aking his
little force safely over the remaining twenty miles from Kruegersdorp
to Johannesburg was the merest accident: the few hours' delay caused,
naturally enough, by Dr. Jameson's desire that his force should be met
and escorted by a small body of volunteers from the Rand. He did not
want, as he said, to go to Johannesburg as "a pirate." Sir John
Willoughby's evidence is perfectly definite and conclusive on the
point. If the force had pushed on by road from Kruegersdorp to
Johannesburg on Wednesday evening--had not, in Willoughby's words,
"messed about" at Kruegersdorp in expectation of the welcoming
escort--Johannesburg would have been reached in safety on Thursday
morning. With Dr. Jameson in Johannesburg and Lord Rosmead speeding
northwards in his special train, the way would have been prepared for
that decisive and successful action on the part of the Imperial
Government which Rhodes had desired to bring about.

[Sidenote: Why the raid failed.]

But, unsuccessful as was the actual expedition, the decision to "ride
in" had secured the intervention of the Imperial Government. If
intervention could have done what Rhodes expected of it, Dr. Jameson's
decision to "ride in" would have gained, at the cost of few lives and
no increase of the national debt, what the war gained four years later
at the cost of twenty thousand lives and L220,000,000. As it was, it
failed to win the franchise for the Uitlanders. Why did not Lord
Rosmead, with so strong a Colonial Secretary as Mr. Chamberlain at his
back, brush the Raid aside, and address himself to the removal of the
greater wrong that gave it birth? If Lord Rosmead had acted in the
spirit of Mr. Chamberlain's despatches; if he had reminded the
Government of the Republic from the first "that the danger from which
they had just escaped was real, and one which, if the causes which led
up to it were not removed, might recur, although in a different form";
if he had used "plain language" to President Krueger; and if, above
all, he had remembered--as Mr. Chamberlain reminded him--that "the
people of Johannesburg had surrendered in the belief that reasonable
concessions would have been arranged through his intervention, and
until these were granted, or were definitely promised to him by the
President, the root-causes of the recent troubles would
remain,"--might he not yet have saved South Africa for the empire
without subjecting her to the dread arbitrament of the sword?

[Si