No responsible statesman in the United Kingdom or in the Colonies can desire to take any step other than conciliatory to Boer sentiment, provided the main object of creating a united and prosperous European community is obtained. Anything like a persecution of the Boer tongue or traditions would not only be unjust, but most unwise. At the same time, Imperial statesmen must remember that British-descended citizens of the Empire in South Africa hold that their sentiment and their opinion is not to be taken as a matter to be ignored. Now, Imperialist sentiment in South Africa is united as to the desirability of having only one official language, and of doing away with the dual language system introduced in Cape Colony twenty years ago. Limiting any action of the Imperial Government, must necessarily be the conditions as to the recognition of Dutch agreed upon with the Boer generals as one of the terms of peace. These conditions were that the Dutch language is to be taught in the schools, in cases where the parents of the children desire it; and in the courts of law in cases where, in the opinion of the court, the ends of justice will be furthered by its use. The wish of the parents and the discretion of the law-courts are, therefore, to be arbiters. The peace terms, in this matter, seem wholly reasonable; but the main question of a dual language remains unaffected. Let us first deal with the cause of much misapprehension in the United Kingdom in this matter. Here I will quote from an article of mine published some time before the peace agreement:-- "There is no question here of the suppression of the language of a people. The language of the Boer people of South Africa is a patois called the Taal, based on the seventeenth-century Hollander Dutch, with a mixture of many strange words, Kaffir and English, and with the omission of most grammatical inflexions. In that happy tongue you are permitted to say: 'I is.' It is needless to say there is no literature in this patois, as there is in the Hollander Dutch of this century. Now, it is only to Hollander Dutch that it is proposed to accord equal audience as an official language. The official recognition of Hollander Dutch dates from 1882 in the Cape Colony, and is a result of the political propaganda of the Afrikander Bond. It was openly announced and hailed as the 'thin end of the wedge' to prevent the fusion of the Boer and British strains of the European people, and to drive the British into the sea. It is almost as grotesque a misrepresentation to call this claim for the official recognition of Hollander Dutch a popular demand, as if, in regard to modern Italy, we were told that the peasants of Umbria or the Marches were hungering and thirsting for the recognition of Augustan Latin as entitled to equal audience with Italian in the courts and public offices of Italy.