Britain
and Germany, and three weeks later the Peace was signed in London and
Berlin. Even hostile critics have admitted that the British terms were
not ungenerous. The war was the result of Germany's unprovoked invasion
of our shores. The British terms were, in lieu of indemnity, the cession
of all German possessions in the African continent to the British Crown,
unreservedly. For the rest, Britain demanded no more than a complete and
unqualified withdrawal of all German claims and pretensions in the
matter of the Peace terms enforced after the invasion by General Baron
von Fuechter, including, of course, the immediate evacuation of all those
points of British territory which had been claimed in the invasion
treaty, an instrument now null and void.

The new Republic was well advised in its grateful acceptance of these
terms, for they involved no monetary outlay, and offered no obstacle to
the new Government's task of restoration. At that early stage, at all
events, the Prussian Republic had no colonial ambitions, and needed all
its straitened financial resources for the rehabilitation of its home
life. (In the twelve months following the declaration of war between
Great Britain and Germany, the number of Germans who emigrated reached
the amazing total of 1,134,378.)

To me, one of the most interesting and significant features of the
actual conclusion of the Peace--which added just over one million square
miles to Britain's African possessions, and left the Empire, in certain
vital respects, infinitely richer and more powerful than ever before in
its history--is not so much as mentioned in any history of the war I
have ever read, though it did figure, modestly, in the report of the
Commissioner of Police for that year. As a sidelight upon the
development of our national character since the arrival of the Canadian
preachers and the organization of _The Citizens_, this one brief passage
in an official record is to my mind more luminous than anything I could
possibly say, and far more precious than the fact of our territorial
acquisitions:

"The news of the signature of the Peace was published in the early
editions of the evening papers on Saturday, 11 March. Returns show that
the custom of the public-houses and places of entertainment during the
remainder of that day was 37-1/2 per cent. below the average Saturday
returns. Divisional reports show that the streets were more empty of
traffic, both vehicular and pedestria