The stories of a possible rising in Cape Colony, provoked
by Boer prisoners on parole, do not strike us as true. It is the object of the fiercer loyalists in Africa to have the Press suppressed and the whole Colony placed under martial law before the troops return, and it is the object of the more extreme friends of the Beers to describe the entire Dutch population as driven into frenzy by British seventies. There have probably been some "regrettable incidents," as there are in all wars, and even the beat soldiers cannot be employed in destroying houses and property without risk of some bad men getting "out of hand." and we can readily believe that stories of such incidents grossly exaggerated would greatly excite the more ignorant Afrikanders. But the distance between excitement and rebellion is considerable. Thousands of the Afrikanders'sre loyal, and to suppress their newspapers and frighten them with threats of Courts-Martial would be most unwise. If the Afrikanders had really entertained the idea of flinging off British rule, they would have made the attempt just after our disasters, when they could look not only for sympathy but for protection from their kinsmen in the two Republics.
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