Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/210

 202] ENGLISH HISTORY. [oct.

to office, of whom Mr. Asquith might be taken as the most prominent.

Speaking at Dundee (Oct. 11) he said that strongly as he felt that steps had been taken that should have been omitted, and omitted which should have been taken, he credited the Government with an honest desire to avoid war. He contested the " fallacious assumption " underlying the final Boer despatch that the British right, or as he preferred to say duty, to intervene on behalf of the Outlanders, was derived from the Convention alone. "The issue raised by the ill-inspired despatch of the Transvaal Government," said Mr. Asquith, "is simply this: Has Great Britain, the paramount power of South Africa, the right to secure for her subjects in the Transvaal the same equality of treatment as is voluntarily granted to Dutch and English alike in every other part of South Africa ? . . . The thinking people of the country see in this war little or no prospect either of material advantage or military glory. They fear, with too much reason, that, like the sowing of the dragon's teeth, it may yield a bitter harvest of resentment and distrust. It is not with a light heart that they take up the challenge that has been thrown down, but now that it has been forced upon them they will see it through to the end/'

The delivery, on the other side, on October 17, a week and a clay after the despatch of the Boer ultimatum, of the " National Memorial against War with the Transvaal " had a somewhat belated appearance. The memorial had been signed during twelve days by 53,833 adults in the United Kingdom, and in the covering letter Lord Salisbury's attention was called to the fact shown by " the attached list of names that many of the memorialists were men and women of substance and influence in different walks of life— teachers, representatives, administrators, artists. . . . Hostilities," added the letter, "hav- ing begun, the memorial was closed, but it is forwarded as evidence of the strong feeling on the part of a large number of our countrymen against the policy which precipitated this war, and the strong desire that exists that the practical suggestion unanimously agreed upon at the Hague shall be acted upon with a view to bring this disastrous civil war in South Africa to an early close."

There was, however, practically every evidence that the -country, as a whole, held with Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith that, whatever mistakes there might have been in the negotia- tions or in accompanying speeches, the war in the end had been forced upon England, and in such a fashion that she was abso- lutely bound to fight it through to an entirely victorious issue.

Unionist members like Sir E. Clarke (Plymouth), Mr. Court- ney (Bodmin), and Mr. Maclean (Cardiff), who had unfavourably criticised the policy of the Government antecedent to the war, were made clearly acquainted with the strong disapproval of their views entertained among their supporters.