of England and the soundness of its leaders has never come out in a more
striking manner than in this conquest of South Africa--a blood-stained
conquest which has become a love match.

During the concluding years of last century the possibility of union was
seldom taken into consideration; few, indeed, were clever enough and wise
enough to find out that it was bound to take place as a natural
consequence of the South African War. The war cleared the air all over
South Africa. It crushed and destroyed all the suspicious, unhealthy
elements that had gathered around the gold mines of the Transvaal and the
diamond fields of Cape Colony. It dispersed the coterie of adventurers who
had hastened there with the intention of becoming rapidly rich at the
expense of the inhabitants of the country. A few men had succeeded in
building for themselves fortunes beyond the dreams of avarice, whilst the
majority contrived to live more or less well at the expense of those naïve
enough to trust to them in financial matters until the day when the war
arrived to put an end to their plunderings.

The struggle into which President Kruger was compelled to rush was
expected by some of the powerful intriguers in South Africa to result in
increasing the influence of certain of the millionaires, who up to the
time when the war broke out had ruled the Transvaal and indirectly the
Cape Colony by the strength and importance of their riches. Instead, it
weakened and then destroyed their power. Without the war South Africa
would have grown more wicked, and matters there were bound soon to come to
a crisis of some sort. The crux of the situation was whether this crisis
was going to be brought about by a few unscrupulous people for their own
benefit, or was to arise in consequence of the clever and far-seeing
policy of wise politicians.