Transvaal republic being, as they said, unjustly attacked, so that the casus fœderis of a defensive alliance had arisen.
We are then internationally at war. The idea which is often expressed in a part of the press that it is not an international war, but that it is possible to treat the enemy as insurgents, is perfectly absurd. No serious person who knows anything of the case would maintain it for a moment. But although we are now internationally at war it will by no means follow that the war will conclude by our becoming internationally at peace. It may be, the war having now broken off the previous relations between the governments, that those relations may never be re-established; it may be that the only remedy for the evil will be the annexation of these two republics. It is now rather early to speak of that, but if that should be the remedy, if in the end there should be no negotiations, no terms of peace, no recognition of the republics as still continuing to exist but simply a proclamation of annexation, then we must remember what President Kruger said at the Bloemfontein conference, that independence on the footing of having the Dutch swamped by Uitlanders governing the country according to the English and not according to the Dutch ideal would be worse than annexation[1].
- ↑ The exercise of the extreme right of conquest by the annexation of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic to the British dominions would not prevent any powers of self-government which might be thought fit being given to the territories which now compose them. The empire includes examples shading off in that respect from the dominion of Canada to the rock of Gibraltar. Nor would annexation prevent the separation, if approved, of the goldmining districts in which the non-Boers greatly preponderate from the more purely Boer districts, so that in the latter the Dutch population might in some degree have the satisfaction of living their own life, under due provisions for the benefit of all other inhabitants of the same parts. Only the constitutional authority of the crown or of parliament would be supreme, and any necessary modifications of the arrangements might be made by that authority from time to time. There would be no more place for the fog
