o mock their memory? Would any
fair-faced girl in all the British Isles wed any man who would not fight
until the sinews slackened with slaying in defence of the homeland? If so,
they are not fashioned of the metal of which their granddames were made.

And what we honour as the prince of virtues in a Briton shall we condemn as
vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a
lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the
weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal
lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle
singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers
with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from
whose ranks our greatest fighters and thinkers spring, will not endorse
that cry. No, not though every slanderous throat shall shriek until they
cannot wail an octave higher.

It is not from such great men as Roberts that we hear these pitiful tales
concerning those who give us battle. He who has been a man of war from
childhood to old age would never stoop to soil his manly lips to woo the
fleeting favours of a mob, and he has proved himself as wise in council as
upon the death-strewn fields of war. So wise, so brave, so loyal to his
word, that even those whom he, at his country's call, has had to crush,
lift their hats reverently at the mention of his name, because he wears
upon his hero soul the white flower of a blameless life. Would Kitchener,
whose dread name strikes terror to the heart of every burgher, would he
befoul his foeman's fame? I tell you no, though whilst a foe remains in
arms he strikes with all a giant's force and spares not; but when the blow
has fallen, he of all men would preserve his enemies' fair fame intact. So
it should be whilst those who stand in arms against our country and our
country's flag refuse the terms we offer. We should make war so terrible
that every enemy should dread the sound of British bugles as they would
dread the trump of doom. When once the country's voice has called for war,
then war should sweep with resistless might over land and sea, until sweet
peace should seem a boon to be desired above all earthly things by those
who stand in arms against us. If Steyn and those who with heroic hearts
hedge him round refuse to bow to destiny and the God of Battles, then he
and they must fall before the bayonets of our soldiery as g