, rebels, or renegades,
would do well to take into account the peculiar position in which they
were placed by the war, before passing a rash judgment on them. To be
fair towards the Colonists we must take into consideration the causes
which produced the effects. Only after a thorough investigation of the
causes could a just sentence be passed on the colonial rebel. If
governments have no responsibility whatever towards their subjects or
citizens, and no binding obligations to fulfil in respect to them, then
only may the investigation of causes be discarded.

None lament more the sad results of the South African war than the
writers of these pages. Before the war Dutch and English lived and
worked side by side as friends and brothers. The two races, once
hostile, began to understand and respect one another more and more. In
the schools the Dutch and English languages had equal rights. In some
Dutch Reformed Churches English sermons were delivered by Dutch pastors
to Dutch and English congregations. The railways of the Free State were
almost exclusively controlled by English officials. In the Government
offices Dutch and English clerks worked together. The principal villages
of the Orange Free State were almost more English than Dutch. The
British subjects were perfectly content with the Free State Government
and desired no better. In the Transvaal the state of affairs was much
the same. Before the Jameson Raid there existed a kindly feeling between
Dutch and English. If time and patience had only been exercised, no
blood would have been shed, there never would have been war in South
Africa. But what time and patience would have wrought, the war party
undertook when they plunged the land into a war the effects of which
will be felt by more than one generation.

Thousands of British subjects have been estranged from the
mother-country and turned into implacable enemies by the war. In many a
home there is a vacant chair, and round many a fireside one is missing
at eventide. Several families, once so happy and content, now mourn the
irreparable loss of a father or brother, a mother or sister. Thousands,
who were well-to-do before the war, are now poverty-stricken. Who then
shall adequately depict the misery and woe which has entered so many
homes since the first shot was fired in South Africa? And to-day, when
the roar of cannons, the din of rifles and the clatter of arms have been
hushed, there are men pining away in forei