the policy, the attempt must ultimately fail ; for, sooner or later, the more numerous race will prevail. Hence the folly of departing from Mr. Glad- stone's course. It does not seem to the writer that to plunge South Africa into a racial war, in an endeavor to suppress the Dutch, is the best and surest way to insure the peaceful and satisfactory para- mountcy of Britain. On the contrary, he be- lieves that Mr. Gladstone was well advised years 175 BRITON AND BOER ago to adopt the policy of peaceful co-operation ; that Lord Salisbury was equally well advised re- cently by able servants of the Crown in South Africa to continue Mr. Gladstone's wise course and avoid raising the dangerous racial issue. It is probable that Britain will have good rea- son, before the contest ends, and even after it ends in a supposed victory, to ponder Shake- speare's words : "When force and gentleness play for a kingdom. The gentle gamester will the sooner win." Andeew Caenegie. WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE IN THE WAR? Feom one end of Continental Europe to the other public sentiment is, we will not say hostile, but certainly opposed to England in regard to the war which she has just inaugurated against the little South African Republic. We believe there is not a single exception to this general statement — or, at least, no national exception, for there are, of course, individual ones. The con- viction is current everywhere that England has been the real aggressor, although the actual rupt- ure of the peace was the act of the Transvaal. The real author of a war is considered to be that nation which by its deliberate procedure has rendered it inevitable. Now, even if the Trans- vaal has committed, in its policy, or, rather, in its domestic administration, blunders and faults which have served England as a pretext, nobody doubts that she has looked forward to the ap- proach of war with apprehension and sadness, and that she has done all that was in her power M 177 BRITON AND BOER to avert the scourge. The idea that the Trans- vaal desired the conflict and coolly provoked it cannot enter the mind of any reasonable man. Not so with England. The superiority of her strength — great indeed, though she may have had an exaggerated estimate of its immediate efficiency in a war of this kind — was an encour- agement and a temptation to her. Hence the universal opinion in Europe is that nothing would have been easier for her than to avoid war if she had the will or even the serious desire, and that the war broke out because she did not have the desire and the will to prevent it. The odium of being the aggressor, therefore, falls upon her, and this odium could be dissipated only by a clear and cogent demonstration that great wrongs were on the side of the Transvaal. This does not mean that no wrong is appar- ent on the part of the latter, for there even was a time when public sentiment was greatly op- posed to the Eepublic. Probably all that would have been required on the part of England was to foster that sentiment and use it as a lever; but she neglected it and preferred the use of force. From the time of the Jameson Eaid, the sympathies of all have been with the Transvaal. That act was so disloyal and so brutal that it 178 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? could not and did not fail to arouse unqualified reprobation. However, it soon appeared clear that all was not right at Johannesburg and that the situation of the Uitlanders there was intoler- able in certain respects. If they exploited the country, the Boers for their part exploited them, taxing them by all known means of oppression and .refusing them rights which might serve them as means of defence and protection. The complaints of the Uitlanders then appeared legit- imate, and if they found an echo all over Eu- rope, that echo was perhaps more distinct in France than anywhere else, and for the simple reason that about fifteen hundred millions of francs of French money are employed in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. A reform in the inner situation of the Transvaal was therefore necessary, and it began to be demand- ed more and more imperiously, when the Eng- lish Grovernment took the matter in hand. Its intervention was at first hailed with favor; the happiest results were expected. But it was soon found that England was placing other interests of a different character alongside and even above the economic interests of the Uitlanders ; in a word, that under cover of defending a general cause, she had in view a 179 BRITON AND BOER merely personal one which was entirely polit- ical. The diplomatic publications, which followed in large numbers, confirmed this feeling, and it became evident when the results of the interview at Bloemfontein were made known. It was a surprise to hear that Sir Alfred Milner demanded for foreigners rights which were almost exclu- sively political, or, rather, electoral. The ex- treme importance which was attached in these discussions to the question whether the plenary, right to vote should be enjoyed by the Uit- landers after five years of residence, or after seven or still more, seemed out of all propor- tion to the practical interest involved. In fact, the Uitlanders would have been perfectly satis- fied with the granting of certain municipal rights in the Eaud that were connected with the needs of their daily life, and they proba- bly cared more for the unhindered continuation of their original nationality than for the acquisi- tion of a new one which they would afterwards have laid aside again as soon as possible. They protested, for example, against certain monopo- lies, which were positively oppressive, such as the dynamite monopoly. These, however, were hardly mentioned at Bloemfontein. Sir Alfred 180 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? Milner, faithful to the instructions he had re- ceived from Mr. Chamberlain, laid down a politi- cal basis for the question ; that is to say, a basis on which it was sure to clash with another — namely, that of the internal sovereignty of the Transvaal, which the treaties had perhaps left in doubt, and which could not be touched, especial- ly at such a moment, without extreme danger. From that day, people began to wonder whether England really meant to bring about a peaceful settlement, and they soon reached a negative conclusion. President Kriiger clearly understood the case, and he would have done better if he had accepted the first propositions of the English. He would have placed them in a diflBcult situation by obliging them to declare themselves satisfied or to show their hands. These propositions were not such as could not be accepted, for he had to accept them later, unfortunately too late. The English had already formulated others. Mr. Chamberlain's adroitness consisted in continually shifting the ground, in constantly inventing new • and more exorbitant demands until he tired out Mr. Kriiger and induced him to say that he would grant everything provided the indepen- dence of the Transvaal were preserved. But Mr. Chamberlain immediately replied that the Trans- 181 BRITON AND BOER vaal was not an independent State, that it was a rebellious vassal, and that Great Britain could no longer tolerate its attitude of revolt. The words which the British Minister used were wil- fully insulting and stinging. If the Transvaal had been able up to this time to entertain the slightest doubt as to her adversary's intentions, that doubt was now dissipated. "War had be- come inevitable. It was then that a revulsion of European opin- ion took place in favor of the Transvaal. In France especially — and America will not be sur- prised at that — there is a love of countries that struggle for their independence, that are ready to stake all in order to acquire or maintain it. And so the sympathies of the people went out to the brave little Republic. At the same time they were curious to know for what reasons the Eng- lish Government desired and brought about a rupture, and these reasons were not found to be very edifying. It is certain that money, the thirst for material wealth, has had much to do with the sad outcome. When blood is shed for gold, when cupidity is combined with cruelty, the conscience of mankind is revolted. It is thought in Europe that the affairs of the Chartered Company were dull and on the point of becoming poor ; that a 183 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? crash was already threatening ; that Mr. Cecil Ehodes's bold speculations were about to end in a catastrophe in which a large part of the Eng- lish aristocracy would have been involved. The Chartered Company had to be saved at any cost, and the only chance of saving it was by war. That was, perhaps, the principal motive that brought about this decision. But there was an- other. For various reasons there is great dis- content in the English colonies of South Africa, which, without Impairing their loyalty, showed itself in the last elections by a movement which put the Afrikanders in power. Now the Afri- kanders are the friends and relatives of the Boers in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The same blood flows in their veins and appeals to their imaginations. By reason of its indepen- dence the Transvaal was, as it were, the pivot about which all sorts of discontent collected. So this independence had to be crushed, and England determined to crush it, being convinced that when that task was accomplished the impatience of the Afrikanders would be checked, submission would be general, and all the dangers of the future would be averted. It will be understood that these considerations, some of which, moreover, do not appear on the sur- 183 BRITON AND BOER face, have had a different effect on public opinion in England and in the rest of Europe. "We have stated what the latter was ; but between it and the conclusion that it will lead to an intervention between England and the Transvaal there is a very long step, especially when we attempt to decide what Government will be driven to inter- vene ; indeed, the step is so long that it will not be taken. When a conflagration breaks out nowadays, the first thought of everybody is to confine and localize it — that is to say, not to interfere; and the principle of non-inter- vention has never been so much in favor as at this conclusion of our century. It was believed in America during the war with Spain that there existed in Europe, or at least on the part of some of the Powers, ,some desire to intervene diplo- matically if not by force of arms. It was stated that England had objected, and so prevented any manifestation of ill-will. This idea, which was adroitly exploited by those who might profit by it, was absolutely erroneous. The tendency to-day is to form a ring around the combatants without meddling with their quarrel, until they have had enough, and themselves solicit the good offices of one or more Powers. Even in the last war between Greece and Turkey, notwithstand- 184 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? ing the general sympathy with Greece, Europe ■waited patiently until Greece was beaten, and did not intervene until requested to do so. Even then Europe interfered only because she knew that Turkey was quite willing, that after having gain- ed some glory Turkey also desired the end of a war from which no other profit was to be derived. We do not say that that was very chivalrous, but so it was ; such are the new ways of countries which have all become more or less democratic and subject to military service. To bring them out of their apathy, it requires some important, evident, urgent self-interest, for the Old World is now governed by selfishness far more than by generous sentiment. Now, we do not see that there is any Power which is sufficiently interest- ed, near or far, in the Anglo-Transvaal war to impose or even spontaneously to propose inter- vention. If France, for example, had a mind to pick a quarrel with England, or even to accept quarrels which England seemed to seek, she would have had better opportunities. We need not speak of Austria — the smallest of the great Powers from a maritime point of view, and abso- ] utely insignificant as regards colonies ; no Power could be less interested in what is going on in a continent where she does not possess an inch 185 BKITON AND BOEK of territory. As for Italy, she calls herself Eng- land's friend, and perhaps believes it herself, notwithstanding the absolute sterility mingled with some mortification that this friendship has brought her. She can certainly not be suspected of preparing any move that might embarrass England, or that would be regarded by the latter as anything but an entirely friendly act. There remain Eussia and Germany. Evidently Russia cannot be regarded as indif- ferent like Austria, or as following in the wake of Great Britain, like Italy. But what interest has she in Africa? "We should be tempted to say that she has not any if it were not inevita- ble for so great a Power to have some interests everywhere, either directly or indirectly. It is known, moreover, that certain common religious tendencies have awakened her traditional sym- pathies with Abyssinia; but they are quite platonic. In reality, Russia's entire efforts are concentrated in Asia, and it is quite true that she there encounters England at several points as an obstacle or a limit. England and Russia may, therefore, consider themselves as eventual enemies in an undetermined future, which is, however, probably remote. Both have in these latter times made so many mutual concessions 186 WILL THE POWEKS INTERVENE? as to suggest that they entertain a sincere desire not to offend each other. If it were not so, we might say of Russia what we said of France, that more favorable opportunities than the pres- ent one have not been lacking ; as she refrained then, she will certainly refrain now. The only secret desire she may be supposed to harbor is that England may remain occupied and in a certain measure absorbed as long as possible by the Transvaal war; but for that it is only necessary to let her alone. There is no need of any intervention. Indeed, if such intervention were successful, England would at once have her South African army disengaged for other pur- poses. Who can tell but she might then be tempted to use it elsewhere, either in consequence of her present warlike impulse, or because, when that impulse has been suddenly arrested at one point, she might attempt to seek revenge or compensation at another. And it does not seem that Eussia would be the gainer. As for Germany, she is perhaps the country in which the unscrupulous policy of England has been condemned most vehemently. Her news- " papers have distinguished themselves by the bitterness which they have mingled with their anger. But we are not now speaking of the 187 BRITON AND BOER opinions of the people — that is unanimous, as we have said — but of the attitude of the Govern- ments. Governments can think and feel like peoples without speaking like them, and, above all, without acting according to their feelings. In Germany, since the time of Kant, and even before, a great difference has always been made between pure reason and practical rea- son, and they are all the more apt to give themselves up to the speculations of the former the less they know how to avail themselves of the latter. For how many centuries did not Germany tend towards unity without making the energetic effort that would bring it to a con- summation? Her thinkers and her poets wrote about it long before her men of action seriously thought of pursuing it, as Eismarck said, with fire and sword — that is to say, by the only means suitable for its accomplishment. "We must not, then, believe that Germany is ready to act when she speaks, and only because she speaks; but judging from her history, it is perfectly permis- sible to believe that she does not speak in vain, but bides her time. Her true feelings towards England are not feelings of sympathy ; one is often tempted to believe that they are quite the contrary, but the time has not yet come to make 188 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? them the rule of her policy. In this respect William II. is the true representative of his na- tion. He does not like England, and she can hardly be in doubt on this point ; for, whether impelled by the ardor of his temperament or the exuberance of his speech, he has not hesitated on numerous occasions to speak his mind freely. In this matter, Germany and her Emperor obey an instinct which does not deceive them. It is al- most inevitable, unless the two countries are al- ways governed by very able and very pacific statesmen, that their conflicting interests will sooner or later provoke a quarrel. The Emperor is well aware of it, and it is on this account that he insists with passionate obstinacy on the de- velopment of his navy. It is his fixed idea, which continually besets him; even when he himself imagines that it has given him a respite, it sud- denly springs up again in his mind and lays hold of him like a nightmare. It is well known at what cost he succeeded last year in inducing the Reichstag to adopt his naval sexennial bill. It was then generally believed, and he no doubt be- lieved it too, that thereafter he would need to ask for nothing more for six years; but lo! on the 18th of October last, he uttered a new note of alarm and distress at Hamburg, and once 189 BRITON AND BOER more denounced the insufficiency of bis navy for sustaining the policy which would enable Ger- many to work out her manifest destiny. T^e ver}' next day the Government papers announced that further very important and very heavy ap- propriations would be asked of the Keichstag to carry out a scheme of naval construction laid out not for a space of only six, but for seventeen years. Will the Eeichstag grant these appropria- tions, and once for all shackle not only its own liberty, but that of three subsequent legislatures in order to conform to the imperial plan ? "We do not know ; at any rate, there will be great resistance, but the Government is not without the means of overcoming it. "What are we to conclude from all this, but that a Hohenzollern once more seeks ' to give Germany, even in spite of herself, the means of realizing her violent but vague aspira- tions ? He for his part shares these aspirations, but in his position, with the sense of the re- sponsibility that he would incur by hasty and in- adequate execution, he sees very clearly and feels very keenly that he still lacks the means of action. So he negotiates with England on the subject of the east coast of Africa ; he seeks to obtain by diplomacy what he cannot take by force; he goes to London to see his old grand- 190 nil. L. S JA.