1

our laws of conduct, national and international, outside our own race, tends to become plainer, until at last it would become so plain that no one would conceive these laws as even remotely to relate to European dealings with Kaffir or non-European. The pressure of the non-European must inevitably tend in the direction of consolidation, and therefore of the elimination of particularist national or rather tribal ideas, among the European race the world over. My friend, who is of an old Huguenot name, and a lawyer of the Temple, said: "You are speaking of the Millennium; in South Africa we shall drive the British into the sea."

As, among other reasons, I had immediately before been instructed in the library by a mild Aryan brother of Bengal how the British rulers of India were to be induced to surrender their powers of Government to the educated graduate of Calcutta University-their command of Sikh and Gurkha and Rajput to the men from the plain-by the simple device of holding up a grey-coated bogey of a Russian soldier on the borders of Baluchistan, I confess I did not dream that tragedy was jostling comedy so near. The shadow on the old sundial, the slope of the lawn, and the trees under which I was sitting, seemed more deserving of attention.

In the fierce glare of a Bloemfontein day of March 1897 I met my friend again, holding high office in the Orange Free State. We talked of many things, but one of his first questions was, "Do you still think of the Millennium, as in the gardens of the Temple? We shall drive the British into the sea." I said, "They shall be as dead and gone as the red and white roses plucked in the Temple Gardens five hundred years ago, and as forgotten as the wars of York and Lancaster." "No, not quite so forgotten. They can keep Simonstown and the Bay." This was the Confederation Week of March 1897, which linked the Orange Free State to the fortunes of the Vaal River Republic. I had returned from attending the "Kwaije Vrouw" banquet, and a perfectly harmless phrase of the President Kruger was being wildly telegraphed over the world.

The latest, although, I hope, not the last, time I met my

friend was in a Johannesburg club in September 1899, in the dark and gloomy days during the exodus of the Uitlanders. He said, "Good-bye: we should have preferred this war twenty years later; we may fail, but we shall do our best. You did not believe my prophecies years ago; you believe them now." I said, "Of war, I did not believe them; but of success, you will be led to believe mine."

Now my friend of these three interviews, and of many others, was not one of the Afrikanders in power; he is one of the most favourable specimens of the results of South African educational training, and is a marked exception to the rank and file of the average young Afrikander trained in African schools, obtaining degrees in English or Scottish universities, or becoming qualified as professional menlawyers, physicians, or engineers-in England. To the intellectually inferior members of the Young Afrikander party I shall refer again, when I come to consider the immediate cause of the war.

What, however, any European who settles in South Africa cannot fail to see, from palpable evidence, is that South African educational institutions, judged by the fruits of their training the minds of their alumni, can only be described as an anti-British forcing-house. The shibboleth, "Drive the British into the sea," has clearly been impressed on their minds at the most susceptible period.

Nothing is further from my design than to institute a polemic against individuals or individual institutions. So I do not propose to re-echo the naming of particular colleges or institutions incessantly reaching one's ears in South Africa from British residents, although details, if they were wanted, are easily available. For present purposes it is sufficient to judge the schools by their fruits-the minds of those who have passed through their training. "Drive the British into the sea."

* See Appendix.

H

CHAPTER XI.

GERMAN COLONIAL EXPANSION.-THE ALLEGED
"ENTENTE CORDIALE."

ONE of the most impressive speeches I ever heard was one delivered by Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, in the early part of 1885, defending his policy towards German expansion in South Africa-addressing the House of Commons and the foreign ambassadors. The Prime Minister welcomed Germany to the field of colonisation, and as a helper in the great task of spreading European civilisation over Africa and the world, wished her "God speed."

