A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

On October 9, 1899, while Mr. Chamberlain was preparing new proposals, an ultimatum was received from President Kruger, demanding an affirmative answer within forty-eight hours; failing in which, it would be considered a virtual declaration of war. Sir Alfred Milner replied: "You will inform your Government that the conditions demanded are such as Her Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss."

On the afternoon of October 11th, the war had commenced, with General Buller in command of the British forces, and General Joubert, aided by General Cronje, commanding the Boers.

Before November 2d three serious engagements had taken place, and the English had been compelled to fall back upon their base of supplies at Ladysmith, where, after an ineffectual sortie on October 30th, they were surrounded and their communications cut off.

The campaign continued to be a story of humiliating defeats until December, when Lord Roberts assumed supreme command, with Lord Kitchener as his chief of staff. England thoroughly aroused was sending men and supplies in unstinted measure for the great emergency, and the world looked on in amazement as 200,000 British soldiers under the greatest British commanders were kept at bay for something less than three years by 30,000 untrained Boers. The British Government had forgotten that these South African colonists were the children of a French Huguenot ancestry which had defied Louis XIV., and of the men who cut the dykes when the Netherlands were invaded by that same tyrant. Some one had wittily said that no member of the Cabinet should be allowed to cast his vote for the war, until he had read Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic." And, indeed, it appeared to many that the view of the Government was focussed upon one single point, the establishing of British authority at any cost in South Africa. At the same time many eminent Englishmen believed it was not to be expected that a community so long established in a home of its own choosing, should upon demand be ready to bestow upon foreigners all the rights of citizenship; and many also believed that the grievances of the "Outlanders" were not greater than ordinarily existed when a mass of foreign immigrants were pressing in upon a people who suspected and disliked them. The sympathy of foreign states was strongly with the Boers; and in England itself the cause evoked a languid enthusiasm, until aroused by disaster, and until the pride of the nation was touched by loss of prestige. The danger, the enormous difficulties to be overcome, the privations and suffering of their boys, these were the things which awoke the dormant enthusiasm in the heart of the nation. And when the only son of Lord Roberts had been offered as a sacrifice, and then a son of Lord Dufferin, and then, Prince Victor, October 29, 1900, grandson of the Queen herself, the cause had become sacred, and one for which any loyal Briton would be willing to die.

By September 1, 1900, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal had been formally proclaimed by Lord Roberts, "Colonies of the British Empire."

This was the beginning of the end, and when the victorious commander (December 2, 1900) arrived in England amid the plaudits of a grateful nation, the victory was practically won, and the time was at hand when not far from twenty thousand British soldiers would be lying under the sod six thousand miles away, in a land, which no longer disputed the sovereignty of England!

We have yet to see whether the South African colonial possessions have been paid for too dearly, with nine fierce Kaffir wars (another threatening as this is written), and the blood of princes, peers, and commoners poured as if it were water into the African soil. Is England richer or poorer for this outpouring of blood and treasure? Has she risen or fallen in the estimation of the world, as she uncovers her stores of gold and diamonds among those valiant but defeated Boers, sullenly brooding over the past, with no love in their hearts.

Not the least pitiful incident in the whole story was the voluntary exile of the man who had been the brain and soul of the South African Republics. Indeed, the life of Paul Kruger, from the day when he trudged beside the bullocks at the time of the great northward trek, until he died a disappointed, embittered old man, a fugitive and an exile, seems an epitome of the cause to which his life was devoted.

No story of this war, however brief, can omit the name of De Wet, the most distinguished of the Boer generals, and perhaps the one genius, certainly the most romantic figure in the whole drama. It was De Wet's faculty for disappearing and reappearing at unexpected place and moment which prolonged the war even after the end was inevitable, thus justifying the title "Three Years' War," which he gave to a subsequent history of the conflict.

The dedication to this book bears pathetic testimony to the character of the man: "This work is dedicated to my fellow-subjects of the British Empire." When one reflects what these words meant for De Wet, one is inclined to believe that his highest heroism was not attained on the battle field!