ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-BOER WAR REVEALED

The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked

By C.H. THOMAS

of Belfast Transvaal formerly Orange Free State Burgher

SECOND EDITION

LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON

27 PATERNOSTER ROW MCM

Butler & Tanner The Selwood Printing Works Frome and London

NOTICE

The present book had been intended for publication in South Africa before the end of 1899, with the object of laying bare the wicked and delusive aims of the Afrikaner Bond combination, to which the Anglo-Boer war alone is attributable, and to counteract its disastrous influences so far as then still possible. But until quite lately circumstances had conspired so as to prevent the writer from leaving the Transvaal, and when he at last obtained the required passport to Lourenço Marques he was there denied a permit to visit a colonial port. He therefore sailed for London in order to publish this book without more loss of time. Though too late to serve as a deterrent, the contents may be effective towards showing up the really guilty parties—the instigators and seducers of the deluded Boer nation, and so pave and widen the avenue of peace and of conciliation between Boer and Briton who were duped and victimized alike.

The exposure of the actual culprits and originators should also operate favourably, and in mitigation in behalf of the much less guilty Boers, so as to dispose the victors to the exercise of magnanimous consideration. In exposing the villainy of the Dutch coterie in Holland, the writer is far from impugning the honourable character of that nation, the better part of whom, when once undeceived, will be the first to reprobate and disown those arch-plotters who sacrificed the peace of South Africa for personal and national advantage.

Some other information regarding the Boers and South Africa will be found interspersed in this study, which will be found of use to the uninitiated and to intending emigrants to that sub-continent. As the reader proceeds with the examination of this book it will suggest comparisons and even analogies which may commend themselves as singularly apposite and instructive in relation with the study of the presently budding Eastern question.

C.H. THOMAS

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

The issue of a Second Edition has afforded an opportunity to correct a few linguistic blemishes, but the work has only been very slightly revised.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Apart from the progress of the present Anglo-Boer war a world-wide interest has been excited also upon the question of its actual origin. Much disparity of opinion prevails yet as to how it was provoked and upon which side the guilt of it all lay.

English statesmen of noblest character and best discriminating gifts are seen professing opposite convictions; one party earnestly asserting the complete blamelessness of their Government, whilst the other, with equally sincere assurance, denounces the responsible Ministry for having provoked a most unjust war against a totally inoffensive people, whose only fault consisted in asserting its love of freedom, and for thus plunging the entire British nation into blackest guilt deserving universal reprobation, a blot and stigma upon Her Majesty's reign.

In following the course of the arguments which have led to those opposing verdicts, one is impressed with the paucity and the clashing character of the information adduced. The marked reticence on the part of the British Cabinet in regard to its diplomatic proceedings tends further to mystify the inquirer, and leaves the bulk of the British nation in a painful state of suspense without conclusive data for judging whether the war is really justifiable or not.

Nor do the various pamphlets and Press articles furnish sufficient light for exploring the maze and producing an approximate unanimity of conviction.

It is hoped that the succeeding pages will be found to supplement the material so essential for diagnosing those grave questions with some degree of certainty, and to locate the guilt more precisely.

Since my youth I have passed nearly forty years in uninterrupted and intimate intercourse with all classes of Boers, resulting in a sincere attachment to that people, with no small appreciation of its many good traits and character. Besides making myself familiar with the earlier portion of that nation's history, I have had leisure and opportunities to closely follow up its later interesting phases up to the present moment. These presented a more perplexing aspect during the last decade, adding a zest to my endeavours for unravelling them, and happening to be a good deal in the know I felt that I might not remain quiet.

Being anything but anti-Boer, nor an Englishman, but a foreigner, born of continental parents and brought up in Europe, these facts should exempt me from a supposition of bias in exonerating England. It is with real grief that I must record my convictions against the Boer nation as solely and entirely guilty, but with this qualification, that its responsibility is much attenuated by the fact, as I will endeavour to show, that the bulk of that people has been unconsciously decoyed as tools of a gigantic intrigue, a conspiracy which was originated some thirty years ago by an infamous Hollander coterie, and operated since by its product and engine, the now well-known "Afrikaner Bond Association," with its significant motto of "Afrika voor Afrikaners"[1]—its object being no less than the eviction of all that is English from South Africa, and to substitute a federation of all South African States into one free and independent Republic, the affiliation to be with Holland instead, and Dutch the common and official language, other nations, in return for afforded aid, to participate in the trade and other advantages wrested from England.

I only regret that my ability falls so much short for the task of demonstrating all this in an approved style—for doing justice to the subject. Its investigation embraces a wider range of details to serve as evidence than may, upon first thought, be held as relevant; but I believe that a willing study will show their connection as serviceable for arriving at an independent and unhesitating verdict.

A very strong and convincing case is indeed needed for remodelling opinions where there is preconceived Boer partisanship, and where party spirit or else foreign jealousy have already warped judgment and established bias.

It would be no small relief to every honest-minded person, especially in England, to be clear upon the subject that England is free of guilt—equally so to the soldier who is called upon to fight her battles. But other objects of no less importance are in view, viz., to open the eyes of the misguided Boer people to the wicked artifices by which it has been seduced from friendly relations with England into an unjustifiable war, to deter the still wavering portion from joining the ranks of sedition, and, lastly, the grounds for palliation being recognised, to pave the way to an early termination of the war by adjustments which could restore mutual goodwill and respect between the contending parties, and so bring about a speedy return of South African prosperity and progress.

The writer is fully prepared to give data and names of the incidents adduced in this paper in support of their authenticity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Africa for white African citizens.

CURSORY HISTORY OF THE BOER NATION

The two principal elements of the Boer nation were the settlers of the Dutch trading company at the Cape of Good Hope, sturdy farmers and tradesmen belonging to the proletarian class of Holland, and a subsequent contingent of French Huguenot refugees and their families who joined as colonists soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I mention below the names still existing which form a large proportion of the present Boer nation of Huguenot descent:—

Billion Blignaut Bisseux Delporte
Du prez Du Toit De la Bey Durand
Davel De Langue Duvenage Fourie
Fouché Grove Hugo Jourdan
Lombard Le Roux Roux Lagrange
Labuscaque Maré Marais Malan
Malraison Maynard Malherbe De Meillon
De Marillac Matthée Naudé Nortier
Rousseau Taillard Theron Terblanche
De Villiers Fortier Lindeque Vervier
Vercueil Basson Pinard Duvenage
Celliers de Clercq Leclercq Devinare

Men of the best French stock, noted for honour, energy and perseverance, rather than recant their Protestant faith, abandoned seigneurial homes, high positions and lucrative callings to carve out fresh careers, and even to become humble farmers wherever they found asylums and tolerance, men who became very valuable accessions to the nations who received them and a correspondingly significant loss to France. To those two main elements were added sparse accessions from other nations at later intervals, and also a strain of aboriginal blood, of which a more or less faint tinge is still discernible in some families, an admixture which many deplore and others consider as most serviceable, supplying a subtle piquancy for perfecting the general stock.

The early Cape Governors aimed at the prompt assimilation of those French people with their own colonists—to make Dutchmen of them. Among other drastic enactments to enforce that object, no other language but Dutch was permitted to be used in public of pain of corporal punishment. Not a few noble Frenchmen were subjected to that indignity for inadvertent breaches of that draconian law, but, as conscientious observers of biblical commands which enjoin subjection to all governmental rule, they willingly submitted and obeyed. Intermarriages with their Dutch fellow-colonists further promoted assimilation into one cohesive community. At the same time the Huguenot faith was transmitted to their descendants, and had a marked influence in sustaining common religious fervour and consistency. They did not look for a reward or compensation for the sacrifices endured, for the sake of faith, by those refugees, though a gracious providence, as the sequel showed, held in store a most ample restitution—magnificent heirlooms for their later descendants, heirlooms which are now unhappily staked in this present war.

In 1814 a payment of six millions sterling received by the Prince of Orange closed the transfer of the Dutch Cape settlement to Great Britain. Immigration of English settlers followed and the area of the colony soon largely extended. As under the Dutch régime, the practice of slavery had continued until its abolition in 1833 by the ransom payable by the English Government to the owners of slaves. The Boer colonists deeply resented that act, and especially the next to impracticable condition which provided that payments could only be received in England instead of on the spot. Many were cheated of all their emancipation money by their appointed proxies or agents, or else had to submit to exorbitant charges and commissions; a great number voluntarily renounced all in disgust.

By that time the existence had become known of promising tracts of country lying north of the Orange River beyond the confines of the British colonies, and a large number of Boers combined with the intention of establishing an independent community northwards free from British restraint.

The British authorities appeared at that time not to fully realize that that movement was rife with future dangers and complications to their own colonial interests, that it meant the creation of a nucleus of a people openly averse to the English, and who would independently carry out practices in near proximity, especially in dealing with aborigines, which would seriously compromise them and become a standing menace against peaceful expansion and civilization.

It was, on the other hand, anticipated that the movement could only end in disaster, the people being too few to make a successful stand against the numerous hostile Kaffir tribes. The Government, therefore, refrained from preventive measures, and confined its efforts to discouraging the emigration and to reconcile the malcontents. Those efforts, however, proved fruitless; the people held to their project with resolute fearlessness and self-confidence, and were even content to sacrifice their farms and homesteads, their sale being in some cases forbidden by special enactment.

The terms of "Boer" and "Boer nation" do not convey or mean anything disparaging, rather the contrary. Boer simply means farmer, as a rule the proprietor of a farm of about 3,000 to 10,000 acres, who combines stock-breeding with a variety of other farming enterprises as well, according to the soil and locality. As a national designation, the term "Boer" conveys the distinction from the recently arrived Dutchman, who is called "Hollander." Hollanders, again, delight of late to claim the Boer nation as their kith and kin, but prefer to ignore the existence of the French Huguenot factor.

The great "trek," with families and movables, as the emigration movement is called, occurred in 1836; some families started even before, and other contingents followed shortly afterwards. After many vicissitudes and nearly twenty years of wanderings, and a nomadic life attended with untold hardships and dangers, intermittent conflicts with native tribes, and at times also contests with British forces, they were eventually permitted, under treaty with England, to settle down and to constitute the independent Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics. That was in 1854 and 1852 respectively.

But, until then, progress in the British colonies and peaceful relations with the several Kaffir nations had at times been sadly impeded by the aggressive native policy pursued by the Boers after the pattern adopted from the previous Dutch régime, which admitted of slavery, whilst English law had abolished and forbade that practice as contrary to a soundly moral method of civilizing natives and inimical to prosperous and peaceable colonial progress. Broils and wars between Boers and Kaffirs had been almost incessant, and intervals of peace only proved their mutually latent hostility. Besides being occasionally engaged in unavoidable wars with neighbouring tribes themselves, it became frequently incumbent upon the British military authorities to intervene in conflicts induced by the Boers, alternately protecting them against natives and natives against the Boers, and all that at the unnecessary expenditure of much blood and treasure.

The Boer occupation of Natal was found to be wholly prejudicial to British interests on aforesaid accounts, and was, besides, contrary to the express declaration of the Boer emigrants at the time of their exodus from the Cape Colony, which was that their new settlements should be located north of the Orange River. Stepping in to the eastward and claiming part of the littoral constituted a rivalry in conflict with that understanding, and England therefore considered it within her rights to expel the Boers from Natal, and to proceed with the colonization there with British settlers instead. That temporary occupation of Natal had been fraught to the Boers with most stirring episodes—some of the most melancholy description, and others representing records of really unsurpassed heroism, which can but arouse deepest emotions and admiration in any reader of their history. There was the treacherous massacre of Retief and Potgeiter and his party by the Zulu king Dingaan at his military kraal, followed by other wholesale massacres of men, women, and children at Weenen and other Boer camps in Natal. Then came the punitive expedition of 450 Boers, armed with flint-locks only, who utterly defeated Dingaan's most redoubtable impi of 10,000 warriors, and resulted in the complete overthrow of that Zulu monarch.

When that punitive Boer commando was about to start upon its mission it was solemnly vowed to observe a day of national thanksgiving each year if Divine aid were vouchsafed to accomplish the object. That brilliant victory had occurred on the 16th December, 1838, and the day has ever since been religiously observed as had been vowed. The celebrations in the Transvaal take place at Paarden-kraal, near Johannesburg, and some other accessible and central camping grounds, where the burghers with their families congregate in thousands—a sort of feast of tabernacles, lasting three days, undeterred by the most boisterous weather. The declaration of independence fell on that same date at Paarden-kraal in 1879, and it was also in December of the succeeding year that the Boers proved victorious over the British troops in Natal, after which the Transvaal had its independence generously restored by the Gladstone Ministry (subject to treaty 1881).

On those anniversaries stirring speeches would be made by the elder leading men, rehearsing the events of the nation's history so as to grave them upon the minds of the younger, and to revive the thankful memories of the elder people. It is only in human nature that unsympathetic feelings against the English would intrude upon the thanksgivings on those occasions, especially as it continues yet to be averred that the British authorities had incited the Zulu king Dingaan to those massacres. Nevertheless, except in instances of implacable natures, the predominant sentiments at those gatherings were those of gratitude to the Almighty and good-will towards all men. After the peace of 1881, it used to be publicly recognised that the English were entitled thenceforth to a first place in the nation's friendship, and that the retrocession put a term to all recriminations applying to previous dates.

