“to the speeches in which I have done all that a sovereign can to proclaim my goodwill.  But, as actions speak louder than words, let me also refer to my acts.  It is commonly believed in England that throughout the South African War Germany was hostile to her.  German opinion undoubtedly was hostile—­bitterly hostile.  The Press was hostile; private opinion was hostile.  But what of official Germany?  Let my critics ask themselves what brought to a sudden stop, and, indeed, to absolute collapse, the European tour of the Boer delegates who were striving to obtain European intervention?  They were feted in Holland; France gave them a rapturous welcome.  They wished to come to Berlin, where the German people would have crowned them with flowers.  But when they asked me to receive them—­I refused.  The agitation immediately died away, and the delegation returned empty-handed.  Was that, I ask, the action of a secret enemy?

“Again, when the struggle was at its height, the German Government was invited by the Governments of France and Russia to join with them in calling upon England to put an end to the war.  The moment had come, they said, not only to save the Boer Republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust.  What was my reply?  I said that so far from Germany joining in any concerted European action to put pressure upon England and bring about her downfall, Germany would always keep aloof from politics that could bring her into complications with a Sea Power like England.  Posterity will one day read the exact terms of the telegram—­now in the archives of Windsor Castle—­in which I informed the Sovereign of England of the answer I had returned to the Powers which then sought to compass her fall.  Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my word should know what were my actions in the hour of their adversity.

“Nor was that all.  Just at the time of your Black Week, in the December of 1899, when disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in sorrow and affliction, and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties which were preying upon her mind and health.  I at once returned a sympathetic reply.  Nay, I did more.  I bade one of my officers procure for me as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants in South Africa on both sides, and of the actual position of the opposing forces.  With the figures before me, I worked out what I considered to be the best plan of campaign under the circumstances, and submitted it to my General Staff for their criticism.  Then I dispatched it to England, and that document, likewise, is among the State papers at Windsor Castle, awaiting the serenely impartial verdict of history.  And, as a matter of curious coincidence, let me add that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that which was actually adopted by Lord Roberts, and carried by him into successful operation.