While we were traveling through the Red Sea, my mind had turned naturally to Colonial problems, for it was not possible, nor even desirable, to be concerned with Winnie all the time. Perhaps the most useful way to reveal my thoughts would have been to contrast the characters of Cecil Rhodes and the German Kaiser. The former was without doubt an Empire Builder; the latter, as few men before 1914 realized, was an Empire Destroyer. But two such portraits would have taken me beyond the scope of the present part of my memoir. For this reason, using the personality of Rhodes as a kind of springboard, I shall attempt to record exactly what my thoughts were at the time. I have since found no reason to alter them.
As early as 1887 at the Colonial Conference in London, Rhodes had outlined the true colonial policy of England in the future. There was no snobbishness in him and he saw that the despotism of the aristocratic class was out of keeping with modern ideas. He told me once that if there had been any brains in English rulers, the seat of government would have been settled for five years in Washington and then five years in London. To him “the British constitution” was an absurd anachronism and should have been remodeled on the lines of the American Union with federal self-governing colonies as the constituent states.
Rhodes had many faults, but there was greatness in him and in the main he seemed to gravitate to what was right. He made dreadful mistakes: He could not believe that Kruger would fight. He was the only man in South Africa of any position who held that view. He believed too that the English would beat the Boers easily and again he found himself mistaken. But he was the ablest exponent of the true imperialism.
At the beginning of the century when the war was practically over, he addressed a meeting of the South Africa League in Cape Town and his words deserve to be remembered:
“The Dutch are not beaten; what is beaten is Krugerism, a corrupt and evil government, no more Dutch in essence than English. No! The Dutch are as vigorous and unconquered today as they have ever been; the country is still as much theirs as it is yours, and you will have to live and work with them hereafter as in the past. Remember that when you go back to your homes in the towns or in the up-country farms and villages, let there be no vaunting words, no vulgar triumph over your Dutch neighbors; make them feel that the bitterness is past and that the need of cooperation is greater than ever. Teach your children to remember when they go to their village school that the little Dutch boys and girls they find sitting on the same benches with them are as much part of the South African nation as they are themselves, and that as they learn the same lessons together now, so hereafter they must work together as comrades for a common objectthe good of South Africa.”
In the three of four years of the war he had changed physically to an astonishing extent; he had become puffy-faced and bloated, but his high purposes held. His first will had been made when he was a youth of 24. In his final will of 1899, he published his resolve to found a great educational scheme to apply to all the English-speaking portions of the world. He gave scholarships to young Americans, Germans and others to enable them to study in Oxford.
It is not time yet to judge the full effect of these “Rhodes scholarships,” but that they have done good is certain.
His private life no one knew much about. He had a secretary once who told me stories of his erotic tendencies worthy of Oscar Wilde, but I never believed them wholeheartedly. Rhodes always seemed to me to be lacking in virility, political ideas engrossed his attention when really good erotic tales scarcely induced him to listen. And in Cape Town where he was well-known, his reputation in this respect was never assailed.
The end of his life was tragiche had drunk too much for years, eaten too much, too, and his heart began to give way. The Princess Radziwill had been connected with him in some way and had forged his name to a number of bills of exchange. He had to go to Cape Town to defend himself. He gave his evidence practically on his death bed, but his last home was chosen for him carefully by Dr. Jameson who brought him to a little cottage at Muizesberg near the sea where he could look out over the great ocean and get the cool breezes. They rigged up a sort of cable over his bed and here he used to hang when his heart fluttered and his breathing became difficult. His old friends all wrote to him affectionately. Hofmeyr was the first to send him a message of reconciliation and daily cables came from friends in London.
Dying, Rhodes reached his true height. “Everything in the world is too short,” he said one day, “life and fame and achievements, everything is too short.” Just before his death on March 26, 1902, he was heard to say: “So little done, so much to do.” It might well be his epitaph.
I feel that I ought to tell something about Rhodes' greatest rival, Paul Kruger, the President of the Transvaal, though in statecraft he was no match for Rhodes. It was said that when a young man, he was the greatest athlete in the country. He was just six feet in height and was, it was said, an extraordinary runner, and possessed, besides, extraordinary strength.
