Why the raid failed.
But, unsuccessful as was the actual expedition, the decision to "ride in" had secured the intervention of the Imperial Government. If intervention could have done what Rhodes expected of it, Dr. Jameson's decision to "ride in" would have gained, at the cost of few lives and no increase of the national debt, what the war gained four years later at the cost of twenty thousand lives and £220,000,000. As it was, it failed to win the franchise for the Uitlanders. Why did not Lord Rosmead, with so strong a Colonial Secretary as Mr. Chamberlain at his back, brush the Raid aside, and address himself to the removal of the greater wrong that gave it birth? If Lord Rosmead had acted in the spirit of Mr. Chamberlain's despatches; if he had reminded the Government of the Republic from the first "that the danger from which they had just escaped was real, and one which, if the causes which led up to it were not removed, might recur, although in a different form"; if he had used "plain language" to President Krüger; and if, above all, he had remembered—as Mr. Chamberlain reminded him—that "the people of Johannesburg had surrendered in the belief that reasonable concessions would have been arranged through his intervention, and until these were granted, or were definitely promised to him by the President, the root-causes of the recent troubles would remain,"—might he not yet have saved South Africa for the empire without subjecting her to the dread arbitrament of the sword?
Mr. Chamberlain.
It is in the answer to this question that we find the actual cause of the utter failure of Rhodes's plan. The truth is that success in any real sense—that is to say, success which would have strengthened British supremacy and promoted the union of European South Africa—was impossible. The sole response which Lord Rosmead returned to Mr. Chamberlain's counsels was the weary confession: "The question of concessions to Uitlanders has never been discussed between President Krüger and myself." The methods employed by Rhodes were so questionable that no High Commissioner could have allowed the Imperial Government to have derived any advantage from them. To have gained the franchise for the Uitlanders as the result of violent and unscrupulous action, would have inflicted an enduring injury upon the British cause in South Africa for which the enfranchisement itself would have been small compensation. The disclosure of these methods and, with them, of the hollowness of Rhodes's alliance with the Afrikander Bond, alarmed and incensed the whole Dutch population of South Africa. What this meant Lord Rosmead knew, and Mr. Chamberlain did not know. The ten years' truce between the forces of the Afrikander nationalists and the paramount Power was at an end. To combat these forces something better than the methods of the Raid was required. Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis! No modern race have excelled the Dutch in courage and endurance. In Europe they had successfully defended their independence against the flower of the armies of Spain, Austria, and France. The South African Dutch were not inferior in these qualities to the people of the parent stock. If such a race, embarked upon what it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to be overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as strong. None the less the active sympathy with the Uitlanders exhibited in Mr. Chamberlain's despatches was welcomed by the British as evidence that the new Colonial Secretary was more alert and determined than his predecessors. For the first time in the history of British administration in South Africa, Downing Street had shown itself more zealous than Capetown. It was the solitary ray of light that broke the universal gloom in which South Africa was enshrouded by the catastrophe of the Raid.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER II
THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS[16]
Carl Borckenhagen.
In the face of the colossal resistance offered to the British arms by the Boers and their colonial kinsmen in the South African War, it may seem unnecessary to produce any evidence in support of the contention that the military strength then displayed by the Dutch in South Africa was the result of long and careful preparation. But the same inability to grasp the facts of the South African situation which kept the Army Corps in England three months after it should have been sent to the Cape, is still to be met with. This attitude of mind—whether it be a consciousness of moral rectitude, or a mere insular disdain of looking at things from any but a British point of view—is still to be observed in the statements of those politicians who will even now deny that any trace of a definite plan of action, or of a concerted purpose, which could properly be described as a "conspiracy" against British supremacy was to be found among the Dutch population of South Africa as a whole, prior to the outbreak of the war. It is for the benefit of such politicians in part, and still more with a view of bringing the mind of the reader into something approaching a direct contact with the actual working of the Afrikander mind, that I transcribe a statement of the pure doctrine of the Bond, as it was expounded by the German, Borckenhagen, and his followers in the Free State. It will, however, be convenient to preface the quotation with a word of explanation in respect both of the text and the personality of Borckenhagen.
The passage, which is taken verbatim from a work entitled, "The Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed," is a collection of sentences gathered from Dutch pamphlets and articles "emanating from Holland," and translated literally into the somewhat uncouth English of the text. The author of the work, Mr. C. H. Thomas, was for many years a burgher of the Free State, where he shared the opinions of President Brand, and subsequently supported Mr. J. G. Fraser in opposing the policy of "closer union" with the South African Republic, advocated by Brand's successor, Mr. F. W. Reitz. The point of view from which the Dutch of Holland regarded the nationalist movement in South Africa was succinctly stated in an article published by the Amsterdam Handelsblad in 1881.
"The future of England lies in India, and the future of Holland in South Africa.... When our capitalists vigorously develop this trade, and, for example, form a syndicate to buy Delagoa Bay from Portugal, then a railway from Capetown to Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Delagoa Bay will be a lucrative investment. And when, in course of time, the Dutch language shall universally prevail in South Africa, this most extensive territory will become a North America for Holland, and enable us to balance the Anglo-Saxon race."[17]