THE BUTLER WHO SAW THROUGH MILNER
General Sir William Butler proved in his short period in South Africa that he was the right man for the job. Unfortunately the man who stayed, Sir Alfred Milner, was the wrong man for his job and the Anglo-Boer war was the consequence and remains the dreadful epitaph of the latter.
There is probably no better example of a hawk and a dove co-existing together, supposedly on the same side but in reality poles apart.
Butler accepted the position of Commander-in-Chief of British forces in South Africa after the death of his predecessor General Goodenough. Butler arrived at the Cape in December 1898 and on the 17th of that month,just two weeks into his term, he gave a speech at Grahamstown, that immediately separated his position from Milner.
Milner who had arrived in May 1897, to be the Governor and High Commissioner at the Cape, had no empathy for the Boers and after the ZAR President Kruger’s re-election, in February 1898, wrote to his minister, Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain thus: ‘There is no way out of the political troubles of South Africa except reform in the Transvaal or war. And at present chances of reform…..are worse than ever.’
In contrast Butler’s as not only CIC (but initially as Acting High Commissioner, for three months, (while Milner was on leave in London) said, “South Africa….does not need a surgical operation, she needs peace, progress and the development which is only possible through the union of many hearts and the labour of many hands.”
The PM at the Cape, William Schreiner, instinctively recognized Butler as a man of peace.
The Uitlanders and their organization the SA League, hated him, even more so a little later when he refused to forward their petition to the Queen, protesting the release of a ZARP( a Boer policeman) who had shot an Englishman,Thomas Edgar, during an arrest.
The SA League built this up into a huge poltical circus as an example of the unfairness and bias of the evil Boer. It was nothing of the sort. Edgar had bashed another English speaking man senseless who died a few days later. During his arrest Edgar had struck the police officer twice with a rod and was subsequently shot dead in the scuffle. The SA League demanded that a petition be sent to the Queen but Butler refused, instead reminding home officials of the machinations of the League. Butler described the Uitlanders as ‘probably the most corrupt immoral and untruthful assemblage of beings at present in the world.’
Butler, himself an Irish Catholic, did not want a second Ireland to plague the English to all eternity and he believed intermarriages would ultimately fuse the two white tribes together.
In February 1899 Milner returned to his HC desk and duties, at the Cape. His meeting with Butler was chilly. They clearly disagreed over the Edgar case and Butler’s fair and exhaustively documented report. During their conversation, Butler commented that the only thing he envied about Milner was his library! (Matched only, one could add, by Milner’s vast lack of knowledge on South Africa).
For Milner, the General’s views were totally unacceptable and he set about forcing a confrontation with the Transvaal and President Kruger’s ZAR government.
Again encouraged the Uitlanders drew up a second petition that suited Milner perfectly and he transmitted it to Chamberlain, insisting on immediate action.
Milner followed with his inflammatory ‘Helots telegram’ likening the plight of British subjects to slaves on the mining fields with their lack of voting rights.
Milner had clearly wanted a military man who was eager to be a confidant in preparing for a clash with Afrikanerdom. Instead he got a man implacably opposed to fueling a war.
Butler carried out his instructions from the War Office correctly, by examining British defence preparedness in their two SA colonies. Part of his instructions he regarded as absurd. He was told that if war broke out he was to push his weak forces into Boer territory. This was a recipe for capture or annihilation and given what happened later to British generals- in Black Week (Dec 10-17,1899), at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso)- it showed that Butler had a better grasp of reality than the theorists back home.
Butler had recommended a strictly defensive policy and as he had published a biography on General Colley , who had died at Majuba in 1881, he had no wish to repeat the disaster of that general of the first ABW-a short skirmish won by the Boers.
Butler was under no illusions of the enormity of the task to quell the Boers and even Milner would later concede that ‘his merit was that he knew the size of the job.’
Butler also, rightly, opposed the sending of anymore troops to South Africa because he knew that would signal British warlike intentions to the Boers –and the failure to heed his words ultimately did just that.
Eventually, a communiqué from the War Office asked him about army supplies and to authorize a number of mules to transport army supplies. It concluded by asking him for any observations he wished to offer. He replied, that a war would be the greatest calamity that ever occurred in South Africa…..advice unpalatable to the ruling elite, particularly Milner.
Milner’s next ‘trick’ was to try and get his CIC to assist an adventurer, by the names of Wools-Sampson, a trigger happy Briton, who wanted to raise an irregular horse regiment to help police the borders of the Cape and Natal. Butler agreed to see him, at Milner’s request, but correctly informed him that he had received no instructions from the War Office to do any such thing, as he requested. He knew that Wools-Sampson had fought the Boers in 1881 and had wanted to do so again during the Jameson Raid.
Butler gave a dispassionate account of the meeting but one eye witness reported furious outbursts on both sides with Wools-Sampson accusing the CIC of being a “traitor” and General Butler responding, calling him a “lunatic.”
Milner,of course, wrote home saying the situation was untenable- it had to be him or Butler and as usual the wrong choice was made. Butler officially tendered his resignation on 4th July 1899 and received a reply, by cable on 9th August, agreeing to it.
To PM Schreiner the General wote, ‘Try and remember me as one who did his best, according to his lights, for South Africa and her peoples.’ He had.
His successor as CIC at the Cape, General Forrestier-Walker, arrived on 6th September 1899 and soon wrote he could not improve on Sir William Butler’s sound defence plans.
The failure of those officers early in the ABW was because they used Butler’s defensive plans for offensive measures with disastrous consequences.
So Milner’s War, instead of Butler’s Peace, led to the most brutal war for a century- between the Napoleonic era and the Great War- and was the source of great bitterness between Afrikaner and Briton that is not fully erased, even today.
