Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 30

[Footnote 282: Cd. 983.]

[Footnote 283: Cd. 903. These measures were taken upon Lord Milner's return to the Transvaal (September, 1901) after his visit to England. The scandal of the almost open co-operation of the Bond with the Boer leaders had become notorious, and this a.s.sistance was recognised as a contributory cause to the protraction of the guerilla war.]

Ample evidence alike of the necessity of these measures, and of the _de facto_ suspension of the const.i.tution, is provided by a Minister's minute of September 12th, 1901. The immediate object of the minute is to advise the Governor that it is impossible, in the opinion of the Cape Ministry, to avoid the further prorogation of Parliament; and this, although the Const.i.tution Ordinance requires the Cape Parliament to meet "once at least every year," and cannot, therefore, be complied with, unless Parliament is summoned "for the despatch of business on or before Sat.u.r.day, 12th October." In support of this decision Sir Gordon Sprigg and his colleagues referred to the Military Intelligence Report for the current month, which showed that, south of the Orange River, there were a dozen or more commandos, with a total of from 1,800 to 2,000 men; while in the portion of the Colony north of the river there were "numerous commandos also roaming about." Then follows a startling revelation of the character of the men whom the Bond organisation had sent to Parliament:

[Sidenote: Condition of Cape parliament.]

"One member of the House of a.s.sembly," ministers write, "is undergoing a term of imprisonment for seditious libel, three members are awaiting their trial on the charge of high treason, two seats are practically vacant by reason of the absence of the members without leave during the whole of last session. Those two members are alleged to have welcomed the invaders of the Colony, and encouraged rebellion, and then fled to Holland, where they are now living. One seat is vacant by the resignation of the member, who has accepted an appointment in the Transvaal Colony.

Another seat is vacant on account of the death of the member, another member is sending in his resignation owing to ill health, which compels him to reside in Europe. In all these cases the divisions concerned are either under martial law or in a state of disturbance, which makes new elections impracticable.

"Besides the cases enumerated there are members who have been deported from their homes on account of the seditious influences which the military authorities allege they were exercising, and others who are under military observation, with respect to whom their attendance in Parliament must be regarded as uncertain.

Several members also are engaged in military operations, whose attendance could not, in the present condition of the country, be relied on. There are also some members who would be unable to attend owing to the state of war and rebellion prevailing in the districts where they reside, whose personal presence is necessary for the protection of their families and property."

Such a legislature, they concluded, could not be regarded as "fairly representing the people." Moreover--

"There is also the further consideration that the probability of good resulting from the meeting of Parliament now is but small, while the likelihood of evil consequences accruing from the publication of speeches of a character similar to many that were delivered last session is strong. The tendency of such speeches would be to encourage the spirit of rebellion which unhappily prevails in the Colony over a large area, and ministers regard it as an imperative duty to do everything in their power to subdue that rebellious spirit, and restore peace and good-will to the distracted country."[284]

[Footnote 284: Cd. 903.]

The necessity for the more stringent action now taken by the Imperial authorities was, therefore, undoubted. But here again, in placing the ports, the centres of commercial life, under martial law, an endeavour was made to render the restraints of military rule as little onerous as possible. A Board, consisting of three persons nominated respectively by the Governor, the Prime Minister, and the General Commanding in the Cape Colony, was created for the consideration and, where necessary, the redress of all complaints or grievances arising out of martial law in the Colony, other than pecuniary claims against the Government. The fact that, on the whole, martial law was judiciously administered is indicated by the Report of the proceedings of this Board, presented on December 3rd by Mr. (now Sir Lewis) Mitch.e.l.l, who, as Manager of the Standard Bank, had been appointed chairman by Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson. Out of 199 cases brought before the Board, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l writes:

"A fair number of substantial grievances have been redressed, but in a majority of instances the Board have held that complainants suffered through some misconduct of their own, or were deported, imprisoned, or otherwise punished on reasonable grounds of suspicion."[285]

[Footnote 285: Cd. 903.]

