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I. 

 PRESIDENT KRÜGER 

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BRITON AND BOER 

BOTH SIDES OF THE SOUTH 
AFRICAN QUESTION 

BY 

RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCE, M.P. 
SYDNEY BROOKS; A DIPLOMAT 
DR. F. V. ENGELENBURG; KARL 
BLIND; ANDREW CARNEGIE 
FRANCIS CHARMES; DEMETRIUS 
C. BOULGER; MAX NORDAU 

WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

Reprinted by permission from 
THK NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
1900 

 CONTENTS 

THE HISTORICAL CAUSES OF THE PRESENT WAB IN 
SOUTH AFRICA. BY THE RIGHT HON. JAMES 
BRYCB, M.P. . . . ........ 1 

ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. BY SYDNEY BROOKS 47 

A VINDICATION OF THE BOEBS (A REJOINDER TO MR. 

SYDNEY BROOKS). BY A DIPLOMAT ... 77 

A TBANSVAAL VIEW OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN QDES-. 
TION. BY DB. F. V. ENGELENBUBG, EDITOR OF 
THE PRETORIA VOLKSBTEH ......... 103 

THE TRANSVAAL WAR AND EUROPEAN OPINION. BY 

KARL BLIND . ........... 133 

THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. BY ANDREW CAB- 

NEGIE ................ 164 

WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE IN THE WAR? BY 
FRANCIS CHABMES, FOREIGN EDITOR OF THE 
EEVUS DE DEUX MOfraea.......... 177 

A POSSIBLE CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE AGAINST ENG 
LAND. BY DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER ..... 198 

PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAB. BY MAX NORDAU 230 

Copyright, 1899, by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 

Copyright, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 

ΛΙΙ rights nttrvea. 

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ILLUSTEATIONS 

PRESIDENT KBÜGER. . . . Frontispiece 

A BOER'S FIRST HOMESTEAD . . Facing p. 4 

DINGAAN AND THE MURDER OF THE BOER 

EMISSARIES ... 12 

A MÁTASELE NATIVE ......... " 30 

OFFICE OF THE REFORM COMMITTEE DURING 

THE JAMESON RAID ...... " 34 

MAJUBA HILL, THE SCENE OF THE RRITISH 

DEFEAT IN 1881 ...... . " 48 

RT. HON. CECIL JOHN RHODES, P.C. . . > 

r " 60 
RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. . i 

A TREKKING OUTFIT ... "72 

TRADING FOR ZULU LABOR . . " 86*^ 

THE WAR-DANCE OF THE ZULUS " 106 

JOHANNESBURG ..... .... " 120 

BRINGING IN THE RAIDERS TO JOHANNESBURG " 142 

PIETERMARITZBURG, THE CAPITAL OF NATAL . " 160 

DR. L. 8. JAMESON ... . " 1QO 

GENERAL PIET JOUBERT . . j 

ζ " 21fi 
M. T. STEYN . ... S 

LADTSMITH ......... ... " 232 

MAP OF THE BOER REPUBLIC 

 BRITON AND BOER 

THE HISTORICAL CAUSES OF THE PEESENT 
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, 
resembling, roughly speaking, the ranching dis 
tricts of western Nebraska or Wyoming. There 
are fertile valleys near the south and southeast 
coast, 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 

2 

CAUSES OF THE WAR 

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 Avar against Napoleon (in 1806), there 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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, and 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 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

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 greatly 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 Avars 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 

 BßlTON AND BOEK 

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 Biver on the 
west-southwest and the lower course of the Lim 
popo River 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- 

CAUSES OF THE WAK 

ing, every farmer or ranchman 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 Revocation 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 

7 

 BRITON AND BOER 

the wilderness, nearly two centuries behind the 
people of Western Europe in the thoughts, as 
well as in the arts, of modern 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 lived by the chase; 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

the Hottentots, savitges 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 English, 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 
Matabelein 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 Hiver, 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, 

