Lord Milner's Work in South Africa / From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902

by W. Basil Worsfold

Milner in the Transvaal.

Lord Milner left Capetown to assume the administration of the new colonies on February 28th, 1901. The incidents of his journey northwards are illustrative alike of the state of South Africa at this time, and of the varied responsibilities of the High Commissioner. After three months of continuous and successful conflict with the forces of rebellion in the south, he was suddenly confronted with a situation in the north even more pregnant with the possibilities of disaster. This was the day on which Commandant-General Louis Botha entered the British lines at Middelburg to treat for peace with General Lord Kitchener; and many counsels of precaution sped northwards upon the wires as the High Commissioner's train crossed the plains and wound slowly up through the mountain passes that led to the higher levels of the Karroo plateau. March 1st, which was spent in the train, was the most idle day that Lord Milner had passed for many months. The respite was of short duration. At midnight, directly after the train had left De Aar junction, a long telegram from Lord Kitchener, giving the substance of his interview with Botha, caught the High Commissioner. But if peace was in the air in the north, war held the field in the south. From De Aar to Bloemfontein the railway line was astir with British troops, concentrating or dispersing, in pursuit of De Wet. At Bloemfontein station Lord Milner was met (March 2nd) by Lord Kitchener, and the nature of the reply to be given to Botha was discussed between them. On the next morning Lord Milner's saloon car was attached to the Commander-in-Chief's train, and a long telegram was drafted and despatched to London.[272] The position which Lord Milner took up on this occasion, and afterwards at the final negotiations of Vereeniging, was that which he had himself condensed in the two words "never again." He was anxious for peace; no man more than he; but a peace upon terms that would leave South Africa with the remotest prospect of a return to the abnormal political conditions which had made the war inevitable, he regarded as a disaster to be avoided at all costs. This telegram despatched, the train left Bloemfontein, and, in spite of more than one sign of the proximity of the Boer raiders, it reached Pretoria without delay at 9 a.m. on March 4th. The next ten days Lord Milner remained at the capital of the Transvaal, in constant communication with the Home Government on the subject of the peace negotiations[273] with the Boers, which ultimately proved abortive; but on the 9th he went over to Johannesburg for the day to see the house which was being prepared for his occupation. On the 15th he left Pretoria finally for Johannesburg. He was received at the station by a guard of honour furnished by the Rand Rifles, and, thus escorted, drove to Sunnyside, a pleasant house in what is now the suburb of Parktown, commanding an unbroken view over the veld to the Magaliesberg range beyond Pretoria; and here he continued to reside until he left South Africa on April 2nd, 1905.

By permission of the Argus Printing and Publishing Co., Ltd., Johannesburg.
LORD MILNER AT SUNNYSIDE.

Affairs in the Cape colony.

From this time forward (March 15th, 1901), Lord Milner's administrative activity is primarily concerned with the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Owing, however, to the continued resistance of the Boers and the extension of the area of hostilities by the second invasion of the Cape Colony, the administrative development of the new colonies was confined within the narrowest limits, until six months of strenuous military operations had enabled Lord Kitchener to render the protected areas and the railways virtually secure against the raids of the Boer commandos. Four out of these six months were occupied by Lord Milner's second visit to England (May-August, 1901). But before we approach this episode, and thereby resume the main current of the narrative, it is necessary to trace the course of events in the Cape Colony. With the government of the Colony once more in the hands of the British party, Lord Milner had been relieved of the acute and constant anxieties that marked his official relationship to the Afrikander Ministry. On the vital question of the necessity of establishing British authority upon terms that would make any repetition of the war impossible, Sir Gordon Sprigg and his ministers were absolutely at one with Lord Milner and the Home Government. Whatever differences of opinion arose subsequently between the Cape ministers and the Imperial authorities were differences not of principle but of detail. For the most part they were such as would have manifested themselves in any circumstances in a country where the civil government was compelled, by the exigencies of war, to surrender some of its powers to the military authority.

The Bond and peace.

By supporting the Treason Bill, Mr. Schreiner and Sir Richard Solomon had dissociated themselves from the Afrikander nationalists; and henceforward their influence was used unreservedly on the side of British supremacy.[274] On the other hand, Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer, as we have seen, had openly denounced the policy of the Imperial Government, and no less openly advocated the aims, and defended the methods, of the Afrikander Bond. The Bond's determination to do all in its power to secure the independence of the Boers, and thereby defeat the policy of the Imperial Government, was manifested by the abrupt refusal of its leaders to associate themselves with the efforts of the Burgher Peace Committee. Mr. P. de Wet and the other peace delegates who had visited the Colony in the circumstances already mentioned, desired the Bond to co-operate with them by informing the republican leaders that they must expect no military assistance from the Afrikander party, and by formally advising them to end the war in the interests of the Afrikander population. The details of the incident, as recorded in the Blue-book,[275] show that Mr. Theron, the President of the Provincial Bestuur of the Bond and a member of the Legislative Assembly, was at first disposed to regard the proposal of the peace delegates with favour. But, after expressing himself to this effect at Wellington, on February 15th, 1901, he went to Capetown to consult the Bond leaders on the matter, and, as the result of this consultation, he wrote to Mr. de Wet, five days later, declining to meet the peace delegates again, or negotiate with them, on the ground that the "principles of the Afrikander Bond" would be prejudiced by his entering into official negotiations with the deputation, whose official status he was unable, after inquiry, to recognise. It is difficult not to connect this summary treatment of the peace delegates by the Bond with the fact that, just at this time, General C. de Wet was reporting to General Louis Botha that the "Cape Colony had risen to a man."[276] However this may be, the wholesale manner in which the Afrikander Bond had identified itself in the country districts with the Boer invaders is sufficiently displayed by a return published six months later, from which it appears that, out of a total of thirty-three men holding official positions in the Bond organisation in three districts in the Cape Colony, twenty-seven were accused of high treason, of whom twenty-four were convicted, two absconded, and one was acquitted.[277]

With the Bond in this mood, with certain districts practically maintaining the enemy and certain other districts constantly exposed to the incursions of the guerilla leaders, with a large proportion of the loyalist population fighting at the front, and a still larger number organised for local defence, and with the whole of the Colony, except the ports, under martial law, it was obviously impossible for the machinery of representative government to continue in its normal course.