praying” for Boer victory over England.  These are instances of mere interest in lieu of genuine convictions.  In England the spectacle is more varied.  There we see interest where there are paid agencies, and persuasion more or less pronounced induced by political party spirit and also by real convictions.  It is in regard to the latter category where perverted journalism triumphs most and stabs deepest, where men of honour and patriotism have adopted views which clash against public interest, and convictions which torture their own minds with grief and shame under the supposed idea of England’s unjust attitude towards the Boer people, assuming that a Government majority allows itself to be actuated by base motives.

Is it not attributable in a large proportion to misguided as well as to venal journalism that the Boer cause has so heavily scored?

Was all this not manifest in the divisions of England’s counsels, in the hampered progress of her diplomacy, her fateful hesitancy and delay in providing appropriate preventive and protective measures in South Africa?

And as regards the tenacity of those convictions, it is with them as it is in plant life.  The longer a tree is in maturing, the harder is it to uproot it.

The activities of Bond propaganda have been in continuance for many years, and the prejudices fostered so long are correspondingly deep-rooted.

Bond patriotism was not long subjected to the strain of individual contributions and unpaid performances.  When the Transvaal revenues advanced with such giant strides the Afrikaner Bond leaders in that State contrived arrangements by which the financial requirements were supplied from State receipts.  Nor was the least compunction felt in doing so.  Was the revenue of the State not chiefly derived from the Uitlander element—­from Uitlander investments, which all throve from the nation’s own buried gold wealth?  No scruples existed to provide from those sources the armaments and all else needed for the common cause of conquest.

A secret service fund of some L40,000 per year only was placed upon the budget list.  But this amount was vastly exceeded by the growing requirements of the Afrikaner Bond for expenditure in South Africa alone.  It was easily contrived to divert, sub rosa, large State receipts to supply the remaining financial needs.  Among these figured, besides the heavy outlays in journalism abroad, gratuities, etc., a large bill also for secret agencies, spies, and the like.

The entire expenditure was under the direction of a few only of the trusted leaders and audited by the chiefs, all being kept otherwise undivulged.

The Transvaal thus became the treasury as well as the arsenal of the entire Afrikaner Bond.

Hundreds of agents were in constant employ in the Cape Colonies and Natal suborning the Boer colonists; many of them occupied positions in various branches of the Colonial Government, and were able to supply information upon any subject and even to influence elections.