9 

 BRITON AND BOEIl 

or both sides of the lower and middle course of 
the Orange River, 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 part in 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 into the wilder 
ness in 1836, the British Government, though 
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 all 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 
notion has in a vague sense never quite vanished 
from the British mind ever since. Th e emigrants, 
however, held that when they went out they re- 
11 

 BKITON AND BOEK 

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 Colony, less than 
twenty thousand in number, all told, it was im 
possible for them to have one Volksraad or one 
Government for the whole body. The various 
parties or communities, when they began to crys 
tallize into communities, 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 the 
possession of the extra-colonial parts of South 
Africa, which has been the central stream of 
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DTNGAAN AND THE MURDER 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 

N 

 n 

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 USTatalian Boers, but 
in the nick of time received reinforcements, 
which so completely turned the scale that the 
Boers presently submitted. The Republic 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 Vaal 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 arms, 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 Basntos, who occupied the mountainous 
country south of the Orange River Sovereignty, 
and were formidable both by their numbers and 
by the difficult nature of their country, attacked 
the British force in the Sovereignty on one side, 
while the Boers from beyond the Vaal 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 Hiver 
Convention—was made with representatives of 
the Boers who dwelt beyond the Yaal Hiver, 
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 WAR 

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 Rivers 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 River 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 Republic 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- 
18 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

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 war, Englishmen sharing with Boers 
the offices 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 the 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 
te 

 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 
20 

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 officer to govern men in whom 
the sentiment of democratic equality was 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 
21 

 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 ]STatal, 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 
22 

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 1877. 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 Avar. 

Men still wrangle over the question in Eng 
land, and may long continue to do so, for it is to 
23 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

some extent a moral as well as a political ques 
tion, and different minds view moral problems 
differently. Regarded as a pure matter of 
politics, it may be pronounced to bave been 
rigbt, 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 
River 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 bad refrain 
ed from using their superior power to take ven- 
24 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

geance which might have been easily taken, they 
knew that the danger 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 bad 
enjoyed under the Sand River Convention, and 
the extension of their influence over the native 
territories that lay around tbem. 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 

CAUSES OF THE WAR 

for expansion—refused to occupy the country 
which 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 son of an 
English country clergyman, who had made a fort 
une at the Kimberley diamond mines, was the 
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 Republic " (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 Kepublic may make, except with the Orange 
Free State. But the Kepublic is entitled to 
accredit diplomatic representatives to foreign 
28 

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 
Kepublic 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 
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 

 ί 

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 aud who now promptly sold the land 
where the gold-beds were worked, and also to 
benefit 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 
SO 

A MATABELE 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 difficult, 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 «xpected to open their 
arms to new-comers and invest them with the 
fulness of their own political privileges. The 
immigrants complained bitterly that every- 
81 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 rüde 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 
33 

CAUSES OF THE WAR 

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 

Tinder such 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 
would have sunk to a mere theoretic grievance. 
If the franchise had been granted to them, it 
would have been their own fault had the Admin 
istration remained unreformed. But, as things 
were, they 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 TJit- 
landers had arms, and still fewer were trained to 
use them. However, they persevered. Some of 
the capitaliste came into the plan, for though 
capitalists do not as a rule favor revolutions, this 

34 

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i 

o 

a 
a 

í 

Λ 

g 

l-l 

55 

•tä 

t 
S 

53 
> 

3 

* I 

i*V \ 

l - 

-v 

 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 Rhodes, 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 

 BEITON 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 Uitlander 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 
86 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

expedition of the company's police, which is now 
commonly called the Jameson Kaid. 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 Krüger, 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 Johannesburg 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 
Krüger in December, 1895, 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 TJitlanders 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 effect of the Jameson expedition was no 
less mischievous in other parts of South Africa 
than in the Transvaal. It roused Dutch feeling, 

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 

 BRITON 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 may 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 Eepublics, 
hoped to see them independent and prosperous, 
40 

CAUSES OF THE WAR 

and desired to maintain 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

political opponents, even when he 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 ,gïjev- 
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 
42 

CAUSES OF THE WAE 

any foreign country. Under these circumstances 
it might have been expected that the questions 
which would have arisen before Britain went to 
Avar 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 telli ? 

