^B^il' °^°^«^^ ««bert
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2008 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/bloodgoldinsouthOOperruoft
"I^air unb M'b m ^ont\ %lxm :
AN ANSWER
TO
DR. CONAN DOYLE :
Bein^ an Examination of his account
of the " Cause and Conduct " of the
South-African War,
By G. H. PERRIS,
Author of "A Short History of the Hague Conference,^'' " The
Life and Teaching of Leo Tolstoy" &'c.
London :
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION,
40, Outer Temple, W.C.
Pamphlet Department: "Morning Leader,"
30, St. Bride Street, E.G.
1902.
CONTENTS.
Chaptee I. — The Boee Hunt Begins
PAGE
.. 3
,, II. — Gold and Grievances ...
18
„ III.— The Bkitish Conspibacy : First Phase —
The Plot and the Eaid 32
,, IV. — The Beitish Conspibacy: Second Phase —
The Campaign of Theeats 41
„ V. — The CoNDUor or the Wae
... 60
^T izTfls^ U'Aorge fkrWt
'/I rtyi •'«/»;«
[loSi
AN ANSWER
TO
DR. CONAN DOYLE.
I.— THE BOER HUNT BEGINS.
ITH a great flourish of trumpets there
has lately been issued, through two of
the leading London publishing houses,
what claims to be a statement of the
British " case " in regard to the South
African War, from the pen of the creator of
" Sherlock Holmes."*' A first glance through the
pamphlet did not move me to take it seriously ;
but the friend who gave it me as " a finger-post
to show the way to salvation " — a man whose
independence and capacity I respect— seemed to
regard it as a convincing document, and other*
tell me that it will certainly have a Avide influence.
Three hundred thousand copies are said to have
been printed already, and Lord Rosebery has given
£50 to assist the production of foreign editions.
That an appeal should be made for funds forits trans-
lation and circulation throughout Europe matters
comparatively little ; our first concern — one too
large for our limited energies — is with our
own people. Moreover, while the foreign Jingo,,
like the native Jingo, will keep his prejudices
against every argument, the foreign humanitarian
is moved by considerations of which Dr. Doyle
seems to have no appreciation, and upon which,
therefore, he can have no influence. It is,
indeed, only when we come to see the peculiar
bias of the argument that we realise to the full the
absurdity of offering such a dish as this to foreign
* The War in South Africa : Its Cause and Conduct.
By A. Conan Doyle. Smith, Elder & Co., and George
Newnes, Ltd. Pp. 156. 6d.
readers. It is not without hesitation, then, that I
set out upon a detailed examination of this defence
of the war and its authors, for our time and space
and energy are sadly limited. Both writer and
readers are likely to tire before the end can be
reached, but enough will have been said to shake
the confidence which Dr. Doyle claims, and his
thousands of readers in this country seem ready to
yield to anything bearing his name.
The Fictionist as Historian.
This examination will only deal with details, since
it will be sufficient for the purpose to show that
the pamphlet is neither accurate nor fair. For a
true history, more than accuracy and fairness in
this narrow sense are required. I do not lay any
stress upon the fact that Dr. Conan Doyle issued
in the early stages of the hostilities a substantial
attempt at history in which he treated the war as
already over, though this blunder at least sug-
gested kinship with the common Jingo journalist.
Perhaps it is unjust to apply the standards of
serious history to the making of a case in niedias
res. Dr. Doyle has never, any more than Mr.
Kipling, given us any ground to expect that he
•could or would write sober history. All the
historians are on the other side of the hedge, along
with the international and constitutional lawyers,
the economists, and the better half of the poets,
preachers, and helle-lettrists. There was no need
for Mr. Quiller-Couch, Mr. Zangwill, or "Edna
Lyall" to leave the field in which they have
earned so many honours while trained hands like
Mr. Frederic Harrison, Prof. Bryce, and Mr.
■Courtney, to say nothing of Mr. Hobson, Mr.
Robertson, Mr. Methuen, Mr. Herbert Paul, and
many another were at work, and when Mr.
Herbert Spencer, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr.
John Morley had given their opinion. It is
impossible not to feel some pity for a Ministry
which has to trust for its defence to a man whose
achievements, however good in their way, all lie
in the domain of popular fiction.
The pamphlet consists of eleven chapters — two
historical, two on the Chamberlain-Kruger nego-
tiations and contemporary points, one on the peace
aiegotiations, five on the conduct of the war, and
one of " conclusions " — together with a brief
preface, in which the author thus demands fu
favourable verdict: "I do not think that an\-
un prejudiced man can read the facts withour
acknowledging that the British Government has
done its best to avoid war and the British Army
to wage it with humanity,"
Queer Title-Deeds.
The most significant thing about the historical'
chapters is the continuous omission of essential
facte. But we are met at the outset by an expres-
sion of opinion which will enable any discerning
reader to locate Dr. Conan Doyle. " In all the
vast collection of British States," he says, "there
is probably not one the title-deeds to which are
more incontestible than to this [Cape Colony].
Britain had it by two rights — the right of cooquest
and the right of purchase" (p. 10). Here is a
pretty judgment upon the Empire, by one of its
sworn partisans ! We hope the Australians and
Canadians will like this insinuation that they are
held to the Empire by no better "title-deeds"'
than conquest and purchase. If that be so, why
prate of "rights" and "title-deeds" at all?
There is no such thing as a " right " of conquest.
Conquest is always and necessarily a wrong, as
Englishmen used to be the first to declare when
the sufferer was a Poland, a Finland, an Alsace-
Lorraine, a Bulgaria, or a Slesvig. The con-
queror does not require title-deeds, and he is
usually content to leave his camp-followers ta
invent excuses for him. The so-called " purchase "
was a meaner and no more rightful operation. The
Stadtholder received a substantial bribe to recon-
cile him to the second British conquest ; the Cape
people were helpless and protesting victims. A
pretty "title-deed" this! As well talk of the
"right" of a man to sell his daughter, or buy
another man's. In another of Dr. Doyle's similes
the Cape territory is referred to as an accidental
stake distributed at the end of a game of beggar-
my-neighbour played by certain European Powers
after the French Revolution. But no code of
equity or law that has ever been drawn up recog-
nises the right of monarchs to gamble with their
possessions.
readers. It is not witliout hesitation, then, that I
set out upon a detailed examination of this defence
of the war and its authors, for our time and space
and energy are sadly limited. Both writer and
readers are likely to tire before the end can be
reached, but enough will have been said to shake
the confidence which Dr. Doyle claims, and his
thousands of readers in this country seem ready to
yield to anything bearing his name.
The Fictionist as Historian,
This examination will only deal with details, since
it will be sufficient for the purpose to show that
the pamphlet is neither accurate nor fair. For a
true history, more than accuracy and fairness in
this narrow sense are required. I do not lay any
stress upon the fact that Dr. Conan Doyle issued
in the early stages of the hostilities a substantial
attempt at history in which he treated the war as
already over, though this blunder at least sug-
gested kinship with the common Jingo journalist.
Perhaps it is unjust to apply the standards of
serious history to the making of a case in medias
res. Dr. Doyle has never, any more than Mr.
Kipling, given us any ground to expect that he
could or would write sober history. All the
historians are on the other side of the hedge, along
with the international and constitutional lawyers,
1;he economists, and the better half of the poets,
preachers, and helle-lettrlsts. There was no need
for Mr. Quiller-Couch, Mr. Zangwill, or " Edna
Lyall" to leave the field in which they have
earned so many honours while trained hands like
Mr. Frederic Harrison, Prof. Bryce, and Mr.
'Courtney, to say nothing of Mr. Hobson, Mr.
Robertson, Mr. Methuen, Mr. Herbert Paul, and
many another were at work, and when Mr.
Herbert Spencer, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr.
John Morley had given their opinion. It is
impossible not to feel some pity for a Ministry
which has to trust for its defence to a man whose
achievements, however good in their way, all lie
in the domain of popular fiction.
The pamphlet consists of eleven chapters — two
historical, two on the Chamberlain-Kruger nego-
tiations and contemporary points, one on the peace
negotiations, five on the conduct of the war, and
•one of " conclusions " — togrether with a brief
preface, in which the author thus demands ft.
favourable verdict: "I do not think that anv
unprejudiced man can read the facts withour
acknowledging that the British Government has-
done its best to avoid war and the British Army
to wage it with humanity."
Queer Title-Deeds.
The most significant thing about the historical
chapters is the continuous omission of e.«senlial
facts. But we are met at the outset by an expres-
sion of opinion which will enable any discerning
reader to locate Dr. Conan Doyle. " In all the-
vast collection of British States," he says, "there
is probably not one the title-deeds to which are
more incontestible than to this [Cape Colony].
Britain had it by two rights — the right of conquest
and the right of purchase " (p. 10). Here is a
pretty judgment upon the Empire, by one of its
sworn partisans ! We hope the Australians and
Canadians will like this insinuation that they are
held to the Empire by no better "title-deeds"
than conqiiest and purchase. If that be so, why
prate of "rights" and "title-deeds" at all?
There is no such thing as a " right " of conquest.
Conquest is always and necessarily a wrong, as
Englishmen used to be the first to declare when
the sufferer was a Poland, a Finland, an Alsace-
Lorraine, a Bulgaria, or a Slesvig. The con-
queror does not require title-deeds, and he is
usually content to leave his camp-followers ta
invent excuses for him. The so-called " purchase "
was a meaner and no more rightful operation. The
Stadtholder received a substantial bribe to recon-
cile him to the second British conquest ; the Cape
people were helpless and protesting victims. A
pretty "title-deed" this! As well talk of the
"right" of a man to sell his daughter, or buy
another man's. In another of Dr. Doyle's similes
the Cape territory is referred to as an accidental
stake distributed at the end of a game of beggar-
my-neighbour played by certain European Powers
after the French. Revolution. But no code of
equity or law that has ever been drawn up recog-
nises the right of monarchs to gamble with their
possessions.
A False Analogy.
The only " flaw " which Dr. Doyle detects in
these precious title-deeds is that they did not
convey the hinterland along with the southern
coast. "Were the discontented Dutch at liberty to
pass onwards and found fresh nations to bar the
path of the Anglo-Celtic Colonists?" No one at
the time thought of asking a question of such pre-
posterous arrogance ; and if Dr. Doyle had any
political imagination he would never have put it
before his Continental and American readers. The
Americans he thinks to placate by supposing a
body of trekkers from New York setting up in
California under an independent flag. The sup-
position is impossible, because the American Union
grew out of the overthrow of a foreign conqueror,
and grew, not by conquest but, as a federation
based on liberty, equality, and fraternity, and
could not have grown otherwise. If a distant
parallel in the Western world be desired, it might
be found by supposing that the ''Loyalists" who
refused to join the Union, and went north into
Canada, had been followed up and pressed back
and back on the ground that nothing must " bar the
path " of the advancing Republicans. Dr. Doyle's
hypothetical instance serves, however, to remind
us of the only respectable kind of expansion. The
United States grew by true colonisation — that is
their great title-deed. But Dr. Doyle himself
reminds us that it was not for fourteen years
after the conquest that any current of British
emigration to South Africa began.
Before leaving this first question of the conquest
of the Cape let us note how difierently an Imperial
historian of recognised standing has treated it.
After speaking of the success of the Dutch in the
work of colonisation and the bargain between
England and the Prince of Orange, Froude
("Oceana," Ch. III.) says that they had only
submitted in 1806 "in the belief that, as before,
the occupation would be temporary and that their
country would be finally given back to them when
the struggle was over." "They had made the
country what it was, had set up their houses there,
had done no one any harm, and had been in posses-
sion for seven generations. They were (now)
treated as adscripti qUlag^^ a^ mere serfs, "as
part of the soil. They reseated it; the hotter
spirits resisted. They were called rebels, and were
shot and hanged in the usual fashion."
The Early Government of Cape Colony.
" If we had been wise," Froude continues, " we
should have tried to reconcile the Dutch to an
alien rule by exceptional consideration. We did
make an exception, but not in their favour. We
justified our conquest to ourselves by taking away
the character of the conquered, and we constituted
ourselves the champion of the coloured races
against them, as if they were oppressors and rob-
bers." Dr. Conan Doyle does not pretend to speak
in the tones once familiar in Exeter Hall, but he
claims, not only that the early government of the
Cape was "mild, clean, honest," as well as "tact-
less and inconsistent," but also that the Imperial
Government " has always taken" "a philanthropic
view of the rights of the native," and that British
justice is racially " colour-blind." On the latter
point we may follow Froude in. recalling, firstly,
that " slavery at the Cape had always been rather
domestic than predial ; the scandals of the
West India plantations were unknown. The
slaves were part of the families and had always
been treated with care and kindness." In the
second place, the crime of the Dutch was. simply
that they were not converted as quickly as we
were from an ancient reproach which had lain
upon us much more heavily (as the chief slave
traders of the world) than upon them. As to the
character of the early government of the Colony,
we need only recall that the rule which Dr. Doyle
describes as " mild, clean, honest " included such
acts as the abolition of the colonists' legislative
and executive council and the substitution of the
Governor's personal rule, the destruction of the
independence of the High Court of Justice, the
suppression of the Dutch language in courts of
justice and ofl&cial proceedings, though five-sixths
of the people understood no other tongue, the
abolition of municipal rights, the toleration of
bribery in the administration, the em'olment of
Hottentots as soldiers and police, and their use in
enforcing civil process — a form of " colour-blind-
ness" which Dr. Doyle's readers in the Southern
8
States of America "will appreciate. Perhaps Dr.
Doyle "will suggest that the British Government is
even now acting as " friend and protector of the
native servants " by employing them on the battle-
field. Yet he sees that the events culminating at
Slagter's Nek opened a long feud between two
white races. He thinks, unjustly, we hope, that
the South African Colonies would not have
abolished slavery of their own will. He admits,
too, that " a brave race can forget the victims of
the field of battle, but never those of the scaflEbld "
— ^having himself forgotten Letter, Scheepers, and
the rest — and that " the making of political
martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship."
Alas! that this "last insanity" should so often
have been repeated in South Africa.
From Pillar to Post.
After these admissions our advocate can find
no more inspiring parallel for the great Boer trek
than the migration of the Mormons ! Sir
Benjamin D' Urban, the Governor of the Cape at
the time, was more generous when he reported that
the trek was caused by " the insecurity of life and
property occasioned by recent measures, inadequate
compensation for the lives of the slaves, and
the despair of obtaining recompense for the
ruinous losses by the Kaffir invasion." The
trekkers, he said, were " a brave, patient, indus-
trious, orderly, and religious people ; the cultiva-
tors, the defenders, the tax contributors of the
country." The trek was, in fact, one of the heroic
episodes of history; and, as Froude said, its
history "repeats our own history wherever we
have settled in new countries inhabited already by
an inferior race." Dr. Conan Doyle does not lack
courage, but he would not have dared to compare
any body of English pioneers with the Mormons.
We now come to the establishment of the Boer
Republics. With infinite labom- the emigrant
farmers fought their way north and east. "The
Boers had occupied Natal fiom within," says Dr.
Doyle, " but England had previously done the
same by sea" — an inaccurate as well as an in-
adequate summary. The Boers had been settled
for years between the Drakensbergs and the sea,
had established towns and constituted themselves
9
a Republic, before the British Government in a fit
of insane jealousy sent a force round by water and
ultimately seized their country. " It was only the
conquest of Natal by the Boers which caused
them (the British Government) to claim it as a
British colony." What a confession for an.
Imperialist pamphleteer to have to make before
a self - summoned European audience ! While
finding it " difficult to reach that height of
philosophical detachment which enables the
historian to deal absolutely impartially where his
own country " is concerned, Dr. Doyle concedes
that in regard to these events " there is a case for
our adversary." But all the tale of wrong does not
prevent him from regarding with satisfaction the
fact that the Boers were " headed off from the sea,"
and their " ambition " was confined to the land.
There has been nothing but grievances and exile
so far; that blessed word " ambition" now makes
an insidious first appearance. " Had it gone the other
way a new and possibly formidable flag would have
been added to the maritime nations." All the narrow-
minded insolence of Imperialism is suggested in
this sentence. One would really suppose that God
made the sea for the exclusive pleasure and profit
of Englishmen. These Boers had been conquered
or bought, whichever Dr. Doyle likes, because a
handful of officials in Whitehall thought this the
best way of securing the route to India. They
had been robbed of their political and social
liberties because the said officials were still labouring
under the infatuation that India is a more valuable
asset than North America. They might fight wild
beasts and savage tribesmen as long as they liked,
but they must not found independent communities,
and, above all, they must not dare to look upon
the ocean, lest it should move them, as it has moved
us, to ideas of liberty and culture, trade and travel,
and mayhap, in some distant day of their demorali-
sation, of empire! The "title-deeds" of the
Spanish Armada were, in fact, a veritable armoury
of right as compared with those of Natal.
And still, if the hand of Imperial lust had gone
no further, there might have been peace. Unfor-
tunately persecution grows by what it feeds on.
The Boer hunt proceeds. The Orange Republic,
established in 1837, was invaded eight years later,,
and though the British troops were defeated and
10
forced to retire — " a futile resistance," says Dr.
Doyle — the territory was afterwards effectively
annexed. The resultant feud with the Basutos
Dr. Doyle finds it convenient to ignore. Those
were the days when we were attempting to apply
Dr. Doyle's doctrine to the Eussian Empire, and
when England was beginning to learn in the
Crimea its futility and costliness. In 1852, by the
Sand River Convention, the absolute independence
of the Transvaal was recognised — " against the will
of a large part of the inhabitants " says Dr. Doyle,
M ithout offering a tittle of evidence — and two years
later the Orange Free State gained the same
liberty, becoming in the following forty-six years,
as Mr. Bryce has said, " the most idyllic community
in South Africa," and one of the most prosperous
and healthy States in the world.
Progress "on Dutch Lines."
We have mentioned above some of the disabilities
under which the Dutch stood in Cape Colony. It
is amusing to note Dr. Doyle's view of the rectifica-
tion which came about with the grant of self-
government to the Colony in 1872. "The Dutch
majority," he says, "put their own representatives
into power and ran the government upon Dutch
lines." Well, that is the way of majorities every-
where, and in this case there was a steady increase
of prosperity. Moreover, Dr. Doyle might have
remembered to record that the head and front of
the " Dutch," or as we should more accurately say
the Africander, policy and party at the Cape was,
at the crucial time of " Outlander grievances," no
less a person than the '"Emjjire builder," Mr.