\rKSON WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? mother. In short, he restrains himself, and we are quite convinced that he will continue to re- strain himself and that he will not intervene in the present war. England will therefore be allowed to fight out her quarrel with the Transvaal to the end, and the disparity of strength of the two combatants is so great that the weaker must infallibly suc- cumb. But whatever may happen hereafter, the Transvaal will not succumb without glory. The boldness with which she declared war because she was resigned to die rather than voluntarily surrender her independence, the coolness she has shown on the battle-field, and the first successes which have demonstrated her courage — all this will be recorded to her credit in history. But she will be conquered. To make this outcome doubtful, the Afrikanders would have to rise and make common cause with the Boers. Then the situation would assume some resemblance to that which arose in America at the close of last cen- tury; but even then, if England persisted in the struggle, she would undoubtedly win. Only the war, which even now threatens to be a long one, would then be greatly protracted ; it would be marked by greater atrocities ; in short, the situ- ation would long remain in suspense, and the 191 BRITON AND BOER problem of the difficulties and the remedies which England has encountered in Ireland — a problem referred to by the few orators of the Liberal opposition — might easily be again real- ized. In that case, which we deem improbable, we should have to affix a note of interrogation to all that we have said above, and England, whose prestige would not be increased by anything that could then happen, might find embarrass- ments in Africa or elsewhere, although it may be impossible now to foretell how they would arise. Nothing tangible therefore is likely to happen at present in consequence of the Anglo-Transvaal conflict. Public opinion will condemn the war, but the Governments will not move. None of them, as we have said, has an interest sufficiently great or direct to intervene between London and Pretoria, and the interests which some of them have outside of Africa would not be well served by intervention. Moreover, before provoking the Transvaal, England was careful to take precau- tions in all directions. At the close of last year she came to an understanding on all African questions with France, and the arrangement thus made assured to the latter the continuity of her territories and satisfied her for the present. Eng- 193 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? land has also had an understanding with Eussia concerning the extreme East, so there is no imme- diate clash to be feared in that quarter. The same is true respecting Germany. In treating with that Power, England seems to have had two points in view at once — the Samoan Islands and the east coast of Africa. They had a strong desire for the Samoan Islands in Berlin, the more so because the imperial diplomacy had suffered some morti- fications, the sting of which was still felt. By consenting to submit the definite situation to be established in the islands to negotiations which promised to be protracted, and which, moreover, could be drawn out as long as the English Gov- ernment desired, it felt sure of being able to oc- cupy and restrain the German Government by holding out a hope to which the latter attached a very great value. This hope has now been realized, and Germany has obtained her desire. She could not therefore manifest any hostile sen- timents so soon afterwards. There is, however, reason to believe that she regards the cession of the principal islands in the Samoan group as a mere sop, and that her pretensions do not stop there. She already has considerable possessions in the east and in the west of Africa — we shall speak at present only of the former — and she has N 193 BEITON AND BOER been giving her attention to the extension which the English possessions cannot fail to take in the near future in consequence of the Transvaal war. They are, in fact, destined to grow prodigiously. But a few years ago Mr. Cecil Ehodes was cred- ited with the scheme of establishing between Northern and Southern Africa, between Egypt and the Cape, an uninterrupted continuity of territory over which England exercised either paramount influence or actual sovereignty. That scheme seemed chimerical. It is no longer re- garded as unattainable at the present day, and it was natural that Germans should take it into consideration. Would she be prevented from expanding farther in any direction ? Il^obody can tell exactly what has been agreed upon be- tween Berlin and London, but everybody knows that something has — doubtless to the detriment of the Portuguese colonies — and it is thought also that Germany too is satisfied for the pres- ent. There may be some difficulties on this head later on between her and England. However that may be, it is known that the latter has taken the precaution and found the means of securing a certain respite for herself during which she need fear no trouble from any quarter. There is also reason to believe that this respite will be suf- 194 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? ficiently long for her to complete her undertak- ing. If she rushed into the conflict headlong in a military sense, she acted more prudently in her diplomacy, which is an additional reason for be- lieving that she will not be disturbed by any- body in the execution of what everybody regards as an atrocity. But the opinion will prevail that an. atrocity has been committed against a weak nation whose chief fault was the possession of gold-mines. It will be seen once more what England is capable of when her interests are in- volved in the slightest degree, and how lightly she then esteems the rights of others and human- ity. She speaks continually of civilization ; but outside of her own boundaries nobody admits that the cause of civilization is interested in the Transvaal war. The high-sounding words with which she disguises her conduct may deceive her- self, but abroad they produce a very different effect. It would have been more sincere if she had invoked only her great material interests and the right of the stronger in this affair. After all, there are other European nations in whose his- tory sins of the same kind are found, but then they committed them in a less pharisaical, and therefore less offensive, manner. All of which is a subject for serious reflection for all the na- 195 BRITON AND BOER tions of the old continent — at' least, for all those which have a navy and colonies. The fact is that the Transvaal aflPair is only an episode which has a root from which others may spring. At the present time there may be observed in England -the fermentation of a peculiar vi- rus which we call Chauvinism or jingoism with which the policy of that great country is, as it were, infected. This policy has become more and more brutal in its methods than it used to be. The generation to which Mr. Gladstone be- longed is gone, and we may say the same of th&,t to which Lord Salisbury belongs, for Lord Salis- bury is no longer the master of his own party. The Liberal party and the Conservative party both obey similar influences which are well rep- resented by Lord Rosebery and Mr. Chamber- lain. E'ew men have come into political power who not only possess insatiable ambition, but a certain hard, cold, inexorable quality as regards the means by which they would realize their am- bition — a personal arrogance and a disdain of others, a cruel absence of feelings that come from the heart such as used to give evidence of their existence, even when force was used, by a cer- tain considerateness prompted by esteem and pity. Of these not a trace is now left, and of a 106 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE? truth Europe would not be sorry to have Prince Bismarck back, whose soul was not too tender, if she were to fall under the hegemony of statesmen such as shine to-day in the British firmament. These are the impressions she has received from the events of the^e last months. The na- tions feel them keenly, and the Governments are not insensible to them. Each makes its own re- flections on them, and there are lessons that will not be lost in what is now going on. However, a part of these impressions consists in the horror which war inspires more and more as our man- ners grow more gentle, and hence we must not conclude that they will necessarily lead to mili- tary conflicts. Everybody desires peace, but feels at the same time that this peace may be disturbed notwithstanding this general desire by some particular opposing desire. For this reason many differences between certain nations are be- ginning to be minimized, and at the same time new interests involving new alliances are arising. It is still only a psychological condition, but in the inevitable evolution of things, that which enters deeply into men's minds and consciences wiU some day produce its influence on events. Feancis Chaemes. 197 A POSSIBLE CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND No Englishman can have resided on the con- tinent of Europe during the last two years, as I have done, with some special opportunities of watching the trend of political events, without becoming aware of a remarkable anti- English movement, which I may call a consolidation of Continental opinion against Anglo-Saxon expan- sion. It began before the United States went to war with Spain, but rather in a debating-so- ciety mood than with the serious purpose of re- sponsible statesmen. The American public do not need to be told that the sentiment of every Foreign Office and of every nation on the main- land of Europe was against them in their con- test with Spain. They also know very well that the one substantial fact which made irate poten- tates and irritated crowds on that continent pause before turning their sentiments into action was the presence and the power of the British fleet. The United States completed their business amid 198 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND the frenzied exclamations of Continental journal- ists on behalf of " the innocent " and " unoffend- ing " Spaniards. But America is far off, and when the war closed the venom and the fear of Con- tinental Governments and nations became con- centrated on Great Britain. Additional force was given to these feelings by the knowledge of the part taken by the British Government in lending its moral support to the United States, by the spectacle of the British and American peoples arriving at spontaneous agreement as to their identical interests and common mission, and by the inevitable consequence of those circum- stances in the conclusion that the growth of An- glo-Saxon power, instead of being arrested, was on the point of taking a fresh and remarkable expansion. How long these feelings might have remained in the chrysalis stage of suppressed resentment and secret intention, if there had been no war in the Transvaal, is uncertain ; but, at the present moment, the floodgates of Continental eloquence and wrath are let loose for the denunciation of England. All that was said to the discredit of the American people during the Spanish war has been written of England's action in South Africa with intensified vindictiveness and an en- 199 BRITON AND BOER larged vocabulary. It is not a question merely of the rights or wrongs of the Uitlander popu- lation being ignored and thrust aside without a moment's consideration, nor is it one as to whether some compromise might not have been discovered in the Transvaal, short of the stern arbitrament of war. A friend might hold an opinion contrary to ours without offending us or giving us the right to complain. We could make allowance for some defect in his knowledge of the facts, we should admit that his point of view was not ours. But there is all the differ- ence in the world between the protest of a friend and the snarling of a foe. Our Continental crit- ics leave us in no doubt as to their sentiments. They use the loftiest language, they invoke the ideal principles, they speak in the name of sublime justice, whenever they have to comment on Brit- ish action ; but they forget to exact from the opposing side an equal compliance with these non-terrestrial conditions, and they fail to observe them themselves when they are called on to deal with colonial problems and difficulties. The Boers may play the tyrant on the veldt without a word of censure. In their truculent intolerance they might insult the British army and drag its flag in the dirt, and the boulevard loungers 300 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND would only be amused. But France may repress, as the savage disposition of some of her officers may dictate, tribes fighting for their indepen- dence in the Soudan or in Madagascar; Eussia may make an example of the inhabitants of Tashkent, when they show an inclination to dis- pute her authority ; Germany can ride rough- shod, in her characteristic official manner, over her subjects in the Cameroons ; all these things may be done with impunity, while England is howled at for vindicating her authority and for punishing those who have reviled at and defied her. Only in her case does the Continental critic adopt his severest mood, take down his book of homilies, and after the most edifying admonition condemn her to the pubhc pillory among the nations, and — what is more congenial to their mood and nearer to their practical purpose — to the discomfiture and overthrow an all-powerful Deity will mete out for such iniquity. Our Con- tinental critics and enemies who arrogate to themselves, under an appropriated decree of Providence imagined in their own conceit, the position of judge, jury, and court of appeal in one, evolve out of their own rhetoric the arrest and downfall of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. These expressions of violent prejudice and un- SOl BRITON AND BOER reasoning wrath are merely the froth on the sur- face of the waters of public opinion. But, in the depths, there is a serious movement, a profound agitation, not to be ignored, threatening seri- ous disturbance when it acquires the necessary volume, and calling for careful and timely ex- amination. The questions that require consider- ation are not limited to the one raised in the title of this paper. They are not confined to the , possibility or probability of a general Conti- nental alliance against England. A far graver danger is threatened by the general hostility of all the Powers, which, moving on their own in- dependent lines, are yet inspired by the common sentiment that England's farther expansion must be stopped. That opinion is common to them all in different degrees of intensity, and when people are agreed in their views it is certain that they will do nothing to hinder their realization, although they may not openly combine for the purpose. I hope to make it clear, before the end of this paper, that the peril of England in this latter form already exists, and that England has begun, unconsciously, a struggle in which the whole of Europe is arrayed against her ; that the struggle will pass through several distinct epi- sodes or chapters ; and that the result will decide 203 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND the fate of the British Empire. In studying so momentous a problem, the most exalted persons are merely pieces on the chess-board. They are not entitled to any greater consideration than their inherent value and position on the table may give them, in deciding the course and the issue of the game. It would be absurd to dis- cuss the question at all if we were obliged to con- sider the personal susceptibilities of an Emperor, to gloss over the rottenness of an administration, or to ignore the decadence of a nation. Prince Bismarck said in 1885 that England had got enough of the world's surface. It was a moment of profound national depression and humiliation. Mr. Gladstone was in office. Ma- juba Hill was recent. The ineffaceable tragedy and disgrace of Khartoum had just happened. The Berlin Conference was summoned. What occurred ? In the centre of Africa was formed a great independent and neutral State, on the west and also on the east coast Germany ac- quired vast territories, while France came down to the Congo and its tributaries. In this man- ner barriers were placed in the path of farther British expansion in Africa. To appreciate the full significance of that rebuff it must, however, be remembered that England had to cancel her 203 BRITON AND BOER own Convention with Portugal on the subject of the Congo, and to assent to her vassal, the Sul- tan of Zanzibar, being stripped of his possessions on the mainland, for the benefit of Germany. The ten years that followed the Berlin Con- ference were, for England, a period of meditation on the errors of the years from 1881 to 1885, and for attaining collectedness as to how they might be repaired. With regard to the Soudan, the country gradually adopted General Gordon's weighty conclusion, that it " could not be divorced from Egypt." Hence followed the gradual re- conquest of the country by Lord Kitchener, who destroyed the military power of the Khalifa at the Atbara and Omdurman. The ^ retrieval of that part of the Gladstone legacy of national loss and discredit was almost accompanied by a war with France over the incident at Fashoda, where a French officer, with the permission of M. Hanotaux, notwithstanding the repeated warn- ings of our Foreign Ofiice, erected the tricolor. The incident ended with the establishment of British predominance throughout the Nile Yal- ley, but the French people have decided to cher- ish the name of Fashoda as constituting for them a humiliation, and to use it as a war-cry when they close the doors of their Exhibition. 304 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND The delay of ten years in commencing the re- conquest of the Soudan did not make the task appreciably more diflficult, for the dervishes were isolated, and the clever scheme formed by Russia and France to make our task more troublesome by inciting and assisting Abyssinia to join the Khalifa, or at least to attack us, was not allowed sufficient time to mature or come off. But the nineteen years that have elapsed since Majuba have served to enlarge a local question of com- paratively little importance into a problem of the first magnitude, affecting the general inter- national position, and influencing more or less the attitude of the Continental Powers towards England. There is no more uncertainty as to the persons who have created for us this aggrava- tion of difficulty in South Africa than there was about the intrigues in Abyssinia and on the Up- per Nile. Germany, and, above all Germans, the German Emperor, is just as responsible for Pres- ident Kruger's defiance as France and M. Hano- taux were for Marchand's appearance at Fashoda, and for the hostile intentions of M. de Bonchamps and Henry of Orleans at the court of King Men- elek. But they are responsible for a great deal more. Their encouragement, advice, and prac- tical assistance, in the form of officers, drill-ser- 205 BRITON AND BOER geants, artillerymen, and arms, have made the Boers a formidable military opponent, only to be crushed by the loss of many brave lives and by an extraordinary effort. In South Africa, as in the Soudan, British supremacy will be reasserted; but it is impossible to ignore the quarter whence the Boers received inspiration, not merely as to their line of policy, but as to their strategy in the field, which might well have gained for the Boers some military successes at the beginning of the war. "Without an alliance, therefore, it is clear that for a number of years France, Germany, and Russia have been pursuing an anti-English policy, opposing our plans, raising difficulties in our path, and diminishing by extensive colorings of the map the area left vacant for the introduction of our commerce and civilization. There is no rea- son to suppose that these measures have been carried out on any systematic plan, but they cer- tainly indicate the prevalence of a general anti- English sentiment, such as Prince Bismarck crys- tallized in the phrases, " England had got enough of the world's surface," and " It might not be Germany's interest to take any specific colony, but it certainly was her interest to prevent Eng- land getting it." These sentences were not ap- 306 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND predated at the time, but a little reflection will show- how the ideas they expressed have influ- enced foreign 'policy during the last fourteen or fifteen years. But in no part of the world — for the time is not yet ripe for treating China after the fashion of Africa in 1885 — has the effort been greater to create for England a situ- ation of danger and embarrassment than in South Africa. When the first campaigns Avith the Boers were undertaken no outsiders were interested in the question. Not a gold-mine had been worked, hardly one Uitlander could be discovered on the veldt. But the stubbornness and success of the Boer resistance in 1881 aroused some interest in thera, and that interest has certainly not diminished by the extraordinary gold discoveries and the consequent inrush of European adventurers and settlers, chiefly Brit- ish, but with a very considerable number of Ger- mans, Dutch, and Cape Dutch, all of whom grad- ually adopted, as comprehensive names, those of Hollanders in the Transvaal and Afrikanders in the Cape Colony. In this way was created a party, not confined to the Transvaal, but extend- ing its organization and influence throughout South Africa, distinct from and opposed to the British settlers and Government. The strength 2or BRITON AND BOER and cohesion of that party were insured by the use of their common language, and thus, for the first time, German and its offshoots entered the lists as a rival to English, on the ground of colonial dominion. But if the project was not restricted to the Transvaal, it was thence that it derived its chief solidity and resources. The gold of its mines, applied to the purchase of warlike stores and to the employment of German and other officers and ex-soldiers, gave it a military power far in excess of the number or general knowledge of the inhabitants. The love of independence shown throughout Boer history, and the prestige ac- quired by the successes in 1881, made the Trans- vaal the natural leader in a Teutonic movement throughout South Africa. But not merely is the Transvaal to be regarded, in the develop- ment of the question, as a free agent acting for and on its own behalf. If it had not possessed another role — if, in plainer words, it had stood atone — the decisive interference in its affairs might have been put off till the disappearance of Mr. Kriiger in the ordinary course of nature should have given a chance