jected Independent Dutch Republic should seek alliance, since it could not stand alone, and that Germany, as an ironfisted foe to Republican institutions, should be held aloof, Mr. Hofmeyr was very naturally alarmed at the discovery of Mr. Kruger's intrigues, first with Bismarck and later with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Alarm deepened into resentment, and the rift in the Afrikander National Party began, when through the agency of Karl Borckenhagen (to whom in such dangerous matters the duty was assigned of making the written word unnecessary), pressure was put on him and the Bond to fall in with Mr. Kruger's plans.

To this cause of difference a second was added when, in 1890, on the accession of Mr. Rhodes to the Premiership of the Cape Colony, Mr. Hofmeyr lent the support of the Afrikander Bond to that northward expansion which in 1884 he had conspired with the Transvaal to prevent. With the details of the eventful bargain between the leader of the Afrikander Bond and the leader of the Imperialists we are not now concerned. It will be sufficient to say that in return for his support to certain domestic measures dear to the Cape Dutch, and to certain other measures in which Mr. Hofmeyr saw a means of securing and enlarging his own parliamentary ascendency, Mr. Rhodes procured the co-operation of the Afrikander party in the task of opening up the vast regions in the north that now bear his name. Doubtless Mr. Hofmeyr was rendered all the more disposed to fall in with Mr. Rhodes's proposals by the thought that in the projected development of her Hinterland' the Cape Colony might regain the hegemony of the South African family of States, threatened by the new-found wealth of the Transvaal; but the only point in the transaction of present interest to us is that, as the result of it, Mr. Kruger was compelled to witness the spectacle of his old allies committed to an enterprise which must rob the Transvaal of its cherished possibilities of expansion beyond the Limpopo. His resentment was profound and practical. Cape Afrikanders were immediately treated as Uitlanders; their places in the service of the Transvaal Government were taken away and given to Hollanders and Germans; their products-wine, brandy, fruit -were as far as possible barred out; and, generally, every opportunity of doing the Cape Colony an ill turn was promptly seized. President Kruger's purpose in these reprisals was to convince his compatriots at the Cape that they could enjoy Mr. Rhodes's good will only at the sacrifice of his own. These reprisals, and the estrangement out of which they sprang, provoked much correspondence between the Cape Dutch and

their kinsmen beyond the Vaal-correspondence of which the following telegram, dated August 14th, 1895, from Mr. Hofmeyr to President Kruger, is an instructive specimen :—

Telegrams in Cape Town papers, re the resolution passed by Volksraad with regard to increased duty on imported liquor, cause great anxiety amongst Transvaal's friends down here, who have, during the late complications, done their utmost in the interest of their fellow-Afrikanders north of the Vaal. They fear that if increased duties are placed upon Colonial liquor it will be taken advantage of by your and our enemies to cause estrangement between your people and our people, to the great injury of both. I pray you watch against all steps which might injure your friends, the Colonial wine-farmers. Answer me, s.v.p., to calm their minds.

Kindly lay this before your Executive.' (From 'Ons Land.') But Mr. Kruger's unkindnesses were not in themselves sufficient to undermine Mr. Hofmeyr's position. It was only when Mr. Rhodes, their dear-bought ally, forgetful, as it seemed, of his pledge of a free hand for Bond policy within the Cape Colony, lent åll his weight to a measure for the compulsory eradication of scab'-a measure detested by the entire Bond, with the exception of its urban members, innocent of sheep-that they turned at last on their leader. They notified Mr. Hofmeyr of their dissatisfaction with a policy which had issued in the alienation of the Transvaal and the threatened imposition of an Act to compel them to 'dip' their sheep; and he, bowing low before the blast, resigned his seat in the Legislative Assembly for Stellenbosch, resigned also the leadership of the Bond, and, with much ostentation of ill health, retired into private life. Mr. Hofmeyr, in fact, had come to see that in his alliance with Mr. Rhodes he had over-reached himself, and that, without having in any wise served the interests of Afrikanderdom, he and his party had contributed substantially to extend and perpetuate the authority of the 'Imperial factor,' which it was of the very essence of their own policy to oust from South Africa. Rhodesia had been made hopelessly British, and, as was shown in an article, The Years Before the Raid,' in our last issue, Sir Henry Loch had put it beyond doubt that British paramountcy was a living and active force in South African affairs. For these obstructions to their ambitions the Afrikander National Party held Mr. Hofmeyr mainly accountable, in that the Parliamentary support which he had given the Rhodes Ministry had alone made them possible; and their resentment, to which Mr. Borckenhagen in his journal, 'De Express,' gave utterance, was loud and deep.