It was Sir James Sivewright who told me that on one occasion Kruger ran a footrace against the pick of Kaffir braves. There were large prizes of good cattle. It was a long day's run across country past certain well-known landmarksamongst others, his own father's house. Young Kruger soon distanced all his pursuers, and when he reached his father's house, he was so far ahead that he went in and had some coffee. His father, however, was so angry with him for running across country without his rifle that he very nearly gave his son a flogging. He made the boy take a light rifle with him when he left to finish his race.
On sped young Kruger, the Kaffir braves toiling after him as well as they could. They threw away their impediments as their muscles weakened; their path became strewn with shields, spears, clubs, and even the bangles they wore on their legs and arms. But in spite of it all, Paul Kruger kept far ahead of them.
His speed on foot was so extraordinary that it was commonly said that he could outrun a horse, and I believe that on one occasion he did. Of course, the myth faculty came into play, and it was usually said that Kruger ran faster than a horse can gallop for half a mile, which, was utterly impossible. In truth, over twelve hours he did, I believe, surpass a horse.
Another story equally strange was told me. Kruger had been chasing buffalo, and his horse had brought him close up to his victim. Suddenly the huge beast put his foot into a hole, and fell head-over-heels into a swamp. Kruger was on top of it in a moment, horse, rider and buffalo all rolling pell-mell in the same soft ground. Kruger was the first to collect his wits. He sprang at the head of the buffalo, seized both its horns in his hands, and while the beast lay upon its side, twisted its neck so as to force its nose under water; thus, after a struggle, Kruger killed the buffalo, drowning it by sheer strength. I had heard this story already in Cape Town, but would not believe it until I had the President's corroboration of this extraordinary feat.
It was the same Sivewright, the Minister of Public Works in the Cape Colony, who told me that he once called upon Kruger with a certain English duke, who was by no means conceited, but was somewhat deficient in diplomacy. The conversation, as I recall it, ran about as follows. Of course it was conducted by means of an interpreter.
“Tell the President that I am the Duke and have come to pay my respects to him.”
Kruger gave a grunt signifying welcome.
“Tell him that I am a member of the English Parliament,” said the Duke after a long pause.
Kruger gave another grunt, puffing his pipe.
After a still longer pause: “Andyou might tell him that I amera member of the House of Lordsa Lordyou know.”
Kruger puffed as before, and nodded his head, with another grunt. Then, turning, he said gruffly, “Tell the Englishman that I was a cattle-herder.”
There was no snobbishness in Kruger, but he possessed great obstinacy and he was as combative as a bull-terrier. I told him that he had better give in to Chamberlain, and give the Englishman the pride of a victory in words, “or else,” I said, “you may be sure there will be war, which will help no one.”
Kruger said: “You may be right, but the issue is in the hands of God. I can only do what I regard as right, and the issue is not so certain as you think. We Boers are hard to beat.” He afterwards sent for me saying that I was the only Englishman he had met who told him the truth. It would have been easy for Chamberlain to manage Kruger, as it was easy for Kruger to placate Chamberlain. But, alas! they preferred to fight, and I cannot but admit that the chief wrong was Chamberlain's. The consciousness of power leads usually to provocative bullying. The struggle cost poor Kruger his life.
My proof that the South African War had cost Great Britain millions and had worsened our relations with South Africa made me many enemies in England. All the evil effects of the war had seldom been adequately or carefully stated. Let me give here some new facts.
In 1901, the Commission of Police in London reported that in the twelve months during which Lord Kitchener was looting and burning and devastating South Africa, the criminal classes were carrying on similar operations in the heart of the Empire. In a single twelve months, burglaries in London rose 50 per cent. Forgeries also showed a similar increase; house-breaking rose 22 per cent, and shop-breaking 15 per cent. As with crime, so with drunkenness. The number of convictions for drunkenness in the five years from 1897 to 1901 showed an increase of 50 per cent in London over the convictions for the five years from 1892 to 1896. The increase in vagrancy was even more appalling. In 1901 the number of vagrants relieved at the workhouse showed an increase of 20 per cent, and in 1901 the number was actually 100 per cent higher than the figure at which it stood ten years before.
