irly in sight. What has
sustained me personally--if your kindness will allow me to make a
personal reference--what has sustained me personally on the weary
road is my absolute, unshakable conviction that it was the only
one which we could travel.

[Footnote 291: The Duke of Cambridge.]

"Peace we could have had by self-effacement. We could have had it
easily and comfortably on those terms. But we could not have held
our own by any other methods than those which we have been
obliged to adopt. I do not know whether I feel more inclined to
laugh or to cry when I have to listen for the hundredth time to
these dear delusions, this Utopian dogmatising that it only
required a little more time, a little more patience, a little
more tact, a little more meekness, a little more of all those
gentle virtues of which I know I am so conspicuously devoid, in
order to conciliate--to conciliate what? Panoplied hatred,
insensate ambition, invincible ignorance. I fully believe that
the time is coming--Heaven knows how we desire it to come
quickly--when all the qualities of the most gentle and forbearing
statesmanship which are possessed by any of our people will be
called for, and ought to be applied, in South Africa. I do not
say for a moment there is not great scope for them even to-day,
but always provided they do not mar what is essential for success
in the future--the conclusiveness of the final scenes of the
present drama."

[Sidenote: Merriman and Sauer mission.]

[Sidenote: Liberals and Afrikanders.]

As a declaration to the British world that Lord Milner "possessed the
unabated confidence of his sovereign and of his fellow countrymen,"
Mr. Chamberlain's luncheon was amply justified. The protraction of the
war was beginning to try the endurance of the nation. Mr. Sauer and
Mr. Merriman were in England for the express purpose of discrediting
Lord Milner, and behind these fierce political freelances was the
astute brain of the Bond Master, Hofmeyr. They had been commissioned
early in the year by the Afrikander nationalists to give effect to the
resolutions of the Worcester Congress by co-operating with their
friends in England in an agitation for the recall of the High
Commissioner. It was said that these two ex-ministers of the Crown
were authorised to offer an undertaking that the Bond would use its
inf