Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 17

"I said to the President," he declared in the Cape Parliament a year later,[164] "that I would not believe he would invade south of the Orange River.[165] President Steyn's reply was, 'Can you give me a guarantee that no troops will come to the border?' Of course, I could give no such guarantee, and I did not then believe that, although such a guarantee could not be given, the Free State would invade British territory with the object of endeavouring to promote the establishment of one Republic in South Africa, as the Prime Minister[166] has said."

[Footnote 164: September 24th, 1900.]

[Footnote 165: This was on October 11th, 1899--the day on which the ultimatum expired.]

[Footnote 166: Sir Gordon Sprigg--Mr. Schreiner's Ministry was replaced by a Progressive Ministry in June, 1900.]

As the Boer invasion spread further into the Colony Mr. Schreiner receded proportionately from his original standpoint of neutrality.

Indeed, three distinct phases in the Prime Minister's progress can be distinguished. In the first stage, which lasted until the actual invasion of the Colony by the Boer commandos, he used all his const.i.tutional power to prevent the people of the Colony, British and Dutch alike, from being involved in the war: and it was only after a severe struggle that Lord Milner prevailed upon him even to call out the Kimberley Volunteers on October 2nd, _i.e._, a week before the Ultimatum. This, "the neutrality" stage, lasted up to the invasion.

After the invasion came the second stage, in which Mr. Schreiner seems to have argued to himself in this manner: "As the Boers have invaded this colony, I, as Prime Minister, cannot refuse that the local forces should be called out to protect its territory." And so on October 16th, after Vryburg had gone over to the Boers, after Kimberley had been cut off, and the whole country from Kimberley to Orange River was in the hands of the enemy, he consented to the issue of a proclamation calling out 2,000 volunteers for garrison duty within the Colony.[167]

But in making this tardy concession he was careful to point out to Lord Milner that the British cause would lose more than it would gain.

"I warn you," he said in effect, "that it is not to your advantage; because you are the weaker party. In the Cape Colony more men will fight for the Boers than will fight for you." The third stage in Mr.

Schreiner's conversion was reached when, in November, 1899, the invading Boers had advanced to the Tembuland border, in the extreme east of the Colony. Then Mr. Schreiner allowed the natives to be called out for the defence of their own territory. In making this final concession the Prime Minister yielded to the logic of facts in a matter concerning which he had previously offered a most stubborn resistance to the Governor's arguments.

[Footnote 167: With this may be compared the fact that in Natal the whole of the local forces were mobilised on September 29th for active service. The dates upon which further units of the Cape local forces were called out are as follows: Uitenhage Rifles and Komgha Mounted Rifles, November 10th; Cape Medical Staff Corps, November 16th; and Frontier Mounted Rifles, November 24th.]

[Sidenote: Schreiner and local forces.]

For in the discussion of the measures urged by Lord Milner as necessary for the protection of the Colony, the question of arming the natives and coloured people had necessarily arisen. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the west and the Tembus in the east were known to be eager to defend the Queen's country against invasion. Mr. Schreiner declared that to arm the natives was to do violence to the central principle upon which the maintenance of civilisation in South Africa was based--the principle that the black man must never be used to fight against the white. Lord Milner did not question the validity of this principle; but he maintained--and rightly, as Mr. Schreiner admitted subsequently by his action in the case of the Tembu frontier--that it could not be applied to the case in question. "If white men," he said, "will go and invade the territory of the blacks, then the blacks must be armed to repel the invasion."

The change which came over Mr. Schreiner's att.i.tude, due, no doubt, partly to his gradual enlightenment as to the real aims of the republican nationalists, but also to the skilful use which Lord Milner made of that enlightenment, may be traced in the following contrasts.