Cecil Rhodes. " Already," Dr. Doyle continues,
" Dutch law had been restored and Dutch put on the
same footing as English as the official language of the
country. The extreme liberality oi such measures and
the uncompromising way in which they have been
carried out, however distasteful the legislation
might seem to English ideas, are among the chief
reasons which made the illiberal treatment of
British settlers in the Transvaal so keenly resented
at the Cape. A Dutch Government was ruling the
British in a British Colony at the moment when
the Boers would not give an Englishman a vote
upon a Municipal Council in a city which he had
built himself." Here is a truly pathetic picture —
11
the Africander Premier, Mr. Rhodes, in Cape
Town, sitting upon an unfortunate British minority
in the Colony, while the leading villain of the
piece, President Kruger, sits upon a corresponding
minority in the Transvaal. It all comes of the
Imperial idea that an Englishman, however poor
a figure he may cut at home, is suddenly and
mysteriously endowed with the worth of a thousand
of any other people directly he sets foot on a
foreign shore. There are many little facts which
clash with this desperate sketch of " a Dutch
Government ruling the British in a British colony "
— the gift of a war-ship to the Imperial Navy, for
instance, and the almost superstitious loyalty to
Queen Victoria. But on these and other points we
may refer Dr. Doyle to his friend Mr. Cecil Rhodes,
while we go hack to the no less remarkahle sugges-
tion that there is some especial " liberality " in
conceding self-government to a British Colony, and
that majority rule is " distasteful to English
ideas." There was, in fact, nothing at all of
liberality in the grant of self government — given
long before to Canada and most of the Australian
Colonies — to the Cape. Let it be admitted that
municipal self-government in Johannesburg was
granted with still more regrettable reluctance. At
least, there was good room for the plea of specially
difficult and even dangerous conditions. No such
conditions existed in England, yet at the moment
of which Dr. Doyle speaks the agricultural
labourers were still without the vote, London was
groaning under a connxpt and incapable Board of
Works, and even to this daj' the government of
the City is unreformed, and thousands of working
men are regularly disfranchised. Dr. Doyle
speaks as if the vote were every Englishman's
birthx'ight. His personal experience may be fortu-
nate ; as, during fifteen years of continuous political
work and steady residence, I have only been able
to vote once for a Parliamentary candidate, I can-
not share his unselfish faith.
Let me again contrast the facts as stated by the
older with the summary of the newer Imperialist :
Fkoude. Doyle.
" With an exception " For twenty - five
which I shall presently years after the Sand
notice, these treaties River Convention the
12
Feoude. Doyle.
(1852 and 1854) were burghers of the Trans-
observed for seventeen vaal Republic had pur-
years, and the land had sued a strenuous and
rest from its misfor- violent existence, Jight-
tunes. Our own border ing incessantly with the
troubles ceased ; the natives and sometimes
Colony was quiet and with each other, with
had no history ; the an occasional fling at
new States did not sink, the Dutch Republic to
but prospered. The the South. Disorganisa-
Boers . . . arranged tion ensued." (Page 17.)
their disputes with the
natives ivith little fight-
ing. In the Transvaal
a million natives lived
peacefully in their
midst." (" Oceana,"
pages 41-2.)
The Theft of the Diamonci Fields.
The exception which Froude went on to describe-
constitutes one of many significant omissions from
Dr. Conan Doyle's apologia — the theft of the
Kimberley diamond fields from the Orange Free
State. It should be said — it is another of Dr.
Doyle's convenient omissions — that, after an inter-
ference in favour of the Basutos, the Treaty of
1852 was renewed in 1869 at Aliwal North, with
fresh promises that there should be no further
interference. But diamonds cover a multitude of
sins. Says Froude : " The Dutch were expelled.
From that day no Boer in South Africa
has been able to trust to English promises. The
manner in which we acted, or allowed our repre-
sentatives to act, was insolent in its cynicism. . . .
We have accused" the Boers "of breaking their
engagements with us, and it was we who taught
them the lesson. . . . Our conduct would have
been less entirely intolerable if we had rested
simply on superior force — if we had told the Boers
simply that we must have the diamond fields, and
intended to take them ; but we poisoned the wound
and justified ovir action by posing before the world
as the protectors of the rights of native tribes. . . .
I had myself to make inquiries subsequently into
the details of this transaction, perhaps the most
discreditable in the annals of English Colonial
13
dilatory " Froude did not find judicial impartiality
so difficult as Dr. Conan Doyle confesses to have
-done. I fear that, impeccably orthodox as he was,
had he lived longer he would have been denounced
— perhaps assaulted — as a " pro-Boer " and an
enemy of his country. But Froude's honesty will
be admired when the things Doyle remembered or
fortfot to say are alike lost in oblivion.
The annexation of 1877 brings us to another
suppression. Our pamphleteer admits that the
Boers were in no need of British intervention to
save them. But, he says, " a formidable invasion
was pending," and so " Sir Theophilus Shepstone,
after an inquiry of three months, solved all ques-
tions by the formal annexation of the country."
The fact is that news of the settlement of the
dispute with Sekukuni arrived while the commis-
,sion was still sitting ; and the annexation was a
.gross breach, not only of the treaties, but of Sir T.
Shepstone's instructions. " There did not appear
to be any sti-ong feeling at the time against the
annexation," says Dr. Doyle. " A memorial
against the measure received the signatures of the
majority of the Boer inhabitants, but there was a
fair minority who took the other view. Kruger
accepted a paid office under Government."
The facts are different. The memorial — it is well
to be exact — received the signatures of 6,591 out
of a possible 8,000 electors (not inhabitants). Mr.
Kruger used his great personal influence for peace
and came twice to England, in 1877 and 1878
(surely this was worth mentioning, Mr. Doyle),
to plead for the re-establishment of the Republic.
For three years he kept the Boers in hand. It
was in that interval (ten months before Majuba)
that Mr. Gladstone declared that, even if the
Transvaal were more valuable than it seemed to be,
"he would repudiate the annexation, because it was
obtained "by means dishonourable to the character
of our country."
Dr. Doyle simply plays with the question.
According to him there was no grievance on the
one side, no greed on the other. The burghers
only wanted a Volksraad and " an occasional cup
of coffee with the anxious man who tries to rule
them." The Volksraad was not given (" simply
through preoccupation and delay") ; and Sir Owen
Lanyon forgot the coffee. On the other hand
14
" Great Britain had no possible selfish interest in
view " — why on earth did she persist then ? was
it sheer philanthropy ? — " there was nothing sordid
in the British action." Of course not, there never
is ! And so " every farmhouse sent out its rifle-
men," and the brief campaign that culminated
at Majuba was fought — not that there was any-
thing to fight about, but just for the fun of the
thing !
Majuba— The Two Voices.
Dr. Uoyle's treatment of the retrocession of
independence to the Transvaal is a mean piece
of shilly-shally journalism in which all the in-
formation necessarj' to a just judgment is lacking.
What he calls the "surrender" of the Gladstone
Government was " either the most pusillanimous or
the most magnanimous in recent history." While
refusing to credit its authors with any decent
motives, he declares that the motive of the British
people in acquiescing was " undoubtedly a moral
and Christian one. They considered that the
annexation had evidently been an injustice, that
the farmers had a right to the freedom for which
they fought, and that it was an unworthy thing for
a great nation to continue an unjust war for the
sake of a military revenge." As this was precisely
the Gladstonian view, Dr. Doyle is trying to make
out that that which is "moral and Christian " in the
disciple is " pusillanimous " in the apostle. If he
has really studied the South African question he
must know that Mr. Gladstone could, even in his
life-time, bring witnesses of the first rank to testify
to the immediate practical expediency of his action.
I will only quote two of them. The first witness
is no less a person than the present hero of Dr.
Conan Doyle's defence, the Kight Hon. Joseph
Chamberlain, who spoke as follows at Birmingham,
on June 7th, 1881 : —
" The Boers are not naturally a warlike race. They
inherit from their ancestors— the men who won the
independence of Holland from the oppressive rule
of Philip II. of Spain— their unconquerable love of
freedom and liberty. Are these not qualities which
commend themselves to men of the English race ? Is
it against such a nation that we are to be called upon
to exercise the dread arbitrament of arms ? These men
settled in the Transvaal in order to escape foreign rule.
15
They had had many quarrels with the British. They
left their homes in Natal as the English Puritans lelt
England for the United States, and they founded a
little republic of their own in the heart of Africa. In
1852 we made a Treaty with them, and we agreed to
respect and guarantee their independence ; and I say,
under these circumstances, is it possible we could main-
tain a forcible annexation of the country without in-
curring the accusation of having been guilty, I will not
say of national folly, but I say of national crime 1 "
Mr. Chamberlain went on to say that Sir Evelyn
Wood won a higher title to admiration and respect
when he resisted the temptation of revenging
a military disaster than if he "had entered the
Transvaal in triumph over the bodies of the slain "
— like Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener !
Our second witness is Lord Randolph Churchill,
who said that while the Boers might have
been beaten, the British Government ' ' might
indeed have regained the Transvaal, but it might
have lost Cape Colony. The Dutch sentiment in
the Colony had been so exasperated by what it
considered to be the unjust, faithless, and arbitrarj^
policy pursued towards the free Dutchmen of the
Transvaal that the final triumph of the British
arms, mainly by brute force, would have permanently
and hopelessly alienated it from Great Britain."
Contrast this account of " Cape Politics " by the
Conservative statesman with Dr. Doyle's assertion
that the settlement " tested to the uttermost "
the allegiance of the Colony, and that the people
of the Cape and Natal, "members of a beaten
race," felt themselves " humiliated before " their
" Dutch neighbours." According to our Jingo
pamphleteer, the Colonists have ever since
harboured a growing resentment because the
English people on "moral and Christian" grounds
declined to act like a drunken bully. "The
British Africander," he adds, "has yearned with
an intensity of feeling unknown in England for the
hour of revenge." If this be true, what are we
to think of the British Africanders on whose
behalf Dr. Doyle is arguing ? If it is false, what
are we to think of the author of a slander more
infamous than any of those which he set out to
refute ? As to the British who are not Africanders,
suffice it to say that revenge is a weapon that
always breaks in the hand. In this war Majuba
16
%as been " avenged " a score of times, and as often
or oftener repeated. " These satisfactory results
are very appropriate on the anniversary ofMajuba,"
telegraphed Lord Kitchener the other day, report-
ing a great " drive " of Boers Six hours later he
had to cable that sixteen British officers and 451
men had been captured by the enemy ; a few
days later Lord Methuen was captured with four
guns and many men. The path of the avenger is
a difficult as well as a shameful one.
In a later chapter Dr. Doyle makes a half-hearted
attempt to go back on these passages. Our soldiers,
he says, have wished to avenge Majuba ; that
ancient mishap still "rankled in the memory";
but that it "swayed the policy of the country cannot
be upheld." Granted ! It was gold, solid gold,
that " swayed the policy" ; the thirst of vengeance
only plied the spur. How far this base spirit pre-
vailed may be judged from the fact that Dr. Doyle
does not himself disavow or condemn it.
Suzerainty.
Dr. Doyle is undisguisedly contemptuous of
the Conventions of 1881 and 1884. He says the.
former provided for a " vague suzerainty." The
suzerainty was in fact strictly specific and limited.
Lord Kimberley, as Colonial Secretary, said so in
'his instructions to Sir Hercules Robinson (March,
-Slst, 1881) : "The term 'suzerainty' has been
■cjosen as most conveniently describing superiority
over a State possessing independent rights of
government subject to reservations with reference
to certain specified matters." Even if he had had any
right to go behind the 1884 Convention, Mr.
Chamberlain's effort to use the word " suzerainty "
in a general sense could have had no authority
whatever. As a matter of fact, the 1884 Con-
vention, "in substitution for" that of 1881, was
directly designed, as Lord Derby said, so that
" your Government will be left free to govern the
country without interference, and to conduct its
diplomatic intercourse and shape its foreign policy
subject only " to the power of the British Crown
to negative foreign treaties. Dr. Doyle does not
attempt to defend Mi". Chamberlain here. He
protests that it is a "barren discussion." This
trifling would be all very well were it not for the
fact that the Colonial Secretary's obstinate insist-
17
ence upon a baseless claim, his refusal to put the
question before a judicial tribunal, was the rock upon
which the negotiations were ultimately wrecked.
But for this threat — at first veiled, and afterwards
open — the two Governments would never have
come within measurable distance of war. Why
did Mr. Chamberlain maintain — why was he
allowed to maintain — a "barren discussion" if he
and those behind him did not desire to provoke a
yet bitterer conflict ?
Whether or not Great Britain was " tricked and
jockeyed " into accepting the Convention of 1884,
as Dr. Doyle says, matters not a fig. The limited
suzerainty was definitely abandoned. As Mr.
Chamberlain himself said on May 8th, 1896 :
" We did not claim, and never have claimed, the right to
interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal. 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 acquiesce."
Such, in his own words, is the principle, the be-
trayal of which by Mr. Chamberlain is the imme-
diate cause of the South African War.
There is no need to laboiir the point any
further. As I have written so much and
only reached the end of Dr. Doyle's first chapter,
I will content myself by pointing out that he does
not even seek to prove that Great Britain had any
treaty right to interfere, except by friendly repre-
sentation, in regard to the subjects which after-
wards appear as the casus belli. The legal " case "
for the war, therefore, goes against him by default.
In what follows, accordingly, it should be re-
membered that there is no better legal ground for
British coercion of the Transvaal Government
than, say, American miners in the Klondyke and
the Washington Cabinet might have against the
Canadian Government, or British concessionaires
and our Foreign Office might have against the
Governments of Russia and Turkey, or even
of Germany and France.
18
II.— GOLD AND GRIEVANCES.
The title of the second chapter is "The Cause of
the Quarrel," and the first word is the exactly appro-
priate keynote — " Gold." Dr. Doyle admits that
some of the "adventurers" who flocked to the Rand
were " very much the reverse of desirable "; and_
then, after reminding us that the class of mining
called for was that of large capitalist companies
rather than of small individual enterprise, he
rushes pell-mell into a grossly exaggerated account
of Uitlander grievances. He forgets to mention the
gold "slump" of 1889 and 1890 as a cause oi
discontent; he forgets a hundred things, and is
sure only of one — the utter, gratuitous, hopeless"
wickedness and imbecility of the Boers. Now,
adequately to refute Dr. Doj'le's list of charges
would require a larger booklet than his own,
because he is content to utter bald libels without
offering a tittle of evidence in support, a short, if
not very convincing, way of dealing with your
antagonist. I shall take only the two or three
chief headings of the indictment, and for the rest
refer the reader to witnesses who, from everj' point
of view, desers'e much higher credence than
Dr. Doyle.
Grievances— Taxation.
The first of the " very real and pressing
grievances " which " darkened the whole lives " of
the Uitlanders was that " they were heavily taxed,
and provided about seven-eighths of the revenue of
the country," which, " through the industry of tbe
new-comers, had changed from one of the poorest
to the richest in the whole world (per head of
population)." Why did not Dr. Doyle explain
that the Transvaal taxation of most commodities
was considerably less than in Cape Colony' or
Natal? Or he might have given a comparison
with Rhodesia. " The Gold Law of the Transvaal,"
say^JIr. J. A. Hobson ("The War in South
Africa,"_p. 87), " is the most liberal in the world,
taking no 'uore than 5 per cent, out of the
admitted profits of mining, or if we look at the
output of 1898, taking one-seventieth of the total
value of gold got in the year. Compare this with
tHe Gold Law of Rhodesia, where the Chartered
19
Company has been accorded the right of' taking as
much as 50 per cent, of the net profit of any
prospector who finds a purchaser for his claim."
~" Again, I notice that at a meeting of Rhodesia, Ltd.,
in July, 1900, Mr. R. J. Price, M.P. (Chairman),
said "he believed that in a short time the
Chartered Company would find it necessary to
make some modification in theu- terms. Thirty-
three per cent, was too large an amount to pay
them, and the consequence was that every day new
enterprises were retarded or nipped in the bud
through this heavy imposition." Dr. Doyle is
very simple if he thinks Mr. Rhodes would be an
easier landlord than Mr. Kruger.
If Dr. Doyle wants to be finally satisfied that
the gold grievance was an impudent pretence, he
may refer to a long article in the Times (February
25th, 1902), in which the future of the Transvaal
Gold Law is discussed. There he will find that in
the Boer law of 1899 " the precedents apparently
followed were those of the British law of IQondyke
and the law of Rhodesia," the latter of which, as
"has been said, gives the government much higher
powers. " It is true," says this Jingo writer,
*' that the laws were passed by the Volksraad with the
intention of putting money into the pockets of the
burghers out of the gold wron from the soil by the
TJitlanders. But, in real fact, they have that effect in
hardly any case, as, all over the Transvaal, the Boer
farmer has sold his gold rights to one or other of the
great mining corporations."
Dr. Doyle does not offer any reason why, if the
^oldfields constitute seven-eighths of the money"^
wealth of the country, they should not bear seven-
eighths of the taxation. In this country the
Thrown would have confiscated the mines ; in an
ideal Commonwealth the State would have taken"
them over and sent the invading capitalists packing.
"What an outcry theie would arise in this country
_if the wealth of its greatest industry was drained
off almost wholly to foreign shareholders ! Imagine
an American trust buying up our railways and
shipping all the profit across the Atlantic. Would
we be content with 5 per cent, taxatioa ? I trow
not. " The blood was sucked from the Uitlanders,"
says Dr. Doyle. Notwithstanding this sad fate, in
August, 1899, the market value of the Wemher,
Beit concerns stood at over seventy-six millions ster-
2*
20
ling ; and twenty Rand mines distributed dividends
in the three years preceding the war amounting to
over eight milliuns sterling, an average yearly
dividend of 33 per cent. It is to vindicate these
gilded martyrs, the helots of Park Lane, that Dr.
Doyle's friends in Whitehall have mortgaged for
many years to come the resources of a people
thirty per cent, of whom have been proved to be
living permanently below the poverty line ! Mr.
Hobson has shown quite frankly, and with the
skill of a trained economist, how a radical reformer
would have dealt with the finances of the Trans-
vaal. Reforms were already being made, and
would have been completed in course of time.
Joubert, who died earlj' in the war, Schalk Burger,
the present Acting President, and Botha, hero of a
hundred fights, were all progressive Boers,
advocates of reform, and opponents of Mr.
Kruger, though Dr. Doyle does not think the fact
worth mentioning. But under any honest system
of finance the goldfields would have had to pay
rather more than less. The worst fault of the
Kruger Government was that, suddenly faced by
the strongest financial combination which the
modern world has produced (with the possible ex-
ception of some American " combines "), it lacked
experience, and had only rough principles of
justice to apply to a situation of immense difficulty.
In any case, a war the mere interest on the money
cost of which (as far as it has now gone) the whole
public revenue of the Transvaal would not suffice
to pay, is a queer way of remedying a taxation
grievance.
The Franchise.
But, we are told, ,as the second count, the.
Uitlanders " were left without a vote ....
Such a case of taxation without representation has
never been known." The obvious facts that have
" never been known " to Dr. Conan Doyle would
make a substantial library. Has he never heard
of the greatest ironworks in Russia, Yusovo {i.e.,
Hughes-town), built up by British Uitlander capital
and labour in spite of every possible disability and
obstacle, political, social, and economic ? There
are probably many more Englishmen in Russia
than there were in the Transvaal, and not only
have they not a single vote among them, nor any
21
right of meeting, nor any freedom of speech and
publication, but their very persons are not safe
from agencies notoriously unscrupulous and
hardened in all manner of extortion and villainy.
