"The very best friends of the Transvaal feel that the Bill providing for the seven years' franchise is not a fair or workable measure.
"I am assuming, of course, that the proposals are such as can be accepted without dishonour.
"I confess I look with horror on a war to be fought by Afrikanders to bolster up President Krüger's régime. I could understand a war in defence of the South African Republic after it has made reasonable concessions to the demands of the new-comers, and after it has displayed the same desire to secure good government as is seen in the Orange Free State; but of such a desire I have not seen the faintest trace."
He alludes again to the doings of Dr. Reitz and Smuts:—
"I have carefully read the latest correspondence, and I am by no means satisfied that the British Resident was guilty of a breach of faith. The utmost I would say is that there was a misunderstanding. The dispatch of the 21st August seems to me to have been wholly unnecessary, unless something happened between the 19th and 21st which led the Transvaal Government to think they had yielded too much. I have heard it said that between those dates a cablegram from Dr. Leyds gave hopes of European intervention...."
Does this telegram exist? It is indeed likely. At any rate the responsibility of the war rests upon those who—be they diplomatists or journalists—have deluded Dr. Leyds to that extent. And the blood which is now shed is on the head of those who still try and persuade the Boers that Russia, Germany, or France is going to interfere.
In Le Siècle of the 3rd September, extracts from the "Blue Book" have been printed. We also find there letters from the 11th of March, 1898, up to the 8th of May, 1899, written by Mr. J.X. Merriman, the Cape Treasurer during the Schreiner Ministry. As he is one of the leaders of the irreconcilable Afrikander group he cannot be suspected of undue sympathy towards England. In his first letter to Mr. Steyn a year before the Uitlanders had petitioned for a redress, fourteen months before the Bloemfontein Conference, eighteen months before the declaration of war, the following passage is to be found:—
"Yet one cannot conceal the fact that the greatest danger to the future lies in the attitude of President Krüger and his vain hope of building up a State on a foundation of a narrow unenlightened minority, and his obstinate rejection of all prospect of using the materials which lie ready to his hand to establish a true Republic on a broad liberal basis. The report of recent discussions in the Volksraad on his finances and their mismanagement fill one with apprehension. Such a state of affairs cannot last, it must break down from inherent rottenness, and it will be well if the fall does not sweep away the freedom of all of us.
"I write in no hostility to the Republics: my own feelings are all in the opposite direction; but the foes of that form of government are too often those of their own household. I am quite sure that you have done what you can in modifying the attitude at Pretoria; but I entreat you, for the welfare of South Africa, to persevere, however unsatisfactory it may be to see your advice flouted and your motives so cruelly misrepresented by a section of colonists.