He may perhaps bring about the fall of Mafeking, if he chooses to dispense for a few weeks longer with the reinforcements which Commandant Snyman by raising the siege could bring to his main army.  There was indeed some days ago an unofficial report that a strong column was moving north from Kimberley.  If that were true the destination of the column must have been Mafeking, but it is not clear what its composition could be.  The Guards Brigade being at Poplar’s Drift there would be left the other brigade of the first division, and that may be on its way towards the north.  Resistance was expected at the passage of the Vaal at Fourteen Streams, but that point must have already been reached.  Probably nothing will be heard of this column until it has accomplished its task, except in the not very probable event of hard fighting between Winsorton and Mafeking.  Colonel Baden-Powell is known to be very hard pressed, being short of provisions and of troops.  It is certain the column will make every effort to reach Mafeking in time, but the distance is great.  The best chance of success would be found in the despatch of a large body of mounted troops to move in the fashion of the great raiding expeditions of the American Civil War; but it is doubtful whether sufficient mounted troops were or are available.

Apart from their own resources the Boers may hope for help from outside.  They have from the beginning looked for the intervention of some great Power, for the assistance of the Dutch party at the Cape, and for such action by the British Opposition as might embarrass the Government in its resolve to prosecute the war to its logical conclusion.

Intervention will not be undertaken by any Power that is not prepared to go to war, and does not see a fair prospect of success in an attack upon the British Empire.  Intervention therefore will be prevented if the Navy is kept ready for any emergency, and if the Government measures for arming the Nation are so carried out as to convince continental Powers that they will produce an appreciable result.  That conviction does not yet exist, but it is not too late to create it.

The Cape Dutch will not be able to embarrass a British Government that knows its own mind and is resolved to treat them fairly while asserting its authority in the Transvaal and the Free State.  The peace at any price party at home is trying hard to press its false doctrines, but in the present temper of the Nation has no chance of success, provided only that the Government carries out without hesitation or vacillation the policy to which it is by all its action committed, of bringing the territories of the Boer Republics under British administration so soon as the military power of the Boers has been broken.