If the records set out in the preceding pages leave any impression upon the mind, it is one that must produce a sense of amazement, almost exasperation, at the thought of the many mistakes and disasters that might have been avoided, if only greater weight had been attached to the advice tendered to the British Government by its local representative in South Africa. And with this sense of amazement a generous mind will associate inevitably a feeling of regret for the injustice unwittingly, but none the less irreparably, inflicted upon loyal and capable servants of the Crown--an injustice so notorious that it has made South Africa the "grave of reputations." Apart from the pre-eminence with which the period of Lord Milner's administration is invested by the occurrence within it of a military conflict of unparalleled magnitude, Lord Milner stands out in the annals of South Africa as the first High Commissioner whose knowledge of South African conditions was allowed to inspire the policy of the Home Government, and who himself was recognised by the Government and people of Great Britain as voicing the convictions and aspirations of all loyal subjects of the Crown in that province of the empire. The state of affairs with which Lord Milner was called upon to deal was in its essence the situation sketched by Frere twenty years before in the memorable forecast to which reference has been made. But the working of the forces indicated by Frere as destined, if unchecked, to drive England one day to a life-and-death struggle for her supremacy in South Africa, had been complicated by an event which cannot be omitted altogether from a chapter intended, like a Euripidean prologue, to prepare the mind of the spectator for the proper understanding of the characters and action of the drama. This event is the Jameson Raid. [Sidenote: The Jameson raid.] [Sidenote: Rhodes.]