Mr.Eckstein and other leading people knew very well that sooner or later the Transvaal was bound to fall to England, and they would have felt quite content to wait quietly until this event had been accomplished as a matter of course, by the force of circumstances, without violence.

President Kruger was such an old man that one could, in a certain sense, discuss the consequences which his demise was bound to bring to South Africa.

There was no real necessity to hurry on events, nor would they have been hurried had it not been for the efforts of the Rhodesians, whose complaints had had more than anything else to do with the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, and all that followed upon that regrettable incident.

It was the Rhodesians, and not the big houses of the Rand, who were most eager for the war.
The exploitation of Rhodesia, the principal aim of which was the foundation of another Kimberley, had turned out to be a disappointment in that respect, and there remained nothing but making the best of it, particularly as countless companies had been formed all with a distinctly mineral character to their prospectuses.

Now, if the Rand, with all its wealth and its still unexplored treasures, became an appanage of Kimberley, it would be relatively easy to effect an amalgamation between gold and diamond mines, which existed there, and the Rhodesian companies.
Under these conditions it was but natural that despite an intelligent comprehension of the situation, Sir Alfred Milner was nevertheless unable to push forward his own plans in regard to the Transvaal and its aged President, Mr.Kruger.
The misfortune of the whole situation, as I have already pointed out, was that the men who had attempted to play a high game of politics, in reality understood very little about them, and that instead of thinking of the interests of the Empire to which they professed themselves to be so deeply attached, they thought in terms of their personal outlook.