THE

HE topic of the month in London has been the postponement of the Coronation, but of that so much has been said in the newspapers that there is no need to refer to the subject in these pages. What is of much more practical importance is to discuss the peace which has been arrived at in South Africa. The first thing to be noted about that peace is that once again the Boers have manifested the extraordinary magnanimity of character which they have displayed at every stage in the whole of the long-drawn-out contest. The frank and hearty manner in which they have accepted their defeat has compelled even the most grudging of their calumniators to admit that they possess to an extraordinary extent those manly virtues which our newspapers have for the most part so conspicuously failed to display.

THE FIRST EPIC OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

The long and glorious epic of the Boer struggle for independence has been magnificently crowned by the splendid manner in which they have consented to register for a time the failure of one of the gallantest struggles which any nation has ever fought for its right to exist. In the ending of the war, as throughout its course, all the honour and all the glory have fallen to their share, and richly they have deserved it. Even the most ignoble of the writers who have discredited the English name by the foul libels which they have been eager to disseminate concerning the burghers of South Africa have been constrained to add an unwilling tribute to the bravery, heroism, and high spirit of the men whose country we have devastated, and on whose women and children we have waged a merciless

war.

66 BROTHER BOER VINDICATED.

It is with a grim and sardonic satisfaction that I record the utterances of our Jingo press at the beginning and the close of the war. Three years ago they told us a single army corps was sufficient to crush the insolent burghers, who were constantly described in such terms of contumely that it was an absolute amazement to many of our soldiers when they first met them in battle to find that they were white men like themselves. In those days we sallied forth, in the insolence of our invincible might, lusting to avenge Majuba, and vindicate by a signal display of our military prowess the reality of our Imperial power. Since then we have sent in battle array to South Africa about 388,000 armed men. We have spent £200,000,000 sterling, and at last, after two years and seven months incessant fighting, by the unstinted employment of arson and starvation, among other methods of barbarism, we have succeeded not in extorting uncon

ditional surrender, but in compelling the remnant of the Boers to lay down their rifles on honourable terms which, if honestly fulfilled by us, will in a short time enable the defeated of yesterday to exercise the dominating influence in the government of South Africa. For very shame the foulest Thersites of our Jingo press cannot now forbear acknowledging the extraordinary qualities of our gallant foes. At the beginning of

the war I was scouted and flouted from one end of the kingdom to the other for daring to speak of my "brother Boer." To-day our "brother Boer" is the term adopted by the very journals which three years ago had no words of contempt foul enough to hurl at the men whose territories they lusted to

conquer.

THE REAL HEROES OF THE WAR.

Already, even with the Man in the Street, Botha, De Wet, and Delarey are recognised as the real heroes of the war. Of the four English generals whose names are familiar to the public, Buller is more or less under a cloud; the popularity of Lord Roberts did not survive the discovery that he had left all the hard work of the war to be accomplished by his successor; General French, although a brilliant cavalry soldier, can hardly be regarded as a popular hero; while the universal admiration which Lord Kitchener commands is due much more to the fact that he has made peace and won the liking of the Boers than to any brilliant military exploit that can be placed to his credit. If this is the case, even now, when the bitter memories of the war are still fresh upon us, is it too much to prophesy that before ten years are over hardly a schoolboy in the land but will not feel that the story of this war is one of the most humiliating in the long and chequered annals of the British Empire?

THE VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED.

Every day that passes brings into clearer relief the enormous disproportion between the army of subjugation and the gallant few who, with a bravery worthy of the days of Leonidas, defended their native hills against the hordes of the conqueror. The names of De Wet and Botha and Delarey will be remembered with the same admiration with which everyone now regards the Bruce of Bannockburn, Sir William Wallace, and George Washington. Who remembers the names of the unfortunate generals who in the Seven Years' War we sent out to crush the aspirations of our American colonists? Their names have perished in oblivion, while that of Washington, whom they failed to conquer, is hailed as that of the greatest Englishman of the eighteenth century. Throughout the world

there is already only one opinion as to those with whom lie the honours of the war. The Boers defended their liberty like heroes, and submitted to the inevitable like gentlemen.

OUR CRIME AGAINST NATIONALITY.

