"But nothing alters the fact that the war is the worst one that the English have ever been engaged in, except, indeed, their terrible defeat in the Argentine, which no one seems to remember. But this is even worse, for South Africa was already practically Anglicized, made English in sentiment from one end of the country to the other.
"I remember spending an evening with General Cronje, who was a typical Boer, but his daughters would talk of nothing except of the dramas on the London stage and how they longed to go for a night to Covent Garden to hear Grand Opera."
I must have spoken with intense bitterness because at the end of the lunch Lord Desborough, in saying "Good-bye" to me, said: "I am afraid, Harris, we must part; when you speak against England as you do, it is like speaking against my mother; I cannot bear it. I am sorry, but we mustn't meet again."
I realized then that I was completely out of touch with the English, and as the gloomy days went on, I came to be more and more isolated.
I don't know how to express what I felt about that inexcusable war and my detestation of the men who brought it about. I think everyone who reads what I have written about Joseph Chamberlain and Alfred Milner must admit that I have treated them more than fairly, with sympathy, indeed, and a desire, above all, to omit no good feature of character, no gift of intellect.
But they worked together to bring about the South African war, and afterwards I always said and felt that they were viler than any criminal, two of those whom Dante meant when he said they were hated of God and of His enemies.
After the war, Chamberlain invited me to dinner and I replied, regretting that I couldn't accept. He met me a day or two afterwards in the lobby of the House of Commons and came up to me, smiling.
"Your letter rather surprised me," he said. "I thought we were friends and that you would tell me when you would be free, in case you had an engagement."
I replied, "I am very sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, but I can only see you as the maker of the war in South Africa and I cannot meet you with any decent, friendly feeling. I think it a horrible thing to have done. I mustn't speak about it or I should be insulting, and I have no wish to insult you."
"I am sorry," he replied, "but I did what I regarded as my duty."
I said, "I know, but the word 'duty' is worse than prostituted," and I hurried away.
Milner, too, I saw afterwards, met in fact at a certain house, but when he spoke to me I went past him as if I hadn't seen or heard him. I was told afterwards that both Chamberlain and Milner spoke of me as a "savage without manners," but there are higher laws than those of manners.
Swinburne wrote a shameful sonnet in August, 1899, which was printed in The Times in defense of the war. He speaks of the Boers as "dogs, agape with jaws afoam," and ends with Strike, England, and strike home.
Meanwhile, Lord Roberts had taken over the commander-in-chief-ship and the whole war had altered. I did not know Roberts at all well. Years before, he had invited Sir Charles Dilke to pay him a visit on the northwest frontier of India and see what he had done with the British forces in Afghanistan.
Dilke asked me to go with him and at first I consented eagerly, but when I talked it over with Wolseley, he persuaded me that I was wrong: he told me that Roberts had nothing in him at all-was a little fighting Irishman under the thumb of his wife, Lady Roberts; he was sure I should only be losing my time. I could see no reason for Wolseley's condemnation, for I had always found him fair minded: I took his advice in this instance and told Dilke I couldn't go with him; and so I missed Roberts. Towards the end of the year 1899 a story was told me which led me to think that I would have to alter my opinion about him.
When it became plain that Buller could do nothing except make a fool of himself in South Africa, and lead his troops to defeat and disaster, the Defense Committee under Lord Hartington got together to consider matters, and for some unknown reason they all agreed that Roberts ought to be sent out; but the Secretary of State for War objected. "We passed Roberts over," he said, "who was the senior, and sent out Buller. How can we go back to Roberts now? How can one confess such a blunder?"
"Quite easily," said Lord Hartington; "tell Roberts that we made fools of ourselves and we are sorry for it and beg him to come to our help; say that England wants him."
The moment the War Secretary broached the matter to Roberts, he exclaimed, "At last, at last!"
The Secretary of War asked him what he meant. He replied, "You know they sent me out in '80, but when I got to Cape Town I found that Gladstone had just made peace after the bitter defeat of Majuba. The news sent me down to my cabin crying with rage-to make peace after such a defeat!
But when I thought it over I felt certain that if I lived long enough my time would come, so I resolved to give up drinking and smoking and live as long as I could for the chance of redeeming our name; that's why I said, 'At last.'"
"I wanted to apologize," said the Secretary, "for passing you over and sending Buller out."
"No apology needed," said Roberts, "I have my chance at last. I will do the work; you can tell them so."
One day I read in the paper that Roberts when to church on Sunday at Cape Town, and I must confess this gave me a shock, till a friend told me the story that I have just told here. At any rate, Roberts went forward through Cape Colony and through the Free State to the Transvaal and led his troops against the chief force of the Boers under General Cronje and won a complete victory-almost without loss. One word in the account made the victory clear to me: the correspondent said that Roberts, holding the Boers in front, made a flank attack.
When he returned to England a couple of years later, I got to know him, and asked him, had I been right in my thought about his tactics.
He said, "Quite right. The Boers had come from all parts of a country three times as big as England: the Boers from the north of the Transvaal couldn't possibly know anything about the Boers from the south, so when they were on the battlefield I knew that there could be no cohesion among them; and at the same time, I realized perfectly that they were far better shots than the troops of my army, so I protected my front with a cross fire of artillery while attacking their flanks, and at once saw I was justified; the Boers began to retreat; successive flank attacks broke up the whole organization, and my artillery turned the retreat into a rout."
The bringing of two or three hundred thousand English soldiers up through Cape Colony and the Free State held Cape Colony to quietude, and the brains of Lord Roberts did the rest. The defeat and retreat of Cronje was the turning point of the war.
People still talk of Kitchener as if he had been the equal of Roberts, and I have heard the victory in South Africa attributed to his generalship, so I must tell what I think of Kitchener. I had met him first when I was in Cairo fifteenodd years before. I had gone out partly to cure bronchitis and partly to get an understanding of Egypt. I met Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer, in Cairo; and he introduced me to his assistant, who was a far abler man, Gerald Portal, afterwards Sir Gerald Portal, who died all too soon for England.
Gerald Portal came and lunched and dined with me at Shepheard's Hotel, and took me to the English Club; and at the English Club one day he asked me whether I knew Kitchener; I shook my head. "The Chief," he said, "Sir Evelyn Baring, thinks a great deal of him, but I couldn't form such a high opinion about him: he was so silent."