The Boer War

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The Boer War Page 11

by Thomas Pakenham


  What if Chamberlain failed to persuade the Cabinet to accept the call for intervention on the side of the Uitlanders? ‘I will take risks – big risks – but not silly ones,’ Milner had confided to Fitzpatrick a month before. ‘If I go smash… I can go back to something else.’34 Perhaps his mind was already turning to what he would do if he was recalled, like those earlier advocates of a forward policy in South Africa. He might give up politics altogether – by now he had saved enough to live on – and live a life of ‘contemplative obscurity’. That was one of the great ambitions of his life, as he had decided years before, when he had stopped in Athens (it was after being rejected by Margot Asquith) and wandered alone at the foot of the Parthenon.35

  The morning that Milner expected to hear the Cabinet’s decision, he took his ADC, charming, pink-cheeked Bendor Belgrave, for a ride up the path that led from Cecil Rhodes’s eyrie, Groote Schuur, towards the heights of Table Mountain. The dismal weather of the last few days had suddenly evaporated.’36 A cold south-easter scraped bare the grey flanks of the mountain. At their feet lay the whole Cape peninsula. It was one of Rhodes’s favourite haunts, the kind of place where a man can mistake himself for a colossus.

  When they returned, the cypher cable from Chamberlain had arrived: ‘The despatch is approved. We have adopted your suggestion.’37 It was as brief and as blunt as that.

  So he had won that round after all. The Cabinet had agreed to intervene – peacefully at present – on the side of the Uitlanders. But Milner was allowed no respite. A fortnight later he heard of another peaceful intervention: by Kruger’s allies. Hofmeyr and Schreiner, leaders of the Cape Afrikaners, proposed that Milner should go and meet Kruger and try to settle matters face to face; President Steyn offered Bloemfontein, the Free State capital, as the meeting-place. Milner regarded the conference as premature. He was waiting eagerly for the publication of the Blue Book containing Chamberlain’s official reply to the Uitlanders’ second petition – and to his own ‘Helot Despatch’. He would have liked to postpone negotiations till after this Blue Book was published – and both the British public and Kruger were properly briefed about the seriousness of the situation. Now it was the Blue Book that would have to be postponed. If they had rejected Steyn’s invitation, ‘it would have been too likely to lead to an outcry both here and in England that we wanted war’.

  Milner promised Chamberlain to be ‘studiously moderate’ at Bloemfontein. But he wrote to Philip Gell with a hint of triumph. When the ‘Helot Despatch’ was published, ‘never again would people reproach him with discretion.’38

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘It is Our Country You Want’

  The Orange Free State,

  30 May – 6 June 1899

  ‘The conference goes on its rather weary way … meanwhile our Uitlanders will lose patience, and upset the game. We preach them the doctrine of faith in my chief, and of patience for some time after the conference is over …’

  Major Hanbury Williams (Milner’s Military Secretary) to British Military Intelligence from Bloemfontein 31 May 1899

  The special train left the siding in Kroonstad a couple of hours before dawn on Tuesday 30 May. Then it resumed its journey steaming south down the single-track railway into the heart of the Free State. Before it reached the Zand River, the sun rose out of the mist, painting the mealie patches a rusty yellow and wiping the hoar frost off the metal sleepers.

  It was a winter dawn, the hour when the veld shivered like a Canadian prairie. A silent landscape, except for the hiss and rattle of the steel wheels and the honk of the engine. An empty landscape, too, except for the inevitable African children watching the train go by: two wooden carriages and a ribbon of dun-coloured vapour trailing from the tall smoke-stack and cow-catcher back to the horizon.1

  You could see this was no ordinary special. The engine was flying three flags: green stripes each side of the cow-catcher, orange on the boiler. They were the stripes of the Transvaal vierkleur and the Free State flag respectively. The same flags saluted the train at each station it passed, even the smallest wayside halt.2

  In the first saloon carriage, dressed in his usual baggy black suit and hidden behind drawn blinds, sat President Kruger with his staff, including the State Attorney, Jan Smuts. Kruger’s eyes blinked painfully behind his small gold spectacles. He would need a carriage closed against the cold wind when they reached Bloemfontein.3