[Sidenote: Loyalists defend the colony.]

In all this Sir Gordon Sprigg loyally co-operated with the Imperial military authorities. His att.i.tude, and that of the loyalist inhabitants of the Colony, may be gathered from the speech which he delivered at Capetown on December 1st, 1901. In this striking and inspiring utterance we have the companion picture to that presented in the minute of September 12th. Throughout there runs a note of justifiable pride in the military efforts of the Cape Government, and in the sacrifices which these efforts have entailed upon the loyalist population. First there was the number of troops provided. The Cape Government had placed, he said, 18,000 men in the field against the invaders and rebels; they had a defensive force of 18,000 town guards, of whom 3,000 were natives; and, in addition, 7,000 natives were under arms in the Transkei for the defence of those territories. In respect of this force of 18,000 men in the field, Sir Gordon Sprigg pointed out that such a number of men, coming from a population of 500,000, was equivalent to a force of 1,450,000 men from the United Kingdom, with its population of over 40,000,000. He might have added that, since half of the 500,000 Europeans in the Cape Colony were "either actually in rebellion against the Crown or in positive sympathy with rebellion," the more correct equivalent force from the United Kingdom would have been 3,000,000 men. And as for the cost of maintenance, the colony provided three-fourths of the expenditure upon the 18,000 men in the field, while it wholly supported the town guards and other purely defensive forces. He then dwelt with satisfaction upon the fact that these local forces were now entirely controlled by the Cape Government, which had made itself responsible for the defence of no less than thirty-one districts of the Colony.

"Months ago," he said, "we pressed strongly upon the Commander-in-Chief to hand over to us the colonial forces then under his direction. We thought that if we got them into our possession, not only defraying the cost of their maintenance, but taking charge of certain parts of the Colony, we could keep those districts clear of the enemy. We were continually putting that view before the Commander-in-Chief, and also before the High Commissioner, Lord Milner, but still the matter hung, and we had communications going backwards and forwards till at last the High Commissioner communicated with me, and he said, 'I think the only way to come to an understanding in this matter is, if we have a conference. If you could manage to meet Lord Kitchener and myself, I have great hopes we should be able to arrange what you desire.' I asked then if Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner could come to meet me half-way, but Lord Kitchener said it was not possible for him to leave Pretoria at that time, but he would be only too delighted if I could come up and meet him and Lord Milner upon the question. The result of that was that I went up with two of my colleagues. It has been put about all over the country that we were ordered by Lord Kitchener to proceed to Pretoria, but, so far from that being the case, it was our suggestion that we should take over the command of certain portions of the country, and we went up to Pretoria to secure that object. And in that we were successful, and the result of it has been published very lately."[286]

[Footnote 286: Cd. 903. This was, in its essence, the proposal for the systematic and effective defence of the Colony, which Lord Milner had consistently advocated both before and during the war--with General Butler and the Home Government, with Lord Roberts at the time of the Forward Movement (see p. 353), and now at the eleventh hour with Lord Kitchener in support of the Cape Government.]

[Sidenote: Second visit to England.]

These events, revealing the slow and laborious progress of the Imperial troops in a South Africa rent by war from end to end, account sufficiently for the postponement of the work of active administrative reconstruction in the new colonies, to which Lord Milner owed the opportunity for his second visit to England. On April 3rd, 1901, he telegraphed a request that he might be allowed to return home at an early date, on leave, since he feared that, unless he had a short rest, he would approach the onerous duty of superintending the work of reconstruction with lessened efficiency. "I have now been continuously in harness," he said, "without a day's holiday, for more than two years ... and it is, undoubtedly, better for the public service, if I am to get such a rest at all, that I should take leave immediately while military operations still continue and the work of civil administration is necessarily curtailed, rather than when it will be possible to organise civil government in a more complete fas.h.i.+on, and when many important problems which are for the moment in abeyance will have to be dealt with." To this request Mr. Chamberlain replied that, although His Majesty's Government greatly regretted that it was necessary for Lord Milner to leave South Africa at present, they quite recognised that it was unavoidable that he should take the rest which the severe strain of the last two years had made imperative.[287] He was, therefore, to take leave as soon as he found it possible to do so.