The sequel has shown that soon afterwards another spirit was allowed to intrude to displace those good and just sentiments, and that without any reason or provocation and despite a persistently loyal and sincere attitude of friendship and confidence observed towards the Boers by the, British Government and the English people in South Africa. As instances may be cited: (1) England's conceding spirit in assenting to a modification of the convention of 1881 and agreeing to that of 1884; (2) genial treatment of the colonial Boers on perfect equality with English colonists, sharing in the privileges of self-government, the Dutch language also raised to equal rights with English; (3) most harmonious relations with the Orange Free State; (4) reduction of transit duties for goods to the Republics to 5 per cent, and later to 3 per cent.; (5) unrestricted privilege for the importations of arms and ammunition to both Republics. In lieu of friendly reciprocity the return began to be rancorous mistrust and revival of hatred.

In the course of our study to account for this sad and unwarrantable change on the part of the Boers we will be following the trail of the serpent and track it right up to its Hollander lair and to its at first unsuspected product, the Afrikaner Bond.

PROSPERITY OF BOERS AND POLITICAL RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND UP TO 1881

A period of about twenty-five years following the establishment of the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics was marked with much progress and prosperity in the Cape Colonies and Natal, both Republics also having cause to rejoice over similar advancement.

The evil influence which aimed at rending good relations between Boer and English became more apparent after 1881. During the preceding era the two races actually had been in a fair way towards friendly assimilation. Mutual appreciation was further stimulated by the reciprocal benefits arising from trade and economic relations. Intermarriages became more frequent under such friendly intercourse, a respectable Englishman being truly prized in those days as a Boer's son-in-law. The English language also largely advanced in favour and prestige not only among the Cape Colonial and Natal Boers, but also in both Republics, and anti-English sentiments were fast being supplanted by amity and goodwill.

The principal event in the Orange Free State during that period was a three years' exhaustive war with the Basuto nation, which ended in the latter's defeat in 1867. Their chief Moshesh then appealed for British intervention. The Basutos thus came under England's protection, and a peace resulted which has ever since continued, through British prestige and authority as well as good government. The Orange Free State gained a large tract of the territory conquered by that State, but had to renounce the rest.

Then, in about 1870, came the discovery of the diamond-fields, situated on the then still ill-defined western limits of the State. According to a boundary line claimed by Great Britain, those diamond-fields fell outside Free State territory. That State received £90,000 compensation for improvements and expenses incurred during its short occupation of that disputed strip of diamondiferous ground. The diamond-fields at Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein were subsequently discovered and lie deep within the confines of the State. President Brand had proved his sagacity and discretion in concluding the negotiations with England upon the question of the peace with the Basutos and then again in submitting to the boundary delimitations, it being contended even yet that the Orange Free State had the weightier arguments in its favour in both instances.

The people of that Republic proved however to be the ultimate gainers in those adjustments; they did not miss the more solid advantages attending the discovery of the diamond-fields. Believed of the grave responsibility involved in governing a turbulent population of foreign diggers, the geographical position of the Kimberley fields secured to the Free State farmers an almost entire monopoly in the supply of products; trade also flourished apace, all tending to enrich the inhabitants and the State revenue as well.

But the Orange Free State derived a permanent advantage, quite unique and more than compensating the apparent set-back suffered by the loss of the diamond-field territory and by British intervention in the Basuto war matter, in that the method of those procedures saddled England with the responsibility of guaranteeing the internal safety of the State from those hitherto unprotected borders "altogether at her own cost." The Keate award completed the British cordon around the Free State, excepting only in regard to the Transvaal frontier. No need thenceforth for costly military provisions for the protection of the State—it was, as it were, walled and fenced in at British expense, and the State revenue was thus for ever relieved of a very heavy item of expenditure, which could be devoted to the increase of the national wealth instead—a peaceful security accompanied with an intrinsic gain constituting a veritable and permanent heirloom for the people of that State.

It is notable that the position of the Orange Free State, without any other access to the sea-board than from colonial ports, made its status and welfare entirely dependent upon the friendly and loyal good faith of England. Up to the present unhappy war that State enjoyed unaltered the best relations without being ever subjected to even a trace of chicanery from the part of Great Britain.

By what illusion, it may well be asked, could that hitherto friendly people have been deluded to risk all in a disloyal breach with England by joining the Transvaal in a "Bond" issue against her best friend? Towards the Transvaal also had England proved her earnest desire to maintain an intercourse on the basis of sincere amity, desirous only of reciprocity, which indeed could be expected in willing return, seeing that England took upon her own shoulders to provide for the protection and welfare of the entire area of South Africa by sea and land, whilst both Republics freely participated in all the great benefits so derived. These considerations should substantially disprove the wicked aspersion lately made that British policy aimed at the subversion of republican autonomy in those two States. All that Great Britain needed and confidently expected in return for her goodwill was friendly adhesion, and a willing recognition of her paramountcy in matters affecting the common weal of South Africa as a whole, and also such reciprocity and mutual concern in the welfare of all as consistently comport with common interests. How fell and malignant the "influence" which operated a treacherous ingratitude and hostility instead!

TRANSVAAL HISTORY—SUZERAINTY

The references made to the history of the Transvaal so far reach up to the rehabilitation of its independence and the convention of 1881. Some of the conditions of that treaty, especially the subordinate position imposed by the suzerainty clause, were found to be repugnant to the burghers. Delegates were therefore commissioned to proceed to England in order to get the treaty so altered as to place the State into the status provided by the Sand River convention, which conceded absolute independence. Mr. Jorrison, a violent anti-English Hollander, was the chief adviser of the members of that delegation.

To that the English Ministry could not assent, but sought to meet the wishes of the people by agreeing to certain modifications of the convention of 1881. This was effected with the treaty of 1884. The delegates had specially urged the renunciation of the suzerainty claim, but that claim appears not to have been abandoned, to judge from the absence of such mention in the novated treaty. Had its renunciation been agreed to, as has been since averred, it is quite certain that the delegates would not have been content without the mention in most distinct terms of that, to them, so important point. It may therefore be assumed as a fact that the negotiations did not result in an active suspension of the relations as set forth in the convention of 1881, and that the Transvaal continued in a status of subordinacy to England, but only with a wider range in regard to conditions of autonomy. To most lay minds it therefore appears perfectly clear that the Transvaal delegates had well understood and accepted, and so had also their Government, that the convention of 1884 was de facto a renewal of that of 1881, with the only difference that it provided an enlarged exercise of autonomy, but without in the least abrogating the principles of respective relations, which were left intact, or at least latent.

It has been averred and a strong point made in the theory of repudiating suzerainty or over-lordship that Lord Kimberley had given the assurance that the right of Transvaal autonomy and independence was meant to equal that of the Orange Free State. This need not be contested, as that Minister obviously relied upon a similar observance of staunch adhesion towards England which that State had shown during a period of thirty years previous; the fact that the Transvaal was quite differently situated as to adjoining territory imposed the necessity, if only as a matter of form, to preserve the written conditions of Transvaal vassalage.

Lord Kimberley, in 1889, intimated the readiness of his Government to afford advisory and other co-operation with the Transvaal Government in order to cope with the new element of foreign immigration, resulting from the discovery of the rich gold-fields, and to provide appropriate relations with a new floating population, without materially altering the status of Transvaal authority, or the methods of government then in practice.

The Transvaal Government, however, preferred to ignore that loyal offer, and to be guided by Bond principles instead. That circumstance affords another proof that England did not then see the necessity, as has subsequently been the case, of strengthening her position against Bond aggression by imposing a demand of general franchise for Uitlanders.

One aspect of the prolonged controversy re suzerainty forced upon England would be to denote a lack of honour, which is not of unfrequent occurrence when one party to a contract seeks by cavil and legal quibble to evade compliance with some of its conditions, simply because the written terms appear to afford scope for doing so. But the principal reason of the Transvaal contention proceeded from the project of gaining over some strong foreign ally who would see an obstacle, if not scruples, in joining common cause whilst England's claim of over-lordship remained unshaken. But for that consideration the Transvaal Government inwardly viewed the whole of the treaties as waste paper, since it was not only intended to violate them all, but also to bring about, at an opportune moment, a hostile severance from England. In the meantime, the academic squabble was to serve as a decoy to hide Transvaal identification with any such sinister objects, and to divert attention and suspicion.

TREATMENT OF UITLANDERS—FRANCHISE

To resume the cursory history of the Transvaal. Mr. Burger, during his Presidency in the early seventies, went to Europe with the mission of attracting capital to the development and exploitation of gold, etc., then already authentically discovered; also, to provide for the building of a railway connecting with Delagoa Bay. The Transvaal Boers were at that time exceedingly poor, and without a sufficient revenue for properly maintaining the administration. Beyond creating a lively interest, his success was confined to an agreement with a company in Holland for building a section of that railroad, which, however, fell through, because the Transvaal proved ultimately unable to furnish its quota of the necessary funds. The present President fared better. A Dutch company styled "The Nederlandsch Zuid Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappy," abbreviated "Z.A.S.M.," undertook the work and completed it in 1887, from the Portuguese border to Pretoria. The line from Pretoria to the Natal border was soon after built, as also several extensions around the Wit-waters Rand, and that from Pretoria to Pietersburg. The section connecting Delagoa Bay as far as the Transvaal border had previously been completed by McMurdo, and is the subject of the present Berne arbitration.[2]

The contract conferred to the Dutch Company a monopoly, and most advantageous financial terms as well. By that time great strides had been made in the development of the Transvaal gold-fields, especially at the Wit-waters Rand (Johannesburg); and immigration on a large scale from all parts of the world had set in, and was constantly increasing with vast amounts of investments in mercantile and other enterprises, as well as in mining industries. At first, equitable laws governed burghers and Uitlanders alike, administered by an independent judiciary. All desirable security was afforded for person and property, with confidence in the safety of investments, and great general prosperity kept pace with ever-increasing activities and enterprise.

It was a great satisfaction to Uitlanders that the peace of 1881, and the reinstatement of Transvaal independence, had restored harmony between Boer and English, and that a policy was being followed to preclude friction between the respective Governments. Those facts largely stimulated investments and enhanced confidence. By 1887 the alien population had already exceeded 100,000, and the capital investments £200,000,000 sterling, and the desire so ardently entertained by the people of the land, for twenty years back, was gratified at last. The burghers shared in the prosperity to a very large degree, and in lieu of former poverty, competence and wealth became the rule, and many of them became exceedingly rich. It was not unusual to hear Boers expressing undisguised gratitude, not merely for the natural gold deposits, but specially also that people had come to prospect and to invest capital, without which the wealth of the land would have remained unexploited and lain fallow. Harmony and cordiality were the proper outcome between foreigners and Boers. The influx of capital and of immigrants continued to increase, but not so the happy conditions. These were gradually getting marred by a spirit of variance, no one seemed to know how. The study of this paper will reveal it. The variance between Boers and Uitlanders began to be specially discernible from 1887 and had been increasing like a blight ever since. This was noticeably coincident with the numerous arrivals of educated Hollanders employed for the railways and the Government administration.

In the earlier period of the Transvaal Republic, one year's residence was first held sufficient for acquiring full franchise or burgher rights and voting qualifications. The condition was successively raised to two, three, and five years; but in 1890 laws were passed which required fourteen years' probation, with conditions which virtually brought the term to twenty-one years, and even then left the acquisition of full franchise to the caprice of field-cornets and higher officials. Englishmen and their descendants were at one time totally and for ever excluded and disqualified just merely because of their nationality whilst Hollanders were admitted in very large numbers without having to pass any probation at all or only comparatively short terms. The English language became a target for hostility and as good as proscribed; impracticable and ludicrous attempts even were made to exclude its use in Johannesburg, where hardly any Uitlander understood Dutch, whilst every Boer official was well versed in English: market and auction sales were to be conducted only in Dutch; bills of fare at hotels and restaurants were also to be in full-fledged Dutch only—and all this, it must be remembered, some years before the Jameson incursion took place.

The judiciary, which, according to the "Grondwet" (Constitution), was the highest legal authority, was by one stroke of enactment rendered subservient and subordinate to the First Volksraad. The then Chief Justice (Kotzee) was ignominiously deposed for honourably contending against the grave departure from right and justice in subverting the sacred prerogative due to the highest tribunal, which Boer and Uitlander alike relied upon for independent justice.

A new system of education was next introduced which admitted only High Dutch as the medium of instruction in public schools. As only Hollander children could benefit by such tuition, and whereas those of other immigrants could not understand that language, the effect was that parents of English and other nationalities had to combine in establishing private schools or else to employ private teachers at their own expense—whilst paying, in the way of taxation, for Hollander public schools as well. That oppressive system was subsequently somewhat modified in a manner which admitted the English language as a medium for a portion of the school hours, the proportion so accorded being larger in Johannesburg and other such wholly English-speaking centres than in other parts of the State; but the amelioration did not take place until after much irritation and expense had been occasioned, nor did it meet the case of hardship more than half-way. I may here place the remark that the public educational department is conducted without stint of expenditure in providing from Holland the amplest and best school equipments and highly salaried Dutch professors and teachers.

Irritating class legislation began to be systematically resorted to, to the prejudice of Uitlanders (the majority of whom, it will be borne in mind, were English), which painfully pointed to a fixed determination on the part of the Boers to lord it over them as a totally inferior class, allowing them no representation, and to treat them, in fact, just as a conquered people placed under tribute and proper only to be dominated and exploited.

