JAMESON RAID

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 December 1934, Page 8

JAMESON RAID

MR J. CHAMBERLAIN’S DENIAL. If in 1895 Mr Joseph Chamberlain had chosen the Chancellorship of the Exchequer instead of the Colonial Office how different the history of the closing sears of last century would have been! And what a different story his biographer, Mr J. L. Garvin, would have had to tell! (writes J. B. Firth, in the London '‘Daily Telegraph.”) Whether happier for himself and his fame, who shall say? Whether happier for Great Britain and for the British Empire admits of no argument. As Colonial Secretary he was the right man in the right place. Chamberlain himself wrote a brief account of the conclave in Arlington Street, when Lord Salisbury offered him his choice of offices, and Mr Balfour said that “the whole field was open to him.” “I said 1 should prefer the Colonies in the hope of furthering closer union between them and the United Kingdom.”

The Colonial Office! A second-class ,-.ost! The political world was amazed that a “man of destiny” should make so unpredecented a choice. It was not modesty, however, whicn prompted it, but glowing ambition. In those days where Chamberlain sat was the real head of the table, whoever might occupy the presidential chair. The German Emperor was soon loud in complaint that the Britisu Government was “a two-headed Government,” meaning that where Colonial interest were concerned von Bulow had to deal with Chamberlain as well as with Lord Salisbury. The latter was engrossed in foreign affairs —which had never been moredifficult. embarrassing, and dangerous on all fronts. The Colonies and Colonial interests were only regarded a', odd moments in the interstices of a busy Foreign Secretary’s time. They were considered a responsibility rather than a sstrengjtu. Cliamberlain socn changed all that. His arrival at the Colonial Office was a decisive event in British history.

The “pushful Joe” —that was one of the stock epithets which Liberals attached to him —knew well in 1595 the read he meant to travel. Or at least its final stage. Round the bend lay the fiscal question—a desperately rough stretch and very hard going, as he was later to find.

GERMAN ALLIANCE SUGGESTION. Mr Garvin here takes the tale .down to the Khaki Election of 1900, when the South African War was thought to be over, though two more painful years of guerilla lighting had still to be endured. The live years under review, 18951900, were an exciting period to live through; Mr Garvin makes them an exciting period to read about. The dry bones live and fairly dance to the reusing music of his narrative. Debout les marts And the dead men spring to life —Rhodes, Kruger, Milner, Salisbury and all the rest. Only the Kaiser survives of those wh'o then swayed the political sceptres. One may wonder whether the exile of Doorn ever casts his mind back to his Windsor Castle visit in 1899, to his talks with “Joe,” and —a few weeks late —to his Chancellor’s contemptuous rejection of the Anglo-German part of the new Triple Alliance of Britain, Germany and the United States, which Chamberlain in a moment of “blazing indiscretion” offered in a speech at Leicester. That Chamberlain was anxious for ,an Anglo-German understanding is one of the major facts brought out most clearly in this volume. The Kaiser toyed with the idea at times both then and later, but always he rejected it and gave ear to Tirpitz and those who thought that England’s sun had set. It is here shown how desperately hard Chamberlain worked after the Raid and the famous Kaiser’s telegram to make sure of German neutrality in respect of South Africa. “You set a high price on your friendship,” was one of Salisbury's sardonic comments to Hatzfeldt, the German Ambassador, while Chamberlain drily observed, “Well, it is worth while to pay blackmail sometimes."

Those were the days of “splendid isolation.” But the isolation was always more obvious than the splendour Our relations with France were always difficult. They became very strained over the Niger, and at the time of Fashoda they reached the point of an ultimatum.

Russia made no pretence at good relations. Chamberlain’s citation, “Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon,” was made with reference to the blatant duplicity of Count Mouravieff. The partition of China made as much bad blood as that of Africa. Even the United States tossed ns an ultimatum over a Venezuela boundary dispute. The South African war. in fact, revealed that we had not a sincere friend in Europe—Germany least of al). Only the then undisputed supremacy of the British fleet checked the malevolent, design of an anti-British Coalition. Such was the general international situation from 1895 to 1900, and by singular ill-fortune just when Great Britain needed all her wits and statesmanship to cope with it there suddenly loomed up the problem of South Africa in menacing shape on a far horizon.