  At Vereeniging, the frontier post, they had received on the previous evening a parting address from members of the Transvaal Executive. Kruger replied with one of his homely parables. The present franchise law, he said, was like one of those farmers’ dams that only let through the clean water: ‘The clean water is the trusty Uitlanders and through our laws they shall come to join us, and the dirty water is the untrustworthy Uitlanders; they shall stay outside.’ Kruger firmly repeated that he desired ‘peace not war’ and he ‘yearned from his heart that the Conference, now planned to secure peace, should not fail’.4

  The President had always been able to respond to a crisis. Now he was like an old war-horse scenting battle. Although he had accepted President Steyn’s invitation to come to Bloemfontein for the conference, he was pessimistic about the outcome. Not that the truth about Milner was yet guessed by the Boers or other Afrikaners. The fiery ‘Helot Despatch’ was still locked away in Chamberlain’s red box at the Colonial Office. But Kruger was intensely suspicious of Chamberlain, and Milner was one of Chamberlain’s men. Kruger remembered the occasion in 1877, when he had met Sir Bartle Frere, then British High Commissioner. Kruger had then discovered, he said, that there were two separate men called Frere: one Frere, the charming diplomat with whom he spoke; the other Frere, the man who was planning to subdue the Transvaal. Now, in 1899, as Smuts put it, the same question could be asked of Milner as of Sir Bartle Frere: ‘Which Milner do you mean?’5

  In the current crisis, Kruger leant heavily on the support of his young State Attorney. As far as Smuts could judge, Kruger now believed ‘war is unavoidable or will soon become so – not because there is any cause, but because the enemy is brazen enough not to wait for a cause’. Smuts, by contrast, thought the English would probably not be so stupid as to launch an ‘unmotivated’ war. ‘If England,’ he wrote to his old friend and political patron at the Cape, Jan Hofmeyr, ‘should venture into the ring with Afrikanerdom without a formally good excuse, her cause in South Africa would be finished.’6

  He did not believe that the Uitlanders’ franchise could possibly give England a casus belli. He imagined England was ‘stoking up’ unrest on the Rand in order to ‘make us lose our heads and so make a wrong move’. He thought that Chamberlain was understandably terrified of the current of Afrikaner solidarity sweeping the whole sub-continent. Still, he found the general situation very ‘obscure and puzzling’.7 He implored his Afrikaner allies in the Cape to try to persuade the British government to stop harassing the Transvaal.

  In the event it was Smuts, not Milner, whom the Cape Afrikaners had tried to persuade. For weeks they had begged Smuts to placate the British government by making concessions to the Uitlanders. ‘Do endeavour, my dear brother,’ wrote William Schreiner, the Cape Prime Minister since the defeat of Rhodes’s party in 1898, ‘to secure reasonable concessions. If you have done that it will be an immense service to South Africa. Imagine the joy with which Rhodes and Co. would welcome the fact, if the President and Raad should be stung into an attitude of refusing to do what is reasonable …’8 From Jan Hofmeyr, Smuts received a shower of cabled advice: ‘time for pouring oil on stormy waters and not on fire. Do not delay… situation is serious and time precious.’ Hofmeyr also sent Smuts a warning: he must ‘cherish no illusion about Colony’. Hofmeyr meant that if hostilities did break out Smuts must not expect the Cape Afrikaners to ‘rush en masse to arms’, especially as ‘most of them know nothing about the bearing of arms’.9

  As Smuts oscillated between the concilatory mood of his friends at the Cape and the pessimism of his own vener
able chief, the two Cape statesmen stepped up their peace offensive. Schreiner begged Smuts to use ‘infinite patience’ at the conference. He must peruade Kruger to improve his offer; recently Kruger had promised the Uidanders the franchise after nine instead of fourteen years.10 Smuts agreed to try. But doubts about Chamberlain’s real motives still haunted him.

  Suppose the whole conference were to be a sham, a piece of political theatre arranged by Chamberlain for the benefit of audiences at home and in the colonies? If that was the case, why humiliate themselves by making concessions? Indeed, they had already humiliated themselves. By the London Convention, England had specifically bound herself not to meddle in the internal affairs of the State. Now Chamberlain was sending Milner to Bloemfontein to wag his finger at Kruger for his supposed ill-treatment of the Uitlanders.

