INS

Chapter XIII

THE STORY OF THE PROCLAMATION

'N Cape Town, Monday, December 30th, was a day of strange, undefined tension of feeling, through the general expectancy strained towards Johannesburg, not towards the border, and although the actual news was known to nobody that day beyond some half-dozen people. So unromantic a person as Sir Gordon Sprigg confessed to "presentiments." But even Mr. Hofmeyr, who was presently to become counsellor-in-chief by telegram to the Pretoria Government, had as yet heard nothing. The writer had been pestering the leader of Dutch Cape Colony for an interview or utterance of some kind in sympathy with the Uitlander demand for citizenship; and late on Monday evening, the town being full of vague rumours of action at Johannesburg, Mr. Hofmeyr was drawn to the Cape Times Office for news. Owing to the block on the wires the evening telegrams had not yet come in; one of which, much later, brought the incredible information, and to this alone it was due that there could be pumped out of the reticent Bond leader even the few guarded words of sympathetic interest in the Uitlander grievances which duly appeared in print next morning as an interview, concluding as follows:

His views on the franchise demand Mr. Hofmeyr has expressed years ago. He favoured a compromise then, but it found no support at Pretoria. Now it would be useless to offer the compromise which then might have satisfied legitimate aspirations.

On reading this over Mr Hofmeyr found the tone of it expressive only of one side of his feelings in this difficult question, in which he

felt himself, he confessed, pulled both ways; and he desired the addition in clear terms that in spite of the manner in which his efforts on behalf of the Transvaal had been received, and though he regretted that no statesmanlike compromise had been arrived at, the Transvaal still kept his strong sympathies and affection. "Blood is thicker than

water."

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The point being put that the blood of many young Afrikander "Uitlanders was closer to many Cape families even than the blood of the Boers, Mr. Hofmeyr admitted the fact. "But then," he said, smiling, "how if those Afrikander Uitlanders' also found that blood was thicker than water?"

"But they are solid with the other 'Uitlanders,' that is just the point,” it was rejoined to this ; and the question added :

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Suppose war broken out, Mr. Hofmeyr, what would you yourself do?" "God knows! . Try to get peace made as soon as possible,

I suppose, like last time," said Mr. Hofmeyr.

And not one word could be got out of him.

Mr. Hofmeyr gone, enter one of the two Johannesburg emissaries, visibly excited, mysterious as to the reason, but urgent in the same question, "Have you any news?' Enter later the Imperial Secretary, looking ill with anxiety, but constant even then to the habitual officialism which deems it a sin to tell a newspaper anything except what it already knows. His was the same question, “Have you any special news?" which, by now, it was possible to answer, and from him was eventually obtained the authority to state that the High Commissioner had repudiated and recalled Jameson, an item which accordingly accompanied the brief announcement in Tuesday's Cape Times of what was there called "the almost incredible fact, presumably due to a brave, wild, mad, foolish impulse," and to exaggerated rumours from Johannesburg.

These possible excuses for Jameson, by the way, for one must speak by the card in these matters, were no part of what Sir Graham Bower authorized or suggested. The author heard no word from him or any Imperial official during the crisis otherwise than deploring and disapproving of Jameson's action.

Enter again, still later on that well-remembered evening, the Johannesburg emissary aforesaid, who was provoked to passionate remonstrance by the tenor of a half-finished leading article begun at the very first receipt of the news, in which, while it was remarked that "the first shot fired in the Transvaal must needs make many people round its fringes, alike in Colonies and Repubiic, hard to hold," yet "through all such events the High Commissioner's duty is to stand high above the quarrels even the just quarrels of the Uitlanders, for it is to him that all South Africa will look to hold the balance even and to mould the united statesmanship of South Africa into the great settlement which must inevitably ensue upon the struggle." To this, and much more which need not be here repeated in the way of argument against the Imperial Power allowing itself to be in any way implicated in Jameson's mad attempt, the burden of the Johannesburg leader's answer was : "Then all I can say is—the Imperial Power will lose South Africa." Jameson, he admitted, had precipitated and upset the plans of Rhodes and the plans of everybody, but while admitting all this, the Johannesburg man declared that Jameson would undoubtedly carry the whole thing through if the Imperial Government would let him, and the policy of repudiation and recall would never, he declared, be forgiven by the Uitlanders.

