None lament more the sad results of the South African war than the writers of these pages.  Before the war Dutch and English lived and worked side by side as friends and brothers.  The two races, once hostile, began to understand and respect one another more and more.  In the schools the Dutch and English languages had equal rights.  In some Dutch Reformed Churches English sermons were delivered by Dutch pastors to Dutch and English congregations.  The railways of the Free State were almost exclusively controlled by English officials.  In the Government offices Dutch and English clerks worked together.  The principal villages of the Orange Free State were almost more English than Dutch.  The British subjects were perfectly content with the Free State Government and desired no better.  In the Transvaal the state of affairs was much the same.  Before the Jameson Raid there existed a kindly feeling between Dutch and English.  If time and patience had only been exercised, no blood would have been shed, there never would have been war in South Africa.  But what time and patience would have wrought, the war party undertook when they plunged the land into a war the effects of which will be felt by more than one generation.

Thousands of British subjects have been estranged from the mother-country and turned into implacable enemies by the war.  In many a home there is a vacant chair, and round many a fireside one is missing at eventide.  Several families, once so happy and content, now mourn the irreparable loss of a father or brother, a mother or sister.  Thousands, who were well-to-do before the war, are now poverty-stricken.  Who then shall adequately depict the misery and woe which has entered so many homes since the first shot was fired in South Africa?  And to-day, when the roar of cannons, the din of rifles and the clatter of arms have been hushed, there are men pining away in foreign countries because they may not return to their native land.  There are the unhappy exiles in Belgium, Holland, France and America.  Their families are left to the mercy and care of friends and relatives in South Africa.  How their hearts are yearning to go to these, but...!  Besides these exiles there are those undergoing sentences of penal servitude either for life or for long periods.  There are the burghers in Bermuda and in India who, because they cannot conscientiously take an oath of allegiance to the British Government, are not allowed to return to their native land.  As I ponder over the condition of these unhappy cases my heart seems to break, and a feeling of compassion mingled with sorrow inexpressible rises in my bosom.

While referring to these, I would dare to plead earnestly with the Imperial Government to display mercy and generosity.  Exercise these towards the exiled, not only for their sake, but also for the sake of their families and for the promotion of peace in South Africa.  Is it too much to plead for a general amnesty?  Will that not lessen the intense race-hatred between two peoples destined to live in the same land?