Boers could walk or ride about armed to the teeth, whilst Uitlanders were forbidden to possess arms under penalty of confiscation and other punishments (except sporting-guns under special permit). The like irritations became rampant by 1890 already.

The alien population were at first too much occupied with their prosperous vocations to combine in the way of protesting against such prevailing usage. The Press was, however, eventually employed, and the Government was approached with respectful petitions praying for redress of the most glaring causes of discontent; but those were invariably either disdainfully rejected or ignored, or, if some matter was relieved, other more exasperating enactments were defiantly substituted. They were cynically told that they had come to their (the Boer's) country unasked, and were at liberty, and in fact invited, to leave it if the laws did not please them. This was said, well knowing that to leave would involve too great sacrifices of homes and investments. The Uitlanders could not, however, be brought to the belief that the Government of a conscientious people could persist in dealing with them as if a previous design had existed—first to inveigle them and their capital into their midst, with the object of goading and despoiling them afterwards. The course of petitioning and respectful remonstrances was therefore persevered in, but all to no purpose. Indignation and resentment were the natural result of those failures. There appeared no alternative but to submit or else to abandon all and leave the country.

It is true that numerous Uitlanders acquired competences, and some were amassing fortunes, but such prizes were comparatively few. The majority just managed, with varying success, to reap a reasonable return for their outlays and energies, or only to live more or less comfortably. The fashion of luxurious and unthrifty living, so prevalent among the "nouveaux riches" and the section who vied with them, impressed the Boers with the notion that all were getting rich, and that soon there would be nothing left for them in the race. In their Hollander Press they were reminded that the gold, in reality belonging to them, was rapidly being exhausted, and the wealth appropriated by aliens, whose hewers of wood and drawers of water they would finally become. All this galled them to the heart, and the Government readily lent itself to proceedings intended to balance conditions in favour of their burghers, as the process was described. I will adduce a few instances. As is well known, it is only burghers and some privileged Hollanders who are employed in Government service, from President down to policeman. There are very few exceptions to this rule, which also applies to the nominations of jurymen, who are well paid too. The salaries of all, especially in the higher grades, had been largely augmented; the President receiving £8,000 per year, and so on downwards.

For Government supplies and public works the tenders of burghers only, and perhaps of some privileged persons, are accepted. In many instances the tenderers are without any pretence of ability for the performance of the contract, but are nevertheless accepted, performing only a sub rosa rôle. One such instance occurred some years ago when a burgher who did not possess £100—a simple farmer and a kind of "slim" speculator—received by Volksraad vote the contract for building a certain railway.[3] The price included a very large margin to be distributed in places of interest—as douceurs of £1,000 to £5,000 each, and £10,000 for the pro forma contractor and his Volksraad confederates; all those sums were paid out by the firm for whom the contract was actually taken up.

Similarly in contracts for road making, repairing, and making streets, etc., etc. On one occasion a rather highly placed official obtained a contract for repairing certain streets in Pretoria for £60,000. The work being worth £20,000 at most, the difference went to be shared by the several official participants.

One of the first instances of glaring peculation occurred about fifteen years ago in relation with the Selati railway contract obtained by Baron Oppenheim.[4] The procedure was publicly stigmatized as bribery. It had transpired that nearly all the Volksraad's members had received gifts in cash and values ranging each from £50 to £1,000 prior to voting the contract, but what was paid after voting did not become public at the time of exposure.

The acceptance of those gifts was ultimately admitted, in the face of evidence adduced in a certain law case; denial became, in fact, impossible. The plea of exoneration was that those gifts had been freely accepted without pledging the vote. The President publicly exculpated the honourable members, expressing his conviction that none of them could have meant to prejudice the State in their votes for the contract; and as there had been no pledge on their part, the donor had actually incurred the risk of missing his object. From that time the practice of obtaining and selling concessions or of sinecures and other lucrative advantages grew quite into a trade; and receiving douceurs became a hankering passion from highest to lowest, but happily with not a few exceptions where the official's honour was above being priced.

There was nothing shocking in all this venality to the bulk of the Johannesburg speculator class and others of that category. The rest assessed official morality at a depreciated value, but hoped the blemishes might be purged out with other and graver causes for discontent, if Uitlanders, were only granted some effective representation in public matters. That appeared to be the only constitutional remedy. But this continued to be resentfully refused, even in matters which partook of purely domestic interest, such as education, municipal privileges, etc. The latter were opposed upon the specious argument that such extended rights would constitute an imperium in imperio, and thus a condition incompatible with the safety and the conservation of complete control.

In the usual intercourse with burghers and officials a great deal of exasperating and even humiliating experiences had often to be endured, Uitlanders being treated as an inferior class, with scarcely veiled and often with arrogant assumption of superiority.

I witnessed a field cornet enjoying free and courteous hospitality at a Uitlander's house, while being entertained by his host and others in the vernacular Dutch, peremptorily object to the conversation in English in which the lady of the house happened to be engaged with another guest at the further end of the table. His remark was to the effect "that he could not tolerate English being spoken within his hearing"; this was in about 1888.

No wonder that under such conditions and ungenial usage Englishmen and other Uitlanders were put in a resentful mood, and many of them bethought themselves of methods other than constitutional to improve their position.

Identification was resorted to with the Imperial League, a political organization called into being in the Cape Colony to stem Boer assertiveness there and to restrain Bond aspirations. It was also seriously mooted to obtain the good offices of Great Britain as an influence for intervention and remonstrance.

It was not that the Transvaal Government was unaware of its duty and responsibility to remove causes which produced discontent and resentment among by far the larger section of the people under its rule. It seemed rather that the Uitlanders were provoked with systematic intention.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The Berne award has, as is well known, since been given.

[3] The Ermelo-Machadodorp branch.

[4] These very details were since made public in the Belgian Law courts in the recent cause célèbre of "The Government of the South African Republic versus Baron Oppenheim."

MONSTER PETITION—JAMESON INCURSION—ARMAMENTS

It was at this stage in May, 1894, that a monster petition with some 25,000 signatures was presented to the Volksraad, setting forth the entire position, and praying for a commission to be appointed to examine the merits of the Uitlander complaints, and to frame a programme of reforms, the interests of the mining community needing such in a most urgent degree, not only for the sake of its own prosperity, but for the welfare of the entire State. A commission was indeed appointed, who reported in favour of the petitioners, and suggested a series of reforms; but the final Volksraad vote resulted in an angry rejection of the petition and denunciation of its organizers.

As on the occasion of previous memorials, some few abuses were redressed, but those benefits were made worse than nugatory by enactments in other directions of a still more galling nature. The petitioners found themselves snubbed and in the position of humiliating defeat.

Treatment of Coloured British Subjects

A glaring instance of oppression practised by the Transvaal Government was its cruel treatment of coloured British subjects who had been admitted into the State. Among these figured some thousands of educated Asiatic traders, including numerous cultured Indian and Parsee merchants with large stakes in the State and well-appointed residences, people whose very religion exacted the most scrupulous cleanliness and who had all proved themselves obedient and law-abiding. These were classed under one rubric with the vastly inferior coolie labourer, with Kaffirs and Hottentots, and actually compelled to abandon their stores and residences to reside in one common ghetto upon the outskirts of the towns, a measure which entailed great losses apart from the gratuitous humiliation—to many it involved ruin and in fact meant their expulsion.

It will be remembered that some years before already the English Government had felt it incumbent to advocate the cause of coloured British subjects and to remonstrate against their ill-usage. The matter was ultimately submitted to arbitration at Bloemfontein, under the umpireship of Sir Henry de Villiers, whose award, contrary to expectation, was adverse to the coloured people. Here was indeed a unique occasion for the Transvaal Government to exercise geniality upon a point sorely felt by the British Government; but the very contrary course was adopted under the ægis of that notorious award, and upon the untenable plea that sanitation and regard to public health necessitated that measure of segregation.

Despite the fact that no royalty was yet exacted upon the gold output, probably to please French, American, and German investors, there seemed to exist a veiled hostility against the representatives of mining capitalists, as if the Government regretted to have allowed the exploitation of the mines to fall into private hands and would welcome an opportunity to take them under State control altogether.

The Uitlander Press vented public sentiment and denounced the Government attitude in unmistakable terms; there were besides some angry public demonstrations. It was an alarming time of impending crisis, rife with signs of open revolt; the Government looking calmly on awaiting developments. It was then that the President's since famous saying was pronounced, viz., "that the tortoise must first be allowed to put out its head before it could be struck off, and that he was ready for any emergency."

The situation had a truly anomalous aspect. More discoveries of gold and even of diamonds followed apace, and the scope for mining, commercial and industrial enterprises expanded to an incalculable magnitude. All that was needed was a stable and good Government to encourage the needful investments. A most tantalizing picture indeed, based upon undeniably well-grounded facts.

As it was, the situation was one of alarm for capital already invested—a stake then of over 300 millions sterling in a country where more than half of the population were in almost open revolt against a Government commanding very large repressive forces, and resolved to maintain its stand.

British intervention appeared to be the only means of salvation to restore security, and to give a fillip to the brilliant prospects of the country, for the good of the burgher estate as well as for the sake of Uitlanders.

As the Government continued deaf and obdurate to representations, other means were sought for. No wonder the Uitlanders longed for a change, not by any means with the object of altering the style of Republican status, but to get the Augean stable of misgovernment cleansed, to escape oppressive and rapacious Boer domination.

The farcical failure of Dr. Jameson was the outcome of those endeavours. The unspeakable cowardice of his Johannesburg confederates was the chief feature of that puny attempt. Laurels, like those gained by Lord Peterborough, Warren Hastings, or Lord Clive, were not decreed to that ill-advised emulator.

Nothing could have been more propitious than that very Jameson incursion to fan race hatred and to advance the projects of the Afrikaner Bond—"Afrika voor de Afrikaners," for, whilst no one acquainted with the facts can for a moment doubt the guilt of the Transvaal Government for having systematically provoked that attempt at revolution, "Bond" propaganda and paid journalism had a rare chance to set up the theory that annexation on behalf of Great Britain had been foully planned—the Prince of Wales even being an abettor of the attempted coup d'état purely to gratify the lust of greed for the gold and diamonds of the poor innocent Boers. No terms were too vituperative to denounce the enormity. Millions of honest persons all over the world were deluded—there was a bitter cry of almost universal indignation. The Boer Government posed as innocent; the designs of the Afrikaner Bond were not even suspected—its ranks, in sympathy with those delusions sped on filling up faster than ever, and the father of lies was scoring another very sensible triumph.

In lieu of reforms, Bond projects and armaments were secretly pursued with redoubled vigour towards the climax which should install Afrikanerdom supreme in South Africa, financially as well as politically.

BLOEMFONTEIN FRANCHISE CONFERENCE—BOER ULTIMATUM

Capitalists had already begun to feel nervous about the final security of their investments; operations and credit became restricted, fresh projects were abandoned and a persistent withdrawal of capital set in. Trade and prosperity were progressively waning, accompanied with still more ominous portents for the Uitlanders' future. It all meant a very extensive weeding out of investments under enormous losses, except such as stood in relation with dividend-paying mines. England, though apparently apathetic and inactive, was not inattentive to the situation. Whoever had a stake, whether in South Africa or abroad, looked to Great Britain as the Power upon whom the duty devolved to provide a peaceable remedy. The suzerainty controversy was then followed by other questions of diplomatic difference, among which that of the franchise reform. Upon this matter English intervention took an insistent form. It clearly turned all upon that—and once it were satisfactorily arranged, the amicable solution of other questions might in turn be expected to follow. As to suzerainty, that claim appeared relegated to remain in abeyance. A conference was convened at Bloemfontein early in June, 1899, for the discussion of those topics between the Colonial Governor, Sir Alfred Milner, and the Presidents of the two Republics. The outcome was a final demand for the right of representation of the Uitlander interests in the legislative bodies of the Transvaal, amounting to one-fifth of the total aggregate of members, the voting qualifications to consist in the usual reasonable conditions and a residence in the State of five years, operating retrospectively.

We may here consider whether such a demand contained any real feature of unfairness to warrant refusal.

Three-fifths of the entire white Transvaal population were Uitlanders, the majority of them English. They own four-fifths of the total wealth invested in the State. About half of them have been domiciled, with house and other fixed property, for periods of from five to ten years and more.

The preponderance is not only in numbers and wealth, but also in intelligence and in contributing at least four-fifths of the total State revenues.

Is it right or prudent to exclude such interests and such a majority from legislative representation?

Could a minority of one-fifth, that is to say, twelve Uitlander members against forty-eight Boer members, be said to constitute a menace to the status or to the conservative interests of State?

Do Uitlanders not deserve equal recognition with the burghers in respect to intrinsic interest in the land, seeing that the former supplied all the skill and the capital to explore and exploit the mine wealth, all at their risk, and without which it would all have remained hidden and the country continued fallow and poor?

