sen. These people
professed to understand local politics better than the British
authorities, and expected the officials, as well as public opinion in
Great Britain, to adopt their advice, and to recognise their right to
bring forward claims which they were always eager to prosecute.
Unfortunately they had friends everywhere, to whom they confided their
regrets that the British Government understood so very little the
necessities of the moment. As these malcontents were just back from the
Rand, there were plenty of people in Cape Town, and especially in Port
Elizabeth, Grahamstown, and other English cities in Cape Colony, ready to
listen to them, and to be influenced by the energetic tone in which they
declared that the Boers were being helped all along by Dutch Colonials who
were doing their best to betray the British.

In reality, matters were absolutely different, and those who harmed
England the most at that time were precisely the people who proclaimed
that they, and they alone, were loyal to her, and knew what was necessary
and essential to her interests and to her future at the Cape of Good Hope
and the Rand. Foremost amongst them were the adherents of Rhodes, and this
fact will always cling to his memory--most unfortunately and most
unjustly, I hasten to say, because had he been left absolutely free to do
what he liked, it is probable he would have been the first to get rid of
these encumbrances, whose interferences could only sow animosity where
kindness and good will ought to have been put forward. Cecil Rhodes wanted
to have the last and definite word to say in the matter of a settlement of
the South African difficulties, and as no one seemed willing to allow him
to utter it, he thought that he would contrive to attain his wishes on the
subject by seeming to support the exaggerations of his followers. Yet, at
the same time, he had the leaders of the Dutch party approached with a
view of inducing them to appeal to him to put himself at their head.

This double game, which while it lasted constituted one of the most
curious episodes in a series of events of which every detail was
interesting, I shall refer to later in more detail, but before doing so
must touch upon another, and perhaps just as instructive, question--the
so-called refugees, whose misfortunes and subsequent arrogance caused so
many anxious hours to Sir Alfred Milner during his tenure of office at the
Cape and later on in Pretoria.

CHAPT