Mr. Jan Hofmeyer had indeed been sent for from the Cape so as to assure
that section of the Bond of Transvaal firmness, but he found no sign of
flinching or of renouncing the common object laboured for so long and
then so near fruition. The only difficulty was that British action had
hastened the issue somewhat too fast. Hence the repeated hurried visits
of the Bond leaders--Jan Hofmeyer, Abraham Fisher, and others--the
frequent caucus meetings of the Executive in consultation with those
delegates, the secret midnight sessions of the combined Volksraads and
Executive, the prolonged telegraphic conferences between the two
Presidents, and the final resulting word of "ready" which preceded the
fatal war ultimatum. The Gordian knot had been in evidence many years
ago; it is now recognised with regret that England had deferred action
for cutting it much too long.

But why not agree to arbitration, it will be asked, that peaceable
method so strenuously appealed for by the Transvaal Government and
advocated by her partisans, to adjust all differences, of which the
suzerainty claim and the Uitlander question appeared to be the principal
ones? The reply is not that England was unwilling, but because the
Transvaal was insincere, and the request was a cover for shameless
duplicity, for, while it had been declared by the former that the claim
to suzerainty would be left in abeyance and that infractions of
convention which had been committed by the latter would be overlooked in
consideration of future friendly relations and co-operation, the
Transvaal Government in reality never for a moment meant to be content
with less than British overthrow and complete Boer supremacy in South
Africa, and efforts and intrigues were never relaxed, in concert with
the Bond, to compass those objects.