stone sangars following a semicircle, which was, however, evacuated during the night. General Clery with a part of Sir C. Warren's force, at 6 A.M. on the 21st, attacked the ridges west of Spion Kop, where the Boers were intrenched, and, with the judicious use of his artillery, succeeded in capturing ridge after ridge for about three miles. His troops bivouacked on the ground they had gained, the main position of the enemy still in front. The action lasted for thirteen hours, and was severely contested, with a loss to us of 190 officers and men, mostly slightly wounded. During the day General Warren's division swung round two miles towards the right, thus gaining touch with the cavalry at Acton Homes. General Lyttelton's brigade, opposite Potgeiter's drift, also moved forward, forward, under cover of the fire of the naval guns on Mount Alice, At Schiet drift, about four miles east, a party of Irregulars came upon a small Boer force on the northern bank, showing that the enemy was watching that point and probably the entire river-line, no doubt to prevent surprise. On the evening of the 21st the position of the British seems to have been: Lord Dundonald with a cavalry brigade at Acton Homes on the extreme left; Sir C. Warren's division next to him on his right; General Lyttelton's brigade two miles north of Potgeiter's drift on the extreme right of the line; General Hildyard's brigade near Springfield; and General Barton with his brigade and all other available troops fronting Colenso. SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL PROSPECTS. OF the many problems which this war opens, the one which is most urgent. is the prospect, now brought in sight by Sir R. Buller's operations, of its successful and, if possible, speedy termination. The further questions, what amount of reconstruction our military system must undergo, and what must be our naval policy with the presence on the high seas of so many prospective first-class navies, may stand over for the present. Their premature discussion denotes a certain degree of unfounded panic, and may be classed with the exaggerated outcry against the Government in respect of its preparations, and the generals in respect of their mistakes. If our object is to take a fair view of the present position, we must bear in mind that it is one of unprecedented and unforeseen difficulty. We must concentrate our energies on the present, and adjourn the past and future to another opportunity. It is the way out of this difficulty, by successfully surmounting it, that we must discover: the way into it in the past, and the mode of preventing its repetition, may be discussed hereafter. It is said that we have sent to South Africa the whole of our available British activeservice army. It is a statement very difficult to test. We have no doubt a very large and wellequipped force there, much of it, especially the cavalry, too good for the work which it has to do. But there are large reserves of military force ready to our hand. Thousands of South African volunteers are ready to serve, Australia and Canada will furnish more; our own volunteers are eager to be utilised; our native forces in India, Sikhs and Goorkhas, men most suitable for this class of warfare, would obey as proudly the word of command as they did when Lord Beaconsfield summoned them to Malta, and Mr Gladstone to Egypt. Our resources in men and money are so illimitable as compared with those of the Boers, who cannot replace a man or a horse without commandeering, that it is superfluous to count them up. Nor is there any need to adopt a pessimistic tone with regard to the course of the campaign. No facts in politics are so thoroughly demonstrated as these that the Boers have silently and steadily, with the passive sympathy rather than the active support of the Cape Dutch, been building up for eighteen years a great military power; that they have had the advantage of the initiative in war operations; and that they have put into the field at once their whole population and their whole military resources. It was a reasonable calculation on their part that they would be able to drive the slender British forces to the coast. They meant every word of transport, in raising suitable and sufficient mounted troops, in maintaining communications or executing manoeuvres in a country filled with enemies and swarming with spies, have proved greater than were expected. We have sent our best generals to the front, and we are doing all we can to surmount those difficulties. Alternate victories and defeats have been our fate. But the net result is that our beleaguered cities hold out, and that our opponents are wearing themselves out with fruitless labours, forbidden to advance or retreat, withdrawn from civil life, and eating their heads off in camp. their ultimatum, and believed enterprises. Difficulties in they could carry it out and offer to this country the problem how to reconquer a whole continent. When public writers are so glib in arraigning our Government and our generals (for very shame's sake they spare our dauntless soldiers), we are bound to recollect that this avalanche of trained and well-equipped Boers was stayed by a wholly inadequate British force; that Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith maintain their defence; that the Boers have always been unwilling to court certain failure by attacking us in the open, and are at all points reduced to play a waiting game, for which we are much better prepared than they. No doubt, mistakes have been made, as was inevitable; but at least a task, unprecedented in the history of the world, has been accomplished -that of transporting across 6000 miles of sea a larger force of men, animals, and warmaterial than were ever sent by one country on one expedition before. A heavy work of organisation, and of equipping that force in a way most suitable to the needs of the country, awaited it on its arrival. The results accomplished have not kept pace with our impatience; but, on the other hand, no reverse has been sustained which at all impairs our confidence in the ultimate result. Mistakes in military administration have been numerous, as was reasonably to be expected after forty years of cessation from large military At the time of writing the undivided attention of the Anglo-Saxon race is riveted on the ground between the Tugela and Ladysmith. We are all eager for a brilliant success; but if disaster