Secondly : Assuming that the grievances 
(which were real, but in my opinion not so 
serious as has been frequently alleged) and the 
behavior of the Transvaal did amount to a casus 
lelli, 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 casus 'belli. 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 Reserves 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 belli never came up at all. The 
only casus belli has been the conduct of the two 
contending parties during a negotiation, the pro 
fessed subject of which was in no sense a casus 
belli. 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 
45 

 fi 

BEITON AND BOEE 

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-govern 
ing colonies. It may, indeed, possibly mean for 
her the ultimate loss of South Africa. 

JAMES BKYCE. 

ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 

THE failure of the Bloemfontein Conference is 
a disappointment that may prove a tragedy. 
President Krüger 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

Milner, as Lord Cromer'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, or more anxious to reach a just and 
pacific solution. There was nothing in the 
political situation in Cape Colony but what 
48 

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 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 

would quiet President Krüger'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 Germany came no 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 
malees 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 Rand, have of late put aside 
their Anglophobia, and have been calling upon 
President Krüger to set his house in order. 
D 49 

 BEITON 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 Resident, to whom was given 
a vetoing power over the policy of the Republic 

50 

ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 

towards the Kafirs—a very necessary provision, 
for the 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 
with 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 
with 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 Office. 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 Republic 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 Republic," says 
this clause, " will conclude no treaty or engage 
ment with any State or Nation other than the 
Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to 
the eastward or westward of the Republic, 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 
52 

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 official 
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 tue terms of the clauses 
I have quoted that the South African Republic 
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 fixed, 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 

 BEITON AND BOEK 

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 popular 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 efflcacy 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 TEANSVAAL 

is ; and that nobody can tell us. The really im 
portant thing to know is that so long as Presi 
dent Krüger 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 between Pres 
ident Krüger and the German Emperor that fol 
lowed the Jameson raid, the fear of foreign 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 
Rhodesia 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. Tet 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 affairs 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 

 «tí Hl 

BEITON AND BOEE 

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 by 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- 
69 

 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 are 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. 
Krüger, 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 

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 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 

TJitlanders 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- 
fontein 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 
Republic's internal economy. It would remove, 
in great part, the tearfulness 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 banlc- 
62 

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 
Ms 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 

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BEITON AND BOEE 

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 TEANSVAAL 

business men, and the working-classes who have 
settled in the Rand district less as a speculation 
than to make it their home and earn a living and 
bring up their families. The recent petition 
from the TJitlanders to the Queen was entirely 
the work of professional men and laborers. 
Neither Mr. Rhodes, 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 Rand 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 Rand 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. 
66 

ENGLAND AND THE 

they raised the probationary term of qualification 
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 Volksraad 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 

 BEITON 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 
Krüger 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 Krüger 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 les^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 Krüger 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 Republic, 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 average 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 

 BRITON AND BOER 

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 Natal, the Orange Free 
State, and Cape Colony as upon Johannesburg, ' 
the middle and working classes in the Rand 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 show7 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 BOER 

of this policy is that the rich mines, which can 
bear tbe exactions, buy up the poorer ones that 
cannot, and so tend to bring almost the entire 
Hand into the hands of two or three capitalists. 

It must not be supposed that President Krüger 
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- 

H 

a 
S 

o 
a 

í 

-3 

i*.' 

oughness of which are hardly to be inferred from the modesty 
of its title. 

72 

 ίίί 

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 Eepnblic 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 

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 
Uitlanders had come into the country uninvited 
and undesired, 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 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 Repub 
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 posswnus, 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 dynamite 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 Republic. 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 

 BKITON AND BOEK 

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 
has in it the promise of permanence. 

SYDNEY BEOOKS. 

