originally come from a good stock, the descendants of Dutch and Huguenot ancestors, but who got mixed up with Hottentots and Zulus and Basutos and other tribes of South Africa, and are somewhat mongrel in their character now. Ten or fifteen per cent. of them perhaps can read, the majority wander over the veldt, respect no rights, and enslave the natives. They are men who trekked off from Cape Colony many years ago because the British had there the same law for the white man that they had for the black man, and the same law for the black man as they had for the white man. They could not stand that, and so went off to the north, following the Old Testament usage, as they supposed, of visiting the wrath of God upon Canaan, and enslaving the natives and making their lives miserable in bondage, and denying them every right that pertains to humanity.

Boer and British civilization are in the balance to-day, and one or the other has to prevail in that country. I, for one, have no doubt as to where the sympathies of every man in this House and of every man in this Dominion of Canada should rest in this great struggle between these two elements. Sir, I have heard criticisms upon the conduct of Mr. Chamberlain outside of this House, and in private conversations inside of this House. I have heard it asserted that Mr. Chamberlain on the one hand was just as much to blame for this war as Mr. Paul Kruger was on the other, and that this war could have been averted, and was a proof of a lack of diplomacy in the management of this matter. Why, Mr. Speaker, for the last eight years, ever since the mines of the Witwatersrand have yielded a revenue, the Boers have been devoting that revenue to the purchase of arms. For the last ten years the Afrikander element in South Africa has steadfastly kept in view its ultimate object, to make South Africa Dutch. There is just one underlying issue that has prevailed from the outset, and that is the issue to-day, viz. Shall South Africa be Dutch, or shall South Africa be British? That is the question to be settled now. There is no outcome but to decide which it shall be, and either it will be Dutch and we shall leave South Africa

as Paul Kruger in his ultimatum practically demanded we should do last October, or, South Africa will be British and the Dutchmen will have to be content with the same degree of liberty that the Englishmen possess.

Notwithstanding all, England will see that the Dutchman has that liberty. The outrages that have been perpetrated on British subjects by the Boer government will have to cease. The tone of that ultimatum in last October is but a very poor basis for the assertion that the British in their treatment of the Dutch element in South Africa were arrogant, and rash and overbearing, and that they were to blame for the war. Sir, this war was a foregone conclusion. The Dutch had decided it should come, and they purposely precipitated the contest while the British troops were being gathered in South Africa so that they might strike the first blow under circumstances which gave them a decided advantage, and which for the time being have led, perhaps, to the belief that the Boer is fully the equal, if not the superior of the British soldier. Mr. Speaker, that is not the case. We heard quoted in this House not long ago the aspersion once cast upon British generals. But, sir, the very man who was reported to have said that the British general was a jackass, was himself conquered by a British general, and, as a result of his defeat, was sent a prisoner to St. Helena. Of course, sir, the British army is now engaged in a war under new conditions, as the American army was engaged in war under new conditions not long ago.

This war is going to demonstrate a good many things that were not before known. It has already demonstrated the great advantage possessed by an army acting upon the defensive, behind rocks and entrenchments, and armed with Mausers and rapid-fire guns. The Boer, as he has been situated in Natal, in the military operations up to the present, has been, I admit, an ugly customer. But, sir, as I said the other night, the Boers have accomplished nothing in this war which has evinced great bravery and dash. They besieged a little garrison at Mafeking, consisting of colonial troops, and not many

of those, and they have had Mafeking under siege for several months, but have failed to capture it. They have besieged two of three thousand British and colonial troops in Kimberley, but have not been able to take that town. They have besieged six or seven thousand British soldiers in Ladysmith, and beleaguered it with forty or fifty thousand men, but for months they have been unable to overcome the gallant resistance of the British soldiers there. But the British soldiers, time and again, have driven them from strong positions at the point of the bayonet, with gallantry such as could not have been excelled; and if you will give them a fair chance on an open field, the character of this war will soon demonstrate itself, and its result will very soon be known, and will prove the superiority of British arms.

