was issued with the famous Selborne Federation Dispatch of 7 January 1907 and
published as an Imperial Blue Book (Cmd. 3564 of 1907). It was republished, with an
introduction by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, by Oxford University Press in 1925.
The Central Committee of the Closer Union Societies (which was nothing but the
Kindergarten) wrote a complete and detailed account of the political institutions of the
various areas concerned. This was called
anonymously in five parts, and revised later in two quarto volumes. A copy was sent to
every delegate to the National Convention in Durban in 1908, along with another
anonymous work (edited by B. K. Long), called
work contained copies of the five chief federal constitutions of the world (United States,
Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia). Curtis was also the chief author of the
draft of projected constitution presented by the Transvaal delegation to the National
Convention. This draft, with modifications, became the Constitution of the Union of
South Africa in 1910. The Transvaal delegation, alone of the various delegations, lived
together in one house and had a body of expert advisers; both of these circumstances
were due to the Kindergarten.
After the convention accepted the Union Constitution, it was necessary to have it
accepted by the Imperial Parliament and the various states of South Africa. In both of
these tasks the Kindergarten played an important role, in England through their control of
Africa by the economic pressure of the Transvaal. In Natal, the only state which
submitted the question to a referendum, the Kindergarten put on an intensive propaganda
drive, financed with money from the Transvaal. Of this struggle in Natal, Brand, with his
usual secrecy on all matters dealing with the Kindergarten, merely says: "A referendum
was therefore taken—contrary to general expectation, it revealed an overwhelming
majority for union, a good testimony to the sound sense of the people of the colony."(9)
Brand, as secretary to the Transvaal delegation to the Convention, knew more than this!
The same secrecy was maintained in regard to the whole convention. No record of its
proceedings was kept, but, according to Worsfold, its resolutions were drafted by Brand
and Duncan.
Throughout these activities, the Kindergarten received powerful support from a man
who by this time was a member of the Milner Group and later gained international fame,
chiefly because of this membership. This was Jan C. Smuts.
Smuts had studied in England, at Cambridge University and the Middle Temple. By
1895 he was a lawyer in Cape Town. His lack of success in this profession doubtless had
some influence in turning him into the devious opportunist he soon became, but
throughout his opportunism he clung to that ideal which he shared with Rhodes and
Milner—the ideal of a united South Africa. All his actions from this date onward—no
matter how much they may seem, viewed superficially, to lead in another direction—
were directed toward the end ultimately achieved: a United South Africa within the
British Empire—and, to him almost equally important, a United South Africa in which he
would be the dominant figure. Smuts and Milner differed chiefly on this last point, for if
Milner was "selfless," this was almost the last word which could be applied to Smuts.
Otherwise the two seemed very similar—similar in their desires for a united South Africa
and later a united British Empire, and extraordinarily similar in their cold austerity,
impersonal intellectualism, and driving discipline (applied to self even more than to
others). In spite of their similar goals for the Empire, Smuts and Milner were not close
friends. Perhaps such similar personalities could not be expected to find mutual
agreement, but the divergence probably rests, rather, on the one characteristic in their
personalities where they most obviously differed.
Smuts and Rhodes, on the other hand, got on together very well. As early as 1895, the
unsuccessful Cape Town lawyer was sent by the great imperialist to Kimberley to speak
in his defense. But after the Jameson Raid, Smuts became one of the most vociferous
critics of Rhodes and the British. These attacks gave Smuts a reputation as an
Anglophobe, which yielded considerable profits immediately. Going to the Transvaal
(where he added to his fame by uncompromising support of President Kruger), he was
raised, at the age of twenty-eight, to the post of State Attorney (1898). In this position,
and later as Colonial Secretary, he adopted tactics which led steadily to war (forcing the
Uitlanders to pay taxes while denying them the franchise, arresting Uitlander newspaper
editors like Monypenny, etc.). At the Bloemfontein Conference of 1899 between Kruger