MALIGN DESTINY
Outlanders : - A Study of Imperial Expansion in South Africa, 1877-1902. By C. E. Vulliamy. (Cape. 12s. 6d.)
" WHAT is there, I wonder, in South Africa that makes black- guards of all who get involved in its politics ? " So, as we-learn from Mr. Garvin's Life, Chamberlain wrote to Fairfield of the Colonial. Office on August 22nd, 1896. " Blackguards " is a strong term and it was used under the sting of a threat of blackmail. But if a milder term were substituted, a term that gave the sense of a malign destiny and not merely that of wilful wickedness, the sentence would not be inappropriate to the story told in Mr. Vulliamy's full and vivid narrative. Chamberlain was referring to Rhodes and the various con- spirators of the Chartered Company, but when the whole history of this period is reviewed, it may be said that there is hardly a public man in its pages who does not leave on South African history the mark rather of his defects than of his virtues. Rhodes seemed in many ways the very man to settle the racial feud in South Africa. The obstacle to all plans for uniting , South Africa was the influence of memories that made differ- ences of habit and sentiment so bitter and acute. Rhodes was outside all this angry history. He had neither the resentful mind of the colonists nor the stiff mind of the bureaucrat. He neither disliked nor despised the Dutch farmers. He was an Englishman who understood them and won their confidence and respect. He was in sight of an immense success as an Englishman holding office as Prime Minister at the Cape with the support of the Dutch when some devil left in his soul by his past as a financial buccaneer, helped perhaps by the impa- tience that is one of the effects of heart disease, tempted him to
his fatal fall Milner, lacking the generosities of Rhodes' nature, had the virtues, the want of which ruined Rhodes, but just as the great reconciling work done by Rhodes was destroyed by the consequences of his crime, so Milner left behind him, as his chief memory, the obstinate arrogance that had wrecked all hope of peace between the two races. The excellent administrative and constructive work he did was less important to the world than the spirit he brought into African
politics ; the spirit that ruined Chamberlain's efforts for settle- ment, resisted the large sympathy of Kitchener at Vereeniging, and the larger sympathy of Canipliell-Baiiiernian in '906. The same fatality pursued all the other characters who took great talents and reputations of one kind or another to,this sinister scene r either -their own faults or the faults of others or the sheer spite of fate robbed SoUth Africa of the benefits of the courage and the skill and the experience and the ideas of men like Bartle Frere, Garnet Wolseley, Evelyn Wood and Pomeroy Colley, and others who- pass through Mr. Vulliamy's tragical pages. Mr Vulliamy is very happy in sketching their temperaments, their plans and. their misfortunes.
Behind these several tragedies there was one general cause of British failure. Whether any other European Power could have managed this perplexing knot of problems better nobody can say. But nobody looking back on this story can deny that neither the Disraeli nor the Gladstone Governments gave to their task courageous, consistent and honest thought. It looks as if the malaria, whose disabling effects are described so graphically in Dr. Leopoldi's illuminating study, The Bushveld Doctor, infected those Governments whenever they turned their minds to South Africa. Vacillation, inattention, weakness and the dodging of responsibility marked the behaviour of the Disraeli Government alike in their treatment of their problems and their servants.. When the Gladstone Government took 'office in x88o, though they had both given strong reason to expect that they would reverse the annexation of the Trans- vaal, Gladstone and Hartington let themselves be persuaded without any serious study of the evidence that the Boers were now content. The Colonial Office was in the bands of Kimberley, who wanted to keep the Transvaal because he was told by bad advisers that it would upset the hope of federation if it was given back. Chamberlain with his direct mind was much wiser and more alert than Gladstone and he pressed from the first for the policy that was adopted later. That the Gladstone Government were right in refusing to let the mishap of Majuba alter their plans few will doubt, but the circumstances which the Liberal Government gave effect to the policy it had seemed to promise before the election of z88o made a concession that was right, and in the circumstances highly courageous, a new cause of discord.
Until Chamberlain went to the Colonial Office in 1895 South African affairs were never in the hands of a Minister who was at once a man of action and a man able to Make his colleagues listen to him. Yet with all his energy he, too, fell under the African curse. Rhodes and his friends took advantage of Chamberlain's natural impatience and drew him by subtle methods into their power. We know from Mr. Garvin's Life that, deceived by the Rhodesians about the prospects and the seriousness of the proposed rising in the Transvaal, he was so imprudent as to give advice about the time of that rising. With this background the great failure of this strong Govern- ment and the action or inaction of the Committee of Inquiry become intelligible. If this fact had become known, how could the world have been persuaded that the Government were not behind the Jameson plot ? From a letter Chamber- lain wrote to Lord Grey on October 13th, 1896, we know that it was his view that the Chartered Company had forfeited their charter by the conduct of their agents. Yet the Company got off scot free, and the impression that the Government were implicated in the Raid itself spread in consequence through South Africa. This flinching is in strong contrast with the conduct of a Govern- ment of the eighteenth century in most respects far weaker. The Fox-North Government knew in 1783 that the King was going to trip it up at the first opportunity and yet it faced all the social power of a wealthy interest -in order to reform the Government of India. It was an act of immense spirit and it destroyed its authors. The Salisbury Government in 1896 was exceedingly strong in itself and in its popularity, and it knew that it could count on the full support of the Opposition if it had taken action to vindicate the authority of the Crown and to punish this gross misconduct. Ten years later Campbell-Bannerman faced the combined influences of social power and political fear and insisted on giving self-government to the Boers. That act did not solve the South African problem, as we know well today, for that problem is not a problem merely of regulating the relations of two white races. But it saved South Africa from the civil war that would have followed if the advice of IVIiIner and Balfour had been taken, and a less
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