on, the
impression made by the world-wide celebration of Her Majesty's
Jubilee has strengthened that feeling throughout South Africa,
and is likely to have a permanent value."[31]

[Footnote 31: This short despatch has been given practically
_in extenso_. It was not published in the Blue-books, but it
was communicated to the Press some three months after it had
been received.]

[Sidenote: First impressions of the Dutch.]

It has been urged that the opinion here recorded is inconsistent with
the charge of anti-British sentiment subsequently brought by Lord
Milner against the Dutch leaders in the Cape Colony, and the despatch
itself has been cited as affording evidence of the contention that the
unfavourable view subsequently expressed in the Graaf Reinet speech,
and more definitely in the despatch of May 4th, 1899, was not the
result of independent investigation, but was a view formed to support
the Imperial Government in a coercive policy towards the Transvaal.
This criticism, which is a perfectly natural one, only serves to
establish the fact that Lord Milner actually did approach the study of
the nationality difficulty in complete freedom from any preconceived
notions on the subject. As he said, he went to South Africa with an
"open mind." So far from having any prejudice against the Dutch, his
first impression was distinctly favourable, and as such he recorded
it, suitably enough, in this Jubilee despatch. But it must be
remembered that the opinion here recorded was based upon a very
limited field of observation. At the time when this despatch was
written Lord Milner had not yet been quite two months in South
Africa, and his experience of the Dutch of the Cape Colony had been
confined to intercourse with the Dutch of the Cape peninsula; that is
to say, he had only come into contact with that section of the Cape
Dutch which is, as indeed it has been for a century, closely
identified, from a social point of view, with the official and
mercantile British population of Capetown and its suburbs.

What the Jubilee despatch really shows is that Lord Milner was
prepared to make the best of the Dutch. The contrast between its tone
of ready appreciation and the note of earnest remonstrance in the
Graaf Reinet speech is apparent enough. The despatch is dated June
23rd, 1897; the speech was delivered on March 3rd, 1898. What had
happened in this interval of nine months to p