The Boers, as we know by experience, are capable of
believing the wildest legends in regard to intervention, and if they heard—as they certainly would, for they have never been cut off from telegraphic news—that a foreign deputation had left Europe to make terms of peace, they would most probably believe that intervention had come at last, and that they bad, in fact, won the fight. But if a wave of feeling of this kind spread throughout South Africa, it might easily rekindle the war in a hundred places. The Boers would everywhere think they bad got a good reason for holding on and not surrender ing. We do not, of course, say that _these considerations necessarily compel the Government to reject the: Dutch offer altogether, but we do say that they compel the greatest possible caution in regard to the subject of negotiations with third parties who have no credentials, no power to bind any one, and who presumably are acting contrary to the wishes of Mr. Kruger and Dr. Leyds. Might not the Dutch Government, indeed, be first asked to convince the Boer leaders in Europe
that the struggle is hopeless P When they had done that, and had secured authorisation from and co-operation with them, the chief difficulties in regard to communicating with the men in the field would have disappeared.
