regarding our own neutrality in the event of war in South Africa. In
both these regards we made matters clear to the two South African
Republics and did so in good time."[4] The Chancellor seems to have
fairly defined the position maintained by the German Government
throughout the war, although popular feeling often clamored for official
action in behalf of the Boers.

[Footnote 4: Speech in Reichstag, Dec. 10, 1900.]

A similar course was pursued by the French Government despite the fact
that in France popular sympathy was more strongly in favor of the
Transvaal than was the case in Germany. No official action, however, was
taken which could involve France in complications in view of the
declared neutral attitude assumed at the beginning of the war. The
administration at Paris ordered the prefects throughout the country to
have removed from the official minutes the resolutions of sympathy for
the Boers which had been adopted by the provincial councils. But opposed
to the correct attitude of the Government, popular feeling was
manifested in different ways. A committee of ladies in Paris made a
direct appeal to the French people. They declared: "We are not biased
enemies of the British Nation ... but we have a horror of grasping
financiers, the men of prey who have concocted in cold blood this
rascally war. They have committed with premeditation a crime of
_lèse-humanité_, the greatest of crimes. May the blood which reddens the
battle-fields of South Africa forever be upon their heads.... Yes, we
are heart and soul with the Boers.... We admire them because old men
and young women, even, are all fighting like heroes.... Alas! to be
sure, there is no more a France, nor yet an America.... Ah! Ideal
abode of the human conscience, founded by Socrates, sanctified by
Christ, illuminated in flashes of lightning by the French Revolution,