I reprint here a letter published in _The Times_ of 14th October 1899, together with a prefatory note added by the editor of that journal. This epistle seems to me worthy of the study of thinking men. Much of it, most of it indeed, is mere brutal vapouring, false in its facts, false in its deductions; remarkable only for the livid hues of hate with which it is coloured. Yet in this vile concoction, the work evidently of a half-educated member of the Cape Dutch party, or perhaps of an Afrikander Irishman of the stamp of the late notorious Fenian Aylward, appear statements built upon a basis of truth which we should do well to lay to heart. I allude principally to the question of our food supply and to the possible behaviour of the electorate in the event of a great war under pressure of want and high prices. (See paragraph 3 of the letter of "P. S.") In a very different work, "A Farmer's Year," pages 179 and 380, I have attempted to treat of this great matter which elsewhere has been dealt with also by others more able and perhaps better qualified. Until it is reasonably certain that under any circumstances which we can conceive the price of food stuffs will not be raised to a prohibitive point, it can never be said that the future of Great Britain is assured beyond all probable doubt. When will this problem receive the attention it deserves at the hands of our Governments and of those over whom they rule? We have received the following letter, appropriately headed "Boer Ignorance." The writer bears a well-known Dutch name, and gives as his late address the name of a well-known town in a Dutch district of Cape Colony:-- _To the Editor of the "Times."_ SIR,--In your paper you have often commented on what you are pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do not change it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind tool of our farseeing and intelligent, President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambezi to the Cape. All the Afrikanders in Cape Colony have been working for years for this end, for they and we know the facts.