W. Basil Worsfold

“ Say what we will, the controversy always seems to relapse into the old ruts—it is the British Government on the one hand and the Boers on the other. The question how a particular policy will affect not merely our enemies, but our now equally numerous friends, seems seldom to be adequately considered. And yet it would seem that justice and policy alike should lead us to be as eager to consider the feelings and interests, and to retain the loyalty, of those who are fighting on our side, as to disarm the present enmity and win the future confidence of those who are fighting against us. ”

“ The Dutch can never own a perfect allegiance merely to Great Britain. The British can never, without moral injury, accept allegiance to any body politic which excludes their motherland. But British and Dutch alike could, without loss of integrity, without any sacrifice of their several traditions, unite in loyal devotion to an empire-state, in which Great Britain and South Africa would be partners, and could work cordially together for the good of South Africa as a member of that greater whole. ”

“ Lord Kitchener was the humane and successful general, anxious to bring the miseries of the war to an end, and anxious, too, to close a campaign which, in spite of its difficult and arduous character, had afforded little or no opportunity of reaping military honours commensurate to the skill and endurance of the army or the sacrifices of the nation. Lord Milner was the far-sighted statesman, responsible for the future well-being of British South Africa, and, above all, the jealous trustee of the rights and interests of the empire. ”

“ Our fathers fought with the courage of despair, and retook the land with God's aid and with their blood. But England is not satisfied. Again is our freedom threatened by the same people, and not only our freedom, but our language, our nationality, our religion! Must we surrender everything, and disown our fathers? I cannot agree with this. The thought is hateful to me—the thought of trampling on the bodies of our fathers as we extend the hand of friendship to those who have slain our fathers in an unrighteous quarrel.... But some may say that the Bible teaches us to love our enemies. ”

“ It is impossible for any one who has not lived in South Africa to realise the sickening distrust and dread produced in the minds of the loyal subjects of the Crown by this statement. War they were ready to face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. ”

“ 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 assurance of knowledge, that compels conviction. ”

“ Chamberlain continued, "although he repeated that statement three days before the ultimatum was delivered, and a week before the invasion of Natal took place. I do not speak, therefore, of his foresight. But what is to be said of the patriotism of a man who is not a single individual but who represents a great party by virtue of his position—although he does not represent it by virtue of his opinion—what is to be said of such a man who, at such a time, should countermine the endeavours for peace of Her Majesty's Government?" ”

“ It is a great privilege to be allowed to fill any position in the character of what I may be, perhaps, allowed to call a 'civilian soldier of the Empire.' To succeed in it, to render any substantial service to any part of our world-wide State, would be all that in any of my most audacious dreams I had ever ventured to aspire to. But in a cause in which one absolutely believes, even failure—personal failure, I mean, for the cause itself is not going to fail—would be preferable to an easy life of comfortable prosperity in another sphere. ”

“ The scarcely veiled demand for the independence of the Cape Colony, now put forward by the Afrikander nationalists, is as magnificently audacious as the ultimatum. Knowing the infamous character of the methods by which the agitation in favour of the Boers was being promoted, Lord Milner might have been excused if he had given way to some strong expressions of indignation. No such note, however, is heard in his reply. He is as dry and passionless as an attorney receiving his clients. ”

“ Now or never the foundation of a wide-embracing nationalism must be laid.... The partition wall has disappeared ... never has the necessity for a policy of a colonial and republican union been greater; now the psychological moment has arrived; now our people have awakened all over South Africa; a new glow illumines our hearts; let us lay the foundation-stone of a real United South Africa on the soil of a pure and all-comprehensive national sentiment. ”

“ Asquith spoke, was destined to be brought into play so prominently during the "eight dusky years" of his South African administration, that to the distant on-looker it came to be accepted as the characterising quality of the man. To some Milner became the "man of blood and iron"; determined, like Bismarck, to secure the unity of a country by trampling with iron-shod boots upon the liberties of its people: even as in the view of others his clear mental vision—never more clear than in South Africa—became clouded by an adopted partisanship, and he was a "lost mind." ”

“ To save England in spite of herself; to keep South Africa a part of the Empire in spite of ignorance at home, in the teeth of an armed Republic and an Afrikander ministry, required not merely an iron will and mastership in statecraft, but a reasoned and unfaltering belief in the justice of the British cause. ”

“ Lord Milner's inflexibility was, in its essence, a keener perception of duty than the ordinary: it was a determination to do what he believed to be for the good of South Africa and the Empire, irrespective of any consideration of personal or party relationship. It was in no sense the incapacity to measure the strength of an opponent, still less did it arise from any failure to perceive the cogency of an opinion in conflict with his own. ”

“ A century of wars, missionary effort, British expansion, industrial development, of lofty administrative ideals and great men sacrificed, had left the two European races with political ambitions so antagonistic, and social differences so bitter, that nothing less than the combined military resources of the colonies and the mother-country sufficed to compel the Dutch to recognise the British principle of "equal rights for all white men south of the Zambesi." ”

“ Dear countrymen of the Transvaal: Brothers of our religion and language: Our hearts are burning for you all: when your brave men fall, we pray to God night and day to help you with His might; we are powerless by ourselves—the English are so angry with us that they have taken away our ammunition, all our powder and cartridges; if you can provide us each with a packet of ten and a Mauser, you will see what we can do ”

“ I am satisfied by experience that the majority of those Dutch inhabitants of the Colony who sympathise with the Republics, however little they may be able to resist giving active expression to that sympathy when the enemy actually appear amongst them, do not desire to see their own districts invaded or to find themselves personally placed in the awkward dilemma of choosing between high treason and an unfriendly attitude to the men of their own race from beyond the border. There are extremists who would like to see the whole of the Cape Colony overrun. ”