Now, this maintenance of British supremacy, I said a moment ago, is a matter in which we colonists in Canada are very directly and intimately interested. England has built up a very wonderful empire. If you look around the world, you will be struck with this fact. Here we have half of the North American continent, just in the infancy of its development. We have room here for 75,000,000 people who can be fed from our own soil. We have in Australia an empire which will support probably 100,000,000 people. We have this magnificent region in South Africa which I have been describing. We have our hands upon every important naval strategic position in the world. We command the entrance to the Mediterranean at Gibraltar. We have our coaling and naval station at Malta in a commanding position half-way to the East. We control Egypt; we have the Suez canal; we control the outlet to the Red Sea with our fortresses at Aden. We have a great naval position at Cape Town. We have our coaling stations and naval positions scattered over the whole face of the globe. We have Zanzibar, off the east coast of Africa, midway between its extremities, and commanding the Zambesi, the German sphere of influence in Africa and the Portuguese sphere of influence in Africa.

The British empire has its coigns of vantage and its strategic

positions in every part of the globe; and its power is ubiquitous. and its armies are collected Its accomplishments have

Its sails are found on every sea; in almost every part of the globe. been almost beyond human belief; and to talk of the incapacity of the leaders of the great movements, or the lack of bravery on the part of men who have carried England's flag in triumph over so many quarters of the globe and over so many fields of action, is the supremest folly.

Of course, as I said a few moments ago, we have difficulties to meet; and perhaps, Mr. Speaker, it is a fortunate thing for Great Britain that we have occasion now to test our strength. Perhaps it is a fortunate thing for us that we are taking a short canter over the military field under these changed conditions to adjust our chronometers, to test our armaments, to ascertain where weak points exist, so as to get ready for any great difficulties that may come in the future, and to know how to strike great blows unerringly and efficiently when the occasion arises. In that respect the two great Anglo-Saxon nations of the world, the United States and Great Britain, have passed through the training required to fit them to meet great emergencies.

It is an unforYou do not go

Sir, we have lost some men in the Transvaal. tunate thing. We may expect to lose more. to war and fight battles with an enemy capable of handling arms without loss of men. You have to expect that. But we have lost very few men compared with the numbers that have been lost in other wars. We have had some reverses; but the reverses have reflected no dishonour on our arms. We have had no reverse like Bull Run, the opening episode in the American struggle. We have had no fighting like the fighting at Cold Harbour, where 10,000 men were swept out of existence in twenty minutes through the mistake of a general. We have had no fighting like that at Gettysburg, where Pickett's brigade of 20,000 men made its assault on the Union centre and the fire was held till the assaulting column was within twenty rods, and 6,000 men went to their death in sixty seconds. We have lost no such num

bers of men as were lost at Chancellorsville. And we have had a greater reserve to draw upon than the republic which sustained these losses, and yet fought through and came out triumphant at the end, having buried, indeed, half a million men, but having proved its capacity to subdue the rebellion and its right to claim the position of a first-class power.

No, we do not need to borrow trouble about this matter. We do not need to consider the necessity of calling the leaders of the Opposition and the leaders of the government in this House together, or to resolve ourselves into a committee of the whole to determine what is to be done. We are not managing these military movements. That belongs to the British War Office. We are doing what lies in our power to promote the interests of the British empire, and we are called upon, not to direct the military operations, not to tell England what is to be done, but to send as many men as we can spare, to raise as much money as we can, and to do our duty as a child of the motherland, loyal to her interests, and well aware that her interests are ours.

I deprecate the evident attempt that has been made to make party capital out of this matter. It has been said that the government moved too slowly, that they ought to have led public opinion, that they ought to have jumped right into the breach and decided incontinently that they would send their contingent to South Africa. Well, governments as a rule are elected to carry into effect certain lines of policy. They do not originate these lines of policy; but the people decide questions at the polls, and a government is installed in office for the purpose of giving effect to the policy which the people have decided upon as a proper one. The question of sending a contingent to Africa had never been passed upon by the people of Canada. The government had no mandate in this matter, and, in my opinion, was not called upon to assume that it knew what the people wanted until the people gave some indication of their opinion.

In the great struggle of the United States, to which I referred a moment ago, when President Lincoln took office, state after