"Try and persuade President Krüger to confer a benefit on the whole of South Africa by granting a broad measure of reform, and you will have done the best day's work any statesman ever did in South Africa."
Two months after the declaration of war, while the Boers' military operations were somehow successful he wrote to Mr. Piet de Wet also a member of the Cape Parliament—"it is hopeless...."
"If the Republics had not made the fatal mistake of sending the ultimatum when they did, things would have gone differently; but it is of no use going back on what might have been."
His letter had no effect upon Mr. de Wet, who now is under trial for high treason along with three other Members of the House.
There are other letters, among them one written by Mr. Te Water, who left the Schreiner Ministry. In a speech delivered at Graaff-Reinet some time ago he has declared that the Cape Government ought not to have allowed the railway lines to be used by English troops. Yet in a letter to President Steyn on the 8th of May, 1899, he asked him to put pressure upon "our friends in Pretoria" to adopt conciliatory measures. Alluding to the impending Conference he writes:—
"In your position you as go-between can do endless good towards arriving at an understanding at such Conference. I know well that there is a party who will do everything possible to prevent this."
Nevertheless he also is in favour of the policy advocated by Mr. Melius de Villiers:—
"We must now play to win time. Governments are not perpetual. It is honestly now the time to yield a little, however one may later again tighten the rope."
This shows how this former Minister at the Cape meant to abide by Conventions. How Mr. Krüger did abide by the Conventions of 1881 and 1884 is a well-known fact. No wonder if England was suspicious of the "ridiculous proposals," to use Mr. de Villiers' phrase, offered by President Krüger. The letters written by Mr. Te Water and Mr. Melius de Villiers show that there was good reason for suspicion. These letters show also what responsibility has been assumed by the members of the Liberal party who sided so eagerly with Mr. Krüger and by those who, like Mr. Stead, backed at first Mr. Rhodes' policy with all their might (so Mr. Clark wrote to General Joubert, Mr. Krüger, and President Steyn) and were blind enough to imagine that their party was strong enough to elbow out the Government and revert to Mr. Gladstone's policy after Majuba. Had they been more far-sighted they would have recognised that the Transvaal had since 1881 condemned itself, and that no Ministry, be it Liberal or Conservative, could follow again in the steps of Mr. Gladstone.