"As our terms have been refused by Botha, they are of course withdrawn, and his Majesty's Government do not think it advisable that you or Kitchener should reopen negotiations. Should Botha or other leaders make any further suggestions of their own accord Kitchener will, of course, forward them to us without expressing any opinion upon them to those who make them. But neither Mrs. Botha nor any one else should be led to suppose that we could consider terms more favourable to the Boers than those which have been rejected. The Secretary of State for War will send a copy of this to Kitchener." That the negotiations were looked upon with disfavour by all parties concerned is undoubted. A letter written by one of Reuter's correspondents expresses the very general view taken by the British in the field:-- "The Parliamentary paper giving particulars of the peace negotiations has been eagerly read by all ranks of the Army. It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that the British forces now operating in South Africa are profoundly dissatisfied with them. On all hands, and from all ranks, the same complaint is heard, that they are too lenient, and are not calculated to bring permanent peace to South Africa. There is no bitterness against the Boers; that feeling has long ago died out, but when the men came to read the terms of peace proposed by the British Government, they remembered their dead comrades whose graves mark the line of march, and asked themselves: 'Is it for this that they have died?' The Army, which has undergone countless hardships and dangers, is less articulate than a municipal body in England, but surely it should have its say. The regular Army, perhaps, is expected not to think or to express its thought about politics, but to fight, and only to fight; but the South Africans, the Canadians, and the Australians will give expression to their sentiments. They declare that in the terms of peace offered by the British Government there are all the elements of future rebellion and unrest. 'Give the Boers,' they say, 'even more than we have promised them, but let it be as a free gift after surrender, and not as a condition of surrender.' Curiously enough, these sentiments are shared entirely by the Burghers who have surrendered, and who are only waiting for the end of hostilities to take their places as British subjects, determined to do their utmost for the peaceful development of a country which, under British rule, will be as much theirs as anybody else's. One of them, speaking to me the other day, put forward his view of the case. 'If the British grant terms to those burghers now under arms,' he said, 'they at once establish for all time a confession of weakness. We shall tell