a successful “drive.” He was accompanied by Generals Hamilton, Baden-Powell, and Wilson, and when General Hamilton, addressing the column, praised the New Zealanders and said that he did not want any better men under him, the New Zealander Premier was a happy man. He went along the front for sixty miles, and also visited the hospitals at Johannesburg, Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp, speaking kindly and encouragingly to the New Zealanders who were sick or wounded.
At Durban he announced that New Zealand desired peace on an everlasting basis, “but if more men are wanted,” he added, “more will be sent.” In the same city he told the people of South Africa that the only conclusion possible to the war was unconditional surrender by the Boers, but he declared with an air of kingly clemency that brave fighters would be treated with Britain’s traditional generosity.
On May 24th he sent a cable message to Sir Joseph Ward stating that he had had tea with Lord Milner and dinner with Lord Kitchener. “Had a long interview with both, which was very satisfactory,” was the significant addition to the message, and on the same day there came the still more significant brief message: “No more contingents will be required.”
This message was taken all over the world as an augury of peace, and London newspapers accepted it as fairly strong proof that the conditions were such as to satisfy this strong advocate of unconditional surrender.
He supplied the South Africans with a policy, to be taken in hand as soon as the country had settled down after the war. That policy ran largely on the lines adopted in New Zealand, whose example, he thought, South Africa could not do better than follow.
In Reuter he had a zealous advance agent. Almost daily the great morning newspapers told the people of London in large type what he was doing, saying, and thinking. At least one comic journal had a Seddon cartoon ready for publication on the day of his arrival. At the Diamond Jubilee he had gone as a stranger, but at the Coronation it was the return of an interesting man who had been the talk of the Empire, and he received a royal welcome.
