Words failed him when he thought of the ‘hopeless’ state of the War Office. If there was war, their preparations were bound to end in ‘catastrophe’.56 At the same time he accepted Milner’s repeated claim that there would be no war, if they showed firmness by sending out troops. It was Milner’s eloquence, and the impatience of the British Press, that probably decided Chamberlain. Together they had finally shaken his confidence in negotiations with Kruger. He would give Kruger a few more days. Then they must impose their own terms – at the point of a gun.
That Thursday Chamberlain wrote to Lansdowne enclosing Milner’s letter, insisting on the despatch of the ten thousand, a copy of which he had sent to the Prime Minister. He told Lansdowne that although the new ‘proposals seem to give us what we want’, he was not certain whether this was a mere manoeuvre. They should now give the Boers a ‘week or ten days’ to clarify the new offer and withdraw the unacceptable conditions about suzerainty and intervention. If there was no settlement within this time, they must assume that the Boers did not ‘want peace’. In that case they must immediately send out the extra instalment of ten thousand troops that Wolseley and Milner were asking for.57
On Saturday 26 August Chamberlain made his promised speech, urbi et orbi, from a commanding spot on the lawn at Highbury. It was what his biographer was to call a ‘short clanging speech’.58 Certainly, Chamberlain showed ominous signs of strain. It was that morning that he had been taunted by The Times for putting his hand to the plough and doing nothing.59 In his speech he said that Kruger ‘procrastinates in his replies. He dribbles out reforms like water from a squeezed sponge…. The sands are running down in the glass.’ This was not the urbane Chamberlain that people knew. He seemed frankly exasperated.60
For the last time, at any rate, he had tried the policy of bluff – of threatening Kruger without any means of enforcing his threats. A further few days passed and the deadlock with Kruger intensified. On 28 August Chamberlain sent a threatening despatch to Kruger. In reply, Kruger withdrew the five-year franchise offer, and replaced it with an ambiguous new offer – a seven-year franchise, possibly with a joint enquiry.61 On 2 September – keeping precisely to his new time-table – Chamberlain wrote to Salisbury to call for a Cabinet meeting.62 The sands were reaching the end of the glass.
In South Africa, Milner and Lady Edward galloped beside the breakers at Green Point. In the Foreign Office in Whitehall, the Cabinet assembled at 12.30 p.m. on 8 September in the room of Lady Edward’s father-in-law, Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. He was more than a figurehead, ‘Old Sarum’, the leader of the coalition. He was half-crippled by private grief; his wife lay dying of cancer at Walmer Castle. Yet he could still exert himself, on occasion, with something of the old fire, whether thwarted by Hicks Beach, the penny-pinching Chancellor, or hustled by ‘Pushful Joe’. He liked to go his own pace, and he usually got his way.
The Cabinet assembled round the horseshoe table overlooking St James’s Park. On Salisbury’s left was Balfour, in sporting gear (blue serge suit and yellow shoes) and visibly sun-tanned after weeks of golf on the Edinburgh links. Next came Chamberlain, orchid in button-hole.63 Opposite them sprawled the Duke of Devonshire (usually half-asleep),64 and there were fifteen other Cabinet members, including Hicks Beach, back from his estate in Gloucestershire, and Lansdowne, fresh from the delights of Dereen in County Kerry.65
The political case for sending out the ten thousand troops (and in due course sending an ultimatum after them) was presented to the Cabinet in the form of a memorandum by Chamberlain. His case was, at heart, simple – and how well he knew it, after all those months of Milner’s hammering it out. An honourable settlement had to reconcile the political rights of the Uitlanders with the Transvaal’s qualified independence and Britain’s rights under the two Conventions. Kruger was not prepared to make a settlement of that sort. He had proved this by numerous actions in the twenty years since Majuba and the four years since the Raid: especially his provocative actions in the Edgar Case, and his shilly-shallying in the months since Bloemfontein. He was merely manoeuvring – playing for time. The final proof of this came from his latest offer. To couple the offer of a five-year franchise with two conditions he knew to be unacceptable – on suzerainty and non-interference on behalf of British subjects – this conclusively proved that he did not ‘want peace’. The only way to make him disgorge the franchise was to put a pistol to his head.