  Smuts returned again to the overwhelming question: did Chamberlain really intend to try to reannex the Transvaal, quite regardless of public opinion? Was it to be war? Then the ‘sooner the better’. His feelings boiled over. ‘Our volk throughout South Africa must be baptized with the baptism of blood and fire before they can be admitted among the great peoples of the world.’ And they would win. ‘Either we shall be exterminated or we shall fight our way out… and when I think of the great fighting qualities that our people possess, I cannot see why we should be exterminated.’11

  Yet war seemed a world away as the special steamed into the station at Bloemfontein. It arrived punctually at ten o’clock. The whole town was en fête, as though the crisis was over. A triumphal arch spanned the main street. A great white banner draped the station: ‘God leide uwe beraadslagingen’ – ‘God direct your counsels’. In the place of honour beside the Transvaal’s vierkleur was the Union Jack.12

  Kruger shuffled from the train, peered through his gold spectacles, and began his reply to the address of welcome. I shall give ‘everything, everything, everything’ for peace, he said, grimly repeating the Dutch word alles. But if ‘they touch my independence, I shall resist’.13

  The same dawn that found Kruger’s special train steaming south to Bloemfontein found a second special, flying two Union Jacks beside the cow-catcher, steaming north to the same destination.14

  Sir Alfred Milner had woken half an hour earlier after a shaky night in the front carriage of the train. He looked at his watch. It was only six; the sky was still hardly distinguishable from the veld, but the train was already approaching De Aar Junction. At De Aar he was to meet, secretly, Percy Fitzpatrick’s closest political ally from the Rand, H. C. Hull, an Uitlander solicitor. He would reassure Hull. HMG really did mean business this time.15

  In fact, what were Chamberlain’s own aims in the coming crisis? It was a question that preoccupied Milner and his Uitlander allies quite as much as Kruger and Smuts – and is puzzling even today. Milner knew the official (if private) answer. Since that crucial cabinet meeting on 9 May, both Chamberlain and the government were committed to Milner’s policy of imperial intervention on behalf of the Uitlanders16 – of ‘turning the screw’ on the old President till a ‘climb-down’ was achieved.17

  But what did Chamberlain mean by a ‘climb-down’? British demands restoration of the five-year franchise, with a larger minority of seats in the Raad allocated to the Rand – might give the British Uitlanders individual political equality. It would not give them immediate collective supremacy. No one knew how many British Uitlanders there were in the Transvaal, nor how many of them would opt for Transvaal citizenship.18 So the peaceful take-over of Kruger’s state, on behalf of the Empire, might not be accomplished for years not till after Milner’s term as High Commissioner had expired. Would Chamberlain allow Milner to stiffen his demands? Not if Kruger conceded the five-year franchise, Milner had reason to believe. Chamberlain aimed at a diplomatic coup for himself, but only a limited settlement for the Uitlanders. It was all British public opinion would accept.19

  It was Chamberlain’s dependence on public opinion that filled Milner with a frustration bordering on despair. Of course, it was not Chamberlain’s fault, he knew that. Joe was ‘magnificent’, he assured one of the Cabinet – a real ‘imperial statesman’.20 But British party politics, as he confessed to other, still closer friends, were ‘rotten’.21 He explained that ‘for really big and crucial things, the weakness and the compromise, which it [party politics] involves, even with the strongest government, must ruin any settlement.’22 Milner himself had no intention of compromising with Kruger. He had committed himself ‘heart and soul’ to the Uitlanders. The game was the ‘great game for mastery in South Africa’. He intended to win.23

  His plan was to annex the Transvaal. He would rule it as a Crown Colony, much as his old chief, Cromer, ruled Egypt. It was all part of the larger game of federating the white Empire. He would achieve ‘a place in history as big as the man who made the American Constitution, or the authors of the United Germany’.24 These were the dreams of Milner’s life and he saw no reason to abandon them now because of one obstinate (and obsolete) old man in South Africa. But how to prevent Chamberlain ‘wobbling’ and ruining everything by compromise? A delicate tactical plan, whose object had to be kept as secret from Chamberlain as from Kruger, was taking shape in Milner’s mind.