However satisfactory this may be to those who, in good report or ill, have enthusiastically supported the cause of justice and of nationality in the war which is now ended, it would be a great mistake to assume that all our difficulties are over in South Africa because the Boers have proved themselves to be the better men. They have extorted our respect, and

after a time the contrast between their conduct and ours will no doubt make us all heartily ashamed of ourselves. We are, however, so far from having arrived at that pitch of sanity that there are some who are not ashamed amongst us to speak of the "extraordinary generosity" of our terms, and to regard the ruthless extinction of two Republics as a signal illustration of British liberality. People who can believe that can, of course, believe anything. A policy which, in defiance of every recognised rule of civilised warfare, adopted devastation and incendiarism as a method of military coercion, and which has done to death more helpless women and children than all the Boers we killed under arms, will remain on record as an ineffaceable blot upon the annals not of our history only, but the history of humanity. No crumbs of charity reluctantly conceded at the last hour to the nationality whose independence and existence we have destroyed can count as a feather weight in the scale of impartial justice. The fact that we have overwhelmed the Boers by our armed forces gave us no moral right to destroy their independent existence as States. Those who hold the contrary may yet find reason to lament the bloodstained precedent of this annexation.

SUPPOSE IT WERE CANADA!

Of course it will be said that there is no hardship in being annexed against their will to an empire so liberal as that of Great Britain. It would be interesting to hear what those who use this argument would say if the United States were forcibly to annex Canada. The Americans would argue, and with reason, that the Republican form of government is more advanced and represents a higher type of civilisation than the "effete monarchy" of which the Canadian Dominion had been a vassal. The Canadians are by no means as distinct a nationality as the Dutch of South Africa. Is there one man, woman or child in Great Britain who would not indignantly repudiate these pleas of American annexationists as an inexcusable insult added to an unpardonable injury?

THE TERMS OF PEACE.

When we examine the terms of peace it is difficult not to feel some degree of amazement at the extraordinary ease with which Mr. Chamberlain succeeded in palming off upon a credulous public this legend of the exceeding generosity of the terms of peace.

The statement that a free grant of £3,000,000 had been made by the victors to the vanquished impressed the imagination of the unreflecting crowd, and as the mass of people never read Blue Books there is some difficulty in convincing them as to the real meaning of this £3,000,000 sterling. Anyone who takes the trouble, however, to compare the terms of peace provisionally agreed upon with the Boers at Vereeniging, and the draft finally insisted upon by Mr. Chamberlain, can see in a moment how this delusion arose. In the original arrangement the £3,000,000 free grant appears in its right position as the acknowledgment by the annexing State of the legal obligations entered into by the conquered State before the extinction of its independence.

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THE ALLEGED FREE GRANT."

In other words, the £3,000,000 free grant is neither more nor less than the acceptance of the floating debt of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which was incurred when they commandeered gold and stock in order to carry on the war. As we annexed these States we succeeded to their liabilities, and the so-called free grant in the original terms is set forth as being neither more nor less than this acceptance of the obligation to discharge the debts incurred by the States which we had annexed. But this did not suit Mr. Chamberlain, and, as the despatches show, he insisted upon altering the position of the clause relating to the restocking of the farms so as to make it appear that this £3,000,000 free grant was to make provision for the necessities of the burghers, instead of being hypothecated, as it is in truth, to the payment of the debts of the extinguished States. General Botha was quite correct when last year he stated that in every civilised State the debts of a conquered territory were assumed by the conqueror; and £3,000,000 is certainly not one penny too much to meet the obligations represented by the notes and receipts given by the two Republics for the goods which they commandeered for the service of the war. Among these goods was over a quarter of a million of gold, which was commandeered at the very outbreak of the war, the repayment of which will make a considerable hole in the £3,000,000 of free grant. Many of the Boer receipts were given not to burghers of the Republic, but to the Cape and Natal colonists in the districts overrun by the commandos.

THE GENEROSITY" OF SHYLOCK.

Of the £3,000,000, therefore, only a portion will pass into the hands of the Boers, and it will probably be found, as a matter of fact, that when the floating debt of the Republics has been met, there is not one penny piece left over for the restocking of the farms or the rebuilding of the farmsteads. This has to be provided for not by any free grant, but by a loan which will bear no interest for two years, but afterwards must bear interest at 3 per cent., and be repaid in a term of years. By the original terms of