The war with the Matabeles is clearly not over yet.
The insurgents are perpetually attacked and always defeated, but their impis or regiments have not been driven to any great distance from Bulawayo, and the country is in no way safe. The blacks cannot resist cavalry, and are not apparently well armed, but they hold the hills, move with great rapidity, and are formidable to all detached parties. Mr. Cecil Rhodes appears anxious to distinguish himself in the field, probably with a view to popularity, and his policy seems to be entirely one of battle, which in so vast a oountry must be unwise. At the same time it must be fully recognised that the Matabele murders of unarmed whites, merely because they are whites, put them almost out of the pale of mercy, and that the absence among them of any leader who can answer for their conduct makes general arrangements for peace exceedingly difficult. At the same time we regret, if only on grounds of policy, to see the temper of the white settlers hardening, to notice a certain readiness to execute as well as to slay in fighting, and to read exulting expressions as to the number killed. We do not want dead bodies in Rhodesia, but quiet subjects who will work fur wages and ultimately become taxpayers. Lenity is good policy in Africa as well as Asia, but it is very seldom that it is displayed on the former continent. Something in the climate or the surroundings seems to make all Europeans, Germans, Dutchmen, Portuguese, and even Englishmen, abnormally hard.
