the Lynn Canal, and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company surrendered the possession which they had theretofore held as tenants of Russia, and departed, leaving the head of the Lynn Canal in the possession of the United States. From that time until the present the United States has retained that possession, and has performed the duties and exercised the powers of sovereignty there. || For certainly more than twenty years after that, there was not a suggestion from the British Government that the possession was not rightful. In the meantime, the Naval and Military officers of the United States governed the Indians who lived at the heads of the inlets; those Indians were included in the United States' Census; order was enforced among them, and their misdeeds were punished by the United States; a public school and mission schools were established at the head of the Lynn Canal, under the auspices of the United States' Government; the land laws of the United States were extended over the territory, and mineral claims were located in the territory now in question; the revenue laws of the United States were extended over the territory, and were enforced in the territory in question; foreign vessels were forbidden to unload at Chilkat, and obeyed this prohibition; a post-office was established at the head of the Lynn Canal; an astronomical station of the United States' Coast Survey was established there; factories for the canning of salmon were erected and operated by American citizens; and all these operations of Government were unaccompanied by any suggestion that the United States was not rightfully there. In the meantime, Great Britain refrained from exercising, or attempting to exercise, any of the functions of Government in the neighbourhood of these inlets. The true condition was stated by the Prime Minister of Canada, in the Canadian Parliament, on the 16th February, 1898, when he said:

„My honourable friend is aware that, although this is disputed territory, it has been in the possession of the United States ever since they acquired this country from the Russian Government in 1867, and, so far as my information goes, I am not aware that any protest has ever been raised by any Government against the occupation of Dyea and Skaguay by the United States;" || and when, on the 7th March, 1898, he said: | ,,The fact remains that, from time immemorial, Dyea was in possession of the Russians, and in 1867 it passed into the hands of the Americans, and it has been held in their hands ever since. Now, I will not recriminate here; this is not the time nor the occasion for doing so, but, so far as I am aware, no protest has ever been entered against the occupation of Dyea by the American authorities, and when the American

authorities are in possession of that strip of territority on the sea which has Dyea as its harbour, succeeding the possession of the Russians from time immemorial, it becomes manifest to everybody that at this moment we cannot dispute their possession, and that, before their possession can be disputed, the question must be determined by a settlement of the question involved in the Treaty." || It is manifest that the attempt to dispute that possession to which the Prime Minister refers is met by the practical, effective construction of the Treaty presented by the longcontinued acquiescence of Great Britain in the construction which gave the territory to Russia and the United States, and to which the Prime Minister testifies. Only the clearest case of mistake could warrant a change of construction, after so long a period of acquiescence in the former construction, and no such case has been made out before this Tribunal.

Aus dem Bericht der kgl. Untersuchungskommission über den Südafrikanischen Krieg.")

The Military Preparations for the War in South Africa.

8. The Commission are, in the first place, directed to inquire into the Military Preparations for the War in South Africa". This must be understood as a direction to inquire (a) what military preparations were in fact made; (b) to what extent they were, or were not, made in sufficient time, and were equal to overcoming the opposition which, upon the information which it was then possible to obtain, might reasonably be anticipated. If they were not sufficiently timely and otherwise adequate, it must be further asked who were the authorities responsible, and what defence have they to offer? || 9. A distinction must be made between the preparedness of this country for any war in the year 1899, and the definite preparation made for the event of a war against one or both of the Dutch Republics in South Africa. Into the former question the Commission are not expressly directed to inquire. At the same time the second direction to the Commission, i. e., to inquire into the supply of men, ammunition, equipment, and transport by „sea and land," indirectly raises the question of preparedness for any considerable war in 1899. The whole military system as it stood at that date was tested by the war in South Africa.

Public Negotiations and Transactions Previously to the War.

