politics that could bring her into complications with a sea power
like England.

"Posterity will one day read the exact terms of a telegram, now in
the archives of Windsor Castle, in which I informed the sovereign
of England of the answer I returned to the powers which then sought
to compass her fall. Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my
word should know what my actions were in the hour of their
adversity.

"Nor was that all. During your black week in December, 1899, when
disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a
letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in
sorrow and affliction and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties
which were preying upon her mind and health. I at once returned a
sympathetic reply. I did more. I bade one of my officers to procure
as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants
on both sides and the actual positions of the opposing forces.

"With the figures before me I worked out what I considered the best
plan of campaign in the circumstances and submitted it to my
General Staff for criticism. Then I dispatched it to England. That
document likewise is among the State papers at Windsor awaiting the
serenely impartial verdict of history.

"Let me add as a curious coincidence that the plan which I
formulated ran very much on the same lines as that actually adopted
by Gen. Roberts and carried by him into successful operation. Was
that the act of one who wished England ill? Let Englishmen be just
and say."