Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  Milner had been knighted for his services to the nation in 1895, but his promotion to high office in South Africa was spectacular. At the farewell dinner held by the Secret Elite in his honour, Milner was praised to the heights. Stead stated that he ‘was an imperialist of the purest water, who could be relied upon to do all that can be done to make South Africa, from Table Mountain to Tanganyika, as loyally British as Kent or Middlesex’.32 The dinner was organised by Lord Curzon and chaired by the future prime minister, Herbert Asquith. The guest list included Lord Rosebery, Sir William Harcourt, Lord Goschen, Arthur Balfour and Richard Haldane. These major British political figures had gathered to salute Sir Alfred Milner, one of their own, who ended his speech with a personal declaration that he was a ‘civilian soldier of the Empire’.33 How appropriate. Here was the man who would take up arms for the British race to which he was forever sworn.

  On 14 April 1897, Milner set out for South Africa on a personal crusade to make it as loyally British as the garden of England. He would remain there for eight years, cement his role as leader and build a team of brilliant young acolytes to drive the Secret Elite agenda forward over the next 30 years. His mission was absolutely clear: govern South Africa, all of it, remove Boer obstacles to complete British domination and take the Transvaal’s gold. Milner knew it would mean all-out war. He also knew that the only way to make such a war acceptable to the Cabinet and British public was to portray Kruger’s Boers as the aggressors.

  Sir Alfred Milner rarely met with Rhodes in South Africa but kept in constant touch using Edmund Garrett, member of the Society of the Elect34 and newspaperman, as an intermediary. Milner felt that it was politically necessary to conceal their relationship, for Rhodes’ reputation had been badly damaged and he was absolutely detested by many Boer communities.

  In his first year in the Cape, Milner travelled around assessing the situation and weighing up alternatives. His appointment shortly after the raid disturbed the Boers, for he was known to be a determined Empire loyalist. And they had every reason to fear his unspoken intentions. In private letters to the colonial secretary, he stated very plainly that there was ‘no way out of the political troubles in South Africa except reform in Transvaal, or war. And at present the chances of reform in the Transvaal are worse than ever.’35 Although Chamberlain reminded him that their agreed strategy was to play the ‘waiting game’, that was precisely what Milner had no intention of doing. He was supported at every turn by Chamberlain’s under-secretary, Selborne, who wrote secret and confidential letters to Milner in South Africa appraising him of Chamberlain’s views and insisting that he must have a ‘free hand and be backed up through thick and thin from here’.36

  Sir Alfred Milner returned to England in 1898 to build support for ‘an active and resolute policy of action’.37 He travelled between London and the great watering holes of the Secret Elite, where he briefed members including Lords Curzon, Rosebery and Rothschild. He visited Arthur Balfour, Conservative leader in the Commons, and his former Balliol College classmate St John Brodrick, the man who within months would become secretary of state for war.38

  Here, for the first time, the reader can see exactly how the Secret Elite worked. The colonial secretary persisted in his stance that Milner should delay until both public opinion and parliamentary objection had been turned in favour of war. Milner was straining at the leash because he knew that delay would only make the Empire look weak. He ensured that his own network prevailed. Joseph Chamberlain was effectively circumvented by his official representative in South Africa and, even had he known, there was nowhere he could turn to complain.

  The high commissioner was invited to Windsor Castle by Queen Victoria, advised of course by Lord Esher, before going on to Sandringham, where a very affable future King Edward VII was anxious to have his advice. Milner instructed all the key members of the Secret Elite that there would have to be a war, whether his titular boss, Joseph Chamberlain, wished it or not. Every one of these powerful individuals understood Milner’s message. There was going to be a war in South Africa and they had to be ready to stand by him through what were certain to be difficult times.

