He could not return to Kimberley; he did not care to go to Rhodesia; and in Cape Colony he was always restive.
At this period all kinds of discussions used to take place concerning the ultimate results of the war and the influence which it would have on the future development of affairs in the Transvaal.

The financiers began to realise that after the British flag had once been raised at Pretoria they would not have such a good time of it as they had hoped at first, and now, having done their best to hurry on the war, regretted it more than anybody else.

The fact was that everybody in South Africa, with the exception of the Boers themselves, who knew very well their own resources, had believed that the war would be over in three months, and that the Transvaal would be transferred into a Crown Colony where adventurers and gold-seekers would have a fine time.
Rhodes himself had more than once expressed his conviction that the destruction of the Boers would not take more than three months at the most, and this assurance was accepted as gospel by most of the financiers of Johannesburg.

An exception was Mr.F.Eckstein, the general manager and partner in the concern of Wernher, Beit & Co., and one of the ablest financiers in that city.

From the first he was quite pessimistic in regard to the length of time the war would take.
As the war dragged on without there seeming any chance of its being brought to a rapid conclusion, it became evident that England, after all the sacrifices which she was making, would never consent to leave the leaders of the movement--the ostensible object of which had been to grant to the Uitlanders certain privileges to which they had no right--as sole and absolute masters of the situation.