n to a British
Governor who will have virtually no option but to obey them. What
will be the contents of those minutes, I wonder? As time goes on
it may be a proposal for dispensing with English as an official
language, or a proposal for the distribution to every country
farmer of a military rifle and so many hundred cartridges, in
view of threatened danger from the Basutos."

[Footnote 169: Mr. Fischer. See forward, p. 291.]

[Sidenote: "Just reminiscences".]

So far Lord Milner had dealt with the Orange River Colony. Then he let
his thoughts range back to these months of his great ordeal.

"I think I can see the Governor just hesitating a little to put
his hand to such a document. In that case I think I can hear the
instant low growl of menace from Press and platform and pulpit,
the hints of the necessity of his recall, and the answering
scream from the pro-Boer Press of Britain against the ruthless
satrap, ignorant of constitutional usage and wholly
misunderstanding his own position, who dared to trample upon the
rights of a free people. I may be told, I know I shall be told,
that such notions are the wild imaginings of a disordered brain,
that these are theoretical possibilities having no relation to
fact or to probability. _My Lords, they are not imaginings. They
are just reminiscences._

"I know what it is to be Governor of a self-governing colony,
with the disaffected element in the ascendant. I was bitterly
attacked for not being sufficiently submissive under the
circumstances. Yet, even with the least submissive Governor, the
position is so weak that strange things happen. It was under
responsible government, and in the normal working of responsible
government, that 1,000,000 cartridges were passed through Cape
Colony, on the eve of the war, to arm the people who were just
going to attack us, and that some necessary cannon were stopped
from being sent to a defenceless border town,[170] which directly
afterwards was besieged, and which, from want of these cannon,
was nearly taken."[171]

[Footnote 170: Kimberley.]

[Footnote 171: _The Times_, February 27th, 1906.]

Thus, six and a half years later, Lord Milner spoke of these months of
_Sturm und Drang_ in the calm and passionless atmosphere of the House
of Lords.

From Bloemfo