Pancras Vestryman
without a contest in 1897, an event rather of literary[30] than
political significance, and in 1898 he had a serious illness which kept
him out of the movement for nearly two years; whilst at the end of 1899
Sydney Olivier was appointed Colonial Secretary of Jamaica, and spent
most of the next fourteen years in the West Indies, latterly as Governor
of Jamaica, until 1913, when he was recalled to London to be the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture.
* * * * *
External events put an end to this period of quiescence, and the
Society, which was often derisively regarded as expert in the politics
of the parish pump, an exponent of "gas and water Socialism," was forced
to consider its attitude towards the problems of Imperialism.
War was declared by President Kruger for the South African Republic on
October 11th, 1899. Up to this point the whole of the Society, with very
few exceptions, had scouted the idea of war. "The grievances alleged,
though some of them were real enough, were ludicrously unimportant in
comparison with our cognate home grievances. Nobody in his senses would
have contemplated a war on their account,"[31] But when war had come the
situation was entirely altered. The majority of the Society recognised
that the British Empire had to win the war, and that no other conclusion
to it was possible.
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