What about British concessionaires, mei'chants,
and artizans in Turkey, and in nearly all Asiatic
countries? How many British Uitlanders in
Germany, France, Austria, or Italy, ever get or
ask for a vote? Nay, Igtus^ try to put aside the
"^yj^^'fi'i^y !i"'l cant that do so easily beset us, and
asK ^vhelo and when the vote was made the birth-
right of an Englishman. I have spoken before of
The tardy and partial extensions of our home
franchise. Probably not one-half of the sane adult
men (none of the women, of course) of England
have a vote for the House of Commons, and the
House of Commons itself is openly flouted by the
Upper Chamber for which no one has a vote, and
by the Cabinet which, for long periods together,
is practically irresponsible. The Prime Minister
is_ frankly in favour of excluding aliens, and
the Lords endorsed his opinion in July, 1898,
By~86 to 36 votes. The vote is not given to
aliens in this country as a right at all, but only
-^^fter a qualification period of five years — ^as an
optional concession. For a Government the chief
members of which have obstinately opposed fran-
chise extensions at home to pose as their ad-
vocates in a foreign goldfield is a peculiarly
eros~fraud upon their uninformed constituents.
A half-a-dozen of these men have lately com-
mitted the people of England and the Empire,
without saying so much as " If you please," to an
offensive and defensive alliance with an Asiatic
Power that may easily land us in a war from
which we should not recover. To talk of the jyote
as an accepted right in face of these facts is either
very stupid or very hypocritical.
Some of the Uitlanders were more frank than
their advocates. " As for the franchise," said Mr.
"Lionel Phillips, of Eckstein &c Co., " few of us
care a fig for it." Those who did care were for
ITie most part thosa who intended to try to
accomplish the aim of the Jameson Raid, as Mr.
Cecil Rhodes cynically declared, " by constitutional
means." Dr. Doyle should read, if he has not
already done so, Mr. Phillips's letter to " My
dear Beit," the wealthiest of the South African
22
millionaires, whom he represented in Johannesburg,
dated from that place on 16th June, 1894
(^' Arbitration or "War ? " F, Parker and Others,
p. 39). "As you of course know," he said, " I
have no desire for political rights, and believe as
a whole that the community is not ambitious in
this respect." It even preferred to be voteless,
and — a point which Dr. Doyle carefully omits to
mention — free from the burgher's obligation of
military service. Bribeiy and coercion, not normal
political agitation, are the favourite weapons of the
new finance. But for the conspiracy which the
leaders of the Johannesburg crowd were then
hatching, they would have got a liberal fi'anchise
long ago.
As it was, the Raad passed (on July 19t.h,
1899) a franchise law reducing the qualification
period to seven years, enfi-anchising at once all
nine years' residents and all native-bom adult
children of aliens, requiring only five years more
from two years' residents and giving the Goldfields
four more seats in each Raad. The Government
afterwards offered to reduce the franchise further
to five years, with ten seats out of thirty-six in
the Volksraad. Dr. Doyle admits (p. 31) that,
with a five years' franchise, there would never
have been any war, since " grievances would have
been righted from the inside without external inter-
ference." The admission is fatal, for Mr. Cham-
^^ berlain had no better ground for refusing to accept
the offer of a five years' franchise, which Dr.
Doyle says would have righted everything, than
that the power of external interference, which Dr.
' Doyle says would then be unnecessary, must be
maintained at any cost. The fact is that Mr.
Chamberlain had then gone too far along the road
of violence for it to be pleasant to draw back.
He knows better to-day, and the man in the street
begins to see the cost of not knowing how to wait.
Promiscuous Slanders.
Feeling, perhaps, the impossibility of represent-
ing this franchise difficulty as a " veiy real and
pressing grievance " — for he has to admit that
" the Uitlanders were not ardent politicians " — Dr.
Doyle seeks to strengthen it by pouring out phrases
of contumely worthy of the Johannesburg reptile
press upon the heads of the Boer administration.
23
They were " a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and
incompetent to the last degree." They " fleeced"
their victims " at every turn," and met them "with
laughter and taunts." They were " men of the
worst possible character," " ignorant bigots, some
of them buffoons, and nearly all of them openly and
shamelessly corrupt." I need not refer back to
some orthodox opinions on Boer character already
cited or quote others in answer to the pages which
Dr. Doyle defaces with this cowardly clap-trap, for
the events of the last two years afford the
best answer. Thousands of captive Britishers
owe their lives to the humanity and wisdom
of these brutal and corrupt buffoons, who, for
all their ignorance, have been able to withstand
the strongest military force ever got together
in human history, and have not lost their
morale in the process. I will not yield to the
temptation of comparing the Kruger oligarchy
with the Cecil oligarchy, the average Boer with
the average Uitlander. On a later page Dr. Doyle
himself says that " in contests of wit, as of arms, it
must be confessed that the laugh has up to now
been usually upon the side of our simple and
pastoral South African neighbours." It would be
putting it too mildly to say that the Boers have
nothing to lose by such comparisons ; but, however
effective, they tend to throw into the background the
main fact, which is that Dr. Doyle is attempting
to justify a bloody and disastrous war by levelling
vague charges of ignorance, stupidity, and corrup-
tion against what Mr. Chamberlain described, just
1 1 after the Jameson raid, as "a foreign State in friendly
11 treaty relations with Her Majesty." This is, in
fact, the colouring matter and residuum, the mud
that sticks, in every "case " for the war; and Dr.
Doyle is only " going one better " than other
Jingo scribblers when, in illustration, he reports
(no authority given, as usual) one member of
the Raad as opposing pillar-boxes in Pretoria
because he never wrote letters himself, and anoth^^-
as opposing measures against locusts on the ground
that th«^y were a scourge sent by God to
punish the sins of the people. We do not know
whether this report is an Uitlander concoction or
not. What we do know is that if the Boers were
ten times as stupid, ignorant, inefficient, and
corrupt as Dr. Doyle alleges, the fact would
24
furnish no casus belli against " a foreign State in
friendly treaty relations " with us.
Put Yourself in Their Place.
This would be recognised even by the most belated
Tory if we could only get him for a moment to try
the golden rule of putting himself in the other
man's place. Let us suppose an ideal State as
much greater than Britain as Britain is greater
than the Transvaal ; and let us suppose this greater
State to be looking down contemptuously upon our
infirmities. Take a few infirmities as they are
stated by one of our most popular writers at the
present moment : —
"The House of Lords is a collection of obsolete
territorial dignitaries fitfully reinforced by the bishops
and a miscellany (in no sense representative) of opulent
moderns ; the House of Commons is the seat of a party
conflict, a faction-fight of initiated persons that has
long ceased to bear any real relation to current social
processes. The members of the lower chamber are
selected by obscure party machines operating upon
constituencies almost all of which have long since
become too vast and heterogeneous to possess any
collective intelligence or purpose at all."
After an account of the " ridiculously obsolete "
procedure of the House of Commons, Mr, H. G.
Wells, Avhom I am quoting, continues:
" The same obsolescence that is so conspicuous in the
general institutions of the official Kingdom of England,
and that even English people can remark in the official
Empire of China, is to be traced in a greater or lesser
degree in the nominal organisation and public tradition
throughout the whole world. The United States, for
example, the social mass which has, perhaps, advanced
furthest along the new lines, struggles in the iron bonds of
a constitution that is based primarily on a conception of
a number of comparatively small internally homogeneous
agricultural States, a bunch of pre-Johannesburg
Transvaals."—(" Anticipations," pp. 100-101.)
All this sounds very bad, and so it is ; but
what should we or the United States say if these
things were taken up by some hypothetical Higher
Power as a casus belli, a justification for all the
monstrous evils of a war of conquest ?
Some Uitlander Testimony.
Those who really wish at this time of day to
read a close, frank, and impartial examination,
of the grievances, actual and alleged, by a political
25
economist of established repute, may find it in Mr.
J. A. Hobson's " The War in South Africa."
I will quote only two or three typical Uitlander
witnesses. Mr. J. Crothers, of Burnley, a trades-
man returned from the Transvaal (quoted in the.
Manchester Guardmn), says : —
"The grievances are almost entirely manufactured. The
\ laws of the Boer Government, as a whole, are quite as good
Nas those at home, if not better, and the mining laws are the
rlbest in the world. I lived twelve months in Johannesburg,
/ and have been nearly all over the mining district, and I was
/ never once insulted by a Dutchman. The discontent is
simply a question of the rich men getting richer at the
I expense of the poorer classes. I believe if a ballot were
\ taken of the English working men on the Rand, the majority
Vwould be in favour of a Dutch Government."
Mr. Ratcliffe, of Acregate Lane, Preston, who
returned on the eve of the war, said that not half
of the signatures to the franchise petition were
genuine, and to his knowledge the names of me^
were signed who had been dead for two or three
years.
Captain March Phillips, of Rimington's Scouts,
formerly himself a Uitlander, says :
/^ "As for the Uitlanders and their grievances, I would not
/ ride a yard or fire a shot to right all the grievances that
V were ever invented. The mass of the Uitlanders (i.e., the
\ miners and working men of the Rand) had no grievances.
J I know what I am talking about, for I have lived and
S worked among them. I have seen English newspapers
/ passed from one to another, and roars of laughter roused by
/ the Times telegrams about these precious grievances. We
I used to read the London papers to find out what our
\ grievances were ; and very frequently they would be due to
\causes of which we had never even heard."
Here is a more recent testimony, that of a man-^
who scorns Pro-Boers and approves of the war on
general Imperialist grounds — Mr. Ben Bowen,
"late of Rhondda Valley, now~ of Kimberley "
( Jf^estem Mail, February 1 1 th, 1902) :—
" For ten months I have done my utmost, with as unbiassed
mind as possible, to examine things for myself. The Uitlander
grievance, to say the least, has been exaggerated. But who
"and what was the Uitlander ? A man who wanted as much
money as possible out of the country in as few years as
possible, and then to pack up and clear. Who in England is
■prepared to allow the destiny of our nation to rest in the
hands of a German band? "Let the truth be admitted. I
have met many Uitlanders. Ninety -nine per cent, of them
"frankly admit that they had no grievance, and were, in fact,
as contented as ever. The late Transvaal Government was
the working man's boon. Bear in mind, at the same time,
that the working man who felt it a boon at all was simply a
machine, employed in South Africa for some time, and then
removed, maybe to England, either to rest or rust. The
average Uitlander wanted 20s. or 25s. a day — nothing else."
26
Mr. E. B. Rose, an Uitlander, who was president
of the Labour Union in Johannesburg on the eve
of the war, has written a pamphlet {Mornitig
Leader office, Id.) in pursuance of a suggestion of
Mr. Herbert Spencer, making a detailed comparison
of the constitution and laws of England and the
Transvaal respectively. He thus sums up : —
" We have enumerated thirty-one points, having reference
to matters political, military, economical, and social, eveiy one
of great and many of supreme importance ; and in the vast
majority of them we find that from the democratic standpoint
not only is the Transvaal abreast of England, but very far
ahead. And it would certainly be impossible to name an
equal number of matters of equal importance wherein Great
Britain and its constitution and laws are in advance of the
Transvaal. ... It may be said without the least exag-
geration that in destroying the nationality of the Boers, the
British Government is engaged in destroying the nearest
approach to essentially democratic government that probably
the world has ever seen — certainly that exists at the present
time."
The Naked Issue.
In these and many other quarters there is at
least solid evidence to set over against Dr. Doyle's
unsupported statement that the Boers " have stood
for all that history has shown to be odious in the
form of exclusiveness and oppression." This sort
of vague abuse will not convince anyone, least of
all the Continental readers for whom Dr. Doyle's
pamphlet was chiefly written, at this time of day.
It smacks too much of the lying telegram about
the women and children being in danger, foisted
upon the British public on the eve of the Jameson
Raid by the friends of the Johannesburg plotters.
Dr. Doyle forgets that lies and slanders are the
familiar milestones of the road which he has
chosen to travel. He makes the mistake of
supposing that all the people can be fooled all the
time. He knows that the man in the street cannot
check one by one his bold asseverations ; but he
under-estimates the force of a few main considera-
tions which — as is usual in the important issues of
history — are sufficient, when flrmly grasped, to
lead even a simple mind to a right conclusion.
One of these I have already indicated — the utter
disproportion and unsuitability between the disease
(supposing that there was one) and the remedy.
This pamphlet is a defence not of a Jameson Raid,
but of a war that has already cost hundreds of
millions of money and scores of thousands of lives,
27
the end and final price of which no man can foretell.
Dr. Doyle uses many exaggerated phrases, but he
does not suggest that the Uitlanders' grievances
cost a single life. He admits that there was a
Boer reform party, that one-third of the Raad
voted in favoui- of the reception of the Uitlanders'
petition, and that the Uitlanders could, with a
peacefully extended franchise, have got their way
in a few years. He admits that the grievance did
not arise till 1890, and he knows that Mr. Kruger's
nde, which is the burden of his apologia, could not
have lasted long.
He quotes Mr. Chamberlain's admission that in
the Franchise Law of 1899 President Kruger had
" accepted the principle for which they [the
British Government] have contended," and the
comment of the Times thereon that the crisis was
over. Only questions of detail remained, and,
says Dr. Doyle, "the difference of two years [in the
franchise] would not have hindered its acceptance,
even at the expense of some humiliation" to Sir
Alfi'ed Milner. " There was no very great gap
between the parties " on the eve of the war. It all
comes to this, then : we are to believe that Mr.
Chamberlain's diplomacy and the horrible conflict
it brought about were preferable to a few months
more of patient negotiation or a few years of patient
waiting for a small community of gold-seekers.
That is the real issue which these pages are written
not to explain, but to conceal. If that issue could
be put in its naked simplicity to the British elector-
ate, or to any popular tribunal in the world, there
can be little doubt what the verdict would be.
A Calculation and Another Test.
Yes ! to any tribunal — even one of Transvaal
Uitlanders ! Many of them have been ruined by
the war; but set that aside. Let us suppose
ourselves back in the summer of 1899, with a
knowledge of what the next two and a half years
was to cost this country. Put the money cost at
the moderate sum of three hundred millions sterling
and the number of aggrieved foreigners at 50,000
— five for every two who signed the famous
petition — and you will see that it would have been
cheaper to give every man Jack of them £6,000
'own, or a perpetual pension of £200 a year, out of
the British Exchequer, cheaper by 50,000 good
28
lives, than to let this infamy come about. A few
odd millions might have been voted as a solatium
to Mr. Rhodes and his fellow-capitalists, and what
a gain the account would still show ! This is one
of those perfectly simple considerations, which
would outweigh every argument Dr. Doyle could
bring, were he ten times more ingenious.
Here is another. There were Uitlanders of many
nations, yet the British Government alone made
representations to the Transvaal Government, the
British Government alone pretended that the griev-
ances were of an onerous character. Why Mas
that ? Dr. Doyle makes a hurried and feeble effort
to answer. " The Continental Uitlanders," he says,
" were more patient of that which was unendvirable
to the American and the Briton." A pretty plea
to offer to a Continental audience — that that is
endurable to a Frenchman, a German, an Italian,
which is a casus belli for an Englishman ! If true,
what can be the use of appealing to Continental
opinion at all ? If false
But let us take the case of our " Anglo-Saxon "
cousins. " The Americans, however," says Dr.
Doyle, " were in so great a minority that it was
upon the British that the brunt of the struggle for
freedom fell." This is simply childish. Is the
United States Government wont to be indifferent to
the robbery and oppression of its subjects when
they are outnumbered by those of other countries ?
Are American subjects meeker than British under
foul wrongs when they are in a minority ? This
matter is open to an easy test. There were
thousands of Continental and American Uit-
landers. As to the former— especially the Germans
— all the evidence is against Dr. Doyle's case.
The Kaiser's telegram to President Kruger, the
formation of the Foreign Legion, and the universal
sentiment of Europe are conclusive. As to the
Americans, the evidence is of a more negative
character, but it all points in the same direction.
Can Dr. Doyle bring one American witness, except
Mr. Hammond, who was one of the Rhodesian
crowd, to support his account of the grievances?
Can he point to a single representation by
Americans to the American Government, or by
the latter to the Transvaal ? Two Presidents
have refused to intervene on behalf of the Boers in
this unequal struggle, because England had to be
29
paid for having refused to intervene on behalf of
Spain ; but the Boer delegates have been received
in the friendliest way at the White House, and the
overwhelming mass of American opinion favours
the cause of the little republics whose independence
we are trying to crush out.
The fact is that the witnesses, without whom
Dr. Doyle could not prove his case, are against
him almost to a man. Thousands of miners
returned to the various Western countries at the
outset of the war. If they had had any substantial
wrongs in excess of the evils always attendant
upon a cosmopolitan community of gold-seekers,
every one of these countries would have known of
them long ago. Dr. Doyle did not try to get the
evidence of the returned English miners even —
many of whom, indeed, have testified in the
opposite direction. He preferred to hash up the
scurrilities of the Rhodesian press. It is pitiful to
see talent put to such misuse. England could only
accept a " case " so concocted for lack of a better,
as some poor salve to a stricken conscience. But
it is ludicrous to suppose that foreign countries, to
whom the facts have long been available, can be
convinced in any such way.
The "Rieht" of Conquest.
Dr. Doyle never really relies on his own account
of the grievances. Before it comes the cry
" Avenge Majuba ! " After it the plea of a " right
of conquest," and after that again the right
of Imperial interest to override every other con-
sideration. If Dr. Doyle were not an utter
amateur in politics it would be difficult to deal
adequately with a kaleidoscopic argument like this.
As it is, the lack of any firm foundation shows
itself plainly in frequent and flagrant incon-
sistencies. "The Boers," he tells us, "held the
Uitlanders down in a way which exists no-
where else upon earth. What is their right?
The law of conquest ? Then the same right
may be justly invoked to reverse so intoler-
able a situation." This absurd proposition, we
are asked to believe, the Boers " would them-
selves acknowledge." Let us overlook the fact
that there is no more a "right" of conquest
than a " right" of highway robbery ; let us even
overlook the fact that the Boer republics were
30
founded upon genuine colonisation and regular
treaties. Let us look at the phrase in its un-
abashed absurdity. Cape Colony, said Dr. Doyle,
at the outset, was founded on conquest and pur-
chase, and no part of the Empire had better " title-
deeds." But, according to the later dictum, the
fact that we took the Cape by violence would
justify any other Power — the imaginary authors
of the great Africander conspiracy, for instance — in
taking it from us in the same way ! We hold
India by con(juest ; therefore any other Power —
Russia, for instance — has the same right to take it
from us ! Any imaginable rapacity, international
or personal, could be defended on this ground.
The essential fact that England has repeatedly, and
in the most solemn way guaranteed the integrity of
these States, and undertaken not to interfere in
their domestic affairs, Dr. Doyle coolly ignores.
The singular thing is that, if he really believes this
dictum, he should have thought the rest of the
book worth writing. If this "title-deed" of a
British Transvaal be good, all the rest is super-
fluous ajjology. If the rest was needed, it can
only be because this is an impudent imposture.
