NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AGAIN it is impossible to say definitely that peace is an accomplished fact, but Mr. Balfour virtually promises an announcement on Monday, and meantime all the omens are favourable. The chief Boer delegates have left Pre- toria, carrying with them the final 'British decision, and this they will submit to-day to a ballot of the whole body of delegates at Vereeniging. These must either accept the terms en bloc or reject them, and allow the war to begin again. The course of the negotiations at Pretoria has not transpired, but, as we have said before, they no doubt took the form of diplomatic haggling, which Bunyan has made immortal in his " Holy War." It will be remembered that the other side begins by asking for complete and absolute independence. When that is refused the negotiator, Mr. Loth-to-Stoop, says : " Sir, my master bath said that he will be content that you shall be the nominal and titular lord of all if he may possess but a part." When that is refused, Mr. Loth-to-Stoop suggests that the whole town should be given up, but that his master should have assured to him some place to live in privately. That rejected, be asks for a right of free entry, and when that too is refused, he exclaims, " Sir, you seem to be very hard," but still proposes further terms of concealed autonomy, and again and again presses his points.