It was hard to see anything clear in that first rush of surprise, but one thing did seem clear to the writer, and he clung to it accordingly. Though heart and soul with the Johannesburg Revolution if only the Uitlanders would make it, he could not see that the Imperial Government had the right to interfere and make it for them. The Johannesburg leader left the office unconvinced and fuming.

The story of how the news came to Cape Town, and how it was received by various people from various points of view is one which can best be illustrated by concrete example and personal reminiscences; hence these recollections of one night at a Newspaper Office, bringing across the stage as it does so

conveniently a quick succession of figures typical of the different forces engaged in the crisis. Let me add that at the Cape Times Office this news, that is, the Jameson part of it, and the much later discovery of Mr. Rhodes' full relation to that part, was as much a surprise that evening as it was to Ministers and to Cape Town generally when it appeared in print next morning. Let me add also this, that the foregoing conversations, joined to the imperfect knowledge at the time of what might have led to Jameson's act, give all the key that any candid person will require to the following telegram which the writer addressed next day to the Star, Johannesburg, after hearing of the coming proclamation :

"You must expect, and not misunderstand, a proclamation putting Jameson formally in the wrong. Imperial authorities have no other course. Don't let this weaken or divide you. This merely for your information."

It was merely a private reading of the situation exchanged between two journalists, perfectly understood by the recipient, and conveying a common-sense hint which proved of some small use in the confused brouhaha at Johannesburg. Why it should have been seized on by the Transvaal Government as a great find, and immortalized in a Green Book, and even debated in the Cape Parliament, is a mystery only to be explained by the epoch of suspicious unreason which the crisis produced. As all this was done, the matter is just mentioned here.

December 31st, 1895, in Cape Town. - At Government House a great part of Tuesday was occupied by the great fight about the proclamation. Abundant evidence came to hand during the morning to show what passion and indignation the news of the raid had evoked wherever it was known in Dutch South Africa. A message from the Acting President of the Free State referred to Jameson's cool reply to the Commandant of Marico, and expressed anxiety for the "peace and welfare of South Africa." The Free State, in fact, was up in arms. 1,600 burghers were commandeered to take up a position about sixteen miles on the Free State side of the Vaal, and

mounted expresses scoured the country and the border, and it may be recalled as a significant fact that in one district twice the number of burghers commandeered responded to the call.

But it was in the person of Mr. Hofmeyr that Dutch South Africa really marched into Government House that Tuesday morning.

Mr. Rhodes had called and assured Sir Hercules that Dr. Jameson acted without his authority, adding something about the stopping telegram and the cut wires, and offering to resign if either Mr. Chamberlain or Sir Hercules thought it necessary.

Mr. Hofmeyr came up scarcely knowing what to think. He openly suspected the attitude of Mr. Rhodes towards Jameson, and covertly, perhaps, that of the Imperial Government. Indeed, he has since confessed that what cleared and composed his mind in this matter was simply the transparently candid personality of one man— Sir Hercules Robinson. Rhodes had said a year before that only one man had enough prestige with Dutch South Africa to be fit to cope with the coming racial crisis and save a war. This one man was now to make good the words-if not quite to the purpose their author had dreamed of.

one.

Mr.

It may be said that Lord Rosmead, in South African politics, is now a man of one idea. But the point is that that one idea was, for the beginning of 1896, the right one-the only feasible Mr. Chamberlain had to come to see it; Mr. Rhodes saw it before and probably sees it now again; perhaps it will dawn some day even on Lord Rosmead's own countrymen in the colonies, to whom to-day he is even as Mr. Gladstone once was in the Jingo Party.

The writer had the opportunity to see this old and ill man in the thick of the crisis. His was the coolest head there.

"It is almost impossible to know what to do next,” he remarked to a visitor at almost the most puzzling moment of all; "but I have an old formula which I have always found come out well in the end-and that is, 'Don't trouble about a "policy," but do the thing that you see to be right."