The Times of Friday contains a very interesting and characteristic
telegram from its Paris correspondent, de- scribing a cosmopolitan dinner given by "a Frenchman of high political rank," at which a Dutchman, "a man of a certain age" and well acquainted with" the Transvaal, pronounced a most striking speech on- the subject of the South African War. If the address, like that delivered by the old man at a station, who made a promiscuous ora- tion," was a little long and diffuse, it contained one state- ment of great moment, and, as we believe, a statement which is entirely well founded. This was that the German Emperor was the real author of the war.—" The German Emperor's telegram. This was the real cause of the present war; and I say this because I was in the Transvaal at the time, and witnessed the explosion of feeling which it caused. Take note, I beg of you, that I would not now appreciate William IL's act, which, indeed, was the spontaneous outburst of- a Royal will, before which we must bow down with admiration." [" Appreciate " here, no doubt, means over - estimate.] "This telegram, it should not be forgotten," the anonymous Dutch politician went on to say, "was not a promise of intervention, it was intervention itself. I affirm for my part—I who am no longer of the age of this heady Sovereign—that every one in the Transvaal at the time felt a thrill, and one and all we said, it is the intervention of Germany and tantamount to her protection.'"
