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While enforcing the obligations of a neutral State by an attitude of strict impartiality toward both belligerents, the United States was not inclined to allow popular sympathy for the Boers to lead to complications with foreign nations over a matter with which it was only remotely concerned. This position was known to the envoys of the Transvaal and Orange Free State before they left Pretoria.
Chamberlain points out that the London Convention contains specific and not implied amendments of the Pretoria Convention; that the direct request for abolition of the suzerainty was refused by Lord Derby; that the preamble as the fundamental declaration must be deemed to be in force; and that if not, the same reason which is adduced against the continued existence of the suzerainty would hold good against the independence of the Transvaal, for in the preamble of the 1881 Convention alone is any mention made of either the grant or the reservation.
In the previous July, when Sir Danvers Muller was visiting Lord Williams of Afghanistan at Pretoria, Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., had been married to Lynette Bridget-Mary Mildare at the Registrar's Office, Gueldersdorp, and at the Catholic Church. One hour after the ceremony the happy pair left by the mail for Cape Town. Gueldersdorp turned out to do them honour. We have heard the people cheer.
Jess, with whom he had dreamed, would go away to Europe and he would marry Bessie, and all this Pretoria business would glide away into the past like a watch in the night. Well, it must be so; it was right and proper that it should be so, and he for one would not flinch from his duty; but he must have been more than human had he not felt the pang of awakening. It was all so very unfortunate.
The districts west and south-west of the capital were infested by energetic commandos which had thwarted all Baden-Powell's and Smith-Dorrien's efforts to suppress them, and Grobler was threatening Pretoria from the north.
The work was going listlessly, the men carrying up the smallest and easiest stones they could find, and spending most of the time in contemplating the scenery or discussing the situation, which they did not think hopeful. "We're surrounded that's what we are," they kept saying. "Thought we was goin' to have Christmas puddin' in Pretoria. Not much Christmas puddin' we'll ever smell again!"
We had over sixty miles to ride that day, and it must have been about eight o'clock at night, on the sixteenth day of our journey, when we reached Pretoria and rode straight up to our camp, where we were heartily greeted. I am sure that some of our friends must have felt a little disappointed at seeing us arrive healthy and fat, without a sign of fever, after all their melancholy predictions.
Jameson's affair is concerned, that he could not be expected to suspect a deception such as was practised upon him; yet it does seem extraordinary that, being in Pretoria for the purpose of negotiating for the disposal of Dr.
Standerton, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Wakkerstroom, Rustenburg, and Marabastad were all invested and all held out until the end of the war. In the open country the troops were less fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a small British force was taken by surprise and shot down without harm to their antagonists.
Should however, the British Government make a proposal which had, as a basis, the temporary withdrawal only of the Independence, then we would lay this proposal before the nation. Thereupon the following telegram was drawn up and dispatched: "PRETORIA, April 14th, 1902. "A difficulty has arisen in connexion with the negotiations.
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