Mr. Hofmeyr, the nominal leader of the Bund in Cape Colony, might at almost any time during recent years have become Premier and, through his reputation for moderate views, might, perhaps, have done good service to the cause of compromise and conciliation. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether he could have succeeded in this respect when Mr. Rhodes, between 1890 and 1895, failed. The latter did everything that man could do to hold the racial elements together and checkmate the Kruger influence, and it seems probable that Hofmeyr could not in the end have resisted the power of Pretoria over the Afrikanders any more effectively than did Mr. W. P. Schreiner in the two years preceding the outbreak of war. His Ministry would have been a Bund Government just as that of Schreiner is to-day; his principal co-workers would have been instruments of Kruger in much the same degree as members of the Schreiner Cabinet have been; and his participation in the general Afrikander movement, or conspiracy, or whatever it may be called, would have been more dangerous than that of Mr. Schreiner because his loyalty has always been asserted, and would have been used, consciously or unconsciously as a cloak for the action of his colleagues and friends. [Sidenote: Kruger's Auspicious Opportunity] In 1898, however, Mr. Schreiner took office; the Bund was triumphant at the polls in Cape Colony and in Parliament; and had a weak Government or vacillating Colonial Secretary been in power in London, Mr. Kruger's day would have indeed come. He undoubtedly built upon this latter possibility and upon his personal experiences of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Kimberley and Lord Derby. To demand, even in the days of Transvaal weakness, had been to receive, and now, with the Uitlander population under the heels of an ironclad law and of enactments allowing them less liberty than was given the Kaffir; with great guns guarding Pretoria and commanding Johannesburg--coupled with the consciousness of other and more extensive military preparations; with the policy of the Imperial Government hampered by the rash aggressiveness of the Jameson Raid; with the Orange Free State in close defensive and offensive alliance and its President a mere tool in his own hands; with clever advisers and unscrupulous helpers such as Reitz and Leyds; with the certainty of European sympathy, the expectation of American support and the hope of active interposition on the part of France, or Russia, or Germany; with the Cape Colonial Government in tacit sympathy with his aims and in occasional active support of his policy; with the assurance of an extensive support from the Boers of the Colony itself; it is not surprising that President Kruger entered the lists at the Bloemfontein Conference with great confidence, and ultimately faced the might of Britain with assurance that the weakness of a British Ministry, the power of a European combination, the