last sentence in the plaint of the Matabele, a cause carefully concealed
from the public eye? For God's sake, let mothers teach their sons that
first rudiment in manly character, the recognition that the girls of a
conquered race, or of a barbarian tribe inhabiting one of our spheres of
influence, from the very fact that they are a conquered race, or, if not
conquered, hopelessly and piteously in our power, are _ipso facto_ a
most sacred trust to us, which it is both unmanly and bestial to
violate. Especially I would plead with mothers to send us pure men for
our army--officers who will set their men a high example of chivalry
towards the weakest native woman, and who will so influence them by
example and personal influence that they may look upon voluntarily
disabling themselves from active service, while still taking the
government pay, as unmanly and unsoldierly. Give us men who can say with
a non-commissioned officer writing home to one of our White Cross
secretaries: "I have been out in India now eleven years and have never
had a day's illness; and I think the whole secret of my good health is
total abstinence from all that intoxicates, and that I honor all women
as I honor my mother or any of my sisters."

Thirdly, the hardest thing on earth is not to slay a sin, but to get it
buried; and the hardest of all sins to get under ground is the sin of
impurity. It is largely due to the low standard of purity among men that
we owe the almost insoluble problem presented by the existence of the
large Eurasian population in India, and of the half-caste generally.

"The universal unanimity of the popular verdict on the half-caste
is remarkable," says Olive Schreiner in some powerful articles
published in _Blackwood_ on the problems presented by our Colonial
Empire. "The half-caste, it is asserted in every country where he
is known, whether it be in America, Asia, or Africa, and whether
his ancestors be English and negroid Spanish and Indian, or Boer
and Hottentot,--the self-caste is by nature anti-social. It is
always asserted that he possesses the vices of both parent races
and the virtues of neither: that he is born especially with a
tendency to be a liar, cowardly, licentious, and without
self-respect."

Olive Schreiner herself is the first to admit that there are exceptions.
She says:

"The fact that amongst the most despised class of our laboring
hal