, cannot refuse that the local forces
should be called out to protect its territory." And so on October
16th, after Vryburg had gone over to the Boers, after Kimberley had
been cut off, and the whole country from Kimberley to Orange River was
in the hands of the enemy, he consented to the issue of a proclamation
calling out 2,000 volunteers for garrison duty within the Colony.[167]
But in making this tardy concession he was careful to point out to
Lord Milner that the British cause would lose more than it would gain.
"I warn you," he said in effect, "that it is not to your advantage;
because you are the weaker party. In the Cape Colony more men will
fight for the Boers than will fight for you." The third stage in Mr.
Schreiner's conversion was reached when, in November, 1899, the
invading Boers had advanced to the Tembuland border, in the extreme
east of the Colony. Then Mr. Schreiner allowed the natives to be
called out for the defence of their own territory. In making this
final concession the Prime Minister yielded to the logic of facts in a
matter concerning which he had previously offered a most stubborn
resistance to the Governor's arguments.

[Footnote 167: With this may be compared the fact that in
Natal the whole of the local forces were mobilised on
September 29th for active service. The dates upon which
further units of the Cape local forces were called out are as
follows: Uitenhage Rifles and Komgha Mounted Rifles, November
10th; Cape Medical Staff Corps, November 16th; and Frontier
Mounted Rifles, November 24th.]

[Sidenote: Schreiner and local forces.]

For in the discussion of the measures urged by Lord Milner as
necessary for the protection of the Colony, the question of arming the
natives and coloured people had necessarily arisen. The Bastards in
the west and the Tembus in the east were known to be eager to defend
the Queen's country against invasion. Mr. Schreiner declared that to
arm the natives was to do violence to the central principle upon which
the maintenance of civilisation in South Africa was based--the
principle that the black man must never be used to fight against the
white. Lord Milner did not question the validity of this principle;
but he maintained--and rightly, as Mr. Schreiner admitted subsequently
by his action in the case of the Tembu frontier--that it could not be
applied to the case in question. "If white men," he