to cling fast to the God of their forefathers, and to the righteousness which is sometimes slow in acting, but which never slumbers or forgets.  “It proceeds according to eternal laws, unmoved by human pride and ambition.  As the Greek poet of old said, it permits the tyrant, in his boundless self-esteem, to climb higher and higher, and to gain greater honour and might, until he arrives at the appointed height, and then falls down into the infinite depths.”

Who is there who remembers the boastings of the British press at the outbreak of the war can read without awe the denunciations of the Hebrew seers against the nations and empires who in arrogance and pride forgot the Lord their God?

“Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord God of Hosts:  for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.  And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up.”

This, after all, is the great issue which underlies everything.  Is there or is there not in the affairs of men a Providence which the ancients pictured as the slow-footed Nemesis, but which we moderns have somewhat learned to disregard?  “If right and wrong, in this God’s world of ours, are linked with higher Powers,” is the great question which the devout soul, whether warrior or saint, has ever answered in one way.  When in this country a leading exponent of popular Liberalism declares that “morally we can never win, but that physically we must and shall,” we begin to realise how necessary is the chastisement which has fallen upon us for our sins.  If this interpretation of the situation be even approximately correct, the further we go the worse we shall fare.  It is vain for us to kick against the pricks.

  W.T.  STEAD.
  January 1st, 1900.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  1894.—­Year of Lord Loch’s visit (in June) to Pretoria.]

[Footnote 2:  1895.—­Conspiracy, culminating in the Raid.]

[Footnote 3:  1898.—­First nine months.]

A CENTURY OF WRONG.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION.

BROTHER AFRICANDERS!

Once more in the annals of our bloodstained history has the day dawned when we are forced to grasp our weapons in order to resume the struggle for liberty and existence, entrusting our national cause to that Providence which has guided our people throughout South Africa in such a miraculous way.

The struggle of now nearly a century, which began when a foreign rule was forced upon the people of the Cape of Good Hope, hastens to an end; we are approaching the last act in that great drama which is so momentous for all South Africa; we have reached a stage when it will be decided whether the sacrifices which both our fathers and we ourselves have made in the cause of freedom have been offered in vain, whether the blood of our race, with which every part of South Africa has been, as it were, consecrated, has been shed in vain; and whether by the grace of God the last stone will now be built into the edifice which our fathers began with so much toil and so much sorrow.