Dr. Doyle's self-imposed task was to rebut " the
persistent slanders to which our politicians and our
soldiers have been equally exposed"; and he
accomplishes it by attributing to them the morals
and the policy of the physical-force anarchist !
The Heart of the « Case."
The point is pressed home with unfaltering
cynicism. "With a reformed Government the
Transvaal " would have become stronger and more
permanent, with a population . . . united in
essentials. Whether such a solution loould have
been to the advantage of British interests in South
Africa is quite another questio7i. In more ivays
than one President Kruger has been a good friend
to the Empire" (p. 31). If this means anything,
it means that those who take Dr. Doyle's view of
"British interests" did not want a reformed, and
therefore a permanent and united, Transvaal ; that
they regarded that ideal as an obstacle to the
expansion of the Empire and the full possession
of the goldfields. But this is exactly the suspicion
that strengthened the conservative hand of Presi-
dent Kruger, the worst charge laid at the door of
31
Mr. Chamberlain. If Dr. Doyle is right, the
demand for reform was only a pretext hypocritically
used by the British Government, whose " friend "
Mr. Kruger became whenever, by rejecting it, he
gave them excuse for more forcible measures.
The sti'ongest " pro-Boer " indictment could do
little more than elaborate this admission. The
author of " Sherlock Holmes " is indeed a sin-
gularly innocent political controversialist, I
wonder how he would regard the application of
his principles by any of those foreign States whose
people he is now generously undertaking to educate
in the facts of Empire — say, by Russia at Con-
stantinople. Shades of that Madhi of modern
Imperialism, Benjamin Disraeli !
One minor point before we pass on. Dr. Doyle
is openly scornful of the Boers' religion. The
Great Trek reminded him of the Mormons ; the
Scriptural view of State policy reminds him of
Thibet. He thinks that President Kruger, " a
man imbued with the idea of a chosen people, and
unread in any book save the one which cultivates
this very idea, could not be expected to have
learned the historical lessons of the advantages
which a State reaps from a liberal policy." The
greatest ruler England has aver had, Oliver Crom-
well, might have suffered an identical judgment at
the hands of some hanger-on of the Jacobite
Court. I hope the Jewish magnates of the Rand
like this line of vindication. I am neither a Jew
nor a member of any of the Churches of this
country which base themselves avowedly upon the
Bible as "the Word of God." But if I am to
choose between the sincere Puritanism of the Boer
and the canting and time- serving conformity of
the Imperialist Churchman, I have no difficulty in
deciding which is manlier and more truly pro-
gressive, which has the greater past behind it, and
which will contribute the more valuable elements
to the future.
32
in.— THE BRITISH COTs^SPIRACY : FIRST
PHASE— THE PLOT AND THE RAID.
Dr. Doyle does not enlarge upon his avowal
of the real attitude of the British Government;
and he regards a couple of pages of bald narrative,
from which once more the essential facts are
studiously omitted, as a sufficient account of the
development of events between 1890 and the
Jameson Raid. Let us try to get behind the
curtain a small corner of which has been un-
wittingly lifted, before we resume our chrono-
logical analysis.
Dr. Doyle's general position (paragraphs 2 and 3
of '' Some Points Examined ") is that (I) this can-
not be " a capitalists' war," because the capitalists
did not want war, and because neither the British
Government nor the British people would have
been content to pull their chestnuts out of the fire ;
and (2) that it is absurd to say that " Britain
wanted the gold-mines," because, in fact, the
mines can give no compensation for the enormous
cost at which they have been got. The answer to
these cheap debating-society arguments lies on
their face. The second is as though one should
say that it is absm'd to pretend that purchasers,
say, of " The Hound of the Baskervilles," wanted
a good story, because, in fact, they got a bad one.
The war has proved a very bad story, a tembly
disappointing adventure, a bitterly unremunerative
investment ; but Dr. Doyle cannot have forgotten
that every one expected a walk-over for the
British, and the capitalists' anticipations are down
in black and white for anyone to refer to. Mr.
C. D. Rudd said, '' If it were true that the wai* was
caused by capitalists or undertaken on behalf of
the mines, the Empire owes them a deep debt of
gratitude. . . . South Africa is not a dear
asset to the Empire at the cost of the present war."
The money cost of the war was, said Mr. J. B.
Robinson, " of minor importance " compared with
the " immense value " of the Boer territories. But
these characteristic utterances of men who fight
not, neither do they pay, date back to November,
1900, when the cost of the war was estimated at
83
only sixty millions sterling — say a tax of 8 per
cent, on the estimated total future value of the
Transvaal gold-fields. I doubt whether these men
would say to-day that it was better to force on war
than amicably to encourage reform.
In his first point Dr. Doyle jumbles up three
parties whose interests were very different. As to
the British people, they were, and to a large extent
still are, simple dupes of the politicians and the
capitalists. It is the part of these two latter
classes which we must now try more exactly to
ascertain ; and in doing so we will set Dr. Doyle a
good example by citing unimpeachable facts and
testimony.
The "Helots" of Johannesburg,
And first for the capitalists. " We know now,"
says Dr. Doyle, "that the leading capitalists in
Johannesburg were the very men who most stren-
uously resisted an agitation which might lead to
war. . . . The agitation for the fi-anchise and
other rights was a bona fide libei'al agitation started
by poor men, employes, and miners, who intended
to live in the country, not in Park Lane." A more
scandalous mis-statement of historical facts I do
not remember to have seen over the name of a
responsible writer.
The Transvaal National Union, founded in 1892,
has been described as, at the outset, filling the
office of debating society on the Rand. Not till
1894 was there any serious franchise agitation.
In that year occurred two incidents which Dr.
Doyle does not think worth mentioning — the
claim of the Transvaal (legitimate under the Con-
vention) to commandeer Uitlanders for service in
war against natives, and its abandonment, and the
first intei-position of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who, in a
stormy interview with Mr. Kruger, threatened the
Tatter that "he would lose his country unless he
changed his mode of government." " Had Mr.
Rhodes not interfered in Transvaal politics," says the
T'imes correspondent in Pretoria, Dr. Scoble (" The
Rise and Fall of Krugerism," p. 174), "the mining
magnates would never have given a hearty^pport
tothe Uitlander cause." They now determined to
exchange the policy of. bribery for a policy of
threats and, if necessary, of force. The lead was
taken by the heads of the two millionaire groups
3
34
of Wernher, Beit, k Co. and the Consolidated
Goldfields, who were the heads also of the two
other chief money concerns of South Africa, the
Kimberley Diamond Mines and the Chartered
Company. Mr. Rhodes was at once Prime
Minister at the Cape, Chairman of De Beers,
Managing Director of the Chartered Company,
and a most powerful member of the Consolidated
iSoldlields, From the date of the letter of Mr.
Lionel Phillips, which has already been quoted —
June, 1894 — the agitation was subsidised and
managed by these Rand capitalists. Mr. Charles
Leonard, their legal adviser and confidant, became
President of the National Union. " The fact
is," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, a member of the Eckstein
firm, in his " The Transvaal from Within,"
" that Mr. Alfred Beit, of the firm of "Wernher,
Beit, k Co., London, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes,
Managing Director of the Consolidated Gold-
fields, may be regarded as the chiefs to whom the
ultimate decision as to whether it was necessary
from the capitalistic point of view to resort to
Extreme measures was necessarily left." After
detailing the financial interest of the men already
named, this writer continues: "Mr. George
Farrer, another veiy large mine owner who joined
a little later than the others, with the gentlemen
named above, may be considered to have repre-
sented the capitalist element in the earlier stages
of the Reform Movement" — the commanding
element which Dr. Doyle suggests did not exist.
" The other elements were represented by Mr.
Charles Leonard, Chairman of the National Union,
and one or two other prominent members of that
body." The famous letter to Dr. Jameson, of
December 20th, 1895, was signed by Messrs.
Leonard, F. Rhodes, L. Phillips, J. H. Hammond,
and G. Fairer, It specifically declared that "all
the elements necessary for armed conflict " were
in existence, and it guaranteed "any expense that
may reasonably be incurred by you in helping us."
The Real Cause.
Dr. Doyle's pretence that the *' Reform "
movement was run by poor and pacific working-
men being disposed of, we now give a more exact
answer to the question of its real objects. The
chief of these lay in the fact thus shortly explained
u
35
by the then editor of the Johannesburg Standard
and Diggers' News :
" The time had arrived for the development of deep-level
mining, g,nd the great mining corporations recognised that t^e
work could not be undertaken at a profit until a considerable
reduction in the cost of working had been secured. Millions
of pounds had been spent m sinking shafts and otherwise pre-
paring the ground. Engineers of experience pointed out that
at the existing cost of production these deep-level mines could
not realise the values placed upon them. There were also
certain rights over ' bewaarplaatsen ' and ' unproclaimed '
farms that the capitalists were anxious to secure . . . The
great question was that of cheaper production. The hope was
to secure the cancellation of all monopolies, to diminish what-
ever taxation bore directly upon the mines, to decrease white
men's wages, and to introduce a modified form of the ' com-
pound system' which prevailed in Kimberley and worked
entirely for the benefit of the capitalists," — (" Arbitration or
War P*^" pp. 44-5.) *"
Further details of the economic basis of the
Johannesburg conspiracy will be found in Mr.
J. A. Hobson's and other books,. and confirmatory
evidence from the lips or pens of Mr. Hays
Hammond, Mr. Rudd, Mr. Albu, Lord Harris
("Chairman in London of the Consolidated Gold-
ields), Mr. E. P. Rathbone (Mine Inspector on the
Rand), Major White, and others will be found in
Mr. Ogden's collection of documents, " The War
against the Dutch Republics." This evidence is
unanswered and unanswerable. Dr. Doyle does
not attempt the impossible ; once more he finds
the Levite's the easier way. But it is surely an
insult to the intelligent reader to suppose that on a
point of first-class historical importance it will
suffice to cast the dust of mendacious generalities
in his eyes. I confess it is very difficult to speak
patiently of a " case " so conceived. Dr. Doyle
might have taken a leaf out of the book of his
hero, Mr. Chamberlain, who at least meets his
opponents face to face.
Cheaper labour, black and white, "regulated"
or forced in the case of the natives, reduced duties
on dynamite, &c., increased taxation of agriculture,
reduced taxation of the industrial community —
"^ihese were the real objects of the Johannesbm-g
conspirators and the cosmopolitan capitalists who
directed and paid them. "Progress " and "good
government" always meant for these men slave-
labour. " With good government," said Mr.
'Hammond (November 18th, 1899), "there should
be abundant labour, and then there will be no
clifficulty in cutting down wages. The Kaffir will
- 3*
36
be quite as well satisfied — in fact, he would work
longer if you gave him half the amount.' ' Mr. Rudd
still more frankly, though in the name of "pro-
gress and the general prosperity of the country,"
advocated the introduction of compulsory labour.
And as those aims could not be attained under a Boer
Government, the Government was to be forcibly up-
set. Not — mark ! — to make the Transvaal a British
colony, which would have been to create a still
greater obstacle to their designs, but to deliver it up
to the gang of Avhom Mr. Rhodes, with his dream of
ununited" South Africa under his own domin-
ance, was the chief. " It was a minority of the
tJitlanders who had any desire to come into the
British system," Dr. Doyle confesses, adding veiy
truly that " the majority of the British immigrants
had no desire to subvert the [existing] State."
Under Which Flag?
This annoying fact received rather ludicrous
demonstration in the fiasco of December, 1895.
The capitalists were quite ready — to pay the bill.
Their lying message — charitably overlooked by Dr.
Doyle — about the women and children being in
danger was ready for appearance in the London
Times. "Constitutional agitation was laid aside,
arms were smuggled in, and everything prepared
for an organised rising." Alas and alack-a-day !
The crushed and despairing TJitlanders — whose
woes move Dr. Doyle to dithyrambic ire even at
this late day, and whom he pourtrays as groaning
over the loss of rights which are the heritage of
every free-born Briton — wouldn't rise ! Why
should they, indeed ? Some of them had thought
it worth while to sign the petition in favour of
reforms. A tenth part of them could have
captured Johannesbm-g — Dr. Jameson and his 500
roughriders had less than aOO Boers to deal with.
The golden mountain was in labour — behold the
ridiculous mouse ! " The revolt at Johannesburg
was postponed on account of a disagreement as to
which Jlag they were to rise under. ^^ Tor once Dr.
Doyle does not suppress the awkward fact. It is
true that at the top of the same page he had
spoken of these men as naturally turning their eyes
to the British flag, " which means purity of
government with equal rights and equal duties for
all men." Why, in fact, couldn't they agree to
37
proclaim that beautiful ideal when the ci*isis came ?
\Vhy were Mr. Leonard, Mr. Hammond, and other
leaders persistently Republican ? Why did Mr.
Leonard find it necessary to rush off to Cape Town in
mid-crisis (December 25th) to report the dispute to
Mr. Rhodes, and why was it decided to postpone
the revolt rather than rise under the British flag ?
The answer is obvious. Johannesburg in the power
of the Uitlander capitalists could make its own tenns
with the Boer Government ; a British Johannesburg
would be definitively amenable to London-made
law and administration. The mining magnates
wanted the Transvaal for themselves, not for the
Empire, or for " pure government and equal
rights." Only when they realised that, though
the Uitlander s would not fight for them, England
might be duped into doing so, was the centre
of gravity in the question shifted from Cape Town
and Johannesburg to London. And no sooner did
the costliness of the policy of conquest appear
than they began to threaten \see, e.g., the speech of
Mr. J. B. Robinson, Chairman of the South
African Banking Company, on 2nd November,
1900) that if they are penalised they will raise fresh
trouble of the old kind, even though the Govern-
ment be British and not Boer !
The Chief Criminal.
In face of these facts, Dr. Doyle coolly observes
of Mr. Rhodes — the chief manager of the plot —
that "the motives of his action are obscure —
certainly we may say that they were not sordid,
for he has always been a man whose thoughts were
large and whose habits were simple." If the
matter were not of fundamental importance one
might laugh this white-washing phrase off with
a reference to the ballad of Ah-Sin, whose ways,
his also, were " childlike and bland." The motives
of Mr. Rhodes seem to me much less " obscure "
than those of Dr. Doyle, who is taking these
pains to set forth a purely cynical view of episodes
which must excite the disgust and indignation of
every fair and healthy mind. The conspiracy —
rebellion and raid — is a thoroughly contemptible
affair from top to bottom ; to it is directly traceable
the worst of the difficulties that afterwards aros**.
Yet Dr. Doyle is not moved even to echo the half-
hearted condemnation of it and its authors which
38
every Jingo was prepared to utter at the time.
Mr. Rhodes's plans were certainly "large," and
his methods "simple" ; but does burglary cease to
be a "sordid" crime when it is carried out on a
vast scale ? Sjjecial Committees of the House of
Commons and the Cape Legislature have jiut it on
record that this man, to whom more than any
other the woes of South Africa are due, promoted,
with the aid of Chartered Company troops, an
armed insurrection against what Sir Hercules
Robinson, in his Raid proclamation, described
as ^'- a foreign State in amity with Her Majesty's
Government," and whose " iudepeudence " it was
his " desire to respect " ; that Rhodes and Beit were
the active promoters and moving spirit of the con-
spiracy, which he largely financed and controlled,
both within and outside Johannesburg ; that
be could not escape from the responsibility, and
that there was no jusiification for his conduct. It
was proved at the inquiries that the attempted
revolution cost Mr. Rhodes personally £61,500,
which he paid on January 15th, 1896. The whole
agitation was estimated to have cost not less than
£250.000.
Fom- of Mr. Rhodes's tools — Messrs. Phillips,
Farrar, F. Rhodes, and Hammond — pleaded guilty
in Johannesburg, and, the death sentences being
commuted, were mildly punished. The rest, having
sworn that they never intended to jeopardise the
independence and safety of the Republic, were let
off with small fines. The raiders were sent home,
and, as Dr. Doyle admits, " the chief officers were
condemned to terms of imprisonment which cer-
tainly did not err on the side of severity." He
cynically adds that of the bill for damages
subsequently presented to the British Government,
not a penny has been paid — not even compensation
to the widows and children of the slain burghers.
President Kruger's magnanimity is not denied.
Mr. Chamberlain himself recognised it in so many
words. If, in truth, Mr. Kruger had " hardened
his heart" when he found the Colonial Office
taking up the broken threads of the Uitlander
conspiracy, who could have wondered ?
But what of that other man of " large thoughts
and simple habits," the chief criminal, Cecil
Rhodes ? Scornful of blame, safe from punishment
in the security of the most luxurious mansion in
39
South Africa, he set himself to the elaboration of
a larger, bolder, and more effective, if also a more
costly, plan of campaign. Come to think of it, it
is only poor men who will do other people's
fighting for them without getting a share in the
spoil. The Uitlanders were too comfortable, all
the grievances notwithstanding. Now there's Mr.
Thomas Atkins, on the other hand . . ! Also
he has the advantage of being a " constitutional
means "...
The ground was already well prepared. The
greater part of the South African press was already
in Rhodesian hands ; a large part of the press of
London came quickly under the same influence.
Gold and diamond shares had become a leading
factor in the attitude of English Society. The
Government was safe for years to come, Lord
Rosebery having crippled the regular Opposition.
All that was wanted was a Rhodes in the Cabinet.
The man of destiny appeared in the figure of him
who, in 1881, had vindicated the Boers and
declared that the annexation of the Transvaal
would be a national crime.
Enter Mr. Chamberlain!
Within a few months of his advent to the
Colonial Office in July, 1895, Mr. Chamberlain
had commenced the huge game of bluff, the
development of which we have now to trace, with
his ultimatum on the Drifts question ; and at that
time he had already made inquiry of the Rhodes
ministry at the Cape as to the share they would
take in a war with the Transvaal. Within three
weeks of the Raid he cabled to Sir Hercules
KoBlnson that he was considering the propriety of
immediately sending a large force to the Cape to
provide for all eventualities. The High Com-
missioner deprecated the idea, and it was shelved.
But early in the following January (1896) Mr,
Chamberlain was threatening the Transvaal
Government that the danger from which they
hdd escaped " may recur, though in a diffei'ent
^ form." These are incidents which Dr. Doyle does
nut think worth mentioning : he has nothing to say
about the period preceding the Bloemfontein Con-
ference— during which municipal self-government
was given to Johannesburg and other reforms
were effected — but that things were going from
40
bad to worse. We must try to get the facts into
truer proportion and perspective. That the possi-
bility of war resulting has been in view throughout
the years of Mr. Chamberlain's aggressive and
provocative treatment of the questions at issue is
undeniable ; but we may still conclude that, with
the comparative insignificance of his adversary also
in full view, he hoped to the last that bluff might
be suflScient and bloodshed might be avoided.
Mr. Rhodes may have entertained the same hope ;
in neither case does it mitigate their guilt as the
chief authors of the war. Statesmen must be held
responsible for the natural and probable results of
the line of action which they deliberately adopt.
