venal journalism that the Boer cause has so heavily scored?

Was all this not manifest in the divisions of England's counsels, in the
hampered progress of her diplomacy, her fateful hesitancy and delay in
providing appropriate preventive and protective measures in South
Africa?

And as regards the tenacity of those convictions, it is with them as it
is in plant life. The longer a tree is in maturing, the harder is it to
uproot it.

The activities of Bond propaganda have been in continuance for many
years, and the prejudices fostered so long are correspondingly
deep-rooted.

Bond patriotism was not long subjected to the strain of individual
contributions and unpaid performances. When the Transvaal revenues
advanced with such giant strides the Afrikaner Bond leaders in that
State contrived arrangements by which the financial requirements were
supplied from State receipts. Nor was the least compunction felt in
doing so. Was the revenue of the State not chiefly derived from the
Uitlander element--from Uitlander investments, which all throve from the
nation's own buried gold wealth? No scruples existed to provide from
those sources the armaments and all else needed for the common cause of
conquest.

A secret service fund of some L40,000 per year only was placed upon the
budget list. But this amount was vastly exceeded by the growing
requirements of the Afrikaner Bond for expenditure in South Africa
alone. It was easily contrived to divert, _sub rosa_, large State
receipts to supply the remaining financial needs. Among these figured,
besides the heavy outlays in journalism abroad, gratuities, etc., a
large bill also for secret agencies, spies, and the like.

The entire expenditure was under the direction of a few only of the
trusted leaders and audited by the chiefs, all being kept otherwise
undivulged.

The Transvaal thus became the treasury as well as the arsenal of the
entire Afrikaner Bond.

Hundreds of agents were in constant employ in the Cape Colonies and
Natal suborning the Boer colonists; many of them occupied positions in
various branches of the Colonial Government, and were able to supply
information upon any subject and even to influence elections.

There were numerous permanent agents drawing large emoluments in Europe
also, and emissaries to different places abroad, some touring in
America, England, and the Continent, as the Rev. Mr. Bosman did
recently, and also the P.M.G., Isaac van Alphen.

Mu