Queen or President f By S. M. Gluckstein. (Grant Richards.)
—This " indictment of Paul Kruger " leaves us in no doubt of the writer's sentiments and opinions. It does not exactly appear on what authority he speaks, but he seems to be familiar with his subject. On one point he is quite clear. The really mischievous element on the Transvaal side is not genuinely native. It is a foreign element. The real Boer, extraordinarily ignorant as he is, would not have committed himself to his present course of action but for the urging of counsellors of the Leyds type. Some were moved by self-interest—there is no escape from the damning indictment of the dynamite business, which would have ruined any European statesman for ever. Others, it is probable, had a genuine enthusiasm for a Dutch South Africa. But the Boer, left to himself, though he is nut better, to say the least, than the average of mankind, would not have acted so wildly. How, it may be asked, could the Boer farmer be wiser than the men who were acquainted with European politics P Because they counted on European intervention, and did not count on English en orgy, and the fervour of Colonial loyality, which has really saved the Empire. And they had somethi ng to go on. The unanimous malignity of the European Press means something, and then there was the Kaiser's telegram. —The Boer in Peace and War, by Arthur M. Mann (J. Long, is.), is in its "tenth thousa nd," and so may be supposed to have got beyond the reach of criticism. Perhaps we might suggest that Mr. Mann uses irony too freely. He asks, for instance, "Does farming in the Dutch Republic pay F Most emphatically, No." But he means that it does pay, for he gives a balance-sheet for quite an ordinary farm, which shows an income of £537 on a capital of 411,980. He means that the Boer says it does not pay. On the whole, we may say that there is very little of the partisan in Mr. Mann.
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