The tide of pauperism, which had been steadily ebbing during the liberal regime of peace, turned completely. In 1900 there was 1 pauper for 42 of the population, in 1901 1 in 40, and in November 1902, 1 in 38.4. Not less ominous was the tale told in the Labor Gazette as to the increase in the number of unemployed. When the war began, the percentage reported as unemployed by the trades unions was little more than 2.5. In November 1902, the percentage had doubled. The poverty in England chiefly due to the English ruling classes was intensified through this purposeless war. Here I will use another authority:
In 1904, Montague Crackenthorpe in an article in The Nineteenth Century gave some figures which deserve to be widely known. He proved that “nine hundred and twenty-nine out of every thousand persons in the Kingdom die in poverty and one of every four in London dies supported by public charity. Eight millions of people in the United Kingdom are on the edge of starvation, and twenty millions are not comfortable.”
Such facts should be known to every man, but not one Englishman in ten thousand cares to note them, and not one in ten million attempts to understand their profound significance, much less dream of a remedy.
Perhaps the worst of all is Crackenthorpe's true statement: “The people of England have come to look on starvation and suffering, which they call distress, as part of the social order. Chronic starvation is regarded as a matter of course.”
I cannot help adding a table showing the cost of armaments in each of these first years of the century:
France?38,400,000
Germany?38,000,000
United States?38,300,000
Russia?43,000,000
Italy?15,700,000
Great Britain spent?69,000,000
The South African war was made by England and it was well perhaps that she should pay for it; but the wrongs she committed in South Africa were beyond belief.
In the South African war, Chamberlain made the mistake of choosing the worst possible Lieutenant. Lord Milner was all for fighting until the Boers surrendered unconditionally. He armed scores of thousands of blacks. He closed the gates of the refugee camps against the miserable women and children whose homes he had burned and let loose his armed savages upon the helpless wanderers. A little further pressure and these methods of barbarism would, he believed, result in unconditional surrender.
But, thank God, the King was wiser; he was sick and tired of the war. We had drained the Empire of our last resources in recruits. The Peace of Vereeniging was the result. Peace was made on terms despite Lord Milner, but as the execution of the terms was left to him, the Boers maintain that the difference was chiefly on paper. Surrender on terms is all very well, but if the terms are not executed, and no means exist whereby they can be enforced, such surrender is particularly unconditional.
Some time after the South African war, I met Joseph Chamberlain in the lobby of the House of Commons, and he came over to me in the friendliest way and wanted to know why I had refused his last invitations to dinner. I said that the dreadful South African war was the cause of my coldness. “I thought you would be the greatest English statesman,” I said, “but you had the bad luck to choose Milner, and the two of you have written one of the worst pages in all English history.”
“I did what I thought my duty,” he said. “Milner went beyond all my orders, but now it is all over and done with.”
“Not to me,” I said. “That war marks the beginning of the fall of the British Empire.”
“I am sorry,” he said and turned away. Even now, a quarter of a century later, I see no reason to modify my opinion, though Campbell Bannerman by his wise concessions to the Boers did much to blot out the worst results of the Chamberlain-Milner rule and, of course, the world-war had still more disastrous consequences. Thanks to this last blunder, Britain lost the leadership of the nations and can never again regain it in spite of the wonderful opportunity which still exists for her in Africa.
Very few realize that Africa is made up of three zonesthe first all along the ocean, unhealthy save in the north and south; go three hundred miles inland and you will come to a land lifted from 1,250 to 2,500 feet above the sea, a plateau which is healthy and sun baked; go inland another hundred miles and you will come to the center-table land lifted from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the level of the sea.
This central plateau is perhaps the healthiest and most interesting portion of the known world. And the English now own the whole of it from Khartoum to the Cape. If they would spend one hundred million pounds yearly in transporting their unemployed to this central plateau and giving them decent work and housing, they would retrieve all their losses of the world war in two or three generations and form a Central African Empire healthier and more fruitful than the United States.
One man, and so far as I know only one, understood thisMr. Abe Bailey, born and bred in South Africa. He understood what might be done. He has farms in the north of Cape Colony, near Colesberg; they extend for an area of about 200,000 acres. When I met him, years ago, he had about 3,000 acres in cultivation. He contemplated an extension of the cultivated area to 15,000 acres. By far the greatest part of his holding consisted of Karroo.
“The Karroo,” said Mr. Bailey, “is the best soil in the world and is capable of the greatest development.”
