majority of people in this
country regarded as humiliating. On this occasion even the pretext was
political. It may have been that the English mine-owners thought they
could earn better profits under the British flag than under the rule of
Mr. Kruger, though I am inclined to believe that even in their case
their incentive was chiefly a patriotic desire to repaint in red that
part of the map in which they carried on their business. Certainly their
grievance, as it was put before us at home, was frankly and purely
political. They said they wanted a vote and that Mr. Kruger would not
give them one. That acute political thinker, Mr. Dooley of Chicago,
pointed out at the time that if Mr. Kruger "had spint his life in a rale
raypublic where they burn gas," he would have given them the votes, but
done the counting himself. But Mr. Kruger did not adopt this cynical
expedient, and public opinion here, though a considerable minority
detested the war, endorsed the determination of the Government to
restore the disputed British suzerainty over the Transvaal into actual
sovereignty. Subsequent events, largely owing to the ample
self-government given to the Transvaal immediately after its conquest,
have shown that the war did more good than harm; and the splendid defeat
of the Germans by the South African forces under General Botha--our most
skilful opponent fifteen years ago--has, we may hope, wiped out all
traces of the former conflict. But what we are now concerned with is the
fact, which will be endorsed by all whose memory goes back to those
days, that the South African war, though instigated and furthered by
financial interests, would never have happened if public opinion had not
been in favour of it on grounds which were quite other than
financial--the desire to bring back the Transvaal into the British
Empire and to wipe out the memory of the surrender after Majuba, and
humanitarian feeling which believed, rightly or wrongly, that the
natives would be treated better under our rule. These may or may not
have been good reasons for going to war, but at least they were not
financial.

Summing up the results of this rather discursive chapter we see that the
chief benefit conferred on mankind by international finance is a
quickening of the pace at which the wealth of the world is increased and
multiplied, by using the capital saved by old countries for fostering
the productive power of new ones. This is surely something solid on th