for more enlightened and saner counsels. But the Transvaal was the iinperium in imperio which supplied our ene- 208 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND mies with the means of organizing, within our limits, a formidable confederacy that, at the given moment of external complications, might have revealed all its power and ambition, to the se- rious peril and perhaps temporary disappearance of British supremacy south of the Tropic of Cap- ricorn. Before the Jameson Raid, it was well known how active German agents had grown in the Transvaal, and in the four years since that episode their activity has increased and grown more systematic and dangerous. Under these circumstances, it would have been madness to defer action any longer. The German Emper- or's telegram of congratulation and support to President Kriiger in 1896 was the indiscreet lift- ing of the veil as to all Germany had done and intended still to do in the Transvaal. Four years have passed since that telegram, and we are now assured that the German Emperor has purged him of his offence, and that the British plans will encounter no opposition at his hands. Before these lines can appear in print, he should have visited England, and many opin- ions will be hazarded as to the true significance of that perhaps farewell interview between grandmother and grandson. But even if the visit comes off, it will perhaps not enable us to o 209 BRITON AND BOER see very much more clearly, or a great deal farther ahead, as to the true intentions of Ger- many. The affectionate and confidential utter- ances of royal personages will not arrest the course of State policy nor tnrn aside from their purpose statesmen and diplomatists whose efforts and reputation are staked on the arrest of Anglo- Saxon expansion. Any new agreement with Germany will be like that already signed, but unpublished, of which the one thing certainly known is that it did not give us Delagoa Bay, when its possession would have enabled us to take the Boers in flank and at a great disadvan- tage; or, perhaps, it will more resemble the unsigned agreement with Mr. Ehodes at Ber- lin, which will create German railways, without carrying us much on the road for the Oape-to- Cairo railway. The German Emperor has left both England and America in no sort of doubt as to his views, wishes, and plans in regard to their affairs. He is their enemy, but their wait- ing enemy, because his fleet is in its infancy, " a mere baby," to use his own words ; but it seems to have escaped the notice of his critics that babies, especially such a fine healthy baby as the German navy of to-day, become men. These preliminary observations, necessary for 310 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND the correct appreciation of what follows, may have made clear one thing, viz., the hostile intentions, towards England in the first place and the United States in the second, of the three leading military Powers, France, Germany, and Eussia. With regard to Eussia, it need only at this stage be observed that she has open to her in Asia a wide field for ambitious operations, that occupy her attention and render her less keen than the others to interfere with Great Britain in quarters with which she has little or no concern. It may be said of her at once that, if she were induced to interfere with England over any African question, it would be not of her own free will, but under the pressure of France. The crippling of England in any quarter might bring the Cossacks nearer to the Indus or Peking, but the secret of Eussia's success hitherto has been the concentration of her policy, and she may prefer to attain her objects in her own way and without seeking remote adventures. "With the exception of the Abyssinian scheme, Eussia has as yet shown no inclination to come into collision with England outside of Asia. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that whatever St. Petersburg may do in support of others, the initiative of any offensive measure against Eng- 211 BRITON AND BOER land in Africa will be at Paris or Berlin. In both, those capitals there has for many years been a systematic plan of embarrassing and thwarting England in Africa. The French de- signs were brought to a summary check at Fashoda, but the German have continued down to the present hour under a friendly guise. But there is a radical difference between hos- tile intentions and a definite alliance. All the Continental nations may dislike and envy us; but they have their own relations and differences to consider. Europe is an armed camp from the Channel to the Caspian ; but the explanation of that fact is not the wish to make war on Eng- land, but the need of defending their several frontiers against one another. The practical questions are : Can the Powers lay aside, even momentarily, their mutual jealousies and appre- hensions, to combine against England? Do statesmen at Berlin seriously contemplate a union with Paris and St. Petersburg, in order to call a halt on the British in South Africa ? Can they afford to face the consequences of the success of a policy in which they would be following the lead of France and Russia ? Can they feel con- fident that the policy would succeed, either by England's yielding to a formidable international 313 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND demonstration, or by the Powers vanquishing England on the sea ? We may be sure, at least, that the German Government will carefully con- sider these points in all their bearings before they come to the momentous decision to quarrel "with England. They will be swayed very much by their estimate of the relative strength of the Continental Powers and the British Empire. They will carefully examine, by the light of the information they possess, the condition of the allies who are only waiting their signal to pre- sent England with an ultimatum which, if signed by Germany, would make her for good and for- ever an enemy. If that step would isolate Eng- land to-day, Germany at no remote date might find herself in the same position, and exposed on both her frontiers to the double peril of Slav ambition and French revenge. The material and political condition of Euro- pean countries may also appear discouraging under the close and critical examination of German spectacles. Germany is allied with two tottery States in Austria and Italy, in both of which exist serious elements of internal dissen- sion and weakness, that might greatly diminish their value at the critical moment when Ger- many had need of them. With regard to any 213 BRITON AND BOER possible action against England, Austria would not count at all, and Italy is the one Euro- pean Power that would certainly not take part against her, because the co-operation of the British Navy is needed, and assured by a defi- nite understanding, for the protection of her own coasts. Spain does not seriously exist, and the sentiment of little States like Holland and Belgium, however noisily uttered, can have no influence on the question. The continent of Eu- rope, therefore, resolves itself, for practical pur- poses, into the three Powers — Germany, France, and Eussia ; and when the possibility of an alli- ance between those three rival Powers is sug- gested, one realizes the exact difficulties that lie in the path of those who would effect it. Russia and France being already allies for better or worse, the practical point to be dis- covered is whether there is any reasonable prob- ability of Germany's associating herself with them for the arrest of England's progress, and, if need were, for her more serious discomfiture. There was a time when the mere proposition would have been received with ridicule, and when an equal repugnance to the suggestion would have been shown at both Berlin and Paris. But as much cannot be said to-day. The 314 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND alliance may be impracticable, but at least it ex- cites no repugnance. The idea of such a combi- nation has sunk into the minds of both peoples, and it will at least afford abundant material for discussion. Nor can it be forgotten that such an alliance existed, for all practical purposes, at the Berlin Conference of 1886, and still more openly in 1895, when the three Powers arrested Japan's progress and ignored England. The old theory that France and Germany could and would never combine requires at least more careful examina- tion before passing current than formerly. It may still be sound, but it has not such a sure foundation as it once had. France is undoubted- ly willing to sink her ancient feud with Germany, in order to gratify her more pressing irritation against England. The German Emperor has but to give a nod and he can fold the French Kepub- lic. Cap of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and all, with the French army to boot, in his arms. If Germany had only to think of theatrical effect, the inclination to make the sign would be irresist- ible, but she must look a little further ahead and think what will come after. It is not going too far to say that France has offered Germany her alliance against England, with the object of stopping her conquest of the 215 BRITON AND BOER two South African Eepublios. Of course, France has not put herself in the position of inviting a formal rebuff, but at Berlin they are in no doubt as to what France is willing to do, and also as to what France wishes Germany to do. The visit of the German Emperor to Windsor is regarded as the cold-water douche to these indirect over- tures, but it may not have all the significance or importance imagined. Still, it means that Ger- many is not as eager as she was supposed to be to enter the lists against England. She has reck- oned up the odds, and she has come to the con- clusion that the fleets of the three Powers would not be certain to have the better of the English fleet, which could count on the co-operation of Japan at once, and probably of Italy as well, with the possible intervention of the United States on the same side following, perhaps, at a short in- terval. The paper odds of the German-French- Eussian fleets against England would thus be turned into the material and incontestable superi- ority of England and her allies, when the nations vanquished would certainly lose their navies and their colonies. From inviting that catastrophe the Emperor William has drawn back, and just in time. Four years ago he went very near to the edge of the precipice ; but, after some irrita- 216 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND tion and resentment, he seems to have placed upon himself a prudent restraint which the ex- cited exhortations of the German Colonial Party- are not likely to break down. His policy is not dictated by any sincerely friendly feeling towards England, but by a care- ful regard for German interests. Perhaps the occasion will arise, before the Transvaal diffi- culty is settled, for him to show how very lit- tle he cares about England and her interests, although he is not disposed to enter the field openly against her. If, for instance, as is by no means improbable, France and Russia take steps which assail our rights in some quarter, and pro- voke a war for which England was never more ready than at the present hou¥, Germany would stand aside and observe the strictest neutrality. She would not move a finger to help us, and would take a cynical satisfaction in seeing her formidable military neighbors injure themselves ; and, at the same time, the damage that could not fail also to be inflicted by such a war on England would facilitate the Emperor's schemes for the commercial and colonial expansion of his own country. Moreover, the German Emperor and Government will expect to be paid for this neutrality, whether there is war or peace, by 317 BEITON AND BOER concessions in Africa or the Pacific ; and, as the Germans are good hands at driving a bargain — the title of " honest broker " was not gained by Bismarck without reason — the highest value will be set on their services in order to gain the larg- est amount of reward. Provided there is no gen- eral outbreak of war, and Great Britain is left undisturbed to establish firmly and indisputa- bly her supremacy in the Transvaal and Orange Free States, no Englishman could object to see Germany come down to the Zambesi, when Portugal quits the east coast, with "Walfisch Bay on the west coast thrown in. But if war ensues with France and Kussia, then Germany should receive nothing unless she openly ranges herself on the sid6 of England. It is very doubt- ful if the arrangements between England and Germany have provided for that contingency. Germany has very practical reasons for not combining with France and Kussia in any serious enterprise. If she contributed to their success, she would be strengthening her enemies, and a day of reckoning would be sure to arrive. If they failed, she would share in their discom- fiture ; and, on measuring the comparative sea- forces of the world, the balance is against suc- cess. 318 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND But Germany has other reasons for pausing before she commits herself to a line of action that would make her subordinate to Kussia and France. "What is her estimate of the real strength and resources of those two Empires? Do the confidential reports from Paris and St. Petersburg represent them as being in a sound and healthy condition, and able to bear the strain, not of a single campaign, but of a long war, waged in every quarter of the world ? JSTo one questions the military spirit of the French soldier, but the French soldier would have very little to say in a war with England. Nor need the merit of the best part of the Eussian army be disputed ; but India and China are still a long way off, and where else is the British Empire vulnerable from Eussia ? Such military strength as France and Eussia undoubtedly possess is not of the kind to make them dangerous opponents to England at the present moment. On the other hand, the German authorities cherish no illusion on the capacity of the British fleet to deal with that of France and Eussia combined. The immediate consequences of a war would be, therefore, the sweeping of the Mediterranean Sea, the Channel, and the China Seas by the British Navy. There would be some sanguinary 219 BKITON AND BOER engagements, some losses by the victors, but the result would be to put " Paid " to the account of French and Eussian schemes beyond their land frontiers. What would be the consequences of those facts in the two Empires? How would France, overtaxed, miserable as she is at heart under the overshadowing military superiority of Germany, stand the humiliation of that discom- fiture ? How would Kussia, immature, unready, and probably rotten at the core, retain her posi- tion if to the loss of her fleet were added the col- lapse of the position she has laboriously gained in Eastern Asia, and which is based on an in- secure foundation ? There is no reason to believe that an accurate dissection of either of those States, if it were possible, would reveal a thor- oughly sound constitution ; and the first collision of the opposing fieets would reveal the truth as under the touch of Ithuriel's spear. Germany cannot pretend to be omniscient, but she showed that she possessed good information in 1870, and there is no reason to suppose that she is less ac- curately informed to-day. The policy of her ruler has so far been modified that he has drawn back from the policy which would have made him the ally of France and Eussia against Eng- land ; and all the barking of the anti-English 320 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND press incited by Dr. Leyds and his influential German friends will not make him swerve from his course. But that policy is dictated by no re- gard for England ; it is the result of a calm con- sideration of all the elements in the question. For this occasion, at least, we can feel sure that Berlin will not dance to the music set by Paris and St. Petersburg. The possible Continental alliance against England resolves itself, by a process of elimina- tion, into the opposition of France and Eussia — an opposition which, however serious, the Brit- ish Empire can face with a reasonable amount of equanimity and confidence in the result. It is regrettable to see that, after over eighty years of peace and on some occasions of alliance, the rivalry and hatred of France for England exist just as keenly as at any time during the pre- vious eight centuries of war. The French hate the Germans, but are afraid of them. They know that, unless they can produce a military genius of the highest order, the odds are over- whelmingly against them in any renewed strug- gle with Germany, and their " great " generals of late bear the names Boisdeffre, Mercier, and Eoget ! They think it safer, therefore, to take out of the cupboard their old animosity towards 231 BRITON AND BOER England, and to provide their army with an opportunity of redeeming its good name at the expense of perfide Albion. That is a dangerous sentiment to cherish against a State which has legitimate grievances against France's attitude from Newfoundland to the Chinese Province of Yunnan. A spark may at any moment pro- duce an explosion in such a magazine of inter- nal irritation and discontent as is the France of to-day. The further forbearance of England is not to be relied on if a Waima incident oc- curred on the Burmese frontier, or if Pierre Loti repeated in any form at Cabul Marchand's the- atrical exhibition at Fashoda. Anglo-French relations have entered on a phase which must inevitably have a hostile termination, unless France has the wisdom to tack and steer an op- posite course. Neither the Eussian Government nor the Rus- sian people are swayed by any bitterly hostile feelings towards England such as animate all the nations of French race. They see in the British Empire a rival with which, at some future date, they will prolsably come into collision ; but they have no wish to hasten the date. The rivalry of England and Eussia is like the approach of a comet towards our planet. The political astrono- 232 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND mers have not been able to fix the date of the impact, nor can they be absolutely sure that nature will not, at the eleventh hour, provide some means of averting the collision. But Eussia is tied to France for better or for worse, and the conditions of her ally may cause her some rea- sonable apprehension. In a choice of evils, Eussia may prefer to accompany France along a course that she does not approve of to leaving her in a state of internal discontent and disorder, which may sap her value to Eussia as an ally. Even during the Fashoda business, France received as- surances that Eussia would not fail her, although that Power hoped there would be no war. Nor was Eussia's action confined to words. She sent 10,000 more troops to Central Asia, and strength- ened her garrisons on the Afghan frontier. If she did this in regard to the Upper Nile difficulty, it is certain that she wo;*ld do a great deal more in so important and interesting an occurrence as an attempt to save the Transvaal from becoming British. But there is no fear that France and Eussia win attempt anything so Quixotic as helping the Boers to emerge from their condition as the vassals of England. All the denunciation in the press of England's tyranny aad ambition will not, on the eve of a new century, induce 233 BKITON AND BOEE those Powers to openly oppose what they know England has a perfect right to do. The practice of throwing projectiles, in the form of abuse and epithets, at the head of the English has always been a favorite pastime with Continental journal- ists. It amuses them and does not hurt us, as the song says ; but the Governments know very well that the Boers have brought their punish- ment and changed fate on their own heads. The action of France and Eussia will be of a different form to that. It will not be less hostile to England, but it will be more practical. They cannot dream of aiding the Boers directly ; nor, without the co-operation of Germany, which, I have shown by weighty reasons, they will not get, can they think of presenting an ultimatum to England of " Hands off the Transvaal!" But they may think that England is so occupied in South Africa that she will not oppose their pro- ceedings somewhere else, and that she will look on while they appropriate certain points which they think will prove advantageous to them in the future. They may hold this opinion so strongly that, like the Emperor Nicholas I., they will believe that England, under the very con- siderable provocation they propose offering her, will still not fight at such a time as she is em- 324 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND ployed in South Africa, and, like that