CHAPTER XVI

SOME REFLECTIONS AND A MORAL-KRUGER,

CHAMBERLAIN, ROBINSON, AND DE WET

I FEEL I cannot conclude this book without devoting a little attention to what I may properly term personal characteristics of some of the men who have come prominently before the public in connection with recent events in the Transvaal.

First and foremost there looms large the imposing figure of the great President of the South African Republic. A man of the time truly this. A man who has writ his name large on history, who has had great opportunities and has risen to them. A man who has shown magnanimity and mercy, clemency and justice. A man of deep religious feeling, honesty of purpose, singleness of life, thoroughness of character. A man moulded by nature for the position he fills and adorns. Not a drawing-room courtier, certainly, not an orator, not a crafty diplomatist, but a man, a real live man, possessing all the qualities and qualifications that his position requires, and free from all those vices and defects which are too often found in

men holding such positions, or engendered or developed by the office. In the short space of two months, President Kruger has lived down, even in England, an amount of prejudice, not to say hatred, enormous in its extent. It is no exaggeration to say that, towards the latter part of 1895 and in the beginning of 1896, he was the best hated man in this country; but there has been a sudden revulsion of feeling, and wherever one now goes, and events of the day are the subject of conversation, we may hear the remark that “Kruger is not such a bad fellow, after all." The fact is, that the English people, though very often prejudiced, though liable to be led away for the time by the Press, are ultimately just in their judgments. People here in England have begun to reason thus: "This man, the head of a State, has his territory invaded by an armed force; a treasonable society is in full swing in the largest town in the State arming foreigners with a view of obtaining by force certain reforms which are, rightly or wrongly, demanded. The invading force is defeated, the treasonable movement collapses, Kruger has all these men in the hollow of his hand and he does not harm a hair of their heads. What ruler of any other country of the would would have done likewise? Can one imagine any other Government acting in this apparently philanthropic manner? Clearly this Kruger is not the autocratic, overbearing, cruel master he has been portrayed in certain newspapers," I myself feel a peculiar satisfaction in this revulsion of public opinion, and I think, and I say it with all

modesty, I may justly claim that my efforts in the Press and elsewhere have to some extent brought about this agreeable state of things. When President Kruger visits England, and I believe there is no doubt that he will visit England, I anticipate that he will receive a reception, not only friendly, but cordial and enthusiastic, and that he will return to South Africa imbued with the idea that the British public are, above all things, just and generous. I sincerely hope that nothing will interfere-and the only thing that now can interfere will be some muddling at the Colonial Office-to prevent President Kruger coming to England, because I believe such an event will tend more than anything else to promote those feelings of friendship and goodwill which it is most important should prevail between the South African Republic and the Paramount Power in South Africa.

Another man who has loomed large in the public gaze in connection with the Transvaal Question is the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., Secretary of State for the Colonies. Now, I am not about to add to the volume of fulsome adulation of which Mr Chamberlain has been the recipient during the past few weeks, and of which he must be heartily tired. Mr Chamberlain simply did his duty in connection with Dr Jameson's raid, nothing more nor less, and I rather fail to see why the fact of a man having done his duty should necessitate his being bespattered with fulsome praise. There are thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of poor, obscure souls in this England who every day of their lives conscientiously and