or the
continued existence of their country and government should fight, and as
they have declared they will go on with the war, then it will be three
times eight months or three times a year before peace comes to South
Africa. Presidents Kruger and Steyn have declared that they will continue
the struggle for three years, and longer if necessary. De Wet will never
yield as long as he has fifty burghers in his commando, and Botha will
fight until every British soldier has been driven from South African soil.
Hundreds of the burghers have made even firmer resolutions to continue the
war until their cause is crowned with victory. There may be some among
them who fought and are fighting because they despise Britons and British
rule, but the vast majority are on commando because they firmly believe
that Great Britain is attempting to take their country and their
government from them by the process of theft which we enlightened
Anglo-Saxons of America and England are wont to style "benevolent
assimilation." They feel that they have the right to govern their country
in accordance with their own ideas of justice and equality, and,
naturally, they will continue to fight until they are victorious, or might
asserts itself over their conception of right. If they have the power to
make Great Britain feel that their cause is just, as our forefathers in
America did a hundred years ago, then the Boers have vindicated themselves
and their actions in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world. If they
lack in the patriotism which men who fight for the life of their country
usually possess, then the Boers of South Africa will be exterminated from
among the nations of the world and no one will offer any sympathy to them.

We Anglo-Saxons of America and Great Britain have a habit of calling our
enemies by names which would arouse the fighting blood of the most
peaceable individual, and when there is a Venezuelan question to be
discussed we do not hesitate to practice this custom, born of our
blood-alliance, by making each other the subjects of the vituperative
attacks. During the Spanish-American war we made most uncomplimentary
remarks concerning our short-lived enemy, and more recently we have been
emphasising the vices of our _proteges_, the Filipinos, with a scornful
disregard of their virtues. The Boers, however, have had a greater burden
to bear. They have had cast at them the shafts of British vituperation and
the lyddite of American