The Current Was Running Swift, And The Roar Of The Fall
Was Already Sounding Louder In The Ear.
On June 12th Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town
and reviewed the situation.
'The principle of equality of races
was,' he said, essential for South Africa. The one State where
inequality existed kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was
one not of aggression, but of singular patience, which could not,
however, lapse into indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed
the Raad. 'The other side had not conceded one tittle, and I could
not give more. God has always stood by us. I do not want war, but I
will not give more away. Although our independence has once been
taken away, God has restored it.' He spoke with sincerity no doubt,
but it is hard to hear God invoked with such confidence for the
system which encouraged the liquor traffic to the natives, and bred
the most corrupt set of officials that the modern world has seen.
A dispatch from Sir Alfred Milner, giving his views upon the
situation, made the British public recognise, as nothing else had
done, how serious the position was, and how essential it was that
an earnest national effort should be made to set it right. In it he
said:
'The case for intervention is overwhelming. The only attempted
answer is that things will right themselves if left alone. But, in
fact, the policy of leaving things alone has been tried for years,
and it has led to their going from bad to worse. It is not true
that this is owing to the raid. They were going from bad to worse
before the raid. We were on the verge of war before the raid, and
the Transvaal was on the verge of revolution. The effect of the
raid has been to give the policy of leaving things alone a new
lease of life, and with the old consequences.
'The spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in
the position of helots, constantly chafing under undoubted
grievances, and calling vainly to her Majesty's Government for
redress, does steadily undermine the influence and reputation of
Great Britain within the Queen's dominions. A section of the press,
not in the Transvaal only, preaches openly and constantly the
doctrine of a republic embracing all South Africa, and supports it
by menacing references to the armaments of the Transvaal, its
alliance with the Orange Free State, and the active sympathy which,
in case of war, it would receive from a section of her Majesty's
subjects. I regret to say that this doctrine, supported as it is by
a ceaseless stream of malignant lies about the intentions of her
Majesty's Government, is producing a great effect on a large number
of our Dutch fellow colonists. Language is frequently used which
seems to imply that the Dutch have some superior right, even in
this colony, to their fellow-citizens of British birth. Thousands
of men peaceably disposed, and if left alone perfectly satisfied
with their position as British subjects, are being drawn into
disaffection, and there is a corresponding exasperation upon the
part of the British.
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