ave encouragement to the people who were making all kinds of
speculations as to what should happen when the Transvaal became a Crown
Colony.

The idea of a South African Federation had not at that time taken hold of
public opinion, and, if Rhodes became its partisan later on, it was only
after he had realised that the British Cabinet would never consent to put
Johannesburg on the same footing as Bulawayo and Bechuanaland. Too large
and important interests were at stake for Downing Street to look with
favourable eyes on the Rand becoming only one vast commercial concern. A
line had to be drawn, but, unfortunately, the precise demarcation was not
conveyed energetically enough from London. On the other hand, Cecil
Rhodes, as well as his friends and advisers, did not foresee that a war
would not put them in power at the Transvaal, but would give that country
to the Empire to rule, to use its riches and resources for the good of the
community at large.

The saddest feature of the South African episode was its sordidness. This
robbed it of every dignity and destroyed every sympathy of those who
looked at it impartially or from another point of view than that of
pounds, shillings and pence. England has been cruelly abused for its
conduct in South Africa, and abused most unjustly. Had that feeling of
trust in the justice and in the straightforwardness of Great Britain only
existed in the Dark Continent, as it did in the other Colonies and
elsewhere, it would have proved the best solution to all the entangled
questions which divided the Transvaal Republic from the Mother Country by
reason of its manner of looking at the exploitation of the gold mines. On
its side too, perhaps, England might have been brought to consider the
Boers in a different light had she disbelieved a handful of people who had
every interest in the world to mislead her and to keep her badly informed
as to the truth of the situation.

When war broke out it was not easy for the Command to come at once to a
sane appreciation of the situation, and, unfortunately for all the parties
concerned, the unjust prejudices which existed in South Africa against Sir
Alfred Milner had to a certain extent tinctured the minds of people at
home, exercising no small influence on the men who ought to have helped
the High Commissioner to carry through his plans for the settlement of the
situation subsequently to the war. The old saying, "Calumniate,
calumniate, something will a