y a few unscrupulous people for their own
benefit, or was to arise in consequence of the clever and far-seeing
policy of wise politicians.

Happily for England, and I shall even say happily for the world at large,
such a politician was found in the person of the then Sir Alfred Milner,
who worked unselfishly toward the grand aim his far-sighted Imperialism
saw in the distance.

History will give Viscount Milner--as he is to-day--the place which is due
to him. His is indeed a great figure; he was courageous enough, sincere
enough, and brave enough to give an account of the difficulties of the
task he had accepted. His experience of Colonial politics was principally
founded on what he had seen and studied when in Egypt and in India, which
was a questionable equipment in the entirely new areas he was called upon
to administer when he landed in Table Bay. Used to Eastern shrewdness and
Eastern duplicity, he had not had opportunity to fight against the
unscrupulousness of men who were neither born nor brought up in the
country, but who had grown to consider it as their own, and exploited its
resources not only to the utmost, but also to the detriment of the
principles of common honesty.

The reader must not take my words as signifying a sweeping condemnation of
the European population of South Africa. On the contrary, there existed in
that distant part of the world many men of great integrity, high
principles and unsullied honour who would never, under any condition
whatsoever, have lent themselves to mean or dishonest action; men who held
up high their national flag, and who gave the natives a splendid example
of all that an Englishman could do or perform when called upon to maintain
the reputation of his Mother Country abroad.

Some of the early English settlers have left great remembrance of their
useful activity in the matter of the colonisation of the new continent to
which they had emigrated, and their descendants, of whom I am happy to say
there are a great number, have not shown themselves in any way unworthy of
their forbears. South Africa has its statesmen and politicians who, having
been born there, understand perfectly well its necessities and its wants.
Unfortunately, for a time their voices were crushed by the new-comers who
had invaded the country, and who considered themselves better able than
anyone else to administer its affairs. They brought along with them fresh,
strange ambitions, unscrupulousness, de