  Chamberlain wanted a ‘climb-down’ by Kruger leading to a settlement. Milner wanted a war leading to annexation. But these opposite strategies could be served by the same tactics. Chamberlain would agree to Milner turning the screw progressively tighter until Kruger climbed down. Milner would argue that to get a peaceful settlement they must first send out enough troops to frighten Kruger. Together the two screws – increased political demands and increased British garrisons – would precipitate the war. This was, in essence, the scenario that Milner had designed.25

  Hence the Bloemfontein conference was not, as many people later came to believe, staged by Milner as a piece of political theatre, a sham conference he intended should fail. On the contrary, it was Milner’s first step, according to his agreement with Chamberlain, in ‘screwing’ (Milner’s phrase) Kruger.26 At this stage, Milner would pitch his demands low enough – he would be ‘studiously moderate’, as he had promised Chamberlain. But once he had Kruger publicly seeking a settlement, the screw would tighten till it became unbearable.

  Such were Milner’s ideas. It was a trap for old Kruger out of which there was no escape, except to precipitate a hopeless war – unless, horrible thought, Kruger picked up the offer of the five-year franchise and accepted a settlement there and then.

  The special train had by now left De Aar Junction far behind and was toiling upwards to Naauwpoort, astride the main watershed of the northern Cape, nearly five thousand feet above sea-level. The last time he had come that way – on a trip to Basutoland – he had found the Great Karoo green with rain.27 But now look at the veld! The grass was burnt grey by sun and frost; there would be no forage for the burghers’ horses till September. Well, no doubt that was all to the good. No forage meant no war – no invasion by the Boers, at any rate.

  From Colesberg, it was downhill all the way to the Orange River and the frontier. The train steamed into Bloemfontein at five o’clock, true to the minute. President Steyn welcomed them much as he had welcomed President Kruger seven hours earlier: with a twenty-one-gun salute of detonators under the rails, and ‘God Save the Queen’. Milner sprang down from the train, a clean-shaven, debonair figure in a morning suit and a grey topper. South Africa seemed to be at his feet. Here was the man, said the Boer newspapers, who would go down into history as one of ‘the greatest of Englishmen’. He could bring ‘peace with honour’ to South Africa.28

  Bloemfontein (‘Flowers-in-the-Springs’) was then a delightful place, with jacarandas lining the main street and a picturesque old British fort built on a commanding kopje. Its wealth was based on the single-track railway from the Cape to the Rand completed in 1892.29 Appropriately, the conference was to be held beside the railway station – in the only room with a round table large enough for the dozen
men of the two delegations.30

  When proceedings opened on Wednesday 31 May the omens seemed encouraging. President Steyn made a joke, perhaps not intentionally. He introduced the two men with ‘this, Sir Alfred, is Mr Kruger, of whom you have probably read in the newspapers …’ Kruger did what was expected of him, playing the fool and digging Milner in the ribs, according to the papers, ‘with many hoarse salutes of affection and respect’.31

  But despite Steyn’s goodwill, Kruger’s good humour and Milner’s good manners, there was to be no meeting of minds at Bloemfontein.

  The conference, according to Milner’s Military Secretary, was like a ‘palaver with a refractory Chief’.32 That was hardly the way Milner would have described it. Whatever miscalculations he had made, he prided himself on not having underrated the old man at the other side of the round table. Kruger was an anachronism – and a giant. Yet Milner planned to undermine the giant with the franchise. He would force Kruger to disgorge a ‘substantial and immediate’ instalment of political power to the Uitlanders. Then, and only for a short respite, would the old beast be allowed to regain his feet.

  Throughout the first day of the conference, Milner played his part admirably. He had no wish to ‘apportion blame’, he said, in this ‘deplorable situation’ in which both countries found themselves. But it was his ‘personal opinion’ that the increasing tension between the governments was caused by the Transvaal’s policy towards the Uitlanders. Clear this out of the way; then other outstanding questions could be settled amicably. He put his hand on his heart. Britain had no designs on the independence of the Transvaal. Far from it. If only the Transvaal would treat the Uitlanders better, the Uitlanders would cease to call for Britain to intervene. This would ‘strengthen the independence of the Republic’, as well as re-establishing the ‘cordial relations which we desire’.33

 

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