It sealed the past and heralded the dawn
of a new day when civilisation was to assert itself, to brush away many
abuses, much cruelty and more injustice. The race hatred which the
personality of Rhodes had done so much to keep alive, collapsed very
quickly after his death, and as time went on the work done with such
unselfishness and such quiet resolution by Sir Alfred Milner began to bear
fruit. It came gradually to be understood that the future would justify
his aims.

[Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR JOHN GORDON SPRIGG]

The war was one of those colossal crises which shake the foundations of a
country and change the feelings of a whole generation of men and women in
regard to each other. Whilst it lasted it roused the worst passions and
showed up the worst aspects of the character of the people who played a
part in it; but once it was over the false fabric upon which the
animosities of the day before had been built fell. A serious and more
enlightened appreciation of the events that had brought about the
cataclysm which had cleared the air took the place of the furious outburst
of hatred that had preceded it. People began to realise that it was not
possible, on a continent where Europeans constituted but a small minority,
that they could give the coloured races a terrible example of disunion and
strife and still maintain dominance. Both the English and Dutch had at
last recognised the necessity for working together at the great task of a
Federation of the South African States, which would allow the whole of the
vast Southern Continent to develop itself on a plane of higher progress
under the protection of the British flag. This Union was conceived many,
many years earlier by Cecil Rhodes. It was his great spirit that thought
of making into one great nation the agglomeration of small nationalities,
white and black, that lay over the veldt and impenetrable forests of South
and Central Africa. For a long space of years Cecil Rhodes was South
Africa.

So long as Rhodes lived it would have been impossible for South Africa
to escape the influence of his brain, which was always plotting and
planning for the future whilst forgetting more often than was healthy or
wise the preoccupations of the present. After the Queen's flag had been
hoisted at Pretoria, Cecil Rhodes alive would have proved an anomaly in
South Africa. Cecil Rhodes dead would still retain his position as a
dreamer and a thinker, a man who always pushed forw