The Uitlanders were treated like ‘an inferior race, little better than Kaffirs or Indians whose oppression has formed the subject of many complaints’. But the issue now went further than the grievances of Uitlanders, or natives. What was now at stake was no less than ‘the position of Great Britain in South Africa – and with it the estimate formed of our power and influence in our colonies and throughout the world’. Such were Chamberlain’s formal arguments to the Cabinet.66 We do not know all he said, as no Cabinet minutes were taken at this period. Perhaps he also proposed an ultimatum. Certainly he pressed the Cabinet, as Milner had pressed him, to stiffen the terms now demanded of Kruger. Once the troops were sent, the principle of the Sibylline Books must apply: the longer Kruger delayed, the higher the price he must pay for a settlement.67
To crown all Chamberlain’s arguments for sending the troops was the central paradox: that they would not precipitate war. It had been formulated by Selborne, confirmed by Milner, and echoed by Rhodes, Beit, Fitzpatrick and all the other Uitlanders in London. The best way ‘to avoid war was to make preparations for it’; Kruger would ‘bluff up to the cannon’s mouth’.68
How Lord Salisbury replied to Chamberlain is not clear. But we know that he gave support to Chamberlain’s views – grudging support. Like his nephew, Balfour, he disapproved of Joe’s political style. As Balfour had put it, comparing Kruger to a ‘squeezed sponge’ was hardly the language of diplomacy. On the other hand, he agreed with Chamberlain that Kruger had proved impossible to negotiate with, and that they now had no choice but to take a firm hand in South Africa. So he agreed with the political case for sending out the ten thousand troops to Natal.69 The military arguments were also strong. Milner had pressed them since May, Wolseley since June, and that week General Sir Redvers Buller had sent a cri de coeur, urging the despatch of the troops, writing direct to the Prime Minister’s office to bypass the wretched War Minister.70
By contrast Lansdowne was still sceptical of the need for such a large defensive force. He was a friend of General Sir Penn Symons, the GOC in Natal who had recommended first two thousand, now five thousand. He was himself ‘profoundly incredulous’ at Wolseley’s idea of a Boer force of ten thousand invading Natal. He cordially disliked Buller – indeed, he suspected him of pro-Boer sympathies.71 Still, he was prepared to defer to the Prime Minister’s judgement.
It was ironic that the only man in the Cabinet who shared Lansdowne’s feelings was his bitter enemy, Hicks Beach. But then Beach opposed Chamberlain for quite different reasons. He was deeply suspicious of the political case for intervention. He disapproved of the provocative way Chamberlain handled the crisis – especially the way he sent his last brusque despatch to the Boers without consulting the Cabinet. He was appalled at the cost: at least £350,000 if they sent only the first instalment of ten thousand men, and over £5 million for the second instalment, the invasion force under Buller.72 And an alarming sense of déjà vu had recently seized hold of him. Twenty years before, he had been a member of the Cabinet which annexed the Transvaal. ‘Does not this remind you of all that happened with Bartle Frere,’ he said bitterly to Lord Salisbury.73
One other man in the Cabinet had serious reservations about Chamberlain’s policy: Arthur Balfour. As Salisbury’s nephew and deputy, he was, one might have thought, a power to be reckoned with. Four months earlier he had circulated the Cabinet with a brilliant piece of devil’s advocacy challenging Chamberlain’s case for intervention, with arguments Chamberlain himself had used in 1896. The Transvaal, said Balfour, was a foreign st
ate and Britain had abdicated her right to intervene in internal affairs.74 Yet Balfour was not the man to press home an attack. The ‘divine Arthur’, as his friends called him, was too much the philosopher; he saw every side of the case and chose none.75 In the case of Chamberlain’s South African policy he was no more of an obstacle than a beam of sunlight. Besides, Balfour had been persuaded, like most of the Cabinet, that Kruger would surrender rather than fight, once the troops went out. The Cabinet therefore agreed, despite Lansdowne’s fussing and Hicks Beach’s protests, with Chamberlain’s plan. The first instalment of troops would be ordered to leave for Natal as soon as possible.76
Should they also send an ultimatum? The Cabinet dug in their heels. On his part, Salisbury was determined not to be rushed. British public opinion was not yet ready for this. Perhaps it was the Boers who could be manoeuvred into issuing the ultimatum. Besides, there was a crucial military argument for postponing hasty diplomatic action. The ten thousand troops they had now agreed to send would not be in position on the Natal borders till the first week of October. It was essential not to break the peace till then.77
It was left to Old Sarum himself to predict the real implications of the decision.
