whom I had known socially, treated me with marked coldness. I was put down as a lover of the Boers, and a good many of the governing class disliked my attitude intensely. Man after man came out and bowed to Milner and Desborough in the pleasantest way, while contenting themselves with the merest nod to me. After lunch Milner went away and Desborough remarked to me that he had never known Milner so cautious: 'He didn't speak his mind or give us even an inkling of what he thought.' But I still believed that it was absolutely impossible for any English governor to be mad enough to make war with the Boers. 'After all,' I said to Lord Desborough, 'they are the real colonists in South Africa; except the gold hunters in Johannesburg and the diamond diggers in Kimberley, there are no Englishmen outside of Natal and the Cape. Will Milner go in for colonization and make for himself a deathless reputation, or will he proceed to quarrel with the Boers?' I knew at the bottom of my heart that Krueger would quarrel with any one: was indeed as combative as a bull-terrier.
Desborough could tell me nothing, except that he hoped for the best; still, he felt pretty sure that Milner would do what Chamberlain wished and always act in the best interests of England. We had to leave it at that.
In due time Milner went out to South Africa, and in my mind's eye I saw a meeting between him and President Krueger.
Milner tall, thin, with shaven, stony face, calm, direct regard and immaculate attire, the type of clean, intelligent efficiency; and Oom Paul, huddled in his armchair, looking like a sick gorilla with a fringe of thick, dirty hair under his heavy animal face, and small hot eyes glinting out under the bushy brows: the one man ignorant to the point of believing the world to be flat, the other intelligent and equipped with all the learning of the schools; and yet Krueger a great heart and great man, and Milner small and thin, proud of easily holding his emotions in leash to his reason. I dreaded the clash, for behind Milner was all the power of Britain, and yet Krueger was right: 'We Boers hold South Africa; you can't get rid of us; it is foolish to bully your bedfellow.'
Milner's first speech at Graaf Reinet taught me all that I wished to know about him, and more. The gist of his speech, I shall never forget, and I don't care to look out the words. 'The Boers,' he began, 'talk about their loyalty: I see no merit in this; I should think they would be loyal; they live in perfect peace, protected by the might of England, by her armies and navies; loyalty is a cheap price to pay for such complete security.' And so he went on, as if love were a thing to be bought and affection had a price. He had no conception whatever that the ordinary Boer never dreamed of any attack from the outside and would have laughed at the idea. The whole speech was a British challenge; still, at first nothing seemed to come of it, and I gradually settled down into the hope that no decisive issue would arise in my time.
I then went into one of the bad speculations of my life. I had got to know the two managers of the Savoy Hotel, Ellis and Cesari, very well indeed. They had made a success of the Savoy Hotel, and as soon as Cesari knew that I came to the French Riviera nearly every winter, he told me that he could make a marvelous success of a hotel at Monte Carlo. Next winter I came down and saw some hotels which were for sale. I didn't care for any of them, but when I spoke to the Princess of Monaco about it, she said she would be delighted to make any hotel I took a success so far as it lay in her power; and so I told Cesari that if he could find a good hotel as an investment I might take a hand in it, for I had already bought a good deal of property on the Cap d'Estel between Monte Carlo and Eze, and would be glad to develop a hotel or reserve on it.
The next winter, Cesari came out and soon told me that he had discovered a wonderful hotel. I went to Monte Carlo and saw it, didn't think much of it, but allowed myself to be persuaded. Cesari played me false, spent some thousands of pounds on the furnishings of the hotel, and some thousands of pounds more on wine, and the first season was fairly successful. Unluckily for me, about this time one of De Lara's brothers took an interest in a hotel in Monte Carlo, and Princess Alice went continually to that hotel and left me in the lurch, saying that her husband didn't wish her to come to my place. This only made me the more obstinate, and I determined to build a reserve; I got estimates for ten thousand pounds, set the men to work under Cesari's supervision, but as my bad luck would have it, the managership of a great hotel in Paris was offered to Cesari, and he left me practically without notice.
