South Africa is no newcomer among the nations, for she has interested the world for three thousand years. She was the port of Phœnician adventurers centuries before the birth of Christ; she was the goal of the great Portuguese captains in the first dawn of the Renaissance; Holland claimed her when Holland was the first of sea-Powers; she received the flower of the Huguenots scattered by the French religious wars. During the century which has elapsed since Britain first acquired an interest in her soil, she has been the theatre of many wars, as she has been the cradle of many industries. “From Africa comes always some new thing”—the proverb is as old as Aristotle; and the ancient continent has not lost her power to surprise the world. South Africa has had some magic in her to beguile the hearts of all races, and he who has once been captured by the love of her wide sun-steeped spaces will never forget them, and, though he leave her, will assuredly return. For her charm lies in the paradox that she is long-descended and old; and yet eternally young. Distant as she is from the main centres of the world, scarcely one of the great crises of modern history has left her untouched; and it was right, nay inevitable, that in a war of nations she should play a conspicuous part. She who had passed through so many furnaces, could not stand aside when that for which her sons had often fought was challenged, and the hard-won gains of civilization stood in jeopardy. * * * * *