Though one-fifth would be so small a minority, it would at least have afforded the constitutional method of declaring the wishes of Uitlanders, and have done away with the disquieting and less effective practices of Press agitations, public demonstrations, and petitions. The measure could also have been expected to open up the way towards reconciling relations between the English and Boer races, beginning in the Transvaal, where it was hoped that the burghers would be gained over as friends, and so to stand aloof from the Afrikaner Bond. These were the supreme objects for peaceful progress and not for annexation. Solemn assurances from highest quarters were repeatedly given that no designs existed against the integrity of the Republic, that nothing unfriendly lurked behind the franchise demand, but that necessity dictated it for general good and the preservation of peace. Nor were other diplomatic means left unemployed to ensure the acceptance of the franchise reform. In addition to firmness of attitude and a display of actual force, most of the other Powers, including the United States of America, were induced to add their weight of persuasion in urging upon the Transvaal the adoption of the measures demanded by England for correcting the existing trouble. It may be urged that the display of force in sending the first batches of troops would have afforded grounds for exasperation, and be construed by the Transvaal as a menace and actual hostility, tending to precipitate a conflict which it was so earnestly intended to avoid. To this may be replied that the 20,000 men sent in August were readily viewed as placing the hitherto undermanned Colonial garrisons upon an appropriate peace effective only; but not so with respect to the army corps of 50,000 men despatched in September—this was felt as an intended restraint against "Bond" projects, to enforce the observance of any agreement which the Transvaal might for the nonce assent to, and above all it was tending, unless at once opposed by the Bond, to weaken its ranks by producing hesitation and ultimate defection from that body; the die was thus to be cast, duplicity appeared to be played out—the ultimatum of 9th October was the outcome; and England, though unprepared, could not possibly accept it otherwise than as a wilful challenge to war.

As the pursuit of our study will show, the success of Mr. Chamberlain's diplomacy to avert war depended upon the very slender prospects that the Transvaal Government might have been induced to waver, and finally to break with the Afrikaner Bond—a forlorn hope indeed, considering the perfection which that formidable organization had reached. Its cherished objects were not meant to be abandoned. The advice of "Bond" leaders prevailed. War was declared and the Rubicon crossed in enthusiastic expectations of soon realizing the long-deferred Bond motto: "The expulsion of the hateful English."

It is true the Transvaal had made a show of acquiescence to British and foreign pressure. This first took the shape of an offer of a seven years' franchise, and then one of five years, exceeding even Mr. Milner's demands as to the number of Uitlander representation. That of seven years was so fenced in with nugatory trammels and conditions that it had for those reasons to be rejected; whilst that at five years was coupled with the equally unacceptable conditions that the claim of suzerainty should be renounced, and that in all other respects the Transvaal should be recognised as absolutely independent in terms of the Sand River Convention of 1852.

Those offers could hardly have been made in sincerity, but rather as a temporary device and to meet the susceptibilities of the advising Powers, for all the time preparations for war were never relaxed for a moment, but were pushed on with extreme vigour. On the other hand, the British programme seeking to ensure peace by the franchise expedient had been strictly followed without deviation. When the Transvaal Government professed irritation over the disposition of some British troops too near the Transvaal border, they were promptly removed to more remote and less strategic positions, rather than incur the risk of rupture. During the month preceding the outbreak of the war, some large continental consignments of war munitions were, as usual, permitted to reach the Republics unhindered through several Colonial ports, portions being actually smuggled over the Colonial railways as merchandise addressed to a well-known Pretoria firm, but on arrival were secretly delivered, under cover of night, at the various forts and arsenals. These proceedings were carried out with the connivance of the Colonial Bond authorities, and though known to the British Governor, it was all winked at rather than hazard the momentous objects of peace by the introduction of another knotty subject. To sum up the situation, it was a diplomatic contest on the part of Great Britain aiming at peace and to safeguard her possessions and prestige, while the Afrikaner Bond, on the other part, continued active in the work of sedition and preparing for a war of usurpation. Every one must admit that the demand of the British Ministry for an immediate and adequate representation proceeded from the necessity and the desire to overcome the South African crisis in a just and pacific way. The measure was counted upon to effect conciliation between the Uitlander and burgher elements, and as a further result was earnestly hoped to bring about the secession of the Transvaal from the Afrikaner Bond, and so reduce that dangerous confederacy to a somewhat negligible impotence. To discover other objects of a sinister sort lurking behind needs a more than inventive genius. A united Afrikaner Bond, persistent to carry out its fell project, definitely meant war sooner or later. Its first step in launching out to it was that notorious ultimatum, which was tantamount to snatching back the feigned offers of the seven and five years' franchise. According to original programme, the very next step to accomplish the coup d'étatwas the immediate seizure of all Colonial ports, and to complete a general and irrevocable Boer rising all over the Colonies.

All the while the old device had been put into practice of hiding Bond guilt by accusing England of designs against the integrity of the Boer Republics. But directly after, in the exultation of victorious invasions, the mask was shamelessly dropped, and Boerdom stands out defiantly and nakedly self-confessed, aiming at conquest and supremacy over all South Africa. Will the ensuing century have in store an instance to match that record plot of artifice and dissimulation, and see half the world duped into partisanship with it—by journalistic craft?

It may well be imagined that Mr. Chamberlain and his noble colleagues had anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national crisis, and also the stoical endurance of bitter recriminations on the part of an opposition comprising a large and honourable but poorly informed section of the English nation.

BOER LANGUAGE

We come now to the topic of language, which will be found relevant, showing Hollander and Bond influence in using that also as a hostile weapon. What the Boers still speak is a vernacular or dialect so far removed from High Dutch as to be unintelligible to the uninitiated Hollander. It took its form from the dialects brought to the Cape of Good Hope by unlettered Dutch colonists and a large admixture of locally produced idioms, with a slight trace of the structure of the French language in expressing negations. In the two Republics High Dutch rules for official purposes, but in common intercourse the vernacular Dutch is still about the same as it had been a hundred years ago. For an English-Dutch interpreter the thorough knowledge of the vernacular is essential. Preachers and teachers have to adapt their speech by combining High Dutch with the dialect, the one or the other predominating according to the capacity of the hearers. Hollanders follow the same method when learning the vernacular Dutch.

In towns and villages, not only in the Colonies, but also in both Republics, English is almost exclusively used. The Boers, and especially the younger generation, have a much greater aptitude and penchant for learning English than for High Dutch; and generally it has been held more important by the parents that their children should become proficient in English, that language being more easily acquired and of vastly greater use than Dutch. The latter, it was truly averred, would be learnt as they grew up quite sufficiently for all purposes.

The feeling thus existed some twenty years ago that English would become general, and ultimately oust both Dutch and the vernacular. Numerous Boer patriots then devised the remedy of preserving the vernacular by raising it to the standard of a written and printed language for official as well as common use. The Rev. du Toit, later appointed Minister (or Superintendent) of Education in the Transvaal, worked tenaciously towards making that movement a national success. He had the co-operation of many other educated patriots likewise. The Paarl Patriot, a journal published in the vernacular, is one of the surviving efforts. Vocabularies, school books, etc., etc., were printed in that dialect, and the translation of the Bible had also been brought to an advanced stage, when the project had to be abandoned, principally through Hollander influence, aided by some of the Republican leaders and Bond men. Dr. Mansfeld, the present Superintendent of Education in the Transvaal, was subsequently appointed—a very able Hollander, but also a very strong advocate in the general Hollander Bond movement for proscribing the use of the English language, and making High Dutch the compulsory medium of instruction. Since then, and during the past ten years, considerable progress has been made by the average Boer children, and even the grown-up people, in approaching a better knowledge of High Dutch. Before 1880 hardly any Boer cared to read a newspaper except, perhaps, the Paarl Patriot, the vernacular journal referred to. High Dutch and English papers were equally beyond his ready knowledge, but since then the interest in politics gave an impulse to a reading tendency, and at this moment the majority of the Boers manage to read and understand fairly well what is presented in simply written High Dutch by the local Press. They also are fond of simply written books of travels, and especially of narratives of a religious trend. With the Bible they are most familiar from childhood, but literature in High Dutch is beyond them as yet. Greater pains have of late years been taken to qualify Boer sons for the administrative service of the Republics, where imperfect knowledge of High Dutch is an obvious bar to advancement, and Hollanders would otherwise continue to monopolize the better positions.

Taking the fairly educated Free State and Transvaal youth, the average proficiency in English compared to that in High Dutch is as two to one, whilst many possess even a literary mastery in English whilst quite poor in the other language.

In the Cape Colony the above comparison among the Boer section is still more in favour of English.

It may be judged what an important rôle the educated Hollander group can take in those Republics, and are yet aiming at in the Colonies.

It is also worthy of reflection why and how the Dutch language has been raised to equality with English in the Cape Colony, seeing English was more generally understood by the Boers there than High Dutch, and none of the Boer legislators or members of Parliament even now know more than the Dutch vernacular, the High Dutch language having actually yet to be learnt by the Boer population—an important step thus gained by Afrikanerdom under the indulgent ægis of self-government, the thin end of another wedge to nurse sedition and treason introduced by that odious Bond under pretence and veil of Boer patriotism and loyalty.

As one of the world's languages, Dutch figures under a very sorry rôle indeed. It had been ignored everywhere outside of Holland and her distant Colonies. The consequence to Hollanders is that they are of necessity subjected to the ordeal of learning several other continental languages for commercial intercourse, and in order to keep at all abreast with the progress of science, literature, and culture. Dutch is in the moribund stage; its salvation from imminent extinction consists in the expansion of its sphere. Boer successes in South Africa would just accomplish that.

THE DUTCH COTERIE: ITS SEAT IN HOLLAND

As has been shown, the conditions of the two Boer Republics, with High Dutch as the official language, lent themselves to favour the immigration into those States of educated Dutchmen (Hollanders, as they are styled, to distinguish them from the old-established Boer Dutchmen). These were indeed indispensable, as none of the Boers possessed the competence in High Dutch requisite for the conduct of the more important portion of the clerical work in the administration. The professional branches were recruited from Holland likewise, in natural sequence. They were men of high attainments and possessed of energy and astuteness and of various qualifications—doctors, lawyers, editors, clergymen, teachers. Those who did not receive Government appointments quickly found lucrative positions in their vocations. The scope increased as time went by and as those States developed with the growth of the populations and the establishment of numerous towns and villages, especially after the discovery of the diamond-fields in 1870. Every year brought fresh contingents from Holland, including also the commercial class, artisans, and even servants of both sexes, and agriculturists. Preserving a constant intercourse with their native country, those Hollanders also maintained cohesion and clanship among themselves in their newly-adopted homes. Nor did Holland fail to realize the great advantages accruing to that country and its people from the new South African outlets—regular preserves with almost unlimited scope for further extension and for increasing permanent, profitable connections. A formidable barrier presented itself in the gradually ascendant tendencies of the English language and English trade, with corresponding neglect of the Dutch factors. Regretful forebodings aroused energetic efforts to check rival interests. The prize was too valuable, and increasing each year in importance. A dyke needed to be erected to stem the English encroachments and to preserve and consolidate the Hollander position of vantage. The ablest men in Holland and South Africa exercised themselves with that task with an ardour impelled by jealous hatred against the English and intensified by successive revelations of more startling discoveries of gold and other mineral wealth in the Transvaal. It was then, about thirty years ago, that a well-informed, influential and unscrupulous coterie in Holland devised the fell projects which developed into that potential association since known as the Afrikaner Bond.

The building of the Transvaal railway lines brought other large accessions of educated Hollanders, and as they were completed some thousands more were added to serve as permanent staff. Dutch influence was thus attaining strength to assert and consolidate its interests with an expanding impulse. The monopolized railway company promoted immigration from Holland by largely increasing the salaries to such of the staff who were married. The Transvaal Government, under the advice of their educational chief, Dr. Mansfeld, provided similar premiums to secure married teachers from Holland and by raising the salaries of married Hollander officials already placed. The Hollander population attracted to the Transvaal since 1850, and which did not number above 500 in 1870, had increased by 1898 to fully 12,000, representing, as ranged with the Boers, by far the largest factor of educated intelligence, attached to and dependent upon the Government and its staunch allies. The men received full burghership as a rule soon after arrival, exempt from the formalities and probation prescribed by law.

Holland being the locality of the inception, I may say the ingestion, of the Afrikaner Bond, one's thoughts are apt to retrace, by way of contrast, that little nation's creditable past. The view presents those dykes, monuments of labour's heroism; then that glorious resistance against the mighty persecutor of religion, those unsurpassed performances in the arena of culture, arts, and sciences, and that long epoch of success in exploits of colonization, finance, and commerce.

"But view them closer, craft and fraud appear;
Even liberty itself is bartered here."—Goldsmith.[5]

One notes the placid landscapes intersected by those still but deep-flowing rivers and canals, scenes so conducive to mental exercise—the Dutch patriot mourning over the transition of former national prestige to present condition of decadence presaging complete national submersion, but at the same time courageously employing his fertile brain in devising far-reaching projects of remedy over distant perspectives so as to stem that tide of decadence and declension and to erect a firm barrier against that menace—to gain (by inspiration from the titular genius of commerce and craft so conspicuous in that famed art representation[6] exhibited in his Bourse) a dazzling prize for his nation by one fell swoop and, so to say, with folded arms, just by pitting against the English his almost forgotten and long-neglected clan, the Boer nation, inciting them to usurp Great Britain in South Africa, Holland sharing the spoils. See here the master mind exulting in the conception, gestation, and birth of the Afrikaner Bond conspiracy; note the Hollander patriot's glitter of satisfaction at the vista of realizing the restoration of Holland to a position excelling its former glory, of a moribund language revived to significance, and of witnessing besides a sweet vendetta operated upon England, the old enemy and despoiler of his nation, to compass the humiliation and disintegration of the British Empire. Patience, dear reader; preserve judicial composure. Evidence is following on the heels of the charge.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] This is of course not directed against the nation as a whole. See also notice, page vi.

