And of the troops, which under his command had successfully accomplished a military task of unparalleled difficulty, he wrote:
"The protracted struggle which has for so long caused suffering to South Africa has at length terminated, and I should fail to do justice to my own feelings if at this moment I neglected to bear testimony to the patience, tenacity, and heroism which has been displayed by all ranks of His Majesty's forces, Imperial and Colonial, during the whole course of the war. Nothing but the qualities of bravery and endurance in our troops could have overcome the difficulties of this campaign, or have finally enabled the empire to reap the fruits of all its sacrifices."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 344: An onomatopœic expression for the step of a tired horse.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 345: The Three Years' War.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 346: [The Transvaal Government]—"or rather the President and his advisers—committed the fatal mistake of trying to maintain a government which was at the same time undemocratic and incompetent.... An exclusive government may be pardoned if it is efficient; an inefficient government, if it rests upon the people. But a government which is both inefficient and exclusive incurs a weight of odium under which it must ultimately sink; and this was the kind of government which the Transvaal attempted to maintain. They ought, therefore, to have either extended their franchise or reformed their administration" (Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, 2nd Ed., 1900). Mr. Bryce is not likely to have been unduly severe. "The political sin of the Transvaal against the Uitlander, therefore, was no mere matter of detail—of less or more—but was fundamental in its denial of elementary political right." And again: In the Transvaal "an armed minority holds the power, compels the majority to pay the taxes, denies it representation, and misgoverns it with the money extorted" (Captain Mahan, The Merits of the Transvaal Dispute, 1900 [included in The Problem of Asia]). To these, perhaps, I may be permitted to add the following words spoken by myself in 1894—more than a year before the Raid—and published in 1895 (South Africa: a Study, etc.):—"The Boer has still to justify his possession of these ample pastures, these rich and fertile valleys, and these stores of gold and of coal. If he can enlarge his mind, if he can reform existing abuses, if he can expand an archaic system of government and render it sufficiently elastic to meet the requirements of an enlarged population and important and increasing industries—well and good. If not, let the Boer beware; for he will place himself in conflict with the intelligence and the progress of South Africa. Then the Boer system will be condemned by a higher authority than the Colonial Office or the opinion of England; and from the high court of Nature—a court from which no appeal lies—the inexorable decree will go forth: 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?'"[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 347: See admissions of the Boer Generals quoted supra.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 348: "The South African Republic will conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen." Captain Mahan writes: "In refusing the Transvaal that independence in foreign relations which would enable other states to hold it directly accountable, Great Britain retained, in so far, responsibility that foreigners should be so treated as to give no just cause for reclamations.... Great Britain, by retaining the ultimate control of foreign relations, and by her well-defined purpose not to permit interference in the Transvaal by a foreign Power, was responsible for conditions of wrong to foreign citizens within its borders. She had surrendered the right to interfere, as suzerain, with internal affairs; but she had not relieved herself, as by a grant of full independence and sovereignty she might have done, from responsibility for injury due to internal maladministration, any more than the United States was relieved of the responsibility to Italy [in the case of the Italian citizens lynched at New Orleans] by the state sovereignty of Louisiana" (Ibid.). And, says the same writer, a fortiori was Great Britain justified in interfering on behalf of her own subjects.[Back to Main Text]