ruler, they may find that they are mistaken and have gone too far. At this moment it is not very certain what steps these two Powers are going to take; but one of the steps is undoubtedly a joint naval demon- stration in the Persian Gulf, and another is prob- ably a similar movement in the vicinity of Ceuta. In regard to both movements, Eussia would take the lead, and it is believed in well-informed circles that Count Mouravief arranged for the occupa- tion of Ceuta during his visit to Spain. Eussia wishes to obtain a port on the southern coast of Persia, in order to secure a terminus for her pro- jected line across that country and to anticipate the arrival of the Germans down the Euphrates. In regard to France, the direct practical advan- tage of these two moves is far from being clear, even if they were accompanied by a sentimental gain in the marriage of a Spanish princess, and possible future Queen, with so patriotic and chau- vinistic a Frenchman as Prince Henry of Orleans. Such are the schemes of our enemies, and the only practical question is whether the British Government will allow them to be carried into effect. The position of Ceuta is so admirable that the proposition has sometimes been put for- ward in Spain to offer it in exchange for Gib- P 235 BRITON AND BOER raltar. If there never was any strong reason for believing that the proposal would be accepted, there was at least nothing in the offer to make it appear ridiculous. If Ceuta was a strong place twenty years ago, the increased range of fortress artillery has made it more formidable than ever, and Gibraltar itself would be within the reach of its guns if it fell into the hands of a first-class Power. Before these lines can ap- pear in print, the policy of the two Powers may have been unmasked, and England may have shown how she will regard it, and what measures she proposes to take to safeguard herself. But it may be confidently predicted that any attempt to seize Ceuta will be treated as a casus helli. With regard to the proposed demonstration in the Persian Gulf, it is not possible to speak so clearly and positively. It depends very much on the size of the demonstration and the in- cidents accompanying it. It would not be a friendly step, of course, but its gravity might not warrant a declaration of war. "We can all see that Eussia is bound to have a hand in de- ciding the future of Persia, just as she is of ^hina. These sick Asiatic countries will have to be healed by some one or other, and it is problematical if Kussia will be stronger with a 236 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND port on the Persian Gulf or without one. If Russia and France confine themselves to some movement in this quarter, war may be averted, because England can adopt counter-precautions of her own at the Indian entrance to the Persian Gulf. The only obscurity is what benefit France expects to derive from measures so exclusively Eussian. Perhaps she will receive assurances of future support in regard to her plans in south- western China, plans that are certain to bring England and France as rudely into conflict as they were brought on the Nile. Taking a broad view of the international sit- uation, and in the endeavor to pierce the clouds hanging over the European world, the final word may stiU be given in favor of the balance turn- ing for peace, and for the adjournment of any serious effort to cripple England. This is proba- bly the last occasion on which the hostile Powers will place a restraint on themselves before, tak- ing wishes for certainties, they cross swords with the British Empire. The French people will conceal or restrain a little longer their desire to fight England. They may talk and threaten, but they wiU not imperil the success of their Exhibition. Eussia is quite willing to wait, and also prefers her own slow methods to 337 BRITON AND BOER the impetuosity of her vivacious partner. The risk is that they may both go a little further than the British Government can stand, and before they well know what they have done they may find themselves engaged in a naval war that they little expected. The French military authorities cherish many fine schemes of establishing their reputation by a brilliant stroke at the expense of England. They have had, for some years, a plan for throwing a force across the Channel and seizing Dover. Its merit may be inferred from the fact that General Boulanger drew it up ; and now ttiey have added a project for seizing Malta or Gibraltar, one or both, by a coup de Tnain, in which abso- lute treachery would play no small part. It is not strange that French generals should con- ceive these schemes, but it certainly is strange that they should think the schemes can be kept secret. The real danger of the hour to England comes, then, from France, behind whom stands Russia, and if there is to be war, " The rescue of the Boers !" will be as good a cry as any other. It will be received with general acclamation by the European public in States which have no pre- tence to have a voice in the matter, and even in 228 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND Germany, where the decision to remain neutral will not prevent the mass of the people from hoping that England will meet with discoin- fiture and damage. At the latest, the close of the year will tell us what we must expect ; but, in the worst event, the British Empire of to-day will give a good account of Eussia and France combined, and make them bitterly regret their decision to assail it. DeMETEIUS 0. BOULGEK. PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR No war has met with such general condemna- tion as the war in the Transvaal. In cases of the clash of arms between two nations, disinter- ested spectators usually divide into two groups, taking sides with one or the other of the com- batants. This phenomenon does not appear to arise in this case. Outside of the Anglo-Saxon world, not a single voice has been raised for England up to the present time. The sym- pathies of all are on the side of the Boers. Meanwhile, the different Governments are main- taining a proper attitude, observing strict neu- trality and warning their people against a too violent manifestation of feelings. But public opinion, as it finds expression in the press and in meetings, is unrestrained, and overwhelms England with execrations more emphatic even than those used in past centuries against the arch-enemy of Christendom — the Turk. 230 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR Whence this unanimity of hatred against Eng- land among the people of the European Conti- nent ? The sentiment has a variety of roots. Some of these lie on the surface, others are more deeply concealed. Some originate from noble motives, others from fairly ignoble ones. When David and Goliath step into the ring, brutal realists will always bet on the giant ; but knightly en- thusiasts will pray for the success of his diminu- tive opponent. The fact that a tiny people faces death without hesitation to defend its indepen- dence against an enemy fabulously superior in number, or to die in the attempt, presents an as- pect of moral beauty which no soul, attuned to higher things, will disregard. Even friends and admirers of England — yea, even the English them- selves — strongly sense the pathos in the situation of the Dutch Boers, who feel convinced that they are fighting for their national existence, and agree that it equals the pathos of Leonidas, WUiiam Tell, and Kosciusko. With many, par- tisanship for the Boers rests upon genuine ab- stract ethical grounds. With others these no- bler grounds are pretexts disguising previously existing hatred of the British. Most of the na- tions envy England its enormous territorial pos- sessions in all parts of the world ; its wealth, its 231 BRITON AND BOER high cultural development, its freedom ; some are jealous of its competition in the world's mar- icet ; one or the other of the nations reproaches it with the fact that it desires no neigl:bor in its colonizings, and they all regard its racial pride as an offence to their egotism. But one fundamental note resounds through all the different cries which voice the public opinion of Europe against England — resentment because of a lost illusion. I The war in theJTransvaal follows the Peace /Conference at The Hague without an interval; it therefore reacts upon the mind like a cruel satire upon it. The representatives of the Pow- ers assembled with the solemn peal of bells and sweet music, and separated with a thundering of cannon at Glencoe and Ladysmith. A thousand entranced pens celebrated the peace manifesto of the Czar as the beginning of a new era in the world's history, and these now stand convicted of the fact that the thought of turning over a new leaf is still far from Clio's mind. The disenchantment is the more humiliating-, since the illusi^ti was sincere in the case of but very few open admirers of the initiative of the , Czar. There are few general manifestations of our times in which hypocrisy played so large a 233 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR part as it did in the extravagant hymns of praise that greeted the call to the conference at The Hague. The fundamental principles upon which our civilization rests, the religious doctrines, the moral and judicial standards which we pretend to follow, logically require that war should be condemned and that one should pose as a disciple of peace. No man can serve God and Mammon. It is impossible to declare: "Justitia regnorum fundamentum''^ (justice is the foundation of king- doms) and " Might is right " at one and the same time. To be confirmed as a Christian upon a catechism which teaches : " Love thy neighbor as thyself; Thou shalt love thine enemies," and to recognize methodical preparations for murder and arson as the chief duty of every well-or- dered government, are two incompatible things. But millions of people who indulge in conven- tional speeches as to their love of peace know very well that their heart does not coincide with their lips. They were grateful to the Czar, since his manifesto seemed to take their alleged love of peace for good coin of the realm, and they felt complimented therein upon the high degree of culture which it apparently assumed in them, and they are vexed with England because its actions give the lie to their assertions of their 333 BRITON AND BOER love of peace before all white humanity. An unmasked hypocrite cannot be expected to be in good humor. It scarcely wrongs the Christian Powers if it be surmised that not one of them — not even Russia — would have acted differently from England under the same circumstances. But they would not admit it. They want to have the semblance of respect for right and neighborly love preserved. England should have allowed some little time to elapse between the Conference at The Hague and the war in the Transvaal. It might have assumed the appear- ance of seeking mediation or arbitration, in which case it could have adjusted matters in such a way that the attempt at a peaceful solu- tion should have proved a failure. England has done violence to international decorum. But a breach of etiquette, this most serious of all draw- ing-room sins, is as unpardonable with the po- litical hypocrite as with his social counterpart. II Is it riot unfounded pessimism to assume in the heart of one's neighbors murder and robbery as general sentiments? Is it not calumny to 334 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR denounce white humanity as a horde of warlike barbarians lightly coated with a veneer of ra- tional civilization ? I do not believe it is. A comparison of the factors which practically labor for peace with those which prepare, justify, and train humanity for war, will show the latter as having over- Avhelming preponderance. The number of the apostles of peace outside of individual poets, literati, artists, and thinkers includes a few inter- national and national societies, whose member- ship is not great, comprising but few representa- tive men of the time. Sad but true. The official organs of these societies have an incomparably smaller circulation than the most insignificant financial or sporting journal, and their periodical congresses attract far less attention than a floral exhibit or a cattle-show. On the other hand, all organized powers of State and society are pronounced or tacit adherents of war. Religion is not necessarily, or at all times, an advocate of peace. That the Old Testament is filled with a warlike spirit needs no proof. Je- hovah is "The Lord of Hosts" and His com- mands to His people more frequently involve bloodshed than compromise. The prophet Isaiah is the first to feel a premonition of a better future, 235 BRITON AND BOER when " people will beat their swords into plough- shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and nation will no longer lift up sword against na- tion." His God is no longer the angry God, who imposes the extermination of the Canaanites upon His people as a sacred duty. He is a loving father, who preaches : " Peace, peace — to those who are afar and to those who are near." Christianity is indeed the religion of peace. Above the portals of the Church of Christ, the Christmas greeting of the angels, "Peace on earth and good will to men," glows as an inscrip- tion. This is theory. The practice of the Church is quite different. She has scarcely ever pre- vented war, and frequently pressed the sword into the hands of the faithful. In all the cen- turies of her sway, the Church has shed blood like water. She exterminated the Goths because of their Arianism, and she did what she could to prepare a similar fate for the Yandals and Lom- bards. In the Crusades she armed the Occident against the Orient, and sent hundreds of thou- sands, possibly millions, of pious Christians and brave Mahometans to their death. She unleash- ed Simon de Montfort's assassins like a pack of wolves against the Albigenses ; she visited the Waldenses with fire and sword ; she prepared the 336 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR Night of St. Bartholomew for the Huguenots; and when she instigated neither foreign nor civil wars, she catered to the taste for the drama of human suffering and to the habit of bloodshed by the Inquisition and her Auto-da-Fes. In our day the Church has lost the power to set nation against nation, but she does not withhold her blessing from the banners of war; the hosts that march to the front are sped by her pious wishes, and she prays to God that He grant victory to the arms which she has blessed. In every country does the Church render this ser- vice to the native banners and arms, and she does not seem to see that it is blasphemy to ask of the God of Love to look with favor upon murder and destruction ; or to ask of the God of the Universe to take sides with one portion of His children against another portion ; especially Avhen she knows that that other portion is turn- ing to God with exactly the same impertinent request. Never yet has a clergyman had the common-sense to say : " I refuse to pray for the victory of our arms. From the altars in the enemy's country this same prayer is rising to Heaven in this self -same hour, and to hearken to both prayers, to grant victory to both hostile armies, lies beyond the pale of even God's Om- 237 BRITON AND BOER nipotence." When, in the dispute over the Carolines, Prince Bismarck asked the Pope to act as arbitrator between Germany and' Spain, Leo XIII. indeed declared that it was part of his office to make peace between Christian na- tions. But no head of a State Church has yet dared to answer the temporal authorities who asked his blessing upon banner and host : " You desire war, and our God teaches peace. I can- not bless the hand armed to maim and kill men. If you must shed blood, do so ; but do not mix God and His religion with your devil's work." Islam does not claim to be a religion of peace. Jehad, or Holy "War, is one of its fundamental in- stitutions ; but there is no need of stopping on this, since no one seeks the highest expression of human culture among the Mahometan peoples. In justice, religion should not be rebuked that it does not raise a more decided voice against war. According to the religious con- cept, war is not so dreadful an evil as it is ac- cording to the materialistic concept. "Why is war a horror? Because it inflicts misery upon men and because it destroys life. But the suf- ferings of war reach only the flesh, which is transitory, and what concerns the death of the 238 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR body has little import for him who believes in the immortality of the soul and in the conti- nuity of personality beyond the grave. There was no contradiction to her fundamental doc- trines in the Church's maintaining that it was in the interests of religion that she instigated wars and revolutions. "What is the loss of prop- erty, of bodily members, or even of life itself, in comparison with eternal salvation, which she could promise to him who fought for a good cause ? Ill The cause of peace has little to expect from the Church. She will pray and preach peace when the Government of the State desires peace ; and she will implore God for victory, she will bless the arms and praise death upon the battle-field to the troops as pleasing to God, when the Govern- ment is carrying out a warlike policy. But re- ligion also, which I distinguish from the Church, is not in itself an ally of peace. "Whatever its ideals or theoretical dogmas may be, in practice it always savors of the opportune. It adapts it- self to the attainment of the spirit of the age. It preaches words into which every nation and 239 BRITON AND BOER every individual puts the meaning corresponding to their own feelings, culture, and comprehen- sion. I do not say that religion does not grad- ually mould minds along the lines of its doctrines, but, on the other hand, it is likewise a fact that minds mould religion. When the Gospel was preached to Chlodwig, the King of the Franks, he had but one thought: "Ah, if I could but have been ^present at the crucifixion of Christ- with my Franks, what havoc could I have wrought among those Romans and Jews !" In his warlike soul the religion of love aroused con- cepts of combat and murder only. The catechism which missionaries teach the negroes of Australia is the same from which the whites derive their knowledge of religion. No one will seriously maintain that the Australian negro fills the crystal vessel of the catechism with the same emotional and intellectual content as the white Christian. Instincts control intellect and polarize it in their own direction. As in religion, so in the most intellectual of all intellections. Philosophy. This does not mould the feelings of men ; it pleads for their intellectual authorization only ; it finds reasons for them ; it gives them methodical expression ; it gathers them into a system. There are, of course, phi- 240 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR losophers in every generation who strive for an objective verity and care little for the subjec- tivity of their contemporaries. But they are solitary dreamers, without perceptible influence upon the thought of the times. Whole nations honor as philosophers only those wise men and teachers who formulate, as reason and science, that which lives in the hearts of millions as sen- timent. And since, unfortunately, the masses to- day still entertain violent and bloody instincts, almost all philosophers teach the justification, the necessity, and even the morality and beauty of war. In the beginning of the eighteenth century Abbe de Saint -Pierre created a sensation with his Prqjet de Paix Eternelle (Plan for Eternal Peace). The book is a landmark in a century of rationalism. Saint -Pierre fails, as did the en- cyclopedists after him, to aUow for the instinc- tive bases of human nature ; he deals only with the visible surface, with inane forms of speech, which man bandies on his lips, when his feelings are asleep. It seemed to him a very simple and easy matter to abolish war in a Congress of all Nations, and to establish a world-police, whose duty it should be to maintain eternal peace among the peoples. One hundred and seventy Q 341 BRITON AND BOER years later the Czar found it a trifle less easy to realize the thought of Saint-Pierre. The latter's contemporary, Yoltaire, was cruelly amused with him, and demonstrated in his entertaining cri- tique upon his book how utterly unfamiliar the good Abbe was with the realties of human nature and of life. Eousseau was a friend of peace on principle; but he considered Saint-Pierre's plan as impracticable, although it was sensible, or, rather, because it was sensible — "for," he said, " men are insane ; it would furthermore be a sort of insanity to be the only sane man among the insane." The French " nationalists ", of to-day, who ac- knowledge themselves with candid brutality as worshippers of Force ; who, with M. Jules Le- maitre, adore the " Sword of Salvation," and with M. G. Hanotaux, praise the murderers of the oflBcers Klobb, Voulet, and Chanoine as heroes, have tried to introduce Kant as a crown witness for their theory. M. Brunetiere tried to prove that the Koenigsberg philosopher speaks a word for war, by citing a disconnected sen- tence from a work later on repudiated by Kant himself. This is false. The most recent num- ber of " Kant - Studies " shows the hardy igno- rance of M. Brunetiere, and the true opinion of 343 PHILOSOPHY AND MOEALS OF WAR Kant, Avho actually condemns war as a crime, and desires to introduce the same judiciary forms between peoples as hold between individuals.