One of the principal, perhaps indeed the most important of these, is that, though brought about by material ambitions of certain people, it ended by being fought against these very same people, and that its conclusion eliminated them from public life instead of adding to their influence and their power.

The result is certainly a strange and an interesting one, but it is easily explained if one takes into account the fact that once England as a nation--and not as _the_ nation to which belonged the handful of adventurers through whose intrigues the war was brought about--entered into the possession of the Transvaal and organised the long-talked-of Union of South Africa, the country started a normal existence free from the unhealthy symptoms which had hindered its progress.

It became a useful member of the vast British Empire, as well as a prosperous country enjoying a good government, and launched itself upon a career it could never have entered upon but for the war.

Destructive as it was, the Boer campaign was not a war of annihilation.

On the contrary, without it it would have been impossible for the vast South African territories to become federated into a Union of its own and at the same time to take her place as a member of another Empire from which it derived its prosperity and its welfare.