obligations--narrates how in 1896 he was approached by Mr. D.P.
Graaff, formerly a member of the Cape Legislative Council and a
very prominent Afrikander Bondsman, with the proposition that Great
Britain should be pushed out of South Africa. The same politician
made the same proposal to Mr. Beit. Compare with this the following
statement of Mr. Theodore Schreiner, the brother of the Prime
Minister of the Cape:

'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in
Bloemfontein between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly
after the retrocession of the Transvaal, and when he was busy
establishing the Afrikander Bond. It must be patent to every one
that at that time, at all events, England and its Government had no
intention of taking away the independence of the Transvaal, for she
had just "magnanimously" granted the same; no intention of making
war on the republics, for she had just made peace; no intention to
seize the Rand gold fields, for they were not yet discovered. At
that time, then, I met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to get me to
become a member of his Afrikander Bond, but, after studying its
constitution and programme, I refused to do so, whereupon the
following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has
been indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since:

'REITZ: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to
take an interest in political matters not a good one?

'MYSELF: Yes, it is; but I seem to see plainly here between the
lines of this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.

'REITZ: What?