A GARDEN DIARY 233 



do so for a considerable time longer. Botha, 

 De Wet, Delarey, with half a dozen more guer- 

 rilla leaders, are swarming about, active as ants, 

 and at least as dangerous as hornets. We have 

 got Pretoria, but we have emphatically not got 

 our new colonies, though both, I see, are now 

 officially annexed. That we shall get them some 

 day or other, and that the last of England's big 

 daughters will in the course, say of the coming 

 century become as friendly and tolerant of her 

 as are the other two, a good many people seem 

 to expect. Possibly. The very moderate view 

 she takes of the motherly function will certainly 

 be a help in that direction. In these days 

 grown-up daughters are not expected fortunately 

 to be deferential especially, perhaps, to their 

 mothers. 



The closing scenes of a war have a tendency 

 to awaken in some speculative minds thoughts of 

 war as a whole ; of the entire attitude of man 

 as a combative being. So long as the particular 

 struggle we have been watching remains at the 

 acute stage, so long especially as the faintest 

 doubt exists as to its final result, such a merely 

 academic attitude is impossible. Pride ; dignity ; 

 honour ; fear of what may be ; anger, perhaps, 

 at what has been ; all these rush in a tide 

 through even the most tepid veins, and every- 

 thing else is for the time being as though it were 

 not. When however the struggle is nearing its 



