atures, also a further
secret Report of Communications in Natal north of Ladysmith,
including a memorandum of the road controlling Lang's Nek
position.

Further, there is a short Military Report on the Transvaal,
printed in India in August last, which was found most
interesting. The white population is given at 288,000, of whom
the Outlanders number 80,000, and of the Outlanders 30,000 are
given as of British descent--which figures the authorities regard
as much nearer the truth than Mr. Chamberlain's statements made
in the House of Commons.

One report estimates that 4,000 Cape and Natal Colonists would
side with the Republics in case of war, and that the small
armament of the Transvaal consists of 62,950 rifles, and that the
Boers would prove not so mobile or such good marksmen as in the
War of Independence.

Further, the British did not think much of the Johannesburg and
Pretoria forts.

A further secret Report styled "Military Notes on the Dutch
Republics of South Africa," and numbers of other papers, not yet
examined, were also found, and are to be forwarded to Pretoria.

The Free State burghers are now more than ever convinced that it
was the right policy for them to fight along with the Transvaal,
and they say, since they have seen the reports, that they will
fight with, if possible, more determination than ever.

It may be contended, no doubt, upon our part that these private reports
were none other than those which every Government receives from its
military attaches, but it must be admitted that their discovery at the
present moment is most inopportune for those who wish to persuade the
Free State that they can rely upon the assertions of Great Britain that
no design was made upon their independence. If at this moment the
portfolios of a German Staff Officer were to fall into the hands of an
English correspondent, and detailed plans for invading England were to
be published in all the newspapers as having been drawn up by German
officers told off for that purpose, it would not altogether tend to
reassure us as to the good intentions of our Imperial neighbour. How
much more serious must be the publication of these documents seized at
Dundee upon a people which is actually at war.

The concluding chapter of Mr. Reitz's eloquent impeachment of the
conduct of Great Britain in South Afric