Scarcely had I got the Saturday Review and taken the first steps to make it successful when the Jameson Raid took place, nominally in obedience to a call for help and protection from the English women and children in Johannesburg. I knew South Africa too well to be deluded for a moment by this shallow pretext. At once I denounced the raid and everyone who defended it. I soon found its defenders were numerous and could make their voices heard in a hundred journals from The Times down.
I saw Beit about it, and Ochs, Woolfie Joel, too, and others, and came very soon upon the proofs that the raid was instigated by Rhodes for selfish interests and would set South Africa in a blaze.
Information reached me that the raiders had been assembled at Pitsani by Rhodes, and everybody in South Africa knew that their real object was not to succor the Outlanders in Johannesburg, but to overthrow the government in Pretoria.
English opinion on the Jameson Raid and its ignoble end was rather undecided till the German Kaiser sent his famous telegram to Krueger, in which he practically told Krueger that if he wanted help he would give it to him. This inconceivably stupid act not only consolidated English opinion in favor of Jameson, but was the very beginning of that dislike of Germany and condemnation of the German Kaiser which later led to the Great War. Even the British Government resented the insult; it mobilized a part of the fleet and, I believe, called ships away from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. It is not too much to say that the English dislike of the Germans dates from that idiotic telegram.
After the Kaiser's telegram, I saw Arthur Walter, but found him a hot partisan of the Jameson Raiders with ears closed to any reason. At first, as I have told, he didn't like Rhodes, but Moberly Bell soon inoculated him with the pan-English patriotic enthusiasm which suited his innate conservatism.
I had thought that the loss of the American colonies would have taught the English people that interference, even with their own kin thousands of miles away, was ill-advised and apt to be dangerous. But in London in 1895 I found nine men out of ten convinced that it was necessary to "teach the Boers a lesson and put Krueger in his place." That brutal unreason was so wide spread and intense that I resolved to go to South Africa in order the better to combat this old hereditary madness.
It all reminds me that Englishmen have not grown much in one hundred and fifty years. Didn't Benjamin Franklin write to Lord Kames, somewhere about 1760, that "the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of British Empire lie in America, and though, like other foundations, they are low and little now, they are nevertheless, broad and strong to support the greatest political structure that human wisdom ever yet erected"? And it was due to Franklin that at the Treaty of Paris in 1763 Guadeloupe was restored to France, while Canada remained with England, though popular English opinion at the time wished rather to retain "the valuable sugar-islands of Guadeloupe" and give Canada to France.
If England had only the sense to profit by Franklin's foresight instead of jeering at him and insulting him, how different the course of world history would have been! As it is, Britain owes her chief possession in North America to his wisdom. In the same way, in 1896,1 found that practically the whole of British opinion, as well in England as in South Africa, was totally and lamentably perverse. I must now return to my own story.
There was no time to lose if I was to do any good, so I took ship at once and was in Cape Town before mid-January, 1896, leaving Runciman in charge of the Saturday Review as my assistant, after having begged him, on any doubtful question, to take counsel with my old friend, the Reverend John Verschoyle.
The first person I wanted to see in South Africa was Jan Hofmeyr, then Rhodes; but curiously enough the day I arrived, Sir James Sivewright came to lunch at the same hotel, and as soon as he heard of me, came up, introduced himself and gave me the benefit of his unrivaled knowledge of South Africa.
When he realized that I wanted the truth and was prepared to accept it, he let himself go freely. He spoke of Hofmeyr with affection and of Rhodes with pity. I soon found him one of the wisest and best informed of counselors. I asked him about Governor General Sir Hercules Robinson, whom I knew and liked. "Alas!" said Sivewright. "He's too wedded to Rhodes; but he's honest and capable."
At length we came to the Jameson Raid and the famous telegram from the women in Johannesburg, asking for Jameson's help. "That telegram," said Sivewright, "was written in Rhodes's office in Cape Town and sent from there to The Times." I was horrified, but he gave me the proofs of what he alleged.
My first day in Cape Town had been astonishingly fruitful. At once I wrote an article and some notes for the Saturday Review and then, out of my affection for Arthur Walter, I wrote to him, giving chapter and verse for my belief, and begging him to modify the attitude of The Times. A little later Cecil Rhodes told me he knew I was working against him through Walter, and after that I let The Times take care of itself.
After the raid, Rhodes went up to Kimberley and the British element made his railway journey a sort of triumphal progress, but the more thoughtful spirits all condemned him. On his return to Cape Town he prepared to go back to England at once.
I had several interesting talks with him, and because he had been jolted, so to speak, out of his ordinary self-centered optimistic attitude, I came to know him better than ever before. I found he had gone entirely astray.
"What on earth could you hope to win by the raid?" I asked at length.
"I don't admit I had anything to do with it," Rhodes replied.
"Let us leave that," I answered, "but what could Dr. Jim hope to win by it?
Suppose he had got into Johannesburg; next day it would have been surrounded by five thousand Boers and in a week would have had to surrender."
"In a week a great deal might happen," said Rhodes sententiously.