What if a weaker man than Chamberlain had had to bridle Cecil Rhodes, cope with the inevitable consequences of the Jameson. Raid, and then preside —at so vast a distance—over the Milner-Kruger negotiations! Mr Garvin handles his masses of material with masterly skill of selection. He demolishes completely the fiction about the Raid greedily invented by Chamberlain's enemies that “Joe was in it.” Chamberlain heard the news at Highbury, on the night of the annual servants’ ball. “If this succeeds,” he said, “it will ruin me. lam going up to London to crush it.”

Mr Garvin describes how Flora Shaw (Lady Lugard) put point-blank questions to Chamberlain about his alleged complicity: —

Flora Shaw: “It is absolutely necessary for me to know the truth. I put you on your honour to answer ma. Did you know about the Raid beforehand, or not?” J.C.: “You put me on my honour. Very well. The fact is I can hardly say what I knew and what I did not. I did not want to know too much. Of course. I knew of the precautions, the preparations, if you like, in view of the expected trouble at. Johannesburg, but I never could have imagined that Jameson would take the bit between his teeth.”

F. S.: “Then you.did not know.about the Raid?" J.C.: “I did not.”

In his relations with Milner he was often tightening the rein. He wrote

again and again in the following .strain: j “The principal object of lI.M. Government in S. Africa is peace. Not;j--1 ing but a most flagrant offence would justify the. use of force.” And again: “I have no doubt that if we were to get into serious conflict with any of the Powers the Boers would be tempted to take advantage of our difficulties and declare their independence. Accordingly, I wish to emphasise the fact that for the present, at any rate, our greatest interest in S. Africa is peace, 1 and that all our policy must be directled to this object.” I That was in 1898. Before and dur- , ing the Bloemfontein Conference he urged patience, patience, patience. Milner broke off the conference as hopeless when Kruger withdrew the concession to which he had momentarily been persuaded to agree. He admitted the mistake promptly: “I think I was wrong in breaking off quite as quickly as I did. Perhaps extreme fatigue had something to do with it ... Of course, I should have broken it off as I did had your telegram, urging delay, reached me in time. That came the next morning. THE “GRANITE KRUGER."

This, perhaps, was Milner’s y°rst mistake, and due to “overstrain.” Yet no one believes that a peaceful solution was negotiable with Kruger, whom Mr Garvin sketches to the life: “Granite was Kruger’s character. He looked on modern life through slits. The depth and pathos of his passion for.racial independence, his conviction of the righteousness of his cause in the sight of Jehovah, the narrowness of his contempt for the ungodly rabble of the Rand and for the British >n particular, the shrewdness ol his fears and the ignorance of his courage—especially in his speculations for foreign support all these made for catastrophe in the long run .... “He wanted the gold without the diggers. By taking the gold he forfeited the moral right of the ruling caste to dominate the diggers. . . A rudely hewn grandeur belong to his memory, but he was the father of woe.”

Whatever blame attaches for the South African War it does not attach to Joseph Chamberlain, and if Mr Garvin had established nothing else in his brilliantly marshalled argument at least he has established that. But he has also shown how it. was Chamberlain who prepared the transition from the old Colonial Empire to the new Commonwealth of British Dominions, and stimulated commercial interest in the “neglected estates * of the Crown. We see in his pages Chamberlain as the strong column of the British State. He was built to take command in turbulent times.

He did not “care a twopenny damn” —as he once wrote to Lord Selborne — “ for office or for the temporary gusts of public opinion.” The two-headed eagle of Austria, was in those days a familiar enough lie?--aldic picture. A three-headed eagle would have been the-best blazon for the British Government of 1895-1900, with Chamberlain’s head showing the sharpest curve of beak.