show that I have honestly tried to work for unity between Boer and Briton as far as in me lay. I shall now attempt to give a fair and dispassionate account of the causes and real 'inwardness' of the present South African situation. Mr. Garrett's able contribution to the Contemporary Review is true as far as it goes. But I can trace the beginnings of evil further back than Mr. Garrett.

If any one had prophesied that the ill-omened gift of responsible government, which was forced upon the Cape Colony in 1872, would have produced such dire consequences as it has since done he would have been laughed at. It is true that the English colonists of the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony resisted the introduction of responsible government by every means in their power. A few of the far-seeing ones may have feared that some day responsible government might result in an Africander Ministry in power at Cape Town, but the bulk of the opposition arose from the fact that the Eastern Province wanted a separate government, and that they feared the domination of the Cape Town clique of politicians, who then aspired to form a close corporation to rule the Colony. In 1874, when I landed in South Africa, the country was peaceful enough. The development of the Kimberley Diamond Fields had brought wealth and prosperity to Boer and Briton alike. The Transvaal was a pastoral republic which attracted little attention. The Free State was governed wisely and prudently by President Brand, the greatest statesman that Dutch South Africa has produced. Race hatred between Dutch and English colonists was a dormant factor in our political and social life. But in 1875 the Imperial Government gave a sort of commission to the famous historian Mr. J. A. Froude to make a political tour in South Africa, with a view to the formation of a South African dominion of confederate States. The historian was neither a diplomatist nor a statesman. Sir G. Grey could have formed a confederation of the two republics and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal some years before Mr. Froude's mission; but Downing Street forbade the scheme. And now Mr. Froude thought he could accomplish his object by flattering the susceptibilities of Dutch South Africans. He produced very little impression at Pretoria and Bloemfontein, but he stirred up the Dutch of the Cape Colony. Hitherto they had taken no prominent part in politics. The Cape Parliament was practically an English assembly, and the dividing line in politics was the antagonism between the Eastern and Western Provinces of the Colony. minds very quietly to capture the was favoured by the logic of events. vaal in 1877 was the premature plucking of fruit which in a few months would have fallen into the lap of Great Britain from very over-ripeness. As it was the Dutch of the Cape Colony skilfully used the annexation for party purposes. The Transvaal rebellion of

But now the Dutch made up their
Cape Parliament. Their effort
The annexation of the Trans-

1881, and the surrender to successful rebels after Majaba, fanned Dutch feeling within the Colony to fever heat. General Joubert said he was fighting for a universal Dutch Republic from the Cape to the Zambesi. The Africander Bond was formed in the Cape Colony to give vitality to the idea of a United South Africa under a republican flag. The Bond leaders in the Cape Colony veiled their purposes under a cloak of loyalty to the Queen's Government. But their secret aim was evident to all thoughtful colonists. They worked for an Africander supremacy in South Africa under the specious catchword of Africa for the Africanders.' President Brand openly discouraged the Africander Bond in the Free State. He alone of Dutch South Africans realised that England did not surrender the Transvaal because she was defeated in the Boer war of 1881. But he died, and was succeeded by President Reitz, the present Transvaal State Secretary. There was no prominent South African Dutchman. left to oppose the political propaganda of the Bond.

In 1882 it showed its power by getting an Act passed to legalise the use of the Dutch language in the Cape Parliament, although the Raads of the Transvaal and Free State would never have dreamt of allowing the use of English in their debates. In 1883 the Bond captured the Cape Parliament, and by careful and skilful organisation forced the responsible Ministry of the day to do its bidding as the sole condition of retaining office. The politics of the Cape Colony were henceforward demoralised. The Ins' and the Outs,' alike truckled to the dominant factor, and the English of the Cape Colony ceased to exercise any real influence upon its political life.

At this crisis of affairs Mr. Rhodes became a factor in South African politics. His natural Toryism, and undoubted preference for the farmer who lived on his land to the mercantile class, made him a persona grata to the rank and file of the Cape Africander party. He became Premier of the Cape in 1890, and tried to lead the Bond party into the paths of a peaceful Imperial development.