[6] Oil painting in the Amsterdam Exchange building representing Mercurius.

AFRIKANER BOND—OUTLINES AND PROGRAMME

The late Mr. Jan Brand, that noble President who was succeeded by Reitz and now by Steyn in the presidency of the Orange Free State, appeared to have had early intimations, or at least presages, as to the true nature of the Afrikaner Bond, for during the early eighties that association had yet posed as a harmless body, intended to preserve old Boer traditions upon perfectly constitutional lines. President Brand and some others then already suspected more, as the following incident will show. In 1883 President Brand officially opened the new wagon-road bridge over the Caledon River at Commissie drift, near Smithfield, Orange Free State. Towards the conclusion of the ceremony, one of the other speakers, Mr. Advocate Peeters, member of the Volksraad for Smithfield district, in the course of his speech formally suggested that President Brand should accept the leadership of the Orange Free State section of the Afrikaner Bond. The President, addressing the burghers and all present, replied in about the following terms: The proposal just then made by Advocate Peeters had pained and offended him; the festive event would be marred by that incident were it not that it afforded him the opportunity, which he otherwise would have missed, of telling them all what he thought of the Afrikaner Bond—that it was an evil thing; he could not find terms strong enough to warn the people against its subtle seductions. The Afrikaner Bond professed its objects to be peace and harmony, but it really contained the pernicious seeds of division and strife, to set up enmity between English Afrikaners and Boer Afrikaners. He pointed out the sincerity of friendly relations on the part of England towards both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics. The peace which restored to the Transvaal its independence a few years before was one big proof; his Government had many proofs of England's good will, too. It suited both parties to maintain harmony—it behoved every Afrikaner to be one-minded in friendly reciprocation. Through a gracious Providence both Republics were prosperous and enjoyed independence. All over the world the prosperity of States depended upon good relations with their neighbours—this was especially so as regards the Orange Free State. They knew what kind of bond the Bible enjoined. It was the bond of peace and concord; and he concluded by declaring his well-grounded fears that the Afrikaner Bond was a device of the devil directed against the well-being of the entire Afrikaner nation. Instead of being encouraged, it should, like the "Boete Bosch"[7] (Xanthium spinosum, burr weed), be extirpated from the soil of South Africa.

MEMORANDA OF BOND PROGRAMME, EMANATING FROM HOLLAND (TRANSLATION FROM GLEANINGS).

The Afrikaner Bond has as final object what is summed up in its motto of "Afrika voor de Afrikaners."[8] The whole of South Africa belongs by just right to the Afrikaner nation. It is the privilege and duty of every Afrikaner to contribute all in his power towards the expulsion of the English usurper. The States of South Africa to be federated in one independent Republic.

The Afrikaner Bond prepares for this consummation.

Argument in justification:—

(a) The transfer of the Cape Colony to the British Government took place by circumstances of force majeure and without the consent of the Dutch nation, who renounce all claim in favour of the Afrikaner or Boer nation.

(b) Natal is territory which accrued to a contingent of the Boer nation by purchase from the Zulu King, who received the consideration agreed for.

(c) The British authorities expelled the rightful owners from Natal by force of arms without just cause.

The task of the Afrikaner Bond consists in:—

(a) Procuring the staunch adhesion and co-operation of every Afrikaner and other real friend of the cause.

(b) To obtain the sympathy, the moral and effective aid of one or more of the world's Powers.

The means to accomplish those tasks are:—

Personal persuasion, Press propaganda, legislation and diplomacy.

The direction of the application of those means is entrusted to a select body of members eligible for their loyalty to the cause and their abilities and position. That body will conduct such measures as need the observance of special secrecy. Upon the rest of the members will devolve activities of a general character under the direction of the selected chiefs.

One of the indispensable requisites is the proper organization of an effective fund, which is to be regularly sustained. Bond members will aid each other in all relations of public life in preference to non-members.

In the efforts of gaining adherents to the cause it is of importance to distinguish three categories of persons—

(1) The class of Afrikaners who are to some extent deteriorated by assimilative influences with the English race, whose restoration to patriotism will need great efforts, discretion, and patience.

(2)The apparently unthinking and apathetic class, who prefer to relegate all initiative to leaders whom they will loyally follow. This class is the most numerous by far.

(3) The warmly patriotic class, including men gifted with intelligence, energy, and speech, qualified as leaders and apt to exercise influence over the rest.

Among those three classes many exist whose views and religious scruples need to be corrected. Scripture abounds in proofs and salient analogies applying to the situation and justifying our cause. In this, as well as in other directions, the members who work in circulating written propaganda will supply the correct and conclusive arguments accessible to all.

Upon the basis of our just rights, the British Government, if not the entire nation, is the usurping enemy of the Boer nation.

In dealing with an enemy it is justifiable to employ, besides force, also means of a less open character, such as diplomacy and stratagem.

The greatest danger to Afrikanerdom is the English policy of Anglicizing the Boer nation—to submerge it by the process of assimilation.

A distinct attitude of holding aloof from English influences is the only remedy against that peril and for thwarting that insidious policy.

It is only such an attitude that will preserve the nation in its simple faith and habits of morality, and provide safety against the dangers of contamination and pernicious examples, with all their fateful consequences to body and soul.

Let the Dutch language have the place of honour in schools and homes.

Let alliances of marriage with the English be stamped as unpatriotic.[9]

Let every Afrikaner see that he is at all times well armed with the best possible weapons, and maintains the expert use of the rifle among young and old, so as to be ready when duty calls and the time is ripe for asserting the nation's rights and be rid of English thraldom.

Employ teachers only who are animated with truly patriotic sentiments.

Let it be well understood that English domination will also bring religious intolerance and servitude, for it is only a very frail link which separates the English State Church from actual Romanism, and its proselytism en bloc is only a matter of short time.

Equally repugnant and dangerous is England's policy towards the coloured races, whom she aims, for the sake of industrial profit, at elevating to equal rank with whites, in direct conflict with scriptural authority—a policy which incites coloured people to rivalry with their superiors, and can only end in common disaster.

Whilst remaining absolutely independent, the ties of blood relationship and language point to Holland for a domestic base.

As to commerce, Germany, America, and other industrial nations could more than fill the gap left by England, and such connections should be cultivated as a potent means towards obtaining foreign support to our cause and identification with it.

If the mineral wealth of the Transvaal and Orange Free State becomes established—as appears certain from discoveries already made—England will not rest until those are also hers.

The leopard will retain its spots. The independence of both Republics is at stake on that account alone, with the risk that the rightful owners of the land will become the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the usurpers.

There is no alternative hope for the peace and progress of South Africa except by the total excision of the British ulcer.

Reliable signs are not wanting to show that our nation is designed by Providence as the instrument for the recovery of its rights, and for the chastisement of proud, perfidious Albion.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Literally "bush of fines" (fines imposed on landowners where the burr weed was not eradicated).

[8] Africa for the African citizen or African-born whites.

[9] It is notorious that from about 1890 such marriages were denounced from the Boer pulpits and on the occasions of the Independence day anniversaries (16th December).

PACIFIC POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN

During the period of, say, twenty-five years after the inception of the Afrikaner Bond, and while its organization and development were secretly kept at full pace with occurring events, the British Government consistently and openly pursued the policy of bringing about the unification of South Africa. Mr. Froude, a speaker of rare gifts, was sent to lecture upon the topic: this was in about 1873. The Colonial Governor, Sir Bartle Frere, strenuously advocated that union. The lines suggested were a general federation under one protective flag, self-government in the Colonies, and the continuance of uncurtailed autonomic independence in the two Republics. The benefits which such a coalition promised to all concerned in South Africa are obvious. It would guarantee harmony between the two white races without involving the least sacrifice of liberty with any party—it simply meant coincident peace, prosperity and security, and would relieve England of a considerable burden of anxiety. The scheme promised to find all-round acceptance, but, unaccountably, except to Bond men, its greatest opponents were the Cape Colonial Boers. It was, however, confidently hoped that, with patience, opposition and indifference would be overcome, and in view of this no opportunity was lost to prove England's loyal sincerity by genial treatment, by conciliating the various interests, and gratifying the wishes of the Boer communities, and so to ensure the desideratum of complete rapprochement between the white races.

Conferences were convened with the objects of coming to agreements for the establishment of a general South African Customs Union, and for adjusting railway tariffs upon fair bases and a more reliable permanency of rates suggesting reciprocal terms advantageous to the Republics. These efforts also proved fruitless through similar opposition.

The Afrikaner Bond party, as the reader will understand, had ranged itself against all such attempts, whilst successfully masking its own object all the time.

Other differences, which, with a friendly and united spirit, were capable of easy adjustment, were welcomed by that party as grist to its mill in order to widen the gulf and to increase the tension.

Besides the chagrin over the failure of its peace policy, the British Cabinet had finally to admit itself confronted with a very real and ominous national peril, face to face with the South African Medusa, Afrikanerdom, defying Great Britain in preconcerted aggression and revolt. That apparition was all the more startlingly disquieting because of the suddenness with which the magnitude of the menace and its wide perspectives had begun to expand into clearer view. It was interesting to note how the English ministry responded to the call upon its fortitude; the terrifying apparition did not seem to petrify that body of men, despite the galling handicapping consequences through the opposition of part of the nation, which was indeed tantamount to encouraging South African rebels and usurpers.

BOND PRESS PROPAGANDA—SECRET SERVICE—TRADE RIVALRIES

The Bond leaders in Holland and South Africa had at an early stage acted upon Stuart Mill's recognised saying, "that conviction in a cause is of more potent avail than mere interest in it." Among those leaders there was no lack of men of erudition and of psychological science, than whom no one knew better the prime importance of ensuring uniformity of convictions among the Boers and their partisans, and that the public mind needs to be framed and trained so as to view the Boer cause as just and that of the English as odiously wicked. They knew how indispensable the Press is for attaining those objects, how journalism is capable of plausibly representing black as white and to convince people so—that, in fact, it is on occasion an agency of persuasion more potent than armies are. Its needs are unscrupulous pens and ample payments. For money is the sinews of journalism as well as of war, whether the projectiles be charged with lyddite or with lies, whether it is bullets or throwing dust into people's eyes.

We have seen how a few articles (for which a leading French paper received £100,000) were instrumental in enabling the Panama Canal Co. to swindle the French public of forty million pounds sterling, and more recently, where through Press agency it became feasible to a combination of Jesuitism and militarism to seduce by far the greater portion of the noble French nation into frenzied agitation and anti-Semitic excesses, and load the entire people with almost ineffaceable guilt in the matter of that unfortunate Dreyfus. In its Press campaign the Afrikaner Bond employed several leading Colonial organs—the Bloemfontein Express, the Pretoria Volksstem, the Standard and Diggers' News of Johannesburg, and numerous papers of note abroad as well. These were coached, in the usual masterly manner, sophisticating and perverting truth. Whenever a lull occurred in treating one or other of the more salient questions, those South African papers would invariably contain—especially in their Dutch columns—aspersive articles, coupled with invective comments to prejudice the Boer mind and to reawaken anti-English sentiments. It is notable as a proof that the Bond party lacked all occasions for recriminations, so that those papers had to resort for material for their vituperation to distorted incidents of Transvaal history prior to the peace of 1881. There would, for example, be dished up falsely rendered and dramatically coloured and perverted selections, such as the treacherous massacre of Retief's party in 1838, averring that the Zulu king, Dingaan, had been incited thereto by the British authorities; tragic descriptions of events, coupled with the massacres by Zulu impis soon after at Weenen and Blaauwkrantz, averred also to have taken place at the instance of the English Government, and ever and anon references and full tragic descriptions of the Slachtersnek execution in 1816, omitting to state that the Boer culprits were hanged after fair and open trial and conviction by a "Boer" jury for high treason in conspiring with Kaffirs against the Government, which crime had led to bloodshed, and that their relatives had been ordered to witness the execution because they had been abettors and privy to the crime.

Books teaching the history of South Africa were adapted for school use wherein denunciations against the English appear in almost every chapter. Poetry in the vernacular Dutch and pamphlets teeming with like burdens and calumnies also did their share in inspiring race hatred.

Pro-Boer journalism in England and elsewhere abroad had assumed such dimensions, especially during the past decade, as to bring the Secret Service expenditure on that head during recent years to over £100,000 per annum. Dr. Leyds, the Transvaal ambassador, now (December, 1899) in Europe, is known to some to have with him some £250,000 to defray Press expenditure, etc., apart from the millions to which he is authorized to engage his Government in diplomatic projects, such as procuring allies, or to create embroilments and diversions to the prejudice of England.

To sum up the success achieved by anti-English propaganda, we find the Boer nation, from the Zambesi to the Cape, unanimous in convictions as to their fancied claims, their own absolute innocence, and the immeasurable guilt of the British Government, abetted by capitalism—guilt which cries to heaven for retribution; and those convictions take with each man the form of a resolute patriotism wherein mingled fanaticism and religious fervour in their cause form a powerfully sustaining part.

