h an ultimatum only one answer was possible. British troops at
once started for the Cape.

Naturally the whole of Great Britain was in a state of turmoil, and
the vast multitude of people--"the men in the street," so to
say--were inclined to express surprise that the question of two
years' difference in the terms of obtaining the franchise should
have been made into a _casus belli_. To all thinking men it was
patent, however, that the quibble about the franchise was merely a
Boer _ruse_ to obtain time for the carrying out of a long-concerted
scheme for the elimination of the British from the Cape to the
Zambezi. These were aware that the military methods of the Transvaal
were under process of reorganisation, and indeed had been readjusted
gradually ever since 1896, and that the simple methods of 1881 had
been superseded by newer and more modern principles of warfare. It
was known that great additions had been made to the warlike
resources of the Republic, and that the President of the Free State
was, if anything, more bitter than Mr. Kruger in his hatred of Great
Britain and all things British, and that the two Republics would
make common cause with each other against a mutual enemy. It was
also known that foreign experts were imported, and foreign stocks of
war material--material of the newest and most expensive kind--were
prepared in anticipation of war, and that even such a thing as
tactical instruction--a thing hitherto ignored among the
Transvaalers--had been acquired from accomplished German sources,
and all this for one sole purpose--war with Great Britain. In order
that there may be no doubt that the Boers were completely prepared
and determined to fight long before the insolent Ultimatum was
published, it is desirable to read a letter which appeared in the
_Times_ of the 14th of October 1899. This epistle, which was
appropriately headed "Boer Ignorance," emanated from a Dutch
writer, whose address was in a well-known part of Cape Colony. It
runs:--

"SIR,--In your paper you have often commented on what you are
pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are
not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor
are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do
not change it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle
to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of
the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind
t