NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE war news is again chiefly concerned with the negotia- tions for peace. In the House of Commons on the afternoon of Friday, April 18th, and so too late to be recorded in our last issue, Mr. Balfour announced that Lord Milner and Lord Kitchener had had two conferences with the dele- gates, and at their request Lord Kitchener, while refusing an armistice on military grounds, agreed to give facilities "for the election and meeting of representatives of the various commandos to consider the position." The Boer leaders left Pretoria at once for this purpose, but, added Mr. Balfour, it was not expected that communications could be resumed in less than three weeks. Though we are, of course, by no means prepared to say that peace will result at once from the present negotia- tions, we feel convinced that the action of the Boers must tend in that direction. Either the commandos will agree to peace, or else the war will begin again in earnest. But if the latter happens it is inconceivable that the Boers will not begin in depression, and with the assurance of ultimate defeat upon them. Our troops have been resting, except for an occasional and stimulating capture of a few Boers—nearly twelve hundred have been accounted for since the negotiations first began—while the Boers have been getting cold. No doubt the Boer troops are wonderfully exempt from those waves of feeling which affect ordinary armies, but even they in this interval between life and death cannot but have reflected on the hopelessness of the struggle, while at the same time they have been forced to admit, even in spite of themselves, that we are not in reality heartless tyrants who wish to enslave them.
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