RIDGE, NEAR CAPEL, SURREY, _October 19th, 1906_
DOWNING STREET AND THE MAN ON THE SPOT.................. 1
THE CREED OF THE AFRIKANDER NATIONALISTS............... 48
A YEAR OF OBSERVATION.................................. 75
UNDER WHICH FLAG?..................................... 130
PLAYING FOR TIME...................................... 188
THE ULTIMATUM......................................... 253
THE FALL OF THE REPUBLICS............................. 300
THE REBELLION IN THE CAPE COLONY...................... 341
THE "CONCILIATION" MOVEMENT........................... 373
THE DISARMAMENT OF THE DUTCH POPULATION............... 413
PREPARING FOR PEACE................................... 470
THE SURRENDER OF VEREENIGING.......................... 536
INDEX................................................... 585
PORTRAIT OF LORD MILNER _Frontispiece_ _From a photograph by Elliott & Fry (Photogravure)_
LORD MILNER AT SUNNYSIDE.............................. 473
MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA........................... _At the End_
The failure of British administration in South Africa during the nineteenth century forms a blemish upon the record of the Victorian era that is at first sight difficult to understand. If success could be won in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in India and in Egypt, why failure in South Africa? For failure it was. A century of wars, missionary effort, British expansion, industrial development, of lofty administrative ideals and great men sacrificed, had left the two European races with political ambitions so antagonistic, and social differences so bitter, that nothing less than the combined military resources of the colonies and the mother-country sufficed to compel the Dutch to recognise the British principle of "equal rights for all white men south of the Zambesi." Among the many contributory causes of failure that can be distinguished, the two most prominent are the nationality difficulty and the native question. But these are problems of administration that have been solved elsewhere: the former in Canada and the latter in India. Or, to turn to agencies of a different order, is the cause of failure to be found in a grudging nature--the existence of physical conditions that made it difficult for the white man, or for the white and coloured man together, to wring a livelihood from the soil? The answer is that the like material disadvantages have been conquered in Australia, India, and in Egypt, by Anglo-Saxon energy. We might apply the Socratic method throughout, traversing the entire range of our distinguishable causes; but in every case the inquiry would reveal success in some other portion of the Anglo-Saxon domain to darken failure in South Africa.