“I thought it a wilderness,” I said.
“It is a wilderness of untold wealth” he replied. “It only requires intelligent cultivation to make South Africa one of the greatest farming countries in the world.”
“But you have no water in the Karroo.”
“That is where you make your mistake,” said Mr. Bailey. “I have bored ninety-three times in various parts of my farms and have struck water every time except one. Sometimes it was only fourteen feet below the surface, and the deepest boring we found necessary to make was 135 feet. In some instances the water rises to the surface by itself, but as a rule it has to be pumped up by windmills. We have about ninety windmills on our farms. There is plenty of wind, and with their aid, all my cattle can be watered where they are pastured.
“I hope before long to have fifteen thousand acres under alfalfa. We take five or six crops off it every year, and after I fed all my stock last year, we had six hundred and fifty tons of hay left on hand. It is marvelous what alfalfa will do. I estimate its value at?7 an acrenot bad for land which I bought seven years ago at 17 shillings an acre.”
“Don't you exhaust the soil?” I asked.
“Not at all. The alfalfa grows up by itself. It continues to grow year after year; supply it with water and you have an unfailing supply of fodder for your stock.”
“What stock does your farm carry?”
“I am rather proud of the variety. Mine is the only farm in the whole world on which you will find sheep, cattle, horses, Angora goats, and ostriches, all doing well, and all the best of their kind.”
“Do you think there is much land in South Africa that could be made as profitable as your farm?”
“I think,” replied Mr. Bailey, “I have got the pick of the bunch, but there are millions of acres that are almost as good, with any number of them running to waste, and square miles of Karroo which are quite waterless for want of the windmill. I think,” added Mr. Bailey, “my farm has demonstrated in practical fashion that South Africa can be made one of the richest farming countries in the world. But you must have: first, brains in the management; second, windmills to raise water for your stock; third, dams to secure the irrigation of the flat land on either side of the plot; fourth, alfalfa with which to fodder your stock in winter, and fifth, you must raise nothing but the best stock. If you stick to these five rules you will not go far wrong.”
If the English had given Abe Bailey power, he might have made an Eldorado of South Africa.
Instead you have statesmen like Asquith and Grey who will make a world war without fear or doubt, or hesitation, but will not attempt at small cost to build up a world empire. Yet the Central Plateau of Africa is sure to become a world empire in the near future, for the climate is not only healthful, but the country is astoundingly attractive and rich as well, sun baked and life-giving all the year round without being too hot even in summer and on the Equator.
The great event of January 1906 was the overwhelming defeat of the Party that made the South African War. The great event of February was the re-establishment at Westminster of a Parliament which in every sense represented the heart of the nation. For years Parliament had been sinking in public esteem. In the last years of the Balfour Ministry it had come to be treated with contempt. Now all that was changed. Westminster was alive again. Even the Peers showed symptoms of a new life.
The King's speech, which was of considerable length, contained the welcome announcement that responsible government was to be established this year in both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, in the confident expectation that “the grant of free institutions will be followed by an increased prosperity and loyalty to the Empire.”
Best of all, the Chinese laborers in the Transvaal, or slaves as they really were, were to be sent home again at the cost of the British Government.
And so Milnerism was finally killed. His speech in the House of Commons was his death-song. In it, the tyrant stood confesseda tyrant whose one idea of government was to use racial supremacy as his sole instrument. There was no longer any disguise. Naked and unashamed Milnerism stood revealed before our eyes.
No wonder Lord Milner was miserable. To have been directly responsible for the slaughter of 25,000 fighting men, and for the deaths of 5,000 women and 20,000 helpless infants, would have been a terrible burden to bear even if the end had justified the means. But Lord Milner, in the frankest fashion, admitted his failure:
“Just now the Transvaalindeed, all South Africais under a cloud. It has cost us great sacrifice. The compensations which we expected, and reasonably expected, have not come.”
Seldom has there been a more signal and instantaneous manifestation of the magic influence of justice and sympathy than in the rally of the whole Boer nation to his Majesty's Ministers the moment they showed that they intended to keep faith with his Afrikaner subjects.
The aristocracy and Milnerism had come to much the same grief in South Africa at the end of the 19th century as their predecessors achieved in the United States at the end of the eighteenth.