are tenable at universities or institutions of university rank. Some of the senior scholars are studying at Oxford, Cambridge, and London Colleges; others at technical institutes, such as the Central Technical College; others at the Durham College of Science. The scholarships give a payment of £60 a year for three years, and also cover ordinary tuition fees. Only five are awarded each year. "In making grants to secondary schools, the Board does not proceed upon hard and fast lines, but deals with each case on its merits. In three points, the Board's course of action is limited by statute. In the first place, it may make no grants to any schools conducted for private profit; in the second place, the Board is required by statute to place representatives on the governing bodies of all schools which it aids; thirdly, the Board is bound to require that any school which receives its grants shall have a conscience clause. This requirement has never occasioned the smallest difficulty, and there has never been any necessity to raise the religious question. It is found that even strict Roman Catholic Schools would be prepared, if necessary, to conform to such a condition,. All schools which could legally be aided were originally invited to send in applications, and claims were received from the majority of public endowed schools. · Second grade' and 'middle' schools have almost without exception participated in the Board's grants; these schools have all been visited; full reports have been drawn up upon their constitution, educational, and financial status, and their special needs have been in each case separately investigated. In every case the Board requires certain conditions to be carried out. All schools are required in return for a grant to receive some of the Board's scholars, not exceeding a certain number, free of charge.” It will be extremely interesting to watch the passage of the Education Bill through the Committee stage of the House of Commons. When the Local Authority for London comes to be considered we shall know who are really anxious for the good education of the children of London, and who only desire to speculate in their own theories, at the cost of the general public. The class of educationalists and politicians to which Mr. Macnamara apparently belongs seems to think that the proof of the pudding is not the eating, but the cost. It is difficult to believe that the present House of Commons will allow them to carry their principles any further. CHARLES L. A. SKINNER. P.S.-This article was written before the production of the Government Bill, and is not, I think, inopportune in view of the fact that London is not mentioned in the Bill, as reserved for special treatment. C. L. A. S. * The Editor of this Review does not undertake to return any Manuscripts. THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. No. CCCLIV. NEW SERIES.-JUNE 1, 1896. THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT MR. RHODES AND THE TRANSVAAL. PRESIDENT KRUGER is astonished and pained at the attitude of Mr. Chamberlain and Her Majesty's Government towards Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the Chartered Company. As a punishment for the encouragement and aid Mr. Rhodes has given to the Reform Union. party at Johannesburg, President Kruger and his Hollander Government would like to see him removed from his position in Rhodesia, for with Mr. Rhodes at its head the Chartered Company is, in the opinion of the Boer Dictator, a source of danger to the whole of South Africa. There is a ring of sincerity in these utterances, and when we consider the situation, we can hardly blame the great Boer diplomatist if he uses his opportunity to the uttermost. For what is the situation? President Kruger has one, and only one, serious opponent in the struggle for the hegemony of South Africa-an opponent who is his match, if not his master. That opponent is Mr. Rhodes. As long ago as 1884 Mr. Rhodes, then a beginner in the game of high politics, checkmated the wily old President in a daring move of his scheme to overthrow British supremacy in South Africa. President Kruger's Transvaal Boers, supplied from some easily guessed source with equipment and munitions of war, had advanced into Bechuanaland, seized territory, and established Republics, which would no doubt have been in due time-as was the new Republic in Zululand—incorporated with the Transvaal. The Germans on their part had been allowed by the supineness of the British Government to seize Great Namaqualand and Damaraland. What was to prevent them from joining hands and shutting out British expansion from the rich and coveted regions of the hinterland to the north? This apparently inevitable result of England's indifference was prevented by Mr. Rhodes, whose first appearance in politics was an appropriate introduction to his after career. Mr. Rhodes, even while he was accomplishing a big commercial work at Kimberley, had dreamed of a United South Africa under the hegemony and ultimately the flag of Great Britain. To realise this at that time apparently impossible dream he had toiled for years on the Diamond Fields, and, having made a fortune, had thrown himself into political life-always with his eye on the vast regions to the north that now bear the name of Rhodesia. If Mr. Rhodes dreamed of a United British South Africa with the Cape for its centre, President Kruger dreamed of a United Dutch South Africa with the Transvaal for its head. The difference in their dreams was characteristic. In the United British South Africa of Mr. Rhodes there was to be room and representation under equal institutions for the Dutchman; in the United Dutch South Africa of President Kruger there was to be no representation and no equality or justice of any kind for the Englishman. The present situation is merely a further development of the struggle. Till the regrettable blunder of Dr. Jameson, Mr. Rhodes had scored heavily. He stopped President Kruger's move into Bechuanaland in 1884. He just succeeded in anticipating Germany and securing the hinterland to the north by the concession gained from Lobengula in 1888, and the creation of the Chartered Company in 1889. He was not, as the memory of Count Pfeil's Mission reminds us, a moment too soon. The Chartered Company, inspired by Mr. Rhodes' spirit of enlightened and far-sighted imperialism, actually subsidised the Imperial Government of Central Africa to the tune of £10,000 a year, secured the hinterland up to Lake Tanganyika, and would probably, but for Germany's pressure on the Home Government, have reached the sources of the Nile. The Chartered Company spent money freely in acquiring vast territories— in addition to the gold-bearing regions of Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Manica-which the Company could only in the distant future hope to find remunerative. Thus, although a