and to discuss with him points which the Colossus thought it
worth while to talk over. At that time Rhodes was in the most equivocal
position he had ever been in his life. He could not return to Kimberley;
he did not care to go to Rhodesia; and in Cape Colony he was always
restive.

At this period all kinds of discussions used to take place concerning the
ultimate results of the war and the influence which it would have on the
future development of affairs in the Transvaal. The financiers began to
realise that after the British flag had once been raised at Pretoria they
would not have such a good time of it as they had hoped at first, and now,
having done their best to hurry on the war, regretted it more than anybody
else. The fact was that everybody in South Africa, with the exception of
the Boers themselves, who knew very well their own resources, had believed
that the war would be over in three months, and that the Transvaal would
be transferred into a Crown Colony where adventurers and gold-seekers
would have a fine time.

Rhodes himself had more than once expressed his conviction that the
destruction of the Boers would not take more than three months at the
most, and this assurance was accepted as gospel by most of the financiers
of Johannesburg. An exception was Mr. F. Eckstein, the general manager and
partner in the concern of Wernher, Beit & Co., and one of the ablest
financiers in that city. From the first he was quite pessimistic in regard
to the length of time the war would take.

As the war dragged on without there seeming any chance of its being
brought to a rapid conclusion, it became evident that England, after all
the sacrifices which she was making, would never consent to leave the
leaders of the movement--the ostensible object of which had been to grant
to the Uitlanders certain privileges to which they had no right--as sole
and absolute masters of the situation. In fact, the difficulties of the
war made it evident that, once peace was proclaimed, public opinion at
home would demand that the Transvaal, together with the Orange Free State,
should be annexed to the British Empire in view of a future federation of
the whole of South Africa, about which the English Press was already
beginning to speak.

That South Africa should not remain a sphere of exploitation sent shivers
down the spines of the financiers. The South African League was observed
to become quite active in discovering rebels. Their zea