Before the Cabinet broke up, Salisbury uttered a solemn warning to its members. He did not share Chamberlain’s and Balfour’s optimism that Kruger would surrender rather than fight. When the British troops arrived at the front he expected war to begin – or perhaps the Boers would rush Natal when they heard they were being sent. He was afraid that the war would be the greatest war Britain had faced since the Crimea.78 And perhaps he hinted to his colleagues what he had revealed to Lansdowne a week before: his own bitter reservations about the business. They could not flinch from war. Their only alternative was to resign all pretensions to supremacy in South Africa, the strategic key to the imperial route to India. Yet it was cruel, none the less, to be forced into a war for such a negative object: ‘all for people whom we despise and for territory which will bring no power to England’.
He wrote a short comment on Milner’s letter to Chamberlain that showed he had, too late, realized how Milner and the Uitlanders and Wernher, Beit and Co had outmanoeuvred Chamberlain and the Cabinet. ‘His [Milner’s] view is too heated … But it recks little to think of that now. What he has done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us by him and his jingo supporters.’79
The Cabinet meeting, which had lasted half an hour longer than usual, broke up at ten to three. A holiday crowd had collected on the sunny pavement outside the Foreign Office, and people noticed how the ministers, who had arrived with such solemn faces, were chattering and laughing as they left. Did that mean peace or war? One well-informed foreign correspondent summed up the situation: ‘The Government is going through with the matter to the bitter end, but … believe that President Kruger will climb down.’80
Lansdowne returned to the generals waiting on tenterhooks in the War Office in Pall Mall. Soon the morse operator in the cable room began to tap out the messages drafted by the Commander-in-Chief to the GOCs in India and South Africa.81
Wolseley was almost cheerful. Unlike most of the Cabinet, he believed the Boers would stand and fight. He expected a small war in Natal before Buller’s Army Corps landed; after that a walk-over; perhaps even Pretoria by Christmas.82
Two days earlier, he had taken the chair at the Army Board meeting held in his room. He had then been plunged in gloom and the weather that afternoon suited his mood: thunder and lightning and a sky so black that the generals could not see each other’s faces as they sat around his mahogany table, and candles had to be lit. Now the storm had washed London clean, and Lansdowne and the Cabinet had caved in at last. Wolseley savoured his triumph. Lansdowne looked ‘more like a little Jew today than ever’, he told his wife. ‘I can now assert from four years constant work with him that his mind is smaller than his body.’83
But where were the ten thousand men to defend Natal actually to be found? As the yellow cablegrams began to accumulate on Wolseley’s desk, and the green-backed files marked 079 (for South Africa) shuttled backwards and forwards down the twisting corridors, the War Office atmosphere was far from happy. Lansdowne had already asked the Indian authorities if they could provide the bulk of the reinforcements. They offered 5,500 soldiers.84 Wolseley did not like the sound of this at all. He distrusted the Indian army. It was Roberts’s army. And wasn’t it the British regiments from India – the 60th Rifles and the 92nd (Gordons) – who had lost Majuba? Wolseley wanted to send a brigade of Guards, under a general he could trust – one of the ‘Africans’. But he was overruled by Lansdowne.85
Within ten days, the War Office cables were tapping out the news of the smooth embarkation of seasoned British regiments from Bombay and Calcutta: the 2nd Kings Royal Rifles, the 1st Gloucesters, the 1st Devonshires and so on, all seasoned white troops, rich in stores and ammunition, with eighteen field-guns, three field hospitals, and over a thousand Indian bearers. What of the other reinforcements? Wolseley managed to scrape together a further three battalions: the 1st Royal Irish from Alexandria, the 1st Border Regiment from Malta and the 2nd Rifle Brigade from the British garrison on Crete.86 The new reinforcements for Natal totalled just ten thousand, including the two battalions sent in late August. It was the best the Empire could do in the circumstances: the Amir of Afghanistan was in poor health, and so India’s north-west frontier was in danger. The total force in Natal would come to fifteen thousand by mid-October, when all the ten thousand reinforcements had landed at Durban. The total number of troops the Boers could raise in both republics were estimated at fifty-four thousand. But Symons claimed he only needed five thousand to defend the whole of Natal. Wolseley reckoned that these fifteen thousand men would be enough to guard Natal ‘as to everything south of the Biggarsberg [range]’ – which included the main British military depot, the camp at Ladysmith. Wolseley would ‘stake his reputation on it’.87
The War Office, it would soon be proved, had disastrously miscalculated in answering the first of Milner’s crucial three questions: how many troops were needed to defend Natal? Equally disastrous was their answer to the second: who was to lead and organize the defence?
