The suggestion of this joint commission has been criticised as an unwarrantable intrusion into the internal affairs of another country.  But then the whole question from the beginning was about the internal affairs of another country, since the internal equality of the white inhabitants was the condition upon which self-government was restored to the Transvaal.  It is futile to suggest analogies, and to imagine what France would do if Germany were to interfere in a question of French franchise.  Supposing that France contained as many Germans as Frenchmen, and that they were ill-treated, Germany would interfere quickly enough and continue to do so until some fair modus vivendi was established.  The fact is that the case of the Transvaal stands alone, that such a condition of things has never been known, and that no previous precedent can apply to it, save the general rule that a minority of white men cannot continue indefinitely to tax and govern a majority.  Sentiment inclines to the smaller nation, but reason and justice are all on the side of England.

A long delay followed upon the proposal of the Secretary of the Colonies.  No reply was forthcoming from Pretoria.  But on all sides there came evidence that those preparations for war which had been quietly going on even before the Jameson raid were now being hurriedly perfected.  For so small a State enormous sums were being spent upon military equipment.  Cases of rifles and boxes of cartridges streamed into the arsenal, not only from Delagoa Bay, but even, to the indignation of the English colonists, through Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.  Huge packing-cases, marked ’Agricultural Instruments’ and ‘Mining Machinery,’ arrived from Germany and France, to find their places in the forts of Johannesburg or Pretoria.  Men of many nations but of a similar type showed their martial faces in the Boer towns.  The condottieri of Europe were as ready as ever to sell their blood for gold, and nobly in the end did they fulfill their share of the bargain.  For three weeks and more during which Mr. Kruger was silent these eloquent preparations went on.  But beyond them, and of infinitely more importance, there was one fact which dominated the situation.  A burgher cannot go to war without his horse, his horse cannot move without grass, grass will not come until after rain, and it was still some weeks before the rain would be due.  Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried while the veld was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain.  Mr. Chamberlain and the British public waited week after week for their answer.  But there was a limit to their patience, and it was reached on August 26th, when the Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of speech which is as unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the question could not be hung up for ever.  ’The sands are running down in the glass,’ said he.  ’If they run out, we shall not hold ourselves limited by that which we have already offered, but, having