[Footnote 287: Cd. 547.]

[Sidenote: Civil affairs in new colonies.]

None the less the little that could be done to develop the inchoate machinery of administration which marked the transition from military to civil order in the new colonies, was done, and done well, before Lord Milner left Johannesburg. On May 4th, 1901, Sir H. Gould-Adams was able to report that the chief departments of the administration of the Orange River Colony had been transferred from military to civil officials, and reorganised on a permanent basis. In the Transvaal the departments of finance, law, mines, and that of the Secretary to the Administration, had been organised, and were gradually taking over an increasing volume of administrative work from the military officials. Even more significant was the establishment by proclamation (May 8th), of a nominated Town Council for the management of the munic.i.p.al affairs of Johannesburg, and the consequent abolition of the office of Military Governor, with the transfer of the departments. .h.i.therto controlled by him to a Government Commissioner and other officials of the civil administration. This step was rendered possible by the circ.u.mstance that a certain number of the princ.i.p.al residents, of whom twelve were nominated for service on the Council, had now returned to their homes. It marked the recommencement of the industrial life of the Rand, which had followed the permission, given by Lord Kitchener in April, for three mines to resume work. From this time forward the Uitlander refugees began to return; although, as we have seen,[288] it was not possible to allow the general ma.s.s of the inhabitants to leave the coast towns until the following November.

And, in addition to this, Lord Milner had obtained statements of the views of the Cape and Natal Governments on the question of the settlement of the new colonies. Mr. Chamberlain had attached great importance to this interchange of opinions; rightly holding that, in determining the conditions and methods of the settlement of the conquered territories, the British South African colonies should be taken into the counsels of the Imperial Government. Lord Milner had, therefore, submitted to the colonial Governments the draft of the Letters Patent, under which the system of Crown Colony government was to be established in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, before they were issued.[289] As the result of these consultations the terms of surrender granted to the Boers at Vereeniging, and the consequent administrative arrangements arising out of them, embodied decisions based not merely on the judgment of the Imperial Government, but on what was virtually the unanimous opinion of the loyal population of South Africa. In this, as in the crisis of the negotiations before the war, the loyalists found in Lord Milner their "representative man."

[Footnote 288: See p. 459.]

[Footnote 289: The Letters Patent were not issued until August.]

[Sidenote: Milner in England.]

Lord Milner--then Sir Alfred Milner--left Capetown on May 8th, and reached England on the 24th. On his arrival in London he was met at the station by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, and immediately conducted to the King, who was at that time still residing at Marlborough House. At the end of a long audience His Majesty announced his intention of raising him to the peerage, the first of many marks of royal favour, including his elevation to the Privy Council, which were shown to the High Commissioner during his stay in England. The warm demonstrations of popular regard with which he had been welcomed upon his arrival in London, were followed by a luncheon given on the next day (Sat.u.r.day, May 25th) in his honour by Mr. Chamberlain, his official chief. The speech elicited by this notable occasion is one in which a graceful humour is characteristically blended with deep emotion. Those who have had the good fortune to hear many of Lord Milner's speeches--speeches sometimes turning a page of history, sometimes mere incidents of official or administrative routine--know that they are all alike distinguished by the high quality of sincerity.[290] But this was an occasion upon which even adroitness of intellect and integrity of purpose might well have sought the shelter of conventional expressions. Lord Milner dispenses with any such protection. "In a rational world," he said, it would have seemed better to everybody that he, "with a big unfinished job awaiting him," and many of his fellow workmen unable to take the rest which they both deserved and needed, "should have arrived, and stayed, and returned in the quietest possible manner." But it was an age in which it "seemed impossible for many people to put a simple and natural interpretation on anything; and his arrival in this quiet manner would have been misconstrued to a degree, which would have been injurious to the public interests." If his "hard-begged holiday" could have been represented as a "veiled recall," then of course it was obvious that, having taken the proverbial hansom from Waterloo to his own chambers, this very harmless action would have been "trumpeted over two continents as evidence of his disgrace."

