veto over their foreign policy, and this admission in itself,
unless they openly tore up the convention, must deprive them of the
position of a sovereign State. On the whole, the question must be
acknowledged to have been one which might very well have been referred
to trustworthy arbitration.

But now to this debate, which had so little of urgency in it that seven
months intervened between statement and reply, there came the bitterly
vital question of the wrongs and appeal of the Uitlanders. Sir Alfred
Milner, the British Commissioner in South Africa, a man of liberal
views who had been appointed by a Conservative Government, commanded the
respect and confidence of all parties. His record was that of an
able, clear-headed man, too just to be either guilty of or tolerant of
injustice. To him the matter was referred, and a conference was arranged
between President Kruger and him at Bloemfontein, the capital of the
Orange Free State. They met on May 30th. Kruger had declared that all
questions might be discussed except the independence of the Transvaal.
'All, all, all!' he cried emphatically. But in practice it was found
that the parties could not agree as to what did or what did not threaten
this independence. What was essential to one was inadmissible to the
other. Milner contended for a five years' retroactive franchise, with
provisions to secure adequate representation for the mining districts.
Kruger offered a seven years' franchise, coupled with numerous
conditions which whittled down its value very much, promised five
members out of thirty-one to represent a majority of the male
population, and added a provision that all differences should be subject
to arbitration by foreign powers, a condition which is incompatible with
any claim to suzerainty. The proposals of each were impossible to the
other, and early in June Sir Alfred Milner was back in Cape Town and
President Kruger in Pretoria, with nothing settled except the extreme
difficulty of a settlement. The current was running swift, and the roar
of the fall was already sounding louder in the ear.

On June 12th Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town and
reviewed the situation. 'The principle of equality of races was,' he
said, essential for South Africa. The one State where inequality existed
kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of aggression,
but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse into
indifference.' Two days la