Can we wonder that the telegram was so accepted, even
if it was not so meant, especially when we remember that the German Government never made any real apology for, or ex- planation of, the telegram? The present writer held at the time, and has always continued to hold, that our Government should have answered the telegram by a demand that it must be withdrawn in the clearest, most public, and most unmistakable terms, and that if this demand was refused we should have treated the refusal as an unfriendly act, with all its consequences. Such action, if successful—as it certainly would have been, for Germany knew that she must face us alone, and so have lost her whole mercantile marine and all her colonies—would have taught the Boers that they must not look for any help from European intervention. As it was, we neglected to give them this lesson, but, instead, we let them believe, as they were not unnaturally prone to do after the telegram, that they might rest secure under German protec- tion. They believed, erroneously no doubt, that we did not follow up the Raid by Imperial action because the Emperor had forbidden us to do so, and in this security they sat down to pre- pare for the war which they believed they would be able to wage with limited liability, owing to the certainty of intervention if the worst came to the worst. That the Boers were " fooled ' in the end does not make our unwisdom any the less in not recognising that the German Emperor's telegram was a• great fact,—an act of State which could not be ignored, and must be dealt with sharply and at once if it was not to have ultimate consequences injurious to this country. But, alas ! our statesmen found it almost impossible to understand that things cannot be and not be at the same time.
