NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE war news of the past week has been of the usual character. We go on capturing the Boers at the rate of about four hundred a week, and we continue to restrict the area of Boer activity by weaving the toils of the block- house net. As Mark Twain said of his journey in the cart drawn by a donkey, a cow, and an old woman, "it was slow, but it got us in before night." So will the blockhouse system. Meantime the intercepted letter sent by General Tobias Smuts to General Louis Botha, published on Wednesday, is noteworthy. It shows that the Boers were quite willing to burn farmhouses when they considered it advisable,—and also were, very characteristically, willing, if occasion served, to reprove the burners on the ground of humanity. No one is so great an adept as the Boer at having things both ways. Think with what skill they defended, in the name of liberty, the principles and workings of a medireval tyranny.