A VINDICATION OF THE BOEES 

A EEJOINDEE TO ME. SYDNEY BEOOKS 

ONE of the principal arguments used against 
the Boers is that they are not only a stationary, 
but a positively retrograde, people. Among the 
proofs adduced to substantiate this charge, no 
one has thought, " et pour 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 

 Util 

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 
alreadjr 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 Government and citizens have re 
frained from doing, a foreigner, totally uncon 
nected with them, might think of achieving, 
prompted thereto simply by his sympathy with 
78 

A VINDICATION OF THE BOEKS 

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. 
79 

 -. Λ tat 

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 sufficient triumph for the Boers. 

After deploring the breakdown of the nego 
tiations between President Krüger 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 Hill, 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 
80 

A VINDICATION OF TIIE 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 Krüger would not be glad to 
make, in order to sweep away the limitations on 
the full sovereignty of the Transvaal and place 
the Republic 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 

 BRITON AND BOER 

President Krüger, 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 TJitlanders, 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 

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 fall 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 sacrificing 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 administration benefits 
mankind and the natives themselves, for whom 
83 

 BRITON AND BOEE 

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 BOERS 

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 the 
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. 

85 

 BRITON AND BOEE 

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 he from his neighbor—disdaining 
trade, disdaining agriculture, ignorant to an almost incon 
ceivable degree 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, horrïbïle 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 the specific grievances origi 
nally formulated by the Uitlanders ? Mr. Brooks 
86 

L '"·- %> 

V-V*;' l ";' 

-- 

TRADING FOB ZULU LABOR 

 A VINDICATION OF THE BOEKS 

speaks of bad administration, as illustrated by 
the absence of sufficient 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 reference 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 class 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 

 BRITON AND BOEK 

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 BOEßS 

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 interna 
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 

 Ίιί·Λΐ 

BRITON AND BOER 

pire of the Romanoffs, 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 themselves in American territory, 
have they not used incomparably more rigor, in 
order to defend the economical situation of the 
country, 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, through 
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 this 
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 

 BEITON AND BOER 

an "obligation" for governments to enfranchise 
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. Representation, where 
it exists, is a consequence of citizenship. " Well, 
then, we have a right to Transvaal citizenship, 
say the English. Again, why ? Some States show 
a tendency to favor the naturalization of foreign 
ers, especially the American Republics, others, 
like Russia, 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 Republics. In fact, the 
92 

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 

 ifflff / 

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. As a 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. Krüger 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 
05 

 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 Raad ; 
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 Englishmen, 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- 
96 

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 

 BEITON 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 affirms 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 customs upon the British, 
the only enemies they have known. It was to escape from 
British rule that their forefathers struck out from the Capo, 
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 
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 Bechuanalatid. It was with British gold 
and under the command of British officers that the raid of 
1805 was planned and carried out. Small wonder that the 
Boers saw, and still see, in the demand for the francbise 
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 looking to the past experi 
ences of his people witli the English, could guarantee tftat tJieir 
capture of ffie franchise would not lead to their capture of tlie 
entire State, that the Republic would not become an English 
Republic with an English President and its original founders 
a despised and oppressed minority f" 

Following 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 baseless, are very unlikely 
to be realized." I need not point to the delicious 
effect of the words, " if not baseless, are very uu- 
99 

 Í.ÍTII 

BRITON AND BOER 

likely to be realized." But the crowning point 
of Mr. Brooks's originality is to be found in the 
following 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 tlieyfeel that, were tliey 
in Ms place, tJiey would liaw done much as lie 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 all 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 

 BEITON 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 ΑΒΈΙΟΑ 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 Witwaters- 
rand were not situated alongside au 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 

 irfíí 

BEITON 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, which sweep like a whirlwind through 
the whole of the southern continent. From 
olden days, Africa has been known as the land of 
plagues and calamities. Kinderpest 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-dunes ; the 
east coast is unhealthy and haunted by the tset- 
sefly. No 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 

 , η 

BEITON 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 doubt, 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 

t* 

-' * r i 

ïr 

• *'ι*ρ 

THE WAK-DANCE OP THE ZULUS 

 il/il 

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 what 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 

 BEITON AND BOEK 

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 severely 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 

 Ííifflííi 

BEITON 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. No 
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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 tjie 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 

113 

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 résumé 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 

