ustifiable to carry on
a resistance involving the loss of many lives and the destruction
of an immense quantity of property, when the object of that
resistance can no longer, by any possibility, be attained. No
doubt, great allowance must be made for most of the men still
under arms, though it is difficult to defend the conduct of their
leaders in deceiving them. The bulk of the men still in the field
are buoyed up with false hopes. They are incessantly fed with
lies--lies as to their own chance of success, and, still worse,
as to the intention of the British Government with regard to them
should they surrender. And for that very reason it seems all the
more regrettable that anything should be said or done here which
could help still further to mislead them, still further to
encourage a resistance which creates the very evils that these
people are fighting to escape. It is because I am sincerely
convinced that a resolution of this character, like the meeting
at which it was passed, like the whole agitation of which that
meeting is part, is calculated, if it has any effect at all,
still further to mislead the men who are engaged in carrying on
this hopeless struggle, that I feel bound, in sending it to Her
Majesty's Government, to accompany it with this expression of my
strong personal dissent."[231]

[Footnote 231: Cd. 547.]

The comment of _Ons Land_ upon Lord Milner's reply to the Worcester
Congress deputation was an open defiance of the Imperial authorities
and a scarcely veiled incitement to rebellion. Mr. Advocate Malan, the
editor, who had been elected for the Malmesbury Division upon the
retirement of Mr. Schreiner--now rejected by the Bond--wrote:[232]

[Footnote 232: As stated in a _Central News_ telegram,
published in London on December 14th, 1900.]

"Sir Alfred Milner considers the request of the Afrikanders for
peace and justice unreasonable. The agitation has now reached the
end of the first period--that of pleading and petitioning. A deaf
ear has been turned to the cry of the Afrikanders and their
Church. But the battle for justice will continue from a different
standpoint--by mental and material powers. The path will be hard,
and sacrifices will be required, but the victory will be
glorious!"

There were, of course, some voices th