10. In considering the question of the preparations made for the war in South Africa it seems to be convenient in the first place to review

*) Blaubuch Cd. 1789. 1903. Red.

concisely the negotiations and transactions which ended in the outbreak of war in the autumm of 1899, as shown in published despatches. || 11. In order to trace this history fully it would be necessary to begin at the date when, in 1881, after the previous Boer War, a qualified independence was granted by Her late Majesty's Government to the inhabitants of the Transvaal territories, and was reluctantly accepted by a dissatisfied Volksraad, who desired a complete independence. It would also be necessary to refer to the modifications made in the „Pretoria Convention" by the London Convention of 1884, to the expedition which had to be sent in 1885 under Sir Charles Warren to restrict the South African Republic to the frontiers fixed on the west by the Conventions, and to other matters. From a military point of view the situation in South Africa did not become serious until the results of the discovery of the Witwatersrand gold reefs in 1886 began to operate. This discovery led to the foundation of Johannesburg, the extraordinary increase of British population in the Transvaal, the alteration of the franchise laws in the year 1890 with the result of the practical exclusion of that population from a share in political power, and the emergence of numerous questions in which the views and interests of the British population came into collision with those of the Government of the Republic. In the year 1894 the British Government intervened, through Sir Henry Loch, then High Commissioner, on behalf of the British inhabitants, in connection with the claim of the Transvaal Government to commandeer them for service in local native wars. The claim was withdrawn, though not before the possibility of a resort to force had been intimated. || 12. It does not appear to be necessary that the Commission should enter into the details of this previous period, but the year 1895 seems to be a point at which a closer investigation of public events may begin. In that year numerous grievances of the Uitlander population, including interference by the Volksraad with the courts of law in favour of the Government, had been fully developed; it was known that the Transvaal Government had begun to make armaments on a larger scale than before; there were apprehensions, due to speeches of President Kruger, that he was endeavouring to form special relations with foreign powers. In this country a new Government came into power in the summer of 1895, and the Ministers who where responsible for the administration of Colonial and Military affairs down to the time of the war assumed their respective offices. In the same year Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley was appointed to be Commander-in-Chief for a term of five years, and the departments of the War Office were re-organised under the Order

in Council of 21st November 1895. || 13. In November 1895, the Secretary of State for the Colonies protested against the action of the Government of the South African Republic in closing the drifts across the Vaal River in order to further their railway policy as being contrary to the provisions of the London Convention. In a despatch at the same date to the High Commissioner at the Cape, Mr. Chamberlain stated that when the message to the Republic was once sent, Her Majesty's Government could not „allow the matter to drop until they had obtained compliance with their demands even if it should be necessary to undertake an expedition for that purpose." He desired the High Commissioner to inform the Cape Colony Ministers of this, and to inform them also that Her Majesty's Government did not intend that such an expedition should be conducted at the entire cost of the United Kingdom, and to require them to undertake that in the event of an expedition, the Cape Parliament should bear half the gross expense, and that the Local Government should furnish a fair contingent of the fighting force besides giving the full and free use of ' its railways and rolling stock. The Cape Government gave the assurance required, the despatch was forwarded to Pretoria, and the Government of the South African Republic gave way on the point at issue. This incident illustrates in some degree the view taken of the kind of force which it would be necessary to employ at that time. || 14. The drifts incident was followed in the last days of the year 1895 by the Jameson Raid. This attempt to overthrow by force the existing Government of the Transvaal had consequences which did, perhaps, make the eventual war inevitable. On the one hand it called the attention of the British nation closely to the political situation in South Africa, and, especially in view of certain manifestations of policy in Europe, made it necessary to assert more clearly than before that Great Britain intended to „maintain her position as the paramount power in South Afrika." On the other hand the raid immensely increased the suspicions with regard to British intentions in the minds not only of the Transvaal Dutch, but of the Dutch race throughout South Afrika; it gave the Transvaal Government a reason for greatly accelerating the speed at which they were accumulating armaments, and made it less easy for the British Government to protest against such armaments; and it obtained for President Kruger among his own countrymen a far greater support for his repressive policy than he would otherwise have enjoyed.

15. From the time of the Raid the Government of the South African Republic, while continuing to arm, maintained a controversy against Her Majesty's Government of a character which might at any time have