The great blot on this necessary and natural expansion is the record (from time to time) of the displacement of native tribes by force and violence, when their rights seemed to interfere with the interests of the white man.  Of such action we have had to repent in the past, and we repent more deeply than ever now when our responsibilities towards natives races have been brought with startling clearness before those among us who have been led to look back and to search deeply into the meanings of the present great “history-making war.”

The personality of Paul Kruger stands out mournfully at this moment on the page of history.  Mr. FitzPatrick wrote of him in 1896, as follows:—­

“L’Etat c’est moi, is almost as true of the old Dopper President as it was of its originator; for in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the Boer as a party, the President has his way as completely as any anointed autocrat.  To anyone who has studied the Boers and their ways and policy ... it must be clear that President Kruger does more than represent the opinion of the people and execute their policy:  he moulds them in the form he wills.  By the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his indomitable will, he has made the Boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the Afrikander nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract and assimilate all their kindred in South Africa, and thus to realize the dream of a Dutch Republic from the Zambesi to Cape Town.

“In the history of South Africa the figure of the grim old President will loom large and striking,—­picturesque as the figure of one who, by his character and will, made and held his people; magnificent as one who, in the face of the blackest fortune, never wavered from his aim or faltered in his effort ... and it maybe, pathetic too, as one whose limitations were great, one whose training and associations,—­whose very successes had narrowed and embittered and hardened him;—­as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the age pronounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy State.

“To an English nobleman, who in the course of an interview remarked, ’my father was a Minister (of the Queen),’ the Dutchman answered, ’and my father was a shepherd!’ It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis.  He, too, was a shepherd,—­a peasant.  It may be that he knew what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realized that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread,