With your Excellency's permission, I should like to clear up our
position with regard to intervention. It is this: We hope, and
still are hoping, that the moral feeling of the civilized world
would protest against the crime which England is now permitting in
South Africa, namely, that of endeavouring to exterminate a young
nation, but we were still firmly determined that, should our hopes
not be realized, we would exert our utmost strength to defend
ourselves, and this decision, based on a firm trust in a merciful
God, is still unshaken in us.

I further notice that your Excellency thinks that our fight is
hopeless. I do not know on what grounds this assumption is based.
Let us for a moment compare our mutual situations of to-day with
those of a year ago, after the surrender of General Prinsloo. Then,
the Cape Colony was altogether quiet, and free from our commandos.
The Orange Free State was almost entirely in your hands, not only
as regards the principal townships, railway lines and villages, but
also the whole country, except where Commandant Hasebroek was, with
his commando. And in the South African Republic the situation was
very similar. That country was also mainly held by you, except in
the parts which General De la Rey and General Botha occupied with
their commandos, far up in the Boschveldt.

How do matters stand now?

The Cape Colony is, so to speak, overrun by our commandos, and they
are really in temporary possession of the greater part of Cape
Colony. They go about there as they choose, and many of our
nationality and others also are continuing to join us there, and