desperate fate to live under a Government which respects their worldly goods, their language, and their religion, and has done a vast deal more for them besides than they ever really expected. Further than this it is impossible to go. But at least there is nothing to dissipate the hope that the two races, living for the first time on terms of perfect equality, will eventually join hands in a strong sentiment of affection and pride for South Africa.
III.
I turn from the relations of the two white races to the relations of the five South African States. Here at any rate we have an obvious unmistakable advantage as a result of the war. The disappearance of the Dutch Republics means the disappearance of an official nucleus for anti-British intrigue. The administration of the two central States is for the first time in friendly hands. The aims and ambitions of all the States are—broadly speaking—in harmony. President Kruger did a good deal in the closing years of his reign—in his conduct, for instance, of the franchise negotiations—to damage his reputation as an astute diplomatist. And therefore people are apt to forget the extraordinary skill which he had long displayed in setting his neighbours by the ears—in playing off the Cape against Natal, and Portuguese interests against both. No doubt the possibilities of official discord still exist to a very obvious degree; but at least it is half the battle to be rid of the desire for discord as such.
At the same time it is just worth remembering, before finally taking leave of the racial question, that that unofficial organization which has taken the place of the Republics as the nucleus for anti-British effort has still a certain predisposition to keep the various British Governments at loggerheads. The Boer population takes very little personal interest in the questions at issue between the States. They are questions in the main of rival points and railway rates and tariffs, questions, that
