f Great Britain aiming at peace and to safeguard
her possessions and prestige, while the Afrikaner Bond, on the other
part, continued active in the work of sedition and preparing for a war
of usurpation. Every one must admit that the demand of the British
Ministry for an immediate and adequate representation proceeded from the
necessity and the desire to overcome the South African crisis in a just
and pacific way. The measure was counted upon to effect conciliation
between the Uitlander and burgher elements, and as a further result was
earnestly hoped to bring about the secession of the Transvaal from the
Afrikaner Bond, and so reduce that dangerous confederacy to a somewhat
negligible impotence. To discover other objects of a sinister sort
lurking behind needs a more than inventive genius. A united Afrikaner
Bond, persistent to carry out its fell project, definitely meant war
sooner or later. Its first step in launching out to it was that
notorious ultimatum, which was tantamount to snatching back the feigned
offers of the seven and five years' franchise. According to original
programme, the very next step to accomplish the _coup d'etat_ was the
immediate seizure of all Colonial ports, and to complete a general and
irrevocable Boer rising all over the Colonies.

All the while the old device had been put into practice of hiding Bond
guilt by accusing England of designs against the integrity of the Boer
Republics. But directly after, in the exultation of victorious
invasions, the mask was shamelessly dropped, and Boerdom stands out
defiantly and nakedly self-confessed, aiming at conquest and supremacy
over all South Africa. Will the ensuing century have in store an
instance to match that record plot of artifice and dissimulation, and
see half the world duped into partisanship with it--by journalistic
craft?

It may well be imagined that Mr. Chamberlain and his noble colleagues
had anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to
checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging
their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation
which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing
involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national
crisis, and also the stoical endurance of bitter recriminations on the
part of an opposition comprising a large and honourable but poorly
informed section of the English nation.

BOER LANGUAGE

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