r's administration
is invested by the occurrence within it of a military conflict of
unparalleled magnitude, Lord Milner stands out in the annals of South
Africa as the first High Commissioner whose knowledge of South African
conditions was allowed to inspire the policy of the Home Government,
and who himself was recognised by the Government and people of Great
Britain as voicing the convictions and aspirations of all loyal
subjects of the Crown in that province of the empire.

The state of affairs with which Lord Milner was called upon to deal
was in its essence the situation sketched by Frere twenty years before
in the memorable forecast to which reference has been made. But the
working of the forces indicated by Frere as destined, if unchecked, to
drive England one day to a life-and-death struggle for her supremacy
in South Africa, had been complicated by an event which cannot be
omitted altogether from a chapter intended, like a Euripidean
prologue, to prepare the mind of the spectator for the proper
understanding of the characters and action of the drama. This event is
the Jameson Raid.

[Sidenote: The Jameson raid.]

[Sidenote: Rhodes.]

In order to see the Jameson Raid in its true perspective, it is not
sufficient to place it in relationship to those familiar and notorious
events by which it was followed. It must also be placed in relationship
to the no less clearly defined events by which it was preceded. Thus
placed it becomes the direct outcome of the refusal of the Imperial
Government to use the advice of its local representative--or, more
precisely, of the refusal to base its policy on South African instead
of British conditions: and, as such, it convinced the Imperial
Government of the need of reviving the power of its local
representative. In other words, it is a connecting link between the High
Commissionerships of Frere and Milner. The events which followed the
recall of Frere were accepted by the British inhabitants of South Africa
as a practical demonstration of the inherent viciousness of the system
under which the decision of cardinal questions of South African
administration was left in the hands of the House of Commons, a body in
which they were not represented; which met 6,000 miles away; whose
judgment was liable to be warped by irrelevant considerations of English
party politics; and one which was admittedly unfamiliar with the country
and peoples whose interests were vitally affected by th