Before the Boer invasion he refused to call out the local forces of the Colony even for purposes of defence;[168] afterwards he not only sanctioned the employment of these forces in the Colony, but allowed them to take part in Lord Roberts' advance upon Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Before the invading Boers, having already possessed themselves of the north-eastern districts of Cape Colony, began to threaten the purely native territories to the south, he would not hear of the natives being armed for their own protection. But when the Boers had actually reached the borders of Tembuland he consented. In his advice to the Cape Government, no less than in that which he gave to the Home Government, Lord Milner was shown to be in the right. In both cases he urged an effective preparation for war. In both the measures which he advised were ultimately taken; but taken only when they had lost all their power as a means of promoting peace, and half of their efficacy as a contribution to the rapid and successful prosecution of the war. In both cases Lord Milner was able, in the face of unparalleled obstacles, to secure just the minimum preparation for war which stood between the British Empire and overwhelming military disaster.

[Footnote 168: The Kimberley and Mafeking Volunteers were called out at the last moment, but actually before the war broke out; but the safety of both these places was imperilled by the refusal, or delay, of the colonial Government to supply them with guns.]

We have observed the position in Great Britain, and found that the root cause of the impotence of the Home Government was the nation's ignorance of South Africa. In the Cape Colony the evil was of a different order. Lord Milner, although High Commissioner for South Africa, had within the Colony only the strictly limited powers of a const.i.tutional governor. The British population were keenly alive to the necessity for active preparations for the defence of their country; were, indeed, indignant at the refusal of the Schreiner Cabinet to allow the local forces to be called out: but the Dutch party was in office, the Bond was "loyal," Mr. Schreiner was a minister of the Crown, and the most that the Governor could do was to urge upon his ministers the measures upon the execution of which he had no power to insist.

[Sidenote: Seven years after.]

The best comment upon this strange situation is that which is afforded by a pa.s.sage in Lord Milner's speech in the House of Lords on February 26th, 1906. Seven years have gone by, and the great proconsul has returned to England. He is drawn from his much-needed rest by a sudden danger to the country which he has kept a part of the Empire. The Unionist Government has fallen, and a Liberal Government has been placed in power. He is warning this Government of the danger of a premature grant of responsible government to the Orange River Colony.

"What is going to happen under responsible government? It is more than probable, it is, humanly speaking, certain, that the persons to whom I have referred will form a large majority, if not almost the whole, of that first elected Parliament of the Orange River Colony to which, from the first hour of its existence, the whole legislative and executive power in that colony is to be entrusted. I do not suggest that they will begin by doing anything sinister. All forms will be duly observed; as why should they not be? It will be perfectly possible for them, with the most complete const.i.tutional propriety, little by little to reverse all that has been done, and gradually to get rid of the British officials, the British teachers, the bulk of the British settlers, and any offensive British taint which may cling to the statute-book or the administration. I can quite understand that, from the point of view of what are known as the pro-Boers, such a result is eminently desirable. They thought the war was a crime, the annexation a blunder, and they think to-day that the sooner you can get back to the old state of things the better. I say I quite understand that view, though I do not suppose it is shared by His Majesty's ministers, or, at any rate, by all of them. What I cannot understand is how any human being, not being a pro-Boer, can regard with equanimity the prospect that the very hand which drafted the ultimatum of October, 1899,[169] may within a year be drafting 'Ministers' Minutes' for submission to a British Governor who will have virtually no option but to obey them. What will be the contents of those minutes, I wonder? As time goes on it may be a proposal for dispensing with English as an official language, or a proposal for the distribution to every country farmer of a military rifle and so many hundred cartridges, in view of threatened danger from the Basutos."

[Footnote 169: Mr. Fischer. See forward, p. 291.]

[Sidenote: "Just reminiscences".]

So far Lord Milner had dealt with the Orange River Colony. Then he let his thoughts range back to these months of his great ordeal.

