If the Boers attacked, the mines would close, the blacks would swarm out and get drunk; riot and conflagration and the Boers together might lose the Reformers more in a day, in money, blood, and suffering, than the desired political relief could compensate in ten years if they won the fight and secured the reforms.
It is May, 1897, now; a year has gone by, and the confusions of that day have been to a considerable degree cleared away.

Mr.Cecil Rhodes, Dr.
Jameson, and others responsible for the Raid, have testified before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in London, and so have Mr.Lionel Phillips and other Johannesburg Reformers, monthly-nurses of the Revolution which was born dead.

These testimonies have thrown light.
Three books have added much to this light: "South Africa As It Is," by Mr.Statham, an able writer partial to the Boers; "The Story of an African Crisis," by Mr.Garrett, a brilliant writer partial to Rhodes; and "A Woman's Part in a Revolution," by Mrs.
John Hays Hammond, a vigorous and vivid diarist, partial to the Reformers.

By liquifying the evidence of the prejudiced books and of the prejudiced parliamentary witnesses and stirring the whole together and pouring it into my own (prejudiced) moulds, I have got at the truth of that puzzling South African situation, which is this: 1.

The capitalists and other chief men of Johannesburg were fretting under various political and financial burdens imposed by the State (the South African Republic, sometimes called "the Transvaal") and desired to procure by peaceful means a modification of the laws.
2.