[Footnote 13: It is worth noticing that even the presence of the German Marines at Delagoa Bay was counterbalanced--whether by chance or design--by the coincidence of the arrival of a British troopship with time-expired men from the Indian garrison, off Durban.]
If this was the essence of Rhodes's plan, it would matter comparatively little whether the Reformers had, or had not, completed their preparations, or whether Dr. Jameson had 1,200 or 500 men. Certainly some such assumption is necessary to account for the fact that Rhodes treated his confederates at Johannesburg as so many pawns on a chess-board. It is equally necessary to account for Dr. Jameson's action. "Twenty years friends, and now he goes in and ruins me," was Rhodes's comment on the news that Dr. Jameson had "ridden in," in spite of his own orders to the contrary and the message to the same effect which Captain Heany had delivered on behalf of the Reformers. But what if Dr. Jameson knew, or thought that he knew, that Rhodes's object in forcing the insurrection was not to make the Uitlanders reduce Krüger, but to compel the Imperial Government to step in? In this case he may well have thought that what was essential was not that the rising should be successful, but that there should be a rising of any kind; provided that it was sufficiently grave to arrest the attention of the world, and claim the interference of the Imperial Government.
According to Mr. Chamberlain the continued inaction of the Imperial Government in the eighteen months that had passed since Lord Loch's visit to Pretoria in June, 1894, was due to two circumstances. In the first place, "the Uitlanders and their organs had always deprecated the introduction into the dispute of what is called in South Africa the 'Imperial factor'"; and in the second, the "rumours" of violent measures "were continually falsified by the event." Obviously, if Rhodes forced an insurrection with the intention of removing these obstacles--if, that is to say, the intervention of the Imperial Government, and not the success of the insurrection, was his primary object--the temerity of Dr. Jameson's invasion is materially diminished. Now Mr. Chamberlain's statement, made under date February 4th, 1896, _i.e._ five weeks after the Raid, is perfectly consistent with the view of the attitude of the Reformers expressed by Rhodes on the day before the Raid took place.