somebody remarked that a Cape newspaper
had suggested that our yeomen should ultimately settle in the country
and continue their pastoral life in the veldt-farms of South Africa.
Evidently the journalist who wrote this article imagines that our
gallant yeomen were all tillers of the soil. Even if they were, few
Englishmen will care to exchange the green fields and leafy copses of
England for the solitude of these dreary, sun-baked plains. Moreover,
where is the land to come from for any considerable number of such
settlers? Practically all the land which is worth cultivating in the
colonies of South Africa and the two Republics is already occupied. Even
if we confiscate the farms of those colonial rebels actually and legally
proved to be such, I doubt very much whether the land thus obtained
would provide for more than three or four hundred settlers. Enthusiasts
in England who write to the papers on this topic seem often to take for
granted that the farms of the burghers in the two Republics will at the
close of the war be presented to any reservist or yeoman who wishes to
settle in South Africa. But is there any precedent in modern times for
the confiscation of the private property of a conquered people? Are the
burghers who survive the struggle to be evicted from their farms and
left with their wives and children to starvation? This would be a bad
beginning towards that alleviation of race hatred after the war which
all good men of every political party earnestly desire. There is, it is
true, a certain amount of land owned by the State in the Transvaal, but
if we distribute this _gratis_ to a few hundred individuals we shall be
depriving ourselves of one of the few sources from which a war-indemnity
could accrue to the nation as a whole.

Nothing, of course, could be more desirable than the planting in South
Africa of a large body of honest, hard-working English settlers with
their wives and families. But there are many difficulties to be overcome
before the idyllic picture of the reservist surrounded by the orchards
and cornfields of his upland farm can be realised in actual fact. The
Dutch farmers of South Africa are as a rule very poor. They rise up
early and take late rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, but their
life is one of constant poverty. If we talk of "improvements" we must
remember that irrigation in such a country is sometimes difficult and
costly, and light railways demand considerable capital. Who