Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/232

 224] ENGLISH HISTORY. [«ov.

their leaders of proclamations " annexing " several of the northern districts to the Free State. At the same time, in Natal, the Boer forces were not only able to " contain " Sir G. White's army at Ladysmith, notwithstanding dashing sorties or reconnaissances on the part of the garrison, but to detach considerable numbers southwards to check the progress of a relieving force. The accession to the invaders of con- siderable numbers of the Dutch farmers in the districts of Cape Colony " annexed " by the Free Staters helped appreciably, with or without justice, to strengthen the growing acceptance by the British public of the belief in an old-standing movement, radiating and inspired from the Transvaal, for the overthrow of British power in South Africa. The scepticism on this subject expressed by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speaking again (Nov. 24), at Birmingham, did not avail to modify the current of public opinion, which in the main was influenced by the evidence afforded by the course of the campaign of the accumulation in the Transvaal of military resources im- measurably greater than could have been thought necessary to meet any possible repetition of the Jameson raid. In this temper of the national mind, the renewed efforts of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, in the speech just mentioned, to exhibit defects in the conduct of her Majesty's Government, and of Sir A. Milner, during the summer and autumn, and suggestions that, though personally immaculate, they had been subject to interested influences, were felt to be growingly irrelevant. England, it was generally held, was encountering, all too little prepared, the culmination of a carefully devised scheme for the destruction of her authority at a vital part of her empire. That being so, there was something in the resolute tone of a speech delivered by Mr. Asquith at Ashington on November 25 much more congenial to the public mood than that of recent utter- ances by his leader in the House of Commons. While neither admiring nor understanding the new diplomacy, Mr. Asquith refused to admit that the British Government, and through it the British people, were ultimately responsible for the war. He argued that a postponement of British intervention on behalf of the Outlanders would have tended to strengthen the forces making against reform, and to bring about the demorali- sation of the Outlanders. Moreover, as to the time for inter- vention, he attached considerable weight to the authority of Sir A. Milner, who went to Capetown with an unbiassed mind, and the attacks on whom, though he did not set him up as an infallible authority, Mr. Asquith strongly deprecated. If he were asked why we were fighting, his answer was, first of all to repel an invasion of British territory ; next to assert our rights, which were put directly in issue, to intervene on behalf of our fellow-subjects, to secure them liberty and just treatment in a State to which we granted self-government, not in the interest of one man, but of the whole population ; and finally to secure