months their Press was turned upon outrages upon Outlanders in Johannesburg, while missionary opinion was mobilized to denounce the cruelties practised by the Boers upon the native population in South Africa. The diplomatic story of Outlander grievances, foisted on our public from diplomatic sources, was wildly exaggerated. Living for several weeks in Johannesburg at the very time of these alleged disorders, I experienced no personal difficulties and, though the timidest of God’s creatures, I felt no fear in moving about the streets at night. Though a few acts of violence were committed, there was no campaign of violence, and it became clear to me that, if Smuts and Schreiner had had the conduct of the Bloemfontein Conference in their hands, instead of Kruger and Milner, there would have been no war, in spite of the goadings of a “kept” Press. War came from the joint drive of capitalism in South Africa and the new imperialism in England.
This experience had two effects upon my life. It gave realistic support to economic opinions derived in the main from theoretic interpretations of history, and it plunged me for some years into the heated atmosphere of political controversy. Returning to England shortly after the outbreak of war, I cast the articles written for the Manchester Guardian, with some other material, into a book entitled The South African War, followed in 1901 by an analysis of the modern war-spirit called The Psychology of Jingoism, which dwelt upon the
