interference by raids demands an ample mobile force.

These are general principles of warfare, universally applicable. The
questions of water, pasturage, and horse sickness are special to South
Africa, as is also in some degree the inadequate railway system; and
these constitute conditions which modify the local application of
general principles. Two factors, however, have appeared in this war
which, while they characterise it especially, are gravely significant
to those who would fain seek in current events instruction for the
future, whether of warning or of encouragement. These are the almost
complete failure of the British Government and people to recognise at
the beginning the bigness of the task before them; and, in the second
place, the enthusiasm and practical unanimity with which not South
Africa only but the other and distant British colonies offered their
services {p.074} to the mother country. The philosophical reflector
can scarcely fail to be impressed with this latter political fact; for
it has illustrated vividly the general truth that, when once men's
minds are prepared, a simple unforeseen incident converts what has
seemed an academic theory, or an idle dream, into a concrete and most
pregnant fact.

The naval battle of Manila Bay will to the future appear one of the
decisive events of history, for there the visions of the few, which
had quickened unconsciously the conceptions of the many, materialised
as suddenly as unexpectedly into an actuality that could be neither
obviated nor undone. What Dewey's victory was to the over-sea
expansion of the United States, what the bombardment of Fort Sumter in
1861 was to the sentiment of Union in the Northern States, that Paul
Kruger's ultimatum, summarizing in itself the antecedent
disintegrating course of the Afrikander Bond, was to Imperial
Federation. A fruitful idea, which the unbeliever had thought to bury
under scoffs, had taken root in the convictions of men, and passed as
by a bound into vigorous life--perfect, if not yet {p.075} mature. In
these months of war, a common devotion, a common service, a common
achievement, will have constituted a bond of common memories and
recognised community of ideals and interests. To a political entity
these are as a living spirit, which, when it exists, can well await
the slow growth of formal organisation, and of compact, that are but
the body, the material framework, of political life.

It is evident enough that