that diplomatic
pressure could in any case have availed to secure the necessary
reforms, it is obvious that, whatever prospect of success attached to
this course of action--Policy No. 2, as Lord Milner called it--in
June, was materially diminished in September. During the interval the
British Government had done practically nothing to improve its
military position. That of President Krueger had been conspicuously
improved. He had carried the Free State with him; he had got his
Mauser ammunition and additional artillery, and he had completed his
arrangements for the simultaneous mobilisation of the burghers of the
two Republics. Even now the military action of the British Government
was confined to preparations for defence; for the order to mobilise
the army corps was not given until the next Cabinet Council had been
held on September 22nd. The spirit of Pretoria was very different. The
commandos were on their way to the Natal border before the reply to
this British despatch of September 8th was delivered to the British
Agent. That was President Krueger's real answer--not the diplomatic
fencing of September 15th.

[Footnote 140: The despatch of 2,000 additional troops to
Natal had been sanctioned on August 2nd, in response to the
earnest appeal of the Natal Government. Hence at this time
there were (roughly) 12,000 Imperial troops in South Africa.
It is noticeable that, although the despatch only reached
Lord Milner on the morning of the 9th, the _Cape Argus_ had
contained a telegram, giving an account of the troops warned
in India and England, on the evening of the 8th.]

[Sidenote: Violence of the Boers.]

More than this, the three months' negotiations had embittered the
relations of the British and Dutch factions in every South African
state to such a degree that any compromise of the sort proposed by
Lord Milner at Bloemfontein was no longer sufficient to effect a
settlement. The moderate measure of representation then suggested
would have been rejected now by the Uitlanders as wholly inadequate
for their protection, in view of the violent antipathy to them and the
gold industry which the diplomatic struggle had evoked among all
classes of the Dutch inhabitants of the Transvaal. The particulars of
the outrageous treatment, and still more outrageous threats, to which
the British Uitlanders were subjected from this time onwards up to
the ultim