APPENDIX VI.

FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A PROGRESSIVE BURGHER OF THE ORANGE FREE STATE.

THE ORANGE FREE STATE AND PRESIDENT KRUGER'S POLICY.

The Special Correspondent of the London Times at Bloemfontein sends an interesting despatch, dated 25th April, 1900, from which the following extracts are taken. They contain the views of a Progressive burgher of the Free State, the party lately led by Mr. J. G. Fraser, who, to the loss of all South Africa, was defeated in the Presidential election of 1896.

Few chapters in the history of the development of that anti-British movement which finally culminated in the present war in South Africa could be more interesting than that dealing with the political relations between the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

Both Republics had their origin in the Great Trek. But, though both sprang from that movement of discontent with British rule, such as it was in the thirties, there was a great difference in the degree of the discontent. A large section of the emigrant farmers was composed of men of adventurous nomadic habits, impatient of all control, and bitterly hostile to all those elements of modern civilisation which British influence represented. It was these who, when in 1848 direct sovereignty over the country between the Orange and Vaal rivers was resumed by Sir Harry Smith, decided to cross over into the then almost unknown regions beyond the latter river, and founded various turbulent little States carved out of territories conquered from the natives. These ultimately coalesced into a single republic, which assumed to itself the ambitious title of the South African Republic. Those, on the other hand, whose grievances had been largely temporary and local, and who realised the advantages of some form of stable government, remained in the fertile country south of the Vaal, and, being joined by many immigrants, Dutch, English, and German, became the fathers of the Free Staters of the present generation. Thus there was from the very first a great difference of character between the two Republics, and for many years after the retrocession of the Free State intercourse between it and Cape Colony was much closer than between it and the Transvaal. There grew up in South Africa during the sixties and seventies a Dutch nationalist aspiration, aiming at the ultimate creation of an united Dutch South Africa from which English rule should be eliminated. This aspiration was chiefly fostered by foreign

immigrants, Hollanders and Germans, who came to seek their fortunes in the Republics, and by some of the more educated among the Cape Dutch who had studied in Europe, and there imbibed the views about nationalism which were in fashion with the generation that followed the halfnationalist, half-liberal movement of 1848. Conspicuous among these were men like Carl Borckenhagen, a talented, ambitious and unscrupulous German, who, through the medium of his journal, the Bloemfontein Express, and still more through the enormous secret influence he exercised over President Reitz and his successor Steyn, devoted all his powers to the propagation of the nationalist idea of hatred of England; F. W. Reitz, a rising advocate in Cape Colony, who afterwards rose to become Chief Justice and President of the Free State, and is now State Secretary of the Transvaal; the Rev. S. J. du Toit, editor of the Patriot—since converted to a sounder appreciation of what the future welfare of South Africa demands. It was these three men who, in 1882, founded the Afrikander Bond. In President Burgers, too, with his magnificent plans for the future development of the South African Republic, these views found a typical representative.

It was the revolt of 1881, the series of defeats inflicted on British regulars by a handful of Afrikander farmers, and the short-sighted and unexpected surrender of Mr. Gladstone's Government, that gave the nationalist aspiration a chapter in history, a new hope, and-in Paul Kruger-a leader.

During the war of 1881 large numbers of Free Staters and colonials flocked to the Transvaal to join their kinsfolk. In the Free State many petitions were signed and addressed to President Brand expressing sympathy with the Boers and asking the President's intervention. Оп 7th February, 1881, Kruger sent from Heidelberg a long appeal for intervention or assistance to President Brand, ending with a passage which may well be quoted as summing up the object of Kruger's policy from that day to this: "Freedom shall rise in South Africa, as the sun from the morning clouds, as freedom rose in the United States of America. Then shall it be, from the Zambesi to Simon's Bay, Africa for the Afrikander." Brand offered his mediation, which the British Government, glad to get out of the scrape as best it could, eagerly accepted. At the Newcastle conference Brand practically dictated the terms to which both parties were to submit. But, though Brand's sympathies inclined towards the revolted burghers of the Transvaal, he still remained a friend to Great Britain. He was far too sagacious to be led astray by the nationalist delirium which the war awakened among the Dutch all over South Africa. He did all in his power to discountenance the Bond advocated by Borckenhagen and Reitz as only calculated to cause future mischief. His sane, far-seeing policy was guided by a sincere patriotism which looked not only to the Orange Free State, but to the whole of

South Africa. He looked on the British power as a friendly factor—a factor essential to the development of those portions of South Africa which it had retained under its control. Brand's comparatively early death in 1888 was one of the greatest misfortunes that ever befell South Africa, as it left the field clear for Paul Kruger. From the very first Kruger was determined not to rest content with the settlement secured for the Transvaal by President Brand. Through the weakness of Lord Derby he secured its modification by peaceful means in 1884. But the reaction which followed in England and which led to the despatch of the Warren expedition in the following year convinced him that he had now got as much out of Great Britain as he was ever likely to get by peaceful request, and that henceforward he must look to political intrigue and physical force to help him in his further plans. For a time the poverty of the country, internal dissensions, and the task of maintaining himself in power-an object which in his eyes has always ranked above all else, above even the destruction of the British power in South Africa-kept him quiet. In 1886 came the discovery of the Witwatersrand with its promise of immeasurable wealth, to be used not only to keep the President in office, but also to carry out by the practical instruments of armed force and lavish intrigue the vague ambitions once cherished by President Burgers. The Delagoa Bay railway scheme initiated by Burgers was now taken in hand by Kruger with characteristic determination and unscrupulousness, and as an essential preliminary the Portuguese Government was driven into breaking its faith with the English company which had got the concession for the railway to the Transvaal border. The objects Kruger kept before his eyes in those years were twofold. On the one hand, his aim was to connect the Transvaal with the sea, not only through Delagoa Bay, but by the actual extension of its territory to the coast through Zululand or Amatongaland, so that it should have its own harbour and become economically free both of Portugal and the British colonies, and be able to enter into more direct relations with European Powers which might support it against England; and, on the other hand, to arm his own burghers and render the Free State economically and politically so completely dependent on the Transvaal that, when the time should come either for throwing off the London Convention or for annexing some piece of disputed territory necessary for his schemes, he should have at his back a military Power with which no British Government, such as British Governments then were, would dare to try the issue of war.

