Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/206

 198] ENGLISH HISTORY. [ocr.

ceeded, " State Attorney sounded British Agent both in writing and in conversation as to the conditions on which her Majesty's Government would waive their invitation to a joint inquiry, and the result of these communications was the proposals made by the Government of the South African Republic in those letters. ... It is impossible that the Government of the South African Republic could, in making their proposals, have been in any doubt as to the answer which her Majesty's Government would give to the conditions attached to them. The answer actually given by her Majesty's Government . . . was precibely that which the British Agent had foreshadowed to the State Attorney . . . and which, therefore, they must have anticipated in making their proposals." The temper of the Transvaal Boers, encouraged by the assurance of Free State support, was illustrated by the publication on October 6 of a despatch, handed to Mr. Greene on September 26, purporting to reply to Mr. Chamberlain's despatch of May 10 with regard to the petition to the Queen from over 20,000 British subjects in the Transvaal. In this document the Pretoria Government pro- tested "earnestly and emphatically against the act of Great Britain in taking notice of the chimerical grievances of so- called Outlanders, and also to Great Britain making represen- tations thereon to this Government " ; while still professing willingness to welcome any " friendly advice or hints " offered by the British Government in the interest of its subjects.

In view of such declarations and of the obvious trend of events in South Africa, it was difficult to recognise much reality, even though there was an element of truth on the surface, in Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's complaint at Maid- stone (Oct. 6) that " no one could tell what we were going to war about." He glanced at various points which had been prominent in the diplomatic correspondence, and for one reason or other found them all inadequate to furnish a cause for war. He regretted the pressing of the suzerainty contention on our part as having stirred Boer suspicions of our aims, but held that since the " reasonable proposals " of September 8 they had had sufficient evidence of the groundlessness of such suspicions. He regarded the idea of war in South Africa with horror. Even supposing that our open foes were confined to the people of the two Republics, and that they were defeated, such a war would leave behind it, throughout the whole of South Africa, racial enmity and anger which it would take generations to overcome.

Meanwhile the course of events was sweeping swiftly towards the impending catastrophe. Both sides were actively preparing for a resort to arms, but the Boers, as events were to prove, had a start which it would take the British a long time to catch up. In the first week of October the Boers were understood to have some 15,000 men, with a good deal of Artillery, massed along the borders of the triangle of Natal