^ John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte belong to the peace party among the philosophers. On the other hand, Fichte is enthusiastic for war. And his " Speeches to the German Nation " are the chief sources of the emotions which ani- mated the German people in the wars of libera- tion. Hegel takes the same stand at Fichte. Since he teaches that everything that exists is rational, the logic of his own dogma compels him to find war rational, since it exists. But he goes further than that; he declares that war is not only rational, but also beautiful and useful ; it is the great reconstructor of humanity; the logic of his system does not compel him to go as far as that. About the same time Xavier de Maistre wrote his fiery hymns in praise of war, which since have become the Gospel of all scrap-politicians, and whose arguments are to be found under the pen of all militarists, polished indeed, but deteri- orated, like coins that have passed through many hands. But the greatest authority of all advocates of war is Darwin. Gladly do they accept his 243 BRITON AND BOER " struggle for existence " as the fundamental law of all life and all progress; and they conclude that war is a mandate of Nature, which man can escape as little as he can the law of gravitation. I will not here discuss Darwin's theory. Neither need I show that, according to Darwin's concept, combat may assume moral and lovable forms ; as in cases where the individuals of a species do not battle against one another, but turn against other species in loyal solidarity; or, in higher degrees of mental culture, against the inimical forces of nature ; or, when the male bird woos the female and tries to outdo his rival by a more graceful dance -step, more beautiful song, or a richer ornamentation of feathers. In such com- bats no blood is shed, no life is destroyed. They develop the best qualities of the combatants, and at best produce some slight distress in the ego- tism of the conquered. In this way, however, the pseudo - Darwinian philosophers and politi- cians do not understand the " struggle for exist- ence." They always impart to the word of Darwin the sense of the prize-fighter and the gladiator, and subject the history of mankind to the law of the jungle. As Christians, as citizens of communities theoretically based upon right, they felt hitherto that a sense of decorous duty 244 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAE impelled them to simulate a love of peace and to weep a few crocodile tears over war as a neces- sary evil. But since the theory of evolution has been promulgated, they can cover their natural barbarism with the name of Darwin and proclaim the sanguinary instincts of their inmost hearts as the last word of science. Only this faintly veiled foundation of savagery can explain the fact that the ravings of Nietz- sche, an insane man, suffering with psychic pare- sis, which finally paralyzed the enfeebled brain entirely, could be enthroned as the philosophy of fashion. Nietzsche thinks that he is an oppo- nent of Darwin, but, in reality, his work is but a parody on Darwin's theory misunderstood. And this by reason of grotesque exaggerations. " The Over -Man" — "the free -roving blond beast" — "all is allowable" — "the laughing lion" — -"on the other side of good and evil " — " the morals of the classes " — these prison formulae, these shibboleths of brigandage harmonized too well with the most secret sentiments of the red-skins in dress-coat and uniform, wherewith alleged white humanity teems, not to be greeted by them with joy as the highest form of revelation. BRITON AND BOER IV It seems to me that the cause of peace is not being defended with proper arguments on right ground. Mr. Herbert Spencer regards the his- torj' of civilization as an evolution from v^ar to industrialism, and uses these two conditions as antitheses. They are not necessarily such. "War is not abrogated by resting the entire existence of a people upon commerce and trade. If indus- trialism is really to mean the end of war, _an equality of evolution must exist between all peoples who have reached the industrial phase of civilization. But, within the limits of calcu- lable time, this is a greater Utopia than eternal peace through general altruism. As long as there are Free -Trade and Protection States, advanced and retarded nations, industry is also open to the temptation to handle tools and swords alternate- ly, and to open markets, which threaten to close, or are monopolized by rivals, by force. Thus industrialism, iu the present condition of things, may become a cause of war, instead of a guar- antee against it. Herr Johann von Bloch, the Kussian State -Councillor, recently brought into prominence through the Conference at The 246 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR Hague, has, in his gigantic work of six vol- umes, War, tried to prove by a multitude of figures that war is impossible to-day between the Great Powers. I fear that facts would easily convince Herr von Bloch that he errs. "Where there is a will there is a way. The horrors of war are the same for both contestants, and he who enters upon the combat with the greater as- surance and with the more intense craving for victory, will bear them longer than his more timid opponent. It is this ability to " bear lon- ger" that constitutes him the victor. One argument is on the tongue of all defenders of peace; it is the sentimental argument. It seems to be the strongest, but in reality it is the weakest. It appeals to our sympathies with reference to the manifold sufferings which war entails upon humanity; but it facilitates the answer for the advocates of war. The spectacle of a corpse with yawning wounds or of a heap of maimed dead is horrible. It is heart-rending to see mothers weeping for their sons, wives for their husbands — for the bread- winners of their children. But are these spec- tacles produced by war alone ? The sociologist, who overlooks broad fields of national life from a high stand-point, will answer that war is but one 347 BRITON AND BOER of many evils which cloud human existence ; and by no means the worst, although the most melo- dramatic. As a moral phenomenon war is a crime. As a material phenomenon it by no means plays the part in ethnic and social econ- omy which one would suppose prima facie be- fore the first impression has been mathematical- ly controlled by means of statistics. "War destroys many human lives. It is true. Yet not so many that the rate of mortality is perceptibly influenced thereby. In 1870-71 the German army lost, in round numbers, 40,000 men, killed in battle and by disease. At that time the rate of mortality in Germany was 27 in 1000, or, with a population of 41,000,000, in round numbers, it was 1,107,000 per year. The 40,000 fatalities of the war increased this num- ber about 3.6 per cent, and raised the mortality less than 1 in 1000. The French losses were greater. They amounted to 88,000 men. But the epidemic of influenza in 1890 increased the rate of mortality in France to a greater extent than the war, although the war was one of the most sanguinary of the century. Typhoid fever has claimed more victims than all wars ; and ship- wrecks do not rank far below it. But typhoid fever could assuredly be prevented more easily 248 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR than war, by a little concerted caution, and it is probable that a large number of shipwrecks could be traced to other causes than the irresist- ible forces of the elements. War brings suffering upon the people — as- suredly. But these sufferings are more rare and less painful that those which every great strike, every important lockout, every loss of labor, in consequence of commercial stagnation, carries in its train. In the sections of our great industrial centres inhabited by the proletariat more con- tinuous misery exists than in camps or villages visited by war. The coal-miner is exposed to greater dangers than the soldier in the field. The stoker on the steamer of a tropical line suffers more intolerable bodily discomfort than the sol- dier on the most dreadful day of battle, and re- ceives less moral and material compensation. The cynic might say that these hysterical lamen- tations are raised about war because its devasta- tion strikes all, even the upper, strata of society ; while the denunciation of other causes of sick- ness, pain, and death is neglected, because their devastations are confined to the lower layers of the people. The sentimental argument, therefore, will not down the advocates of war, for they defend 249 BRITON AND BOER themselves readily with ethnic data and sta- tistics. The emotion which sustains the warlike ten- dencies of cultured men is stronger than religion, which preaches love to one's neighbor; stronger than philosophy, which teaches the irrationality of brute force ; stronger than morals and right, which civilized man pretends to recognize as the leading powers of his life. This feeling is ruth- less egotism, which lusts merely for self -gratifica- tion, and remains untouched by the concept that the neighbor also has rights which deserve re- spect. AU the culture of to-day is calculated to strengthen this egotism, not to weaken it. Art, poetry, and fiction exalt the individual. Their ideal is " sovereign personality," which knows neither self-control nor duty towards the neigh- bor. This " sovereign personality," which is praised as the most perfect blossom of human development, is the worst enemy of all moral advance. Anarchism, the war of the classes with the masses, political and economical rings, patriotism which swells into Chauvinism and national megalomania, are but different aspects of this delirium of self-love. If war is to disappear from national life, the individual must first feel his solidarity with the 250 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR race in his heart, and not only recognize it as mere verbal wisdom ; and the law of progress must be co-operation instead of competition. But in such a world-concept, which recognizes the in- dividual only as a social being, as a civic entity {Zoon politihon), and imposes upon his subjectiv- ity the law of the collective organism, the ego- ; tism of " sovereign personality " can scarcely find, room. - — '" Max Noedau. ENGLAND, THE TEANSVAAL, AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS A STEONG and even passionate feeling of resent- ment against England prevails at the present mo- ment over the whole Continent of Europe. The successes of the Boers have been greeted with exultation, and further favorable news is awaited with eager suspense. This need not excite sur- prise, at any rate so far as the Russians are con- cerned, for they have long seen their greatest enemy in the English. France, until recently, had divided her dislike between the English and the Germans ; but ever since Fashoda her desire for revenge for that humiliation has thrown her antagonism towards Germany into the back- ground. Hence, the curious and characteristic feature in the political situation of Europe at this moment is that the people of Germany, the leading power of the Triple Alliance, are entire- ly in agreement with the members of the Dual Alliance, inasmuch as a sentiment of hate for England unites the whole Continent. 352 ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. It is well known that a friendly feeling towards England has always existed in Germany. Ger- man Protestants have never been tired of empha- sizing the community of creed between England and Germany ; while German Liberals have seen their ideals realized in the Constitution of Eng- land, -which they ultimately hoped to be able to attain for themselves. On the other hand, it must be admitted that German Conservatives have always inclined more towards Russia than towards England. To-day all German parties are united in rejoicing over English defeats. Public meetings censure the Government for not inter- vening in favor of the Boers, and urge the Em- peror not to carry out his intention of going to England. Many, on the other hand, condemn the adoption of such resolutions at public meetings, on the ground that it is not customary or proper to dictate his personal movements to an Emperor. But, in one main sentiment, the whole people, the whole press, and aU parties are united : they view the Emperor's journey with great displeasure, the more so as they feel that it will be interpreted throughout the world as a demonstration against the Boers. The hatred which our forefathers felt for the French (at vfhose hands they had suffered so 253 BRITON AND BOER much from the time of Louis XIV. down to that of Napoleon) is gradually dying out. To-day, people in Germany are rather pleased than other- wise when they read of anything which is advan- tageous to the French. On the other hand, a cer- tain apprehension of Eussia exists in the minds of a cultivated and clear-sighted minority, to whom the despotism of the Czar is repugnant, and his power a constant menace. But, on the other hand, it is felt that any possible dan- ger with which Eussia might threaten Germany lies in the distant future. In fact, since Eussia has retired from the Balkan Peninsula to concen- trate her attention more and more on the Far East, we are on good terms with our Eastern neighbor, and every apprehension of the great war which Germany would have to wage with a double front to the east and west has passed away. In fact, Germany to-day might very well be friends with the world at large. But a nation as well as an individual must seemingly either love or hate. If the multitude had no enemy to be the object of its hatred, it would take no part in foreign politics at all. So the German nation, which once celebrated with delight the memory of the telle alliance of Bliicher and Wellington at Waterloo, has now 254 ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. directed its hate against England. England must have no Illusions on this point ; if it were announced to-morrow that Eussia, France, and Germany had concluded a Continental alliance against England, this news would be welcomed everywhere with joy by the people of these three nations. If you ask the man in the street why he is im- bued with such an unbounded ill-feeling towards England and such a sudden sympathy for the Boers, his reply would be that the Boers are of his own race, and are being visited with an un- righteous, even heinous, war on the part of the English. A few of the better classes are more moderate and reserved in their opinions ; they are not disposed to attach too much value to the question of affinity, since the English also, as Anglo-Saxons, are equally our cousins. They point out that the Boers, albeit Christians, are semi-barbarians, whereas the English are a peo- ple on the highest level of civilization. Neither do they take the judicial question of right and wrong to be so decisively clear as to preclude every doubt or difference of opinion. It cannot well be malice aforethought on the part of the Eno-lish that caused the gold-fields to be disco v- ered on the territory of the Boers, and it is the 355 BRITON AND BOER gold-fields which have produced the present con- flict. The gold-fields have led the IJitlanders into the country of the Boers, and the Uitlanders claimed an opportunity to take part in the Gov- ernment, which the Boers refused. The English have interfered in this dispute. It is obviously not true, as the English assert, that they are fighting for the equality of the white races ; they are fighting for equal rights of the immigrants with the Dutch inhabitants. l^ov can it be denied that there were good grounds for the English Government's formu- lating such a demand on President Kriiger. The English Government was justified in this course — at least so say those who have followed the whole course of events with a desire to judge dispassionately. But even those who concede so much agree in the main with the judgment of the crowd; for they say that it is immaterial whether England's right of interference in the Transvaal is based upon the Convention or not ; the real cause of the action of England is her claim to be the paramount power in South Africa. And the position of paramount power in South Africa is only the preliminary step towards the establishment of iBritish rule from the Cape to the Nile. England insists on being the only great 356 ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. commercial and colonial power in the world, and is only willing to allow other nations the favor of owning small fragments as enclaves wedged in helplessly between her possessions. This it is which we neither can nor intend to tolerate. Once England has overcome the Boers, she will take the German possessions in Africa as her next booty. At present there is still Portuguese territory intervening; but Portugal, pressed by financial necessities, will soon be forced to part with it. Perhaps Germany and England will share it between them ; but in every case the benefit will only be an illusory one for Germany, should England at the same time endeavor to up- hold the position of paramount power towards Germany also. This is the reason why even the most peace-loving citizen, the best friend of Eng- land among the German people, looks upon the struggle of the Boers with England as though it ■were his own cause. We no longer feel inclined to accept the pretensions of England to Anglicize one continent of the world after another. The good things of this world belong to all civilized nations in common. As England is not expected to give way peaceably, and as her great naval power cannot be overwhelmed by any one single State, the best remedy would be the alliance K 257 BRITON AND BOEE against her of all her rivals together, especially of Eussia, France, and Germany. There are some Germans, especially those of the old Bismarck school, who think that a Con- tinental alliance against England would be a fata morgana, and for this reason, that France will never give up the idea of revenge for 1870, and, therefore, Germany never would be safe from treachery in any co-operation with that country, or when face to face with any great crisis. But even those who are most suspicious of France would agree and co-operate with her from the moment that our western neighbors gave any tangible guarantee for the sincerity of their change of mind. People remember that, for many years, Prince Bismarck himself fostered the idea of a final reconciliation between Germany and France. It was he who encouraged Jules Ferry to revive the colonial policy of France, and, backed by Germany, the Great Yanquished of 1870 has since found plentiful territorial compensation for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in her newly acquired colonies; witness Tunis, Cochin China, Siam, Madagascar, and West Africa. It is also worth while noticing that France was never able to afford herself the luxury of becoming a colonial power, so long as 258 ENGLAND, THE TEANSVAAL, ETC. she was solely bent on striving for the lost frontier of the Khine. Louis XIV., as well as Napoleon I., the mightiest monarchs of their time, lost the sea against England because they had to fight on land at the same time against the German powers. A young German scholar of the Berlin University, Dr. Eoloff, has published quite recently a book on the colonial policy of Napoleon I., and has shown from official docu- ments, found by him in the archives of Paris, that the true inwardness of Napoleon's ambition was not to subdue the Continent of Europe, but to form a great French colonial power. His ex- pedition to Egypt embodied the fundamental idea of his life, and until the very last his mind was occupied with plans for an expedition to India. It came to nothing, because England had her allies on the Continent, and these grew more formidable in proportion to Napoleon's efforts to subdue them. It is now the first time in history that France, although vanquished on the Continent, has yet acquired huge colonial territories; indeed, she would have added even more to her dominions, if her statesmen had not been ceaselessly preoccupied and troubled in decisive moments by the memory of the lost provinces between the Ehine and the Moselle. 