PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
judgment and capacity of Sir A. Milner to deal with the situation. He would not recall one word he said on that occasion.
His visit to South Africa had enormously strengthened the impression that unless they could ensure the same treatment for Britishers and all other white men in the South African Republic, that the Dutch and men of other than the British race receive in all parts of the world under the British flag, South Africa would be lost to the British Empire, and the present unrest would end sooner or later in a terrible civil war, the more terrible because there would be no paramount Power to hold the balance of power between the two races. He had returned with unabated confidence in Sir A. Milner's policy. He believed that the position in South Africa and the grounds for Imperial intervention were admirably reviewed in the last portion of his celebrated dispatch of May 4th, and he was convinced that in endeavouring to secure from President Kruger, as he did with the most admirable patience at the Bloemfontein conference, the concession of an effective franchise, he was taking the best, and, indeed, the only means to a peaceful solution of the South African question.
Influence of Dr. Leyds.His first feeling, and perhaps his principal feeling, in this Transvaal question, was one of disappointment—he might almost say disgust—that Mr. Gladstone's magnanimous policy of 1881 was not now, and never had been, reciprocated by the Transvaal Government. In the establishment of Dutch as the official language—an entirely foreign language to the Transvaal in the introduction of 'Hollanders'—people coming from Holland—into their administration, and in all other246
