ard without heeding the
obstacles, forgetful of aught else but the end he was pursuing, the
country which he loved so well, and, what he cared for even more, his own
ambition. Men like Rhodes--with all their mistakes to mar their dazzling
successes--cannot be replaced; it is just as difficult to take up their
work as it is to fill the gap caused by their disappearance.

CONCLUSION

I have come to the end of what I intended at first to be a book of
recollections but which has resolved itself into one of impressions. A
more competent pen than mine will one day write the inner history of this
South African War, which by an anomaly of destiny had quite different
results from those expected. So many things have occurred since it
happened that the whole sequence of events, including the war, is now
looked upon by many people as a simple incident in a long story.

In reality the episode was something more than that. It was a
manifestation of the great strength of the British Empire and of the
wonderful spirit of vitality which has carried England triumphantly
through crises that would have wrecked any other nation. The incidents
which followed the war proved the generosity that lies at the bottom of
the English character and the grandeur that comes out of it in those grave
moments when the welfare of a nation appears to be at stake and its rulers
are unable to apply to a succession of evils and dangers the right remedy
to bring about peace and contentment. No other nations possess this
remarkable and distinctive feature. England very wisely refused to notice
the bitterness which still persisted in the early days after the
conclusion of peace, and devoted her energies to the one immense and
immediate work of Federation.

The colossal work of Union had been conceived in the shape which it was
eventually to assume by Sir Alfred Milner, who, after having laid the
foundations, was patriot enough to allow others to achieve its
consummation, because he feared the unjust estimate of his character,
disseminated by interested persons, might compromise the desired object
and far-reaching possibilities of an enterprise which the most sanguine
had never imagined could be accomplished within so short a space of time.
He had toiled courageously toward the founding of a new State where the
rights of every white as well as of every coloured man should be respected
and taken into account, and where it would be impossible for a handfu