259 BRITON AND BOER We believe it to be a fact that when, four years ago, the Emperor "William sent his congratula- tory telegram to President Kriiger, and England in a fit of wrath despatched her flying squadron, the French Government offered England the support of France in case of complications. Fa- shoda became in due course the punishment for this diplomatic action; and, since this humilia- tion, it seems as between France and Germany only to be a question as to who will take the first step. Such is the state of public opinion in Ger- many. There is only one person in the whole country who thinks otherwise, and that is the Kaiser. And in Germany foreign politics are shaped not by public opinion, but by the Kai- ser. In America people think it the privilege of a free country to make her politics herself. In Germany we do not. The United States may be well satisfied with the results of their foreign relations in the one hundred and twenty- five years of their existence. But these rela- tions always were v^y simple. In the Old World foreign politic/S are much more compli- cated and not so easiily controlled by the whole nation. If France does not take so high a rank to-day among the great powers as formerly, it is 260 LORD JtOBIORTS OF KANDAIIAK, V.C., G C I!., OA-LK ('onir]iaiiiU;r-m-Cljief uf llii' Rnti^li forcoy iu .SuiiLli Afncji ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. not only the defeat of 1870, but her democratic Government, the constant change of her Foreign Ministers, which is responsible for the decline. " Secrecy is the soul of foreign politics," said Frederick the Great in his political testament. Who can intrust a secret to a diplomatist of the French Eepublic? The experience of history shows that in the long run monarchies have always overpowered democracies. Evea the most successful examples of democracies in his- tory, such as Athens, have not had a very long life. Eome, Venice, and the ISTetherlands, which perhaps of all republics in the past may be said to have enjoyed the most prolonged prosperity, were more aristocratic than democratic in char- acter. Germany, therefore, leaves the direction of her foreign affairs to the Emperor and trusts that the sovereign will do the best he can, choose the most able counsellors he can find, and that he will be prompt as weU as prudent. Since all he does for the nation he does also for himself, for his own greatness and glory, for the splendor of his family, and for the future of his children and posterity, all his interests depend upon and are included in the success of German policy and the welfare of Germany. The House of Hohenzollern never can 261 BRITON AND BOER be separated from the fortunes of the nation. Therefore the nation may safely confide its fort- unes to the House of Hohenzollern ; and even now, when public opinion has evidently taken quite a different view of things from that of the Emperor, or at least from that which he seems to hold, no public organ would propose, nor would the Eeichstag itself wish, to alter the German constitution with regard to this particular point. Perhaps here we might object that we have a great Social Democratic party in Germany, and that it is republican, and does not at all approve the direction of policy by a personal government. It is true that this is the meaning of the pro- gramme of this party; but in reality Social Dem- ocrats care very little for foreign politics, and though in general they have a certain sympathy with England in this struggle, there may be yet many who sympathize more with the Boers. The sturdy militia warfare waged by them against the mercenaries, the drilled soldiers, of England excites admiration. The Social Democrats are thus divided in their sympathies; and, besides being a minority, they will not in any way thwart the policy which the Kaiser determines to follow. Now the Emperor is unquestionablj'^ proud and ambitious; he desires above all to preserve the 363 ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. position of his dynasty and that of the Gernaan nation among the great Powers ; he would not willingly let his country become inferior to any other empire, kingdom, or country in the world. But he also is a man of modern ideas. He detests the cruelty of war, and he will never engage in warfare as long as it is possible for Germany to avoid it. He knows that a great country which possesses a strong army and navy can secure suc- cess without bloodshed. In his eyes, the task for Germany is to preserve the balance between all her neighbors; to provide that the world shall never become either entirely English or Kussian. A Continental Alliance against England would undoubtedly sooner or later mean a general war against her. This war the Emperor wants to avoid, or at any rate not to provoke. So he looks for ways and means to ^ake German policy run not against, but rather with, England as long as this is possible. It is, perhaps, as well to bear in mind that the aim which the Kaiser strives for is essentially the same as that which public opinion in Germany has in view : to win for our race an assured future, not to allow England to rule alone in Africa. The only diflference is in the ways and means. German public opinion would prefer a policy 263 BRITON AND BOER openly directed against England, by means of a Continental Alliance. This does not mean, indeed, to embark in hostilities towards England. Such a possibility is not even so much as con- templated. It is hoped and believed that the mere conclusion of the great alliance indicated would suffice to bring about the desired result. The Emperor, on the other hand, sees that such an alliance would be ineffectual unless it were indeed an alliance for war. Therefore, he has chosen the other alternative, and wishes to go hand in hand with England, as already stated, so long as this is possible. The question now is how long this will be possible, and the answer depends on many con- tingencies. Although foreign affairs in Germany are directed by the Emperor and not by the nation, the Emperor, of course, is not out of touch with, much less antagonistic towards, the country. He can do what he likes, but he cer- tainly will not act permanently against the sen- timent of the people. To continue his own pol- icy, he must from time to time prove to the country that he is moving in the right di- rection. He must be in a position to show results. At this very moment there comes the news of the treaty concerning Samoa. It 264 ENGLAND, THE TRANSVAAL, ETC. was certainly very clever of the English Min- isters to make a slight concession to German aspirations ; perhaps there are more such things in the background. The Emperor will next pay a visit to his grandmother in England. Our Ger- man papers say that it is but a family visit, but in every English newspaper you can read that this visit will possess great political impor- tance ; and surely the English are right. A Ger- man Kaiser w^ho pays a visit to England cannot be a party to an alliance against England ; and as without Germany the other Powers cannot as- sume the offensive against England, the English are at liberty to deliberately concentrate aU their force against the Transvaal. I should not be surprised to learn that this is an advantage acquired at a very low price. It is noticeable that the title-deeds of England to Samoa are to be paid for by Germany by the cession of some other islands in the South Sea of much greater area than Samoa — besides territory in "West Africa. If the English, as seemed probable for a mo- ment after the fight of Glencoe, had overrun the Boers without any great effort, I have little doubt that the Continental Alliance above referred to would have been very soon effected. English 265 BRITON AND BOER diplomacy, elated by the happy issue, would hardly have been inclined to appease all rivalry by pliability and moderation. So far, perhaps, the heroism of the Boers is a bit of good fortune for England. If, after a long and tenacious struggle, England and the Transvaal should come to a convention for the peace of the world, this surely would be the best outcome of the situation. The hostile sentiments of the Continental nations, especial- ly of the Germans, will be restrained, and the Kaiser will be able to continue his policy of peaceful moderation. If, however, England should not speedily prove to be strong enough to protect her own territories and to drive the Boers back into their own land, to enforce an honorable and suitable peace, if the war is to go on for more than a year, nobody can say to-day what the consequence will be for the politics of the world. In such a case, Eussia and France would very likely endeavor to profit by the opportunity and extend their colonial influence. The Eussian Emperor e^ecially must be dis- pleased at the fact that his great Congress of Peace at The Hague has been estimated so lightly by the English. Arbitration, which he wants to be employed instead of war, or at least before 266 ENGLAND, THE TKANSVAAL, ETC. the peoples resolve to go to war, has not even come into question in the conflict between Eng- land and the Transvaal. Yery likely Mr. Cham- berlain has fomented the Transvaal trouble just at this time because the Kussians are not yet ready with their Siberian Kailway, which would at once enable them to bring their forces within a fortnight from Moscow to Pekin. But if the Boer war should continue for months and months, Russia may find other points, perhaps in Persia, where she could make a great advance. The most ominous eventuality for England undoubt- edly would be if Eussia and France together should determine to bring up the Egyptian ques- tion. Egypt is by far the most important acqui- sition that England has made in our time, and she has no legal title under international law to remain there. However, it is of little avail to pass in re- view the international questions which might be brought to the fore in consequence of the South African crisis. "What I wanted to say is only that the feelings of the Continental nations of Europe at this moment are in an astonishing unison against England, and would greet with joy any measures that their Governments should happen to undertake against England. The man 267 BRITON AND BOER who restrains them all from common political action is the German Emperor, and no doubt he wiU continue to do so as long as English states- men and the course of the South African war may render it possible for him. Hans DELBEircK. GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH In 1896, when the English started on their famous Dongola expedition, on behalf of the de- feated Italians caught in the Eritish trap through Crispi's criminal ambition, I wrote a leading article in the St. Petersburg Viedomosti, under the English title, " The Eobbers of Posterity." In it I endeavored to demonstrate that the ex- pedition had nothing of the nature of strategical movement; that it yras part of a far-reaching scheme which involved an advance into the very heart of Africa, intended to make the English masters of the whole course of the Nile, thus giving them in reality complete control of East- ern Africa, and rendering their pressure on the Mediterranean and the countries bordering on it quite formidable. The article in question called upon itself the attention of the Times of London, which charged me with a fondness for rhetoric and a penchant for loud-sounding phrases. Circumstances, however, proved that I had not 269 BEITON AND BOER been so bad a prophet after all. Not only have the English, in the course of the last three years, acquired the whole of the Nile Yalley, planting their flag in Khartoum, but, likewise, after bring- ing matters to the verge of war in connection with the Fashoda incident, they have extended their claims over regions far in the interior to the west of the Nile, acquiring by a convention forced on France, Darfur and Kordofan, and lying in wait for an occasion of expanding their dominion in the eastern direction by the conquest of Abyssinia. The " Robbers of Posterity " have done their work pretty neatly. Nearly the whole of Eastern Africa has fallen into their lap. The sinister significance of the British success- es mentioned above lies in the fact that all these acbievements of British diplomacy and military power are parts of a vast preconceived scheme. The present Transvaal war is but the realization of one of its details ; and that it is unfairly and unscrupulously waged against a State whose po- litical and international status is quite clearly defined only shows the extent to which the bad faith and mischievous purpose of England may go. Such is the Russian view of the present crisis in South Africa ; and need I say that this 370 MAJOU-GKNEKAr, LOUD KITCIIKNKI! Chief of Staff to Lord Robcrls, CuiiiriiinHlrr m Chii-f of the llritish forces lu SoiiIIj ,-\rnr;i GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH view is fully justified by the facts of its history, as set forth by English writers themselves? It is no secret that the greatness of the British Empire dates from the conquest of India; so much so that, through aU the periods of English history, underlying all manifestations of English political thought and life, there passes, like a red thread, the idea of the preservation of England's i great Asiatic possession. To develop communi- cations between this vast dependency and the metropolis, to shorten the ways that lead to India, has been the chief preoccupation of gen- erations of British statesmen. Such an idea is by no means in itself discreditable, but, unfort- unately, England's greed has led her people to set no limits to their ambition and to fulfil their historic task with utter disregard of the vital in- terests of other nations and races. In her efforts to establish the security of India she has thrown a net over the States of Europe (as well as over alien races in other parts of the world, though injustice in this case does not count, according to the code of the Christian civilization of to-day), a net that is always tightening round the necks of other, peoples, killing their energies, rendering them incapable of fulfilling their own mission or of attaining moral and spiritual perfection through 271 BRITON AND BOER the aid of noble deeds. A curse to mankind was and is the policy pursued by Great Britain for the last two centuries. Through blood and tears is she making her progress through the world ; but, unfortunately, other European nations and the great American Eepublic have had until lately too much to do in their respective coun- tries to admit of their paying attention to the fate of the people of India, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the British sections of Africa, China, and Ireland. " Darkest England " has never been put before the world in her true character, her talk and pretence of furthering the cause of civ- ilization and humanity having thrown a veil over British misdeeds. But Lord Beaconsfield's policy in Turkey, like that of Mr. Chamberlain in the Transvaal, affords a striking example of the gen- eral character of Great Britain's doubtful services to civilization. With a view to opening a way to India through the countries in possession of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain played a double game with the Sultans. On the one hand she gave them assistance in their suicidal policy of trampling upon, keeping under foot, and mas- sacring the Christian population of the Empire ; and on the other she called forth the righteous indignation of Europe against the Turks, thus 273 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH holding the Ottoman Empire in her power and pocketing all she could take. The Armenians, the Cretans, the Egyptians, the Slav population of Turkey could all tell a sinister tale of their sufferings, which benefited only England. The general idea of British politicians was to shut in the Ottoman Empire, by the creation of inde- pendent States, against any one coming from the north, thereby leaving themselves a free hand for grasping Cyprus, Egypt, and Arabia, the posses- sion of which would render them masters of the Persian Gulf and the whole of the Indian Ocean. '■'■Study the Tnaps!" Such was the advice tendered to his countrymen by Lord Salisbury in one of his speeches. " Study the maps," will I say to the great public in general, "if you wish to form a correct idea of the English de- signs." By southern ways Great Britain is creeping to the north, making the English pressure irre- sistible. Mr. Chamberlain's policy in the Trans- vaal, which had the general approval of the members of Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, is a strik- ing illustration of this fact. The tightening of the English grasp on South Africa, coming as it does after the conquest of the Soudan, gives England new strength on the Indian Ocean, s 273 BRITON AND BOER brings the English nearer to India, to the Per- sian Gulf, to Arabia, to the Far East — in short, this is the English answer to Germany's colonial activity and to the taking by the United States of the Philippine Islands. If in the algebraic problem presented by the English policy you were to put in the place of the unknown " x " England's move to the East, you should have solved the problem and got an answer to aU the details of the question that are difficult at first to understand. Such is exactly the course of the English policy which I predicted three years ago when I wrote the article on " The Bobbers of Posterity." What was, therefore, my surprise, not only when events had proved the correctness of my forecast, but when, at the beginning of the Transvaal war, I actually read in one of the London periodicals an article in which the author put forth exactly the same idea of the strengthening of the Eng- lish dominion over the Indian Ocean, and, as a consequence, over the Persian Gulf. A clear indication that such is really the English aim is afforded by the vigorous campaign carried on lately by the Indian press against Russia's sup- posed designs on Bender-Abbas on the Persian Gulf. 274 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH But there is more in the present political move- ment of England than is apparent at first sight. All I have described above regarding England's preoccupation about India shows by itself that the present display of British force is bound to be followed by others in various directions, and that the English have started on a career of mili- tary conquest. " Qui a iu, hoira /" is the French saying ; translated into English, special English in this case, it means : "Me who has drunk of Uood, shall drink it again /" It must not be for- gotten that Mr. Chamberlain has been made the spokesman of the present Unionist ministry, thereby involving the majority of the Liberal- Unionists in responsibility for the deeds of the present Conservative Government, which is, in the case of the Transvaal, supported by the Lib- eral-Imperialists, led, actually though not nomi- nally, by Lord Eosebery. But what was some years ago the chief aim of the present colonial minister? He sought to strengthen the ties binding the colonies to the mother-country by creating a colonial ZoUverein. Having, however, failed in this task, the British ministry turned their activity to arousing a special colonial patri- otism in matters particularly English and having no concern with the colonies. This colonial pa- 375 BRITON AND BOER triotism was called vmperialism, which was made so broad as to include the United States on the same grounds as Canada in the task of working for the achievement of a pan-British ideal. The "Anglo-Saxon" cry was also raised with the same aim. It must be acknowledged that the English ministry are fighting against real dangers,- al- though they do not realize that they are en- gaged in an attempt to oppose the force of events. The centre of political and commercial power, which was once located in London and Paris (England finally defeating France in the time of Napoleon), has shifted, under the press- ure of events, to the Wjest and to the East — to America, where the United States are contend- ing with the same England in the Canadian over- coat, and to the centres of the European Conti-, nent, Berlin and St. Petersburg, on which conti- nent England tries to fight Eussia with the aid of Germany. The struggle in each case must prove utterly futile, at all events in the future, as history unlooses the forces which underlie the world's political structure ; but the struggle may be rendered profitless in the present as well, if the nations interested realize the meaning of passing events and make it plain to England 376 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH that the time of her undisputed dominion over the world has come to an end. The present Transvaal war has the following meaning to the British Empire. Bearing in mind, on the one hand, that British political power is on the wane, and wishing, on the other hand, to infuse new blood into the Empire with the aid of its colonies, British politicians have started on a career of conquest, making out of the Transvaal an object-lesson for their future exploits. The present Tr-ansvaai war is practically a step in the mobilization of all the forces of the British Empire, the colonial forces included. It imports, likewise, the denying to the colonies of a right to a separate life, to separate interests : all life, aU interests must be sacrificed for the English ideal. It is notorious that for a number of years the leading English statesmen have persistently put forward the idea of the colonies co-operating in defence of the Empire. I find the same thought expressed by Sir Charles Dilke in the October issue of the North American Review. The Transvaal, in case of the success of Brit- ish arms, is destined to be a second Alsace and Lorraine, which formed the cornerstone of the vast building of the German Empire ; the Trans- vaal is a rallying point for the colonial forces. 