t of interests, to the
Power which stands most prominently for individual freedom and liberal
institutions. The same poor excuse may be made for the organs of the
Vatican. But what are we to say of the insensate railing of Germany,
a country whose ally we have been for centuries? In the days of
Marlborough, in the darkest hours of Frederick the Great, in the great
world struggle of Napoleon, we have been the brothers-in-arms of these
people. So with the Austrians also. If both these countries were
not finally swept from the map by Napoleon, it is largely to British
subsidies and British tenacity that they owe it. And yet these are the
folk who turned most bitterly against us at the only time in modern
history when we had a chance of distinguishing our friends from our
foes. Never again, I trust, on any pretext will a British guinea be
spent or a British soldier or sailor shed his blood for such allies. The
political lesson of this writer has been that we should make ourselves
strong within the empire, and let all outside it, save only our kinsmen
of America, go their own way and meet their own fate without let or
hindrance from us. It is amazing to find that even the Americans could
understand the stock from which they are themselves sprung so little
that such papers as the 'New York Herald' should imagine that our defeat
at Colenso was a good opportunity for us to terminate the war. The
other leading American journals, however, took a more sane view of the
situation, and realised that ten years of such defeats would not find
the end either of our resolution or of our resources.

In the British Islands and in the empire at large our misfortunes were
met by a sombre but unalterable determination to carry the war to a
successful conclusion and to spare no sacrifices which could lead to
that end. Amid the humiliation of our reverses there was a certain
undercurrent of satisfaction that the deeds of our foemen should at
least have made the contention that the strong was wantonly attacking
the weak an absurd one. Under the stimulus of defeat the opposition to
the war sensibly decreased. It had become too absurd even for the most
unreasonable platform orator to contend that a struggle had been forced
upon the Boers when every fresh detail showed how thoroughly they had
prepared for such a contingency and how much we had to make up. Many
who had opposed the war simply on that sporting instinct which backs
the smaller against t