"I understand," I replied. "Hercules Robinson would probably have gone north and consulted Krueger to play fair, but neither in war nor peace could your raiders have gained anything. It was an idiotic move."
"And suppose Chamberlain had taken a hand in the game?" Rhodes went on.
"You mean to say?" I cried; he nodded- "Worse and worse," I countered; "that would have meant war, a race war in South Africa with fifty thousand Boer settlers and eighty thousand English loafers; you would have needed one hundred thousand British soldiers.
Rhodes, you could not want that!"
"Krueger would have given in," he said.
"You know better," I cried, "you know Krueger would never give in and his Boers would back him to the last."
"Evidently you know South Africa better than I do," was his final fling.
"I am appealing," I said, "to Rhodes sober, the Rhodes I knew years ago, who taught me a good deal about South Africa and the Boer stubbornness."
"Well," he said smiling, "the end is not yet; don't condemn me before the end."
To that I nodded my head.
This talk was only preliminary; I wanted to know Rhodes better: his real view of life and what he wanted to do in it. At length, one evening, I came to an understanding of his peculiar view of the world.
He had already spoken to me of Ruskin, who had influenced him profoundly through a lecture at Oxford; and he had come to believe that the Darwinian theory of evolution was the most probable explanation of the world, that it is the law of some supreme being, rather than the result of blind forces. God, he thought, was obviously trying to produce a type of humanity the best fitted to bring peace, liberty, and justice into the world, and thus make, as Heine said, "A Kingdom of God on this earth." One race to him seemed to approach God's ideal type-his own, the Anglo-Saxon. He knew no language but English, and that only imperfectly, and so was easily convinced of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon character. God's purpose, to him, was to make the Anglo-Saxon race predominant.
As an ideal, it seemed to me grotesque. The races of the world to me were like flowers in a garden, and I would cherish every variety for its own especial excellence; far from being too numerous, they were not numerous enough, and there was not enough variety. The French seemed to be dropping into the second class, according to the judgment of force and numbers, but how could humanity afford to lose the French ideal of life? The French had done more for abstract justice in their social relations and more, too, for the ideal in art than any other race; we couldn't afford to lose the French. Yet, there are only forty millions of French people, whereas there are already nearly two hundred millions of Anglo-Saxons, and soon there will be a thousand millions, and yet what mistakes they make! Would not the consciousness of power make them increasingly intolerant?
I couldn't influence Rhodes; he talked to me repeatedly of Bartle Frere's idea: the English should possess Africa from the Cape to Cairo. "They already own more than one-half of the Temperate Zone," I said; "isn't that enough for them? And they don't know how to use it."
Still, I had already come to see that the vast central plateau of Africa from the Cape to Cairo was the most magnificent possession in the world, finer far than even the North American colonies that England had thrown away. Was it the chance of insular position, or really some superiority in the race, that had given one empire after the other into their possession? On the surface, it was merely the greed of the aristocratic English class to get ever more land into their power. But their continual extraordinary growth perhaps shows some spiritual ascendency. I should like to believe it, though I later found certain special virtues in the attempts at German colonization.
One day at dinner I ventured on a jest which distressed Rhodes dreadfully. I said I could understand God, in His youth, falling in love with the Jews, an extremely attractive race, but in His old age to fall in love with the Anglo- Saxon was a proof of senility that I could hardly forgive Him. Rhodes cried out at once: "You say things, Harris, that hurt."
"I would like to shock your idolatry of the English," I cried; "fancy the race that loves commerce and wealth more than any other and yet refuses for a century to adopt the metric system in weights and measures and coinage!
Harold Frederic used always to talk of the stupid Britons.
"The masters of the world," Rhodes retorted.
"Nonsense," I replied. "The Americans are already far stronger and more reasonable."
We parted friends but disagreed profoundly.
Rhodes was completely uneducated, ignorant, indeed, to a degree that was painful; an almost blind force from which as much might be feared as hoped.
Yet perhaps of his want of education, he was in most intimate sympathy with the intense patriotism and imperial ideas of the English governing class, and he was rich enough to advance his views in a hundred ways; money, to him, was chiefly a means to an end.
After much talk with Sivewright, I called on Jan Hofmeyr, who greeted me with the old kindness. "Very glad you've come out," he said; "now there's some chance of making title truth known." He did not conceal his profound disappointment with Rhodes. "Another Briton," he said, "whom we had taken for a great Afrikander," and he added, with rare prescience, "he may do worse for us yet! He's really madder than Oom Paul." We talked for hours day after day and at length, when I had to say "Goodbye," he gave me a letter to Chief Justice Kotze at Pretoria, whom he praised cordially: "He will give you pure wine to drink on almost every South African subject."
From Sivewright and Jan Hofmeyr I got the truth about the raid and then called on Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor General. He was before all an official, and an English official at that, but he had a certain understanding of South Africa and the best South African opinion; and though he sympathized with Rhodes's imperial ambitions, he would never defend such an outrage as the raid.