277 BRITON AND BOER " Qui a iu, loira /" As the Prussians, after the war with Denmark, fought the Austrians and then the French, so England, after fighting the Transvaal, will have a ready weapon to fight in any direction that may be thought necessary. The central power in London will simply turn the fighting energies of the colonies in the direc- tion selected : to North Africa, to the Persian Gulf, to Arabia, to Abyssinia, to China, to Can- ada, to Nicaragua, etc. The Enghsh politicians will, with the greatest ease, bring pressure to bear on aU points of the globe, when required. So much for England, in case of her success in the campaign. But the character and scope of this success will in the long run depend on the attitude of the world's Powers. For the Continental Powers of Europe, as well as for the United States, the consequences of Enghsh success and of the strengthening of Great Britain are plain enough. The two cru- cial questions, for the present, are these : "Will the Powers realize the full meaning of the pres- ent English move? and, will they play the Eng- lish game ? While I would answer the first ques- tion in the affirmative, I would give a negative reply to the second, were I sure of the far-sight- edness, as a rule, of the persons called diplomats. 378 GREAT BKITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH For the United States there would be no danger in the present political situation and its neces- sary political developments, if the interests of Canada and of the United States were not artifi- cially divided, if the Dominion were not irretriev- ably under British influence, and if it were not profitable to England to keep alive an eternal antagonism between the countries of the Ameri- can continent. As matters now stand, the atti- tude of the United States ought to be the reverse of that of the Dominion ; such are, at any rate, the American traditions of liberty and indepen- dence. "What of the success of England in trying to create an antagonism between Germany and Russia ? I do not believe in it, and for the fol- lowing reasons. Germany has nothing whatever to gain by an antagonistic policy towards Russia. All the efforts of the German Empire are directed towards gaining full access to the seas and in- creasing its naval power. By spreading to the north, in the direction of Holland, Germany comes into collision with the English, as she is sure to do in the south, if the Germans ventured to find open access to the Mediterranean. The independence of Holland has made it difficult for Germany to accomplish the first task, although lately there has been much talk in the German 279 BRITON AND BOER press about common interests with Holland, and after the visit of Queen Wilhelmina to Berlin the British Ambassador at The Hague has gone away to London for a prolonged stay. The second task, in the Mediterranean, is rendered impossible to Germany by England's little game with poor Italy. Well! Coupled with the Anglo- German commercial rivalry, this antagonism be- tween the political aims of Great Britain and Germany goes a long way to explain the pres- ent situation and its future developments, and it also shows that unfriendly relations with Eussia would not " pay " Germany. The political aims of Eussia and Germany are identical without coming anywhere into collision. The Eussians and the Germans "seek the seas" in their own separate spheres. This antagonism of Eussian and German aims to those of England must nec- essarily underlie the relations between Eussia and Germany, whatever aspect these relations may at any time acquire for the moment. It is true that both countries, Germany and Eussia, are capable of creating many diflBculties for each other, but they will always have to reckon with their respective positions in Europe, and they are bound to keep an eye — aye, both eyes — on England. The events in the Far East offer 280 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH an example of the position sketched above. Eng- land dared not answer to the seizure of Kiao- Tchao and the Emperor's speech at Kiel, because she feared that Russia supported Germany ; on the other hand, English politicians would not adopt an openly aggressive attitude towards Kussia in China, because they secretly beheved in a probable rupture between Germany and Russia. The English were mistaken ; nobody in Europe wishes to fight their battles. Whatever, therefore, may be the compensa- tion that England is ready to pay to Germany for her benevolent attitude in the present cam- paign, it is plain that by associating herself with England, Germany would be carryiDg on a sui- cidal policy ; would weaken herself by aiding in their designs the English statesmen, who are directing the policy of a State far superior to Germany as a world-wide Empire. True, we read in the papers about an Anglo-German ar- rangement in the question of Samoa, about To- goland, Zanzibar, and the Portuguese African colonies. But this is nothing else than a repeti- tion of the fable of the robber who stole a cow and gave his comrade the milk-j ug. Germany can- not rest satisfied with the milk-jug in the form of concessions in Zanzibar, when England takes to 381 BRITON AND BOER herself the cow of the fable, the whole of South Africa, thereby strengthening the English posi- tion in the Indian Ocean and rendering almost useless the German colonies in East Africa. The question which now faces the European Powers is : Can the strengthening of England on the Indian Ocean leave them indififerent ; can the balance of power in the vicinity of the Otto- man Empire and in the Far East be disturbed? And all the world Powers have likewise to an- swer another question : How shall the putting forth by England of her colonial forces affect them ? The second question I have already answered, and it will aid me in replying to the first if I say that the Transvaal war, coming as it does. after the Soudan campaign, gives unmistakable evidence that it is a career of conquest that they have begun in London. If the English were anxic5us about their commercial interests, they would not go to war, as all the principal ports and harbors of Africa are in their hands. ' The first question as to the attitude likely to be assumed by the European Powers in the pres- ent struggle affords me the opportunity of stat- ing that now is the moment when Eussia, Ger- many, and France, with their diplomacy, are 382 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH brought simultaneously into prominence, and it is with them that the final answer rests. There can be no doubt about the attitude of Russia and France, the former having to secure her interests in the Persian Gulf and Abyssinia, and the latter, notwithstanding her possessions in Madagascar, Siam, and Indo-China, not being even consulted by England before the commencement of the present war. There may be some doubt as to the final attitude of Germany, but the interests of the latter will bring her in the long run into line with the two former Powers, and the Pots- dam interview of both Emperors, arranged ac- cording to Emperor William's desire, goes far to justify an optimistic view in this instance. Sup- posing, however, there were some doubts on this point, I think they would be disposed of if it were made clear to the minds of European diplo- mats that the question put before them is nothing else than the existence of France. In the sphere of colonial interests, the French Eepublic blocks the way to the expansion of the British Empire, and is met by the latter on every point of the globe. Were it not for France the British diplo- mats would not care a straw about Germany, so far have they surpassed her in the race for col- onies. But having to fight France, the English 383 BRITON AND BOER are bound to conciliate Germany in the same manner as they lately pushed forward Italy in China. The existence of France is now at stake, the more so as Madagascar lies on the way from South Africa to the East ; and we hope that Em- peror "William will not repeat the mistakes of Napoleon III. England is playing with Ger- many the same game as that played in the former days by Bismarck, who endeavored to lull the suspicions of the French Emperor while the " Iron Chancellor" was at work in the north and in the south of Prussia building up an empire. Napoleon was so short-sighted that he even fought the battles of England against Eussia in the Crimea and finally got his due. In the pres. ent case, England realizes plainly that an assault on France, bringing her within the sphere of English political combinations, would give the English new vigor and colonial possessions and restore to Great Britain the political power which, according to some, is shifting to the West and to the East. Such an assault on France, however, no responsible politician of Germany and Russia would tolerate. When I say assault I mean not only actual warfare, but an attempt to crush by political pressure the political power of France for English benefit as well. Were 284 GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WAR-PATH this to be allowed, the power of resistance of the European Continent to England's encroachments would be diminished, and, in consequence, Ger- many's power would also be on the wane ; the great fleets of Germany are things of the distant future. The immediate future holds a probability of some combination of Powers, when the idea gains ground that the balance of power is disturbed in the Indian Ocean and in the countries lying in its vicinity, and that the growth of the colonial mili- tary forces of Great Britain is a standing menace to the whole world. Nobody can tell in what direction the colonial regiments will be sent next time, especially when Great Britain is on the eve of developing her military resources at home. At any rate, whatever the issue of the present campaign, whether it be favorable to England or not, all the attention of the world Powers must be centred now on the Indian Ocean. Some action is imperative in this direction. What form this action shall take is a matter of secondary interest. As to the effect which the criminal campaign against the Transvaal may have on the English people themselves, I will say this : The good angel of England is flown away; Gladstone is dead, quite dead, and now his countrymen are in the 285 BRITON AND BOER act of driving new and heavy nails into his coffin in order to hold its lid well down. Vladimie Holmsteem. P. S. — I approve Mr. Holmstrem's ideas on the subject of which he treats. Peinoe Ookhtomskt. SIR REDVERS BULLER: A CHAEAOTBE STUDY There is no stronger man in tbe British Em- pire to-day than the illustrious soldier to whom has been given the charge of our forces in South Africa. Strength is popular among us, and rough- ness is looked at by the majority of men as the necessary appanage of strength. Around the name of Sir Eedvers Buller, accordingly, a per- sistent legend has arisen, encouraged by certain superficial qualities of his own, which represents him as a martinet, " rough and tough," like Major Joey Bagstock, a mere iron instrument of war- fare, from whom it would be extravagant to ex- pect any of the agreeable virtues. To read the complacent descriptions of him in a hundred newspapers, one would imagine him to be some- thing between a bull and a battering - ram ; " a silent, saturnine, bloodthirsty man," one of his admirers calls him. A second remarks that "one never thinks of BuUer apart from his-profession." 287 BRITON AND BOER A third, ardently appreciating his genius, sighs that "it is a pity that he does not succeed in attracting as much affection as he does respect and admiration." To one who has the privilege of knowing Sir Eedvers Buller in a strictly non- oflBcial capacity, there is something preposterous in these exaggerations of his decisive manner, his forthrightness, his abrupt and blunt address. One is tempted to combat this blood-and-iron legend, and to portray the man as he seems to his friends. Those who can " never think of Buller apart from his profession " cannot be aware that, with the exception of Lord "Wolseley, not one of our great living soldiers has so much to interest him outside his military work as Sir Eedvers Buller has. Most of our leading generals cannot be thought of detached from the army. But if Lord "Wolseley had never become a soldier he might very well to-day have been Kegius Profes- sor of History at Oxford or Cambridge ; while Sir Eedvers Buller would certainly have been a very active county magistrate, and probably Minister for Agriculture in a Unionist Cabinet. After 1881, when he was disgusted with the action of Mr. Gladstone, Buller could hardly be dissuaded from throwing up his commission. To a friend who used with him the argument that. I.IEUTENANT-flKNIir.AL SITt UKDVIiKS IIEMCV IIULI.KK, (•■.(• r.., K.C.Af.ll., K.f.i: , V.C. ij'jiuiiiuii'iiti!/ (In; achanue roliiiuD ol Uie iJriLiiL lorct_-s iij SouUi Africa SIR REDVEES BULLER if he did so, his occupation would be gone, he replied: "No; I have other things to look to when I cease to be a soldier. You forget how many interests I have." This is a side of his character which is little known, and it is to this that I desire to draw attention. In the first place, then, those who regard Sir Eedvers BuUer as a sort of mechanical engine of war, with no thought in his head but of fighting, should be told that this typical soldier springs from an entirely unmilitary family. He is the Squire of Downes, and, as his ancestors have been in a long line, the head of a large Cornish and Devonshire clan of landed gentle- men, identified for centuries with "West-country farming and sport. His father, Mr. James Went- worth Buller, was a prominent figure in his day, a man universally respected in the County of Devonshire, which he long represented in Par- liament, and in which he spent his whole life in the midst of his tenants. Mr. Buller was a dis- tinguished scholar of Oxford, no sportsman, devoted to literature and art, but, above all, to his civic duties as a country gentleman and a magistrate. He married the daughter of Lord Henry Howard, and Mrs. Buller shared his culti- vated tastes, read the same books as he, diffused T 289 BEITON AND BOER over the same circle a kindred influence of refine- ment. This couple, who lived at Downes in a sort of patriarchal state, were the parents of fourteen children, eight sons and six daughters, Sir Eedvers being the second son. From this couple sprang in the next generation a family of strong, sport-loving, farm-loving sons, of whom Sir Eedvers was the only soldier. With him the army instinct is not hereditary, but quite individual. He was born to be a leader of fight- ing men, as others are born to be poets or astrono- mers. Moreover, until, in 1876, his eldest brother died, he had the salutary position of a cadet in the family. Conscious of immense force and ambition, he was obliged by circumstances to look around for the best mode of developing his powers. Had he been the eldest son of Mr. J. "W. BuUer, it is extremely unlikely that he would have found his business in war at all. And it is important to point out that, while the personal element in his genius is, of course, predominant to-day — while, that is to say, it would be an affectation to speak of him as anything but pre- eminently a soldier- — the element of his old life in Devonshire still remains at the base of Sir Eedvers BuUer's experience and shapes the non-official part of his character. To show in 290 SIR REDVERS BULLER what way they act will be th^ object of these pages. I wish to emphasize that this "silent, saturnine, bloodthirsty " soldier of the Jingo legend is really a genial county gentleman and a man of refined intellectual culture. In the South African war the Zulus had various names for Sir Eedvers BuUer; they called him "the Steam Engine," because he was always rushing out of unexpected places, and " the Brother of the Devil," because he led to so much bereavement in their families. These names are good enough for Zulus, and perhaps for a large portion of the English public, but they cannot satisfy Sir Eed- vers's personal friends. Those who only know Sir Eedvers Buller in his capacity as a soldier must form an incom- plete conception of him. He is a very diifferent person in Devonshire and in Pall Mall. On his Downes estate there is not a blade of grass that he has not watched, not a cottage that he has not planned, not a laborer whom he has not known from a boy. "What Sir Eedvers really enjoys most, next to starting off upon a campaign at short notice, is the life of a country squire. As a lad he was always in the open air, neglect- ing his books a good deal, but learning steadily and eao-erly in the classes of the eoole lidsson- 291 BRITON AND BOER niere. He spent his early days at Dowries among the farm-laborers, with the woodman, the blacksmith, and the carpenter, and before he went to Eton he had managed to pick up a knowledge of many technical things, connected with these occupations, so thorough that it has remained with him ever since. Mingled with this and in complete harmony with it was a pas- sion for hunting, always in those days of a rough and provincial kind. But it was with the Trem- lett hounds that Sir Redvers BuUer learned that firm seat in the saddle which has served him so well in his wild campaigns. His soldiers have often expressed surprise at his practical knowl- edge. For instance, in the Zulu war a gun- wagon got jambed in being taken through a deep defile. When the manoeuvre seemed hope- less, Sir Eedvers got down and showed how the thing was to be done. The men could not help expressing amazement. " Oh !" replied the General, " it's only a knack. I learned it from watching the woodmen in the Devonshire lanes when I was a boy." Sir Eed vers Buller's life in the "West, of which we never hear anything in London, would be enough to exhaust the energy of some ambitious men. He is untiring in his e£forts to improve 292 SIR REDYERS BULLER his land, and he does not disdain to be the chief citizen of his little ancient borough of Crediton. He takes an astonishing interest in the affairs of the town. He is Chairman of its School Board, one of the twelve Governors of its Church, and administrator of most of its local charities. When he was extremely busy as Adjutant-Gen- eral of the British Army, he always made time to go down west to important town-meetings. In consequence he is regarded with great respect and affection in Crediton, while his popularity is unbounded. It is based on his reputation for sympathy and justice, on the long experience of his straightforwardness. The townspeople know that he will never promise to do more than he can perform, and they realize that he is one of themselves, that he thoroughly understands them. Crediton is almost comically proud of Sir Eedvers. A mild old man loitering about the church-porch the other day was asked if the Squire was a favorite. " A favorite here ? Well, all I can tell you is that if any fellow were to say a word in Crediton against the General, we should rise like one man and knock him down." All this dates further back than Sir Eedvers's connection with the army. He was sent very early to a hard, rough school in Devonshire, 393 BRITON AND BOER where, as he sometimes says, he " was grounded, at the butt end of a whip, in the Bible," but where he gained little else that was worth learn- ing. And then followed Eton, where he was happy, but with his own pursuits, and where he specially distinguished himself