do not mean on the Chinese question merely. On that there has been no clear and consistent voice either way. I mean all round. Bring it to the test of actuality. Try to exemplify the broader statesmanship of labour which Milner (presumably) ought to have called in as against the class interest or narrower local interest of capitalist counsels. I doubt if anyone would care to name any actual Transvaal Labour leader, and compare in this sense the line such a leader actually took on test questions with the line actually taken, say, by a typical 'Randlord' like Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. Such questions, I mean, as the war contribution, the 10 per cent. profit tax, or that novel and provident piece of State socialism which has secured to a Colony for the first time the lion's share of the profits of a diamond mine. The truth is that, especially in the Transvaal, the skilled workman is a bit of a capitalist himself, and the real dividing-line is between those in each class who have the quickening touch of public spirit and those who have not. Milner simply enlisted that spirit where he found it, disregarding class.
There are working men, no doubt, especially while hard times last, who fondly recall piping times under Kruger, and wish they could have them back, 'grievances and all.' Mr. Burt cites one such with a complaisance which I find puzzling. The fatted helot is not the type of artisan citizen which Mr. Burt affects at home. He should have compared notes about that man with some keen democratic politician of Transvaal domicile. Would that he could have done so with his fellow Tynesider and Radical, the late C. R. Dodd! Light would then have been thrown upon that breach between home and colonial Liberals which Lord Rosebery lately deplored. So, too, there are certain capitalists who sigh for the back-stairs of the old regime. Those whom one sees quoted by English Liberals with seeming approval on such matters as war contribution are mostly of this school. Those of us who know their record, and remember with what groaning winches, if
