that there are considerable military powers on our frontiers which have that propaganda at heart, then I think it would be folly to ignore it. We must expect as reasonable men that an attempt by arms would be carried out when England was in difficulty, and the only way to deal with it was to deal with it at a time when England was not in difficulties. I know well that friends of the Boers deny the existence of the propaganda itself, or at least that it is of serious importance; they deny the existence of the designs imputed to them. I do not give what I have told you as conclusive proof, but as sufficient proof to create reasonable suspicion in cautious minds, and as reason enough for us to believe Sir Alfred Milner, a very eminent man, when he says that this is the case, at any rate not to put our own individual opinions against those of a man so placed. Now then it was expressly upon this ground that Sir Alfred Milner, not in speaking to Mr Kruger at the Bloemfontein conference—he did not wish to embitter that conference by referring to any such ground as that which I am now dealing with, a ground of course which Mr Kruger would dispute, a propaganda which of course he would disclaim—it was not in the conference but in the famous despatch which preceded the conference[1] that he, to Mr Chamberlain, expressly put the line he intended to take upon that ground. He says:—
- ↑ The telegram of 4th May 1899.