 ííiillí 

BEITON AND BOEE 

now attempts to deny—the South African Re 
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 TEANSVAAL 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 clipped 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. 
Rhodes—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 Rhodesia of to-day. 
Then came the establishment of the Chartered 
Company, followed by the notorious Jameson 
Raid. 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 Eepublic 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 Yictoria will be able to enjoy the mani 
fold pleasures of life without one drop 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 Lourenço Marques. Natal and Cape Colony 
were not satisfied with squeezing the inland 
States by means of heavy duties, high postal 
tariffs, and enormous trade profits ; they sought 
the complete economic dependency of the Re- 
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 Eepublic—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 
nettiim omnium contra omnes, can only be ex 
plained by the overwhelming influence acquired 
by certain "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 witnessed 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 

 f §κΛ 

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, 
they 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 

majority 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 exceptionally 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 Eest and Barberton compares 
very favorably with that of the Diamond Fields 
119 

il 

 ίίίιΛίΙί'Μ 

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 Rest 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 

». 

«f 

fà- >. -, $ 

:.V. "V-·"" 

¿¡t;, ".--Λ 

,,f%v. V 

· " 
, ν,-Λ-Μ'.- 

 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 bacilli of dis 
cord and revolution, much to the detriment of 
the shareholders across the sea. 

The appearance of the present-day TJitlander— 
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 Ee- 
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 Eepublic 
131 

 BRITON AND BOEE 

A TRANSVAAL VIEW 

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 Uit- 
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 
Band, 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 Uitlander 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 
133 

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 
public 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 Krüger to the Golden City, 
the Transvaal flag was pulled down from the 
Government buildings. It subsequently tran- 
133 

 BEITON 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 Republic 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 Rand, 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- 

* Vîde Transvaal Green Book, No. 2, of 1896. 
134 

A TRANSVAAL 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 wrote 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." 
125 

 BKITON AND BOEK 

All this happened in 1894, when the gold out 
put had already 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 Re 
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 
11J 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 Rand (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 22J millions, and the number 
of dividend-paying companies increases every 
month. 

In 1896 the rural population were visited by 
126 

A TRANSVAAL 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 
Krüger régime, 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 
127 

 BRITON AND BOER 

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 
Kepublic. 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. 
128 

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 Kepublic, 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 Phœnicians 
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 

ι 129 

 ΒΚΙΤΟΝ 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 Krüger 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 TKANSVAAL VIEW 

tered here with a combined capital of over 
£15,391,389. In July last—in the middle of the 
crisis—five new companies were registered with 
a capital of £1,159,000. And of all the Uitland 
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 Eepublic 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

' 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. V. ENGELENBUKG. 
PBETOBIA, August, 1899. 

THE TEANSVAAL WAE AND EUEOPEAN 
OPINION 

ALL Europe is united in condemning the at 
tack made by the English Government upon the 
independence of the South African Republic, 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 all 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 Krüger after the defeat of Dr. 
Jameson's Raid. Here T may state at once a 

183 

 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 
Krüger as a volunteer corps for the defence of 
the Republic. They had asked the Kaiser, on 
the arrival of the first news about the Raid, 
whether he would not say a word in favor of the 
threatened Boer Commonwealth. 

It will be remembered that Krüger 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. Krüger, 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 
Republic 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 

Krüger 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 Republic. In all probability the offi 
cial or semi-official 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 & 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 Eepublic—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 Eepublic 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 ΝώΊΐι American Review. Having 
followed the negotiations in 1883-84, when I 

136 

EUROPEAN OPINION 

was in frequent contact with the Transvaal 
Deputation (President Krüger, General Smit, of 
Majuba Hill 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 
Krüger, were literally, and wellnigh in exactly 
the same order, given as had been done by me in 
the pages of the North American Review. 

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 
shalling of arguments and facts, may seem ex 
traordinary. It is, however, easily explainable 
from the strength of the case. 

187 

 BRITON 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 Republic," as it 
had been before the violent annexation which 
Mr. Disraeli had craftily effected while the 
burghers of the Republic were 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 
Resident 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 Resi 
dent. 

