During nineteen months of close observation and earnest, patient study, Lord Milner had grasped the situation in its completeness. What he saw was the demoralising effect of the spectacle of the Dutch ruling in the Cape Colony, and the British being tyrannised over in the Transvaal. Looking at South Africa as a whole, there was the fact, as indisputable as it was grotesque, that the British inhabitant was in a position of distinct inferiority to the Dutch; and this although the Cape and Natal were British colonies, while the Transvaal and the Free State were states subject to the authority of Great Britain as paramount Power. It was an impossible position. What Lord Milner urged upon the Imperial Government was the plain necessity of putting an end to an intolerable state of things which showed no capacity of righting itself; of pressing for justice to the British population of the Transvaal, with an absolute determination to obtain it. That such a policy might result in war, he knew; though neither he nor any one else realised, in the beginning of 1899, how near war actually was. The reliance of the Transvaal oligarchy on the Orange Free State, now bound to them by a formal alliance, and on the party of the Bond now in power at the Cape, might tempt them to resist even the most moderate demands. But Milner no doubt hoped that, if the British Government grasped the nettle firmly, and, while treating the Transvaal with all possible diplomatic courtesy, yet left no doubt whatever of its inflexible resolution, war might still be avoided. And in any case he felt that there was no option for the British Government but to take up the case of the Transvaal British, if a shred of respect for the power and name of Britain was to be preserved in South Africa. To embark on such a policy involved two dangers: the danger of war, and what in Milner's eyes was perhaps even greater, the danger that, by advancing just claims and then, letting ourselves be "bluffed" out of them, we might yet further lessen, and indeed totally destroy, what hold we still possessed upon the affection of the South African British or on the respect either of British or Dutch. In the light of past experience the second danger may well have seemed to him the greater of the two. But, with perils on both hands, he still felt that there was nothing for it but to go forward, to make one supreme effort to save a situation which was rapidly becoming a hopeless one. To have remained quiescent, with the forces which were gradually edging us out of the Sub-Continent growing on every side, could only have ended in the overthrow, or at best, the euthanasia of British dominion in South Africa. [Sidenote: His verdict.]