Partisanship outside of Africa counts by millions of individuals and entire peoples; with these it is not so much conviction, but rather persuasion induced by political hatred and the souring effects of jealousy and unsuccessful rivalry. This feature is, of course, most accentuated in Holland, where, with the eyes set upon the loaves and fishes in South Africa, that nation has for some time been "publicly praying" for Boer victory over England. These are instances of mere interest in lieu of genuine convictions. In England the spectacle is more varied. There we see interest where there are paid agencies, and persuasion more or less pronounced induced by political party spirit and also by real convictions. It is in regard to the latter category where perverted journalism triumphs most and stabs deepest, where men of honour and patriotism have adopted views which clash against public interest, and convictions which torture their own minds with grief and shame under the supposed idea of England's unjust attitude towards the Boer people, assuming that a Government majority allows itself to be actuated by base motives.

Is it not attributable in a large proportion to misguided as well as to venal journalism that the Boer cause has so heavily scored?

Was all this not manifest in the divisions of England's counsels, in the hampered progress of her diplomacy, her fateful hesitancy and delay in providing appropriate preventive and protective measures in South Africa?

And as regards the tenacity of those convictions, it is with them as it is in plant life. The longer a tree is in maturing, the harder is it to uproot it.

The activities of Bond propaganda have been in continuance for many years, and the prejudices fostered so long are correspondingly deep-rooted.

Bond patriotism was not long subjected to the strain of individual contributions and unpaid performances. When the Transvaal revenues advanced with such giant strides the Afrikaner Bond leaders in that State contrived arrangements by which the financial requirements were supplied from State receipts. Nor was the least compunction felt in doing so. Was the revenue of the State not chiefly derived from the Uitlander element—from Uitlander investments, which all throve from the nation's own buried gold wealth? No scruples existed to provide from those sources the armaments and all else needed for the common cause of conquest.

A secret service fund of some £40,000 per year only was placed upon the budget list. But this amount was vastly exceeded by the growing requirements of the Afrikaner Bond for expenditure in South Africa alone. It was easily contrived to divert, sub rosa, large State receipts to supply the remaining financial needs. Among these figured, besides the heavy outlays in journalism abroad, gratuities, etc., a large bill also for secret agencies, spies, and the like.

The entire expenditure was under the direction of a few only of the trusted leaders and audited by the chiefs, all being kept otherwise undivulged.

The Transvaal thus became the treasury as well as the arsenal of the entire Afrikaner Bond.

Hundreds of agents were in constant employ in the Cape Colonies and Natal suborning the Boer colonists; many of them occupied positions in various branches of the Colonial Government, and were able to supply information upon any subject and even to influence elections.

There were numerous permanent agents drawing large emoluments in Europe also, and emissaries to different places abroad, some touring in America, England, and the Continent, as the Rev. Mr. Bosman did recently, and also the P.M.G., Isaac van Alphen.

Much energy and money were also devoted to electioneering campaigns, as had notoriously been done in the Cape Colony towards bringing in a Bond majority. Large sums are spent in the diplomatic arena in Holland to propitiate foreign statesmen, soliciting sympathy, and in coquettings for Transvaal allies. One of these attempts that failed had been with Germany. It would appear that some progress had been feasible some years ago in temporarily luring Emperor William to favour a Holland-Transvaal combination, but when that sovereign had at last penetrated the infamous business that lay behind it all, he, as a true "Bayard" promptly washed his hands clean of it, preferring to forego obvious brilliant advantages for his people than to sully Germany's fair fame in a connection amounting to no less than abetting a foul conspiracy.

The readers of the Johannesburg Standard and Diggers' News will remember among the staple attacks upon capitalism quite a series of articles intended to decoy mining artisans and operatives to Boer views. Secret agents were also employed for that purpose, and to induce the belief that the Government was the enemy of capitalism, and would champion its victims (the mining operatives) in the State. It would support miners and the working class generally against attempts to curtail the just rights of labour, and to parade its sincerity actually passed a law constituting eight tours a legal day's labour. With such coquettings it was hoped to gain the miners' confidence and adhesion. Those men were, however, not to be taught by quasi-socialistic professions of concern, and when, some months later, the exodus prior to the war occurred, they nearly all left, much to the disgust and discomfiture of the Government, which had counted upon them to stay to work the mines for its own account when the moment should arrive.

The appropriation of gold mines and their exploitation for Government benefit bring about a singular anomaly for a nation engaged in war, viz., that of a plethora of gold and a scarcity of paper currency, the Transvaal mint coining the sinews of war at the expense of its victims, but the plundered gold after all not equalling commercial paper values.

In connection with the foregoing remarks the following may also be said. States professing neutrality still permit themselves to trade with the Transvaal to a large extent. It is notorious that that State possesses no funds available for payments except the gold derived from the misappropriated mines. The output is seized in its entirety, and not limited to the extent accruing to British scrip holders only. The hustling rivalry of doing business with the Transvaal thus involves receiving stolen money in payment of trade accounts. We see the receivers eager to stand upon the same platform as the thief, thus not only as his political partisans, but also as his accomplices.

DISLOYALTY OF COLONIAL BOERS

The Boer section in the Cape Colonies represents nearly one-half of the white population there. Their representatives in the administration were ever profuse and assertive in professions of loyalty to the Queen and to the English Government, and any aspersions to the contrary were always indignantly and stoutly repelled. The Afrikaner Bond was averred to include nothing to clash with loyal sentiments, no severance from England, but, on the contrary, that its principal objects were to strengthen the lines of amity and joint solidarity in view of a general federation of South Africa upon Imperial bases. In support of such sentiments one of the first acts of the Bond party when recently come into power was a vote of £30,000 per year towards British naval outlays, and in grateful recognition of naval protection; it was at the same time mooted, in fact almost pledged, that the Transvaal would similarly offer £12,000 as well.

The sequel has proven these to be Athenian gifts, for no sooner had the Republican commandoes invaded the Cape Colonies in November last than those identical men enthusiastically welcomed the Queen's enemies as their friends and deliverers from hateful English dominion. There they stood—self-avowed and unmasked traitors. Members of the Legislative Assembly met those Boer invaders with addresses and speeches, assuring them of their own and of every other true Afrikaner's aid and fidelity in their common cause. "The star of liberty," they said, "had arisen at last—it had been the nation's desire and prayers during the past fifteen years." "He could thank God with tears of joy for having granted those prayers." Such were the words of Mr. van der Walt, M.L.A., uttered at Colesberg. Mr. de Wet, M.L.A., Mr. van den Heever, M.L.A., and other colonial notables were spokesmen in similar terms of enthusiasm on other occasions as the invasion advanced. All this is sadly notorious, but still it seems a hard task to convince people who prefer to remain blind or only see a presumptuous adversary in any one who seeks to enlighten them upon this glaring and premeditated treachery.

October and November were months of unrestrained exultation to the Boer party, to judge from letters and articles which appeared in the Standard and Diggers' News, Johannesburg, dated 22nd November, 1899, and in the Pretoria Volksstem, dated 20th November, 1899.[10] There one sees the mask off, in language of defiant insult and of scurrilous mendacity against all that is English, avowing that the present Anglo-Boer War has been the outcome of preparations during the past thirty years. That letter is not all suitable reading for the tender sex, but should serve as evidence to the still unconvinced sceptic that the Boers are fighting for something more than their mere independence and liberty, viz., for conquest and the domination of Afrikanerdom. His Excellency Dr. Leyds may deny all those too previous intentions with his placid effrontery of assumed innocent calm. He may denounce Mr. Chamberlain, Rhodes, Jameson, and even the Prince of Wales, and he may use the old device of posing as innocent by accusing others. The detected robber, however, does not always escape with his booty by running off himself, whilst shouting "Stop, thief!"

Something refreshingly analogous to such attempts of screening and exculpation has been extemporized in Cape journals of late. There, in an ingeniously pretended dissertation, it is invented how ill founded the aspersions are against Mr. Premier Schreiner, and that the acts, upon which he was so wrongly suspected as an amphibious helmsman, are really attributable to another person—by the way, to one at a safe distance, viz., to Mr. F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively deplored the confusion of people's ideas who see anything wrong in the Afrikaner Bond, adding: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do or talk about."

"The peace of South Africa is only possible under Boer supremacy," is the Bond shibboleth. The end justifies the means, even to sedition, to a war of conquest and the wholesale plunder of investors.

Many of the younger Boers in the Cape Colony and Natal had shown a singular ardour in joining the several volunteer corps. They were equipped with uniforms and best weapons, were drilled into efficiency, received pay, and all went on well until the oath of allegiance was to be tendered. This they refused, preferring to resign and to provide arms from other sources—Mauser rifles by preference. This happened some considerable time before the outbreak of the war.

Boer Arguments Denying Uitlanders' Complaints

Many plausible arguments are proffered to prove that Uitlanders' grievances and irritations are purely fictitious, but few, I venture to say, will bear examination. Taxation, for example, is stoutly averred to fall alike upon burgher and Uitlander, but a glance at the long rubric of articles specially taxed will show that the selection is contrived to hit the latter and to spare, or even to protect and benefit, the burgher section.

The gold industry is not charged with a royalty as is customary in other gold-producing countries, but with 5 per cent. only upon the net profits; but here an intolerant and corrupt domination proves much more prejudicial than a heavy royalty would be.

Proper representation would be the remedy and afford contentment, even with higher taxation, but that is refused upon Bond principles.

The Anglo-Boer War is attributed to base motives on the part of the British Government, operating in collusion with capitalism—to England's passion for annexation, her rapacious greed for the Transvaal gold, her inordinate ambition to universal commercial supremacy, etc. What a confusion of assertions and of self-refuting contradictions!

Would England really acquire the Transvaal gold by the annexation of that State, seeing that its mines are already capitalized and as good as expropriated in favour of the host of shareholders, some of whom are English, but the greater portion German, French, and of other nations?

What advantage would accrue to shareholders? Would England, in case of forcible annexation, not be under the necessity of incurring a heavy charge in the increase of her South African garrisons, and so be justified in levying a considerable royalty upon the output, which would materially reduce the dividends? What advantage would arise to England by substituting an unproductive and costly war in South Africa for conditions of peace and prosperity, which alone can yield her commerce profit? England can only derive profit from wars waged between other peoples. And as to the incentive of commercial supremacy, England, while possessing that to a large extent already, freely and voluntarily allows all comers from other nationalities to share the benefits with her by her principle of free trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Extract from Pretoria Volksstem, 20th November, 1899, from a long letter averred to have appeared in the London Times, dated 12th October, 1899, said to have been signed by a well-known Cape Boer, then in England:—

"We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of South Africa from the Zambesi to the Cape. All the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony have been working for years past for this end.

"For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and their yoke at the same instant, and 200,000 Dutch heroes will trample you tinder foot. We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you have got it."

PORTUGUESE TERRITORY—TRANSVAAL LOW VELDT—MALARIA—HORSE SICKNESS

Between the north-eastern borders of the Transvaal and the coast lies the Portuguese colony Mozambique. Its frontier railway station, Ressario Garcia, is near that of the Transvaal, viz., Komati poort, which is 53 miles from Delagoa Bay. A low-lying country extends from the coast about 100 to 200 miles inland, and is tropical. Except some elevated spots, the whole of it is almost uninhabitable in summer by whites on account of malaria. During some specially bad seasons natives even succumb to that malady. The only comparatively safe months are from June to November. Marshy localities, and wherever there is shaded rank vegetation in low-lying parts, are dangerous all the year round; in such places the water is deadly at all times unless first boiled.

This malarial poison is distinct from that which produces yellow fever in America, and is so far unlike it as it is not contagious. The theory is that the poison is produced below the surface by decaying vegetable matter in low and dank parts during the more inactive but still warm and sunny winter season and during the hot months preceding the summer rainfall. Upon the first rains the malarial poison escapes through the then softened crust in the shape of vapoury miasms. This happens during the night, after the surface of the earth has been cooled off. Those miasms are dissipated or neutralised by the action of the sun. The dewy grass retains the poison until it is thoroughly dried to the root. All surface water is liable to that poisonous impregnation. Malarial manifestations occur all over South Africa, but in progressive degrees of virulence with the advance to warmer latitudes, and with the descent from the high table-lands to the coast levels. On the Transvaal high veldt, for example, a mild form is developed which, in midsummer, to a small extent, affects and kills sheep. It is called blaauwtong, and does not affect horses. Descending further, this danger to sheep increases and begins earlier. Below 5,000 feet altitude in the Transvaal the summer season is dangerous to sheep, and horses and mules are subject to horse sickness; whilst lower still the same malaria attains sufficient virulence to attack human beings, and becomes very deadly upon levels nearing the coast. Komati poort, the frontier railway station already mentioned, is dreaded as a still worse death-trap than even Delagoa Bay, where it is very unsafe, say, from December to end of April. The season of horse sickness terminates upon the appearance of the first sharp frost in May. The safeguards for human beings consist in avoidance at night and early morning of low-lying localities, or such elevated places even which are subject to be invaded by miasmatic emanations produced on and wafted from dangerous lower levels. Drink no unboiled water except that from deep wells or rain-water; maintain careful and moderate diet, active habits, but avoiding extreme exertions and excitements; a very sparing use of alcoholic drinks, preferably taken with the regular meals, is admissible.

Donkeys, horned cattle, and goats are exempt from malarial risks.

