Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position invests us with. * * * * * If it be asked, why at this especial moment we feel it incumbent on us not to maintain silence, and what that is which compels our action and speech, the answer may be given in one word--WAR! The air of South Africa is HEAVY WITH RUMORS; inconceivable, improbable, we refuse to believe them; yet, again and again they return. There are some things the mind refuses seriously to entertain, as the man who has long loved and revered his mother would refuse to accept the assertion of the first passer-by that there was any possibility of her raising up her hand to strike his wife or destroy his child. But much repetition may at last awaken doubt; and the man may begin to look out anxiously for further evidence. * * * * * We English South Africans are stunned; we are amazed; we say there can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to ask ourselves: “What means this unwonted tread of armed and hired soldiers on South African soil? Why are they here?” And the only answer that comes back to us, however remote and seemingly impossible is--WAR! To-night we laugh at it, and to-morrow when we rise up it stands before us again, the ghastly doubt--war!--war, and in South Africa! War--between white men and white! _War!_--Why?--Whence is the cause?--For whom?--For what?--And the question gains no answer. We fall to considering, who gains by war? Has our race in Africa and our race in England interests so diverse that any calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon us, as war? Is any position possible, that could make necessary that mother and daughter must rise up in one horrible embrace, and rend, if it be possible, each other’s vitals?... Believing it impossible, we fall to considering, who is it gains by war? There is peace to-day in the land; the two great white races, day by day, hour by hour, are blending their blood, and both are mixing with the stranger. No day passes but from the veins of some Dutch South African woman the English South African man’s child is being fed; not a week passes but the birth cry of the English South African woman’s child gives voice to the Dutchman’s offspring; not an hour passes but on farm, and in town and village, Dutch hearts are winding about English AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH.