reduced our country to such a state of
exhaustion, that it will soon be a physical impossibility for us to
fight any longer. Our only hope lies in the chance of help from outside.
A year ago I, in the name of my Government, communicated the condition
of our nation to His Honour States-President Kruger, in Europe. He
wrote in reply that we must rely on the state of affairs in Cape
Colony--and the sympathy of European nations--and that we must continue
the war until all other means were exhausted."

The speaker here enlarged upon the political developments which had
taken place in the United States and in the principal European countries
during the preceding two years, and then continued:--

"So far as we are concerned, the sum total of the foreign situation is
that we obtain a great deal of sympathy, for which we are naturally most
grateful. More than this we do not obtain, nor shall obtain for many a
long year. Europe will go on expressing sympathy with us until the last
Boer hero has died on the field and the last Boer woman has gone down to
her grave--until, in fact, the whole Boer nation has been sacrificed on
the altar of history and of humanity.

"I have already, on a former occasion, told you what I think about the
situation in Cape Colony. We have made great mistakes there; perhaps
even now Cape Colony is not ripe for the sort of policy which we have
been pursuing with regard to it. At all events, we cannot entertain any
hopes of a general rising of the Colonists. We cannot, however, give too
much honour to those three thousand heroes in the Colony who have
sacrificed all in our behalf, even though they have not succeeded in
securing our independence for us.

"Thus we have given President Kruger's advice a fair trial. For twelve
months we have been testing the value of the methods which he urged upon
us. And, as a result of it all, we have become convinced that those
methods are of no avail--that if we wish to remain independent we must
depend upon ourselves alone. But the facts which the various delegates
have brought before our notice show that we _cannot_ thus depend upon
ourselves; that, unless we obtain outside help, the struggle must come
to an end. We have, then, no hope of success. Our country is already
devastated and in ruins; let us stop before our people are ruined also.

"And now the enemy approaches with a proposal, which, however
unacceptable it may be to us in other respects, includes the prom