But in the Transvaal State, when it was re- 
139 

 BRITON AND BOER 

stored to its old rank as the South African Ke- 
public, the Resident 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 Republic" 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 Ke- 
public. " Conventions," in the plural, was al 
ways the word. 

Not even when President Krüger 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 still lawfully in operation! Each 
time, moreover, the British terms were raised. 

Ill 

The Treaty of 1884 gives England no right 
whatever to interfere in the internal affairs of 
the South African Republic. 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 Republic 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

them wrote, " within the course of a quarter of 
an hour, a worse collection of rascaldom of vari 
ous kinds." 

When President Krüger, some years ago, vis 
ited Johannesburg, the British flag was hoisted 
by such immigrants as a symbol of their insur 
rectionary desires. When Mr. Rhodes organized 
the Raid, 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 1877 
and 1881 ? Were they simply to allow their 
Republic 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, Krüger and the Volksraad 
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- 
142 

,.<·... '--«L a. - 

'» "- ·.,· ; -.· ? 

.· .. - -V '· 

i 

» ,ν , 

-Λ ./' iV : 

BRINGING IN THE «AIDERS TO JOHANNESBURG 

 EUROPEAN 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 Eepublics—with even 
more troops announced to come afterwards. Thus 
both Eepublics 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 public 
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 " supremacy, 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 
Eule 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 Eepublics, 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, he 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 Revolutions 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 Nimrod of Africa, who 
was one of the first to open up unknown terri- 

K 145 

 BEITON AND BOEB 

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 seu- 
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 
tbem—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. 
Krüger 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 difficult 
to see how war can be avoided; for the Transvaal Boers are 
an obstinate people, and will probably rather fight 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, 
will infallibly lose us the whole of South Africa as a British 
possession within flie lifetime of many men who are now living. 
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 country." 

Arrogance and ignorance have prevailed. The 
blood-guiltiness of the war now raging lies, ac 
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 Mr. Chamberlain ac 
knowledged, in 1895-96, the South African 
147 

 BRITON AND BOER 

Republic to be one—is perfectly feasible. But 
then he suddenly altered his stand-point. Con 
trary to his 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 Eepublic the vassal. 

When the lives of the captured Raiders 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 
Krüger with great courtesy. The Republic, 
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 Krüger 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 Krügersdorp. 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 Krüger, 
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 Raid, 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 Repub 
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 

 BEITON AND BOER 

When the South African Eepublic at last 
mobilized 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 Revolt " 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 70,000, men, or, if 
need be, even 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 Republics 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 
Krüger, 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 Krüger in order to force upon him 
reforms in the internal affairs of his Slate, 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 Krüger, 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 difficult to attempt to persuade 
any one so capable as President Krüger 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 Krüger 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 

EUROPEAN 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 
place, an ultimatum to President Krüger 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 £20,000,000—it does 
not matter particularly which [laughter]—and would send 
an army of 10,000 men, at the very least, to force Presi-· 
dent Krüger 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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

tions of a Monarchy which still calls itself " by 
right divine," though in historical truth it is the 
issue of a successful Whig aristocratic Revolu 
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 

EUEOPEAN 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 Eeform 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 

 BEITON AND BOEB 

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 
Republic, 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 Rep 
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 Rule Bill. But I doubt whether the House 

156 

EUEOPEAN 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 un wholesomely 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 Republic 
under the false plea of an oligarchy holding sway 
there? 

 BRITON 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 nay 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 
Republic, involving the overthrow of English 
169 

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 ivould 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 
Eepublic. 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 

duced 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 Vaal was 
relentlessly pursued by English troops. 

The strain became still more severe by the 
lawless overthrow in 1877 of the Transvaal Ee- 
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 Eandolph Churchill, a Con- 
160 

H 

N 

§ 

o 

«s 

'it 

.1 ·,· 

¡Ί ·- ; & 
^ ···-·· · 'ν- 

Λ 

VV-'i. 

v 

*, 

 EUROPEAN 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 parva fui. 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 Bartle Frere, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and Sir Owen 
Lanyon that the final triumph of tbe 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 

 BRITON AND BOER 

and that concord the Government of Mr. Rhodes inaugurated 
and has since to all appearances firmly riveted." 

