ight.

The appropriate and conscious employment of war as a political means has
always led to happy results. Even an unsuccessfully waged war may
sometimes be more beneficial to a people than the surrender of vital
interests without a blow. We find an example of this in the recent
heroic struggle of the small Boer States against the British Empire. In
this struggle they were inevitably defeated. It was easy to foresee that
an armed peasantry could not permanently resist the combined forces of
England and her colonies, and that the peasant armies generally could
not bear heavy losses. But yet--if all indications are not
misleading--the blood shed by the Boer people will yield a free and
prosperous future. In spite of much weakness, the resistance was heroic;
men like President Stein, Botha, and De Wett, with their gallant
followers, performed many great military feats. The whole nation
combined and rose unanimously to fight for the freedom of which Byron
sings:

"For freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Inestimable moral gains, which can never be lost in any later
developments, have been won by this struggle. The Boers have maintained
their place as a nation; in a certain sense they have shown themselves
superior to the English. It was only after many glorious victories that
they yielded to a crushingly superior force. They accumulated a store of
fame and national consciousness which makes them, though conquered, a
power to be reckoned with. The result of this development is that the
Boers are now the foremost people in South Africa, and that England
preferred to grant them self-government than to be faced by their
continual hostility. This laid the foundation for the United Free States
of South Africa.[E]

[Footnote E: "War and the Arme Blanche," by Erskine Childers: "The truth
came like a flash ... that all along we had been conquering the
country, not the race; winning positions, not battles" (p. 215).

"To ... aim at so cowing the Boer national spirit, as to gain a
permanent political ascendancy for ourselves, was an object beyond
our power to achieve. Peaceable political fusion under our own flag
was the utmost we could secure. That means a conditional surrender,
or a promise of future autonomy" (pp. 227-228). Lord Roberts wrote
a very appreciative introduction to this book without any protest
against the opinions expressed in it.]

Pres