He seemed to have aged a good deal in the three or four years since I had seen him in London. I noticed signs of nervousness in him that I had not expected. He astonished me almost at once by saying: "We are still friends, are we not?"
"Of course; always," I replied warmly.
"People have been saying," he went on, "that you were sent out by Chamberlain, but that can hardly be true. He would surely have let me know. Still, he is capable even of that, I suppose."
His words and tone set me marveling. But for the moment I could not occupy myself with his opinion of Chamberlain. I noted that he was a good deal irritated and left it at that.
"No," I replied, "no, I have nothing to do with Mr. Chamberlain. I imagine he would hardly be likely to send me as an agent."
"I am glad of that," said Hercules Robinson. "We can then be on the old footing, can't we?"
I nodded.
"Why didn't you come to see me at once?"
"To tell you the truth," I answered frankly, "I wanted to see Jan Hofmeyr, wanted certain information before I came. I had to get clear in my own mind about the raid and Rhodes's complicity in it, and I didn't think it would be fair to question you in your position-I, your friend."
"You have found out all you wanted to know?"
"I have found out that you were all in it," I replied, thinking the challenge would excite him. "Rhodes planned it of course, but you winked at it."
"Winked at it," he repeated hotly; "you are mistaken: it isn't true."
"Oh, no," I laughed. "I was saying, 'winked' at it to be very diplomatic and polite. You knew all about it."
"Indeed, I did not," he took me up. "What put that into your head?"
"Come," I said gravely. "Surely you won't maintain that an armed force could have lain weeks on the border without your knowing it."
"But I assure you," he said, "you are mistaken. I knew nothing of the raid."
"I should like to take your word," I persisted, "but it is impossible. I have absolute proof."
"Proof?" he cried. "That's impossible. You must explain: you must see that your statement is-is-dishonoring. I have assured Krueger on my honor that it isn't true; he accepted my assurance, so must you."
I shook my head. "I'm afraid I can't."
"But I can explain everything," he went on. "For the first time in my experience the Colonial Office acted over my head. If you must know the whole truth, Chamberlain withdrew the political officer who was on the border; Chamberlain said he would deal with the matters connected with Jameson directly. I shrugged my shoulders, and let it pass. It was all a part, I thought, of his new method of doing business. He has his own peculiar methods," he concluded bitterly.
New light began to drift in on me; at least a hitherto unthought of suspicion.
"But you saw Rhodes on the matter," I ventured. "He must have told you at any rate that Jameson's forces were there to bring a little pressure on Krueger; he must have talked to you about the reform agitation he had helped to get up in Johannesburg."
"I shouldn't have listened to such nonsense for a moment," cried Robinson.
"The way to get things out of Krueger is to behave straightforwardly with him."
"Rhodes got something out of him over the Drifts business by threatening war."
"That was different," Robinson admitted reluctantly. "Krueger felt he was in the wrong there. But now I hope you understand that I had no complicity in that shameful, stupid raid."
I had resolved to continue, so I persisted.
"I told you I had proofs," I replied. "You have destroyed one supposition, but the proofs remain."
"Proofs?" he said, in an anxious, irritated tone of voice. "There are none; there can't be any, Harris."
"Indubitable proofs," I repeated.
"It's impossible," he exclaimed. "Treat me like a friend. I tell you on my word of honor I knew nothing of the raid."
"I am sorry," I replied, "but if you want me to deal like a friend with you, I can only say I can't believe it."
"Good God," he cried, getting up from the desk and walking about the room.
"This is maddening. Speak plainly, lay your proofs before me, and I will undertake to demolish every one of them."
"If I show you proofs that you can't demolish," I said, "will you deal fairly by me and tell me all you really know, and what I want to know?"
"Certainly," he exclaimed. "I give you my promise; I have nothing to conceal."
"All right," I cried, "I will give you the proofs one after another. Here is the first."
Sir Hercules Robinson's face was a study in conflicting emotions as I went on.
"When you first got news on the Sunday morning that Jameson had crossed the frontier, you wired to him to return, and you wired to Krueger saying that you had ordered Jameson to return, and that the raid was not authorized by Her Majesty's Government."
"Yes," Robinson broke in sharply, "that's what I did."
"You must have expected an answer in two hours," I went on. "If not an answer from Jameson, certainly an answer from Krueger."
"Of course," replied Robinson, "and I got a reply from Krueger."
"Pardon me for contradicting you," I replied, "but you did not. You got from Krueger a mere statement that Jameson had crossed the border at a certain hour with an armed force. You must have known from that telegram that President Krueger hadn't had your telegram."
"No," replied Robinson, "I see what you mean, but we were all very much excited and nervous, and I drew no such inference. The first thing I did was to send to Rhodes to ask if he knew anything about Jameson's act. I wanted to consult with him."
"I suppose he was not to be seen?" I said.
"That's true," said Robinson. "But how did you know?"
"Easy to be guessed," I replied carelessly.
"Rhodes returned no reply to any of my messages: in fact, he wouldn't see my messengers," Robinson went on.