His efforts were partially successful. He made certain concessions to Africander ideas, and he found the Bond party responsive to his leadership, because just at that time the Transvaal had offended a good many of the Colonial Dutch. The Hollanders had captured all the plums of the Transvaal Civil Service, which formerly fell to the lot of educated Cape Africanders. The Transvaal fiscal policy shut out Cape Africander products. And thus there was a rift in the lute.

We heard next to nothing of the old Bond cry, 'Africa for the Africanders,' in its original sense of a United South Africa under a republican flag. The scheme to banish the British flag was for the time dormant. But it was not forgotten. I was talking one day to a prominent Cabinet Minister who in those days followed Mr. Rhodes and posed as an Imperialist. He said, 'We

don't mean to be in a hurry about the South African Republic. My children will see it if I do not.'

The Republican idea was still a. dominant factor under the surface.

President Kruger and Dr. Leyds were intensely bitter against Mr. Rhodes for the success he had won in dealing with Colonial Africanders. I saw President Kruger in 1895, nearly a year before the Raid, and he spoke to me of Mr. Rhodes as his enemy, equally with the British Government, who had just blocked his favourite scheme of having a seaport and a Transvaal navy by annexing the strip of country which shut off his access to Kosi Bay.

The idea of making the Transvaal a sea Power, with a port of its own, was one of the President's most cherished ideas.

And then came the Jameson Raid. People are apt to forget that it was not without certain results which proved beneficial in the end. It stopped the formation of a cosmopolitan Uitlander Republic of the Transvaal, which would have effectually hindered the union of South Africa under the British flag. It hindered the maturing of intrigues between the Transvaal and a foreign Power which would have undermined British supremacy in South Africa. Enough hard things have been said of Dr. Jameson and his action. He has suffered his punishment, and it is nearly time that his fellow countrymen should begin to remember the good work that he did as administrator of Rhodesia. I purposely refrain from discussing the position of Mr. Rhodes in this matter. He has borne the brunt of accusations and charges in connection with the Raid with a dignified reticence that is one secret of his power. As Canon Knox Little says of him he is a loyal friend.' When history is written dispassionately in the years to come Mr. Chamberlain's words declaring that Mr. Rhodes passed through the great crisis of his life with unstained personal honour will be amply vindicated...

As I do not write as a politician desiring to score off an adversary, but simply as an ordinary citizen of South Africa, trying to record the simple facts that underlie a situation obscured by the clouds and mists of political special pleading, I say no more of Mr. Rhodes and the Raid. It is a side issue of the South African controversy which has no real bearing upon what has been the true main issue for the last twenty years, save that it accelerated matters somewhat, and by closing up the little rift between the Cape Africanders and the Transvaal enabled President Kruger and Dr. Leyds to mature their plans on that main issue more rapidly. That main issue, as I have said before, was the final expulsion of the British flag from South Africa. I will cite two pieces of evidence about eighteen years old to prove my statement.

Mr. Reginald Statham, who is one of the most prominent of Mr. Kruger's English newspaper champions, was editor of the

