roops upon the borders of the republic should be instantly withdrawn,
that all reinforcements which had arrived within the last year should
leave South Africa, and that those who were now upon the sea should be
sent back without being landed. Failing a satisfactory answer within
forty-eight hours, 'the Transvaal Government will with great regret be
compelled to regard the action of her Majesty's Government as a formal
declaration of war, for the consequences of which it will not hold
itself responsible.' The audacious message was received throughout the
empire with a mixture of derision and anger. The answer was dispatched
next day through Sir Alfred Milner.

'10th October.--Her Majesty's Government have received with great regret
the peremptory demands of the Government of the South African Republic,
conveyed in your telegram of the 9th October. You will inform the
Government of the South African Republic in reply that the conditions
demanded by the Government of the South African Republic are such as her
Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss.'

And so we have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of the
pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford
and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These
people were as near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They
were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit
of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they were as ourselves. Brave,
too, they were, and hospitable, with those sporting instincts which are
dear to the Anglo-Celtic race. There was no people in the world who had
more qualities which we might admire, and not the least of them was
that love of independence which it is our proudest boast that we have
encouraged in others as well as exercised ourselves. And yet we had come
to this pass, that there was no room in all vast South Africa for both
of us. We cannot hold ourselves blameless in the matter. 'The evil that
men do lives after them,' and it has been told in this small superficial
sketch where we have erred in the past in South Africa. On our hands,
too, is the Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen and led by
officers who held the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame of the
shuffling, half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable business.
These are matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and it is
we who held them. But the fagots which prov