"But at ten o'clock," I insisted, "you had a call from Jan Hofmeyr. He asked you to send out a proclamation, a public proclamation declaring that Her Majesty's Government had nothing to do with the raid, and that you had recalled Jameson by wire. You would not do this."
"I didn't see the necessity of it," Hercules Robinson answered. "I had wired to Jameson, and I had wired to Krueger, and I considered that enough. Krueger knew that the raid was unauthorized, and that was the main point."
"But Krueger did not know it," I replied, "and you must have known that he didn't know."
"What do you mean?" cried Robinson. "I knew nothing at all of it." And then he added, as if to himself, "When I was up at Pretoria, Krueger never said that to me."
"Outsiders see most of the game," I went on. "Let us go back to that Saturday.
You have an exciting morning, but you get your lunch, and after lunch at about, I suppose, three-thirty o'clock, you get another wire from Krueger repeating his news, amplifying it, saying that Jameson had crossed the frontier with Maxim guns, and asking you what you are going to do. Now you must have known that he hadn't yet got your first telegram."
"No, I didn't know," said Robinson. "It ail passed in the hurry and excitement of the moment."
"But why didn't you duplicate your telegram to him," I asked, "saying that the raid was not authorized, and that you would order Jameson's return?"
"I did," he said.
"No, you didn't," I replied, "not at once, that is. Later that afternoon," I went on,
"or rather that evening, you got a telegram from Krueger again giving you the news, and insisting on a reply."
"You are right," Robinson broke in, "I remember now; it was that last telegram that I answered. But how did you know all this?"
"How I know doesn't matter," I replied. "The point is, I am giving you facts.
You must have taken great care that the second telegram of yours, after you had received three from Krueger, each of which showed that he had not received your first wire; I say, you must have taken extraordinary care to see that the second telegram reached him at once."
"It must have reached him in an hour," said Robinson carelessly, "just as the first must."
"You would be surprised to know," I replied, "that it didn't reach him at all that night, nor till far on in the next day. You left Krueger to his Hollander counselors for a day and a half without any word from you."
"Good God!" cried Robinson. "It can't be true; yet it would explain his attitude to me at first. But how can it be? It's absurd."
"Send and find out when your telegrams went," I urged. "You must have a book of telegrams, where times and everything are entered?"
"Of course, of course," he cried. "That is all in the hands of the Imperial Secretary, Sir Graham Bower. I will ring for him."
He rang, and when a man came, sent him to ask Sir Graham Bower to come at once. Two minutes later Sir Graham Bower appeared: an ordinary dark man, unimportant looking, smiling, I thought, a little nervously, a set smile.
"Oh! Bower," broke out Robinson, "Harris has a most extraordinary tale.
Pardon me, I must introduce you. This is Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary, and this is a friend of mine, Frank Harris, the editor of the Saturday Review whom we have talked about."
We bowed and shook hands.
"Bower," Robinson broke in again, "Harris has brought a most extraordinary story that on the Sunday morning when we got the first news of the raid, my telegram to Krueger, telling him we had wired ordering Jameson to return, and that the raid was not authorized by Her Majesty's Government, never went oft. I don't know how he knows, but that is what he says."
"No, no," I broke in. "I say that it didn't reach Pretoria that day, and not till well on in the next day."
"Nonsense," cried Robinson. "Please get the telegraph book, Bower, and prove it to Harris."
Bower turned and went out of the room, still with the same smile on his face. I felt sure then he was playing a part. I thought I had found the villain of the piece, but waited for the proof. Meanwhile Robinson and I stood together in tense expectation.
In two minutes Bower returned with a large book in his hand.
"The telegram," he said, "I find, went off at twelve-thirty."
"Twelve-thirty!" cried Robinson. "You must be mistaken. That is hours after I sent it."
"It went off in the usual way," Bower remarked, with studied carelessness.
"Usual way!" said Robinson, looking at him. "But it was of the first importance."
"There was a great deal of excitement and running to and fro," he said.
"I know, I know," said Robinson. "I sent you to Rhodes-but still, Bower- twelve-thirty."
A thought came to me, and I drew the bow at a venture.
"But you have a special form," I said, "for telegrams from power to power, a special form of telegram that takes precedence over all others. Why was this telegram sent as an ordinary telegram, and not on your special form?"
I had hardly begun to speak when Bower's face changed expression. I knew I had guessed right.
"Of course it went on the proper form," cried Robinson. "There can be no doubt of it, can there, Bower? You can prove it."
I smiled. Bower said very lightly, too lightly, "I suppose so."
"But think, Bower," Robinson went on, "think what it means."
"I can't be sure. I'm not sure," replied Bower.
"Not sure," cried Robinson, turning on him, "not sure! But you can't realize what it means, man. Harris here says that we got a second telegram from Krueger in the afternoon, telling us of the raid again and asking us what we were going to do. We believed, or I believed, that my first telegram had already reached him, telling him that we disavowed the raid, and had ordered Jameson to return. Harris says that when we got that second telegram we must have known that Krueger hadn't got my first telegram; and Harris is right. I should have drawn that inference; I remember it struck me at the time as curious that Krueger should merely repeat the news. Then came Krueger's third telegram, and of course Harris insists again it must have made me see that Krueger had not received my first telegram. We answered it, and now Harris says that both these telegrams of mine, official telegrams, must have been sent as ordinary telegrams, for Krueger didn't get even the first of them in the day; Krueger got no word from us till the Monday afternoon, Harris asserts."
