It consequently follows from the above despatches that the Soudanese campaign offered to many officers of our volunteer Militia the long wished for opportunity to freely tender their services to the Imperial Government; that the British authorities never applied to the Canadian Government, then presided by Sir John A. Macdonald, for armed support in Soudanese Africa; that, on being officially informed of the offers of service received by His Excellency the Governor General, the Colonial Secretary, before accepting or declining them, enquired if the Canadian Government sanctioned and recommended them; that the Governor General answered him in the affirmative, the recruiting to be made according to the Imperial Military Act at the expense of the Imperial exchequer. On the 16th of February, the War Minister, then the Marquis of Hartington, informed the Colonial Secretary that he had come to the conclusion to decline with thanks the offers of service from Canada, for the reason that it would have taken too long a time to recruit and organize the regiments offered by General Laurie and Colonel Williams. Was I not right, when I refuted Mr. Bourassa's assertion, in saying that if a _refusal_ was _then_ given, it was by the British Government who had received the freely tendered services, and not by the Canadian Government, to whom no demand of armed support had been made by Great Britain? If it is indeed very astonishing that Mr. Bourassa should have taken the responsibility to affirm that the Government of Sir John A. Macdonald had refused to help Great Britain in the Soudanese campaign, it is easy to understand his object in so doing. His purpose was to convince his French Canadian readers that the political leaders at the head of the Government, in 1899 and 1914, together with the Canadian Parliament, had, in a revolutionary way, reversed the traditional policy of Canada of non-intervention in the "wars of the Empire"--_les guerres de l'empire_. And to achieve his end, so detrimental to the best interests of the Dominion, he did not hesitate to draw an absolutely erroneous conclusion from undeniable historical facts. The "Nationalist" leader was very anxious to charge the chieftains of the two great political parties with an equal responsibility for what he terms a "Revolution" in our relations with the Mother Country. With this object constantly in view, he pretended that the intervention of Canada in the South African War created the precedent which brought about the Dominion participation in the European war, in 1914. In order to stir up to the utmost the prejudices of the French Canadians, he boldly qualified the South African conflict as an _infamous crime_ on the part of England.