, whether told with a good or bad intention,
and it was still harder for him in those first days of his office to
discern who was right or who was wrong among those who crowded their
advice upon him--and never forgave him when he did not follow their
ill-balanced counsels.

Concerning the outstanding personality of Cecil Rhodes, the position of
Sir Alfred Milner was even more difficult and entangled than in regard to
anyone else. It is useless to deny that he had arrived at Cape Town with
considerable prejudice against Rhodes. He could not but look
interrogatively upon the political career of a man who at the very time he
occupied the position of Prime Minister had lent himself to a conspiracy
against the independence of another land. Moreover, Rhodes was supposed,
perhaps not without reason, to be continually intriguing to return to
power, and to be chafing in secret at the political inaction which had
been imposed upon him, and for which he was himself responsible more than
anyone else. The fact that after the Raid Rhodes had been abandoned by his
former friends harmed him considerably as a political man by destroying
his renown as a statesman to whom the destinies of an Empire might be
entrusted with safety. One can truly say, when writing the story of those
years, that it resolved _itself_, into the vain struggle of Rhodes to
recover his lost prestige. Sir Alfred was continually being made
responsible for things of which he had not only been innocent, but of
which, also, he had disapproved most emphatically. To mention only
one--the famous concentration camps. A great deal of fuss was made about
them at the time, and it was generally believed that they had been
instituted at the instigation of the High Commissioner. When consulted on
the subject Sir Alfred Milner had, on the contrary, not at all shared the
opinion of those who had believed that they were a necessity, although
ultimately, for lack of earlier steps, they became so.

The Colony at that time found its effective government vested in the hands
of the military authorities, who not infrequently acted upon opinions
which were not based upon experience or upon any local conditions. They
believed, too, implicitly what they were told, and when they heard people
protest, with tears in their eyes, their devotion to the British Crown,
and lament over the leniency with which the Governor of Cape Colony looked
upon rebellion, they could not possibly think that they