"I can only tell Mr. Harris," said Bower, "that the whole place was in a state of the intensest excitement. I went twice or three times to Rhodes and couldn't see him; visitors called at every moment, Hofmeyr and others, who had to be seen: everyone was running about."
"All the more reason," I said, "for sending such important telegrams on the special official forms.
"My God!" said Robinson, putting his hands to his head. "My God! That's what Krueger's cold reception of me meant."
There could be no doubt about the matter. Hercules Robinson was blameless in the affair. He had been kept out of it. Rhodes had found a surer tool in the Imperial Secretary, Sir Graham Bower.
I rubbed the point in decisively.
"Your message," I said, "the telegram of the High Commissioner, the most important telegram ever sent from this office, went as an ordinary telegram, and instead of taking precedence, followed some hundreds of others in ordinary sequence to Pretoria; and Krueger sat in council all day, sending message after message to you, and getting no reply, but getting wire after wire from country districts to the effect that Jameson was pushing on towards his capital as hard as he could. Can you expect Krueger to trust the English after this? All that day, all that night, the old man waited, and half the next day before you gave him the chance to act."
"Good God!" said Robinson.
"You don't want me any more, Sir?" asked Graham Bower, pointedly, and left the room.
"What's to be done now?" cried Hercules Robinson, falling into his seat.
"What's to be done? But how did you know all this? How have you in a few days found out more than I knew, I with such power and experience, and living at the center?"
A little later I went up to Johannesburg, and while there was asked to go and see the President by Chief Justice Kotze of the High Court. I went across one day to Pretoria. It is like a town set in a saucer with low hills ringing it round; a town of squat Dutch houses set amid trees and little noisy rivulets of water running down the sides of the streets-everywhere the chatter of children and childish games, and quiet home life. And in the strange little provincial town, two or three magnificent public buildings that represent fairly enough the obstinate patriotism of the Boer.
I was invited to call upon the President at six o'clock in the morning, but I declared that if I got up at that hour I should be at my worst, and I wanted to be at my best. When the President heard that I never got up before the day was well aired, he invited me to come and have coffee with him, and so I called upon him in the early afternoon, called with Chief Justice Kotze, who was kind enough to offer to act as interpreter. The house was an ordinary Boer house, the reception-room an ordinary Boer parlor with wax flowers, colored worsted mats and a huge Bible as its chief ornaments, unless I include the enormous spittoon, which was used at every moment by the master. I hardly dare to describe the coffee. For providing this coffee Krueger got eight hundred a year besides his salary of eight thousand pounds, and I should think that for eight pounds he could make enough of it to float a battleship. It was the vilest liquid I had ever attempted to drink; a very disagreeable decoction of Gregory powder in half-warm milk. I took one sip and left it at that.
I told about the interview in its main lines in the Saturday Review at that time, and gave the best portrait I could of the village Cromwell called Paul Krueger. Every one is familiar with his likeness to a great gorilla, his porky baboon face, and small piggy grey eyes, but no portrait could give an impression of the massive strength, the power, and restrained passion of the man. He must have been fifty-four inches round the chest, and when seated looked like a Hercules. The worst fault in his gigantic figure was the shortness of his legs. Strange to say, he is one of the few men who has grown greater in my memory, and this in spite of all the rumblings and failings of his later years. Had he been trained, had he had any education or reading, Paul Krueger would have been one of the greatest of men. As it was, he was one of the most remarkable.
Krueger was suspicious, as the ignorant always are, self-centered like most strong-willed, successful men, but not devoid of heart and conscience. His treatment of the Outlanders in Johannesburg was simply insane. Some eighty thousand of them had made Johannesburg the greatest gold-mining industry in the world; they paid more than nine-tenths of the state taxes.
Instead of getting just enough to live on-a few hundreds a year-from his twenty thousand Boer burghers, Krueger was now a rich man. The Outlanders had turned the Transvaal from a bankrupt state into the wealthiest in South Africa, with a revenue of three millions sterling a year: yet in 1894 he had made it impossible for them to obtain a vote in a country to which they contributed practically the whole revenue. They had no control even over the affairs of the city they had founded and built up.
Krueger still treated Johannesburg as a mining camp under his own mining commissioner.
Dutch was taught in the schools, and not English. Though denied all rights of citizenship and treated as aliens, the Outlanders were nevertheless liable to be impressed for service in native wars. Krueger's iniquities were surely unparalleled. He had given foreigners a concession for the manufacture of dynamite, which was imported into the country by monopolists, and sold at such a price to the mines that it practically imposed a tax of half a million pounds a year on the industry. Another lot of adventurers got the concession for carrying coal along the Rand, which they did at the highest possible rate; another group owned a liquor concession which corrupted the natives.