Always impressionable and impulsive, Mr. Cham-
berlain uttered, indeed, at the moment when the
shame of the Rhodesian conspiracy was fresh upon
us, a very remarkable prophetic judgment upon
his own policy. It is in the light of these words,
spoken in the House of Commons on May 6th,
1896, that the reader must interpret what follows :
f " In some quarters the idea is put forward that the Govern-
! ment ought to have issued an ultimatum to President Kruger
, — an ultimatum which would certainly have been rejected,
and which must have led to war. Sir, I do not propose to
discuss such a contingency as that. A war in South Africa
/ would be one of the most serious wars that could possibly be
• ivaged. It would be in the nature of a civil war. It would be
I a long war, a bitter war, and a costly war. As I have pointed
out, it would leave behind it the embers of a strife which I
believe generations would hardly be long enough to extin-
guish. To go to tear with President Kruger in order to force
upon him reforms in the internal affairs of his State, with which
successive Secretaries of State standing in this place have
repudiated all right of interference, that would have been a
course of action as immoral as it would have been unwise."
41
IV.— THE BRITISH CONSPIRACY : SECOND
PHASE— THE CAMPAIGN OF THREATS.
We hare seen that Dr. Doyle's appeal to British
vanity on behalf of the Rhodesian plotters is
merely a trick of political advocacy, because, in
fact, the managers of the Johannesburg revolution
did not want to exchange Boer for British institu-
tions— they only wanted to turn the goldfields into
an independent State under their own rule, and the
movement failed because, while some TJitlanders
would have liked direct British rule and many
others were quite content with the Boer Republic,
no substantial number were willing to fight to
establish a capitalist system. A moment's thought
will show that when once this situation was
publicly revealed there remained, for politicians
and capitalists alike, but two alternatives: a
patient recognition of Transvaal independence,
modified only by loysl agitation within and friendly
recommendations from without, or a policy of
threats leading up to a war of annexation. There
is no third way, and it only remains to determine
which road was actually taken. Dr. Doyle burks
this simple question. He is writing for foreigners
as well as Britons, and for them he knows that the
plea of the superiority of British institutions
would not be convincing even if it were pertinent.
In a long passage opening his third chapter, he
accordingly asks " our foreign critics" to believe
that none in England wanted annexation, because
the game could not be worth the candle.
" Whether the four-coloured flag of the Transvaal, or the
Union Jack of a self-governing colony, waved over the gold
mines would not make the difference of one shilling to the
revenue of Great Britain. . . . While she is no gainer
by the change, most of the expenses of it, in blood and in
money, falls upon the home country. On the face of it, there-
fore. Great Britain had every reason to avoid so formidable
a task as the conquest of the South African Republic."
This is the sort of wisdom that comes after a
bitter experience. The sufficient answer is that
if someone in authority had told the British^people
three years ago that such a war would entail such
costs without any reward, there would have been no
42
war, even if Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Rhodes had
been still determined to bring it about.
" There was no room for ambition or aggression. . . .
One may examine the files of the Press during all the mouths
of the negotiations, and never find one reputable opinion in
favour of annexation."
An ingeniously-worded challenge ! Reputable
people were far from desiring to annex the gold
mines; unfortunately this "fussy and faddy
minority," as Dr. Doyle calls it a page or two later,
was too optimistic ; it gave " the man at the
wheel" credit for too high motives ; when it fully
realised the peril, it was too late. But to show
that in those financial, professional, and pseudo-
aristocratic circles out of which our governing
class are mainly recruited, annexation was openly
desired — as a second best to the election of an
•Uitlander Raad and an Uitlander President —
would be very easy. It will suffice to point to
the reception of the Raiders in London, and the
welcome of Mr. Rhodes by the Prince of Wales,
our present King-Emperor. Much more to the
point will it be to show that the British Govern-
ment, in collusion with the chief of the Rand
conspirators, deliberately pursued the aggressive
policy indicated above, with the intention of secur-
ing, either by threats or by war, the complete
surrender of the Boers.
Mr. Chamberlain's Complicity.
Just how far the collusion of Mr, Chamberlain
and Mr. Rhodes extended it is at present impossible
to say. The House of Commons Committee of
Inquiry left behind it a secret, a mystery, of which,
to interpret him in the most favourable way, Dr.
Doyle knows no more than any other man in the
street. Mr. Chamberlain would hardly thank him
for this passage from the page in which the
subject is dismissed : —
" That he knew an insurrection might possibly result from
the despair of the Uitlanders is very probable. It was his
business to know what was going on so far as he could, and
there is no reason why his private sympathies should not be
with his own ill-used people. But that he contemplated an
invasion of the Transvaal by a handful of policemen is
absurd."
Overlooking the ambiguity of the last sentence,
we may ask what fundamental distinction Dr.
Doyle can draw between the Johannesburg con-
43
spiracy and the Raid which was to assist it. Both
were under the guidance of the same hands and
had the same object. At any rate, we may start
from this admission that Mr. Chamberlain probably
knew of the Uitlander plot and sympathised with
it. We know he did not attempt to stop it. Even'
if our information went no further than this, we
should have ground enough to suspect every
subsequent act of the man who directed the British
policy. Dr. Doyle's only other contribution to
the question is to choose out the two following
telegrams sent by Mr. Rhodes to London from the
matter subsequently r'evealed, and to claim that
they show, not complicity, but only an attempt to
force Mr. Chamberlain's hand :
" Inform Chamberlain that I shall get through all right if
he will support me, but he must not send cable like he sent'
to the High Commissioner.
" UnlesH you can make Chamberlain instruct the High
Commissioner to proceed at once to Johannesburg the whole
position is lost.''
Chamberlain'*
that from.
Dr. Doyle might well admit Mr.
fore-knowledge ! But how far is
complicity?
Let me recall some other of the Raid documents.
On 2nd Noveniber, 1895 — nearly two months
Beforehand — Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, in Loudon,
telegraphed to his master, Mr. Rhodes, in Caj^e
Town: — ;>
" Very confidential. If you cannot carry out the plans of /
Dr. Jameson have every reason to believe J. Chamberlain '^>
inlends active policy Imperial with intention to federation >
British sphere of influence in his way and he will expect you
to adopt his views."
Two days later he reported : —
"I have already sent Flora to convince J. Chamberlain )
support Times newspaper. If you can telegraph course you r
wish Times to adopt now with regard to Transvaal Flora )
will act." w^
It__was on this day that Mr. Fairfield, of the
Colonial Office, after an interview with Dr. Harris,
wrote to Mr. Chamberlain at Birmingham : —
" You will see that events are moving rapidly in South \
Africa. Rhodes having accepted the responsibilities imposed
on him is naturally keen to get the Protectorate question j
settled, and has been telegraphing all day to this end. . . . s
I said I would lay this before you ; iu fact, Rhodes', very <'
naturally, wants to_get our people off the scene, as this ugly row it- '
2/, That, I think, is also our interest."
pending with the Transvaal.
jQa -November 26th
Dr. Harris cabled as
44
follows — the money reference is to the sum paid
for the Pitsani strip, the " jumping-ofP place " for
the Raid, the "Protectorate question" alluded to
above : —
"... Know there is great danger Phillips Leonard
they can or may be doing business without assistance from
British South AfricaCompany and also independently British
flag it would have serious effect on your position here . . .
Flora suggests 16th December celebrate Pretoria District
1880. I will try make best possible terms J. Chamberlain for
£200,000 which I was oompelled abandon that could only
secure British position."
On December 12th, Miss Elora Shaw, a personal
friend of Mr. Chamberlain, who paid frequent
visits to the Colonial Office, telegraphed to Mr.
Rhodes : —
" Delat/ dangerous. Sympathy now complete,\iVit will depend
very much upon action before European Powers given time
enter a protest which as European situation considered serious
might paralyse Government. General feeling in the Stock
market very suspicious."
And on December 17th :
"... Chamberlain sound in case of interference European
Powers but have special reason to believe wishes you must do it
immediately."
Ten days later Dr. Harris telegraphed to Miss
fihaw that " everything is postponed. We are
ready, but divisions at Johannesburg." The
capitalists are always ready, but there are times
when poor, oppressed working-men fail them.
Jameson and his four hundred men — the body of
mounted troops, under British regular officers,
whom Dr. Doyle calls a "handful of police "^ —
blundered in, nevertheless.
To these imperfect revelations, two facts have
to be added : (1) That further documents, said to
be the most important of all, have been suppressed,
though Mr. Chamberlain has been repeatedly
challenged to produce them or prosecute his
libellers, and though he has been openly threatened
by Mr. Rhodes' s solicitor, Mr. Hawkesley, with
their production if he attacked Mr. Rhodes ; and
(2) That, so far from making any such attack, he
went out of his way, in face of the verdicts of the
two inquiries, to make the famous white-washing
speech in the House of Commons, in which he
declared that " there exists nothing which affects
Mr. Rhodes's personal character as a man of
honour."
Here, then, are the main ascertained points as to
45
the British conspiracy for the seizure of the
Transvaal : (1) The chief organiser of both Revolu-
tion and Raid was the British Prime Minister of a
British Colony, to this day a member of His
Majesty's Privy Council, and, with the possible
exception of Mr. Chamberlain, the chief hero of
British Imperialism ; (2) Mr. Chamberlain knew
in advance of the Johannesburg plot, and
sympathising with it, did nothing to hinder it ;
(ajthe" agents of Mr. Rhodes, who frequently
visited Mr. Chamberlain, believed him also to
sympathise with the intended Raid, and to wish it ^
to come off immediately ; (4) with fore -knowledge
that an attack on the Boer Government was
preparing, he sold a piece of ground to Mr. Rhodes
as an encampment for the Raiders, troopers of the
Chartered Company under British regular ofl&cers ^
(5) the Raiders were let off with nominal penalties
and Tiecame the lions of English Society, while
Mr. Rhodes received marked consideration in the
highest quarters, and was publicly defended by
Mr." Chamberlain — who (6) has refused to this day
to disclose more fully what happened, but has
steadily pursued a policy of provocation consistent
only with the supposition that his own aims were
In substance identical with those of the capitalist
plotters.
The "Africander Conspiracy" IMyth.
Dr. Doyle's evasion of these facts would in any
case put him out of court as a historian or a
political adviser. It becomes more flagrant in
view of his ridiculous attempt to revive the
exploded myth of an "Africander conspiracy"
as a final proof for his case. The six pages-
devoted to this experiment in the resurrection of
dead slander open thus : " It would be a misuse
of terms to call the general Boer design against
the British a conspiracy, for it was openly
advocated in the press, preached from the pulpit,-
and sustained upon the platform that the Dutch
should predominate in South Africa, and that the
portion of it which remained under the British
flag should be absorbed by that which was outside
it." The one definite point in these vague phrases
is the disavowal of the word " conspiracy." The
temptation is, however, too great; Dr. Doyie
repeats the word which he has declared to be a
46
" misuse of terms " twice over, aiad with emphasis.
" A huge conspiracy as to the future, which might
be verbally discussed, but which must not be
written, seems to have prevailed among the
farmers," a "great conspiracy, not of ambitions"
only, " but of weaporis and of dates."
Now if, as Dr. Doyle says, South Africa had
been for years rife with open sedition, how comes
it that successive Governors at the Cape and in
Natal had failed to report it to the Imperial
authorities ? How comes it that, while only nominal
garrisons had been maintained, there was no
outbreak ? How is it that Sir Alfred Milner,
reporting on the Jubilee demonstrations of 1897,
could say that " racial differences have not
affected the loyalty of anv portion of ^Vie popula-
tion to Her Majesty the Queen " ? How is it that
when war did break out, the Dutch majority at
the Cape did not rise ? To ask these questions is
to explode the whole myth. I need not quote
evidence in rebuttal — such as the fact that the
Cape, iinder an Africander ministry, was the only
Colony to make a contribution to the British Navy,
or the notorious and almost superstitious loyalty of
the Dutch to Queen Victoria — because there is
really no charge to rebut. Dr. Doyle supports
his ludicrous assertion by four equally vague
quotations, and these only. The old charge about
the arming of the Transvaal Boers is not among
these, so that I am spared from quoting for the
hundredth time the reports of Captain Young-
husband, Major Robert White and others, and the
details of the Transvaal Budgets which establish
beyond question that there was no arming in
the serious sense till nfter the Jameson Raid.
The first of Dr. Doyle's four quotations is a
rambling tirade against the Kruger party by a
violently pro-British member of the Free State
Raad, one P. Botha. There is no specific charge of
sedition or conspiracy in it. The second is a passage
from the reminiscences of Mr. T. Schreiner, record-
ing a conversation held, " between seventeen and
eighteen years ago," with Mr. Reitz who, when Mr.
Schreiner told him he believed somebody wanted
to overthrow the British power, is reported as
replying, "Well, what if it is so?" and "But
even so, what of that?" The third is a speech
made by Mr. Kruger fifteen years ago, in which he
47 '
is reported as saying : " We are growin<^ and are
prepai'ing the way to take our place among the
great nations of the world. The dream of our life
is a union of the States of South Africa, and this
has to come from within, not from without." Quite
like an Australian Premier foreseeing the formation
of the Commonwealth !
Finally, in this unparalleled indictment, Dr.
Doyle prints a letter which he picked up in a
deserted Boer fannhouse, a note of which it is
difficult to make sense, the only pertinent passage
of which is the following, printed by our author
in italics : " Dear Heory, the war are by us very
much. How is it there by you. News is very
scarce to write but much to speak by ourselves."
The gravamen of this innocent, if illiterate, note —
surely the frailest evidence on which a charge of
wholesale consipracy was ever based — is supposed
to be that it was written "some fourteen weeks
before the declaration of war, when the British were
anxious for and confident in a peaceful solution " —
that is, three weeks after the failure of the Bloemf on-
tein Conference ! Dr. Doyle must know perfectly
well that war was feared and discussed long before
this date. I have before me, for instance, a series of
resolutions protesting against an appeal to arms
passed by the International Arbitration Association
in the months of May, June, July, August,
September, and October, 1899. But perhaps the
London Arbitrationists were in the conspiracy also !
It is humiliating to have to argue seriously over
puerilities of this kind. Self-convicted of a ''mis-
use of terms," Dr. Doyle is in fact guilty of a much
more serious offence against truth and justice, a
serious offence against political expediency even,
not only in that such a charge lightly made to an
International audience is more damaging to the
prestige of the Empire than anything a " Pro-
Boer" can say, but because it must have the most
unfortunate effect amongst the maligned section of
the South African peoples. If at some future time
there is really an Africander conspiracy against
Great Britain, it will be the fault of the violent
action which is justified and the unscrupulous
temper which is exemplified in books like this.
The Negotiations.
From either point of view, that of those who
48
say that President Kruger was the head of ait
Africander conspiracy, or those who say that Mr.
Chamberlain, in succession to Mr. Rhodes, became
the head of a British conspiracy, the long duel of
1896-9, which is dignified with the title of "the
negotiations," can now only be of secondary
interest. I cannot be content, with Dr. Doyle, to
leave essential points — such as Mr. Chamberlain's
insistence on the " suzerainty," which Dr. Doyle
affects to regard as a matter of no moment,
though it was the first and last point on which the
British Government took its stand, the point
which Sir Alfred Milner once described as a question
of etymology, but on which Mr. Chamberlain,
nevertheless, based his final refusal to negotiate
further — without any attempt at explanation ; but I
shall not drag the reader over ground that has been
covered a hundred times. The Blue-books are
available at the public libraries ; the important
parts of the despatches have been printed in a
small pamphlet (6d., Wm. Reeves, 83, Charing
Cross Road) ; and they are summarised in Mr.
Methuen's and other booklets. I shall only recall
the most important points, considering them in the
light of the facts already established. There is
really no reason why simple minds should be fogged
by the details of a long ofiicial correspondence.
We have seen —
(1) That the Transvaal was an independent State,
with one, and only one, qualification of its inde-
pendence— the duty of submitting foreign treaties
for the recognition or veto of the British Crown.
No such treaty question arose. In all other
matters the Transvaal was as independent of Great
Britain as France or Germany. The Boer Govern-
ment was willing to receive friendly recommenda-
tions on internal affairs so long as its independence
was not questioned or compromised, and it adopted
many such recommendations down to the offer of
a five years' franchise, the extremest demand that
had been made of it. Anything beyond this,
anything in the nature of a threat, was a
distinct breach of the London Convention of 1894,
which secured to the Transvaal absolute internal
independence, and as much a casus belli as such
a threat would be if we addi-essed it to France or
Germany. The Suzerainty Clause was deliberately
struck put Jby Lord Derby in 1884 with his own
49
hand, as the facsimile reproduced in the Blue-book
[C. 9507] shows. As lately as October 1 7lh, 1899,
Lord Salisbury remarked that ^Ir. Kruger secured
the omission by " considerable territorial and
, other sacrifices." The " complete independence
and autonomy of the South African Republic,
subject only to the restriction contained in the
Convention of 1884 " — to use the Lord Chief
Justice's phrase at the Jameson Trial — has been
repeatedly recognised by British MiDisters, both
Conservative and Liberal (see Methuen, p. 39, for
quotations). Sir Edward Clarke, Ex-Solicitor-
General, an impeccable Tory lawyer, on the eve of
war, described the revival of the claim of suzerainty
as "made in defiance of fact and a breach of
national faith."
(2) That there was a Boer Reform Party; that
reforms were being broiight about more rapidly
_tiban they have been in this country; that in,
regard to the raiders and revolutionists President
Kruger behaved with marked magnanimity; and
that, although after the Raid the Transvaal
Government began arming, evidently in self-
defence, it made repeated and substantial con-
cessions on the franchise and other questions. If_
tb-^'-Klievances were of so tolerable a character at
the time of the Raid that the Uitlanders — whom'
Dr. Doyle treats as being about as numerous as
the whole scattered Boer population — refused to
j:ei'olt in order to remedy them, it is evident that
they must have been very unsubstantial after
repeated concessions, amounting in the final in-
stance, as Mr. Chamberlain admitted (House of
Commons, October 19th and 26th, 1899), tc
"nine-tenths" of what he required, the remaining
"tenth " being only a question of " form."
(3) That, instead of the Rhodesian plot of 1895
being regarded as a blunder and a crime which
ought to be lived down by an extreme felf-control
_on the part of "the British authorities, the plotteis
were lionised, and their aims were more and more
openly adopted by the dominant English party.
The Times and other leading journals supported
plotters and partizans impartially ; the fuel of the
movtment was provided by the Rhodesian press,
which became, as Mr. Methuen, hitherto a steady
supporter of the Government, like Sir Edward
Clarke, Mr. Courtney, Mr. Maclean, and others,
4
50
said, " a manufactory of outrages." Mr. Chamber-
lain denied complicity in Jameson's silly expedition,
but the constant communication with Mr. Rhodes,
and the general identity of their policy and temper,
were beyond denial. Instead of being stringently
limited to the friendly representations that inter-
national law would permit, the " negotiations "
were conducted on the British side in an increas-
ingly provocative and minatory spirit which left
the Transvaal Government no alternatives but
complete surrender or war.
The Refusal of Arbitration.
