rest of the negotiations consisted in offering a five years' franchise law without hampering conditions, but only upon other conditions which they knew that this government would not accept. Finally, the position of the Transvaal government is contained in their notes of 19th and 21st August, in which they offer seemingly most favourable terms, terms which if they had been offered without conditions would have been most favourable. They offered a five years' franchise, retrospective, eight new seats for the Rand, and not only a vote for the volksraad but also for the elections of the President and Commander-in-Chief, and they expressed a willingness to receive and to consider friendly suggestions as to the franchise law to be passed. Now come to the conditions. One of them was that the British government should promise in future never to interfere in their internal affairs, that this should be a final interference once and for all; secondly, not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, and, thirdly, to agree to arbitration on particular matters. Mr Chamberlain's answer to that expressed satisfaction with the terms themselves, apart from the conditions. With regard to the condition not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, he referred to the previous correspondence in which, while insisting theoretically insisting upon a vague suzerainty, he had said that since the republic was prepared to abide by the convention of 1884 there was no controversy as to the essential point'. As to the condition to agree to arbitration on par

1 In a despatch of 16th October 1897 Mr Chamberlain had refused to agree to a proposal of arbitration, which I understand to have included an arbitration on the general relations between the United Kingdom and the South African Republic, as being improper where there was a suzerainty. On 16th April 1898 Dr Leyds, the state secretary of the republic, replied that the suzerainty reserved by the preamble of the convention of 1881 no longer existed, and that it would be no reason against arbitration if it did. On 15th December 1898 Mr Chamberlain argued that the suzerainty of the preamble of 1881 still existed, but added: "Her Majesty's government have taken note of the assurance, once more repeated at the commencement of Dr Leyds's note,

ticular matters, he accepted that also. The one condition upon which there was nothing like an acceptance, but a clear and firm rejection, was the promise in future not to interfere

that the government of the South African Republic are prepared in every respect to abide by the stipulations of the convention of 1884. These stipulations undoubtedly include 'reservations with reference to certain specified matters.' There is thus no controversy as to the essential point in the relations between the two governments, which gives to Great Britain a position of superiority." On 9th May 1899 Mr Reitz, the new secretary of state of the republic, wrote in support of Dr Leyds's view. And on 13th July 1899 Mr Chamberlain wrote: "Her Majesty's government......have no intention of continuing to discuss this question with the government of the republic, whose contention that the South African Republic is a sovereign international state is not in their opinion warranted either by law or history, and is wholly inadmissible." And he quoted Lord Kimberley's instructions to Sir Hercules Robinson preparatory to the convention of 1881, in which it was stated that “entire freedom of action will be accorded to the Transvaal government, so far as is not inconsistent with the rights expressly reserved to the suzerain power. The term suzerainty has been chosen as most conveniently describing superiority over a state possessing independent rights of government, subject to reservations with reference to certain specified matters" (the italics are mine). It was to this despatch of 13th July that Mr Chamberlain referred in his answer of 28th August to the terms offered by the Transvaal government on 19th and 21st August, but that reference must bring in the despatch of 15th December 1898 as a part of the connected correspondence. So far from claiming too much for the British government in saying that it expressed itself satisfied for essential purposes with the express conventional terms, it may be questioned whether, even on the despatch of 13th July alone, it is quite fair to the British government to say that it was theoretically insisting on a vague suzerainty.......The Transvaal condition as to arbitration was accepted in the despatch of 28th August subject to "a discussion of the form and scope of a tribunal of arbitration from which foreigners and foreign influence are excluded." And the reply to the general condition against future interference was expressed in a manner apparently intended to soften the rejection. "First, as regards intervention, Her Majesty's government hope that the fulfilment of the promises made, and the just treatment of the Uitlanders in future, will render unnecessary any further intervention on their behalf, but Her Majesty's government cannot of course debar themselves from their rights under the conventions, nor divest themselves of the ordinary obligations of a civilized power to protect its subjects in a foreign country from injustice."

again in the internal affairs of the republic. That promise, of course, it was impossible to give, after all the experience we have had, which teaches us at least to say that we can place no faith in the Transvaal government. The answer of the republic to that despatch was to declare that the terms were offered only subject to the conditions, that a refusal to consent to the conditions upon which they were offered was equivalent to a refusal of the terms themselves. Nothing further took place before the outbreak of war except this, that Mr Chamberlain at the last moment added a new demand. He demanded, if the franchise was settled, that the new members who represented the Uitlanders in the volksraad should be allowed to speak English. Of course, as they would not be able to speak Dutch, their presence in the volksraad would be useless without that permission. There is no objection made to the French Canadians speaking French in the parliament of Canada. But that demand the Transvaal government refused absolutely.