“ No merely local question affects so deeply the welfare and peace of her own South African possessions. And the right of Great Britain to intervene to secure fair treatment to the Uitlanders is fully equal to her supreme interest in securing it. The majority of them are her subjects, whom she is bound to protect. But the enormous number of British subjects, the endless series of their grievances, and the nature of those grievances, which are not less serious because they are not individually sensational, makes protection by the ordinary diplomatic means impossible. ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield, who was the first statesman to give practical expression to the belief that the maintenance of empire was not inconsistent with the welfare of the masses of the home population, was in power. British statesmen, and the class from which British statesmen are drawn, had begun to study Colonial questions in a more hopeful and intelligent spirit. Something had been learnt, too, of the actual conditions of South Africa. And yet it was at this epoch that what was, perhaps, the most ruinous of all the divergences of opinion between Capetown and Downing Street occurred. ”

“ The five years' franchise—the Bloemfontein minimum—was in itself a compromise. What Lord Milner said, in effect, to President Krüger was this: "I have a whole sheaf of grievances against you: the dynamite monopoly, excessive railway rates, interference with the independence of the judiciary, a vicious police system, administrative corruption, municipal abuses, and the rest. I will let all these go in exchange for one thing—a franchise reform which will give at once to a fair proportion of the Uitlander population some appreciable representation in the government of the Republic." ”

“ And so I do not take it that in this case people are necessarily disloyal because they carry their sympathy with the Government of the Transvaal—which, seeing the close tie of relationship which unites a great portion of the population here with the dominant section in that country, is perfectly natural—to a point which gives some ground for the assertion that they seem to care much more for the independence of the Transvaal than for the honour and the interests of the country to which they themselves belong. ”

“ Further, any attempt to give back or restore the Boer Republic in the Transvaal must lead to anarchy and failure, and probably, at no distant period, to a vicious imitation of some South American Republics, in which the more uneducated and misguided Boers, dominated and led by better educated foreign adventurers—Germans, Hollanders, Irish Home Rulers, and other European Republicans and Socialists—will become a pest to the whole of South Africa, and a most dangerous fulcrum to any European Power bent on contesting our naval supremacy, or injuring us in our colonies. ”

“ For the rest, we look in vain for any trace of bitterness, or even of partisanship, in his frank and penetrating analysis. It is the survey of a man who is completely master of the situation; who is absolutely convinced of the justice of the British cause; who has no illusions and no fears.
Feeding the enemy.
With the circumstances in which the burghers were induced by their leaders to continue, or renew, their resistance to the Imperial troops before us, both the long duration of the guerilla war, and the methods by which it was finally brought to a close, become easily intelligible. ”

“ It is our duty, not only to the Uitlanders, but to the English throughout South Africa, to the native races, and to our own prestige in that part of the world, and in the world at large, to insist that the Transvaal falls into line with the other states in South Africa, and no longer menaces the peace and prosperity of the whole. ”

“ A century and a half of the Dutch East India Company's government—a government "in all things political purely despotic, in all things commercial purely monopolist"—had produced a people unlike any other European community on the face of the earth. Of the small original stock from which the South African Dutch are descended, one-quarter were Huguenot refugees from France, an appreciable section were German, and the institution of slavery had added to this admixture the inevitable strain of non-Aryan blood. ”

“ Hatred of England rose in inverse ratio to the evidence of the justness of her cause. When the Boers were victorious, or seemed to be most capable of defying the efforts of the largest fighting force that Great Britain had ever put into the field; when, that is to say, it was most clearly demonstrated that British supremacy in South Africa could only have been maintained by force of arms against the formidable rival which had risen against it, then the wave of popular hatred surged highest. When the British arms prospered, the clamour sank ”

“ By representing the new British population, which followed in the wake of the mineral discoveries, as "fortune-seekers" and adventurers and not genuine colonists, the Bond endeavoured, not merely to widen the natural line of cleavage between the townsman and the countryman, but actually to detach the older British settlers from sympathy with the mother country, and, by drawing them within the sphere of Afrikander nationalist aspirations, to make them share its own antagonism to British supremacy. ”

“ These injurious utterances at length provoked Lord Salisbury's indignant comment: "England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war, eminent men write and speak publicly as if they belonged to the enemy;" and elicited from Lord Rosebery, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Haldane, and Sir Henry Fowler, the assurance that the determination of the British people to "see the war through" had in no way weakened. ”

“ If he can enlarge his mind, if he can reform existing abuses, if he can expand an archaic system of government and render it sufficiently elastic to meet the requirements of an enlarged population and important and increasing industries—well and good. If not, let the Boer beware; for he will place himself in conflict with the intelligence and the progress of South Africa. Then the Boer system will be condemned by a higher authority than the Colonial Office or the opinion of England ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is quite possible to maintain that the comparative immunity from punishment and the disproportionate military success which the Boers enjoyed did in fact, by contributing to the prolongation of the war, ultimately produce a greater loss of life, and a greater amount of material suffering, than would have been incurred by the South African Dutch if the war had been waged with greater severity on the part of Great Britain. That it increased the cost of the war both in lives and in treasure to the British nation is obvious. ”

“ Considering the tract of country over which these border inhabitants are dispersed, the rude and uncultivated state in which they live, and the wild notions of independence which prevail among them, I am afraid any attempts to introduce civilisation and a strict administration of justice will be slow in their progress, and likely, if not proceeded upon with caution and management, rather to create a spirit of resistance, or to occasion them to emigrate still further from the seat of government, than answer the beneficent views with which they might be undertaken. ”