language, their strong disapproval of extreme and coercive measures.  This protest was slighted.  The members who subscribed their names to it, and who represented the feeling of the Cape Dutch, were called disloyal.  For to be loyal in those days meant to side with the war party, and approve of all they said and did.  To think independently, and to express one’s political views frankly and fearlessly, was a sure sign of disloyalty, when one’s aims were for a peaceful solution of the difficulties of the moment.

Besides this Parliamentary resolution, the Cape Dutch drew up a large petition, addressed to Queen Victoria, whom they all loved as a mother and revered as a Queen.  This petition was signed by thousands of women, who entreated their gracious and tender Mother-Queen to refrain from a policy which would result in bloodshed.  This plea for peace and justice also failed to accomplish anything.  The voice of the Dutch colonists was not heeded.  Their petitions and protests were ignored and rejected time and again.  The petition, however, of some 21,000 Uitlanders in Johannesburg, who clamoured for redress of grievances, immediately called forth armed intervention!

This, then, was the attitude of the Cape Dutch before the declaration of war:  emphatic disapproval of any war policy.  They disapproved of and protested against war in South Africa, not because they were disloyal, and had not the interests of the mother-country at heart, or because they naturally sympathised with the Boers as being a kindred race.  They declared themselves against the Imperial war policy, because they knew and were confident that it was by no means impossible to arrive at a peaceful solution of all difficulties and disputes along friendly diplomatic lines, by which the actual grievances of British subjects in Johannesburg could be redressed, and political affairs so adjusted that it would not be necessary to shed one drop of blood.  So far from being disloyal, they prided themselves in being British subjects, and, as such, they claimed the rights and privileges to which all British subjects are entitled.  Their services in the interests of peace were, however, not appreciated, but were construed into acts calculated to encourage the enemy and to foster rebellion.

The Press had declared war months before it was actually proclaimed.  Feeling ran so high that men would not listen to reason.  “Fight it out,” was the frantic cry of many, who had not the remotest idea of what “fighting it out” meant.

Though frustrated in their endeavours to prevent the threatened war, the Cape Dutch, after hostilities had once begun, tried very hard to bring about a speedy termination of the struggle, and to effect a settlement which would be honourable to English and Dutch alike, and which would secure all, if not more than all, that the English had ever demanded.

Let us note some of the steps they took.