perforce rest content. CHAPTER XXX POLITICAL ECONOMY MAFEKING, _March 15th, 1900_. Colonel Baden-Powell has recently issued an order to all ranks in his command requesting the names of those who are willing to enlist in the special corps which are to be raised for purposes of patrolling the country when the war is terminated. If this be a sign of the times, a token by which we may read the lines of the policy by which Africa will be governed during the next few years, it is satisfactory at least to understand that we do not propose to take the risk of successful risings in the months to come in different Dutch centres. This war has shown us the folly of courting "compromise and Exeter Hall" in dealing with dissatisfied areas of the Empire. We have policed Burma, we patrol Ireland (but in a different sense), and in India we have incorporated and turned into admirable efficiency many of the hill tribes, but we cannot translate the native-born Republican nor convert the rebel Dutch without the almost certain contingency arising of their proving traitorous. There are many who know the Boer, and, knowing him and appreciating his strange strategy, his curiously warped mind, his natural aptitude for breaking his bond, would not trust him in any transaction where integrity of character and probity were the essential complement. There has been much opinion among colonials that the Imperial Government might, anxious to be as conciliatory as possible, enrol the Dutch for constabulary duties, giving, indeed, to the younger generation the preference, and thus enabling them to possess an employment definite, if not altogether lucrative. But in this we should be perpetrating against the loyal colonists of Cape Colony a grave injustice, for until the present generation of Dutch has passed away, taking with it the memories of the war, it will be unsafe, it will be unwise, to employ in any administrative capacity whatsoever, those men who, themselves nursing a rancour against Great Britain, will omit no opportunity to foster the traditional hatred of their forefathers. We have in France, and in the French animosity against Germany, a case which is identical, proving, as it does, how the prejudices of a people can be nurtured and kept evergreen through the sheer force of malignant sentiment; and there can be little doubt that time, and time only, is capable of removing from the minds of the Republican Dutch that feeling of detestation and contempt which has maintained them in their attitude of hostility towards us for so many decades. To them, for many years to come, the British will be a nation of iconoclasts; we may banish them, we may wipe out all traces of their misrule, and so obliterate the signs of their existence that historians may find it difficult to believe that they once lived. We may do all these things, but it will be impossible to govern their instincts by Act of Parliament, to curb