denote: Mr. Chamberlain.]

It is in the answer to this question that we find the actual cause of
the utter failure of Rhodes's plan. The truth is that success in any
real sense--that is to say, success which would have strengthened
British supremacy and promoted the union of European South Africa--was
impossible. The sole response which Lord Rosmead returned to Mr.
Chamberlain's counsels was the weary confession: "The question of
concessions to Uitlanders has never been discussed between President
Krueger and myself." The methods employed by Rhodes were so
questionable that no High Commissioner could have allowed the Imperial
Government to have derived any advantage from them. To have gained the
franchise for the Uitlanders as the result of violent and unscrupulous
action, would have inflicted an enduring injury upon the British cause
in South Africa for which the enfranchisement itself would have been
small compensation. The disclosure of these methods and, with them, of
the hollowness of Rhodes's alliance with the Afrikander Bond, alarmed
and incensed the whole Dutch population of South Africa. What this
meant Lord Rosmead knew, and Mr. Chamberlain did not know. The ten
years' truce between the forces of the Afrikander nationalists and the
paramount Power was at an end. To combat these forces something better
than the methods of the Raid was required. _Non tali auxilio, nec
defensoribus istis!_ No modern race have excelled the Dutch in courage
and endurance. In Europe they had successfully defended their
independence against the flower of the armies of Spain, Austria, and
France. The South African Dutch were not inferior in these qualities
to the people of the parent stock. If such a race, embarked upon what
it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to be
overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as strong.
None the less the active sympathy with the Uitlanders exhibited in Mr.
Chamberlain's despatches was welcomed by the British as evidence that
the new Colonial Secretary was more alert and determined than his
predecessors. For the first time in the history of British
administration in South Africa, Downing Street had shown itself more
zealous than Capetown. It was the solitary ray of light that broke the
universal gloom in which South Africa was enshrouded by the
catastrophe of the Raid.

CHAPTER II

THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS[16]

[Footnote 16: "This