[1] He then proceeded to Cape Town (1903–07), where he wrote on the political and cultural scene in those formative years of the Union of South Africa.
Between 1909 and 1937, he was the paper's leader-writer and wrote also under the pseudonym Rip Van Winkle, earning himself the title of "keeper of the Tory conscience".
[4] During this time, he also wrote a series of amusing rhymed fables, several based on Aesop but reworked to fit contemporary politics.
In 1915, he published The Germans in England, 1066–1598, in which he claimed the Hanseatic League had tried to control Europe through a mixture of peaceful and violent means.
[6] He followed this with The unseen hand in English history (1917), which was designed "to show, by examining a segment of our history, from the reign of Elizabeth to the end of the eighteenth century, that England is most happy when the national interest and the government work together, and least happy when our government is controlled by the unseen hand of the foreigner".