Impressions of South Africa | Page 8

flocking into the country, and which were no worse than
they had been for some time previously, were such as to forbid the
exercise of a little more patience. It was said by the war party among
the English in South Africa that patience was being mistaken for
weakness, and that the credit of Britain was being lowered all over the
world, and even among the peoples of India, by her forbearance
towards the Transvaal. Absurd as this notion may appear, it was
believed by heated partizans on the spot. But outside Africa, and
especially in Europe, the forbearance of one of the four greatest Powers

in the world towards a community of seventy thousand people was in
no danger of being misunderstood.
Whether the force of these considerations, obvious to every unbiased
mind which had some knowledge of South Africa, was fully realized by
those who directed British policy, or whether, having realized their
force, they nevertheless judged war the better alternative, is a question
on which we are still in the dark. It is possible--and some of the
language used by the British authorities may appear to suggest this
explanation--that they entered on the negotiations which ended in war
in the belief that an attitude of menace would suffice to extort
submission, and being unable to recede from that attitude, found
themselves drawn on to a result which they had neither desired nor
contemplated. Be this as it may, the considerations above stated
prescribed the use of prudent and (as far as possible) conciliatory
methods in their diplomacy, as well as care in selecting a position
which would supply a legal justification for war, should war be found
the only issue.
This was the more necessary because the Boers were known to be
intensely suspicious. Every weak power trying to resist a stronger one
must needs take refuge in evasive and dilatory tactics. Such had been,
such were sure to be, the tactics of the Boers. But the Boers were also
very distrustful of the English Government, believing it to aim at
nothing less than the annexation of their country. It may seem strange
to Englishmen that the purity of their motives and the disinterestedness
of their efforts to spread good government and raise others to their own
level should be doubted. But the fact is--and this goes to the root of the
matter--that the Boers have regarded the policy of Britain towards them
as a policy of violence and duplicity. They recall how Natal was
conquered from them in 1842, after they had conquered it from the
Zulus; how their country was annexed in 1877, how the promises made
at the time of that annexation were broken. They were not appeased by
the retrocession of 1881, which they ascribed solely to British fear of a
civil war in South Africa. It should moreover be remembered,--and this
is a point which few people in England do remember--that they hold
the annexation to have been an act of high-handed lawlessness done in

time of peace, and have deemed themselves entitled to be replaced in
the position their republic held before 1877, under the Sand River
Convention of 1852. Since the invasion of December 1895, they have
been more suspicious than ever, for they believe the British
Government to have had a hand in that attempt, and they think that
influential capitalists have been sedulously scheming against them.
Their passion for independence is something which we in modern
Europe find it hard to realise. It recalls the long struggle of the Swiss
for freedom in the fourteenth century, or the fierce tenacity which the
Scotch showed in the same age in their resistance to the claim of
England to be their "Suzerain Power." This passion was backed by two
other sentiments, an exaggerated estimate of their own strength and a
reliance on the protecting hand of Providence, fitter for the days of the
Maccabees or of Cromwell than for our own time, but which will
appear less strange if the perils through which their nation had passed
be remembered.
These were the rocks among which the bark of British diplomacy had
to be steered. They were, however, rocks above water, so it might be
hoped that war could be avoided and some valuable concession secured.
To be landed in war would obviously be as great a failure as to secure
no concession.
Instead of demanding the removal of the specific grievances whereof
the Uitlanders complained, the British Government resolved to
endeavour to obtain for them an easier acquisition of the electoral
franchise and an ampler representation in the legislature. There was
much to be said for this course. It would avoid the tedious and
vexatious controversies that must have arisen over the details of the
grievances. It would (in the long run)