Lord Randolph Churchill wrote that before the 
Raid 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. 
162 

EUROPEAN 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. 

KAEL 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 Krüger, 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 facilities 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 

 BRITON AND BOER 

issue and none other. Nor 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 Republic. 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. 
Gladstone 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 officials who counselled the 
pursuance of the policy which Mr. Gladstone 
had adopted. They reason thus: "We, the 
169 

 BEITON 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 

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 Eepub- 
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 
;s 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 
172 

THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION 

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 

 BRITON 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 d eclared 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." 

ANDREW CAKNEGIE. 

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 Republic. 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 Raid, 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 Government 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 Eand 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 Krüger 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 difficult situation 
by obliging them to declare themselves satisfied 
orto 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. Krüger 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 
182 

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 
lutely 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 

 BEITON 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 Kussia and Germany. 

Evidently Kussia 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 POWERS INTERVENE? 

as to suggest that they entertain a sincere desire 
not to offend each other. If it were not so, we 
might say of Kussia 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 Kussia 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 

 BEITON AND BOEK 

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 Bismarck 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 his navy for 
sustaining the policy which would enable Ger 
many to work out her manifest destiny. The 
very next day the Government papers announced 
that further very important and very heavy ap 
propriations would be asked of the Reichstag to 
carry out a scheme of naval construction laid out 
not for a space of only six, but for seventeen 
years. Will the Reichstag 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 lacles 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 

-••••3! 

-f'"';: 

*»; 
ν 

5 

Κ U 

DK. L, S, JAMESON 

 WILL THE POWEKS INTEKVENE2 

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 OH 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 
loi 

 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- 
192 

WILL THE POWERS INTERVENES 

land has also had an understanding with Russia 
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 

ft 193 

 BRITON 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 Rhodes 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? Nobody 
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- 

Í94 

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 

 BEITON AND BOER 

tions of the old continent—at least, for all those 
which have a navy and colonies. The fact is 
that the Transvaal affair 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 that 
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 Eosebery and Mr. Chamber 
lain. ISTew 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 
196 

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 these last months. The na 
tions feel them keenly, and the Governments are 
not insensible to them. Each malees 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 
will some day produce its influence on events. 

FRANCIS 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 tlo 
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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 
200 

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; Russia 
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 public 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- 
201 

 BKITON AND BOER 

reasoning wrath are merely the froth on the sur 
face of the waters of public opinion. Eut, 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 

 BEITON 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 Office, erected the tricolor. 
The incident ended with the establishment of 
British predominance throughout the Nile Val 
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. 
204 

ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND 

The delay of ten years in commencing the re- 
conquest of the Soudan did not make the task 
appreciably more difficult, 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 Krüger'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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

géants, 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- 

206 

ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND 

preoiated 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 with 
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 them, 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 
307 

 BEITON 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 rôle—if, in plainer words, it had stood 
alone—the decisive interference in its affairs 
might have been put off till the disappearance 
of Mr. Krüger in the ordinary course of nature 
should have given a chance for more enlightened 
and saner counsels. But the Transvaal was the 
imperium 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 Eaid, 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 Krüger 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 turn 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 Cape-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 
210 

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 Eussia ? Can they feel con 
fident that the policy would succeed, either by 
England's yielding to a formidable international 

213 

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 

 BEITON 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 Kussia; 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 
214 

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 1885, 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 Repub 
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 

 -'iJlíílílfí 

BEITON AND BOER 

two South African Republics. 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- 
Russian 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 hour, 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 
217 

 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 Russia, then Germany 
should receive nothing unless she openly ranges 
herself on the side 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 Russia 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. 

