In June, prior to the outbreak of war, President Kruger had been advised by the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs that the Transvaal should maintain a moderate attitude in the discussion of the questions at issue with the British Government.  The German Government, too, had advised the Republics to invite mediation, but at that time President Kruger declared that the moment had not yet come for applying for the mediation of America.  The United States, it was considered by both Holland and Germany, could most successfully have undertaken the role of mediator from the fact that England would have been more likely to entertain proposals of the kind coming from Washington than from a European capital.

In December, 1900, Count Von Buelow, the German Imperial Chancellor, speaking of the neutral attitude of Germany, declared that when President Kruger later attempted to secure arbitration it was not until feeling had become so heated that he was compelled to announce to the Dutch Government that it was not possible to arrange for arbitration.  The German Government, it was declared, regarded any appeal to a Great Power at that time as hopeless and as very dangerous to the Transvaal.  The German and the Dutch Governments each believed that President Kruger should not have rejected the English proposal then before him for a joint commission of inquiry.[2] The German Government had nothing for which to reproach itself in regard to the outbreak of war or with reference to the fate of the Republics.  “Of course there are certain lengths to which we could not possibly go.  We could not, in order to prevent the door from being slammed, let our own fingers be crushed between the door and the hinges; that would not have helped the Boers and would only have harmed ourselves,—­and when the war had broken out it was impossible for us, in view of the general situation of the world and from the standpoint of German interests as a whole to adopt any attitude except that of strict neutrality."[3] Continuing, Count Von Buelow pointed out the fact that the policy of a great country should not at a critical moment be governed by the dictates of feeling, but should be guided solely in accordance with the interests of the country, calmly and deliberately calculated.

[Footnote 2:  The German Chancellor seems slightly in error in assuming that the Transvaal rejected the English proposal for a joint inquiry.  It will be remembered that immediately following the Bloemfontein Conference President Kruger had drafted a law considerably modifying the Transvaal demands in the conference, and later submitted the proposals of August 19, which he alleged had been” induced “by their implied acceptance on the part of the British agent.  When these proposals lapsed from the fact of their non-acceptance by the British Government, he declared that he was ready to return to the discussion of the proposed joint commission of inquiry and was met by the English assertion that the condition of affairs no longer warranted a discussion of the original proposal for such a commission, and that Great Britain would have to formulate new demands to meet the altered conditions.  The outbreak of war had forestalled these demands.]