7. We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth-rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds whom you carefully nourish and preserve. 8. We know that nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials, military and naval, are suffering from kidney diseases, which weaken their courage and will-power and makes them shirk all responsibility as far as possible. 9. We know that your Navy is big, but we know that it is not powerful, and that it is honeycombed with disloyalty--as witness the theft of the signal-books, the assaults on officers, the desertions, and the wilful injury of the boilers and machinery, which all the vigilance of the officers is powerless to prevent. 10. We know that the Conservative Government is a mere sham, and that it largely reduced the strength of the British artillery in 1888-89. And we know that it does nor dare now to call out the Militia for training, nor to mobilise the Fleet, nor to give sufficient grants to the Line and Volunteers for ammunition to enable them to become good marksmen and efficient soldiers. We know that British soldiers and sailors are immensely inferior as marksmen, not only to Germans, French, and Americans, but also to Japanese, Afridis, Chilians, Peruvians, Belgians, and Russians. 11. We know that no British Government dares to propose any form of compulsory military or naval training, for the British people would rather be invaded, conquered, and governed by Germans, Russians, or Frenchmen than be compelled to serve their own Government. 12. We Boers know that we will not be governed by a set of British curs, but that we will drive you out of Africa altogether, and the other manly nations which have compulsory military service--the armed manhood of Europe--will very quickly divide all your other possessions between them. Talk no more of the ignorance of the Boers or Cape Dutch; a few days more will prove your ignorance of the British position, and in a short space of time you and your Queen will be imploring the good offices of the great German Emperor to deliver you from your disasters, for your humiliations are not yet complete. For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and your yoke at the same instant, and 300,000 Dutch heroes will trample you under foot. We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you have got it.--Yours, &c., P. S. _October 12._ Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Boer War, by H. Rider Haggard