"I had been inclined to look at the war as analogous to the struggles which put the Americans in possession of Texas, New Mexico, and California. I suppose the technical rights are about the same in one case as in the other; but, of course, there is an enormous difference in the quality of the invading people; for the Boers have shown that they have no kinship with the Mexicans. In Texas the Americans first went in to settle and become citizens, making an Outlander population. This Outlander population then rose, and was helped by raids from the United States, which in point of morality did not differ in the least from the Jameson raid--although there was at back of them no capitalist intrigue, but simply a love of adventure and a feeling of arrogant and domineering race-superiority. The Americans at last succeeded in wresting Texas from the Mexicans and making it an independent Republic. This Republic tried to conquer New Mexico but failed. Then we annexed it, made its quarrels our own, and did conquer both New Mexico and California. In the case of Texas there was the dark blot of slavery which rested on the victors; for they turned Texas from a free province into a slave republic. Nevertheless, it was of course ultimately to the great advantage of civilization that the Anglo-American should supplant the Indo-Spaniard. It has been ultimately to the advantage of the Indo-Spaniard himself, or at any rate to the advantage of the best men in his ranks. In my regiment, which was raised in the South-West, I had forty or fifty men of part Indian blood and perhaps half as many of part Spanish blood, and among my captains was one of the former and one of the latter--both being as good Americans in every sense of the word as were to be found in our ranks. "If the two races, Dutch and English, are not riven asunder by too intense antagonism, surely they ought to amalgamate in South Africa as they have done here in North America, where I and all my fellows of Dutch blood are now mixed with and are indistinguishable from our fellow Americans, not only of English, but of German, Scandinavian, and other ancestry.