  Milner moved effortlessly from one front in which he was already the acknowledged master to a second where his contact base was equally impressive: the press. The British Army would be going to war, and the British public had to be softened up by a jingoism that would sweep all before it. The reaction to the kaiser’s telegram had provided ample evidence of the public’s aptitude for xenophobia, but Milner needed support too in the South African press. He recruited W.F. Monypenny from The Times to edit the Rand Star. Edmund Garrett, editor of the Fortnightly Review, was a loyal and trusted friend, and E.T. Cook at the Daily News, whose career Milner had advanced, was now trumpeting his virtues and supporting his solutions. In Britain, Harmsworth’s Daily News, with a circulation in excess of 500,000 copies per day, was unstinting in its support for Milner and war.

  The crisis, as far as the British public were made aware, had nothing to do with the Transvaal’s gold. It stemmed from a disagreement about the limited rights of the Uitlanders and their ill-treatment by the Boers. The reader will immediately understand how much vested interest members of the Secret Elite had in Britain’s imperial designs in South Africa. Rhodes, Alfred Beit, Abe Bailey (all Rand millionaires) and Lord Grey were directly involved with the British South Africa Company and, like the House of Rothschild, had serious financial and business investments that required to be protected. In truth, the coming war was all about the gold mines but was dressed as a clash of British immigrant workers’ rights against Boer oppression.39

  One journalist no longer applauded all that Milner did. One important voice who had initially been a committed supporter, as well as one of the original three conspirators, turned against them. William Stead had attended the 1898 Peace Conference at The Hague, undergone conversion to a different faith and returned as an apostle of international arbitration.40 He publicly criticised Milner, who he could clearly see was steering Britain into a completely unnecessary war, and their long friendship (and his role in the secret society) ended acrimoniously.

  Absolutely convinced of the brutal logic of his own analysis, Milner never wavered. British control of the Transvaal was essential, even though it meant war.41 The only question that remained unanswered was how to bounce Paul Kruger into making the first move.

  Consider the reality of Kruger’s Transvaal. Boers were increasingly a distinct minority. Certainly, there were many British workers among the Uitlanders, but a large minority were Afrikaners from the Cape, Germans, Frenchmen and even Americans – all white and earning good money.42 The fact that they were effectively disenfranchised was a genuine concern to permanent settlers, but what did that matter to the itinerant workers? What possible incentive did they have to overthrow the Kruger government? None. Life under the Union flag promised no great advantage to the mass of gold-diggers and mine workers whose dream was to make a fortune and return home as wealthy men. In truth, the Jameson Raid had largely failed because Rhodes had hopelessly overestimated the strength of feeling amongst the Uitlanders. Milner did not leave such a basic prerequisite to mere chance.

  He needed a genuine uprising from an angry and frustrated community that could appeal to the British government for help. Dissent had to be fermented throughout the Uitlander population. To this end, Alfred Beit wanted to unleash his Johannesburg agent and rabble-rouser Percy Fitzpatrick, but one major obstacle stood in the way. Fitzpatrick, arrested and jailed during the Jameson Raid, had been paroled on conditions that banned him from any political activity or criticism of the Kruger government. Quite incredibly, he was released from this bail condition by the Transvaal’s state attorney and freed to stir Uitlander outrage at the shooting of one of their number in his own home by a trigger-happy Boer policeman. Five thousand protestors took to the streets, and salt was rubbed into the wound when several Uitlanders were arrested and set bail conditions five times higher tha
n the police gunman at the centre of the storm. According to Fitzpatrick, those arrested were in the Market Square in Johannesburg simply to present a petition to the British vice-consul but were taken into custody under the Public Meetings Act. Bitter recriminations spewed forth, with Fitzpatrick pointing out that ‘for taking the life of a British subject, £200 bail was sufficient, but for the crime of objecting to it, bail was set at £1,000’.43 The cause became one of trampled civil rights.