business undertaking, the Company was before everything an instrument for the realisation of the Imperial idea in South and Central Africa; and the shareholders, confident in the extraordinary abilities of their managing director, Mr. Rhodes, and swayed by the almost" daimonic" influence of his great personality, were satisfied to postpone their profits to the distant future, conscious no doubt that one day they would have an ample reward for their waiting. While Mr. Rhodes was thus carrying all before him, President Kruger's Boers had not been idle. It was with the utmost difficulty that a raiding expedition into Rhodesia under Colonel Ferreira was stopped in 1891 at the Limpopo. It required all the influence of Mr. Rhodes with the Boers at the Paarl, as well as a demonstration of physical force under Dr. Jameson on the Limpopo, to stop the advance of the Dutchmen, furious at being out-generalled and inclined to make a last bid for the coveted empire of the north. President Kruger, however, was not yet beaten. The resolute old Dutchman-whose pluck and persistency no one can help admiring, even if one dislikes his Chadband diplomacy and his despotic Government-acquired through his emissaries a preponderating influence in Swaziland, and had almost secured Amatongaland and the much-desired seaboard, when he was stopped by Lord Loch, the High Commissioner, for whose action in annexing it, he, with very good reason, bears him a grudge, which we shall not be far wrong in assigning as the motive of the baseless accusation of Lord Loch's alleged design to invade the Transvaal in 1894. Nor is this all. Defeated to the north, the west, and the south, President Kruger could still consolidate his own power to the east, and -if he could not buy Delagoa Bay-could at any rate get hold of the railroad. Here alone he had a free hand, and here, if he were secretly in alliance with Germany, we would expect to find some signs of that alliance. And, sure enough, in the capital and the management of the Netherlands Railway, we again take up the clue. The capital was chiefly obtained from Germany and Holland, and not only was this the case, but a voting power altogether disproportionate, even to the large holdings of the Germans, was given to them, and Germany, with the Hollanders, to-day controls the Delagoa Bay Railroad. Within the Transvaal, too, President Kruger had not been idle. By deliberate retrogressive legislation he has made the Transvaal intolerable as a home for English settlers. Briefly, one-third of the population governs with an iron absolutism the remaining unrepresented two-thirds, and pays for its share only £160,000 out of the three millions of taxation. It may be said, without fear of exaggeration, that parallel conditions and a parallel case of misgovernment does not exist in the modern world. And now the Jameson episode, which is at worst a mere false step in the game which Mr. Rhodes, in the interest of a United British South Africa, has been playing with President Kruger in the interest of an Independent Dutch South Africa, has drawn the attention of the public from this the really important struggle, of which it is a momentary incident; but even at such a moment when the Transvaal Boers, and their backers in the British press, are eager to obscure the truth, there are signs that President Kruger is using his openings with all the energy and astuteness with which he is so largely endowed. In the Cape Parliament Mr. Merriman leads the attack on Mr. Rhodes and the Chartered Company, and clamours for their downfall. But Mr. Merriman represents the dream of an independent South Africa, and is consciously or unconsciously working for President Kruger. As long ago as in 1879 Sir Bartle Frere wrote thus of Mr. Merriman and his associates:-"They are sedulously swaying the loyal Dutch to swell the already considerable minority who are disloyal to the English crown here and in the Transvaal, and who prefer a Holland (i.e., remember, a German) Government or Protectorate in the Transvaal to an English one, and a Republic here to a Dominion under the British crown." Of course, Mr. Hofmeyr and the Afrikander Bond, in the interests of Dutch supremacy, and politicians like Sir J. Sivewright in their own, are working hard for the overthrow of Mr. Rhodes and its corsequence, the wrecking of the Chartered Company. And with them are joined the unmistakable voices of the German press, who scarcely conceal that they desire it as the removal of the chief obstacle in the path of Germany's advance. What says the Neueste Nachrichten, commenting on Mr. Chamberlain's statesmanlike speech, with its masterly grasp of the situation? "As regards South Africa, the just opinion has become prevalent in England of late that Germany may half-a-century hence be able to dispute that supremacy in South Africa. We therefore consider Mr. Chamberlain's policy, which aims by all means to secure British hegemony there, unwise—especially as such hegemony cannot be of long duration." But, in truth, while it is only recently that England's eyes have been opened, Germany's schemes of South African Empire through the Transvaal are no new thing. Many years ago Ernest von Weber drew the attention of Prince Bismarck and the German government to the magnificent possibilities of a German Empire in South Africa (Geographische Nachrichten, November, 1879): "Germany should try by the acquisition of Delagoa Bay, and the subsequent continual influx of German immigrants to the Transvaal, to secure the future dominion over this country, and so pave the way for a German African Empire of the future. A constant mass of German immigrants would gradually bring about a decided numerical preponderance of Germans over the Dutch population, and of itself, would by degrees effect the Germanization of the country in a peaceful manner." It has been assumed by some writers that President Kruger wants to forward the establishment of this German Empire. I do not think this is true. He does not want the Germans as masters; he merely wishes to use their assistance to enable him to establish an independent and United Dutch South Africa, the headship of which would be, in virtue of its wealth, with the Transvaal. But if President Kruger intends merely to use the Germans for his own ends, he leaves out of calculation the purpose of their alliance with him. So those ancient Britons miscalculated when they invited the Saxons to assist them and found too late their allies were their masters. Once Germany really got a footing she would not easily be got rid of. I do not blame President Kruger for trying to use the Germans; it is a move, but, as he may find, a dangerous move in the game of high politics he is so skilfully playing. Nor do I blame him for his hostility to Mr. Rhodes and his efforts to use the opportunity chance has given him to finally remove his most for |