INTRODUCTION

THERE are proverbially two sides to every question, and the Transvaal question is no exception to this generally received aphorism. It seems to me, however, that a large number, if not the great majority, of persons in this country, are either ignorant or oblivious of this fact, or else deliberately shut their eyes to it. There has been far too great a disposition, in my opinion, to regard the matter from the "d-d Boer" point of view, and to jump to the conclusion that, although the incursion of Dr Jameson into the Transvaal might, from a high and dry legal standpoint, not have been entirely justifiable, yet these matters should not be looked

at too technically, and that the best way of settling the Transvaal question, once and for all, would be, by some means or another, to get the Boers out of the country, bag and baggage. I do not say that this view of the matter has been put forward on the platform by responsible speakers, or that it has been urged in the leading articles of influential papers, but I do say that such a view has largely permeated the masses of this country, and caused them to regard the Transvaal question, as a whole, from a prejudiced, and consequently entirely erroneous, standpoint.

To so great an extent has this fact been borne in upon me that I have felt impelled, from a simple desire that President Kruger and his countrymen should, if possible, be judged justly and dispassionately by the masses of this country, to, as succinctly and concisely as possible, lay before the reader my case for the Boers. I want to show who the Boers are, why they came to South Africa, and why

they are at present located in that particular portion of South Africa commonly known as the Transvaal. I shall give a brief and, because brief, necessarily imperfect narrative of the wanderings of these Boers since their ancestors left Europe more than a hundred years ago. I shall treat rather more fully of the events of the last twenty years, culminating, as they have done, in the discovery of the phenomenal riches of the Rand, and the consequent incursion into the South African Republic of a heterogeneous mass of foreigners, many of whom left their country for their country's good, and all of whom came to the Transvaal for no other reason than to accumulate wealth in a hurry. I shall deal with the alleged grievances" of these Uitlanders, and I shall show to what extent those "grievances" have been magnified, and how the treatment of those "grievances by President Kruger and his Government has been

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falsified in the Press, not only of South Africa but of Great Britain.

I may claim, I think, to approach a consideration of this matter with a certain amount of knowledge, and with an absolutely unprejudiced mind. My sympathies, if I gave them full sway, would probably lead me to side with the Uitlanders, most of whom are my own countrymen, but there are things higher and nobler than sympathies and prejudices, namely truth and justice. It is with those ends in view that I indite this book. I do not claim any literary merit for it; it has necessarily had to be written during the leisure moments that I have been able to snatch from the press of work incidental to my business avocations, in fact, at all sorts of times, and in all kinds of places. I may claim for the book, however, that it is inspired by one single idea, and that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the Transvaal, its people, its rulers, its foreign population. If I shall have succeeded in giving the people of this country a little insight into matters which are now dim and

obscure, a juster appreciation of people, of motives, than the veil of prejudice now permits, my book will not have been written in vain. I commend its careful perusal to my countrymen, and I beg of them most fervently, as regards this Transvaal question, not to allow that reputation for justice and fair dealing which Englishmen bear all over the world to be minimised or obscured.

41 THREADNEEDLE STREET, LONDON, E.C., March 1896.

W. F. R.