Natal Witness about twenty years ago. In 1881 he published a book called Blacks, Boers, and British. He had at that date evidently got some knowledge of the Boer plans against British rule. On p. 18 of his book he tells us of a visit to a Dutch homestead, near Cape Town, which had been the home of a Dutch family long before the British flag waved on the Castle of Cape Town, and which, in his opinion, would remain their home after that flag had been hauled down. This,' naïvely remarks Mr. Statham, 'is not only anticipation but treason.' He goes on to tell us, a few pages further on, that Responsible Government in the Cape Colony would end in Boer supremacy in the Cape Parliament, which would ultimately bring to an end British supremacy not only in the Cape Colony, but in South Africa. If Mr. Statham could write in 1881 from his knowledge of the inner counsels of the Africander party the secret conspiracy against British rule must even then have struck its roots wide and deep. Lately, I believe, it has been Mr. Statham's cue to deny the existence of any desire on the part of the Boers to banish British supremacy from South Africa. His earlier utterances convey the simple and unvarnished truth. He thought in 1881 that the British flag had to go, and that the Boer would be supreme in South Africa, because he knew that the Africander Bond was plotting to that end. My second piece of evidence is from a letter which Mr. Theo. Schreiner (brother of the Cape Premier) has written to the Cape Times. Mr. Schreiner was born in the Colony, but, unlike his brother, is an ardent supporter of British rule and a warm admirer of Mr. Rhodes. He is an old friend of Mr. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary and former President of the Free State, who is connected by marriage with the Cape Premier. Some eighteen years ago Mr. Reitz, then Chief Justice of the Free State, asked him to join the Africander Bond. Mr. Schreiner thus describes the interview :

At that time, then, I met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to get me to become a member of his Africander Bond; but after studying its constitution and programme I refused to do so, whereupon the following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has been indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since:

Reitz: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take an interest in political matters not a good one?'

Myself: Yes, it is; but I seem to see plainly here between the lines of this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.'

Reitz: What ?'

Myself: 'I see quite clearly that the ultimate object aimed at is the overthrow of the British power and the expulsion of the British flag from South Africa.'

Reitz (with his pleasant, conscious smile, as of one whose secret thought and purpose had been discovered, and who was not altogether displeased that such was the case): Well, what if it be so ?'

Myself: 'You don't suppose, do you, that that flag is going to disappear from South Africa without a tremendous struggle and fight?'

Reitz (with the same pleasant, self-conscious, self-satisfied, and yet semiapologetic smile): Well, I suppose not; but even so what of that ? '

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Myself: Only this, that when that struggle takes place you and I will be on opposite sides; and, what is more, the God who was on the side of the Transvaal in the late war, because it had right on its side, will be on the side of England, because He must view with abhorrence any plotting and scheming to overthrow her power and position in South Africa, which have been ordained by Him.' Reitz: We'll see.'

Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means-the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the legislature--until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr. Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause.

It is not too much to say that if the present Cape Premier had held his brother's views, instead of taking his opinions from his talented but emotional sister Olive, the history of the Cape Colony during the last few months would have been different. Judging by the votes polled at the last general election of 1898, when the Progressive or English party polled a greater total of votes than the Bond party (although the latter was a narrow electoral victory, owing to an unfair Redistribution Bill), the population of the Cape Colony is almost half English, and we English Cape Colonists, who are just as patriotic as Natalians, have suffered bitter humiliation since the war began. Our English Cape Colony volunteers were as keen to go to the front and just as eager to fight for our flag and country as the Natal men or our kinsmen over seas. But our men have been hindered and thwarted by the Cape Premier. At length all too tardily the Colonial forces have been called out, but up to the present date our volunteers have not been allowed to be in touch with the enemy, except those who have been fortunate enough to be besieged in Kimberley and Mafeking.

But this by the way.

I have now indicated the true inwardness of the South African situation. The determination to get rid of British supremacy at all costs has been the dominating factor in the counsels of Pretoria ever since 1881. The Free State had to be captured. This was easy enough when President Reitz had been succeeded by President Steyn. The Free State was then bound in strict military alliance with the Transvaal. The Cape Responsible Government had next to be captured, and Mr. Schreiner won his narrow electoral victory last year with the active aid of the Transvaal sympathisers in the Cape Colony, and, as has been plainly stated, with electoral funds supplied from Pretoria.

The controversies on enough), the endless

Things were ripe for a forward move. Uitlander grievances (though these are real diplomatic duel between the Colonial Office and Pretoria, the hairsplitting about the conventions of 1881 and 1884, the suzerainty discussion, all these seemed to British South Africans, who knew the real issue, a veritable ploughing of the sands. Behind the confused