he South African Union and the Indian Empire are
both partners in the same British commonwealth improves the chances of
a just solution. It helped to find at least a temporary adjustment in
1914; in the future also it may contribute, in this as in many other
ways, to ensure that a fair consideration is given to both sides of the
thorny question of inter-racial relationship.

[8] General Smuts, May 22, 1917.

The events which led up to, and still more the events which followed,
the South African War had thus brought a solution for the South African
problem, which had been a continuous vexation since the moment of the
British conquest. It was solved by the British panacea of
self-government and equal rights. Who could have anticipated, twenty
years or fifty years ago, the part which has been played by South
Africa in the Great War? Is there any parallel to these events, which
showed the gallant general of the Boer forces playing the part of prime
minister in a united South Africa, crushing with Boer forces a revolt
stirred up among the more ignorant Boers by German intrigue, and then
leading an army, half Boer and half British, to the conquest of German
South-West Africa?

The South African War had proved to be the severest test which the
modern British Empire had yet had to undergo. But it had emerged, not
broken, as in 1782, but rejuvenated, purged of the baser elements which
had alloyed its imperial spirit, and confirmed in its faith in the
principles on which it was built. More than that, on the first occasion
on which the essential principles or the power of the empire had been
challenged in war, all the self-governing colonies had voluntarily
borne their share. Apart from a small contingent sent from Australia to
the Soudan in 1885, British colonies had never before--indeed, no
European colony had ever before--sent men oversea to fight in a common
cause: and this not because their immediate interests were threatened,
but for the sake of an idea. For that reason the South African War
marks an epoch not merely in the history of the British Empire, but of
European imperialism as a whole.

The unity of sentiment and aim which was thus expressed had, however,
been steadily growing throughout the period of European rivalry; and
doubtless in the colonies, as in Britain, the new value attached to the
imperial tie was due in a large degree to the very fact of the
eagerness of the other European powers for extra-Europ