It was in the earlier days of 1895 that all this took place,

Then came the Jameson Raid, and with it Mr. Hofmeyr's opportunity of rehabilitating himself in the eyes of Mr. Kruger and Afrikanderdom. To show how effectually he seized the opportunity would be to tell the whole story of the public life of the Cape Colony since the beginning of 1896. Except a few members who clung to Mr. Rhodes, the Afrikander Bond gave Mr. Hofmeyr the welcome of the sinner that repenteth. He closed up their ranks; organised the Anglophobia which the Raid had fanned to a passion; created the Committee of Vigilance, and by means of it has ever since exercised an authority over Bond and Parliament greater even than that which he enjoyed in 1890 when he placed it at the service of Mr. Rhodes. Nor was this reunion limited to the Cape section of the Afrikander National Party. The breach between it and the Republican section over the question of foreign alliances was healed; and even the scars of the wound disappeared when the other day Mr. Kruger discovered that, in trusting to Germany in the contingency of which he had spoken five years before on the occasion of the Kaiser's birthday, he was leaning upon a broken reed. How Mr. Hofmeyr has used his regained ascendency in Afrikanderdom we may infer from those acts and omissions of the Cape Ministry, and of its masters, the Bond, at which we have already glanced. And, as he has used his ascendency, so will he continue to use it; for in him there is but a shadow of turning-just that shadow which marks all statesmen gifted with a sense of timeliness.

Though Mauser and Krupp are likely to fail, the Afrikander cause may yet triumph by dint of Afrikander statecraft. The conditions that govern the allocation of Parliamentary power are mostly in its favour. Thus, in the Cape Colony, thanks mainly to an inequitable distribution of Parliamentary representation, the Dutch, though numbering barely forty per cent. of the total electorate, have a substantial majority in the Legislative Assembly; and it is difficult to say how this state of things is to be remedied. In the Orange Free State, where the Dutch constitute nine elevenths of the population, Parliamentary power, when Parliamentary government is reinstituted, must necessarily and rightly fall to them. On the other hand, Natal and Rhodesia are securely British. The unknown quantity is the Transvaal. What will happen here in the Parliamentary arena, when, the period of military occupation having passed, the Transvaal embarks on its career as a selfgoverning British Colony? For Parliamentary purposes the Dutch will be in a permanent minority, but will the non-Dutch section of the population remain politically homogeneous?

Hardly. The world-wide strife of capital and labour must presently extend to the Transvaal also; and then the Dutch minority, being equally indifferent to the particular aims of both, will naturally sell its Parliamentary support to the one of the two that will in return pledge the larger measure of support to Afrikander policy. Afrikander statecraft then need not despair. For unless our own statecraft should be able to devise a remedy, Mr. Hofmeyr and his coadjutors may reckon on the Parliamentary control of two, and perhaps three, of the five future Governments of South Africa.

The other essential to the restoration of the Dominion of Afrikanderdom' is the segregation of the Dutch element; and to this end their leaders will be quick to turn to account any flaws in the settlement and any blunders on the part of the Imperial officers charged with its administration, transmuting them into the 'wrongs of a martyr race.' The conservation of the racial integrity of the South African Dutch as the indispensable basis of an Independent Dutch South Africa is, as we have seen, the prime purpose of the Afrikander Bond; and in nothing has Mr. Hofmeyr displayed so much astuteness as in his practical recognition of the value of grievances' as an aid to this conservation. Though himself cultivated and even scholarly, one of his earliest undertakings was to stir up among his compatriots a sense of wrong done them as a race in the non-recognition of their debased patois, the taal.' He used all the powers of the Afrikander Bond to secure the official equality of the 'taal' with English; and there now stands in the public gardens of Burghersdorp—a rebel centre a marble statue emblematic of the taal,' with this inscription on the pedestal :'Erkend is nu der Moedertaal

In Raad, Kantoor, en Schoollokaal.'

How much survives of the spirit of which the statue and the rebellion at Burghersdorp are equally the expression, and to what length it is prepared to go, we may expect to learn presently, when the Cape Parliament and the proposed Congress of the Afrikander Bond assemble, and when the trial of the rebels has been held. We may then return to the subject.

ART. XIII. THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA. II.

THE HE first period of the war in South Africa ended in the middle of December with the unsuccessful attempt of the British force in Natal to pass the Tugela at Colenso. The close of the second period is marked by the British occupation of Bloemfontein in the middle of March. We dealt in January with the former period, and propose now to attempt a general survey of the course of events between the middle of December and the middle of March.

The conditions under which our sketch is undertaken prescribe certain limitations in the objects at which it can aim. The despatches of the British generals, giving their deliberate account of the actions which they have directed, are not yet published; the text of the orders which they have issued from time to time is not yet accessible; the composition and distribution of their forces are still, to observers at home, at least partly, matters of conjecture; the minute topography of most of the battle-fields, without which no full insight into the tactical conditions is possible, has yet to be ascertained and recorded. Of the composition and distribution of the Boer forces and the intentions of their commanders no trustworthy account exists. We are compelled to rely, first, on those official telegrams from the British generals which it has been thought expedient to publish, and in which, therefore, no information is given which it would have been at the time imprudent to communicate to the enemy; and, secondly, on the telegrams and letters of the press correspondents, written and transmitted under the supervision of the military censorship, and therefore in many cases restricted, both as regards their substance and their form. The survey of a war based upon such materials will resemble rather the rough experimental map of a region which the mapmaker cannot enter, and in regard to which he has to rely upon the reports of travellers, than the finished and accurate product of a regular and scientific survey. Yet even the first rough sketch of an unsurveyed country may be useful.

We know the dates, the general nature, and the results of the principal engagements which furnish the skeleton or outline of the campaign, and we may, therefore, safely make such deductions as can be drawn from the general scope of the operations. But we must avoid such inferences as depend upon an intimate knowledge of local conditions or of the motives governing the decisions of commanders, except in the special cases where the necessary facts have been the subject of authentic record,