ming to the teeth. So many
modern magazine-rifles had been imported that there were enough to
furnish five to every male burgher in the country. The importation of
ammunition was on the same gigantic scale. For what were these
formidable preparations? Evidently for a war with Great Britain, and not
for a defensive war. It is not in a defensive war that a State provides
sufficient rifles to arm every man of Dutch blood in the whole of South
Africa. No British reinforcements had been sent during the years that
the Transvaal was obviously preparing for a struggle. In that one
eloquent fact lies a complete proof as to which side forced on a war,
and which side desired to avoid one. For three weeks and more, during
which Mr. Kruger was silent, these preparations went on more
energetically and more openly.

But beyond them, and of infinitely more importance, there was one fact
which dominated the situation and retarded the crisis. A burgher cannot
go to war without his horse, his horse cannot move without grass, grass
will not come until after rain, and it was still some weeks before the
rain would be due. Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried while
the veldt was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain. Mr. Chamberlain
and the British public waited week after week for an answer. But there
was a limit to their patience, and it was reached on August 26, when the
Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of speech which is as
unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the question could not be
hung up for ever. 'The sands are running down in the glass,' said he.
'If they run out we shall not hold ourselves limited by that which we
have already offered, but, having taken the matter in hand, we will not
let it go until we have secured conditions which once for all shall
establish which is the paramount power in South Africa, and shall secure
for our fellow-subjects there those equal rights and equal privileges
which were promised them by President Kruger when the independence of
the Transvaal was granted by the Queen, and which is the least that in
justice ought to be accorded them.' Lord Salisbury, a short time before,
had been equally emphatic: 'No one in this country wishes to disturb the
conventions so long as it is recognised that while they guarantee the
independence of the Transvaal on the one side, they guarantee equal
political and civil rights for settlers of all nationalities upon the
other. But these conven