For horses and mules no certain remedy appears as yet to be known. The best research, on behalf of the Transvaal Government, by specially requisitioned French bacteriologists, assisted by that famous microbe-hunter, Dr. Theiler (Dr. Theiler is the Transvaal veterinary surgeon and chief of the Medical Laboratory, Pretoria, a noted Swiss savant, who, with the aid of the said French experts, discovered the rinderpest inoculation remedy), has failed to find the bacillus of horse sickness. Barely five per cent, of the horses attacked recover, and about ten per cent, of mules. These are then called salted, and are immune from horse sickness; they can after that be safely used in the worst localities, and are correspondingly more valuable. They are, however, liable periodically to light after-attacks, when it is safer to exempt them from work for a day, or for a few hours at least.

Some proprietors of mail coaches are in the habit of administering doses of arsenic to their horses and mules, which are said to operate in lessening the death rate and to favour the salting process.

As safeguards for horses and mules, the following rules have been found to minimise losses in dangerous tracts where the low clinging miasmatic vapours are so deadly during the night and earlier parts of the morning. (During rainfall there is hardly any danger, nor is there after a night's rain for the day following):—

Do not traverse low suspicious tracts during the hours between 9 p.m. and, say, two hours after sunrise, lest poisonous vapours be encountered and inhaled by man or horse.

Choose the most elevated spots for camping out at night. No grazing to be allowed from 10 p.m. to about 10 or 11 a.m., unless it is raining. Dewy grass is fatally poisoned; the heavy moist air close to the surface is also suspected. Grazing is only safe after the soil and grass are dried of all dewy moisture.

Avoid all water of at all a stagnant nature; rather let the animals remain thirsty.

If the animals have been fed with dry fodder during the night, let the first morning stage be moderate and not exhausting. With empty stomachs the task might be somewhat increased, but even then it should be less than any other succeeding stage. When the first symptoms of sickness are noticed they may pass over if the animal is at once freed from work and allowed to rest, or is at most led when marching. Among the most dangerous places for horse sickness and for fever to human beings are the luxurious dongas, ravines, and valleys which abound along the long stretches of mountains and broken country immediately below the high plateaux.

The passes leading up to the high veldt are few in number, and so precipitous as to be almost impracticable for vehicles. Of late years those roads have been allowed to fall into disrepair, in order, it may be supposed, to check wagon traffic and to promote that by railway; apart from the railway, communication with Delagoa Bay would now be impossible. What with the fever climate in summer, and the formidable mountain barriers, the Transvaal high veldt is well protected from aggression from the direction of Delagoa Bay. A few thousand men distributed at the few mountain passes, blocking the tunnel at one of these (at Waterval Boven), and breaking up some few bridges, would effectually arrest the progress of any invading force.

CLIMATE AND TOPOGRAPHY

From the tropical Zambesi regions and the torrid Kalahari plains, down to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming, death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin forests and scrubby stretches; and to the north-west extend the arid, sandy, and stony levels. There are the temperate and fruitful inland reaches along the southern and south-eastern littoral, and again further inward the vast plateaux at 2,000 to 6,500 feet elevation, which represent nearly one-half of the sub-continent with quite other climatic aspects. In the southern and western provinces of the Cape Colony the rainy season occurs during the winter months, probably because of the proximity to the trade wind influences prevailing over the South Atlantic; over the rest of South Africa the winters are dry and sunny, the rains falling in summer, most copiously in December and January, the effect being that there are hardly any winter rigours, and the heat of summer is minimised. The most agreeable climate is that on the higher plateau levels: never hot nor altogether cold, and yet virile and bracing; something like the climate on sunny days found in the higher Alpine regions in summer and in the mild Algerine winters. This climate is found from the Queenstown district at about 3,000 feet elevation, extending north and westwards over the Stormberg, the Orange Free State, and along the lordly Drakensberg range and its spurs some 200 to 300 miles into the Transvaal, where the highest plateau levels occur between Ermelo and to near Lydenburg, viz., 6,500 feet. The Harrismith district near that mountain range is at a similar altitude with an identical climate.

These high tracts are called hoogeveldt or highlands. Their altitude rises steadily with the advance northwards towards warmer latitudes, and with the compensating effect that the climate in the Queenstown district, Bontebok Flats for example, at 3,000 feet elevation, is exactly similar to that in the eastern portions of the Orange Free State at 5,500 feet, right up to near Lydenburg at 6,500 feet altitude, and being some six degrees further north than Queenstown. The northern half of Natal also partakes of that character, though there, as well as over the rest of the eastern slopes of the Drakensberg mountains, the country is more broken and hilly than on the western side. The Cape Colonial high veldt near the Drakensberg range is intersected by high continuations or spurs, but north and westwards those plateaux assume more the real aspect of continuous high plains. There is a gradual descent to the west; from occasional hilly ranges those dwindle to kopjes, and to still less elevated "randjes" occurring in clusters more and more apart, until yet further westwards one gets to the merely undulating sterile approaches of the Karoo and the plains around and beyond Kimberley, which merge at last in the still lower Kalahara desert.

Within 200 or 300 miles from the Drakensberg slopes the country is well-watered, and the rainfall ample and generally regular, but westwards this abundance progressively decreases with a more tardy and precarious rainy season, occasioning at times severe droughts accompanied with correspondingly protracted and very hot weather.

Those high plains make up one vast green sward from the time of the spring rains in September to April. From May the absence of rain, together with the night frosts, shrivel up the herbage, giving the country a pale-brown aspect. This continues until the return of spring, varied with large expanses of black, caused by accidental or intentional grass fires, and here and there a few green spots in specially sheltered and moist localities.

Those burnt spaces may extend for miles, and are for the time veritable deserts. The landscape being quite black and the atmosphere generally very clear, it is obvious that objects of any lighter colour would be conspicuous at very long distances: an ideal background for khaki targets.

Most of the land is well suited for agriculture, but by far the largest proportion is as yet used only for raising sheep, horses and cattle. Angora goats also thrive in the hillier parts. About forty years ago the Karoo plains, the Orange Free State, and Transvaal were, so to say, monopolised by milliards of game. Standing upon an eminence or a swell one could see in all directions, as far as the eye could reach, innumerable herds of all sorts of game grazing, resting or gambolling; the different kinds would be ranged in separate groups and could be distinguished by their special colours—the black-looking wildebeest (gnu) next to the striped quag-gas, the white-flanked springbocks, blesbocks with a blaze on their foreheads, the larger elands and other kinds of the antelope species. Almost all those vast herds have disappeared since, having been killed off by natives and Boers for their hides and for food, or else scared away farther north, where rinderpest extirpated nearly all the rest in 1895-1897.

In the earlier days, and even not so long ago in some parts, the farmers' crops required guarding during the night against the depredations of game. This is still so in the north-western plains of the Cape Colony, as already remarked. In May most of the Harrismith district farmers and those of the Transvaal high veldt move their sheep, horses and cattle to winter in Natal, Swaziland, and to the other extensive low lands most adjacent, to return after the spring rains in September or October. Sheep and horses could not with safety remain longer in those warm regions, as then the fatal malarial blaauwtong begins there to attack sheep, and horse sickness becomes virulent as well. The high veldt, as said before, is exempt from that danger.

Some of the wealthier farmers can arrange it so that they and their families can winter at their comfortable high-veldt homes and send attendants with their cattle to the low veldt, while others, not so well favoured, must close up their houses and accompany their flocks to winter in the warm tracts, where they live in their wagons and tents and escape the outlay for winter clothing.

Owing to the scarcity of wood on the high veldt, kraal fuel used formerly to be the staple substitute. This would be obtained by penning up sheep over-night. The deposits were after a month or two dug out in thick flags, which, after being stacked and dried over the kraal wall, would burn nearly as well and as brightly as wood. The discovery of coal beds in so many accessible places in the Cape Colony, Natal, and in the two Republics has since superseded that sort of fuel to a great extent.

The small divergence between summer and winter temperature upon the high table lands will be seen from the following table taken from observations at 5,500 to 6,000 feet altitude in the Transvaal:—

Fahr. Fahr.
In winter—28° to 40° at night; 35° to 70° by day in the shade.
In summer—40° to 60° at night; 50° to 90° by day in the shade.

It is not often that 85° is reached, and rarely above. This applies equally to the more southern and thus colder latitudes of Queenstown, at 3,000 feet elevation, and to the eastern half of the Orange Free State, at 4,000 to 5,000 feet, the warmth increasing, as said before, proportionately with the descent in altitude, and on occasions of tardy summer rains.

The winter is the most enjoyable of the seasons, being an almost uninterrupted continuation of fine sunny weather. On occasions there would be spells of boisterous weather with a rather sudden and inclement decrease of temperature, brought on by cold south-east winds; if these are accompanied with rain in winter, which, however, rarely happens, it would sometimes turn to sleet or even snow, or else to hard freezing at night. The snow would, however, thaw with the warmth of the sun, and so restore the temperature as before. The bracing quality of the climate mostly consists just in those variations of cool nights and warm days, and the occasional days of comparatively cold, boisterous weather. The latter must indeed be provided against, for even in December—that is to say, in the middle of summer—it would be imprudent to travel without great-coats as well as waterproofs, so as to be protected against unexpected changes, from say, 100° in the sun, almost suddenly to 40° with a driving wind, accompanied perhaps with rain. Such transitions are trying in the open, even if one is well clad, and the blustering weather is sometimes so severe, if it happens in winter or early spring, as to approach the character of a blizzard. One such lasted about thirty hours in the early spring of 1881. It swept over the entire South African plateaux and destroyed great numbers of sheep and cattle. These fell exhausted in their flight before they could reach some sheltering hills or ravines. In situations where such protections from the cold south-east wind were far apart the veldt was on the following day found strewn with their carcases, and upon the still more extensive and unbroken plains antelopes even perished in enormous numbers simply from exhaustion in trying to escape and find shelter from the cold wind.

I will just describe one of those occurrences, the severest in my experience and well remembered by the Free State and the Transvaal Boers—it was, I think, in 1881. One sunny day, early in August (spring time), at a place about twenty miles east of Reddersburg, in the Orange Free State, the wind veered to the south-east, and by afternoon had begun to blow fairly hard and cold, about 35° Fahrenheit—that is to say, about 35° below the temperature of a few hours previously. I had managed to get some milch cows driven near to the kraal, where there would have been very fair shelter for them, but luckily, as the sequel proved, they refused to enter, and rushed past in a scared way, just snatching up one mouthful of forage which had been thrown down to entice them to stay, and making off as hard as they could. The wind did not abate till the day after, when tales kept pouring in of terrible losses of sheep and cattle killed by the cold wind; sheep in open plains had suffered most, and cattle which had been kraaled were nearly all dead, whilst the herds of cattle and horses which had been left grazing out had been driven away and were also believed to have died. At the farm of a certain Andries Bester, near by, some seventy head of cattle in very good condition were found dead, piled up to the level of one of the kraal walls, showing the struggle which some thirty others had in escaping over the mound of dead cattle to the outside of the kraal.

The next day all those thirty head were found grazing some fifteen miles westwards under the lee of hills near Reddersburg, where they had found safe shelter. Everybody's cattle were recovered which had not been kraaled, including mine. This was the case as well with cattle which had been tethered to their transport wagons and which succeeded in breaking loose, whilst the rest were found dead where they had been tied.

There was no possibility of restraining cattle or horses from stampeding—they did it from the instinct of self-preservation, for, whilst running with the wind, its force of driving cold was proportionately lessened, and some loss of heat was made good by the exertion of running, which they had to keep up till in safe shelter of hills or ravines.

Had such a cold storm overtaken an army or patrol, the situation would have been exactly similar, and would have been an ordeal even to experienced Boers or Colonial farmers, and if an enemy had been located near Reddersburg, all the cattle and horses would simply have fallen into his lap.

The obvious safeguard would be a rug for each horse and mule, and for oxen the erection of a shelter against the wind, consisting of all available wagons and stores, or else, if practicable, to move at once to a sheltered locality and always provide a good reserve supply of forage or other provender. That sort of boisterous, cold weather continues sometimes, with more or less severity, two or three days. The want of food and inclemency besides would result in killing the weak cattle and weaken the rest so as to be incapable of work for some days after. The difficulty consists in that such inclement changes occur so suddenly, and that their severity and duration cannot be forecasted.

Upon other much less severe occasions entire gangs of 20-50 Kaffirs, travelling from the warm north to the diamond-fields or gold-mines, and not sufficiently provided with blankets, would be found at their camping places huddled together, nearly all numbed to death. The months when such surprise weather is most liable to occur are from "July to October," before and during the earlier spring rains. It is then, and even up to December at times, that the Drakensberg and other mountains resume their snow-capped winter decorations for some days. There is a saying which fairly well applies to the high-veldt climate, i.e., that cold and inclement weather is not met with until well in towards summer, especially about the time of spring rains, and that hot weather of any considerable continuance mostly occurs in spring. This will be understood upon considering that the midsummer months, December to February, are cooled by very frequent and copious rains, whilst the heat accumulates more during the preceding sunny spring months, which are interrupted at rarer intervals by short showers only.

Upon the whole, and despite the few eccentricities mentioned, the high veldt is favoured with a climate which, for genial comfort all the year round, exempt from prolonged winter rigours and excessive summer heat, is not found anywhere else in the world, or only in rare privileged spots. It is withal most healthy, promoting the highest possible physical development and even longevity.