Before recalling some of these threats, I have
once more to correct Dr. Doyle in his statement of
an essential point of fact. One of the most
sinister coincidences in this deplorable story is
England's refusal to apply to the dispute in South
Africa the method of settlement of which she was
standing before the Great Powers as the great
champion — the method of Arbitration. When
the British Government accepted the Tsar's in-
vitation to the Hague Conference in 1898, Lord
Salisbury felt that arbitration — not disarmament —
was the most promising line of advance toward
international peace ; and, in a letter of instructious
to Sir Julian Pauncefote, he said : —
Q " With regard to the question of making the « mployment
^ of arbitration and mediation more general and effective for
/^the settlement of international disputes, it is unnecessary for
/ me to say that it is a matter to which Her Majestys Government
I attach the highest importance, and which they are desirous of
\ furthering hy every means in their power."
I do not doubt that Lord Salisbury sincerely
meant this : he may, in fact, be regarded as the
chief author of the Arbitral Tribunal afterwards
established at the Hague. But Lord Sali-^bury
was the weaker of two chiefs in the Ministry, and
the other and stronger man was determined that
tbere should be no arbitration over the Transvaal
difficulties. Hence the extraordinary anomaly that
that which Mr. Chamberlain persistently refused to
President Kruger was being proclaimed almost
simultaneously by the British and other envoys at
the Hague to be the universal interest and duty of
civilised States. Mf. Chamberlain's paramountcy
in the Cabinet was first shown by the exclusion of
the Boer States, on British representations, from
participation in the Hague Conference, an act for
51
which no juridical excuse can be pleaded. Even
if general " suzerainty " existed — which it did
not — there would be no excuse. Bulgaria is un-
questionably under the suzerainty of Turkey, yet
Bulgaria was represented, neither Turkey, nor
Russia, nor Austria, nor Greece protesting.
However, the Republics made no public griev-
ance of this exclusion, though they had every
right to do so. The arbitration they were anxious
to secure was of a humbler, more limited kind.
A Grave Misrepresentation.
One might have expected scrupulous accuracy
of Dr. Doyle on a point like this. What we get is
a misrepresentation of the utmost gravity. He
says, speaking of the Bloetnfontein Conference :
" Kruger offered a seven-years' franchise . . . and added
a proposal that all differences should be subject to arbitration
by foreign Powers " (p. 44).
The President proposed nothing of the kind.
The official report of the Conference is perfectly
clear.
" His Excellency [Sir A. Milner] had acknowledged that
bis Honour's request for arbitration by other than foreign
Powers on all points of future difference under the Conven-
tion was reasonable."
As to franchise and other existing points, Sir
Alfred Milner absolutely refused to agree to arbi-
_tmtion ; and in closing the Conference he absolutely
refused to say anything to bind the British Govern-
jnent as to future differences :
" The President must understand that I cannot pledge Her
Majesty's Government in any way on this subject ... I
again insisted that 1 would not bargain for the franchise,
either with arbitration or with anything else ... At the
very close of the Conference he told me that he hoped to heat
from Her Majesty's Government about arbitration. I replied :
' / have nothing to propose to Her Majesty^s Government on the
subject '"(0.9415).
In a despatch at the end of July, Mr. Chamber-
lain recognised " with satisfaction " that " at
Bloemfontein President Kruger withdrew the
proposal for the intervention of a foreign Power."
Later on (p. 50) Dr. Doyle accurately describes
President Kruger as asking the British Government
\o agree to " arbitration by a British and South
African tribunal." The British Agent thus reported
the offer on August 15th, at the same time that
he was reporting the offer of a five years' franchise :
4*-
52
" As regards arbitration they are willing that we
should have any of our own judges or lawyers,
English or Colonial, to represent us, and that the
President or Umpire would be equally English,
Colonial, or Boer" [C. 9521, p. 44]. Could any-
thing be more reasonable and conoiliatory ?
This time it is the reply that Dr. l)oyle mis-
reports :
" To this Great Britain answered that she would agree to
such arbitration."
No such reply was ever given. Quite the contrary.
Mr. Chamberlain seems, indeed, to have been a
little less implacable and aggressive than Sir
Alfred Milner, who throughout the negotiations
took an openly dictatorial line. In the despatch
of July 27th he promised that when existing
questions were done with the British Government
"would be willing to consider how far and by
what methods such questions of interpretation as
have been alluded to could be decided by some
judicial authority." But Sir Alfred Milner was
allowed to refuse the Boer proposal in the most
precise and uncompromising terms. Arbitration
on existing questions was rejected; other unspecified
" matters of difference " were declared to be " not
proper for reference to arbitration " ; arbitration
on future questions was at no time accepted ; and
tKe only ground for Dr. Doyle's mis-statement of
the despatch of August 30th is that it contained,
in addition to these restrictions and refusals, a
promise that at some future time " a discussion of
the form and scope of a tribunal " of arbitration
might be entered upon [C. 9530, p. 26].
Dr. Doyle, and others like him, want to have it
both ways — to contend at one moment that the
British Government was willing to arbitrate, and
at another that it was impossible to submit the
questions at issue to arbitration. The question of
suzerainty, he says on page 22, " is a subject for
the academic discussion of international jurists."
From the point of view of his brief, that was a
slip. At page 65 the regular Jingo line is taken
on (1) Suzerainty ; and Lord Milner's decision that
" it is, of course, absurd " to propose arbitration
on (2) The alleged grievances, (3) " Broad
questions of policy," (4) "Questions of national
honour," is quoted with approval. As there is no
conceivable point of difference which could not be
53
got into this quadruple category of excluded
subjects, we are justified in saying that the British
Government refused arbitration all round.
The Campaign of Threats.
On September 8th Mr. Chamberlain once more
declared that suzerainty was a conditio sine
qua non, demanded "an immediate and definite
reply " whether the Boer Government would make
the reforms unconditionally, and in case of a
"negative or inconclusive" reply "i/ier Majesty's
Government must reserve to themselves the right to
reconsider the situation de novo, and to formulate
Jheir own proposals for a settlement." On .Sep-
teniber 1 2th the British Agent at Pretoria informed
State Secretary Reitz that the British Government
were " unihle to consider any proposal which is
made conditional " on the abandonment of the
suzerainty claim. On the 25th he further wrote
that it was ' ' useless to further pursue a discussion
on the lines hitherto followed, and Her Majesty's
Government are now compelled to consider the
situation afresh, and to formulate their own pro-
posals for a tinal settlement." So far from there
being any waiting on the British side, as Dr.
Doyle alleges (p. 49), the Boers waited for just a
month for the ultimatum thus twice threatened,
and then they delivered their own.
In the speech, a week after the outbreak of
hostilities, in which he extorted from Mr.
Chamberlain the remarkable confession that the
British Government hud accepted " nine-tenths of
the whole" of the Boer proposals at the time
when it refused to negotiate further, Sir Edward
Clarke thus referred to this latest achievement of
'' the new diplomacy " :
" It is dreadful to think of a country of this kind entering
upon a war, a crime against civilisation, when this sort of
thing has been going on. . . . If I had read these Blue
Books not knowing the persons who were concerned in the
matter, I confess that I should have been forced to the con-
clusion that the correspondence was conducted not with a
view of peace. ... If the Government were going in
the direction of war, these Blue Books were the very things
t6 excite sympathy and support for them in this country, and
to excite a feeling in the Transvaal which was as hostile to
the preservation of peace as was the excitement of a violent
war feeling here."
A few further samples of the policy of aggrava-
tion which has been maintained by the Colonial
54
Secretaiy and the present High. Commissioner since
the appointment of the latter in 1897, and more
especially since his visit to this country in 1 898, may
be added to those already given. As to the power
behind these two lands — the South African League,
the Uitlanders' Council, and the Rhodesian press in
the one case ; in the other all the Jingo organisa-
tions of England, big and little, high and low, and
the new force of Harmsworthian journalism — I
must leave all this to the imagination and memory
of the reader. He will remember that weird in-
carnation of militant Imperialism " the Mafficker ";
and he cannot have forgotten all the proved lies
with which the press has regaled us for the last
three years.
Milner Demands Intervention.
When, in January, 1896, Mr. Chamberlain
wished to sead an army to South Africa, it was
Sir Hercules Robinson who dissuaded him. The
new High Commissioner was made of different
stuff, and as soon as the Raid trials and inquiries
were closed, Mr. Chamberlain was free to take up
the broken thread of his old designs. It is true
that in the interval he had recognised, like Lord
Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, and other of his colleagues,
the absolute right of the Boers to settle their
domestic affairs without interference — " the whole
question from the beginning was about the in-
ternal affairs of another country," as Dr. Doyle
says — and that he had denounced, in words Avhich
no "pro-Boer" could make more emphatic, the
bare idea of using force against them in regard
thereto. But Mr. Chamberlain has never found
any difficulty in repudiating his own words and
his own actions. Sir Alfred Milner kept the
furnace of his prejudice well stoked. It did not
take him long to create civil strife between the
Dutch and the English in Cape Colony ; the myth
of an "Africander conspiracy" was for this
"prancing pro-Consul" a basis not only for the
subsequent plea that war with the Transvaal was
"inevitable," but aUo for the subsequent suspen-
sion of civil and political rights in Cape Colony,
By May, 1899, everything was, or seemed to be,
ready for an active policy. On the 5th of that
month Milner wrote to Chamberlain his sensational
cablegram retailing at length the woes of the
65
"helots," as he called them, of Johannesburg.
"The case for intervention," he said, "was
overwhelming," and he demanded "a striking
proof" of British paramountcy. Speaking two
days later in Cape Town, he said the British people
"had set out to make an end of the business once
and for all, to make South Africa one country
under one flag, and with one system of law and
government." Mr. Chamberlain, affecting modera-
tion, even while he was adding the claim of
paramountcy — a word with no meaning in law,
and of no other meaning except as a political and
military threat — to that of " suzerainty," proposed
a conference, no doubt expecting that the English-
man would come best out of the argument. The
Bloemfontein meeting lasted five days only, and
even during that time Lord Milner professed to
regard the prospect of an agreement as " remote."
Military Preparations: The First Ulti-
matum.
While the Eaad was passing a Reform Bill
the progressive and promising character of which
Mr. Chamberlain repeatedly recognised. Lord
Wolseley was laying before the British Govern-
nient a plan of campaign by which not only the
Transvaal, but also the Orange Free State (whose
" laws were as liberal as our own," says Dr. Doyle),
could be conquered by the following November
(Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords, March
l"StIi,' 1901. Hansard, IV. series, vol. 91); and^
the Intelligence Department had issued its " Notes "
for such a campaign. It is with these facts before
him — though he does not think them worth men-
tioning— that Dr. Doyle pretends to regard the
subsequent action of the Boers as a surprise to a
wholly innocent and pacific British Ministry !
Perhaps Mr. Chamberlain — who is an " efficient"
politician, at least in the narrow sense — mistrusted
the War Office. At^any rate, he did his best to
gain time while reinforcements were being hurried
out from India and home, while the reserves were
being called out, while troops were being hurried
up in Cape Colony and Natal, and Mafeking and
other towns were being prepared for sieges which
they bore so gallantly. But by the beginning of
August Frankenstein's monster had begun to get
the upper hand. On the 1 2th of that month the
56
&e*— always up-to-date, if not a little too previous,
whea the Rhodesian conspirator is on the war-path
—declared thai "the last lingering hesitation" to
a resort to armed force had been removed. On the
loth the British Agent at Pretoria delivered the
virtual ultimatum which I have already men-
tioned: ''Her Majesty's Government would be
'jound to assert their demands, and if necessary
to press them by force. I said that the only
ohancefor the South African Republic Govern-
ment was an immediufe surrender to the Bloem-
fontem minimum." "If Mr. Chamberlain was
really playing a game of bluff," says Dr. Doyle,
' It must be confessed that he was bluffing from a
very weak hand." More wisdom after the event !
When will our Jingoes recognise that the braggart's
hand is always weak when the strongest sentiments
ot manhood are aroused against him? At the
time the hand was supposed to be invincibly
strong. Said the Times on August 16th :
wifh^f h/^^^*^*'■"'^^^ •** Vre&ent in South Africa, together
wth the i"egular levies at the disposal of the military
authorities would be fully equal to cope with any force the
Boers could put into the field?" ^
The " unpreparedness " was a measure not of our
innocence, but of our cock-sureness. It was onlv
the villainous "pro-Boers," rich with Kiniger''8
gold and the imbecile " Peace-at-any-price " men
wlio dared then to tell the truth which Dr. Dovle
now tries to misuse.
Vituperation and Duplicity.
On August 26th followed Mr. Chamberlain's
speech at Highbury, aiming phrases of vulgar
vituperation against the aged President, his enemy
which Dr. Doyle is not ashamed to speak of as
p ainness of speech unusual as it is welcome in
diplomacy ' Unusual, truly, to denounce the head
o± an independent State as " a squeezed sponge "
and as costly as it was unusual. " The sands are
running down in the glass," quoth our Birming-
ham hero. " The knot must be loosened, or else we
sball have to find other ways of untying it " Two
years and a-half have passed and that knot is still
untied. The effect of these word« upon a people
who prized their independence as their lives may
be imagined. It was in vain that President Steyn
used his influence for peace, that the Cape Ministry
67
made strong representations in the same direction,
and that at home we Arbitrationists got up a pro-
test against the policy of war which received
•54,000 signatures in a fortnight. The Avar press
was now fully awake ; to speak for peace was
already becoming dangerous. Parliament was not
sitting ; Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner had the
game in their own hands.
The part of the Orange Free State demands a
further word. President Steyn's despatches,
which Lord Milner expurgated for Mr. Chamber-
lain's benefit, and which he scoffs at as " un-
gracious," are a fine piece of pacific statesmanship
to which history will do justice. Lord Milner's
attitude was one of duplicity which could only be
justified on Machiavelian grounds. That the
Orange Free State would cast in its lot with the
Transvaal had not been anticipated. It was neces-
sary, if possible, to stave off a course which Dr.
Doyle — always blind to the real qualities of this
race, and forgetting for a moment the Jingo maxim
that an honourable war is better than a dis-
honourable peace — decries as " singularly rash and
unprofitable," even "suicidal." Su we find Lord
Milner whipping Mr. Chamberlain up with one
hand, while he is administering the oiled feather
to Mr. Steyn with the other : —
To Cha-mbeklain. To Steyn.
" The purport of all *' H.M. Government
r-epresentations made to are still liopeful of
me is to urge prompt a friendly settlement."
■and decided action. . . . (September 19th).
British South Africa is
prepared fur extreme " I adhere to the hope
measures, and is rtady expressed." (September
to sufl'er much in order 25 th).
to see the vindication of
British authority. It is "I can only repeat
a prolongation of the the assurances given "
negotiations, endless (October 2nd).
and indecisive, that is
dreaded. I fear seriously " I cannot believe
that there will be a that the S.A. Republic
strong reaction against will make such aggres-
the policy of Her sive action, or that your
Majesty's Government Honour would counte-
if matters drag y (Aug. nance such a course. . .
31st). Till the threatened act
58
The answer to this of aggression is com-
appeal was the decision mitted, / shall not de-
of the Cabinet on Sep- spair ofpeace^^ (October
tember 8th to send re- 4th).
inforcements from India
and England ; the refusal " My object . . . has
of the British Govern- been to leave nothing
ment to revert to its ovrn undone which could
proposal of a J oint Com- prevent action on the
mittee of Inquiry, and part of the S.A. Repub-
the final breaking off of lie calculated to make
negotiations by Lord a pacific solution finally
Milner on Mr. Chamber- impossible " (October
Iain's instructions on 7th).
September 22nd ; and the
calling out of the Re-
serves and mobilisation
of an Army Corps on
October 7th.
Final Threats and the Boer Retort.
Still the Boers did not move. Tne first com-
mandeering in the Transvaal did not lake place
till September 28th — six weeks after the first
formal threat of force by the British agent, a
month after Mr. Chamberlain's second formal
threat (August 26th), three weeks after the order-
ing out of reinforcements, one week after the final
suspension of negotiations, and a iew days after a
forward move of troops had been made both in
Natal and Cape Colony. The war which Lord
Machiavelli in Cape Town at once urged on and
protested against now looked inevitable. In
England the drum beat ceaselessly. On September
14th the Times said that Mr. Chamberlain's
despatch of the 8th " is not necessarily an ulti-
matum, but it is clearly the prelude to an ultimatum
should the reply prove to be unfavourable." The
Daily Mail more cynically remarked : '* When
our preparations are complete and our forces are
on the field the ultimatum xcill folloto^ On Sep-
tember 20th Mr. Hayes Fisher, Junior Lord of the
Treasury, thus openly explained the Ministerial
plan : —
" Th« Government mtist now tend a sufficient force to the
Cape to insure that tvhen the final ultimatum was pre»ented the
Boere should not be able to mistake the fact of our having
enough troops there to secure the ends we were determined
59
to achieve. Then, perhaps, they would listen to the voice of
reason, and not enter upon an unequal contest and invite us to
inflict upon thena a crushing defeat and take from them the
country they so much cherished."
The wlieel had turned lull circle since the clay
in May, 1896, when Mr. Chamberlain denounced
the idea of sending an ultimatum and declared
that '• to go to war with President Kruger to force
upon him reforms in the internal afFaird of his
State " would be " a course of action as immoral
as unwise." The ultimatum — or shall we say the
penultimatum — had been delivered ; the war,
which was to be " one of the most serious that
could possibly be waged," "a long- wai, a bitter
war, a costly war," was being entered upon light-
heartedlv and with absolute confidence of a speedy
and profitable result.
Here is the whole simple truth which Dr. Doyle
tries to bui-y imder the pretence that a pacific
British Government was being "jumped" by an
open conspiracy — his own idea, if not his own
words — of Africanders " armed to the teeth." It
is a very thin and inconsistent pretence. On the
one hand Dr. Doyle admits that, after the Boer
answer to the British r,ote of September 8th, *' in
Africa all hope or fear of peace had ended " ; and
that the note of September 22iid, though " not an
ultimatum, foreshadowed an ultimatum in the
future." On the other, he describes the demands
for the stoppage of over-sea reinforcements which
the Boers sent in, after repeatedly asking for the
promised new British proposals, seyenteeQ days
later (October 9th), as " unexpected and audacious."
How long could he or an} one else suppose the
Boerr} would lie quietly waiting for the conquerii g
force which, as British Ministers, administrators,
and journalists almost unanimously believed, would
snuff their Republics out in a month ? It is true
that the Boer counter-ultimatum " was received
throughout the Empire with a mixture of derision
and anger." The Empire has learned much since
then, at a terrible price ; and I take leave to doubt
whether in its heart it will thank the author of
" Sherlock Holmes " for this effort to represent it
as still wallowing in the mire of its early infatua-
tion.
