It was, however, not President Krüger alone who had to decide—it affected the Bond as a whole. The diplomatic contest so far proved just the thing to ripen conditions for the meditated Bond coup d'état. An alternative offer of a seven years' franchise was interposed as a mere ruse. Never for a moment did the Afrikaner Bond leaders waver or quail in the face of resolute firmness, display of force, or even of moral pressure and notes of advice from imposing quarters, as Mr. Chamberlain had at first still fondly hoped. To the Bond it had all resolved itself to a mere question of time, of choosing the most opportune moment when to assume the aggressive. British attitude had only hastened the issue. Mr. Jan Hofmeyer had indeed been sent for from the Cape so as to assure that section of the Bond of Transvaal firmness, but he found no sign of flinching or of renouncing the common object laboured for so long and then so near fruition. The only difficulty was that British action had hastened the issue somewhat too fast. Hence the repeated hurried visits of the Bond leaders—Jan Hofmeyer, Abraham Fisher, and others—the frequent caucus meetings of the Executive in consultation with those delegates, the secret midnight sessions of the combined Volksraads and Executive, the prolonged telegraphic conferences between the two Presidents, and the final resulting word of "ready" which preceded the fatal war ultimatum. The Gordian knot had been in evidence many years ago; it is now recognised with regret that England had deferred action for cutting it much too long.
But why not agree to arbitration, it will be asked, that peaceable method so strenuously appealed for by the Transvaal Government and advocated by her partisans, to adjust all differences, of which the suzerainty claim and the Uitlander question appeared to be the principal ones? The reply is not that England was unwilling, but because the Transvaal was insincere, and the request was a cover for shameless duplicity, for, while it had been declared by the former that the claim to suzerainty would be left in abeyance and that infractions of convention which had been committed by the latter would be overlooked in consideration of future friendly relations and co-operation, the Transvaal Government in reality never for a moment meant to be content with less than British overthrow and complete Boer supremacy in South Africa, and efforts and intrigues were never relaxed, in concert with the Bond, to compass those objects.
AFRIKANER BOND GUILT IN GRADATIONS
The promiscuous details and incidents, together with the circumstantial and primâ facie evidence thus far adduced in arraigning the Afrikaner Bond combination, point mostly to conditions existent before the war broke out. We had the smoke before the conflagration—it is a wonder how people could manage to ignore the menace. Now the war torch is over us in its full luridness.
Ordinary fires, if not kindled, originate either from accident, spontaneous combustion, or incendiarism. With war the origin may be traced to similar causes either singly or in combination, or, when we cannot hit the exact diagnosis, we explain it with a handy word and call it evolution, as we may do in the case of the present Anglo-Boer conflict.
We may for a moment review the material and then also the agencies and incentives which operated that evolution against harmony and peace, and to which the conflagration is due. We have noted the legal acquisition of the Cape Colonies by Great Britain, the equally recognised occupation under treaties with England of the two Boer Republics, the English and Boer races in progress of friendly assimilation and in happy prosperity all over South Africa. This was essentially the position in 1881, until it became gradually marred by an invidious element. We have further noted the declining condition of Holland, its moribund language, and finally the prospects which South Africa presented for that nation's restoration to powerful significance, the English factor only standing in the way.
The next aspect brings out the marring manifestations: greed of land and of conquest with the Pretoria-Bloemfontein combination; malignant sedition in the Cape Colonies, urged by lust to participate more directly in the wealth of gold and diamonds in the north and to share general plunder—both categories of covetousness merged into one purulent fester by men of conceited ambition, all cemented with collusion, but the whole of it devised, engineered, and operated by the most malignant agencies from Holland under the coaching of the evil one himself.
The reader may be able to assess the degrees of guilt of each category—of the Republican Boer aspirant for land, the Colonial Boer rebel seeking his particular profit, the accomplices who for ambitious ends lead the first two, and the insidious Hollander intriguers who seduced and actuated all in order to seize the lion's share of the spoliation.
To sum up, the respective rewards which lured them all are: Plunder for the Boers and rebels, laurels and "fat" places for the Bond leaders, and a substantial harvest for entire Holland, with pæans of praise for the coterie and Dr. Leyds from a grateful people for successfully restoring the good fortunes of the Dutch nation, and for effecting a retributive vendetta upon England, all under world-wide, gloating acclaims of gratified and vindictive jealousy.