Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/230

 222] ENGLISH HISTOKY. [hot.

could have accepted a tithe of the propositions he received every week from various parts of England and the colonies, and from the Volunteers and Militia, asking to be allowed to take part in the war. " Up to the present " (Nov. 9), he added, " they had organised one army corps, that morning orders had been sent out for the mobilisation of another division, and a second army corps could be mobilised if required."

By this time the Boer advance on the northern frontier of Cape Colony had begun, and having felt it necessary to send on a large part of the reinforcements which had arrived at the Cape for the relief of Ladysmith, General Buller also found himself obliged to withdraw, at least temporarily, the troops holding advanced positions in the Cape Colony. This feature of the situation quickened the growing disposition to blame the Government for the inadequate force in South Africa at the outbreak of the war. Lord Salisbury, in his Mansion House speech, felt it necessary to deal with this feeling, which, as he truly said, was the reverse of what had been expressed a little earlier by some of their critics. "It would have been to no purpose," said the Prime Minister, " if, as some suggested, we had issued the proclamation for the Beserves some weeks earlier in the year. What was the cause of the war? What was the cause of the ultimatum ? It was not because of any demand that we made. It so happened that at the moment the ulti- matum was issued we had withdrawn our demands, and there was no demand made upon the Transvaal Government. It was because we had taken measures to increase the amount of our force in that part of her Majesty's dominions. But if that had been done two months sooner, exactly the same result would have taken place. . . . The evil dates farther back. It dates from those unfortunate arrangements of 1881 and 1884, by which we deliberately permitted a community that was obviously hostile to enjoy an unbounded and unlimited right of accumulating munitions of war to be used against us.

"England as a whole," said Lord Salisbury, referring to some foreign criticisms, "would have no advantage from the possession of gold mines, except so far as our Government con- ferred the blessings of good government upon those who had the prosecution of that industry, for industry that is prosecuted successfully breeds commerce. . . . We seek no goldfields," he proceeded, "we seek no territory. What we desire is equal rights for all men of all races, and security for our fellow- subjects and for the empire. ... I have seen it suggested — it seems to me a wild suggestion — that other foreign Powers will interfere after this conflict, and will, in some form or the other, dictate to those who are concerned in it what its upshot should be. Do not let any man think that it is in that fashion that the conflict will be concluded. . . . The interference of nobody else will have any effect upon us. In the first place, because we should not accept such an interference gladly ; in the second