Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 29

Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman:

"The whole country in the two belligerent States, outside the mining towns, is a howling wilderness. The farms are burned, the country is wasted. The flocks and herds are either butchered or driven off; the mills are destroyed, furniture and instruments of agriculture smashed. These things are what I have termed methods of barbarism. I adhere to the phrase. I cannot improve upon it.

If these are not the methods of barbarism, what methods did barbarism employ?... My belief is that the ma.s.s of the British people ... do not desire to see a brave people subjugated or annihilated."

Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P.:

"The war was unnecessary, and therefore unjust.... He wished he could agree that we were fighting in a just cause, that we had always fought according to acknowledged civilised methods; but as an honest man he could not do so."

Mr. Edmund Robertson, M.P.:

"The victory of the Government (at the last General Election) had been the main cause of the prolongation of the war. If they had been defeated their successors would have been men with a free hand, and the Boers themselves might have been ready to make concessions, which they would not make, and had not made, to those whom they believed to be their enemies and persecutors. If the Empire was to be saved, the Government must be destroyed."[270]

[Footnote 270: The facts are stated in a letter published in _The Times_ on March 10th, 1902.]

Can any human being of ordinary intelligence believe that these pa.s.sages, containing denunciations of the war, were circulated by Ex-President Steyn for any other purpose than that of encouraging the burghers to continue their resistance to the Imperial troops?

And to this evidence may be added the protest made by "An Old Berliner" in _The Times_ of November 27th, 1901:

[Sidenote: "Methods of barbarism".]

"What I want to impress upon your readers is the much more serious and, indeed, incalculable mischief done by the public utterances of responsible politicians, and, to take the most pernicious example of all, by the reckless language of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The words he uttered about England's methods of barbarism have been used ever since as the watchwords of England's detractors throughout the length and breadth of Germany."[271]

[Footnote 271: See also note, p. 399 (Extract from the _Vossische Zeitung_). The baseless and malevolent allegations of specific acts of inhumanity or outrage on the part of British soldiers, circulated by Boer sympathisers in England and on the continent of Europe, have been pa.s.sed over in silence. For an exposure of these calumnies the reader is referred to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's _The War in South Africa_ (Smith, Elder). A record of the manner in which they were repudiated by the Boer population in South Africa will be found in Cd. 1, 163, pp. 99, 106-111, 113-121. Among those who protested were German subjects, and Germans who had become British subjects, resident in South Africa. Perhaps the most significant of all these protests is the resolution pa.s.sed unanimously by the members of the Natal House of a.s.sembly, all standing: "That this House desires to repudiate the false charges of inhumanity brought against His Majesty's Army by a section of the inhabitants of the continent of Europe and certain disloyal subjects within the British Isles, and this House places on record its deliberate conviction that the war in South Africa has been prosecuted by His Majesty's Government and Army upon lines of humanity and consideration for the enemy unparalleled in the history of nations."]

CHAPTER XI

PREPARING FOR PEACE

We have already noticed that arrangements were made in October, 1900, under which the High Commissioners.h.i.+p was to be separated from the Governors.h.i.+p of the Cape Colony in order that Lord Milner might be free to undertake the work of administrative reconstruction in the new colonies. In pursuance of this decision of the Home Government, Lord Milner became Administrator of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony upon the departure of Lord Roberts (November 29th, 1900); but circ.u.mstances did not permit him to resign the governors.h.i.+p of the Cape Colony and remove to the Transvaal until three months later. The new Governor of the Cape Colony was Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, who was himself succeeded, as Governor of Natal, by Sir Henry E. McCallum; and at the same time (March 1st, 1901), Sir H. (then Major) Goold-Adams was appointed Deputy-Administrator of the Orange River Colony, where he took over the duties. .h.i.therto discharged by General Pretyman as Military Governor.

[Sidenote: Milner in the Transvaal.]

Lord Milner left Capetown to a.s.sume the administration of the new colonies on February 28th, 1901. The incidents of his journey northwards are ill.u.s.trative alike of the state of South Africa at this time, and of the varied responsibilities of the High Commissioner.

