On the 3rd of February Mr. Bryce expressed his opinions. He affected to disbelieve that there had been any Dutch conspiracy to drive the British from South Africa, and considered that, owing to the menace of the Government in the arrangement of negotiations, the meek Boer had no resource but to prepare for war.
Mr. Goschen admitted the gravity of the situation and the responsibility of the Government en masse. The Cabinet, he decided, must stand or fall together. The Admiralty, in acceptation of its responsibility, had assisted the army with heavy guns without weakening its resources. Lastly, he touched enthusiastically on the exhibition of Colonial loyalty:—
“Before concluding I must say a word with reference to the Colonists. They have been supporting us with unstinted loyalty and unstinted generosity. There has been a spirit shown by the Colonies of affection to the mother country which has been the admiration of the world. May we not suggest that that unstinted loyalty and that unstinted generosity is to some extent a reward for the consideration which has been shown the Colonies for some time past; and is it not right to remember that for years there has not been a Secretary for the Colonies who has so endeavoured to win the affection of the Colonies as the right hon. gentleman who now holds that office? You tax us with not having shown foresight and judgment. At all events our treatment of the Colonies has ensured, not their loyalty—that will always be there—but the enthusiastic impulse of the Colonies to come to the assistance of the mother country. We have a great work to do; we want to do that work, and now hon. gentlemen opposite move an amendment the only object of which could be to damage and weaken the Government, who are the instruments of the national will. If hon. gentlemen opposite do not wish to take our places and to bear the burden which rests on our shoulders, is it wise to endeavour to shake the confidence of the country in the men who must continue this war, and gather together all the forces of the Empire to bring it to a successful conclusion? Supposing there should be a division which could be called a bad division for the Government, what would the cheers which would greet that division mean? They would mean, ‘We have succeeded in damaging and weakening the Government.’ The time may come when we will be damaged. If the war is not successful, sweep us away as men who have no judgment, but do not lame the arm of the Executive Government when they have such a work on hand as we have got to do. There has been patriotic co-operation between us and some of the Liberal Party. We thank them for it. I believe this is a Parliamentary bad dream—an interlude between the patriotic attitude of these gentlemen a few weeks ago and the patriotic attitude which I hope we may look forward to when this debate closes. They have assured the country they will support us in going forward. I thank them for that, for it is more important than the petty criticisms to which we have been treated. We are the trustees of the nation for the work that has to be done. The nation will support us, I believe; and so long as we receive that support, God willing, we will fulfil our task.”
Sir E. Clarke, among other things, said:—
“He did not believe the annexation of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State would be of the slightest benefit to the country. The annexation of the two Republics would compel us to very greatly increase our already enormous military expenditure, and it would not give us any advantage commensurate with the difficulties of administration. He had no desire to press his own views, which were singular, and certainly not popular, on that side of the House. He only pleaded that this question might be left open, and that Ministers might not pledge themselves to a course which would involve so great a sacrifice. While he agreed generally with the doctrine of Cabinet responsibility, he considered that the real responsibility for the war lay with the Colonial Secretary. The Prime Minister, in whom all England put the greatest confidence, having many other things to deal with, and being distressed by domestic anxieties, might not have been able to attend so closely as he otherwise would have done to South African affairs; but it could not be gainsaid that there were two men, one in this country and the other in South Africa, who must be associated with the beginning of the war. He wished that the highest sentiments of patriotism would induce those two men to leave to others the positions they now occupied. He believed that the difficulties involved in a solution of the questions arising out of the war would be increased by the fact that the lines of communication and action in South Africa were in the hands of the Colonial Secretary and Sir A. Milner. He had not a word to say about the honesty of these two gentlemen; but if, for a few weeks or a few months, in this grave national crisis and time of deep anxiety, others could take their places—if the Prime Minister himself would take under his own control the communications of the Colonial Office with South Africa, and if Lord Rosebery would give his services to the country, and go out to South Africa to assist in a solution of the difficulties, it would be a sacrifice not too great to ask even from the greatest men among us, and one for which the country would be very grateful. He had said that he was not going to make a controversial speech. He did not think he had. If he had, it had been with no intention of personal attack or party bitterness, but with the deep conviction that in deciding on the great issues with which Parliament had to deal we had to consider not only the things of to-day but the things of the future.”
Mr. Chamberlain’s speech on the 5th of February was an advance on former proceedings. Sir William Harcourt dilated on the indomitable energy of a free people fighting for their independence, praised the gallantry of the troops, and blamed the Government for being led by the opinions of the authors of the Jameson Raid, to which the Colonial Secretary made dignified reply. Finally he questioned—
“How do we meet the charge of mistakes? Not by denying the mistakes, but by saying what we have done and what we are doing to repair them. You say we sent too few troops. We are pouring troops into South Africa, and, as you have been told, in a few weeks you will have an army of 200,000. You said we were forgetful of the need for mounted men. We have been increasing the number of horse infantry until in a very short time the number of mounted men in the British forces will be almost as great, if not as great, as the total number of mounted men in the Boer army. You say our artillery is deficient and not heavy enough. We have sent battery after battery, until now you have an unexampled force of that arm. We have at the same time added a number of heavier guns. When the war began, no doubt the needs of the war were under-estimated at that time; it is part of the same mistake. We failed to respond as we ought to have done to the splendid offers that came from our Colonies. We accepted enough to show how much we valued their assistance, but we hesitated to put on them any greater strain than necessary. But what is happening now? They are multiplying their forces, and every offer is gratefully and promptly appreciated and accepted. And we shall have in this war before it is over an army of Colonials called to the aid of Her Majesty who will outnumber the British army at Waterloo and nearly equal to the total British force in the Crimea.”
In conclusion he said:—
“In Africa these two races, so interesting, so admirable, each in its own way, though different in some things, will now, at any rate, have learned to respect one another. I hear a great deal about the animosity which will remain after the war, but I hope I am not too sanguine when I say that I do not believe in it. When matters have settled down, when equal rights are assured to both the white races, I believe that both will enjoy the land together in settled peace and prosperity. Meanwhile, we are finding out the weak spots in our armour, and trying to remedy them. We are finding out the infinite potential resources of the Empire; we are advancing steadily, if slowly, to the realisation of that great federation of our race which will inevitably make for peace, liberty, and justice.”
On the following night Mr. Asquith, on Talleyrand’s principle—that speech is given us to hide our thoughts—dilated interestingly on the position, his sympathies oscillating between the Opposition, the Government, and Mr. Kruger. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman declared it to be the duty of the Opposition to press Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice’s amendment to a division. He inferred that the conspiracy of the Cape Dutch was a chimera, and went so far as to suggest that when our military supremacy was asserted in South Africa the question of settlement might be left to decide itself sine die! Said he: “Provided that our territories are free and our military supremacy asserted, what matters it at what time or what place a settlement is arrived at?”