It was important to remember that when in 1896 or 1897 England offered to guarantee the independence of the Transvaal the offer was scornfully rejected. There could be no denying that the corruption of the Boer Government was one of the causes of the war and another was the nataral reluctance to admit new-comers to a share of the Government. Mr. Balfour added:—I have been reluctantly Urought to the conclusion that there was another motive, at least us strong, which would have made, either now or hereafter, war an absolute and inevitable necessity.' I now believe this, that the declaration of war by the Transvaal Goverament and the Orange Free State was not any despairing struggle for liberty, but a bold bid for empire. Tnow believe that it was not to preserve what they had, but to vet what they had not that they went to war. I now believe that nothing legs than to make themselves—these two Republics as a nucleus, and what additions they could obtain to them—the centre of a Dutch-speaking paramount power in South Africa, and to exclude: for ever the hated Britisher from any dominating influence in the future of that part of the world. That is the only explanation which fits the facts, that is the only explanation which amongst other things makes the policy of the Orange Free State credible.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.