After three months of continuous and successful conflict with the forces of rebellion in the south, he was suddenly confronted with a situation in the north even more pregnant with the possibilities of disaster. This was the day on which Commandant-General Louis Botha entered the British lines at Middelburg to treat for peace with General Lord Kitchener; and many counsels of precaution sped northwards upon the wires as the High Commissioner's train crossed the plains and wound slowly up through the mountain pa.s.ses that led to the higher levels of the Karroo plateau. March 1st, which was spent in the train, was the most idle day that Lord Milner had pa.s.sed for many months. The respite was of short duration. At midnight, directly after the train had left De Aar junction, a long telegram from Lord Kitchener, giving the substance of his interview with Botha, caught the High Commissioner. But if peace was in the air in the north, war held the field in the south. From De Aar to Bloemfontein the railway line was astir with British troops, concentrating or dispersing, in pursuit of De Wet. At Bloemfontein station Lord Milner was met (March 2nd) by Lord Kitchener, and the nature of the reply to be given to Botha was discussed between them. On the next morning Lord Milner's saloon car was attached to the Commander-in-Chief's train, and a long telegram was drafted and despatched to London.[272] The position which Lord Milner took up on this occasion, and afterwards at the final negotiations of Vereeniging, was that which he had himself condensed in the two words "never again." He was anxious for peace; no man more than he; but a peace upon terms that would leave South Africa with the remotest prospect of a return to the abnormal political conditions which had made the war inevitable, he regarded as a disaster to be avoided at all costs. This telegram despatched, the train left Bloemfontein, and, in spite of more than one sign of the proximity of the Boer raiders, it reached Pretoria without delay at 9 a.m. on March 4th. The next ten days Lord Milner remained at the capital of the Transvaal, in constant communication with the Home Government on the subject of the peace negotiations[273] with the Boers, which ultimately proved abortive; but on the 9th he went over to Johannesburg for the day to see the house which was being prepared for his occupation. On the 15th he left Pretoria finally for Johannesburg.

He was received at the station by a guard of honour furnished by the Rand Rifles, and, thus escorted, drove to Sunnyside, a pleasant house in what is now the suburb of Parktown, commanding an unbroken view over the veld to the Magaliesberg range beyond Pretoria; and here he continued to reside until he left South Africa on April 2nd, 1905.

[Footnote 272: This telegram is printed in Cd. 528.]

[Footnote 273: For the nature of these "Middelburg terms,"

see forward in note 2 on p. 568.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _By permission of the Argus Printing and Publis.h.i.+ng Co., Ltd., Johannesburg._

Lord Milner at Sunnyside.]

[Sidenote: Affairs in the Cape colony.]

From this time forward (March 15th, 1901), Lord Milner's administrative activity is primarily concerned with the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Owing, however, to the continued resistance of the Boers and the extension of the area of hostilities by the second invasion of the Cape Colony, the administrative development of the new colonies was confined within the narrowest limits, until six months of strenuous military operations had enabled Lord Kitchener to render the protected areas and the railways virtually secure against the raids of the Boer commandos. Four out of these six months were occupied by Lord Milner's second visit to England (May-August, 1901). But before we approach this episode, and thereby resume the main current of the narrative, it is necessary to trace the course of events in the Cape Colony. With the government of the Colony once more in the hands of the British party, Lord Milner had been relieved of the acute and constant anxieties that marked his official relations.h.i.+p to the Afrikander Ministry. On the vital question of the necessity of establis.h.i.+ng British authority upon terms that would make any repet.i.tion of the war impossible, Sir Gordon Sprigg and his ministers were absolutely at one with Lord Milner and the Home Government.

Whatever differences of opinion arose subsequently between the Cape ministers and the Imperial authorities were differences not of principle but of detail. For the most part they were such as would have manifested themselves in any circ.u.mstances in a country where the civil government was compelled, by the exigencies of war, to surrender some of its powers to the military authority.

[Sidenote: The Bond and peace.]

