ng of the
proposed Bill before it was put into a final form. The proposal was
submitted to the Raad on August 7, with the addition that when this was
done Sir Alfred Milner was prepared to discuss anything else, including
arbitration without the interference of foreign powers.

The suggestion of this joint commission has been criticised as an
unwarrantable intrusion into the internal affairs of another country.
But then the whole question from the beginning was about the internal
affairs of another country, since there could be no rest in South Africa
so long as one race tried to dominate the other. It is futile to suggest
analogies, and to imagine what France would do if Germany were to
interfere in a question of French franchise. Supposing that France
contained nearly as many Germans as Frenchmen, and that they were
ill-treated, Germany would interfere quickly enough and continue to do
so until some fair _modus vivendi_ was established. The fact is that the
case of the Transvaal stands alone, that such a condition of things has
never been known, and that no previous precedent can apply to it, save
the general rule that white men who are heavily taxed must have some
representation. Sentiment may incline to the smaller nation, but reason
and justice are all on the side of Britain.

A long delay followed upon the proposal of the Secretary of the
Colonies. No reply was forthcoming from Pretoria. But on all sides there
came evidence that those preparations for war which had been quietly
going on even before the Jameson Raid were now being hurriedly
perfected. For so small a State enormous sums were being spent upon
military equipment. Cases of rifles and boxes of cartridges streamed
into the arsenal, not only from Delagoa Bay, but even, to the
indignation of the English colonists, through Cape Town and Port
Elizabeth. Huge packing-cases, marked 'Agricultural Instruments' and
'Mining Machinery,' arrived from Germany and France, to find their
places in the forts of Johannesburg or Pretoria. As early as May the
Orange Free State President, who was looked upon by the simple and
trustful British as the honest broker who was about to arrange a peace,
was writing to Grobler, the Transvaal official, claiming his share of
the twenty-five million cartridges which had then been imported. This
was the man who was posing as mediator between the two parties a
fortnight later at Bloemfontein.

For three years the Transvaal had been ar