There can be no doubt as to the meaning of
these telegrams, or as to the howl of exultation with which they will be received on the Continent, and, indeed, by all enemies of Great Britain. The Temps, however, attempts to accentuate the story by a still more extraordinary tale, publishing a tele- gram from Pretoria which asserts that the Government possess proof that Sir H. Loch (Lord Loch) in 1894 arranged for an invasion of the Transvaal to support a rising at Johannesburg, Lord Loch being then Governor of the Cape and High Commissioner. If that story is true, it may be taken as certain that the Home Government knew that the Boers had broken the Convention ; but we believe the story to be a pure invention. Lord Loch is the last man in the world to have lent himself to anything of the kind, whiob, again, except in the event of a secret treaty between the Transvaal and Germany, would have been utterly opposed to Lord Ripon's notions of right and wrong. The story will, we doubt not, have been denied in Parliament too late for our issue, but its invention reveals unexpected depths of hostility to Great Britain in Paris. One of the most terrible facts which come out in this whole affair is that Africa, which un- doubtedly makes Englishmen callous, appears also to impair or destroy their ordinary quality of truthfulness in politics. The lying all through must have been worse than the lying of the least scrupulous diplomatists.
