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 xot 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 
