Note Back to Main Text — Chapter IV

The friction between the High Commissioner and the General-in-Command in South Africa was the most disastrous manifestation of a disregard of the necessity for timely military preparations on the part of the Imperial Government, which, when war broke out, jeopardised the success of the British arms. For quite distinct reasons both General Butler and the Imperial Government were opposed to any preparations for war. The Salisbury Cabinet were reluctant to take any step that might seem to indicate that they considered that the door to a peaceful solution of the dispute was closed. In thus subordinating the needs of the military situation to those of the political, they acted in direct opposition to the maxim si pacem vis, bellum para. They carried this policy to such a point that they disregarded the advice of Lord Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, and that of the Intelligence Department,[75] with the result that when the war did break out the available British forces in South Africa were found to be in a position of grave disadvantage. The motive of General Butler's opposition was entirely different. His view was that what made the situation dangerous was not President Krüger's obduracy, but what he called the "persistent effort" to "produce war" made by the British inhabitants who desired Imperial intervention in the Transvaal. And he, therefore, held that any reinforcements sent by the Home Government would "add largely to the ferment which he (General Butler) was endeavouring to reduce by every means."[76] The position in June and July, from a military point of view, was as extraordinary as it was harassing to Lord Milner. In England the civil authority, the Cabinet, was refusing to make the preparations which its military adviser declared to be necessary. In South Africa the civil authority, the High Commissioner, was provided with a military adviser who cabled to the Home Government political reasons for not sending the reinforcements which the High Commissioner then urgently required. In these circumstances it is obvious that nothing but the supreme efforts of Lord Milner could have saved England from an overwhelming military defeat, or from a moral catastrophe even more injurious to the interests of the empire.