60
v.— THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
I do not propose to follow Dr. Doyle in devoting
more space to the subject of the conduct of the war
than to that of its cause or causes. The war itself is
the great, the monstrous evil, besides which any
details of its conduct sink into comparative insig-
nificance. Men who declare in one breath that the
war was inevitable, and that it is slanderous to talk
about " methods of barbarism," are merely exhibit-
ing their ignorance of history and their incapacity
to look contemporary facts in the face. True, it
takes a great deal to convert any Englishman to
that deep and permanent anti-force bias which is
the chief prescription of the Peace Party. Force
lies in the very blood of the peoples we miscall
Anglo-Siixon ; and it is so long since we have our-
selves been involved in u great war that the
terrors of the battle-field were like an almost
forgotten myth. Anyone who on the eve of the
war bad foretold the things that have actually been
done in the name of England would have been
dismissed as a raving maniac. Even among the
ranks of definitely humane people — the people who
keep our great charities and philanthropies going
— there was no sort of apprehension of the blood-
shed and devastation and the bitter civil strife that
were impending. Some of the most able and
active opponents of the war policy were far from
being convinced Peace men at the outset ; they
have learned for the first time in the saturnalia of
the last two and a- half years that while war is
never quite inevitable — men being at worst a little
above the beasts — in warfare, once undertaken,
" methods of barbarism " are inevitable ; that, in
fact, warfare is necessarily one huge method of
barbarism.
Farm Burning a Shocking Failure.
There are, however, two or three broad questions
of military and political policy which deser* e to be
separated from the mass of charges of inhumanity
levelled by each side against the other ; acd Dr.
Conan Doyle does well to devote a chapter to the
question of farm burning and a chapter to the con-
centration camps. On the former subject he makes
61
considerable concessions. Farm burning, he admits
(page 84), " came to assume proportions which
shocked public opinion. It must he admitted that
the results have not justified it, and that, putting all
moral questions apart, a hurned-out fam,ily is the
last which is likely to settle down . . . as con-
tented British citizens." These opening sentences
of the chapter really make the following pages of
excuse quite valueless. The plea is the long-
exploded plea of " guerilla tactics " : " the army
which is stung by guerillas strikes round it furiously
and occasionally indiscriminately." It ''becomes
embittered, and a General feels called upon to take
harsher measures." Lord Monkswell has well said
(in a letter to the Times) of this plea — this " de-
batable, and even objectionable, matter," as he
calls it — that it might be used to justify the
poisoning of wells or other ancient expedients.
What does Dr. Doyle mean by " guerillas " ? The
punishment of snipers by burning the farm in which
they are caught is one thing ; the desolation of a
district " at or near which " (to quote the words of
Lord Roberts's proclamation) railways have been
damaged or telegraph lines cut is quite another.
" Nothing can be more imperative in war than the
preservation of the communications of the army/*
says Dr. Doyle ; " and it is impossible without
such disciplinary measures to preserve a line of
1,000 miles running all the way through a hostile
or semi-hostile country." Then it is not a question
of snipers or other " guerillas " at all, but of the
normal and legitimate procedure of warfare ! Dr.
Doyle coolly remarks that something may be said
for the Rules of Warfare agreed upon at the
Hague, and something lor the plea of military
necessity, but he gives his casting vote to the
latter. This is all very well for an irresponsible
scribbler, but what should we say if we as a nation
were the victims of this kind of light-hearted
breach of solemn conventions to which the invading
Power had bound itself ? Dr. Doyle admits cate-
gorically the folly and injustice of the measures in
question — " as a matter of fact, Jarm burning had
no effect in checking the railway cutting, and had a
considerable effect m embittering the population. . .
'Jhe punishment fell with cruel injustice upon
some individuals. Others may have been among
the actual raiders." He is particularly clear in
62
condemning the destruction of the homes of
surrendered burghers who afterwards went on
commando for lack of protection by the British,
and demands compensation in these eases.
"Guerillas"— For Election Purposes.
But amid all these confessions of military folly,
cruel and wholesale injustice, and deliberate
breakinir of treaty promises, he continues to be
obsessed by the idea that at a certain stage,
apparently in the autumn of 1900, the war
degenerated into something quite different from
and deplorably lower than what it had been. Has
he, I wonder, forgotten the real reason for the
temporary vogue of that theory ? The memories
of some of us carry back easily to the election
campaign of 1900, the need of the Chamberlain
party to show that the still unended war was
even then ended, and the support given to that
pretence by Lord Roberts's notice to General
Botha that " the farm nearest the scene of
any attempt to injure the line or wreck a train
is to be burnt, and that all the farms within a
radius of ten miles are to be completely cleared of
all their stock, supplies, &c." — why? Because,
except Botha's army, "there is now no formed
body of Boer troops in the Transvaal or Orange
River Colony, and the war is degenerating into
operations carried on by irregular and irresponsible
guerillas." Those guerillas, those armies which
did not exist, the armies of De Wet, Delarey, and
others have held the field for eighteen months
against 250,000 British troops. Equipped at first
with artillery and transport, acting in concert,
with telegraphs under their control, and mysterious
sources of supply, occupying and re-occupying
towns which we were forced to abandon, invading
and re-invading our colonies, and marching-
hundreds of miles without serious interference,
these non-existent armies are still able to capture
British forces hundreds strong ; and, demoralised
guerillas though they be, tbey appear to know
how to give a British General who falls into their
hands a practical lesson at once in courtesy and
in military skill. Lord Roberts was more careful
of himself than Lord Methuen, and so he missed a
lesson which might have borne good fruit both in
Pall Mall and the House of Lords.
63
Breaches of the Ha^ue Convention.
Let me recall once more the fact that Dr. Doyle
is supposed to be vindicating the fair fame of
England. Yet, in regard to the cause or causes
of the war he declined even to attempt to make
out a legal case for forcible interference in the
internal atiairs of the Transvaal; and now, in
regard to the conduct of the war, and this impor-
tant question of devastation in particular, he
admits that Lord Roberts acted in defiance of the
Convention revising the Brussels Rules of Warfare
which were signed by the British Envoj' at the
Hague Conference only a few months before the
outbreak of the war. This is a rather more serious
matter than Dr. Doyle appears to think, not only
because, for most people, a promise deliberately
made should be faithfully kept, but also because
it is on this very ground that many of the most
tried and convinced friends of England abroad
have now joined the ranks of her censors. Of
many deeds of violence on both sides in this
awful contest, of the sacrifice of women and
children, of the hospital scandals and contract
scandals, it may be said that these things are
really inseparable from warfare ; who advocates
war is implicitly advocating them; who excuses
war must excuse them. Of the wholesale disfran-
chisement of Cape Colonists on pretence of punish-
ing treason, it may at least be said that the Cape
Dutch are strong enough to take care of themselves,
and sooner or later they will do so. But when the
British Commander-in-Chief deliberately breaks
the rules of " civilised " warfare, we have another
kind of offence against humanity — one that, even if
less grave in itself, may have graver consequences.
The breaches mentioned by Dr. Doyle are not the
only ones. Section III. of the Convention deals
with Military Authority over hostile territory,
Article XLIV. declaring that *' any compulsion of
the population of occupied territory to take part in
military operations against their own country is
prohibited." Yet Lord Roberts was reported as
having proclaimed thai " prisoners are warned to
acquaint Her Majesty's forces of the presence of
the enemy upon their farms, otherwise they will
be regarded as aiding and abetting the enemy."
Whether giving military information is " taking
part in military operations" we must leave to
64
lawyers to decide. But on other points the Con-
vention is clearer. By Article XLV. " any pres-
sure on the population of occupied territory to take
oath to the hostile Power is prohibited." But the
Commander-in-Chief was reported to have pre-
scribed " the most rig;orous measures against all
persons who have broken the oath of neutrality, or
who, being residents in districts under British occzi-
pation, have not taken the oath. All burghers in
districts occupied by British forces, except those
who have sworn the oath, ivill be regarded an
prisoners of ivar and transported.^^ This appears
to be a plain infraction of the Convention, the pro-
vision of which is still further emphasised by
Article L. : " No general penalty, pecuniary or
otherwise" [here we recall the threat that fines
will now be " rigorously exacted "]" can be in-
flicted on the population on account of the acts of
individuals, for which it cannot be regarded as
collectively responsible." Article XLVI. is also
worth quoting: "Family honours and rights, indi-
vidual lives and property, as well as religious
convictions and liberty, must be respected. Private
property cannot be confiscated." There is abund-
ant evidence that it was often confiscated — retail
and wholesale.
Warfare by Proclamation.
The fact is that — as Dr. Doyle virtually admits —
Lord Roberts was rapidly provoking the enemy
into forms of retaliation which have been unh( ard
of since his return from South Africa. Consider
the series of proclamations which were designed to
supply the place of military skill. In February, 1 900,
he solemnly promised that burghers who did not
oppose the invading army, even though they had
been under arms, should not be disturbed. In the
following month this assurance was limited to
*' bur}ihers who had not taken a prominent part in
the policy of the war," and who were willing to
take oath of allegiance or neutrality. At the end
of May the pass system was extended to the Trans-
vaal, but it was further announced that for damage
to property " not only will the actual perpetrators,
and all directly or indirectly implicated, be liable
to the most severe punishment in person and
property, but the property of all persons, whether
65
in authority or otherwise, who have permitted, or
who have not done their best to prevent, such
wanton damage, will be liable to be confiscated and
destroyed." Here is the first clear severance of
guilt and punishment. lu June this was pushed a
stage further, principal residents being made jointly
and severally responsible for all damage to railways,
etc., in their districts, and the director of military
railways authorised to place residents in military
trains so as to be exposed to the risk of death in
case of attack — a cowardly and illegal expedient
which Dr. Doyle actually defends. At the same
time houses and farms near which damage wa&
done were to be destroyed, and the residents dealt
with under martial law. Men on commando were
warned in July that if they did not surrender their
property would be confiscated, and, as an enterprising
officer at Krugersdorp added, in the name of the
Queen, "their families turned out destitute and home-
less." On August 1 1th the early promises to protect
peaceable burghers were revoked, and the trans-
portation policy began. All burghers not sworn
would be transport«jd, all buildings where the
enemy's scouts were harboured would be destroyed,
fines would be rigorously exacted, and persons not
warning the British forces of the presence of the
enemy would be regarded as aiding and abetting
them. Thus burghers were forced to fight on one
side or the other, or to be imprisoned or exiled.
On September 13th Lord Roberts threatened new
measures, which would be "ruinous to the country,
entail endless suffering," and become daily
more rigorous. Earlier in the month he had
given the orders already referred to that all
farmhouses near which damage was done to rail-
ways should be buraed, and farms for ten
miles round stripped of provisions, &c. Dr.
Doyle says that only 630 buildings are known
to have been destroyed, "more than half" on pleas
that would be allowed by the laws of warfare.
A gentleman who was out there as long as Dr.
Doyle, and had as good opportunities of finding
out, estimated in November, 1900, that about five
thousand farms had been destroyed ; and Dr. Doyle
is certainly wrong in saying that farm-burning
" ceased in 1900." The policy of devastation goes
on to this day, though it has been limited in the
main of late to crops and herds. As *' a not
5
66
iinknown officer in South Africa" wrote in the
Daily Mail of November 22nd last : —
" Lord Roberts has sown the wind — the country is now
reaping the whirlwind. To do evil that good may come has
ever been held to be immoral, and sooner or later the reward
of the wrong-doing must be reaped."
There has been no more " Mafficking " since then !
^'The Duty of Opposing the Invaders."
The considerations which I have based upon the
text of The Hague Convention have an older and
nearer foundation. Up to the outbreak of the
war, the attitude of Great Britain towards small
States threatened with invasion by superior Powers
was one of steady sympathy and assistance. This
temper, which was illustrated in the execration
poured upon the name of the Spanish General Weyler
when he applied the policy of devastation and
■*' concentration " to Cuba, was still more pointedly
marked in the special instructions to our delegates
upon the section of The Hague Conference that had
the revision of the Brussels Rules in hand. Two
main motives appeared in the deliberations of that
section. The first was the general desire to pro-
vide against practices that had arisen in and after
the Franco-German War — practices which Dr.
Doyle now attempts to use as precedents ; the
second was the anxiety of the small Powers, and
England with and for them, to take care that
the Rules were not moulded so as to limit the
"right and duty of patriotic resistance" against
invasion in countries where such resistance would
fall not upon a large permanent army, but upon
the body of the people. Switzerland was a case in
point, and the case was precisely that of the Boer
Republics. So strong were the, instructions of the
British Delegates at The Hague, that at a meeting
of Section II., Committee B, Sir John Ardagh
actually proposed the following additional clause :
" Nothing in this chapter shall be considered
as tending to lessen or suppress the rights
tvhich helong to the population of an invaded
country to fulfil its duty of opposing the in-
vaders by all lawful means with the most
energetic patriotic resistance."
Owing to German opposition, the clause was not
adopted, but it represented British policy, it was
67
"to some extent expressed in the President's
declaration explanatory of the Convention, and it
points to the chief provisions wherein the Con-
vention is an ad>rance upon the Declaration of
1874, which indeed remained unadopted largely
because of the feeling of many States that patriotic
.sentiment and the right of using every means of
defence against an invader were not sufficiently
respected.
The Goncentration Carnps.
I will not enter into the details of Dr. Doyle's
apology for the Concentration Camps. Toward
Miss Hobhouse he is as mean as Mr. Brodrick,
though not quite as rude and violent as the Daily
Mail. " Her political prejudices were known to
.be against the Government ! " A relation, the
M.P., "admitted" that she was mistaken! Her
conclusions were bound to be untrustworthy
because " she could speak no Dutch, had no
experience of Boer character, and knew nothing
of the normal conditions of South African life."
If these were disqualifications, Dr Doyle himself
would have no right to offer any opinion. But
.are definite facts about diet, water-supply, sanita-
tion, over-crowding, and death rates really beyond
one who does not know the Dutch language and
the Boer character? What do Mr. Brodrick and
Mr. Chamberlain know on those points ? Tne death-
rates (which Dr. Doyle suppresses) tell their own
tale — one need set nothing else against his six
pages of whitewashing evidence. They rose steadily
from 170 in June to 338 in October last per
thousand per annum — those of children only from
159 to 572 per thousand. Then Mr. Chamber-
lain took the matter out of the hands of the
War Office with his categorical imperative : " No
expense must be allowed to stand in the way." By
January last the general rate had fallen to 189,
and the children's rate to 247. To Miss Hobhouse
belongs the credit for the improvement and the
honour of a brave attempt, carried through in spite
•of slander and attempts at personal violence, to
awaken the conscience of the country.
Dr. Doyle does help us, however, to two frag-
ments of the truth. In the first place he reminds
us of the barbarous decree by which it was sought
it)y the semi-starvation of Boer women and children
5*
68
to force their husbands and fathers to surrender.
Mr. Brodrick made the shameful confession on Feb-
ruary 26th last year and he was loudly cheered
from the Ministerial benches. He said : " A dis-
tinction in regard to rations has been drawn between
those who have surrendered with their husbands
and fathers and those who come in to be fed"
— that is, those who are swept into corrals in
course of the denudation of the country — " while
their relatives are fstill in the field." As Dr. Doyle
half excuses the distinction, I prefer simply to
quote one of the military critics on this unprece-
dented avowal : " I can conceive no more humili-
ating confession being wrung from a British
Minister, nor can I conceive of a greater degrada-
tion of political conscience than that indicated by
the fact that so humiliating a confession was
greeted with the cheers and approval of his political
supporters." In the second place, Dr. Doyle rightly
traces responsibility for the camps back to the
policy of devastation and vengeance :
We cannot deny that the cause of the outbreak of measles
was the collection of the women and children by us into
the camps. But why were they collected into camps ? Beopuse
they could not be left on the veldt. And why could they
not be left on the Teldt ? Because we had destroyed the
means of subsistence. And why had we destroyed the
means of subsistence ? To limit the operations of the mobile
bands of guerillas (page 98).
"The Peace of the Wilderness and the
Grave."
We need rely on no mere politician or publicist
on this question ; we may even take the soldier on
his own ground, and recall the opinion of Field-
Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain on " the horrors
that had already devastated and are still devastating
the two Boer States. Never before has anything
approaching to such wholesale and reckless destruc-
tion or abduction of families been enacted by a
British Army.'' (Letters to Manchester Guardian^
August 5th and 26th, 1901.) This, of course^
does not mean that there was no precedent.
Here is a passage from President McKinley's
Message to Congress in April, 1898, stating the
grounds of American intervention in Cuba, which
suggests almost a literal parallel : —
" The efforts of Spain to suppress the insurrection have been
increased by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new
and inhuman phase, happily unprecedented in the modem
6^
history of a civilised people. The peasantry, including all
dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into
the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops. The
raising and moveEcent of provisions were interdicted, fields
were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, and mills
destroyed. . . . The agricultural population
was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage,
•deprived of means of support, rendered destitute of shelter,
left poorly clad, and exposed to most insanitary conditions.
. . . From month to month the death-rate increased to an
alarming ratio. . . . The reconcentration, adopted avowedly
as a war measure to cut off the resources of the insurgents,
worked its predestined result. It was extermination. The only
peace it could beget was that of the ivilderness and the grave,
. . . A long trial has piroved that the object for which
Spain has waged the war cannot be attained. The fire of
insurrection may flame or may smoulder with varying seasons,
but it has been and it is plain that it cannot be extinguished
by the present methods. ... In the name of humanity,
in the name of civilisation . . . the war in Cuba must
«top."
It was evident at the begiuning of his book that
if Dr. Doyle got rope enough, so to speak, he
would surely hang himself. I have said that the
war itself is the supreme evil, and for that Mr.
Chamberlain and his backers are responsible.
Within the war the centre of gi-avity is the policy
of devastation, and its corollary, the death camps ;
and for that the men who, whether from shortness
of temper or election motive^, or both, decided
upon "harsher measures" in the autumu of 1900.
Dr. Doyle's journalistic needs were a soi*t of minia-
ture of Lord Roberts's military and Mr. Chamber-
lain's political objects. In the autumn of 1900
Dr. Doyle, for the purposes of his "history" of
the still unended war, had to decide for himself
and others that the war was really ended, all that
remained being " guerilla " forays. Lord Roberts
•could not come home to receive his earldom with
a less comprehensive report ; Ministers could not
go to the country, which had been led to believe
that all would be over in a month, and honestly
confess that after a year they were " no forrarder."
I have not read " The Hound of the Baskervilles,"
but I should expect to find it a cleverer essay in
the art of reviving dead tales than this pitiful
pamphlet.
Charges Against Soldiers: Expansive
Bullets.