Under such favoured conditions the hand of man only is needed in providing good habitations, planting trees, in the culture of the soil, and some irrigation labour, to transform nearly every little farm within five to ten years from a bare pastoral monotony to a really idyllic spot. There are many such already in Basutoland, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, as well as in the Cape Colonies and Natal—veritable Eden-like places, as it were bits dropped from heaven. With a continuance of peace these could be multiplied to any extent each year, thus rendering those sparsely inhabited tracts the most beautiful areas in the world, with a prosperous self-sustaining population, quite apart from considerations of mineral wealth.

The foregoing description of the high-veldt climate points to clothing composed of woollen fabrics as the only rational and safe attire for men travelling or taking the field. No constitution could be expected to hold out against the ever-changing temperature and weather if depending upon being clad, for example, in a cotton suit; this would only do on warm days for men who are certain of being safely housed at night and sheltered during rainy weather. Horses and mules in the open should be provided with woollen rugs during winter and spring.

BOER PREPAREDNESS FOR WAR

The ultimatum cabled to England had no sooner expired at 5 p.m. on the 11th October last than the same evening and on the very next and succeeding days appeared, published all over the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, "Government Gazettes extraordinary," filling scores of pages, comprising proclamations of martial law, and the hundred and one enactments and provisions regulating that new condition. Their preambles stated: Whereas in secret session on such and such dates (that is to say, months previous) the honourable First Volksraad had passed this or that law—or whereas the two Volksraads, assembled in secret session, had authorized the Government to frame such and such laws, to come into force immediately after publication. This shows at least a studious purpose months beforehand to be in complete readiness, for it obviously took no little time to prepare all those laws, and have them ready in type for despatch and publication as had been done. It accords with the assumption that war had been predetermined, and this is further confirmed by numerous statements, publicly made by Volksraad members, and also by President Steyn's famous and now historic message to President Krüger some short time before, in the laconic and oracular words, "We are ready."

That the Afrikaner Bond had been for years past preparing for its coup d'état is further shown by the following incidents which can be substantiated by the writer:—

During the days of the Jameson raid a very prominent Transvaal Boer, holding office and who had two sons at the scene of the disturbance, remarked at a public place in conversation with other burghers:—

"England just wants to annex the Transvaal, and no doubt the Orange Free State too. This we know; but what she does not know is, that we can at this moment reverse the tale—we can seize in one day Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban, and within a very short time turn every Englishman out of the Colonies, out of the land which England has robbed us of."

Those words were spoken by a Bond man who is known to rarely speak in public. When asked by a Uitlander how it could be done, he relapsed into his usual prudent reticence, and merely remarked grimly, "We can do it."

But for subsequent revelations and the present sequel those words would have been forgotten, and were at the time attributed by some to mere boastful exuberance.

In July last the topic was discussed by some Boers at the house of a highly placed military official, about the five per cent. tax upon the profits of the gold industry. One said it should be raised to twenty-five per cent. for the benefit of the burgher estate. That official, who, by the way, had just returned from a gathering of country officials at Pretoria, sententiously replied "that it was no more a question of any tribute, but of taking the mines altogether out of the capitalists' hands"; and when another burgher interposed a doubt as to the fairness of such a proceeding, that official continued by saying, "Fairness indeed! it is we who have submitted to unfairness only too long—ons wil nou Engelse schiet (we want now to go on the battue of Englishmen)."

When the Transvaal Government had secured the assent of both Volksraads to the seven years' franchise measure it was thought desirable, as a matter of form and to gain time, to defer the formal passing of the law until after it had been referred to the burghers. This was not done till August last. A large section of the people were known to be against extending the franchise, but the Government had no misgivings about the result, counting upon the persuasive influence of the Volksraad members who were to preside at the plebiscite meetings, and had before been drilled up to their task. Their success was as desired, and the measure became law in due course. Those meetings in the different districts and wards of the State were characterised by almost uniform proceedings, so that the description of one of them can serve for all.

The burghers assembled on the appointed day at the local Government Office. The Landdrost, or chief official of the ward, took the chair. There were four Volksraad members, who each in turn recommended the adoption of the seven years' franchise measure. The burghers were invited to express their views. The majority appeared dead against it, but were gradually appeased, and they finally assented to a motion of approval presented by the chairman, which also conveyed full confidence in the Government and their representatives to deal with the enactment and to modify it as they might consider appropriate.

One of the burghers had in his speech stated in passionate terms that no dictation on the part of Uitlanders could be tolerated; they must either obey the laws or leave the State. The function and prerogative of making laws belonged to the burghers. They had been ill-used enough by the English; it would be still worse, he said, if they were invested with legislative rights. "On the contrary, it is the Boer nation which is entitled to supremacy, not only in the Transvaal but right to the sea. The Cape Colonies," he continued, "are ours by divine right, and so is Natal, and no Afrikaner may rest until we are reinstated." General approbation and stamping of feet followed that passionately rendered speech. Not a word of restraint or censure from any of the four Volksraad members. Some of these had addressed the meeting already, and the others in turn followed. Their speeches had one import, viz., "Burghers! The Government and the two Volksraads have carefully and prayerfully weighed this seven years' franchise measure. You may safely approve of it; it can result in no harm; it will strengthen our cause. We know that England wants our land because of the gold in it; but this law will contribute to thwart her, though it will not avert war. We were a small nation when our fathers trekked to this side of the Orange River; we have become united and strong since. It will be soon seen that our people have to be reckoned with among the other nations of the earth; we have right on our side, and, with God's help, we are certain to prevail. Burghers, you may trust us as your representatives; we are all of one mind with you; you may safely approve of the proposed franchise law, and leave possible modifications in the hands of the Government." Then followed tumultuous approval from the great majority, motions of confidence and of thanks. Those burgher meetings were convened during July and August.

President Krüger is famous for employing clever and original similes in order to illustrate a policy as he wants his people to understand it.

It has already been noted that the Franchise Law of 1890 excluded Uitlanders from full burgher rights until after twenty-one years' probation. The reduction to seven years was proclaimed to be a concession to meet Mr. Chamberlain's demand. The simile, as addressed to the Volksraad and published in the journals, ran as follows:—

"First my coat was demanded of me, which I gave; next were asked my boots, vest, and trousers. I surrendered these as well; and now, as I stand in my bare shirt, my limbs are wanted besides."

The people were thus led to be unanimous in the resolve to oppose any further concession, and to view Sir Alfred Milner's unconditional insistence for a five years' franchise as a conclusive proof that England in reality wanted no less than the country itself. In this way the Boer mind was designedly fashioned into the conviction that war was inevitable, and that both President and people were absolved from all responsibility in it. Had the offered franchise of seven years and the subsequent one of five years been honestly meant, there should, indeed, have been little difficulty for adjusting in the one case the difference of two years; but it being so surrounded by impossible trammels that what purported to be an egg proved more like a stone, and even that was not intended to be given, it was a mere subterfuge to gain time for carrying out Bond designs.

ALLIANCE OF ORANGE FREE STATE WITH TRANSVAAL—SUZERAINTY
SQUABBLE—ARMAMENTS BEFORE JAMESON RAID

The project of alliance between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State had been mooted before 1890. After that came conferences between the respective Presidents and delegates for closer union as it was then styled. Mr. John G. Fraser, one of the noblest and most distinguished Orange Free State statesmen, was conspicuous among the few opponents. His arguments against federation were so logical and conclusive that it seemed for a while that the idea would have to be renounced. Among other grounds adduced against that alliance was the fact that England possessed claims of suzerainty over the Transvaal, and, the Orange Free State itself being entirely independent, the incongruity and incompatibility were obvious of joining a vassal State. There was trouble if not danger lurking behind it, if such two States were to join in an actual federation. Whatever was desirable for mutual advantage might be attained without offensive and defensive alliance. The two Governments, however, knew how to manipulate matters. The closer union scheme was carried through before the Jameson incursion, and soon after that event an offensive and defensive alliance completed the federation. The Afrikaner Bond then had advanced another important stage.

Mr. John G. Fraser's persistent objections to federation, upon the ground that the Transvaal stood under British suzerainty, had given that question a prominence operating against the Afrikaner Bond project, viz., that of gaining a strong Power as ally to its cause. It was felt that no Power could, with decency, enter into a connection with that State while such a claim was maintained. To overcome that obstacle the Transvaal Government proceeded to raise a controversy with England, taking up the position of repudiating the claim of suzerainty, and averring the complete independence of the State, subject only to the one clause re treaties with foreign nations. Another object would be gained, viz., of diverting England from Bond aims by that and similar controversies. To make a show of sincerity about it all, the opinions (foregathered, of course) of certain eminent jurists in England and Holland were obtained, who refuted the claim in elaborate disquisitions and with that readiness of apparent conviction so peculiar to some advocates' affected faith in their clients' cause. Thus England was decoyed into a protracted tournament of words and phrases without any practical result, but gratifying and inspiring no doubt to certain well-paid soi-disant champions of the principle defined as the "perfection of justice," who revel in a display of forensic erudition, which, however, only illustrates to the unedified lay mind how speech is adaptable to veil inward conviction, and how a mass of rhetoric can be employed to justify the breach of simple and well-understood engagements.

It continues to be clumsily insisted upon in official and paid Press organs how the need of providing Transvaal armaments became realized only with that Anglo-capitalistic plot of 1895-96 against Boer independence, and that, in fact, Dr. Jameson was worthy of the Boer nation's lasting gratitude for opening their eyes to their helplessly unarmed and unprepared condition up to that time. In those papers it is declared with unblushing inexactness how the Transvaal at that epoch possessed only two hundred and fifty inefficient and ill-equipped artillerists, with only a few cannons of various antiquated types, and how the burgher element had, up to that time, continued unarmed and in unsuspecting insecurity. To stamp these misstatements as false, it needs only to be considered that from the time of the Boer trek in 1835-38 every Boer had been a hunter and guerilla soldier possessed of the best firearms then extant, ready at any sacrifice to provide still more effective weapons as inventions in arms of precision in turn progressed. His passion to be well armed only equalled that of his love for land. From 1881 every Transvaal and Orange Free State Boer without exception had, and was obliged to have, his Martini-Henry rifle. The Government arsenals were supplied with reserves of that up to recently unsurpassed weapon and with large stores of ammunition. The authorities supplied that rifle at £4 each, and even gratis in the case of indigent burghers. At the frequent reviews (wapenschouwingen) each burgher had to appear mounted, with his Martini-Henry rifle and thirty rounds ammunition. To maintain proficiency in rifle practice, prizes and honours were distributed at Government expense in each ward, whilst there was plenty of private emulation encouraged among young and old in the science of sharp-shooting, the Governments of both Republics contributing ammunition at below cost price.

In about 1893 the Transvaal Government introduced about 10,000 new rifles of the Guede pattern, firing a steel-pointed bullet, but the issue did not become general, as the Martini-Henry rifle continued to be held more effective for game and for war. The Mauser rifle was only provided, after long hesitation and much diffidence, for its rapid-firing quality in war, whereas for game it is still considered inferior to the larger bored Martini-Henry.

On the occasion of the Jameson incursion, the Transvaal had in readiness extensive parks of the most modern quick-firing Maxims and Nordenfeldts of various calibres, and breech-loading field artillery of the Krupp make. The Orange Free State hurried to their assistance with similar artillery, each burgher armed with a Martini-Henry rifle. Besides all that, there was the dynamite and explosives factory equipped to manufacture all sorts of modern ammunition as it does now, and this is why President Krüger described that factory as one of the corner-stones of Boer independence. In the face of these facts it is a most singular departure to say that the Transvaal only thought of arming when becoming alarmed for the future by the Jameson attempt, and that statement could only have been intended to mislead the uninformed at a distance. "Qui s'excuse s'accuse" is applicable in this as well as in other ruses for hiding those sinister Bond aims and to pose as the guileless and victimized Boer nation. It was just the other way about—it was England who was unprepared and exposed to imminent risk of aggression on the part of the Boer combination.

What had amazed and actually exasperated many Boers was the ludicrously puny attempt made by Jameson and the Johannesburg revolutionary concert. It was at the time thought that the invasion of some 700 men was only a first installment, and that much larger developments were in preparation to attack the State. It was for that reason that only a few batteries of artillery were despatched at a late moment to Doornkop under Commandant Trichaart to operate against Jameson's party, while the bulk was held in reserve with an extensive mobilization of burghers to resist other supposed opposition of an altogether more formidable but yet undefined character. When nothing further transpired, the feeling uppermost with the people was unbounded derision at that impotent fiasco, and a loathing contempt for the cowering Johannesburg rabble who betrayed and sacrificed the insensate doctor. It was loudly asserted that the combined forces of the two Republics were competent to resist an invasion a hundred times stronger than the one so foolishly attempted; but, with cooler counsels, it was resolved to adopt the appealing attitude of the deeply injured party who miraculously and providentially escaped a great national peril. Upon these lines the raid incident afforded an immense advantage to Afrikaner Bond tactics, and an impulse to Bond propaganda which enormously increased Boer partisanship, inflicting at the same time a fatal check upon the diplomacy of England and upon the essential peace-preserving measures for safeguarding her South African interests. The circumstances, however, served to embolden many hitherto undecided sympathisers into openly declared and vehement Boer partisans, revealing the singular spectacle, among English people even, of a morbid cult apparently ready to sacrifice their nation just to vindicate their judicial dicta about Boer innocence and to parade their own darling sense of shocked and violated national honour.

Quite other and more emphatic terms apply to the revolting sewerage such as the socialistic platform and other purulent nurseries for breeding wilful and hypocritical abettors, at so much a score, of misguided and treason-hatching Afrikanerdom.