"I think I can see the Governor just hesitating a little to put his hand to such a doc.u.ment. In that case I think I can hear the instant low growl of menace from Press and platform and pulpit, the hints of the necessity of his recall, and the answering scream from the pro-Boer Press of Britain against the ruthless satrap, ignorant of const.i.tutional usage and wholly misunderstanding his own position, who dared to trample upon the rights of a free people. I may be told, I know I shall be told, that such notions are the wild imaginings of a disordered brain, that these are theoretical possibilities having no relation to fact or to probability. _My Lords, they are not imaginings. They are just reminiscences._

"I know what it is to be Governor of a self-governing colony, with the disaffected element in the ascendant. I was bitterly attacked for not being sufficiently submissive under the circ.u.mstances. Yet, even with the least submissive Governor, the position is so weak that strange things happen. It was under responsible government, and in the normal working of responsible government, that 1,000,000 cartridges were pa.s.sed through Cape Colony, on the eve of the war, to arm the people who were just going to attack us, and that some necessary cannon were stopped from being sent to a defenceless border town,[170] which directly afterwards was besieged, and which, from want of these cannon, was nearly taken."[171]

[Footnote 170: Kimberley.]

[Footnote 171: _The Times_, February 27th, 1906.]

Thus, six and a half years later, Lord Milner spoke of these months of _Sturm und Drang_ in the calm and pa.s.sionless atmosphere of the House of Lords.

From Bloemfontein to the ultimatum, the British flag in South Africa was stayed upon the "inflexible resolution" of one man. Two months later, when the army corps was all but landed, the English at the Cape gave speech. Then Sir David Gill's words at the St. Andrew's Day celebration of November 30th, 1890 came as a fresh breeze dispersing the miasmic humours of some low-lying, ill-drained plain.

[Sidenote: What the loyalists thought.]

"In the history of the British colonies," he said, "no Governor has ever been placed in greater difficulties. In spite of a support of the most shamelessly feeble character, and in spite of a want of understanding at home, His Excellency has not only had to originate and carry out a policy, but he has had to instruct the whole nation in the dangers which threatened; and the means which were necessary to remove that danger.

"When His Excellency came to this colony he found it honeycombed with sedition. He found a canting loyalty, which aimed at the overthrow of British supremacy in this colony, and not only in this colony, but in South Africa as well.... There have been a mighty lot of misunderstandings in this country, a mighty lot of mealy-mouthed loyalty, that did not mean loyalty at all, and a mighty working to overthrow the power of Englishmen (and Scotchmen) in this country--first of all to bring them into contempt with the native population; secondly, to deprive them of all political power; and thirdly, to deprive them of all material power.... We have a minister who has gone to the front,[172] but it is a remarkable fact that since that minister has gone to the front the accessions of colonists to the ranks of the rebels have been tenfold greater than they were before he went. It is in the face of these innumerable difficulties that Sir Alfred Milner has carried out his work."

[Footnote 172: Mr. J. W. Sauer. The reference is (in Lord Milner's words) to Mr. Sauer's "well-meant but unsuccessful mission to Dordrecht, which was immediately followed by rebellion in that district." The facts, as fully disclosed a year later, are these. On November 23rd, 1899, Mr. Sauer held a meeting at Dordrecht to dissuade the Dutch subjects of the Crown in the Wodehouse Division of the Colony from joining in the rebellion. As the result of this meeting a deputation was sent to the Commandant of the Boer invading-force, Olivier, who was at Barkly East, desiring him not to come to Dordrecht. On November 27th another meeting was held (also addressed by Mr. Sauer) and a second deputation of the inhabitants waited upon Olivier. The sequel is revealed in the telegram despatched the following day (November 28th) by the Boer Commandant to the Secretary, the War Commission, Bloemfontein: "... To-day already I received the second deputation from Dordrecht not to come to Dordrecht. This is asked officially, but privately they say that this is also a blind, and that we must come at once...." On December 2nd Olivier was received with open arms at Dordrecht. It was in a district where, in the Boer Commandant's words, "the Afrikanders were rejoicing, and joining the commandos was universal."--Cd. 420, p. 108 and p. 96; Cd. 43, p. 221; and Cd. 261, p. 126.]

This is how it struck a distinguished man of science, and one who was qualified, moreover, by a residence at the Cape which dated back to the days of the Zulu War, to understand the full significance of what was going on around him.

In July and August, President Kruger was winning all along the line.

