[Sidenote: The necessity of historical retrospect.]

In this hour it behoves us to cast a glance back at the history of this
great struggle. We do so not to justify ourselves, because liberty, for
which we have sacrificed everything, has justified us and screened our
faults and failings, but we do so in order that we may be, as it were,
sanctified and prepared for the conflict which lies before us, bearing
in mind what our people have done and suffered by the help of God. In
this way we may be enabled to continue the work of our fathers, and
possibly to complete it. Their deeds of heroism in adventures with Bantu
and Briton shine forth like guiding stars through the history of the
past, in order to point out the way for posterity to reach that goal for
which our sorely tried people have made such great sacrifices, and for
which they have undergone so many vicissitudes.

The historical survey will, moreover, aid in bringing into stronger
relief those naked truths to which the tribunal of impartial history
will assuredly testify hereafter, in adjudging the case between
ourselves and our enemy. And the questions which present themselves for
solution in the approaching conflict have their origin deep in the
history of the past; it is only by the light of that history that it
becomes possible to discern and appreciate the drifting straws which
float on the currents of to-day. By its light we are more clearly
enabled to comprehend the truth, to which our people appeal as a final
justification for embarking upon the war now so close at hand.

History will show convincingly that the pleas of humanity, civilisation,
and equal rights, upon which the British Government bases its actions,
are nothing else but the recrudescence of that spirit of annexation and