nvolve any great change of system, but, in the Transvaal,
some most important reforms are at once necessary, while an
immense amount of useless rubbish, which encumbered the Statute
Book and made it the despair of jurists, has already been
repealed."[301]

[Footnote 301: Cd. 903.]

In spite of the disturbed condition of the country, two independent
inquiries, each of which was concerned with matters of cardinal
importance to the future of South Africa, were concluded before the
second year of the war had run its course. From the report addressed
to Mr. Chamberlain by the Land Settlement Commission, of which Mr.
Arnold-Forster was chairman, and from that presented to Lord Milner by
Sir William (then Mr.) Willcocks[302] on Irrigation in South Africa,
there emerged three significant conclusions. Racial fusion, or the
ultimate solution of the nationality difficulty, was to be found in
the establishment of British settlers upon the land, living side by
side with the Dutch farmers and identified with them by common
pursuits and interests; the possibility alike of the successful
introduction of these settlers and of the development of the hitherto
neglected agricultural resources of South Africa depended upon the
enlargement and improvement of the cultivable area by irrigation; and
the only existing source of wealth capable of providing the material
agencies for the realisation of these objects was the Witwatersrand
gold industry. British agricultural settlers for the political,
irrigation for the physical regeneration of South Africa--this was the
essence of these two Reports.

[Footnote 302: Managing Director of the Daira Sania Company;
of the Indian and Egyptian Irrigation Services.]

"We desire to express our firm conviction," wrote the Land
Settlement Commissioners,[303] "that a well-considered scheme of
settlement in South Africa by men of British origin is of the
most vital importance to the future prosperity of British South
Africa. We find among those who wish to see British rule in
South Africa maintained and its influence for good extended, but
one opinion upon this subject. There even seems reason to fear
lest the vast expenditure of blood and treasure which has marked
the war should be absolutely wasted, unless some strenuous effort
be made to establish in the country, at the close of the war, a
thoroughly Br