That Prince Bismarck, then German Chancellor, reciprocated such fraternal feelings one may be permitted to doubt. German interests, and German interests alone, quite legitimately from his nationalist standpoint absorbed his thoughts. Consolidated Germany had become industrial. Industries require markets all over the world, and trade follows the flag -more especially when other nations' traders are excluded by hostile tariffs. The Scramble for Africa came rather late for Germany; but Germany took possession of anything that was left. Among these annexations was that of German South West Africa, surrounding the British possession, administered by Cape Colony, of Walfisch Bay.

A generation or two from this will be better able to judge— as then documents, now in the archives of Continental Foreign Offices, may be published-as to the reality of the antiBritish policy freely ascribed to the German Chancellor by British Imperialists in Johannesburg and in Cape Town. I shall endeavour to show what their theory was and is. Let

us console ourselves by thinking that in a hundred years the incredible may become commonplace. Few people in London at the end of the 18th century would believe that the Empress Catherine of Russia could stoop to send written directions to her ambassador in London to have English journalists who opposed her policy in their articles in the London press waylaid and bludgeoned. Yet the curious may read these directions in the collection of despatches published a few years ago by order of the Tsar, edited by Professor de Martens of St. Petersburg. If these journalists had been warned, and had published their news, they would probably not have got a soul in England to believe them.

British Imperialists in South Africa ascribe to Prince Bismarck, and to a less extent to his successors, a definite anti-British policy, so as to secure for Germany territory where possible, and, when territory was not attainable, trade. They allege that the following ascertained facts are proofs of that policy.

In the first place, the annexation of German South West Africa, always regarded as within the British sphere of influence since 1836, being within latitude 25°; and more than that, actually constituting the Hinterland of the British possession of the town and harbour of Walfisch Bay. There is, in fact, even now, no other harbour of the slightest importance in the territory. Much bitterness is still felt by Cape colonists on what they regard as an unwarrantable intrusion on their ground, and it is another of their grievances. against a vacillating Colonial Office in London. They point out to you that a narrow strip of German territory has been prolonged to touch the Zambesi River. They suggest it was meant to facilitate a junction with Transvaal territory, the trek to the North being still expressly permitted to the Republics by the London Convention of 1884; permitted, indeed, until Mr. Cecil Rhodes, by occupying Mashonaland and Matabeleland, headed off the trekking Boer.

In the next place, the subsidising of the German East African line of steamers, running from Hamburg to Delagoa Bay, and preferential trade advantages in the way of Pretoria

Government orders to German traders. Connected with this, the institution of the Government National Bank in Pretoria with German, instead of Hollander or Boer, directors in 1889.

Again, the closing of the Drifts in 1895, an order of President Kruger, to prevent traffic being taken by road instead of rail from Cape Colony to the Transvaal, a measure intended for the benefit of the Hollander railway company primarily, but secondly to divert trade to Delagoa Bay, where the railway ended and the German steamers plied.

Yet again, the introduction of German officers, artillerist and engineers, to Pretoria and Bloemfontein; and the construction, ordered in 1895, before the Jameson Raid, of forts in Johannesburg and Pretoria under the direction of German officers.

The famous telegram of January 1896 of the German Kaiser figures very largely indeed among their proofs of an anti-British Boer-German entente cordiale. British South Africans will not accept assurances, such as even a Socialist member of the German Reichstag gave me, that no political significance attached to that telegram; that it was merely the military spirit of the Kaiser leading him to recognise Boer valour. They ask you, why then did the Germans ask permission from Portugal to land marines at Delagoa Bay to proceed to Pretoria to guard German interests, on the outbreak of the Jameson Raid?

As regards President Kruger's desire to obtain German support, or that of any other of the great Powers, there of course can be no doubt. His declaration of January 1896 to that effect is explicit; but we are speaking here of German policy.

Now, in subsequent chapters, I purpose to present both the Uitlander and the Boer version of the Transvaal situation, in the language of their own leaders, directly communicated to me, and my own conclusion on their merits. In this will appear plainly the Boer attitude towards the German Government and German influence, and their desire to utilise both of those forces as buttresses of their independence as they conceived it.