The curious thing was that Krueger's treatment of the Outlanders was no worse than his treatment of the Boers in the Cape. He wouldn't allow the Transvaal to enter the Customs Union; and pigs, cattle, and coal from the Cape could be imported only on payment of fantastic duties. The spirit of his policy was shown in one act. When the Transvaal railway management proposed to put up the rate from the Vaal above six-pence a ton in order to kill the Cape traffic, Krueger asked them to make it a shilling; and when the traders left the railway at the Free State border and carried their goods over the short stretch to Johannesburg in bullock-wagons, Krueger proclaimed that the Vaal Drifts, which they had to cross, would be closed to them.
This last piece of despotism brought a new force into the field. In 1895 Joseph Chamberlain had made himself the Minister of the Colonies; and although he had no liking for Rhodes, still, when Rhodes appealed to him, he took his view and described President Krueger's act about the Drifts as one "almost of hostility," and declared his willingness to back up his protest by force.
Reluctantly, Krueger saw he had gone too far and threw open the Drifts.
Then the raid took place, which blotted out even the memory of most of the President's stupidities and threw the onus of flagrant wrong doing upon Rhodes.
Early in the interview Krueger asked me point blank whether I believed, like Hercules Robinson, that Chamberlain didn't know about the raid. I said, "I couldn't tell: there was no proof. I felt certain the Cabinet didn't know it, and could hardly believe that Mr. Chamberlain would act as dictator in such a matter."
"The Cabinet didn't know of it?" questioned Krueger. "You are sure?" "As sure as I can be of such a thing," I replied.
In the back of my mind was the feeling that Chamberlain must have known all about it, may have talked even to Mr. Balfour about it, but I wanted to say rather less than more of what I believed out of patriotic feeling, and so I maintained the possibility of Chamberlain's innocence. Krueger turned on me sharply.
"You know that Rhodes planned it, paid for it, directed it?" he barked.
"Surely," I replied. "He confessed as much in Cape Town to Jan Hofmeyr, and I have wired that home to my paper."
"So," he cried, "you admit that Rhodes was a scoundrel?" "Worse," I replied quietly, "a blundering idiot, to think that five hundred men could beat the Boers."
The great burly man sprang erect, while his little grey eyes snapped in the fat pork face. He looked like a maddened baboon.
"Four hundred boys," he shouted. "Do you know what I would have done with them?"
"No," I said smiling, "I should like to know."
"What I proposed in council," he roared, glaring at me, "was to lead each by the ear to the border and kick their bottoms back into Bechuana-land."
"Why didn't you do it?" I cried, shouting with laughter. "Oh, my goodness!
What a pity you didn't do it and enrich history with a unique scene. The most genial proposal I ever heard. That is what ought to have been done with them: impudence should always be met with contempt."
My delighted acceptance of his proposal brought the old man to good humor at once, but he was still suspicious.
"Do you know," he went on, "that one of Jameson's lieutenants, a leader of the raid, an officer in your army, too, told the Bechuanaland police that the raid was looked upon favorably by the government?"
"But the police," I said, "didn't believe him. If the police had come in as raiders, then the complicity of the government would be difficult to deny."
"Hercules Robinson is honest," said Krueger, as if to himself, "good, too, but getting old and weak: thinks it clever to speak with two tongues. But we shall soon know."
"Know what?" I asked.
"Know whether your government, whether Chamberlain and Rhodes were agreed."
"How will time help you?" I asked, wondering.
The old man went into a long explanation which the Chief Justice translated, telling me that notebooks, and telegrams had been found upon the battlefield, and that they had all been decoded, and established the complicity of Rhodes and Beit in the raid up to the hilt. I was told I might go and see the telegrams, and I did see them all the next day, some time early in February, the same telegrams that were published in The Times in May, and caused a sensation.
But Krueger was not to be diverted for long from the main point.
"We shall soon know," he repeated, "whether Chamberlain was behind Rhodes or not."
"How?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "it is clear that the English people were behind him. Look how they cheer the raiders, and how they talk of them as heroes. But if they punish them that will be clear, and if they punish Rhodes, then I shall know that Chamberlain and the government were not behind him."
There was such menace in the old man's voice and manner, such rage of anger, that I tried to show him the other side.
"Difficult," I said "to punish Rhodes. How would you have him punished?"
"Oh," he cried, "I don't want him punished in money or in person. He was made a Privy Councillor. Let them take that away from him: anything to show their disapproval, and I shall be content. I want to believe that the English government is honest, as it was when Gladstone was there."
I could not help but admit that that might be done, should be done.
"If it is not done," cried the old man, "I shall know what to do."
"What?" I asked.
He growled and glared, and didn't answer, but one night after dinner Kotze told me that Chamberlain had asked Krueger to come to London and state his case, saying that he would be treated with perfect fairness. I knew that Chamberlain disliked Rhodes, personally, and had never forgiven him for giving ten thousand pounds to Parnell, and when Kotze told me all this, I said to him that I thought I ought to see the President again; and he arranged for the meeting immediately and undertook as before to act as interpreter between us.
