through the long slow influence of time, but causing no immediate anxiety or alarm.  Someday a grubbing historian may read the back files of South African newspapers and marvel that such warnings should have passed unheeded, but the fact is that the Transvaal Government and its sympathizers had become indifferent to warnings followed by no results and accustomed to prophecies unfulfilled.  To say that they were ’fiddling while Rome burned’ is to a great extent true of those of the South African Dutch who were sincerely desirous that the Transvaal Government should reform its ways and who were not consciously aiding in the republicanizing movement; but even of them it is not an adequate description,—­as the answers given to two questioners by the most prominent and one of the most prominent Bondsmen indicate.  Both of them had in private conversation on different occasions acknowledged the soundness of the Uitlander cause.  To the suggestion, ’Then why not say so publicly?’ the less important of the two replied, ’People would only say that I am climbing down and ratting on my party.’  And the more important of the two, answering a similar question, said, ’Yes, the Rev. S.J.  Du Toit did that.  He was the founder of the Bond; and to-day he is—­nothing!  If I did it, I should fall as he did.’  ‘Then,’ said his British friend, ’what is influence worth if it cannot be used for good?  Can there be said to be influence when it cannot be used at all?’ ‘No,’ was the reply, ’I have no influence as against the cry of race:  blood is thicker than water; and I have no influence at all with Kruger.’  The answer to this contained the crux of the question.  ’Indeed you have; but you have not the courage to exercise it.  The influence of advice has failed, dare you try the influence of repudiation?’ The answer was a shake of the head and ‘Blood is thicker than water.’  That is it!  The Piper pipes and the children follow.

It is too much to believe that the conference between the High Commissioner and President Kruger was a suggestion to which the latter had to be won over either by President Steyn or Mr. Hofmeyr.  It is, indeed, well-known that the idea of a meeting for the purpose of discussing matters at issue between the two Governments had been considered in Pretoria for some months before it actually took place.{51}

The news that, upon the invitation of President Steyn, the High Commissioner and President Kruger had agreed to meet at Bloemfontein, was received by the Uitlanders with relief; not hope, because it was believed that the President’s object was to get something, not to give something; but sheer relief, because, come what might, the position could never again be the same as it was before the conference.  Something must change; someone must yield; the unbearable strain must cease.  Sir Alfred Milner—­wise and just and strong—­commanded the entire confidence of the Uitlanders.  It was not hoped that he would succeed in effecting a settlement at such a meeting, because in the circumstances such an achievement was believed not to be humanly possible; but it was not feared that he would fail in his duty to his country and to his trust.