In 1887 two secret conferences took place between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, dealing with various economical and political questions. Nothing could give a clearer idea of Kruger's policy towards the Free State than some brief account of these meetings. The first conference took place in President Kruger's house at Pretoria on 31st May and the next two days. There were present on the one side Presiden

Kruger with his State Secretary and State Attorney, Messrs. Bok and Leyds, and a commission of the Transvaal Volksraad consisting of Messrs. F. Wolmarans, Klopper, Taljaard, Lombaard, and Spies, and on the other side a deputation from the Free State Volksraad composed of Messrs. Fraser, Klynveld, and Myburgh. The Transvaal representatives are very typical. Above them all stands out the President, who practically leads the whole conference; knowing exactly what he wants, indifferent to argument, returning again and again to the same point, however often refuted; incapable of conviction, though ready as a last resort to lower his demands step by step and claim that he has made a great concession -the same Kruger as twelve years later at Bloemfontein, only here not on the defensive against a superior intellect and a will as strong as his own, but active, persuasive, impassioned, speaking among men more capable of submitting to his influence. At his side is the smooth plausible young Hollander Leyds, taking no part in the debate, but making his influence discernible in almost every argument. The commission represents Kruger's stalwarts in the Volksraad, the men chosen for their unquestioning fidelity to the hand that has fed them and kept them in their places, for their narrow religious and political prejudices and for their genuine hatred of England. Just as the Transvaal representatives for most purposes mean President Kruger, so the Free Staters mean Mr. J. G. Fraser. Son of one of those Scotch Presbyterian clergymen who came out to South Africa in the middle of the century to supply the intellectual deficiencies of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr. Fraser entered the Free State as a young man, and threw in his lot unreservedly with the country of his adoption, rapidly attracting President Brand's attention and becoming his right-hand man, his political alter ego, in which capacity he came on this occasion to Pretoria. After Brand's death Mr. Fraser resolutely continued the tradition of Brand's policy, but unfortunately, as year by year the influence of the noisier and extremer party led by Reitz and Borckenhagen, and afterwards by Steyn, prevailed, his own hold grew weaker. In vain Mr. Fraser for years prophesied the inevitable result of following the mischievous policy of the Transvaal. The mass of the burghers, swayed by sentiment and deluded by their belief in England's weakness, refused to heed his warnings. And now Mr. Fraser has lived to see the little State with which he has so long been identified, and which owes so much to him, throw away its independence in defence of an unworthy and hopeless cause.

The object with which the Free State deputies had come was a single and straightforward one-to arrange for a general treaty of amity and commerce which should bring the two kindred States closer together, and more especially to come to some agreement with regard to the scheme of building a railway across the Free State from Cape Colony to join on to a proposed Transvaal railway from the Vaal to the Witwatersrand and

Pretoria. Another suggestion the deputation had come to urge upon the Transvaal was that of joining a general South African Customs Union. Both these suggestions met with Kruger's strongest disapproval. They meant bringing South Africa together, linking the Free State in closer commercial, social, and political relationship with the British possessions, instead of bringing it into completer dependence on the Transvaal. More than that, it meant English commerce and English immigration on the Rand, and threatened to swamp his carefully-fostered schemes for the Delagoa Railway and for German and Hollander immigration. Throughout the whole series of discussions at the conference the contrast between the attitude of Kruger and the Free State Deputies is very striking. The latter have come to discuss in a straightforward matter of fact way certain economical matters of vital interest to both Republics. For Kruger and his commissioners these are all questions of high politics, to be judged according as they fit in, or clash with, a certain mysterious secret policy to which allusions are constantly dropped. In fact, while the Free Staters talk like business politicians, the Transvaalers talk like stage conspirators. On the railway question Kruger insists that the Free State shall not construct, or even sanction, its railway, or, at any rate, the part connecting Bloemfontein with Cape Colony, before the Delagoa Railway is completed. Delaroa Bay must be the port for the Free State, and not an English port which would let in English trade and bring English influences into the land. For in Kruger's eyes English trade is the worst form of ruin. It must be kept out of the Republics at all costs. To quote his own metaphorical language:-"For the little sheep my door is open; but the wolf I mean to keep out." Or, as another member of his commission puts it:-"What need have we of the Colony and its importation? The trade they represent to us as life and prosperity is our death. We Republics are strong enough; let us go together." Against such arguments it is useless for the Free Staters to plead that the line is an urgent necessity for them, and that there is no sign of the Delagoa Railway being completed for years to come, or to ask whether the Transvaal is quite indifferent to Free State interests, as long as it can get the Free State under its control. Kruger entreats them to wait, vows that railways are a delusion and a snare, that for the present the Free State is much better without one, that to join with Cape Colony now will ruin the Delagoa Railway or any railway he may wish to build to a harbour yet to be acquired. In time, he promises them, they shall have a great railway system radiating all over South Africa from Pretoria, but not before the Transvaal has made itself absolutely independent of English political influence and English trade.

Delagoa is a life and death question for us. Help us! If you hook on to the colony you cut our throat. . . . . How can our State exist without the Delagoa Railway? .... Keep free! We shall help you, even with