European tour of the Boer delegates, who were
striving to obtain European intervention?"

"They were feted in Holland. France gave them a rapturous welcome.
They wished to come to Berlin, where the German people would have
crowned them with flowers, but when they asked me to receive them I
refused. The agitation immediately died away and the delegates
returned empty handed. Was that the action of a secret enemy?

"Again, when the struggle was at its height, the German Government
was invited by France and Russia to join them in calling upon
England to end the war. The moment had come, they said, not only to
save the Boer republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust.
What was my reply? I said so far from Germany joining in any
concerted European action to bring pressure against England and
bring about her downfall Germany would always keep aloof from
politics that could bring her into complications with a sea power
like England.

"Posterity will one day read the exact terms of a telegram, now in
the archives of Windsor Castle, in which I informed the sovereign
of England of the answer I returned to the powers which then sought
to compass her fall. Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my
word should know what my actions were in the hour of their
adversity.

"Nor was that all. During your black week in December, 1899, when
disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a
letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in
sorrow and affliction and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties
which were preying upon her mind and health. I at once returned a
sympathetic reply. I did more. I bade one of my officers to procure
as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants
on both sides and the actual positions of the opposing forces.

"With the figures before me I worked out what I considered the best
plan of campaign in the circumstances and submitted it to my
General Staff for criticism. Then I dispatched it to England. That
document likewise is among the State papers at Windsor awaiting the
serenely impartial verdict of history.

"Let me add as a curious coincidence that the plan which I
formulated ran very much on the same lines as that actually adopted
by Gen. Roberts and carried by hi