neither in games nor lessons. It was at Eton, and towards the end of his school life, that he determined quite independently to go into the army. But just before joining his regiment he very nearly put an end to everything. He was up in a tree in the woods at Downes, lopping, when he cut his right leg so severely that the Devonshire doctor declared that it must be amputated or else he would die. Kedvers Buller stoutly replied that he would rather die with two legs than live with one, and he was eventually cured. It has, how- ever, slightly hampered his movements and made him a little less agile than he would otherwise be. With this exception. Sir Kedvers Buller has (so far) lived a charmed life ; with all his reckless daring in so many most dangerous campaigns, he has never been seriously wounded. His eminence as a soldier and the entrancing nature of his military responsibilities have never killed or even scotched the country gentleman in Sir Eedvers. He has always been a good cross- 294 SIR REDVERS BULLER country rider, and he hunts still. He was out with the hounds last winter, and he is as fond of hunting and goes as well as ever he did. His keenness for every kind of sport is as remarkable as ever ; he seems to palpitate with it. Pie used to be very fond of racing, and although 1 fancy that he has given this up, he never fails to be present at the Derby, and he is careful to fit in with his innumerable engagements as many race- meetings as he can. Everybody in the West ad- mits that he is a first-rate judge of a horse. Un- til lately he was a prominent exhibitor of Red Devon cattle at Smithfield, and very successful. Although, for some reason, he seems to show no longer, he continues to take the greatest interest in his cattle. His fruit-houses and orchards oc- cupy a great deal of his attention. He is elo- quent about pines, positively boastful about mel- ons. His special fad is apples; there is a new orchard at Downes entirely stocked by him with selected apple-trees imported from France. That this is no trivial interest may be shown by the fact that the whole of the money awarded to him for his successes in the Zulu war was spent on the improvement of his fruit -houses and or- chards. So much for the natural activities of the mau 395 BRITON AND BOER who " can scarcely be thought of apart from his profession as a soldier." I proceed, with some diffidence, to describe what one observes of his mental interests. In the first place, although Sir Redvers BuUer is pre-eminently a man of action, one notes in him that instinctive respect for the life of thought and study which sits so gracefully on a great soldier. This attitude of deference to the intel- lectual life is, I doubt not, a heritage from the traditions of the family life at Downes, where scholarship and the harmony of books were held in high respect. It is obvious that he himself has never had leisure for any very close or con- secutive reading. But I have observed that he has the knack of tearing the heart out of any- thing that he' does read, and in an amazingly short spa'je of time. He is certainly a good in- stinctive judge of literature, and if he has not had oppoiti^nity to cultivate his judgment with a very v.'ide selection, where his mind does alight is almost always on the purest and richest writ- ers. For poetry he has, perhaps, no particular aptitude. "When he was a boy he must have learned Scott's verse - romances by heart, for he retains pages of them still. But in prose Sir Eedvers's tastes are definite. Two English clas- 296 .MAJOK-GENKIt \L SIR W. F. GATACKK L'oruiiiaudiug Third Diviaiou uT llie First Army Corps iu Soulli Afni-'a SIR REDVERS BULLER sics travel about with him in miniature editions ; he never starts on a campaign without Bacon's Essays and the Essays of Elia. An interesting feature of Sir Kedvers Buller's attitude to literature is his special interest in the expression of the individual character of the au- thor. One would suppose that he would read entirely for the matter, but I have been surprised to notice that it always seems to be the manner that attracts him. Among the moderns he has, I think, three prime favorites, Euskin, Matthew Arnold, and George Meredith, and in each he is particularly observant of the style. The pen- chant of Sir Red vers for Euskin is so marked as to be quite a feature of his mental life. He was induced to read Modern Painters when he was very young, and he has preserved a lively enthusiasm for this author. The only trace of anything like bibliomania to be met with in Sir Eedvers Buller's library is the care with which he has brought together a rather large collection of the early editions of Euskin. He is not a great novel-reader, and I have heard him say that he always begins at the end. He is not, as one might suppose, attracted by hair-breadth advent- ures and a boisterous plot, but he prefers deli- cate ingenuities of psychology and a scrupulous 397 BRITON AND BOER style. He has even a certain weakness for senti- ment in a story. At Downes there exists a fine library, originally collected by a Buller of a hundred and fifty years ago, and continued by successive squires, par- ticularly Mr. J. "W". Buller. In this library Sir Eedvers has from youth taken a peculiar interest, and has added to it all its most modern orna- ments. Whenever he can find time, he is to be discovered inspecting and rearranging the vol- umes, and searching for gaps, which are to be promptly filled. The annex, in which all the recent books are, was constructed by himself out of a dining-room, and while he was making this part of his library he placed all the shelves and arranged the books with his own hands. As I have said, his own tastes lie in the direction of the higher class of helles-lettres, but there were left to Downes the scientific and philosophical books of a younger brother, a bequest which greatly added to the value of the collection. This brother, who never recovered from being half -eaten by a tiger in India, was a man of very remarkable intellectual powers. There can be no question that Sir Eedvers possesses, in a marked degree, the love of books, although his life has been too full of action to permit him to indulge it. 298 SIR REDVERS BULLER The fine arts have always attracted Sir Eed- vers Buller. He was an early lover of the Barbizon school, and has been abreast of the wave of taste on several occasions. He soon picks up the elements of any order of connois- seurship, and has, at one time or another, been a collector himself. In this kind of occupation, certain qualities make themselves emphatically felt. Sir Redvers would not be the great general that he is if his eye were not exquisitely trained to observe. He declares that this is the result in him of patient labor, that he had to learn to see. But the faculty of close and keen observa- tion must have been native with him. Those who think of him only as the " stern, grim sol- dier " may be diverted to know that on social occasions his eye misses nothing, and disdains not to describe, if necessary, the details of a woman's dress. I have observed him to be par- ticularly sensitive to color? This faculty is but one manipulation of a mind the genius of which lies in great part in its orderly arrangement, its absolute sureness of movement. He is very fond of urging on young men the cultivation of the eye, which he thinks can be deliberately studied and mastered even when there is no natural gift for it. This may, however, be doubted. In all 399 BRITON AND BOER Sir Redvers's personal tastes, I think that a lean- ing to the great style may be traced. In litera- ture he prefers the masters of language ; in music his predilections are classical ; among modern artists, while he valued the conversation of Millais and Boehm, his most intimate friend was Leighton, in whose attitude towards art and life he seemed to find particular satisfaction. It is in his social relations that Sir Eedvers Buller has been, as it seems to his friends, most oddly misconceived. This " silent, saturnine man " is not silent at all in company that he likes, and his geniality is often radiant. He is certainly formidable in approach, but those who are bold enough to advance discover that the lions are chained. He can be very trenchant and even fierce, but the blunt mood passes in a moment, and it leaves no wound behind it. Sir Kedvers Buller is full of good-humor, and, underneath a sort of truculence or roughness, there are funds of kindly nature. His reputation for silence arises, perhaps, from his disinclination to be floated on the stream of disconnected chat which so often passes for conversation. He likes to concentrate his mind, and certainly he appears to the best advantage as a talker when he is called upon to give a definite opinion on a particular 800 SIR REDVERS BULLER subject. I think I have noticed that he likes to be so directly appealed to. His advice is always clear and fresh, practical in its bearing, and illu- minated by a twinkling humor. On matters of conduct he is just and yet indulgent, often ex- tremely severe, but never either crabbed or vin- dictive. He has a singular art in telling his friends their faults without grieving them, and without seeming to take upon himself the role of a cen- sor. This I regard as one of the most remark- able of his minor qualities. "Without inflicting the least offence, he gives other people a window through which they look and perceive their own defects. One of the most eminent of living generals, a very old friend, is in the habit of saying, " Buller's company is very good for me ; he tells me my faults, and, I keep near him, just as the old ladies like to live near a cemetery, that I may remember my latter end." This humor, which pervades his whole attitude of spirit, carries him over all conversational diffi- culties of this kind. What might else be taken as a reproof is put in such a pithy form that the victim must be a fool indeed if he does not re- ceive it in good part. All through his life, Buller's first idea has 301 BRITON AND BOER been to do thoroughly whatever he had in hand to do. This has given him the reputation which he possesses of a glutton for work, in and out of season. Eut this legend he repels, and to peo- ple who reproach him with it, he is in the habit of saying : " I do not slave half as much at my work as you do at your play." "With this intense concentration on his business, he yet is delight- fully lazy. " Oh !" he said, only the other day, " I can loaf, on occasion, with the best of you !" It is sometimes noticed that after a spell of ex- ceptionally heavy responsibility Sir Eed vers BuUer is entirely lazy for a little while ; sitting gazing into the fire in winter or lying on the grass in summei'. But these intervals never last long. He has lately become a fisherman, and after his close work at the War Office a year or two ago, he gave himself up keenly to salmon-fishing in Sutherlandshire, and talks of returning to it season by season. The physical endurance of Sir Kedvers is pro- verbial. As I write these words he is on the point of entering his sixty-first year, yet in mind and body alike he has all the elasticity of youth. No one would dream of calling him an elderly man. This youthfulness of spirit makes him a pleasant companion ; and friends much younger 303 SIR REDVERS BULLER in years are encouraged to be natural in his pres- ence. I think that the discordant accounts of Sir Kedvers BuUer's hehavior in the society of men — some representing him as bluff and taci- turn, others as singularly genial and open in speech — may be accounted for by a simple formula. He has a fellow-feeling with, and will come out to and meet half-way, any man who is interested in doing definite things. Pie does not demand tastes similar to his own, but he must have reality of some sort. If he fails to find it, he is silent and perhaps harsh. He is really — for all his character as a "martinet" — very indul- gent ; I have heard him contradict people, but never snub them. Young men who have the advantage of his company in the country, in hunting or shooting with him, always find him geniality itself. And he has another very hu- man side. He feels the infection of youth. He will enter, heart and soul, into a party of young people, marshal their entertainments for them, and even take a world of pains in coaching them for private theatricals. On these occasions he seems to have no other aim in life ; he becomes the most juvenile of the juvenile. There is no doubt that his extraordinary pres- tige in the English army comes not merely from 303 BEITON AND BOER the illustrious courage and skill of Sir Eedvers Buller, but from an almost superstitious confi- dence which he awakens. Even those who have never seen him believe in him from almost every point of view. He has contrived to make people consider him infallible. Mr. Leveson Gower once asked Lord "Welby, with anxiety, ".Who superin- tends the wine cellar of Grillon's Club?" "Why, Buller," was the reply. " Well," said Mr. Leveson Gower, with a gesture of relief, " I don't know anything about military matters, but I am quite sure that Buller must be a real judge of wine." This was but an expression of the instinct which made the demoralized and hunted soldiers in the Soudan smile with satisfaction when they heard he was coming. " There's old Buller," they said. " Now we shall be all right again." He gains this reputation, which now amounts almost to that of a fetish, by the serene determination with which he sets about his work. In The Tragic Comedians ,Mr. George Meredith has a phrase literally hammered out to fit Sir Eedvers Buller : " The sense of power in him was leonine enough to promise the forcing of a way, whither- soever the path." Sir Eedvers has been known to admit, with a little touch of remorse, that it is a fault with him that when he thinks a thing 304 SIR REDVERS BULLER ought to be done he admits no obstacle in the way of its completion. Once, at a dinner-party, a discussion arose as to the relative merits of the Biblical military 'heroes and of modern generals. Some one, who took the antique side, quoted Joshua as an in- stance of a soldier the like of whom could not be matched in modern history. Mr. Gladstone, in his vehement way, took this up at once. " Joshua ! Joshua !" he exclaimed. " Why, Josh- ua couldn't hold a candle to Redvers Buller as a leader of men !" This was the more valuable a tribute, in that Sir Redvers was never a sup- porter or much of an admirer of Mr. Gladstone. But this is the impression the general makes with his imperturbable and cheery force. Just after the bad Fenian times in Ireland, the Gov- ernment sent him over to Kerry, where every- thing was being dissolved into anarchy. He found the police force utterly demoralized, with- out a leader, without loyalty, without a plan. Within a single fortnight they had all rallied round him, and one man expressed the general feeling in declaring, " There's not a policeman in the County of Kerry who would not lay down his life for Sir Redvers." This was the quality which struck General Hawley at the end of the B .305 BRITON AND BOER ten years when Eedvers BuUer had no active service, after the Chinese war. Hawley was miserable with the idea tnat for want of oppor- tunity such an astounding gift of leadership might be lost to the British army. It is, in fact, not generally known that, towards the end of this time, just as Wolseley, struck with his usefulness, was determining to employ him in the Eed Eiver Expedition, Sir Eedvers had al- most made up his mind to send in his papers and take up the career of a backwoodsman in the wilds of Canada. From this misfortune, at least, the frontier troubles saved the unconscious English nation. If, finally, one is to try to define what strikes one as the central feature of Sir Eedvers Bul- ler's individuality, one is tempted to say that it is his keen appreciation of life in all its bear- ings. There is no more highly organized creat- ure to be found in the range of the seven seas. One is reminded of what Euskin says of the really well-equipped man : " A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation ; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies — one may say, simply, ' fineness of 306 SIR REDVERS BULLER nature.' This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness ; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy." There is not a facet of experi- ence that Sir Red vers BuUer has not touched ; one would conjecture that from every encounter with life he had come back conquering and to conquer. He sometimes says, " The only thing to do is to keep right on," and this march for- ward is an instinctive movement which makes him admired by many, and perhaps dreaded by not a few. He is never in a state of real quies- cence. Somebody said once to him, immediately after his arrival after long perambulation, " I be- lieve that if the truth were known, you would like to start oflf again to-morrow." " You are quite mistaken," Sir Eedvers replied; "I should like to start oflf to-night." He likes color and light and form, and perceives them with an ap- prehension that is extraordinarily quick. It is impossible to describe him as he appears to his friends without touching, however lightly, on sides of character which are too essential to be left unmentioned, and yet too private to be emphasized. But those who know this "sat- urnine, bloodthirsty martinet " best will certainly think a portrait of him incomplete which does 307 BKITON AND BOER not suggest his sensitive refinement, his chival- rous feeling for women, his deep religious humil- ity. A friend, who understands him as few do, says to me : " Whatever you omit, you must say how tender he is, only you must explain that he never lets you lean upon him, but only stands by you and teaches you to support yourself." The legends of his brusquerie, we shall all be agreed in declaring, start in the first instance from a certain shyness never entirely conquered. "When he first came back in glory from the Zulu war, the people in Exeter could not spare him the kind infliction of a banquet. Somebody who saw him at it said that he looked like a captive, suf- fering agonies of nostalgia, while his exuberant captors were trmmphing and drinking deep. " JSTot here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee," we may say to him with justice ; or we might prove the propriety of his presence at thkt feast by quoting against him another of his own fa- miliar dicta : " If there are two courses of action open to you, always choose the disagreeable. It is sure to be the right one." In this brief attempt at a portrait of our famous general in mufti, I have avoided, of course, the repetition of those public features in him which are like the scarlet coat, the plume, 308 SIR REDVERS BULLER the belted sword. la these days, when he is the central figure of our living history, upon which a million eyes are anxiously fixed, there is no need for me to dwell upon what every one is re- peating and what I am particularly ill-fitted to describe. For recapitulations of Sir Red vers Buller's campaigns and prowess in the field I shall certainly not be called upon. Nor, if he were in England and at peace, or if his fame were not now so transcendent that he has be- come the broadest public property, should I vent- ure to discuss in any form or any place a man who takes so little pleasure in every species of publicity. But the occasion is exceptional, and I am weary of seeing one side only, and that the most superficial, of his multiform character pre- sented to the world. This is my excuse for at- tempting a sketch of Monsieur le generalissime intime — of Sir Red vers BuUer as he appears to his friends. One word more. The foregoing pages have been read by Lady Audrey Buller, without whose encouragement and co-operation I could not have dared to compose them. But these last lines she will not see until they are published, and I must seize the opportunity they offer me by reminding my readers of what England owes to her also. 309 BRITON AND BOER "While her husband leads our armies in South Africa, she sits, not in her country home, but in the midst of the soldiers at Aldershot, superin- tending the administration of the fund for the widows and orphans. There, in my Judgment, she presents as sympathetic a figure as the events of to-day supply to us — the centre of a benevo- lent activity which finds its reward, I hope, in removing her thoughts from her own anxieties. And I believe that our American friends will hold the devoted philanthropy of the wife scarcely less interesting than the heroism of the husband. " They also serve who only stand and wait." Edmund Gosse. By POULTNEY BIGELOW WHITE MAN'S AFRICA. Illustrated by R. Caton WooDViLLB and Fredbeic Remington, and from Photographs. 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