d eager burghers were thus
massing threateningly on our frontiers, the Queen it will be
remembered was haughtily commanded to withdraw from those frontiers
the pitifully few troops then guarding them; to recall, in the sight
of all Europe, every soldier that in the course of the previous
twelvemonth had been sent to our South African Colonies; and solemnly
to pledge herself, at Boer bidding, that those then on the sea should
not be suffered to set foot on African soil. Moreover, so urgent was
this audacious demand that Pretoria allowed London only forty-eight
hours in which to decide what should be its irrevocable doom, to lay
aside the pride of empire, or pay the price of it in blood.

Superb in its audacity was that demand: and, if war was indeed fated
to come, this daring challenge was for England as serviceable a deed
as unwitting foemen ever wrought.

[Sidenote: _The rallying of the Clans._]

It put a sudden end for a season to all controversy. It rallied in
defence of our Imperial heritage almost every class, and every creed.
It thrilled us all, like the blast of the warrior horn of Roderick
Dhu, which transformed the very heather of the Highlands into fighting
men. As the soldiers' laureate puts it "Duke's son and cook's son,"
with rival haste responded to the martial call. To serve their
assailed and sorrowing Queen, royal court and rural cottage gave
freely of their best. It intensified the patriotism of us all; and
probably never, since the days of the Armada, had the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland found itself so essentially united.

[Sidenote: _The rousing of the Colonies._]

The effect of the Ultimatum throughout the length and breadth of
Greater Britain was no less remarkable than its first results at home.
Not only the two Colonies that, alas, were soon to be overrun by
hostile hordes, and mercilessly looted, but also those farthest
removed from the fray, instantly took fire, and burned with
imperialistic zeal that stinted neither men nor means.

"A varied host, from kindred realms they come,
Brethren in arms, but rivals in renown."

The declaration of war united the ends of the earth in a common
enthusiasm, and sent a strange throb of brotherhood right round the
globe. The whole empire at last awoke to a sense of its essential
oneness. Australians and Canadians, men from Burma, from India and
Ceylon, speedily joined hands on the far distant veldt in defence of
w