awaits us, it is imperative not to yield. There must be no turning back. South African political prospects will be dark indeed if we do. Whatever happens in the immediate future, we desire to emphasise the political effect which must result from the introduction into South African politics of a new factor of overwhelming magnitude-viz., the resolute determination of all classes in this country to maintain in that quarter of the world an effective ascendancy. Hitherto that factor has been non-existent. For the first three quarters of this century South Africa excited no interest at home; its expensive native wars and its troublesome politics rendered our statesmen more ready to abandon present responsibilities than to assume new ones. The cession of independence to the Orange Free State in 1854 and to the Transvaal in 1852 excited no interest. The establishment of selfgovernment in Cape Colony, with its majority of Dutch electors, in 1872, and afterwards in Natal, passed unheeded: all was well if British power was represented by a handful of troops and by a High Commissioner, even though he possessed no more force of character than Sir Hercules Robinson. The warnings of Sir Bartle Frere, which every British colonist must have known at the time, and which all of us know now, were the ordinary dictates of prudence, were neglected. The surrender by the Transvaal of its independence in 1877 and its retrocession in 1881 after Majuba Hill, with the neglect to purchase from Portugal the Delagoa Bay territory when we might have had it, naturally inspired the conviction that we were neither able nor willing to assert our rights, and were negligent and untrustworthy in respect of our obligations. We are told, on good authority, that a Dutch reformed minister, resident in the Cape Colony, publicly exhorted his kinsmen in the Transvaal to resist the British demands, "because the threats of England are the threats of a man with an unloaded gun." The truth must be brought home to all our minds that in South Africa the reputation which Great Britain has steadily built up is that of vacillation, irresolution, and a disposition to yield. German ambition, as well as Boer, was aroused by Majuba; but her project of connecting her east and west colonies by what is now Rhodesia was thwarted. Mr Rhodes for years has represented in his own person, latterly with the aid of the Chartered Company, the principle of imperium et libertas, which Lord Beaconsfield did so much to establish as the guide of British policy. The Raid with all its folly marks the parting of the ways, and in its consequences made it incumbent upon this country to enforce or abandon its position. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, represented by Mr Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner, necessarily chose the former alternative. Their doing so led to the cessation of German intrigue, and forced the Boer conspiracy to reveal itself; and the whole of South Africa, white and black, knows that the era of British neglect and indifference is past, and is replaced by an unyielding resolve to re-establish the almost dislodged supremacy of Great Britain over its South African dominions. That will and must have enduring political result, more particularly as soon as it is accentuated by some of the military successes which are at last beginning to dawn. Many of the Cape Dutch even in the north have wavered as to which side they should join; a good many of the Uitlanders actually preferred the Dutch to the English flag, if only they could have got rid of Mr Kruger's tyranny and corruption,- for the widespread feeling after the Majuba capitulation was that the British were indifferent and untrustworthy. It is known now in South Africa not merely that public opinion at home is thoroughly aroused, but that in all parts of the empire Mr Kruger's schemes of dominion, principles of government, and hostile animosity to everything British, have been examined and unanimously decided to be an attack on the life and honour of the empire as a whole. They have called forth a unity of sentiment throughout all our great selfgoverning colonies, which has led for the first time in history to an effective unity of action to consolidate and uphold imperium et libertatem. The moral effect of this in South Africa must be immense. The colonies which swell the ranks of our army have diverse interests from ours. It is inconceivable that they should rush in and make the quarrel their own, except on the double ground that the cause is just, involving the honour and the interests in their widest sense of the whole empire, and that the mother country is resolute to assert it. For us to yield in the struggle would be to abandon duty and forfeit empire. Fortunately there is no sign of any diminution of resolve. The mother country sprang to arms of its own accord the moment it realised that the task was difficult. The Colonials have displayed such dash and valour in its service that an enthusiasm for active service has spread over Canada, New South Wales, South Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, and Victoria. Sir Wilfrid Laurier declared that the sending of Canadian volunteers was in response to the unanimous sentiment of the whole population, which desired to show that in this matter the colonies were ranged behind the mother country. Although for the present at all events Indian troops will not be used, the loyalty evoked throughout the whole of India is another proof of the universal sentiment in our favour. The greatest Mohammedan chief, the Nizam of Hyderabad, said, in replying to Lord Curzon's proposing a toast in his honour, that the proudest title he possessed was that of her Majesty's faithful ally, and that his purse, his army, and his own sword were ever ready to defend her Majesty's empire. The great Hindu chief,ˆ the Maharajah of Pattiala, asked permission to serve at the Cape either on Lord Roberts' staff or at the base. He offered to send troops, horses, and transport to South Africa. Every native chief without exception has offered to send horses to the Cape. In spite of the envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness which we receive at the hands of the Continental press, it is gratifying to find that those who know us best rally round our flag and trust us implicitly. On the spot the Boer no doubt is now in the first flush of his power. His whole popu |