had been divined by Lord Milner, and, therefore, immediately after the failure of the Conference, he had urged the Home Government to send reinforcements to South Africa sufficient to defend British territory from attack, and to check any incipient rebellion in the Cape Colony. The negotiations might, or might not, result in a peaceful settlement; but it was futile, nay more, it was dangerous, he said, for Great Britain to go on as though war were out of the question. [Footnote 156: The reader is referred to p. 5 in Chap. I. for the racial characteristics of the South African Dutch, and to the note on p. 48 in Chap. II. for the political significance of the word "Afrikander," as stated by Mr. S. J. du Toit.] [Sidenote: Lord Milner's position.] This was the view of the South African situation which Lord Milner laid before the Home Government in June. We have seen what was done by them in response to these representations. Some special service officers were sent out to organise locally the defences of the Cape Colony and Rhodesia. The Cape and Natal garrisons were strengthened by a few very inadequate reinforcements arriving in the course of the next two months. General Butler was not recalled until the latter part of August; his successor, General Forestier-Walker, did not arrive until September 6th. We have traced the causes which made it impossible for the Imperial Government, as they conceived, to do more than this; and when in due course we come to consider the broad phases of the war, the nature of the penalty which the British Army, and the British nation, had to pay for the partial paralysis of the Government will become sufficiently apparent. The man who suffered most by all this was Lord Milner. When he asked for military preparations, he was told that he could not have them. When he asked for the removal of a military adviser with whom he was supremely dissatisfied, he was told that he must put up with General Butler for a little longer. He put up with him for two months. His Colonial ministers, whose advice on many points he was bound to accept so long as he did not dismiss them, were men placed in office by the Dutch subjects of the Crown for the very purpose of frustrating, by constitutional means, the successful intervention in the Transvaal, by which alone, in his opinion, British supremacy could be made a reality.