This last interview with Krueger seemed to me very important: first of all, I thanked him for letting Leyds show me the telegrams that proved that the Jameson Raiders were on their way to overthrow the Transvaal government, and I got the President's permission to publish the telegrams as I wished. I then alluded to the trial of the chief raiders and said I hoped that no capital punishment would be inflicted. "It would be ridiculous," I said, "to punish the servants with death and let the master go free." Krueger nodded agreement.
"President," I added, "as we agree on so much, I want to persuade you to go to London as Chamberlain desires. You will give him the parliamentary triumph which he wants, and in return he will give you a free hand against Rhodes. You needn't fear for the independence of the Transvaal if you do this: it will be insured for our time at least." "Why should I go to London?" he broke in. "Policy," I said, "nothing else. Chamberlain is much more dangerous than Rhodes: if you get Chamberlain on your side, you need fear nothing for the next twenty years."
"Do you mean," he said, "that otherwise the English would come and try to take the Transvaal again?"
"I have no right to speak for them," I said, "but I am frightened; Englishmen don't believe that forty or fifty thousand Boers should be allowed to play despots and deprive one hundred thousand Englishmen of political rights in the country which they have made wealthy. You will have to judge the matter, Mr. President," I added, "but Chamberlain is strong either as a friend or an enemy, and I always remember what Ben Franklin, one of the wisest of Americans, said: 'There never was a good war or a bad peace.'"
"We have a better friend than Chamberlain," he said. "You forget that we have the Almighty God, and He has freed the Transvaal once for all."
"I can only tell you," I said, "how I think the game should be played; I am no one, you are one of the protagonists."
"I am glad to have met you," was his concluding speech to me; "for the first time I have met an Englishman who tells me what he considers the exact truth. I hope you will put our case plainly before the public, and I don't say I won't take your advice about Chamberlain, though I dislike the idea of going to London. I have grown old," he barked, "and am tired, and I got nothing in London before."
"There is much to get there now," were my last words, "and you would win Chamberlain easily."
Delighted with my praise, the old man said, "As soon as I heard of the raid I got out my rifle and put on my old veltschoon; I was going to lead my burghers against Jameson, but-" he pointed to Kotze, "he and the others persuaded me not to go."
Whatever Krueger was, he was a great old fighter! It was his courage and combativeness which led him to his ruin. I remember saying to Kotze when we came away: "Unless Krueger goes to London and gives Chamberlain his parliamentary triumph, he will be sorry for it. There is a great text in the Bible; I wonder if you know it: 'If thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes!'"
Of course Kotze understood. When we parted I told him that I would send the telegrams to the Saturday Review to be published-but I must pass over that story in silence, for it reminded me of the worldly wisdom of Dante's phrase:
Degli amici guarda mi Dio
Degli memici mi guardo lo
"God save me from my friends; my enemies I'll take care of myself."
In the days that followed, and after my return to England, I saw plainly enough how Krueger's suspicions must be strengthened to certainty. The raiders were received in London by cheering crowds: the leaders, who were punished by short terms of imprisonment, were let out even before the term had been served. Rhodes was regarded everywhere as a hero, and even the commission that was set on foot to bring the truth to light contented itself with finding out little or nothing, and with rewarding instead of punishing the villain.
One scene from that commission I must give because it is of historic interest; it was the only real attempt made to cross-examine Rhodes before the commission, and it established not only his complicity, but threw a more sinister light on the whole conspiracy; and established finally, in my mind, the guilty complicity of Joseph Chamberlain.
The chairman of the commission was a Mr. Jackson, whom I had known as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I had met him at dinners and had had long talks with him, and had learned to appreciate his fair-mindedness and good sense. He gave me a desk to myself, apart from the pressmen's desk in the room where the sittings were held. It was well in front, where I could see and hear everything.
From the beginning it was evident that it was a white-washing commission.
Everyone paid the most extravagant deference to Rhodes, a deference which often called forth from him expressions of amused contempt. Chamberlain bowed when he addressed a question to him. Sir Richard Webster was proud to help him to brandy and soda like a waiter. The idea of a millionaire as a criminal in England was too ludicrous for words. Even Labouchere lost all his pert impudence when questioning him. Indeed, poor Labby was at a loss: he was only half-informed, and Rhodes's advocates on the commission, and especially Chamberlain, could do what they pleased with him.
But there was one man on the commission equal to his task, Sir William Veraon Harcourt. He had studied his brief, had made himself familiar with the facts, seemed quietly determined to get at the truth. When he took Rhodes in hand, the relative proportions of the two men became plain at once. Rhodes began to lose his self-confidence, hesitated, hectored. Sir William Vernon Harcourt apologized, used great courtesy, never insisted, but returned with new questions. Again and again Chamberlain interfered to turn the attack, but Sir W. Vernon Harcourt was not to be denied or diverted from the main points; he smiled at Chamberlain and went on pushing in probe after probe in deadly fashion.