Even in September, after agreeing to the despatch of the reinforcements, Lansdowne saw no reason to send out anyone to command them. Butler had been sacked, but only a stand-in, a charming nonentity called Forestier-Walker, had been appointed for the Cape. Symons remained GOC in Natal. Well, Symons could hold the fort until Buller arrived. Wolseley pressed Lansdowne. A compromise was reached.88 The current Quartermaster-General at the War Office was another of Roberts’s Ring, Lieutenant-General Sir George White, a sixty-four-year-old general, four and a half years older than Buller. Lansdowne was naturally keen on White, (‘not one of the “old gang”’, he told Chamberlain) but Chamberlain thought White, still limping after a riding accident, was too old and doddery for the job. Chamberlain had proposed ever since June – very sensibly – that Buller should go himself.89 But White was appointed GOC in Natal, and he chose for his staff Roberts’s two keenest partisans, Colonels Ian Hamilton and Sir Henry Rawlinson. Wolseley gave him, as his intelligence expert, Major Altham, the short-sighted, elderly major who had written that Intelligence Department booklet, Military Notes, which predicted that the Boers would only make ‘raids’ with two thousand to three thousand men, and that ‘after one serious defeat’ they would throw in the sponge. On 16 September, the day before the first of the Indian contingent embarked at Bombay, Sir George White, Hamilton and Rawlinson sailed for Durban via Cape Town on the Tantallon Castle, after a brave display of solidarity by White’s War Office colleagues on the platform at Waterloo.90
Three days before, Lansdowne had himself sailed for Ireland to resume his interrupted holiday at Dereen, after politely refusing any further concessions. Wolseley and the Army Board wanted to start buying mules, wagons, and so on, for Buller’s Army Corps, so that it could be mobilized, if needed, as q
uickly as possible. Lansdowne replied soothingly to Wolseley. The fifteen thousand men would protect Natal from Boer invasion. What did it matter if their own invasion plans were delayed by the need to economize? All in good time.91 They would ‘press the button’ (George Wyndham’s phrase to describe the order to buy the mules)92 as soon as it was clear Kruger wasn’t bluffing.
By contrast with Wolseley, Buller remained bitter and frustrated. It was an ironic twist to the story of the Rings that Buller, cold-shouldered by Lansdowne as Wolseley’s trusted lieutenant, was now coolly regarded by Wolseley himself. At any rate, on 8 September, the day of the Cabinet’s decision to send the Natal reinforcements, Buller had left his base at Aldershot and come up to have it out with Lansdowne at Pall Mall. It proved a stormy interview. Lansdowne reproached him with ‘going behind his back’ to send that cri de coeur to the Prime Minister. In fact, the two men were hardly on speaking terms. Their natures grated on each other even more badly than Lansdowne’s grated on Wolseley’s. Buller towered over Lansdowne, and was as blunt and tactless as only shy people can be. Lansdowne told him to his face that he found him ‘hard to work with’, and in private admitted he thought him a pro-Boer. It was an impossible partnership. Lansdowne did not show Buller the political telegrams. He did not allow him to choose any of the staff of the Army Corps, except for one or two men on his personal staff. How different it was for Wolseley, Buller bitterly recalled, when Wolseley was chosen to command the Egyptian expedition in 1882: he was allowed to organize the whole business. And here he was, himself, stuck at Aldershot, kept in the dark about everything. The transport for his Army Corps was still not sanctioned, and – most disastrous – no defence strategy had been agreed with White or Symons.93
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