[Footnote 290: It was, in its essence, the "high seriousness of absolute sincerity" that Arnold, after Aristotle, makes the central attribute of poetic thought. In commenting upon a speech delivered at Germiston on March 15th, 1905, the Johannesburg _Star_ wrote on the day following: "Did ever a High Commissioner for South Africa speak in this wise before?

But beneath the light words and unstudied diction there is the weight and sureness of the 'inevitable' thought. A man who has pursued a single task for eight years with unremitting effort and unswerving devotion can afford to put his mind into his words. And in all that Lord Milner says there is an absolute sincerity, born of high integrity of purpose and an a.s.surance of knowledge, that compels conviction. Or, rather, should we say, that makes the need of conviction as unnecessary as a lamp in daylight."]

"It is hard, it is ludicrous," he continued, "that some of the busiest men in the world should be obliged to occupy their time, and that so many of my friends and well wishers should be put to inconvenience--and on a day, too, when it would be so nice to be in the country--merely in order to prove to persons with an ingrained habit of self-delusion that the British Government will not give up its agents in the face of the enemy, or that the people of this country will not allow themselves to be bored into abandoning what they have spent millions of treasure and so many precious lives to obtain. All I can say is, that if it was necessary (I apologise for it: I am sorry to be the centre of a commotion from which no man could be const.i.tutionally more averse than myself), I can only thank you heartily for the kindness and the cordiality with which the thing has been done. I feel indeed that the praises which have been bestowed, the honours which have been heaped on me, are beyond my deserts. But the simplest thing to do under these circ.u.mstances is to try to deserve them in the future. In any case I am under endless obligations. It is difficult to say these things in the face of the persons princ.i.p.ally concerned, but I feel bound to take this opportunity, especially in view of the remarks which have been made in certain quarters, to express my deep sense of grat.i.tude for the manner in which His Majesty's Government, and especially my immediate chief, have shown me great forbearance, and given me support most prompt at the moment when it was most needed, without which I should have been helpless indeed. And I have also to thank many friends, not a few of them here present, and some not present, for messages of encouragement, for kindly words of suggestion and advice received at critical moments, some of which have been of invaluable a.s.sistance to me, and have made an indelible impression on my heart. I am afraid, if I were to refer to all my benefactors, it would be like the bidding prayer--and you would all lose your trains.

[Sidenote: Hint from the bidding prayer.]

"But there is one hint I may take from the bidding prayer. Not only in this place, but at all times and in all places, I am specially bound to remember the devotion of the loyalists--the Dutch loyalists, if you please, and not only the British--the loyalists of South Africa. They responded to all my appeals to act, and, harder still, to wait. They never lost their cheery confidence in the darkest days of our misfortunes, they never faltered in their fidelity to a man of whose errors and failings they were necessarily more conscious than anybody else, but of whose honesty of purpose they were long ago, and once for all, convinced. If there is anything most gratifying to me on this memorable occasion it is the encouragement which I know the events of yesterday and of to-day will give to thousands of our South African fellow-countrymen, like minded with us, in the homes and in the camps of South Africa.

"Your Royal Highness,[291] Mr. Chamberlain, ladies, and gentlemen--I am sure you will not desire me to enter into any political questions to-day. More than that, I really have nothing to add to what I have already said and written, I fear with wearisome reiteration. It seems to me we are slowly progressing towards the predestined end; latterly it has appeared as if the pace was somewhat quickening, but I do not wish to make too much of that or to speak with any too great confidence. However long the road, it seems to me the only one to the object which we were bound to pursue, and which seems now fairly in sight. What has sustained me personally--if your kindness will allow me to make a personal reference--what has sustained me personally on the weary road is my absolute, unshakable conviction that it was the only one which we could travel.

[Footnote 291: The Duke of Cambridge.]