  Fitzpatrick encouraged further protest meetings in Johannesburg, and a petition was signed seeking redress through the British government. It was exactly what Milner needed: a popular cause. Late in March 1899, Milner met secretly with Percy Fitzpatrick in Cape Town and gave him instructions to continue stirring unrest and to feed damaging stories about Kruger to the British press.44 Fitzpatrick was dispatched to London to present the Uitlander case to the British public. His book, The Transvaal from Within, became an instant bestseller,45 promoted by the Secret Elite.46

  Jan Smuts, the Transvaal state attorney who freed Fitzpatrick from the shackles of his parole, warrants considered attention. Prior to the Jameson Raid, Smuts had been Cecil Rhodes’ close friend, trusted confidant and personal agent in Kimberley.47 The 27-year-old Cambridge-trained lawyer believed passionately in South African unity under British rule, where both British and Dutch would settle their differences and coalesce into a single white nation.48 His admiration was such that he saw Rhodes as the very man to carry forward this great ideal, and he became a vigorous supporter of a united South Africa within the British Empire. Then he completely changed tack. Apparently disaffected by the unlawful attempt to occupy the Transvaal by force, he abandoned his political philosophy, denounced his good friend Rhodes and reinvented himself. His conversion from Anglophile to Anglophobe was conveniently explained as a ‘road to Damascus’ moment. Born again as Rhodes’s most vociferous critic, his violent anti-British agitation and uncompromising support for Kruger quickly yielded results. Despite his age and lack of experience, Kruger made him state attorney in Transvaal and his chief political advisor.49

  Smuts’ anti-English rhetoric and other draconian measures soon enraged the Uitlanders. In addition to their lack of voting rights, they complained bitterly about the levels of taxation, the state control of mining supplies and what they considered as a system of blatant extortion that took their wealth from Johannesburg and transferred it to the Boers in Pretoria.50 Smuts’ constant provocation of the Uitlanders was strangely at odds with President Kruger’s attempts to calm the rising unrest, including a major concession on voting rights after just five years’ residence instead of the previous fourteen. He was even prepared to grant preferential mining rights and reduce taxation levels.51 This was Kruger’s ‘Great Deal’, an astonishing turn of events that could have placated the dissenters and restored confidence in his government.

  While the president was granting concessions and attempting to dampen down agitation from the anti-Boer press, Smuts seriously undermined him by arresting newspaper editors sympathetic to the Uitlander cause. Smuts was hell-bent on stirring Uitlander outrage. Strange indeed that in so short a time Rhodes’ former close friend and ally was doing everything in his power to ensure that Milner got the one thing he and Rhodes most desperately wanted: war.

  Smuts sensed a wavering in the political ranks and sent a memorandum to the Transvaal executive in September 1899 urging them to take the necessary steps to become ‘one of the great empires of the world … an Afrikaner republic in South Africa stretching from Table Bay to the Zambezi’.52 This was virtual Secret Elite-speak, reminiscent of Rhodes. Though it was voiced to upset the Uitlanders, Cape Afrikaners begged him to avoid war, accommodate the Uitlanders and placate the British government. Smuts would have none of their wise counsel. He retorted vehemently that if it was to be war, then ‘the sooner the better. Our volk throughout South Africa must be baptised with the baptism of blood and fire.’53 Two voices argued war – Milner and Smuts – apparently implacable enemies. As each week passed, tensions heightened. British troop movements unnerved Kruger, who could see that the Transvaal was threatened with invasion.

  By October 1899, large numbers of British troops were sent to the Transvaal border in what was a calculated provocation. Kruger demanded their withdrawal, but Milner’s response was to deliberately escalate the tension by sending yet more troops.

  Milner got his war. Both the British and Boer representatives rejected the terms they demanded of each other, and to Milner’s delight Kruger approved an ultimatum written by Smuts that accused Britain of breaking the 1884 London Convention, drawn up after the first Boer War of 1880–81. The text of the ultimatum was received in London with derision, delight and disdain. The Daily Telegraph didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The editorials rejoiced in the fact that ‘Mr Kruger has asked for war, and war he must have’.54 It was all to be over by teatime.