At the crucial moment I suddenly found myself called away to South Africa again. Milner was pushing matters to an extremity. I went out and saw to my horror that he had brought it almost to war. I returned to London, determined to see Chamberlain in order to try to save England from what I regarded as a catastrophe.
I wrote to Chamberlain and asked him to give me an hour of his time; and he was good enough to consent. He had altered in many ways since we parted over the policy of the Fortnightly Review. He had given up his belief in Free Trade and had come to see that a closer union of England and her colonies was only to be achieved by 'Fair Trade,' but as soon as I spoke of South Africa I found that he disagreed with me. The English Empire, he thought, must be founded on justice, strict justice; and Krueger and his Boers were unjust to the English settlers in Johannesburg, who had made the Transvaal the richest state in South Africa and yet were denied any rights of citizenship. I learned from him that he meant to force the Boers and Krueger to act justly. I tried to argue with him as I have argued in these pages, but nothing I could say had any effect. It all seemed sun-clear to him, whereas I knew that the use of force must lead to a South African war, which could have nothing but evil results. I did my very best; I went so far as to plead with bun that he might assure Krueger that England would guarantee the independence of the Transvaal on condition that he gave rights of citizenship to the Johannesburgers; but the more I pleaded, the more I felt that it was all in vain; Chamberlain's mind was made up. He had the best of the verbal argument, and power to boot; and Krueger would have to give in. I was perfectly certain that Krueger would never give in.
A little while later Lord Hardwicke came to me and wanted to know whether I would sell the Saturday Review. I said that I had no objection.
There were only about ten or twelve thousand shares which hadn't been taken up, besides the reserved shares-the few hundreds reserved for me. I asked him did he wish to get control in order to change the editorship, or was he willing to keep me on as editor. He said that he didn't think there was any wish to change me; so the end of it was that I sold him the ten or twelve thousand shares, which gave him, or rather Beit and Rhodes, the control of the Saturday Review.
Some months later, Hardwicke told me that 'they wanted to treat me fairly, but the policy of the Review in regard to South Africa must be modified to suit Chamberlain and Rhodes; would I do it, or would I re-sign?'
'It's a perfect impasse,' I said. 'You have got the voting power on everything except the vote for the editor and his assistants, and that is controlled by the five hundred shares which I possess and will not part with.'
A few weeks passed and he came to me and asked me if I would please put a price on those five hundred shares. I had already had thirty thousand pounds out of the Saturday Review for the five thousand I had put in it, and I had come to see that it was necessary for me to give all my time to writing. Still, I did not want to lose the Saturday, so I put the prohibitive price of ten thousand pounds on the five hundred reserved shares; to my astonishment he came to me a little later with his check for ten thousand pounds. I could do nothing but resign myself, which I did the more easily as it freed me to do my own work as a writer, and particularly the work on Shakespeare that I was anxious to complete.
I went away immediately to the South of France and began to work seriously at the 'Shakespeare.' It was nearly twenty years since I had discovered him in his works; in all these years I had read him again and again for various qualities to make sure that my version of him was the correct one. The work was entrancing to me, but difficult. I had continually to be on my guard not to ascribe any of my own failings to him; fortunately for me, the differences in character and development were so marked it was not impossible to picture him in almost every trait.
In this summer of '99 I got the first rough sketch of the book down on paper. In reading it through, I was delighted with the portrait, when suddenly the papers told me that Milner had met President Krueger in South Africa and had failed utterly to come to any understanding with him, and thereupon Milner had sent a telegram to Chamberlain, which filled me with fear: it was the special pleading of an advocate, an advocate, too, who cared nothing for the Boers or South African opinion. I saw at once that Milner had adopted Chamberlain's position from one end to the other.
Now for the first time I felt how wrong I had been to give up the Saturday Review; and, it began to dawn upon me, it was because Rhodes and Chamberlain were determined to push the matter to war that Beit and Hardwicke had bought control of the Saturday. Chamberlain began to send troops to South Africa, and then another voice, and a great one, made itself heard distinctly.
At this very time, the greatest living woman writer, Olive Schreiner, wrote an impassioned article (afterwards published under the title Words in Season), pleading for fair play to the Dutch and for a policy of conciliation, just as