"Peace we could have had by self-effacement. We could have had it easily and comfortably on those terms. But we could not have held our own by any other methods than those which we have been obliged to adopt. I do not know whether I feel more inclined to laugh or to cry when I have to listen for the hundredth time to these dear delusions, this Utopian dogmatising that it only required a little more time, a little more patience, a little more tact, a little more meekness, a little more of all those gentle virtues of which I know I am so conspicuously devoid, in order to conciliate--to conciliate what? Panoplied hatred, insensate ambition, invincible ignorance. I fully believe that the time is coming--Heaven knows how we desire it to come quickly--when all the qualities of the most gentle and forbearing statesmans.h.i.+p which are possessed by any of our people will be called for, and ought to be applied, in South Africa. I do not say for a moment there is not great scope for them even to-day, but always provided they do not mar what is essential for success in the future--the conclusiveness of the final scenes of the present drama."

[Sidenote: Merriman and Sauer mission.]

[Sidenote: Liberals and Afrikanders.]

As a declaration to the British world that Lord Milner "possessed the unabated confidence of his sovereign and of his fellow countrymen,"

Mr. Chamberlain's luncheon was amply justified. The protraction of the war was beginning to try the endurance of the nation. Mr. Sauer and Mr. Merriman were in England for the express purpose of discrediting Lord Milner, and behind these fierce political freelances was the astute brain of the Bond Master, Hofmeyr. They had been commissioned early in the year by the Afrikander nationalists to give effect to the resolutions of the Worcester Congress by co-operating with their friends in England in an agitation for the recall of the High Commissioner. It was said that these two ex-ministers of the Crown were authorised to offer an undertaking that the Bond would use its influence with ex-President Kruger and Mr. Fischer[292] to terminate the war, in exchange for the promise of "autonomy" for the Boers and a general armistice for the Cape rebels. However this may be, the delegates of the Worcester Congress made it their chief business to represent to the members of the Liberal party who favoured their cause, that the recall of Lord Milner would remove the chief obstacle to peace. This attempt never came within a measurable distance of success; but its failure was not due to any want of effort on the part of that section of the Liberal opposition which had been opposed to the annexation of the Republics, and now denounced the British Government and the Imperial troops for their "methods of barbarism."

The completeness with which Lord Courtney, Mr. Bryce, Mr.

Lloyd-George, Lord Loreburn (Sir Robert Reid), Mr. Burns, and other prominent members of the Liberal party identified themselves with the policy and action of the Afrikander Bond, is disclosed by the proceedings which marked the banquet given on June 5th in honour of Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer. Mr. Bryce, in a letter expressing his approbation of the object of the banquet and his regret at his inability to attend it, wrote: "Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer have not only distinguished public records, but did excellent service, for which the Government ought to have been grateful, in allaying pa.s.sion and averting disturbances in Cape Colony."[293] Lord (then Mr.) Courtney, in proposing a vote of thanks to the guests of the evening, declared that the annexation of the Republics was "a wrong and a blunder"; adding that the Liberal policy would some day be "to temper annexation, if not to abrogate it." Both Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer revealed the aims of their mission with perfect frankness. The former, after alluding to Mr. Chamberlain's luncheon as a display of the "Imperial spirit of the servile senate who decreed ovations and triumphs to Caligula and Domitian, when they had received rebuffs from the ancestors both of ourselves and the heroic Dutch now struggling in South Africa," and characterising Lord Milner's High Commissioners.h.i.+p as "a career of unmitigated and hopeless failure," proceeded to demand his immediate recall. To employ Lord Milner in the settlement of the new colonies, said Mr. Merriman, would be "a suicidal and ruinous policy. He was a violent partizan; his predictions never came true; the bursts of fustian and the frivolous utterances of his despatches showed an ill-balanced and ill-regulated mind, which was utterly unable to cope with the problem." While, as for the prospect of a British army ever conquering the South African Dutch, he rea.s.serted the opinion which he held before the war--"Our friends they might be, but our subjects never."[294] Mr. Sauer, who "felt honoured by seeing such a gathering, and seeing in it a Gladstone[295] and a Leonard Courtney," was no less explicit:

[Footnote 292: These two ex-officials, representing the respective Governments of the late Republics, were living in Holland at this time.]

