ers of the Legislative
Assembly, and half of the ministers of the Crown, were in more or less
complete sympathy with the enemy. The Boer ultimatum, by making it
impossible for the British Government to be any longer cajoled into an
elusory settlement by Boer diplomacy, had relieved Lord Milner of a
load of anxiety, and closed a period of unparalleled physical and
mental strain. But it by no means brought Lord Milner's task to an
end. The open rebellion of the Dutch subjects of the Crown,
considerable alike in point of numbers and area, was not the most
dangerous aspect of the state of utter disaffection, or rather
demoralisation, to which the Cape Colony had been reduced by twenty
years of Dutch ascendancy and nationalist propaganda. Just as before
the ultimatum it was the influence, exercised by constitutional means,
and ostensibly in the interests of the Imperial Government, over the
Republics that brought the Salisbury Cabinet within measurable
distance of diplomatic defeat; so, during the war, what was done and
said by the Afrikander nationalists within the letter of the law
constituted in fact the most formidable obstacle to the success of the
British arms. If the Dutch in the Cape Colony had been left to
themselves, their efforts to encourage the resistance of the Boers, in
view of the rapid and effective blows struck by Lord Roberts, would
probably have been without result. But unhappily their efforts
stimulated the traditional sympathisers of the Boers in England to
fresh action; and they were themselves stimulated in turn by the
excesses of the party opposition which sprang into life again directly
Lord Roberts's campaign had relieved the British people from any fear
of military humiliation. Just as in the period before the war we found
the Afrikander leaders striving to "mediate" between the Transvaal and
the British Government; so now during the war we find them striving to
"conciliate" the two contending parties. In both cases their aim was
the same--to prevent the destruction of the Republics and the
consequent ruin of the nationalist cause. As in the former case
"mediation" was a euphemism for the diplomatic defeat of the British
Government, so now "conciliation" is synonymous with the restoration
of the independence of the Boers--that is, the renunciation of all
that the British people, whether islander or colonist, had fought to
secure. That any considerable body of Englishmen should have allowed
themsel