has resulted
in any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the
single mine attacked amounted to L200,000, and it is estimated
that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is
only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the
most important. These facts may afford some indication of the
ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal
and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that
general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just
before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out.
However serious in some respects may have been the military
consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa
owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash
forward, by which the vast mining apparatus, the foundation of
all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening it."

[Sidenote: Material destruction.]

As the result of the last six or seven months of destructive warfare,
"a longer period of recuperation will be required than was originally
anticipated." At the same time, Lord Milner points out that, with
Kimberley and the Rand, the "main engines of prosperity," virtually
undamaged, the economic consequences of the war, "though grave, do not
appear by any means appalling."

"The country population will need a good deal of help, first to
preserve it from starvation, and then, probably, to supply it
with a certain amount of capital to make a fresh start. And the
great industry of the country will need some little time before
it is able to render any assistance. But, in a young country with
great recuperative powers, it will not take many years before the
economic ravages of the war are effaced."

He then turns to consider the "moral effect" of the recrudescence of
the war, which is, in his opinion, more serious than the mere material
destruction of the last six months. In the middle of 1900 the feeling
in the Orange River Colony and the western districts of the Transvaal
was "undoubtedly pacific."

"The inhabitants were sick of the war. They were greatly
astonished, after all that had been dinned into them, by the fair
and generous treatment they received on our first occupation, and
it would have taken very little to make them acquiesce readily in
the new regime. At that time, too, the f