Göttingen, before proceeding to the business for which the conference
was called, proposed a resolution of sympathy for the Boers: "Not
because the Boers are entirely in the right, but because we Germans must
take sides against the English."[1] But despite popular sentiment, the
position which had been taken by the Government seems to have been
consistently maintained.

[Footnote 1: London Times, Weekly Ed., Oct. 5, 1899, p. 626, col. 2.]

In June, prior to the outbreak of war, President Kruger had been advised
by the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs that the Transvaal should
maintain a moderate attitude in the discussion of the questions at issue
with the British Government. The German Government, too, had advised the
Republics to invite mediation, but at that time President Kruger
declared that the moment had not yet come for applying for the mediation
of America. The United States, it was considered by both Holland and
Germany, could most successfully have undertaken the role of mediator
from the fact that England would have been more likely to entertain
proposals of the kind coming from Washington than from a European
capital.

In December, 1900, Count Von Bülow, the German Imperial Chancellor,
speaking of the neutral attitude of Germany, declared that when
President Kruger later attempted to secure arbitration it was not until
feeling had become so heated that he was compelled to announce to the
Dutch Government that it was not possible to arrange for arbitration.
The German Government, it was declared, regarded any appeal to a Great
Power at that time as hopeless and as very dangerous to the Transvaal.
The German and the Dutch Governments each believed that President Kruger
should not have rejected the English proposal then before him for a