vaal was to be
ceded to the Boers under a German Protectorate. Britain was to withdraw
all pretensions regarding Egypt and Morocco, and to cede to Germany,
Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, and British West Africa.

It is not necessary for me to quote the few further details of the most
exacting demands a victor ever made upon a defeated enemy. There can be
no doubt that, in the disastrous circumstances they had been so largely
instrumental in bringing about, "The Destroyers" had no choice, no
alternative from their acceptance of these crushing terms.

And thus it was that--not at the end of a long and hard-fought war, as
the result of vast misfortunes or overwhelming valour on the enemy's
side, but simply as the result of the condition of utter and lamentable
defencelessness into which a truckling Government and an undisciplined,
blindly selfish people had allowed England to lapse--the greatest,
wealthiest Power in civilization was brought to its knees in the
incredibly short space of one week, by the sudden but scientifically
devised onslaught of a single ambitious nation, ruled by a monarch whose
lack of scruples was more than balanced by his strength of purpose.

XXI

ENGLAND ASLEEP

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed,
And feeds the green earth with its swift decay,
Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.

LOWELL.

General von Fuechter and his splendidly trained troops were not the only
people in England for whom the mere fatigue of that week was something
not easily to be forgotten. My impression of its last three days is that
they brought no period of rest for any one. I know that there were as
many people in the streets by night as by day. The act of going within
doors or sitting down, seemed in some way to be a kind of cowardice, a
species of shirking, or disloyalty.

I remember Constance Grey assuring me that she had lain down for an hour
on Thursday. I can say with certainty that we were both of us on our
feet from that time until after the terms of the surrender were made
known on Saturday evening. I can also say that no thought of this matter
of physical weariness occurred to me until that period of Saturday
evening--soon after seven o'clock it was--when the proclamations were
posted up in Whitehall, and the special issues of the newspapers
containing the peace announcements began to be hawked.

An issue of the _Standard_, a