THE ORIGIN OF THE BOER WAR.
Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed : the Conspiracy of the Nineteenth Century Unmasked. By C. H. Thomas. (Hodder and Stoughton. 35. 6d.)—There is a fine vigour about the title of this book which reminds us of "Satan's Invisible World Displayed." Mr. Thomas is a Swiss by birth, an ex-burgher of the Orange Free State, and a profound disbeliever in the righteousness of the Boer cause. Testimony from inside the Republics as to the rottenness of the Pretoria system is valuable, but we cannot see that Mr. Thomas can claim to be taken as an authority on the general situation. He seems to believe that the Boer War was brought about by unnamed wirepullers in Holland, acting rid Cape Town. For this " unmasking " he produces not one shred of evidence. He estimates that the Afrikander Republicans could put one hundred and forty-four thousand men in the field, sixty-two thousand of whom were British subjects between the ages of eighteen and fifty. As for his knowledge of South African history, he thinks that Lord Kimberley (and not Lord Derby) was the Colonial Secretary at the time of the 1884 Con- vention, that Sir Bartle Frere was Governor of the Cape about 1873, and that Sir Henry (and not Mr. Melius) de Villiers was the arbitrator on the Coolie question. He describes Mr. Schreiner as an "amphibious helmsman," a phrase that we commend to critics of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
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