"It makes me melancholy to see the Boer War hanging on. Your limit of eighteen months (the time Selous stated it would last) is rapidly approaching. Of course there can be only one ending; but it is a dreadful thing to have the ending come only by the exhaustion of the country and of the fighting men. How I wish you could be made administrator of all South Africa. Somehow I feel that you could do what no other man could do, and really bring about peace. I begin to be afraid you have been right about this war. I hope we shall see things go right hereafter." It is interesting too to study both Roosevelt's and the American attitude towards our policy in the Boer War. In reply to Selous' explanation of the whole matter the American statesman thus writes (March 19th, 1900):-- "I appreciate very deeply the trouble you have taken in writing to me; although in a way your letter has made me feel very melancholy. My idea of the questions at issue has been mainly derived from the 'Spectator,' a paper that I take and always like, and which impresses me as being honestly desirous of getting at the true facts in any given case. I paid especial heed to what it said because of its entire disapproval of Cecil Rhodes and the capitalist gang. Moreover, a friend of mine, Ferdinand Becker, who was in the Transvaal and who saw very clearly the rights and wrongs of each side, and for whose judgment I have great respect, insists that as things actually were the war was inevitable, _that there had to be a fight, and that one or the other race had to be supreme in South Africa_. By the way, much of the pro-Boer feeling here is really anti-English, and as I have a very warm remembrance of England's attitude to us two years ago, I have of course no sympathy with such manifestations. So I thought after Montague White's visit to me that I should like to hear the other side from someone whom I could thoroughly trust, and I appealed to you. It is largely an academic curiosity on my part, so to speak, for the answer of the English Premier to the communication of transmissal sent by President McKinley with the letters from the Presidents of the two Republics shows that any mediation would be promptly rejected. I do not suppose that the end can be very far distant now, unless there is a formidable uprising in the Cape Colony, for it would look as if there had never been fifty thousand Boers under arms, and Roberts has four times that number of troops in South Africa. Evidently the Boers are most gallant fighters, and quite as efficient as they are gallant.