The Home Government was kept harmless and inactive by the Franchise Bill; the Cape Government tied the hands of the High Commissioner; supplies of arms and ammunition were pouring in, the temper of the burghers in both republics was rising, foreign military officers and M. Leon of the Creuzot Works had arrived; in short, the military preparations of four years were consummated without let or hindrance.

September was less exclusively favourable to the republican cause. On September 8th, as we have seen, the Salisbury Cabinet determined to send out the defensive forces for which Lord Milner had asked three months before. Sir William Butler had been recalled; and General Forestier-Walker did all in his power to carry out the measures urged, and in most cases actually devised, by Lord Milner for the effective employment of the few thousand Imperial troops at his disposal. On the 18th and 19th the Lancas.h.i.+re regiment was sent up-country from Capetown--half to garrison Kimberley, and half to hold the bridge that carried the main trunk line over the Orange River on its way northwards to Kimberley and then past the Transvaal border to Rhodesia. In doing this, however, Lord Milner was careful to point out to President Steyn that no menace was intended to the Free State, which, "in case of war with the Transvaal Her Majesty's Government hoped would remain neutral, and the neutrality of which would be most strictly respected." Such excellent use was made by Lord Milner of the six weeks which elapsed between the recall of General Butler and the ultimatum (October 9th-11th), that the handful of regulars dotted down before the Free State border of the colony, and skilfully distributed at strategic points upon the railways, sufficed to keep President Steyn's commandos from penetrating south of the Orange River, until the army corps had begun to disembark at the Cape ports. On this, as on another occasion to be subsequently noted, it is difficult to withhold a tribute of admiration to the gifted personality of the man who, himself a civilian, could thus readily apply his unique knowledge of South African conditions to the uses of the art of war. At the same time, the prompt.i.tude and efficiency displayed by the Indian military authorities provided Natal, by October 8th, with a force that proved just--and only just--sufficient to prevent the Boer commandos from sweeping right through that colony down to Durban.

[Sidenote: The negotiations closed.]

In the meantime the negotiations, having served their purpose, were being brought rapidly to a conclusion by the Pretoria Executive. On September 15th, as we have seen, the Republic notified its refusal to accept the terms offered in the British despatch of the 8th; and before that date, as we have also noted, some of the Transvaal commandos had been ordered to take up their positions on the Natal border. On the 22nd a meeting of the Cabinet was held in London, at which it was decided to mobilise the army corps--a measure advised by Lord Wolseley in June. At the same time Lord Milner was instructed by telegraph to communicate to the South African Republic a despatch[173]

in which the British Government "absolutely denied and repudiated" the claim of the South African Republic to be a "sovereign international state," and informed the Pretoria Executive that its refusal to entertain the offer made on September 8th--

[Footnote 173: C. 9,530.]

"coming as it did at the end of nearly four months of protracted negotiations, themselves the climax of an agitation extending over a period of more than five years, made it useless to further pursue a discussion on the lines. .h.i.therto followed, and that Her Majesty's Government were now compelled to consider the situation afresh, and to formulate their own proposals for a final settlement"

of the questions at issue. The result of these deliberations was to be communicated to Lord Milner in a later despatch.

[Sidenote: The Burghers mobilised.]

This note of September 22nd, together with a second communication of the same date, in which Mr. Chamberlain warmly repudiated the charges of bad faith brought against Sir William Greene, reached the Pretoria Executive on the 25th, and on the same day it was known that a British force had entrained at Ladysmith for Glencoe. On the 26th intelligence of so serious a nature reached Lord Milner, that he telegraphed to warn the Home Government that the Transvaal and Free State were likely to take the initiative. According to Mr. Amery,[174] an ultimatum had been drafted upon receipt of the British note, and telegraphed on the following day to President Steyn for his approval. At Bloemfontein, however, the doc.u.ment was entirely recast by Mr. Fischer. Even so, in its amended form, it was ready on the 27th. On that day the Free State Raad, after six days of secret session, determined to join the sister Republic in declaring war upon Great Britain, and on the 28th the Transvaal commandos were mobilised. The ultimatum, according to the same authority, would have been delivered to Sir William Greene on Monday, October 2nd, had not deficiencies in the Boer transport and commissariat arrangements made it impossible for the burgher forces to advance immediately upon the British troops in Natal. At the last moment, also, President Steyn seems to have had some misgivings. On September 26th, together with the draft ultimatum from Pretoria, a suggestive telegram from Capetown, signed "Micaiah," and bidding him "Read chapter xxii. 1st Book of Kings, and accept warning," had reached him;[175] and a few days later he received, through Mr.

