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The Psychology of Jingoism

influential British visitors. Not all these visitors sucked in their matter with so much avidity, and reproduced it with so much crudity of judgment as Canon Knox Little; but any reader who chooses to check the statement of the Canon by reference to the history of more sober and discreet Imperialists, will gain some understanding of the processes by which the opinions of influential visitors were moulded.

The enumeration of methods of influencing British opinion would be incomplete were I to ignore the direct and conscious work of politicians and their organizations. The South African League may be said to have come into existence in order to enforce and enlarge British power in South Africa; and when it was decided early in 1899 to precipitate a crisis, its emissaries were active both in South Africa and this country, ably seconding the efforts of Mr. Rhodes' press. The following passage in the report of a speech delivered at Capetown last January by Dr. Darley Hartley, a former President, deserves as much attention for its matter as for its English.

All present who carried their minds back over the three years during which the League had been in existence would find very little difficulty in tracing the present state of things in South Africa [which?] was largely due – one might