were not of the same but of rival races, not sea-sundered, but elbow to elbow. Armed with the proceeds of the fleecing, the Boer overlords, not yet prepared to dictate union on their own terms, were enforcing, at any rate, disunion and European intrigue as the alternative, and familiarizing young South Africa with the spectacle of British citizenship at a disadvantage. If the future was to be left to peaceful, natural forces, those forces must first be liberated. Such was the crux confronting Milner. The solution—'Equal rights for every civilized man'—had been formulated by Rhodes at the moment of his fall. It remained for Milner to apply it. How?
Direct Imperialism was supposed to have gone to the scrap-heap a decade since. Rhodes's colonialism, as we have seen, had just followed it Milner decided first to give the colonial method one more chance. He began hopefully—worked, as no predecessor had done, at the Dutch language, both High Dutch and the Cape taal; studied, as nobody else has ever done, the Dutch vernacular press; talked with leading Dutchmen and travelled hundreds of miles among the farmers, with whom, in Cape Colony, as recently in the Transvaal, he got on excellently. He soon saw the need of the moment. The storm-clouds were banking up; if the Dutch of the Colony were to be roused to the danger and their duty, the need was not smooth sayings, the well-worn cliches of Government House, but 'straight talk.'
On this matter of faithful dealing one thing is certain. Let them say what they will of Rhodes, the charge of not being 'straight with the Dutch' is one which calumny itself can hardly bring against Milner. No husbanding influence, for him, at the price of a neglect of urgent duty. He had borne witness at the Jubilee to Dutch loyalty—the personal loyalty of Dutch colonists to Queen Victoria. That was a genuine sentiment. Had it all evaporated in a feu de joie on Queen's Birthday, or was it of such stuff as would stand in a day of trouble? Was loyalty to the Queen only
