332 THE LAND OF THE LION 
home at last, a man who has done things, a man who knows, 
whose dearly bought knowledge is invaluable, he and it go 
to the great waste-paper basket of the nation, He is not 
now, and never has been, called to the counsels of those who, 
without one fraction of his experience, direct the Colonial 
policy of the country. 
There surely never was perpetrated by any sensible 
people such a purposeless, thankless, criminal waste. Oh, 
why not honour in the eyes of the whole nation they have 
served so well, some representatives at least, of this fine civil 
servant class? Why not give the ablest of them some unpaid 
advisory, but none the less honourable, place, in the Colonial 
administration of the Empire, so honouring in the eyes of 
the world men truly deserving of honour. 
The English taxpayer has to-day a hard time of it. An 
immense fleet, an immense old-age pension bill, yet to be 
paid for; how can he be expected to put his hand deeply in 
his pocket at the behests of a little almost unknown African 
colony. Moreover, the very name “African” is just now 
very tiresome to his ears. He has scarcely met the mon- 
strous expenses of the Boer war (nearly $300,000,000). 
No, nor has he or his rulers as far as a sympathetic observer 
can see, learned its costly lesson, that war came, that treasure 
and blood were poured forth, just because England never 
took the trouble to have and to maintain one wise, righteous, 
settled policy for the country. Rather she ‘preferred, or 
allowed her rulers to prefer, her traditional non-policy of 
““muddle through somehow,” one Government doing and 
promising one thing, the next undoing and taking back the 
work and promises of its predecessors. The result was a 
war that need never have been. ‘The further result lying in 
the future, is nothing less than the loss, to the English speak- 
ing race, of South Africa. 
One can understand the policy that allowed the Boers to 
build up, unopposed, a Government that was intent on driv- 