  Boer soldiers advanced into Cape Colony on 12 October 1899 to attack an armoured train carrying supplies to Mafeking, and so began the Boer War exactly as Milner had planned. Kruger, in exasperation, made the first move before the British could bring even more troops into South Africa and was forever held to be the aggressor. In truth, he had been out-manoeuvred. Milner had the grace to confess in a letter to Lord Roberts, commander in chief in South Africa, that:

  I precipitated the crisis, which was inevitable, before it was too late. It is not very agreeable, and in many eyes, not a very creditable piece of business to have been largely instrumental in bringing about a big war.55

  This was no immodest boast or rampant exaggeration. Milner’s matter-of-fact explanation displayed the cold objectivity that drove the Secret Elite cause. War was unfortunate but necessary. It had to be. One year before, in a private letter to his friend Lord Selborne, Milner explained very clearly that the backward, almost medieval Boers could not be allowed to control the future of South Africa. ‘The race-oligarchy [the Boers] has got to go, and I see no sign of it removing itself.’56 The solution was simple. If they would not go, they had to be removed, and his placemen, Percy Fitzpatrick and Jan Smuts, had played their allotted roles in helping him precipitate that ‘inevitable’ crisis.

  With a force that peaked at almost half a million men, more than double the entire Boer population of the Transvaal, against an estimated 40,000 Boers in the field, the British expected an easy victory. Easy? The first principle of Boer tactics was mobility, and though they vastly outnumbered the Boers, the British Army found it difficult to pin them down. The Boers’ guerrilla warfare proved frustratingly effective against a military mindset anchored in Wellington’s traditions. The war lasted almost three years and became the bloodiest, costliest and longest that the British Army had fought in almost a hundred years.

  The Boer War provided little or no cheering news for the British public, but one report grabbed the national headlines and fired the imagination. It brought a young man with huge ambition to the public eye in a blaze of glory, though the account of his Indiana Jones adventure lacked the rigour of any independent corroboration.

  Winston Churchill had been sent to South Africa as a war correspondent for the conservative Morning Post in 1899 and ended up in a Boer prisoner-of-war camp. The story, and it was largely his, derives from Churchill’s autobiography.57 According to his own account, he joined a reconnaissance mission aboard an armoured train on 15 November 1899 and was captured along with around 60 British officers and men when the Boers attacked it. Taken to Pretoria, they were held in an old school surrounded by a ten-foot-high corrugated-iron wall. Churchill gave an account of the derailment and his subsequent action in making a ‘daring escape’ to other journalists. The Daily Telegraph printed a dispatch from Reuters headlined ‘Mr Churchill’s bravery and coolness is described as magnificent’. The hero created himself.

  What went unreported was that following his internment Churchill wanted himself classified as a non-combatant on the grounds that he was a journalist. He used his connecti
ons to send a begging letter to Alfred Milner on 24 November asking that he be included in a list of prisoners to be released and said that he had asked his mother to write to him through Milner.58 He also submitted requests for his release on 26 November and 8 December,59 and promised that ‘if I am released I will give any parole that I may be required not to serve against the Republican forces’.60 On 12 December, the Boer commander-in-chief agreed to release him, and some time thereafter Churchill was never seen again in the camp.

  On his subsequent arrival in the Portuguese port of Lourenço Marques Churchill relayed an amazing adventure. He claimed to have cut through the fencing under the noses of the Boer guards and made a tortuous journey to freedom. His ‘daring escape’ became the stuff of legend. On his own and unable to speak either Afrikaans or Kaffir, but bolstered by the surprisingly large sum of £75 (worth over £6,000 in today’s currency), he made the 250-mile journey to the safe haven of Lourenço Marques. His odyssey was worthy of any Greek hero of ancient myth. Crossing dangerous terrain and dodging the heavily armed Boer commandos who were out hunting for him, he eventually came to a railway track and leapt onto a train as it thundered past. This must have been accomplished with considerable difficulty, ‘partly because of his dislocated shoulder’.61