Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

One of these is that the contending parties were at one moment all but agreed. The Transvaal Government offered to give the suffrage after five years residence (which was what had been asked by the High Commissioner at Bloemfontein) coupled with certain conditions, which had little importance, and were afterwards so explained as to have even less. This was, from their point of view, a great concession, one to which they expected opposition from the more conservative section of their own burghers. The British negotiators, though they have since stated that they meant substantially to accept this proposal, sent a reply whose treatment of the conditions was understood as a refusal, and which appeared to raise further questions; and when the Transvaal went back to a previous offer, which had previously been held to furnish a basis for agreement, the British Government declined to recur to that basis, as being no longer tenable after the later offer. The Boers, who had expected (from informal communications) that the five years offer would be readily accepted, seem to have thought that there was no longer any chance of a settlement, because fresh demands would follow each concession. They ought, however, to have persevered with their five years offer, which they could the more easily have done because they had tacitly dropped the unsustainable claim to be a "sovereign and independent state," and expressed themselves ready to abide by the Convention of 1884. The British Government, on its part, would seem to have thought, when the five years offer was withdrawn because the conditions attached to it were not accepted, that the Boers had been trifling with them, and resolved to exact all they demanded, even though less than all would have represented a diplomatic victory. Thus a conflict was precipitated which a more cautious and tactful policy might have avoided.

The controversy continued through three months to turn on the question of the franchise, nor were any demands for the redress of Uitlander grievances ever formulated and addressed to the Transvaal either under the Convention of 1884 or in respect of the general rights at international law which Britain possessed. When the franchise negotiations came to an impasse, the British Government announced (September 22nd) that their demands and scheme for a "final settlement of the issues created by the policy of the Republic"—a phrase which pointed to something more than the redress of grievances—would be presented to the Republic. These demands, however, never were presented at all. After an interval of seventeen days from the announcement just mentioned, the Transvaal declared war (October 9th and 11th). The terms of their ultimatum were offensive and peremptory, such as no Government could have been expected to listen to. Apart, however, from the language of the ultimatum, a declaration of war must have been looked for. From the middle of July the British Government had been strengthening its garrison in South Africa, and the despatch of one body of troops after another had been proclaimed with much emphasis in the English newspapers. Early in October it was announced that the Reserves would be called out and a powerful force despatched. The Transvaal had meantime been also preparing for war, so that the sending of British troops might well, after the beginning of September, be justified as a necessary precaution, since the forces then in South Africa were inferior in numbers to those the Boers could muster. But when the latter knew that an overwhelming force would soon confront them, and draw round them a net of steel, whence they could not escape, they resolved to seize the only advantage they possessed, the advantage of time, and to smite before their enemy was ready. It was therefore, only in a technical or formal sense that they can be said to have begun the war; for a weak State, which sees its enemy approach with a power that will soon be irresistible, has only two alternatives, to submit or to attack at once. In such a quarrel the responsibility does not necessarily rest with those who strike first. It rests with those whose action has made bloodshed inevitable.

A singular result of the course things took was that war broke out before any legitimate casus belli had arisen. Some one has observed that whereas many wars have been waged to gain subjects, none was ever waged before to get rid of subjects by making it easier for them to pass under another allegiance. The franchise, however, did not constitute a legitimate cause of war, for the British Government always admitted they had no right to demand it. The real cause of war was the menacing language of Britain, coupled with her preparations for war. These led the Boers also to arm, and, as happened with the arming and counter-arming of Prussia and Austria in 1866, when each expected an attack from the other, war inevitably followed. To brandish the sword before a cause for war has been shown not only impairs the prospect of a peaceful settlement, but may give the world ground for believing that war is intended.

By making the concession of the franchise the aim of their efforts, and supporting it by demonstrations which drove their antagonist to arms, the British Government placed themselves before the world in the position of having caused a war without ever formulating a casus belli, and thereby exposed their country to unfavourable comment from other nations. The British negotiators were, it may be said, placed in a dilemma by the distance which separated their army from South Africa, and which obliged them to move troops earlier than they need otherwise have done, even at the risk (which, however, they do not seem to have fully grasped) of precipitating war. But this difficulty might have been avoided in one of two ways. They might have pressed their suggestion for an extension of the franchise in an amicable way, without threats and without moving troops, and have thereby kept matters from coming to a crisis. Or, on the other hand, if they thought that the doggedness of the Transvaal would yield to nothing but threats, they might have formulated demands, not for the franchise, but for the redress of grievances, demands the refusal or evasion of which would constitute a proper cause of war, and have, simultaneously with the presentation of those demands, sent to South Africa a force sufficient at least for the defence of their own territory. The course actually taken missed the advantages of either of these courses. It brought on war before the Colonies were in a due state of defence, and it failed to justify war by showing any cause for it such as the usage of civilized States recognizes.