Rhodes and his supporters in the press had been putting forward the notion that the agitation in Johannesburg was a real reform movement, whereas Sir William Vernon Harcourt evidently believed that the cosmopolitan Jew financiers directing the mines in Johannesburg didn't even wish to become citizens of the Transvaal Republic. He had already made it pretty plain that it was a fictitious and carefully fomented agitation. Rhodes, on the other hand, asserted that Jameson had gone in to assist the reformers and to keep order.
Sir William Vernon Harcourt went on to the morning before the raid and read a telegram from Jameson to Woolff in Johannesburg: "Meet me as arranged before you left on Tuesday night, which will enable us to decide which is the best destination."
"Can you explain to me, Mr. Rhodes, what is the meaning of those words, 'which is the best destination'?" Thus daintily Sir William Vernon Harcourt placed the bomb upon the table.
Rhodes pretended indignation.
"No, I certainly could not; you see, Woolff was at Johannesburg: Jameson telegraphed from Pitsani. I should say the 'best destination' means the best route."
Sir William Harcourt smiled.
"That is not the ordinary meaning of destination. Was it proposed that Dr.
Jameson, instead of going to Johannesburg, should go to Pretoria direct?
Have you ever heard that, Mr. Rhodes?"
The bomb had exploded, the tension in the room was extraordinary: members craned forward and held their breath so as not to miss a word.
Rhodes hesitated, and then:
"I don't think I could have heard. I couldn't be sure. No," he added, "all I understood was that he would go to Johannesburg if required by the people of Johannesburg."
Again Sir William Harcourt insisted.
"Was there such a proposal? I ask because this is very important."
Mr. Rhodes turned and replied sulkily, fighting desperately for time. "I don't see the importance of it."
Sir William Harcourt, though interrupted by Mr. Pope, one of the opposing counsel, persisted quietly;
"I am putting a most important question. Was it ever discussed between you and Dr. Jameson whether or not he should go direct to Pretoria and attack President Krueger's Government, instead of going to Johannesburg?"
Mr. Rhodes fumbled: "I really couldn't answer that definitely; it might have been said." Then, catching at a straw, "Ask Dr. Jameson."
"You are an even more important person than Dr. Jameson. I really must ask you."
"I have given you my answer; I cannot remember; I don't see the importance of it."
Sir William Vernon Harcourt: "There is a very important difference between going to assist an insurrection in Johannesburg and going to make an attack direct upon the government of Pretoria."
Rhodes admitted the proposal may have been discussed, though he couldn't remember it.
Thus Sir William Harcourt by his questions had brought out the fact which, indeed, was contained in a telegram of Jameson, that the objective of the raid was not decided when the doctor started; that Jameson had it in mind not to go to Johannesburg at all, but to make a dash for Eirene, the place where the Boers stored their arms and ammunition about seven miles from Pretoria, and thus attack Krueger's government at the heart and directly.
Everyone expected Sir William Harcourt to pursue his interrogatory on the morrow, but he did not, and I was deeply disappointed. The commission broke off for the day and the point was never touched on again.
For the life of me, I couldn't fathom the situation or guess the secret. I found it out afterwards, however, from Dilke, the best informed Member of Parliament. He told me what I have already explained in Chapter XIV, that when the German Emperor congratulated Krueger on having defeated the raid, Queen Victoria reproved him sharply and declared that he seemed to be trying to make her government responsible for it, whereas none of her ministers knew anything about the raid. The German Emperor apologized humbly for his mistake.
"But when the South African Committee stirred the whole matter up again,"
Dilke said, "a Conservative statesman called upon Sir William Vernon Harcourt and told him about the Queen's letter to the German Emperor, and his reply; and when he had recited the facts, the Conservative went on to point out that if Sir William Vernon Harcourt pursued his questions and demonstrated the complicity of Chamberlain, or, indeed, rendered Chamberlain's complicity probable, he would be proving the Queen to have told what was not the truth to the German Emperor. He left it to Sir William Vernon Harcourt's sense of what was fit and becoming whether he would continue his interrogatory or not. Sir William Vernon Harcourt thereupon abandoned his plan, and gave up the victory he might have won over Chamberlain."
The committee condemned severely Sir Graham Bower, the Imperial Secretary, who had betrayed his superior, Sir Hercules Robinson, but Chamberlain gave him a governorship at once. Thus is traitorism rewarded in England.
Much the same thing happened with Robinson. He made two or three distinct charges against Chamberlain, and on my way home in April, '96, at Cape Town, he gave me chapter and verse for these accusations, but begged me not to say anything about them till he had returned to London and seen me, as he intended to make them in person against Chamberlain.
When he came back I wrote to him, saying that I was ready to see him at any time he might wish, and he replied that he would give me an immediate appointment. Then he wrote again, putting me off in a letter with a very changed tone; and when I pressed him, he wrote saying he was very ill, too ill to see any one, although he had seen the Colonial Office and Chamberlain in the meantime. Suddenly he was made Lord Rosmead and nothing more was heard of his accusation against Chamberlain. The English often close mouths with titles.