Mr. Burton goes on saying:-- "_It was the cause of South Africa first--as it should be--but it was more than that. It was South Africa first, last, and all the time, and South Africa alone. He and those who were associated with him could not accept that view. It would mean ruinous chaos in South Africa. They had obligations to Great Britain. It was not merely that they had received recognition from the beginning that their Constitutional cause was just. It was not merely that Great Britain in its relation with South Africa had been actuated by that beneficent influence which the British system of liberty effected under the sway of its flag throughout the world, but it was that the people of the Union realized the true inward significance of the struggle in which the Empire was engaged. They knew that the world's freedom was at stake, and with it their own. The people in South Africa had long ago awakened to this great fact, and they were realizing it more and more as the war went on. When he had spoken of putting "South Africa first" as the motto of a party he wished it to be understood that he and the people of South Africa generally accepted it, as every nation was bound to accept it. But they also realized that their future as a nation and their freedom as a nation were at stake, and that their interests were bound up with those of the British Empire._ "_It was because they realized that fact that the Government of the Union had in these troublous times nailed its flag to the mast. It was the honourable course, the right course, and they had stuck to it through good report and ill report, and through much trial and sacrifice. His last message as representative of the Union Government was: Upon that attitude of the Union Government they might depend to the very last. They might be forced--he did not see any present prospect of it--to abandon office, but so long as they were in office they would adhere absolutely in the letter and in the spirit to the undertaking they had given and would continue in the path they had followed hitherto._" Sensible, truly political and patriotic, noble words, indeed. Are they not the complete expression of the powerful wave of enthusiasm which spread throughout the length and breadth of the whole British Dominions overseas, when, after exhausting to the last drop her efforts to maintain peace, Great Britain, in honour bound, threw her gallant sword in the balance in which the destinies of the world were to be weighed during the frightful years of the most terrific thundering storm ever witnessed by man? How weighty those words are is evident. They are still more so by the fact that they positively and firmly express the views and sentiments of the two most trusted and illustrious leaders of the Boers, who, both of them, took a very prominent part in the South African war, as generals commanding the forces of the South African Republics: General Botha and General Smuts.