Rhodesia

After the Raid.

Hercules Robinson reached Pretoria on Jan. 4. He had no sooner learnt of the raid in Cape Town than he issued a proclamation through Sir Jacobus de Wet, the British resident at Pretoria, warning all British subjects in Johannesburg or elsewhere from aiding and abetting Jameson. This was freely distributed among the public of Johannesburg. While in Pretoria the high commissioner in the first instance addressed himself to inducing Johannesburg to lay down its arms. He telegraphed to the reform committee that Kruger had insisted "that Johannes burg must lay down arms unconditionally as a precedent to any discussions and consideration of grievances." On the following day, Jan. 7, Sir Hercules telegraphed again through the British agent, who was then at Johannesburg, saying that "if the uit landers do not comply with my request they will forfeit all claims to sympathy from Her Majesty's Government and from British subjects throughout the world, as the lives of Jameson and the prisoners are now practically in their hands." The 2,000 odd rifles which had been distributed among the uitlanders were then given up. After the Johannesburg disarmament Kruger had 64 members of the reform committee arrested, announcing at the same time that his motto would be "Forget and forgive." In 1897 Hercules Robinson was succeeded in the high commissionership by Alfred (Lord) Milner.

In the period which intervened between the Jameson raid and the outbreak of the war in Oct. 1899 President Kruger's admin istration deteriorated. The Aliens Expulsion and Immigration Laws, as well as the new Press Law, were passed in the latter part of 1896. In 1897 a decision of Chief Justice Kotze was overruled by an act of the volksraad. This led to a strong protest from the judges of the high court, and eventually to the dismissal of the chief justice, who had held that office for over 20 years, and had shown himself an able and upright judge. An industrial commission appointed during this year by President Kruger fared no better than the high court had done. It made several sensible proposals which would have helped both the mining industry and the admin istration, but to very little purpose. All remonstrances, all warn ings from the Dutch-speaking people of the Cape were unheeded.

Second Reform Movement.

In March 1899 the uitlanders, hopeless of ever obtaining redress from President Kruger, weary of sending petitions to the road only to be jeered at, determined to invoke intervention if nothing else could avail, and forwarded a petition to Queen Victoria. This petition, the outcome of the second uitlander movement for reform, was signed by 21,000 British subjects, and stated the uitlander position.

In response to this appeal, Chamberlain, in a despatch dated May io, proposed a conference at Pretoria. Six days before Sir Alfred Milner had telegraphed to London a summary of the situation, comparing the position of the uitlanders to that of helots and declaring the case for intervention to be overwhelm ing. Neither of these despatches was made public at the time. But on the day Chamberlain wrote his despatch the friends of the Transvaal Government in Cape Colony and the Orange Free State invited Milner to meet Kruger at Bloemfontein, hoping to be able to exert pressure on both parties and to arrange a settle ment as favourable as possible to the Transvaal. The conference

opened on May 31 and closed on June 5. It no sooner opened than it was evident that Kruger had come to obtain, not to grant, concessions. He offered, it is true, a seven years' franchise law in place of the five years' franchise which Sir Alfred Milner asked for. But this seven years' franchise was only to be given on cer tain conditions, one of which was that all future disputes between the Transvaal and the Imperial Government should be referred to a court of arbitration, the president of which should be a for eigner. Milner urged the home Government to insist upon a minimum of reform, and primarily on the five years' franchise (this had the full support of the uitlanders and of the majority of whites throughout South Africa) ; and Chamberlain, backed by the cabinet, adopted the policy of the high commissioner.

(X.) The Eve of War.—Each side had committed itself to a posi tion from which a peaceful issue was unlikely. The most stupid explanation of the impasse is that which attributes the forcing of the hands of the British Government to Rand "magnates" who desired to seize the gold fields. It is more true to say the quarrel was racial ; it is certain that Kruger and his advisers fully under stood that the grant of political rights to the uitlanders meant the doom of their rule ; and they vastly underrated the military power of Great Britain.

After the Bloemfontein Conference the tactics of the Boer executive were simply directed towards putting off a crisis till the beginning of October, when the grass would be growing on the veld, and meanwhile towards doing all they could in their des patches to put the blame on Great Britain. At last they drafted, on Sept. 27, an ultimatum to the British Government. For military rather than diplomatic reasons it was not until Oct. 9 that the ultimatum was presented to Conyngham Greene, the British agent at Pretoria. The scheduled demands were:— "(a) That all points of mutual difference shall be regulated by the friendly course of arbitration, or by whatever amicable way may be agreed upon by the Government with Her Majesty's Government. (b) That the troops on the borders of this republic shall be instantly withdrawn. (c) That all reinforcements of troops which have arrived in South Africa since June r, 1899, shall be removed from South Africa within a reasonable time, to be agreed upon with this Government, and with a mutual assurance and guarantee on the part of this Government that no attack upon or hostilities against any portion of the possessions of the British Government shall be made by the republic during further negotiations within a period of time to be subsequently agreed upon between the Governments, and this Government will, on compliance therewith, be prepared to withdraw the armed bur ghers of this republic from the borders. (d) That Her Majesty's troops now on the high seas shall not be landed in any part of South Africa." To these demands the Transvaal Government required an answer within 48 hours.

There could be only one reply, and on Wednesday, Oct. r 1, 1899, at five o'clock P.M., a state of war existed between the British Government and the two Boer republics, for the Free State threw in its lot with the Transvaal.