y, of the qualities of the sixty thousand
troops whom he had reviewed, of the openings for better commercial
interchange. "I venture to allude to the impressions which seemed
generally to prevail among our brethren across the seas that the Old
Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of
pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competitors". The
need of more population in the Colonies was referred to and an urgent
appeal made to encourage the sending out of suitable emigrants. "By this
means we may still further strengthen, or at all events, pass on
unimpaired, that pride of race, that unity of sentiment and purpose,
that feeling of common loyalty and obligation which knit together and
alone can maintain the integrity of our Empire".

CHAPTER XX.

The King and the South African War

No event in many years has created such keen interest amongst, and been
so closely followed by, the Royal family of Great Britain as the war in
South Africa. Apart from Queen Victoria's natural and life-long dislike
of the horrors of war, there was the earnest sympathy which she felt in
the last two years of her reign with thousands of her subjects who had
suffered in the loss of husband, or brother, or father, or friend; and
the womanly sorrow which she herself felt for the many promising young
officers whom she had personally known or liked, or whose relations and
friends had been upon terms of intimacy with members of the Royal
circle. The matter was still more brought home to her, in a personal
sense, by the death of her grandson, Prince Christian Victor, who, after
months of hard campaigning and with the reputation of an able, modest
and hard-working officer, succumbed in the autumn of 1900 to enteric
fever, and was buried, at his own request, upon the South African veldt.
But these personal considerations had never been so potent with the
Queen as had her broader sympathies for her people, and there can be no
doubt the gloomy days of Colenso and Spion Kop told severely upon the
sensibilities of a Sovereign who was as proud of the nation's position
and as keen to feel national humiliation, or sorrow, as was the humblest
and most loyal of her subjects. And the fact that her duty to the people
and the Empire lay in supporting her Ministers and pressing, if
necessary, for a still more vigorous prosecution of the struggle, could
not but have its effect upon the constitution of a Queen who felt her