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- 



