or only see a presumptuous adversary in any one who seeks to enlighten
them upon this glaring and premeditated treachery.

October and November were months of unrestrained exultation to the Boer
party, to judge from letters and articles which appeared in the
_Standard and Diggers' News_, Johannesburg, dated 22nd November, 1899,
and in the Pretoria _Volksstem_, dated 20th November, 1899.[10] There
one sees the mask off, in language of defiant insult and of scurrilous
mendacity against all that is English, avowing that the present
Anglo-Boer War has been the outcome of preparations during the past
thirty years. That letter is not all suitable reading for the tender
sex, but should serve as evidence to the still unconvinced sceptic that
the Boers are fighting for something more than their mere independence
and liberty, viz., for conquest and the domination of Afrikanerdom. His
Excellency Dr. Leyds may deny all those too previous intentions with
his placid effrontery of assumed innocent calm. He may denounce Mr.
Chamberlain, Rhodes, Jameson, and even the Prince of Wales, and he may
use the old device of posing as innocent by accusing others. The
detected robber, however, does not always escape with his booty by
running off himself, whilst shouting "Stop, thief!"

Something refreshingly analogous to such attempts of screening and
exculpation has been extemporized in Cape journals of late. There, in an
ingeniously pretended dissertation, it is invented how ill founded the
aspersions are against Mr. Premier Schreiner, and that the acts, upon
which he was so wrongly suspected as an amphibious helmsman, are really
attributable to another person--by the way, to one at a safe distance,
viz., to Mr. F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this
gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively
deplored the confusion of people's ideas who see anything wrong in the