218 

•Λ 

Α.? 

f3 

i 

01 

S 

\ 

 ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND 

Eut Germany has other reasons for pausing 
before she commits herself to a line of action 
that would make her subordinate to Russia 
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 ? No 
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 Russian army 
be disputed ; but India and China are still a long 
way off, and where else is the British Empire 
vulnerable from Russia ? Such military strength 
as France and Russia 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 Russia 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 

 BRITON AND BOER 

engagements, some losses by the victors, but the 
result would be to put " Paid " to the account of 
French and Russian 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 Eussia, 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 fleets 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 
220 

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 
221 

 BEITON 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 Russian 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 probably come into collision ; but they 
have no wish to hasten the date. The rivalry 
of England and Russia is like the approach of a 
comet towards our planet. The political astrono- 

222 

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 Russia 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, Russia 
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 Russia as an ally. Even 
during the Fashoda business, France received as 
surances that Russia would not fail her, although 
that Power hoped there would be no war. Nor 
was Russia'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 would 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 
Russia will 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 and ambition 
will not, on the eve of a new century, induce 
223 

111"!. 

 BRITON AND BOER 

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 Russia 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- 
224 

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 225 

 BEITON AND BOEK 

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 belli. 
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 Russia is bound to have a hand in de 
ciding the future of Persia, just as she is of 
China. These sick Asiatic countries will have 
to be healed by some one or other, and it is 
problematical if Eussia will be stronger with a 
226 

ALLIANCE AGAINST ENGLAND 

port on the Persian Gulf or without one. If 
Eussia 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 still 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 will not imperil the success 
of their Exhibition. Eussia is quite willing to 
wait, and also prefers her own slow methods to 
227 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 they have 
added a project for seizing Malta or Gibraltar, 
one or both, by a cottp de main, 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 Eussia, 
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 discom 
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 O. BOÜLGEE. 

 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR 

No war has met with such general condemna 
tion as the Avar 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 Leónidas, 
William 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 

L 

 BKITON AND BOER 

high cultural development, its freedom; some 
are jealous of its competition in the world's mar 
ket ; one or the other of the nations reproaches 
it with the fact that it desires no neighbor 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. 

The war in the Transvaal 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 peus 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 illusion 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 

> 

Í, 

,,* 

 l f 

II H 

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 : "Justifia 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 
233 

 lA/lííl 

BEITON 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 not unfounded pessimism to assume in 
the heart of one's neighbors murder and robbery 
as general sentiments? Is it not calumny to 
234 

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 
whelming 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. 

Eeligion 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 

il».·'· 

 κ 

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 Vandals 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 

236 

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 
when 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 BOEE 

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 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 WAE 

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 
Abbé de Saint-Pierre created a sensation with 
his Projet de Paiœ Éternelle (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 allow 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 241 

•I. 

 'I 

BEITON AND BOEE 

years later the Czar found it a trifle less easy to 
realize the thought of Saint-Pierre. The latter's 
contemporary, Voltaire, was cruelly amused with 
him, and demonstrated in his entertaining cri 
tique upon his book how utterly unfamiliar the 
good Abbé was with the realties of human nature 
and of life. Rousseau was a friend of peace on 
principle; but he considered Saint-Pierre'g 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- 
maître, adore the " Sword of Salvation," and 
with M. G. Hanotaux, praise the murderers of 
the officers Klobb, Voulet, and Chanoine as 
heroes, have tried to introduce Kant as a crown 
witness for their theory. M. Brunetière 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. Brunetière, and the true opinion of 
242 

PHILOSOPHY AND MOEALS OF WAE 

Kant, who 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 BOEE 

" 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 MOEALS 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 formula?, 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. 

 BIÍITON AND BOEB 

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 
tory of civilization as an evolution from war 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, in the present condition of things, 
may become a cause of war, instead of a guar 
antee against it. Herr Johann von Bloch, the 
Russian 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 
247 

 BEITON AND BOEE 

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 oue 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 MOEALS 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 

349 

 BEITON AND BOER 

PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAR 

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. All 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 

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 politikon), and imposes upon his subjectiv 
ity the law of the collective organism, the ego 
tism of "sovereign personality" can scarcely find 
room. 

MAX NOKDAU. 

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33