There has been much correspondence during the last fortnight as
to the language used by Sir Jacobus de Wet in the exhortations which he addressed to the Johannesburgere when persuading them to surrender unconditionally to the authorities of the Transvaal. We gather that in his public speech he probably made no promise at all of absolute im mtmity from punishment, but that in his private conference
with the Johannesburg leaders he did say something which his hearers, — including some who were not personally interested in the result,—understood to be equivalent to an assurance that not a hair of their heads should be touched if they submitted at once and unconditionally. We see no evidence that either Sir Jacobus de Wet did intend to -commit himself personally to such an engagement, or that the Johannesburgers deliberately misrepresented him. When terms of this kind are not committed to writing, it is certain that they will be interpreted differently by those who offer and those who accept them. We believe that in all probability Sir Jacobus de Wet unwittingly said too much, and that those to whom he spoke, equally unwittingly interpreted it as con- veying more,—a more explicit personal undertaking,—than it actually did convey. The mere fact that the terms indicated were not committed to writing, should be enough to prove that they had not been so carefully weighed and defined as to render all ambiguity impossible.
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