Fischer, a powerful appeal for peace from Sir Henry de Villiers.

[Footnote 174: _Times_ correspondent and editor of _The Times History of the War_. Mr. Amery arrived at the Cape in the second week of September, and was at Pretoria from September 24th to October 13th.]

[Footnote 175: Secured by Intelligence Department.]

However this may be, the few administrative acts that remained to be taken were quickly accomplished in both Republics. In the Transvaal the remnant of the British population was already in flight; the law courts were suspended; the control of the railways was a.s.sumed by the Government and, in order to protect colonial recruits from the legal penalties attached to rebellion, on September 29th the Executive was empowered by the Volksraad to confer citizen rights on all aliens serving in the forces of the Republic. Not content with their barbarous expulsion of the British population, the Governments of both Republics for a week before the expiry of the ultimatum treated those of them who still remained as though a state of war had already been in existence. During these last days telegrams and letters praying for protection against some act of violence or spoliation were constantly arriving at Government House. But what could the High Commissioner do?

The Army Corps was 6,000 miles away; the 10,000 defensive troops were most of them still on the water. The Free State, in Mr. Fischer's words, "did not recognise international law, and claimed to commandeer all persons whatsoever" under its own. In the Transvaal, Mr. Reitz (after consultation with Mr. s.m.u.ts) was coolly replying to the British Agent's protest against the seizure of the property of British subjects, including 150,000 worth of bar gold, that "the property of private individuals of whatever nationality could be, and was being, commandeered to the value of 15 a head."[176] On October 2nd the Transvaal Raads adjourned, and on the same day President Steyn informed the High Commissioner that the Free State burghers had been summoned for commando service. An interchange of telegrams then ensued, of which one, despatched on October 6th, is important as showing how earnestly Lord Milner seconded Mr. Chamberlain's endeavour to keep the door open for a peaceful settlement up to the last moment.

[Footnote 176: C. 9,530.]

[Sidenote: Last words.]

"I have the honour," he said, "to acknowledge Your Honour's long telegram of yesterday afternoon [the 5th], the substance of which I have communicated to Her Majesty's Government. There is, I think, a conclusive reply to Your Honour's accusation against the policy of Her Majesty's Government, but no good purpose would be served by recrimination. The present position is that burgher forces are a.s.sembled in very large numbers in immediate proximity to the frontiers of Natal, while the British troops occupy certain defensive positions well within those borders. The question is whether the burgher forces will invade British territory, thus closing the door to any possibility of a pacific solution. I cannot believe that the South African Republic will take such aggressive action, or that Your Honour would countenance such a course, which there is nothing to justify.

Prolonged negotiations have hitherto failed to bring about a satisfactory understanding, and no doubt such understanding is more difficult than ever to-day, after the expulsion of British subjects with great loss and suffering; but until the threatened act of aggression is committed I shall not despair of peace, and I feel sure that any reasonable proposal, from whatever quarter proceeding, would be favourably considered by Her Majesty's Government if it offered an immediate termination of present tension and a prospect of permanent tranquillity."[177]

[Footnote 177: C. 9,530.]

With this--practically the final communication of the British Government--it is instructive to compare the "last words" of the two other protagonists. The Pretoria Executive, true to its policy of playing for time, sends through Mr. Reitz two long and argumentative replies to the British despatches of July 27th (the Joint Commission), and May 10th (Mr. Chamberlain's reply to the pet.i.tion to the Queen).