Page:The Transvaal war; a lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge on 9th November, 1899.djvu/35

 the status quo, that is of the existing state of things in South Africa, and that even a purely commercial federation of the South African colonies and states would be an alteration of the status quo to which Germany would object.

In October of the same year, 1895, still before the Jameson raid, there took place the incident of the closing of the drifts or ferries over the Vaal River into the Transvaal state. Those ferries were closed with a view of forcing the traffic to take the course by Delagoa Bay, in Portuguese territory, to which the Transvaalers had made a railway, instead of that by the Cape. That desire, no doubt, was partly in the interests of the railway itself, but it was not wholly a commercial or a financial desire. It was to a great extent a political desire to bring their country into a closer connection with Portuguese and German influences, and to get it out of the region of British South Africa. In connection with the closing of the drifts. President Kruger used some of that unguarded language which marks him. He did not put it only on the ground of getting traffic for the railway to Delagoa Bay; he said "it was his intention to build a wall and construct a barbed wire fence for the exclusion of goods coming from the Cape Colony ." The closing of the drifts was a direct breach of the convention of 1884, and our government succeeded in getting them opened again, but by nothing short of a direct threat of war.

Then followed the Jameson raid at the end of 1895, and during all this time, even before the raid, you must bear in mind that powerful forts were being built to command Johannesburg, and that the country was being armed to the very teeth. Is it possible to suppose that the armament