The president, Paul Kruger, and his bigoted and ignorant Executive Council had got every concession which crafty greed and tyranny could get from cowardice and treason. They had introduced German soldiers wholesale into their country, and purchased nearly all the arms and ammunition which had entered Africa for the past two years. This, with blind and misplaced confidence, they had been allowed to do by the other colonists. Indeed, throughout Cape Colony and Natal, the Dutch Africanders had been openly spending all their spare money in arming themselves, while the colonials, as a majority, had been watching them doing this, and neglecting to take the same precautions. At the present moment, to all appearance, the Boers and their friends were the only effectively armed people throughout South Africa. We must except, of course, those who were under the influence of Cecil Rhodes--the men of Rhodesia and the Three Ace Club league. Affairs were in a fairly quiescent condition at present. The citizens of Johannesburg had given over asking for their rights, and accepted each fresh insult and oppression quietly, and without outward remonstrance. They knew such were utterly futile with that obstinate bigot, who regarded himself as an avenging instrument in the hands of the Lord. Neither was it any secret what all these warlike preparations were aiming at. If the Home Government shut its eyes, not a man, woman, or child in Africa but knew that the old man of Pretoria intended nothing less than the subjugating of Africa to the Boers, as soon as matters were ripe enough. They would soon find excuses for their violence and treason when they were ready to begin. As for the anarchy and massacres that would follow, they were satisfied that they would find plenty of defenders amongst the reptile gangs of Little Englanders, who were at present doing their utmost to help them in their work of destruction. It was an open secret that the hated English were to be driven out of Africa, and the country torn from the empire. This was to be the result of our clemency and weak indulgence to a race who understood only revenge and oppression. The remorseless principles and inhuman tenets of the Boer religion belonged to those dark ages which civilisation and the true knowledge of Christianity has swept from the other portions of the globe where the Bible is known and honoured. Their colonial history is a long record of steadfast atrocity and abuse of power. Wherever they have trekked they have left a broad trail of blood and disaster. Wherever they have settled, progress has ceased to exist. They are, as a race, the most ignorant, the most remorseless, and the rudest of barbarians.