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Though I had had no experience in newspaper work, except as an occasional reviewer, I seized the opportunity to see the working of Imperialism at close quarters, and after several talks with Scott and Hobhouse launched upon what was for me a novel adventure. I met and talked with all the leading public men, Kruger, Reitz, Smuts, and Hertzog in the Transvaal and the Free State; Milner, Schreiner, Merriman, Sauer, Hofmeyr, at the Cape; I dined with Rhodes at Groot Schuur on the eve of the outbreak of war, and busied myself to learn all I could about the division between Dutch and British sentiments in the Colony. While Milner told me that it was necessary “to break the dominion of Africanderdom,” Rhodes professed to disbelieve in the Boers’ willingness to fight, and even when the war began the situation in Cape Colony remained for some time doubtful. The lesson I learned from this experience was the dominant power of a particularly crude form of capitalism operating in a mixed political field. It became evident that, while the politicians were hesitant and divided, the capitalists of the Rand were planning straight for war and were using the British Press of South Africa as their instrument for rousing the war-spirit in England. Though the large number of interested English investors in South African mines formed the nucleus of their appeal, they were well aware that England would need to visualize the war in terms of morals and humanity. So for some