a
better perspective, in the light of which one can question whether it
would have been possible to avoid the conflict by an arrangement of some
kind with the Boer Republics, Personally, I believe that an understanding
was not out of the question if the strong financial interests had not
opposed its accomplishment; but at the same time a patched up affair would
not have been a happy event for either South Africa or for England. It
would have left matters in almost the same condition as they had been
before, and the millionaires, who were the real masters on the Rand, would
have found a dozen pretexts to provoke a new quarrel with the Transvaal
Government. Had the Boer Executive attempted to do away with the power of
the concerns which ruled the gold mines and diamond fields, it would have
courted a resistance with which it would have been next to impossible to
deal. The war would still have taken place, but it might have occurred at
a far less favourable moment. No arrangement with President Kruger, even
one most propitious to British interests, could have done away with the
corruption and the bribery which, from the first moment of the discovery
of the gold fields, invaded that portion of South Africa, and this
corruption would always have stood in the way of the establishment of the
South African Union.

Sir Alfred Milner knew all this very well, and probably had an inward
conviction, notwithstanding his efforts to prevent the war, that a
conflict was the only means of breaking these chains of gold which
shackled the wheels of progress. At so critical a time the support of
Rhodes and his party would have been invaluable. And Sir Alfred would have
welcomed it. Cecil Rhodes, of course, had declared himself officially in
accord with the High Commissioner, and even praised him to a degree of
fulsomeness. But the ulterior motive was simply to excite the Dutch party
against him. The reputation of Sir Alfred Milner as a statesman and as a
politician was constantly challenged by the very people who ought to have
defended it. Rhodes himself had been persuaded that the Governor harboured
the most sinister designs against his person. The innuendo was one of the
most heinous untruths ever invented by his crowd of sycophants.

An opportunity came my way, by which I was able to convince myself how
false was the belief nourished by Rhodes against Milner. During the course
of a conversation with Sir Alfred, I boldly asked him whether