The Transvaal Government formally notified Portugal that the passage of British troops and munitions of war through Beira would be considered in the Transvaal as tantamount to hostile action.  Nevertheless, on May 1, the Chamber of Deputies at Lisbon rejected an interpellation made by one of its members to question the action of the Government with reference to the privilege which Great Britain sought.  The Minister for Foreign Affairs, however, stated that the Transvaal Government had not ordered the Portuguese consul to leave Pretoria.  He denied emphatically that any incident whatever had followed Portugal’s notification to the Transvaal.  When further interrogated, the Minister declared that the English troops had been granted permission to use the railway inland from Beira upon the plea of treaty rights already possessed by Great Britain.  No power, he asserted, had protested except the South African Republic.  It was promised that the Government would later justify its action in granting the permission by producing the documents showing the right of England to the privilege, but it was not considered convenient at that time to discuss the question.[19]

[Footnote 19:  London Times, April 21, 1900, p. 7, col. 3.]

The protest of the Transvaal against the alleged breach of neutrality on the part of Portugal was without effect, and this was the only means the Republic had of declaring itself.  To have entered upon hostile action against Portugal at that time would have had only one result, the stoppage of all communication with the outside world by way of Delagoa Bay.  The British forces were sent into Rhodesia, and though the subsequent part they played in the war was not important the purpose of the expedition was admitted.  It was to cut off any possibility of a retreat northward into British territory by the Boer forces which were being driven back by the English advance upon Pretoria.  The British military plan was that General Carrington should march with his forces and reach Pretoria from the north at the same time that General Roberts reached that point from the south.[20] Thus, the end for which the troops were to be used was not to quell an insurrection of the natives in Rhodesia, as was alleged, but to incorporate the expedition into the regular campaign of the war against the Republics.  This being the case, the contractual grounds upon which the English Government claimed the right of passage should have been beyond question in order to furnish a justification for Portugal or for England in what is viewed by international law writers of the present day as a distinct breach of neutrality.  When the expedition was sent out the statement was made that England was merely availing herself of existing treaty rights, but it was felt necessary to add that the action was not illegal as was that of the Boers in making Delagoa Bay their virtual base earlier in the war.  And on May 31, in legalizing the proceeding, the Cabinet at Lisbon