ment from
other nations. The British negotiators were, it may be said, placed in a
dilemma by the distance which separated their army from South Africa,
and which obliged them to move troops earlier than they need otherwise
have done, even at the risk (which, however, they do not seem to have
fully grasped) of precipitating war. But this difficulty might have been
avoided in one of two ways. They might have pressed their suggestion for
an extension of the franchise in an amicable way, without threats and
without moving troops, and have thereby kept matters from coming to a
crisis. Or, on the other hand, if they thought that the doggedness of
the Transvaal would yield to nothing but threats, they might have
formulated demands, not for the franchise, but for the redress of
grievances, demands the refusal or evasion of which would constitute a
proper cause of war, and have, simultaneously with the presentation of
those demands, sent to South Africa a force sufficient at least for the
defence of their own territory. The course actually taken missed the
advantages of either of these courses. It brought on war before the
Colonies were in a due state of defence, and it failed to justify war by
showing any cause for it such as the usage of civilized States
recognizes.

As Cavour said that any one can govern with a state of siege, so strong
Powers dealing with weak ones are prone to think that any kind of
diplomacy will do. The British Government, confident in its strength,
seems to have overlooked not only the need for taking up a sound legal
position, but the importance of retaining the good will of the Colonial
Dutch, and of preventing the Orange Free State from taking sides with
the Transvaal. This was sure to happen if Britain was, or seemed to be,
the aggressor. Now the British Government by the attitude of menace it
adopted while discussing the franchise question, which furnished no
cause for war, by the importance it seemed to attach to the utterances
of the body calling itself the Uitlander Council in Johannesburg (a body
which was in the strongest opposition to the Transvaal authorities), as
well as by other methods scarcely consistent with diplomatic usage, led
both the Transvaal and the Free State to believe that they meant to
press matters to extremities, and that much more than the franchise or
the removal of certain grievances was involved; in fact, that the
independence of the Republic itself was at stake.[2]