As Cavour said that any one can govern with a state of siege, so strong Powers dealing with weak ones are prone to think that any kind of diplomacy will do. The British Government, confident in its strength, seems to have overlooked not only the need for taking up a sound legal position, but the importance of retaining the good will of the Colonial Dutch, and of preventing the Orange Free State from taking sides with the Transvaal. This was sure to happen if Britain was, or seemed to be, the aggressor. Now the British Government by the attitude of menace it adopted while discussing the franchise question, which furnished no cause for war, by the importance it seemed to attach to the utterances of the body calling itself the Uitlander Council in Johannesburg (a body which was in the strongest opposition to the Transvaal authorities), as well as by other methods scarcely consistent with diplomatic usage, led both the Transvaal and the Free State to believe that they meant to press matters to extremities, and that much more than the franchise or the removal of certain grievances was involved; in fact, that the independence of the Republic itself was at stake.[2]

They cannot have intended this, and indeed they expressly disclaimed designs on the independence of the Transvaal. Nevertheless the Free State, when it saw negotiations stopped after September 22nd, and an overwhelming British force ordered to South Africa while the proposals foreshadowed in the despatch of September 22nd remained undisclosed, became convinced that Britain meant to crush the Transvaal. Being bound by treaty to support the Transvaal if the latter was unjustly attacked, and holding the conduct of Britain in refusing arbitration and resorting to force without a casus belli to constitute an unjust attack, the Free State Volksraad and burghers, who had done their utmost to avert war, unhesitatingly threw in their lot with the sister Republic. The act was desperate, but it was chivalric. The Free State, hitherto happy, prosperous and peaceful, had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Few of her statesmen can have doubted that Britain must prevail and that their Republic would share the ruin which awaited the Transvaal Dutch. Nevertheless honour and the sense of kinship prevailed. It is to be hoped that the excited language in which the passionate feelings of the Free State have found expression will not prevent Englishmen from recognizing in the conduct of this little community a heroic quality which they would admire if they met it in the annals of ancient Greece.

It has been suggested that the question of responsibility for the war is really a trivial one, because the negotiations were all along, on one side or on both, unreal and delusive, masking the conviction of both parties that they must come to blows at last. It is said that a conflict for supremacy between the English and Dutch races in South Africa was inevitable, and it is even alleged that there was a long-standing conspiracy among the Dutch, as well in the Colonies as in the Republics, to overmaster the British element and oust Britain from the country.

On this hypothesis several observations may be made.

One is that it seems to be an afterthought, intended to excuse the failure of diplomacy to untie the knot. No one who studies the despatches can think that either the Transvaal Government or the British Government regarded war as inevitable when the one made, and the other sent a reply intended to accept, the proposals of August 19th. Nothing is easier than to bring charges of bad faith, but he who peruses these despatches with an impartial mind will find little or nothing to justify any such imputation on either party. Another is, that the allegation that a calamity was inevitable is one so easy to make and so hard to refute that it is constantly employed to close an embarrassing discussion. You cannot argue with a fatalist, any more than with a prophet. Nations whose conscience is clear, statesmen who have foresight and insight, do not throw the blame for their failures upon Destiny. The chieftain in Homer, whose folly has brought disaster, says, "It is not I who am the cause of this: it is Zeus, and Fate, and the Fury that walketh in darkness." "It could not have been helped anyhow," "It was bound to come"—phrases such as these are the last refuge of despairing incompetence.

The hypothesis that the Dutch all over South Africa were leagued for the overthrow of British power is so startling that it needs to be supported by wide and weighty evidence. Is such evidence forthcoming? It has not been produced. One who has not been in South Africa since 1895 dare not rely on his own observation to deny the allegation. But neither can Englishmen at home accept the assertions of partisans in South Africa, the extravagance of whose language shows that they have been carried away by party passion.