By supporting the Treason Bill, Mr. Schreiner and Sir Richard Solomon had dissociated themselves from the Afrikander nationalists; and henceforward their influence was used unreservedly on the side of British supremacy.[274] On the other hand, Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer, as we have seen, had openly denounced the policy of the Imperial Government, and no less openly advocated the aims, and defended the methods, of the Afrikander Bond. The Bond's determination to do all in its power to secure the independence of the Boers, and thereby defeat the policy of the Imperial Government, was manifested by the abrupt refusal of its leaders to a.s.sociate themselves with the efforts of the Burgher Peace Committee. Mr. P. de Wet and the other peace delegates who had visited the Colony in the circ.u.mstances already mentioned, desired the Bond to co-operate with them by informing the republican leaders that they must expect no military a.s.sistance from the Afrikander party, and by formally advising them to end the war in the interests of the Afrikander population. The details of the incident, as recorded in the Blue-book,[275] show that Mr. Theron, the President of the Provincial Bestuur of the Bond and a member of the Legislative a.s.sembly, was at first disposed to regard the proposal of the peace delegates with favour. But, after expressing himself to this effect at Wellington, on February 15th, 1901, he went to Capetown to consult the Bond leaders on the matter, and, as the result of this consultation, he wrote to Mr. de Wet, five days later, declining to meet the peace delegates again, or negotiate with them, on the ground that the "principles of the Afrikander Bond" would be prejudiced by his entering into official negotiations with the deputation, whose official status he was unable, after inquiry, to recognise. It is difficult not to connect this summary treatment of the peace delegates by the Bond with the fact that, just at this time, General C. de Wet was reporting to General Louis Botha that the "Cape Colony had risen to a man."[276] However this may be, the wholesale manner in which the Afrikander Bond had identified itself in the country districts with the Boer invaders is sufficiently displayed by a return published six months later, from which it appears that, out of a total of thirty-three men holding official positions in the Bond organisation in three districts in the Cape Colony, twenty-seven were accused of high treason, of whom twenty-four were convicted, two absconded, and one was acquitted.[277]

[Footnote 274: Sir Richard Solomon was appointed legal adviser to the new Transvaal Administration.]

[Footnote 275: Cd. 903.]

[Footnote 276: See p. 431.]

[Footnote 277: Cd. 903.]

With the Bond in this mood, with certain districts practically maintaining the enemy and certain other districts constantly exposed to the incursions of the guerilla leaders, with a large proportion of the loyalist population fighting at the front, and a still larger number organised for local defence, and with the whole of the Colony, except the ports, under martial law, it was obviously impossible for the machinery of representative government to continue in its normal course.

[Sidenote: Anti-British libels.]

The registration of electors, which, under the provisions of the colonial law, was directed to take place not later than the last day of February, 1901, was postponed to a more convenient season. The existing register, while it contained the names of--it was estimated--ten thousand persons disfranchised, or about to be disfranchised, for rebellion, and of some thousands of others then in arms against their sovereign, failed to include persons who had acquired the necessary qualifications since the date of the last registration (1899). Apart from the unsatisfactory condition of the voters' lists, there were other circ.u.mstances that made it undesirable as well as difficult not merely to hold the elections necessary to fill up the nine or ten vacant seats in the Legislative a.s.sembly, but even to summon Parliament. Locomotion in many parts of the Colony was inconvenient, and sometimes dangerous. So large a proportion of the members of both chambers were absent in Europe, or engaged either in repelling the invaders or in repressing rebellion, that the remainder, if a.s.sembled, would present a mere simulacrum of the actual legislature of the Colony. Moreover, it was necessary that no fresh opportunities for promoting disaffection should be provided by discussions in Parliament or contested elections. The "carnival of mendacity" which, culminating in the Worcester Congress, was mainly responsible for the second invasion of the Colony, had been inaugurated by the inflammatory speeches delivered in the last session of Parliament by the Afrikander members during the debates on the Treason Bill. The spirit of malevolence displayed at this period by the anti-British Press, whether printed in Dutch or in English, may be inferred from the list of convictions reported on April 19th by Sir W.

Hely-Hutchinson to the Colonial Office. Mr. Albert Cartwright, editor of _The South African News_ (the reputed organ of Mr. Merriman and Mr.

Sauer), was found guilty of a defamatory libel on Lord Kitchener, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment without hard labour. Mr.

Advocate Malan, editor of _Ons Land_ (the reputed organ of Mr.

Hofmeyr), was found guilty of a defamatory libel on General French, and sentenced to a similar term of imprisonment. Mr. de Jong, editor of _The Worcester Advertiser_, and Mr. Vosloo, editor of _Het Oosten_, were both convicted of the same offence as Mr. Malan, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment without hard labour, while the former was further charged with a seditious libel attributing atrocities to the British troops, in respect of which he was convicted and sentenced to a fine of 100 or two months' imprisonment.[278]

[Footnote 278: Cd. 903.]

The extension of martial law in January (1901) had made such excesses, whether on the platform or in the Press, no longer possible. But the Afrikander nationalists in the ports, and especially in Capetown, continued to render a.s.sistance to the guerilla leaders, both by providing intelligence of the plans of the British military authorities, and by forwarding supplies of arms and ammunition, until the time (October 9th) when these towns were placed, like the rest of the Colony, under martial law.

