The Boers—the Dutch—are the rulers in S. Africa. We had to give them back their land to rule—for us! And more—for whereas they had ruled the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, they were given in addition Cape Colony and Natal to rule. Had we not done this, we should now have been driven from S. Africa. C.B. was wise enough to see that safety lay in giving them autonomy. Had we not done so, Botha and the others would have gone back to their farms, and waited for the moment—this moment—when all our energies were wanted elsewhere, to drive us from S. Africa. We didn't win the Boer War!

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The Boers—the Dutch—are the rulers in S. Africa. We had to give them back their land to rule—for us! And more—for whereas they had ruled the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, they were given in addition Cape Colony and Natal to rule. Had we not done this, we should now have been driven from S. Africa. C.B. was wise enough to see that safety lay in giving them autonomy. Had we not done so, Botha and the others would have gone back to their farms, and waited for the moment—this moment—when all our energies were wanted elsewhere, to drive us from S. Africa. We didn't win the Boer War!" in the context of "David Lloyd George's remarks to Frances Stevenson, as recorded in Stevenson's diary (25 January 1915), quoted in Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George: A Diary, ed. A. J. P. Taylor (1971), p. 25" to mean that wisdom is timeless.