With an exception presently to be mentioned,
we have now dealt with the broad questions of
policy which constitute the important aspects of
70
the conduct of the war. Dr. Doyle seeks to-
compejisate for his altogether unsatisfactory treat-
ment of these questions, on which some accuracy
of judgment is possible, by giving many pages to
the charges of individual misconduct which have
been levelled by each side against the other in this
as in all previous wars. Concerned as I am, not
only for accuracy in detail, but for true proportion
in the whole subject, I altogether refuse to follow
this misleading procedure. Dr. Doyle does not
even begin to be judicial. It may be, as he
asseverates, that the British soldier has always
behaved like a gentleman, while the Boer has
generally behaved — well, like a guerilla. Eminent
Imperialists like Mr. Kipling had hardly led us
to expect such "plaster saint "-liness, and the
evidence, if such it can be called, offered in these
pages would not be worth much in a law court,
where, indeed. Dr. Doyle would have been
required to specify at the outset the "politicians
at home" whom he charges with having "most,
foully attacked " the soldiers' characters. I do
not know any public man, politician or humani-
tarian, who has not rested his case against the
conduct of the war on facts which Dr. Doyle
admits and acts which he excuses. A vague charge
of cruel conduct in the heat of battle against indi-
vidual fighters is a thing about which, as Dr. Doyle
admits, assertions "should be accepted with consider-
able caution." Unfortunately, when dealing with
the enemy he forgets his precept. The open ad-
vocacy of a definite policy such as that of placing
prisoners as hostages on railway trains threatened
with admittedly legitimate attack, to which Dr.
Doyle commits himself (page 131, etc.), is in a.
very much more serious category, as he would see
quickly enough if it were a question, for instance^
of Boers tying up British prisoners inside a farm
threatened with destruction.
There is one charge of this more general de-
scription— not against the soldiery, but against the
Government — which Dr. Doyle not only fails to-
rebut, but as to which he is grossly inaccurate in
his statement of facts. There is not the slightest
doubt, all his ingenuous statements to the con-
trary, that millions— not "some hundreds of
thousands " — of expansive bullets have been sent
out for use by British troops in South Africa. In
71
the House of Commons, on July 11th, 1899, Mr.
Wyndham definitely spoke of the expansive Mark
IV ammunition as having been " the service bullet
for the British Army" — not "for target practice
only," or for sporting purposes — for eighteen months,
previously, and they were then still being manu-
factured. Undoubtedly it was captured ammuni-
tion of this type that the Boers were occasionally
found using against us in the early stages of the
war. Challenged by Mr. Alfred Marks, in the
Daily News {q.v., February Ist, 19u2), Dr. Doyle
has admitted that he had no right to say the Boers
used "explosive" bullets (Lord Roberts, who made
the same charge, has not yet withdrawn it). As I
read this book and think of the corrections it would
require in all 300,000 copies of the English edition
and its sixteen foreign versions to bring it any-
where near to accuracy, I am reminded of Will
Carleton's lines : —
" Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds..
You can't do that when you are flying words."
Here is another specimen from the same page
" The expansive bullet is not, as a matter of fact
contrary to the Conventions of the Hague. It was
expressly held from being so by the representatives
of the United States and of Great Britain." I
begin to be ultra-suspicious whenever Dr. Doyle
says " as a matter of fact." There is only one
" matter of fact " about it, which is, that expansive
bullets were absolutely condemned by the Hague
Conference (July 21st, 1899 — ratified in the third
" Declaration " of the Congress), in spite of the
dissent of the British and American delegates.
Charges Against the Boers.
The chapter entitled " The Other Side of th
Question " depends upon the baseless plea alreadj
examined, that after a year of warfare the Boer*
degenerated into mere banditti. Dr. Doyle open*
with a confession :
" "Writing in November, 1900, after hearing an expression
of opinion from many officers from various parts of the
seat of war, I stated in 'The Great Boer War': 'The
Boers have been the victims of a great deal of cheap
slander in the press. The men who have see a most of the
Boers in the field are the most generous in estimating their
character.' "
"These words," he adds, "could not possibly be
written to-day." As a matter of fact, words very
72
similar could be quoted from many Bi-itish wit-
nesses to-day, and for a year past there has been a
remarkable decline in the tales of Boer outrages
previously current. The only new allegation which
Dr. Doyle can discover is what he calls " systematic
murdering of the Kaffirs by the Boers." Antici-
pating an obvious question, he adds, " Beyond
allowing natives to defend their own lives and
property when attacked, as in the case of the Bara-
longs at Mafeking and the Kaffirs in the Transkei,
we have only employed Kaffirs" — armed he means —
" in the pages of the continental cartoons." This
is an evidently inaccurate statement : indeed, two
pages later. Dr. Doyle admits that armed Kaffirs
have latterly been employed to " watch the railway
line." We know, from i-ecent reports, that they
have been used in the blockhouses. No one knows
in fact, except those whose business it is not to
speak, how far they have been employed ; and it is
therefore impossible to say how far the Boers can
rightly plead the sanction of military custom. The
one point of which we have certain knowledge is
that we have used Kaffirs imiversally as spies —
"scouts," and "intelligence natives" Dr. Doyle
prefers to call them; and as Dr. Doyle himself
defends the shooting of spies when we catch them,
he is not very logical in quoting these cases against
the Boers. Historic circumstances made it certain
from the first that the latter would sternly punish
armed blacks, where they would treat white captives
humanely. The chief responsibility for any outrages
of this kind lies upon us. Our own record is by no
means clean. Dr. Doyle must have heard of the
case of Cape Policeman Smith, who, on the orders
of a Captain Cox, " drilled a hole," as the latter
put it, in a native who delayed in giving up a bridle
for which he was asked. Smith was charged with
murder at Cape Town (October 30th, 1900), and
acquitted amid the applause of the Court. Captain
Cox, who was excused on the ground that he was
hurried and annoyed, was not even put on trial.
The general answer to Dr. Doyle is suggested
by his own observation that the safety of 42,000
male Boer prisoners proves the humanity of the
British Army. Thousands of British soldiers,
including scores of officers, have been captives in
the hands of the Boers, and have on the whole
been treated with conspicuous chivalry. Moreover
73
Dr. Doyle, as I have said before, can't have it both
ways : he can't advocate the exclusion of the
enemy from the rights of "civilised" warfare on
tlie grounds that they are banditti, and then
demand of them the high standard of virtue which
he attributes to Tommy Atkins.
Martial Lavirlessness in Cape Colony.
There is a wholly inadequate section on " Execu-
tions," which is only interesting because, among
thirty-four stated cases, two were for train- wrecking,
two others for train-wrecking plus murdering
a native, two (Boers) for breach of the oath of
neutrality, one for spying, one for " persuading
surrendered burghers to break oath," and one for
desertion plus horse-stealing. Nearly all the other
cases are executions of rebels simply for "fighting."
Few of these penalties could be defended on grounds
of law, and hardly any on grounds of policy. Natal
is ignored ; and reprisals in the shape of heavy fines
are not mentioned. Yet, a telegram from Durban,
on March 14th last, reported that the Natal Treason
Court had dealt with over 500 cases, " the total
number of Natal rebels being estimated at 800 "
— not much ground left for amnesty here ! — fines
to the extent of over £32,000 being imposed,
and terms of imprisonment from ten years down-
ward.
Dr. Doyle says nothing of the administration of
martial law — one more major omission. Let me
briefly quote some authoritative opinions on the
subject. The Constitution of Cape Colony had
been tacitly suspended for some months when, on
October 9th, 1901, a further downward step was
taken — the virtual abrogation of the common law
by the extension, on October 9th, of martial law to
Cape Town and other places where it had not
hitherto been imposed. This action of the soldiery
in South Africa was as clearly illegal as it was
impolitic. Mr. Frederic Harrison, himself a con-
stitutional lawyer, speaking at Newton Hall, on
October 13th, laid down these three propositions,
which, he said, were sustained by the highest of
English judges, from Coke to Cockburn :
1. "That if any British subject was put to deaf h— not in
war, not as a spy, and not in the coarse of actual military
operations, but put to death after a mock trial for treason or
for some such civil offence — every man who ordered, aided, ot
74
abetted in his death was liable to be tried by a jury on a
charge of murder."
2. " That unless any man charged with such death could
satisfy a jury of his countrymen that the act was a bona fide
military necessity for the carrying out of some direct military
operation, and was not a mere act of revenge, of terrorism, or
of usurpation of civil law, the accused, whether soldier or
civilian, general or governor, was undoubtedly guilty of
murder."
3. " That if any mock court-martial arrogated to itself the
prerogative of civil government, and pretended to pass
sentences of penal servitude, such proceedings were not only
null and void, but were in themselves crimes, and every man
— soldier or civilian, oflBcer of justice or of police — who
attempted to give effect to such sentences, who unlawfully
arrested, tried, or imprisoned such prisoners upon such civu.
charges, was himself liable to criminal justice."
A "Stupendous Illegality."
Mr. Thomas Shaw, K.C., M.P., speaking at
Galashiels, after referring to breaches of the rules
of warfare agreed upon by civilised nations, said
we had stepped from illegality to illegality in.
South Africa. But
" the most stupendous of all was the proclamation of martiaT
law over Cape Colony, and this at the hands of the Executive,
and without the sanction of either the Imperial or the local
Legislature. Every student of constitutional law knew that
under cover of martial law so set up without legislative
sanction every arrest was a wrongful arrest, every imprison-
ment was a false imprisonment, every seizure of property was
legally a robbery or theft, and every execution a murder."
Another eminent lawyer, Mr. R. K. Cherry,
K.C., writing to the Daily News of October 12th,
pushes the opinion still farther by raising the
question whether members of the ti'ibunals which
have been trying, convicting, and executing rebels,
without any authority either from the Imperial or
the Cape Parliament, are not liable to be indicted
for murder. After quoting Dicey* s " Law of the
Constitution " to the effect that the military have
no right under the law to inflict punishment for
riot or rebellion, and that any execution inflicted
by a court martial is illegal, and technically murder,
Mr. Cherry proceeds : —
" If this statement of the law is correct — and there is no
reason whatsoever to doubt it — not only are the various tri-
bunals now administering so-called justice under martial law
in Cape Colony as illegal and unconstitutional as the various
Committees which sat in Paris during the Terror, but
everyone who takes part in. the so-called trial of a rebel,
everyone who in any way assists in carrying out the sentence
of death passed upon a rebel, is guilty of murder. If put
on trial on their return to England, a judge would be
bound to direct a jury to convict them of murder, and
a jury, unless they disregard their oaths, could not acquit
75
them. The Constitution has frequently been suspended in>
Ireland during the last century, but never without the
authority of Parliament, never by the mere proolamatioiv
of the Executive, as in this case."
The question whether martial law is illegal
under Roman-Dutch law just as under the laws
of England seems to be settled by the fact that,-
as one of the military officers concerned testifies,
after the term of martial law in Pretoria in 1880-1
an Act of Indemnification was passed in the local
Legislature. Colonel H. B. Hanna, who was for
some years Deputy Judge- Advocate in India, has-
also written to the Daily News (October 16th)
supporting the foregoing opinions as to the illegality
of martial law unless formally established by the
Legislature by quotations from the " Manual of
Military Law," by Lord Thring, then Parliamentary
Counsel. From this it seems clear that the
execution by court-martial of any person not
specifically subject to military law is illegal, and
any officer taking part in such mock-trial, or any
person carrying out the sentence, is guilty of
murder, and would have to be convicted if put on
trial on their return to this country.
"Insensate Inhumanity."
It is weary work protesting against the lawless-
ness of war-makers. "We may find our task easier
when South African conditions begin to re-act
decisively, as they will some day, upon life in this
country. For, as Mr. Frederic Harrison says : —
" Where is anarchy going to stop when once proclaimed on
British soil ? If law is to be abolished in South Africa by a
single Minister in his orchid-house, while his colleagues are
playing golf or amusing themselves at Monte Carlo, why may
it not be abolished the next day in Australia or in Canada
by some Minister ; or even in Ireland, Scotland, or England?
On what is the Throne, the House of Lords, or Parliament,
or civil government to be based hereafter if the most vener-
able conditions of British freedom are to be trampled upon
because our soldiers could not get the better of 50,000 Dutch
farmers ? "
This is, however, more than a question of law,,
deep as that consideration goes. And, again, I
will rely for a statement of that yet weightier
matter, not upon any politician, still less upon
sentiment of my own, but upon the solemn words
of a man who is as much further than Dr. Doyle
beyond ordinary prejudice as he is a greater
master of his own art. Our greatest living prose
76
writer, Mr. George Meredith, wrote thus on
February 24th last to the Daily News : —
" One who is neither for the Boer nor against him, and
who thinks that the case of each party in the South African
conflict has not yet been fully stated, claims a short space in
your columns to join his voice with those now crying for
the discarded 'quality of mercy.' It is England's good name
that interests me. I remember the days before the now well-
beloved Emperor Franz Josef was taught by sharp experi-
ence the virtue residing in benevolent acts, when Austria
was denounced by our country from end to end for the
ruthless hangings and shooting-* of rebels. Italians and
Hungarians, free of their yoke, remember our sympathy ot
that clouded time. They are amazed to see this England
guilty of the fruitless butcheries which dealt their recoil blow
upon Imperial Austria. Such insensate humanity must he
stopped, or Englishmen will have to learn that apathy in the
season of evil deeds is not only a crime, but perceptibly
written by history as the cause of national disaster."
Negotiations— Another Grave IVIisrepre-
sentatlon.
One more point and my task is completed. Dr.
Doyle's chapter on "The Negotiations for Peace "
contains two misreiDresentations, one of minor and
one of major importance. Dealing with the first
months of the war, he says it " is admitted and
beyond dispute " that " every yard of Bi'itish
territory which was occupied was instantly annexed
either by the Transvaal or by the Orange Free
State." The reported notices of annex ition were
certainly denied, and, so far as I know, have
never been proved. After reporting, five days
previously, that the country north of the Vaal had
been annexed by President Steyn, Sir Alfred
Milner telegraphed to Mr. Chamberlain on October
28th: "It is impossible accurately to find out
what has happened as regards the alleged annexa-
tion by the Government of the South African
Republic and the Orange Free State of portions of
the Cape Colony " [Cd. 43, No. 40]. Later on, he
said he had not received copies of the alleged
proclamation. In November, Mr. Sehreiner tele-
graphed on the subject to Mr. Steyn, who replied
indignantly denying that the territory in question
had been annexed.
1'he other misrepresentation is of a more serious
nature. It will be remembered that at the meeting
with General Botha on February 28th, 1901, Lord
Kitchener said from the first that independence
could not be discussed. " Botha showed very
good feeh'ng and seemed anxious to bring about
77
peace." He promised to submit Lord Kitchener's
points " to his Government and people, and if they
agreed, he should visit Orange River Colony and
get them»to agree." Lord Kitchener's terms were
then referred to Lord Milner and Mr. Chamberlain,
both of whom whittled them down in important
particulars, especially that of amnesty. The re-
vised terms were put by letter to Botha, who
replied : —
" After the mutual exchange of views at our interview at
Middelburg on 28th February last, it will certainly not
surprise Your Excellency to know that I do not feel disposed
to recommend that the terms of the said letter shall have the
earnest consideration of my Government."
It is perfectly clear — and so far as I know it has
never till now been questioned — that the negotia-
tions broke down over the diflferences between
Lord Kitchener's original terms and Mr. Chamber-
lain's harsher demands. Yet Dr. Doyle commits
himself to this astounding comment: —
"It will be observed that in this reply Botha bases his
refusal upon his own views as expressed in the original inter-
view with Kitchener ; and we have his own authority, there-
fore, to show that they were not determined by any changes
which Chamberlain may have made in the terms — a favourite
charge of that gentleman's enemies.''
It is hard to restrain one's pen in face of advocacy
of this kind.
"Unconditional Surrender."
Dr. Doyle quotes some of the despatches " to
prove how false it is that the British Government
has insisted upon an unconditional surrender. . . .
Nothing has been refused the enemy save only in-
dependence." By one of the accidents which con-
stantly happened to him in writing this pamphlet,
Dr. Doyle altogether overlooked one set of negotia-
tions which give us a perfectly sharp, clear
unmistakable answer to this statement. On June
2nd, 1900, General Buller and General Botha met
on the Natal border.
" I told him [says Buller — Cd. 458] my terms were that his
men should surrender all guns and return to their farms, and
if they did that they could take their rifles with them, subject
to the understanding that Lord Roberts will later, probably,
order their disarmament. ... I said that to talk about
independence was nonsense ; if hereafter they behaved them-
selves they might become an independent colony, that was the
only chance they had. I think they are inclined to give in,
and that I have in front of me about half the Transvaal
forces now in the field."
78
Bailer reported this to Lord Roberts, who replied
j)eremptorily : —
My terms with the Transvaal Government
are Unconditional Surrender.
In the Address debate of last year, Lord Salisbury
declared in the Lords that " unless we are masters
and conquerors there is no hope," while Mr,
Balfour's formula in the Commons was " abso-
lute, complete conquest and control." The
Commander-in-Chief put into the two plainest
possible words what has been the real demand of
the Minister who afterwards spoke of the war as
a feather in his cap ever since he espoused the
Rhodesian cause.
The Issue for Imperial EngrlAnd.
If I were dealing here with Dr. Conan Doyle as
a politician, I should have to consider his advice
that the exiled burghers should not be returned
to South Africa, except under some undefined
'* guarantee " — though our Convention obligations
here again arj clearly defined — his advice that
the Boer language should be suppressed, and the
phrases of insult and menace which he levels
against the peoples of Continental Europe, espe-
cially Germany, in his concluding pages. These
things answer themselves ; while on the scores of
points of fact which I have laboriously dealt with
■one by one, thousands of innocent readers will be
-deceived.
We may leave Dr. Doyle to his conscience, and
Mr. Chamberlain to the destiny that awaits Imperial
adventurers. But what is to come upon this
British people who are so easily cajoled, who rise
like simple fish to the cheapest Jingo bait, who
bear with equal stolidity their daily burdens, and the
loads of obloquy that their masters heap upon
them? They stand before the world responsible
for the welfare of an empire whose peoples out-
number them by ten to one and cover one-quarter
of the habitable globe. To justify their Imperial
pretensions they would have to show that they
possess individually and collectively the wisest
political spirit, the purest aims, the strongest
economic base and administrative equipment to be
found in the history of human societies. Some of
m, not without grave consideration, have con-
19
■eluded that [the task is, even on this favourable
hypothesis, an impossible one, that our "white
man's burden" is just the modern analogue of
the stone of Sisyphus. But if our Sisyphus is
to be the easy dupe of millionaire plotters, states-
men abandoned to the most sordid ambitions,
and newspapers without scruple or responsi-
bility, the end must come even more rapidly
than the precedents of Babylon and Egypt,
Carthage and Rome would indicate as probable.
Three years ago it was easy to laugh at *' Little
Englandism." To-day the scoflTer and the braggart
may well be dumb before the spectacle of the
hospitals, and cemeteries, and prisons of South
Africa, the broad fields sown now not with the
food of peace, but with the tares of hatred ; before
the spectacle of the moimting debt and the
declining trade and dying prestige of our father-
land. The future is very dark; all we can say
with certainty is that the sole hope for England
rests in something which is greater than England
herself, which is within the reach of all the sons
of men — desire of truth in the first place, and then
faith in operative reason and magnanimity, whose
aninister is Peace.
London, March 27th, 1902.
LONDON :
PBINTBD BY ALEXANDER AND SHEPHEAED, LTD.,
NORWICH STBBET, FETTEB LAKE) S C.
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11