[Footnote 293: It is only fair to a.s.sume that Mr. Bryce was not acquainted with the details of the Dordrecht and Hargrove affairs, to which reference has been made respectively at p.

287 and p. 375. And, still more that he was unaware of the utterly discreditable Basuto incident, with respect to which General Gordon's biographer writes: "The consequence was that Mr. Sauer deliberately resolved to destroy Gordon's reputation as a statesman, and to ensure the triumph of his own policy by an act of treachery which has never been surpa.s.sed."--_The Life of Gordon_, vol. ii., p. 83. (Fisher Unwin.)]

[Footnote 294: Compare the different and infinitely more instructive treatment of the question of Dutch allegiance by Lord Milner in his Johannesburg speech, quoted at p. 145.]

[Footnote 295: _I.e._, the Rev. Stephen Gladstone.]

"I stand here," he said, "as a representative of the Dutch people, and declare that they never mean to be a subject race. If they cannot get their rights by justice they will get them by other means.... I am glad to go back and tell my own people how many there are in this country who appreciate their devotion to an ideal, and are prepared to befriend them in the hour of trial."[296]

[Footnote 296: Apart from those mentioned in the text, the following attended the Merriman and Sauer banquet: Mr. E.

Robertson, M.P. (chairman), Lord Farrer, Mr. T. Shaw, M.P., Mr. Burt, M.P., Mr. Channing, M.P., Mr. John Ellis, M.P., Mr.

H. J. Wilson, M.P., Sir Wilfred Lawson, Mr. Frederic Harrison, and others. And among those who sent letters of regret for their absence were the Marquis of Ripon, Lord Hobhouse, Dr. Spence Watson, Mr. Seale-Hayne, M.P., and Lord Loreburn.]

A fortnight later a meeting of those who sympathised with the Boer cause was held in the Queen's Hall, Langham Place. The spirit of this notorious gathering, presided over by Mr. Labouchere, M.P., and attended by Mr. Merriman. Mr. Sauer, Mr. Lloyd-George, M.P., and other Radical members of Parliament, is sufficiently revealed by certain characteristic incidents which marked the proceedings. The agents of the meeting wore the Transvaal colours; a member of the audience who uncovered at the mention of King Edward was ejected; the Union Jack was hissed and hooted; and, while a printed form was handed round inviting the signatures of persons prepared to pay eight and-a-half guineas for a tour in Holland and the privilege of seeing ex-President Kruger, the name of the British sovereign was received by the audience with marks of evident disapprobation.

[Sidenote: Agitation for Milner's recall.]

The agitation for Lord Milner's recall was continued throughout the year. It was accompanied by a repet.i.tion, in England and on the continent of Europe, of the shameless calumnies upon the Imperial troops, which had marked the "carnival of mendacity" that led to the second invasion of Cape Colony. The injurious effect produced upon the Boers in the field by the support thus given by public men in England to the "continued resistance" policy of the Afrikander nationalists, has been already noticed, and it is unnecessary, therefore, to say more on this aspect of the subject. The attempt to discredit Lord Milner culminated in the declaration made by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, then recognised as the official leader of the Liberal party, at Plymouth, on November 19th, 1901, that, unless the British Government changed its methods, "the whole of the Dutch population in our colonies, as well as in the two territories, would in all probability be permanently and violently alienated from us" when the war was ended. "I am ready to speak out to-night," he continued, "and to say what I have never yet said, that for my part I despair of this peril being conjured away so long as the present Colonial Secretary is in Downing Street and the present High Commissioner is at Pretoria." When the full report of this speech had reached the Cape, the Vigilance Committee, a body representing the loyalists of both nationalities, met[297] under the presidency of Sir Gordon Sprigg, and resolved:

[Footnote 297: December 17th, 1901.]