CHAPTER XII.
"CAPITALIST INTRIGUES" AND THE WAR.[17] 1 .-- _A War of Capitalists._ "It is a war of capitalists against a set of poor Boers who have no sort of interest in the dispute!" Such is the general cry.
Let us look at the facts.
The other day, anent the attempt upon the Prince of Wales, I referred to the anarchist and socialistic attacks of certain Pro-Boer and Anglophobe journals on capitalists, financiers, and the wealthy "metal-hearted mine-owners," as Dr.Kuyper calls them.

I reminded my readers that Professor Bryce himself treats as absurd the tale that the aim of the Jameson Raid, as stated by those papers, was the conquest of the Transvaal for Rhodesia.

I shall now show by documentary evidence that the war did not break out through any action on the part of gold-mine proprietors.

In the first place, the greater number of these proprietors reside in Europe; and as much in France, Germany and Belgium, as in England.

Their representatives in the Transvaal may hold more or less important interests in those mines, but they are imbued with a full sense of their responsibilities.
Now, commercial men never seek to bring about a political crisis unnecessarily; they invariably endeavour to avoid one.