In these circ.u.mstances Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson, acting on the advice of his ministers, prorogued the Cape Parliament from time to time, until the actual termination of hostilities made it possible for the inhabitants of the Colony to return to the normal conditions of their political life. As, however, the provision for the ordinary cost of administration made by the Colonial Parliament in its last session did not extend beyond June 30th, 1901, it became necessary to provide for the expenditure of the Colony after this date by the issue of Governor's warrants, under which the Treasurer-General was authorised to pay out funds in antic.i.p.ation of legislative authority. This technically illegal procedure, by which the authority of the Governor was subst.i.tuted temporarily for that of Parliament, was advised by the Cape ministers and sanctioned by Mr. Chamberlain. In this way provision was made for the financial needs of the Government; and when, after the war, the Cape Parliament was able to meet again, the necessary bills of indemnity, legalising these acts of the Governor and acts committed by the military authorities in the administration of martial law, were pa.s.sed in due course.[279]

[Footnote 279: The action of Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson was not without precedent. See Cd. 903, pp. 57 and 67, and p. 123, _supra_.]

[Sidenote: Breakdown of government.]

The only alternative course was the suspension, or abrogation, of the Cape const.i.tution by the Home Government. In view of the appeal for the suspension of the const.i.tution made to Mr. Chamberlain a year later, and refused by him--an appeal which was endorsed by the judgment both of Lord Milner and Mr. Cecil Rhodes, and supported by the majority of the loyalists of both nationalities--it is interesting to observe that pet.i.tions addressed to the Governor in June, 1901, reveal a considerable body of opinion in favour of the proposal at this date. These pet.i.tions came from the British inhabitants of the small towns in the Eastern Province, since, in the vigorous language of one of the pet.i.tioners, "it's those who live in small towns that feel the Bond's iron heel." And the same correspondent a.s.serts that a great number of persons have been prevented from signing the pet.i.tion, although they approve of it, by fear of the "Bond boycott," adding, "Some of the Bond members have already remarked, 'Now martial law is on we are not in it; but wait until it's removed, then it will be our turn.'"[280]

[Footnote 280: Cd. 903.]

The collapse of the system of responsible government in the Cape Colony was complete. The truth upon which Lord Durham insisted in his famous Report on Canada, that responsible government is only possible where an effective majority of the inhabitants are British, was once more demonstrated. In the granting of supplies, the characteristic function of the lower chamber, the authority of the Governor was now subst.i.tuted for that of Parliament. The endeavour to check the rebellion by the agency of the civil courts had been already abandoned. The lenient penalties of the Treason Bill had produced a large increase of disaffection. On April 6th, 1901, a notice was issued by the Attorney-General warning the public that "any act of treason or rebellion and any crime of a political character" committed after the 12th instant would be brought no longer before the Special Tribunals, with their mitigated penalties created by the Act of 1900, but dealt with by the ordinary courts, and punishable by the severe penalties of the common law of the Colony. But this warning of the Attorney-General was superseded a fortnight later (April 22nd), by a notice, issued by Lord Kitchener and published by the Cape Government, under which it was declared that--

[Sidenote: The military courts.]

"All subjects of His[281] Majesty and all persons residing in the Cape Colony who shall, in districts thereof in which martial law prevails, be actively in arms against His Majesty, or who shall directly invite others to take up arms against him, or who shall actively aid or a.s.sist the enemy or commit any overt act by which the safety of His Majesty's forces or subjects is endangered, shall immediately on arrest be tried by court martial, convened by my authority, and shall on conviction be liable to the severest penalties of the law."

[Footnote 281: Queen Victoria died January 22nd, 1901.]

The decision to deal with such cases by military courts was taken by Lord Kitchener, after consultation with Lord Milner, on the ground that the state of the midland and north-western districts was such that "only prompt and severe punishment could stop the spread of rebellion and prevent general anarchy."[282] The Cape Government, however, in a.s.senting to the measure, stipulated that certain conditions should be laid down for the const.i.tution and procedure of the military courts, sufficient to check the more obvious abuses to which such tribunals are liable. These conditions, as expressed in a minute of Sir James Innes, the Attorney-General, were embodied in a set of instructions issued by Lord Kitchener to his officers concurrently with the publication of the notice of April 22nd. Nor was this all. In view of the continued a.s.sistance known to be rendered to the Boer and rebel commandos by the Afrikander nationalists, martial law was extended, on October 9th, to the Cape ports; and on December 2nd the British Government announced that, as the result of the establishment of martial law at the South African ports, no persons would be allowed to land in South Africa from January 1st, 1902, onwards without a permit, except under certain special circ.u.mstances.[283]