"in the hope that, in concert with the President, you may arrive at such an arrangement as Her Majesty's Government could accept and recommend to the Uitlander population as a reasonable concession to their just demands and a settlement of the difficulties which have threatened the good relations"
between the two Governments. This was the famous despatch of May 10th, in which Mr. Chamberlain reviewed carefully and exhaustively the whole situation as between the Transvaal and the Imperial Government, and formally accepted the Uitlanders' Petition to the Queen. It was not published until June 14th, i.e., after the Bloemfontein Conference had been held. It was then issued, together with Lord Milner's despatch of May 4th, in a Blue-book containing the complete record of all discussions of Transvaal affairs subsequent to Lord Milner's appointment.
In the course of the next few days communications passed rapidly between Lord Milner, Mr. Chamberlain, President Steyn, and President Krüger, with the result that, on May 18th, President Steyn's invitation was formally accepted, and on the following day it was arranged that the Conference should begin on May 31st. Never was intervention more effective, or less obtrusive. Mr. Hofmeyr's part in the affair was confined apparently to an after-dinner conversation with the High Commissioner. Nor was the directing hand of the Master of the Bond revealed more fully until Lord Roberts's occupation of Bloemfontein placed the British authorities in possession of part of the communications which passed at this time, and during the four succeeding months, between the Cape nationalists and their republican confederates. And even in these documents Hofmeyr's name is rarely found at the end of a letter or telegram. It is Schreiner or Te Water who writes or telegraphs to Steyn or Fischer, adding sometimes, by way of emphasis, "Hofmeyr says" this or that. In the meantime (May 22nd), Lord Milner had telegraphed, for "an indication of the line" which Mr. Chamberlain wished him to take at the Conference. He himself suggested that the franchise question should be put in the foreground; since it would be useless to discuss other matters in dispute until a satisfactory settlement of this all-important question had been achieved. Mr. Chamberlain replied (May 24th), agreeing with the line indicated by Lord Milner:
"I think personally that you should lay all the stress," he telegraphed, "on the question of the franchise in the first instance. Other reforms are less pressing, and will come in time if this can be arranged satisfactorily, and the form of oath modified."
Mr. Chamberlain at the same time authorised Lord Milner to inform the Uitlander petitioners that they might rely upon obtaining the general sympathy of the Imperial Government in the prayers which they had addressed to the Queen.
Motives of Afrikander leaders.
There was no doubt in Lord Milner's mind as to the real motives which had prompted the Afrikander nationalist leaders to make this effort. They recognised at length that he was in earnest, and that Mr. Chamberlain was in earnest, and they desired, above all things, to avoid a crisis which would force a conflict before their ultimate plans had fully matured. Lord Milner knew that any delay which involved the continuance of the present position—a position which was one of moral superiority for the Dutch—would unite the whole of the Dutch, with a section of the British population, against Great Britain within a measurable period. He recognised that the franchise question was the one issue which could be raised between the paramount Power and the South African Republic in which the whole of the Cape Dutch would not throw in their lot bodily with their republican kinsmen. This very anxiety on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr to prevent the decisive action of the Imperial Government was evidence of the truth of his estimate. But as a response to the appeal of the Graaf Reinet speech, this Afrikander mediation came too late. "Hands off" the Transvaal was the first plank in the platform of the Schreiner Ministry; "reform" was a second and subsidiary plank, adopted in place of the first only when they had been driven to abandon it by Lord Milner's resolution and statesmanship. But the purpose of the Ministry now, no less than before, was to hinder, and not to help, the British Government in obtaining justice for the Uitlanders. Moreover, the Transvaal armaments were well advanced, and the Pretoria Executive was too deeply committed to a policy of defiance to allow it to draw back without humiliation. Nevertheless, Lord Milner felt bound to avail himself of any prospect of peace that the Conference might afford. When, however, Mr. Schreiner, in bringing President Steyn's telegram, had said that he regarded the proposal as "a great step in advance on the part of President Krüger," Lord Milner had replied that he could "hardly take that view, as the invitation did not emanate from President Krüger himself," and contained no indication of "the basis or subject of discussion."
Krüger's obduracy.
The High Commissioner was right. The slight degree in which any appeal adequate to the occasion was likely to prove acceptable to President Krüger may be gathered from a passage in a letter of Sir Henry de Villiers to President Steyn (May 21st), in which the Chief Justice of the Cape refers to his recent experience in Pretoria when he was on this very errand of "mediation":
"On my recent visit to Pretoria I did not visit the President, as I considered it hopeless to think of making any impression on him; but I saw Reitz, Smuts, and Schalk Burger, who, I thought, would be amenable to argument: but I fear that either my advice had no effect on them, or else their opinion had no weight with the President.