Mr. Methuen draws a close comparison between the situation and that of the American Revolution. There are certainly points of resemblance--and also of difference. Our cause was essentially unjust with the Americans and essentially just with the Boers. We have the Empire at our back now. We have the command of the seas. We are very wealthy. These are all new and important factors. The revolt of the Boer States against the British suzerainty is much more like the revolt of the Southern States against the Government of Washington. The situation here after Colenso was that of the North after Bull's Run. Mr. Methuen has much to say of Boer bitterness, but was it greater than Southern bitterness? That war was fought to a finish and we see what has come of it. I do not claim that the parallel is exact, but it is at least as nearly exact as that from which Mr. Methuen draws such depressing conclusions. He has many gloomy remarks upon our prospects, but it is in facing gloomy prospects with a high heart that a nation proves that it is not yet degenerate. Better pay all the price which he predicts than shrink for one instant from our task. Mr. Methuen makes a good deal of the foolish and unchivalrous, even brutal, way in which some individuals and some newspapers have spoken of the enemy. I suppose there are few gentlemen who have not winced at such remarks. But let Mr. Methuen glance at the continental press and see the work of the supporters of the enemy. It will make him feel more charitable towards his boorish fellow-countrymen. Or let him examine the Dutch press in South Africa and see if all the abuse is on one side. Here are some appreciations from the first letter of P.S. (of Colesburg) in the 'Times': 'Your lazy, dirty, drunken, lower classes.' 'Your officers are pedantic scholars or frivolous society men.' 'The major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds.' 'Nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials are suffering from kidney disease.' 'We will not be governed by a set of British curs.' No great chivalry or consideration of the feelings of one's opponent there! Here is a poem from the 'Volksstem' on August 26, 1899, weeks before the war, describing the Boer programme. A translation runs thus: 'Then shall our ears with pleasure listen To widow's wail and orphan's cry; And shall we gird, as joyful witness, The death-watch of your villainy. 'Then shall we massacre and butcher You, and swallow glad your blood; And count it "capital with interest"-- Villain's interest--sweet and good. 'And when the sun shall set in Heaven, Dark with the clouds of steaming blood, A ghastly, woeful, dying murmur Will be the Briton's last salute. 'Then shall we start our jolly banquet, And toast the first "the British blood."'