And then, when the grass on the veldt was grown enough to afford forage for the horses, they declared war with an ultimatum which demanded that we should remove at once all our troops from the borders of the republic, that we should remove from South Africa all troops landed there since the Ist of June, and that the troops then at sea should not be landed in South Africa. The ultimatum came at a time when negotiations had never been broken off, when it was still possible for either party to make fresh proposals. It demanded too that we should leave ourselves disarmed, with nothing but our usual small garrison, in the presence of two armed republics, and it is no wonder that such an ultimatum as that was instantly refused'.

If we are asked what it is we are at war about, I would

1 The fact that it was so framed lights up the uncertainty that might possibly have still rested on the policy of the two republics, and exhibits them insisting on a position of military superiority in South Africa.

put the final points at issue shortly thus. The British demand is for the franchise to be obtained after five years' residence, also by those who have already resided five years in the republic, together with a substantial number of new seats for the Rand. That is refused unless we give a promise, which we decline to give, of never again on any ground interfering with the affairs of the republic. That the promise so demanded was meant to include intervention on grounds of general international law is evident from the circumstance that the question of the suzerainty was made the subject of a separate condition in the terms proposed on 19th and 21st August. Then there is the other British demand of the free use of either language in the volksraad, which is refused absolutely. There is the Transvaal demand that we should submit not only particular questions but the general relations of the two countries to arbitration, which would be equivalent to referring it to an arbitrator to make a new convention1, and that we should disarm our colonies in the face of their armaments. These are

The

the short issues on which we are now at war. The Transvaal ultimatum was more than an ultimatum; it was a conditional declaration of war. It declared that if its terms were not accepted by the time named a state of war would exist. terms were not accepted by the time named, and we instantly became as much at war in the regular international sense as if the Queen had herself made a declaration of war by the usual proclamation. Thereupon the Orange Free State issued a declaration of war against England on the ground of the

1 The form in which this demand was made in the ultimatum was "that all points of mutual difference shall be regulated by the friendly course of arbitration, or by whatever other amicable way may be agreed upon by this government with Her Majesty's government." This could be worked as a peremptory demand for arbitration, simply by not agreeing to any other amicable way that might be proposed. The correspondence extending over years must be examined in order to appreciate the scope of the desired arbitration.

Transvaal republic being, as they said, unjustly attacked, so that the casus fœderis of a defensive alliance had arisen.

We are then internationally at war. The idea which is often expressed in a part of the press that it is not an international war, but that it is possible to treat the enemy as insurgents, is perfectly absurd. No serious person who knows anything of the case would maintain it for a moment. But although we are now internationally at war it will by no means follow that the war will conclude by our becoming internationally at peace. It may be, the war having now broken off the previous relations between the governments, that those relations may never be re-established; it may be that the only remedy for the evil will be the annexation of these two republics. It is now rather early to speak of that, but if that should be the remedy, if in the end there should be no negotiations, no terms of peace, no recognition of the republics as still continuing to exist but simply a proclamation of annexation, then we must remember what President Kruger said at the Bloemfontein conference, that independence on the footing of having the Dutch swamped by Uitlanders governing the country according to the English and not according to the Dutch ideal would be worse than annexation 1.

1 The exercise of the extreme right of conquest by the annexation of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic to the British dominions would not prevent any powers of self-government which might be thought fit being given to the territories which now compose them. The empire includes examples shading off in that respect from the dominion of Canada to the rock of Gibraltar. Nor would annexation prevent the separation, if approved, of the goldmining districts in which the non-Boers greatly preponderate from the more purely Boer districts, so that in the latter the Dutch population might in some degree have the satisfaction of living their own life, under due provisions for the benefit of all other inhabitants of the same parts. Only the constitutional authority of the crown or of parliament would be supreme, and any necessary modifications of the arrangements might be made by that authority from time to time. There would be no more place for the fog