GUNTON'S MAGAZINE Peace with REVIEW OF THE MONTH Peace has come at last in South Africa,— peace with honor to both British and Boers. That two small South African nations, having a total population of but little more than a million, should have been able to withstand the power of the British empire in desperate warfare for nearly three years is an extraordinary tribute to their bravery, determination and resourcefulness, however mistaken the narrow and exclusive policies which led them into this unnecessary and hopeless struggle. Moreover, under the liberal provisions of the peace agreement, the Boer submission now is not at all an "unconditional" surrender. For the British also the result brings honor, greater than the mere glory of victory-the honor of voluntary magnanimity to the defeated, the honor which is always due to considerate self-restraint in the use of vast power. Peace comes, moreover, in a way and under circumstances bright with promise for the future of civilization in Africa, not merely in South Africa, but throughout the great central region from the Cape to Cairo. The unification of control now accomplished will permit the bringing together of England's great enterprises for progressive development, both in the North and South of the dark continent, and lead to rapid opening up of the intervening section on a wide scale. As a great additional basis for this process of develop. ment, the two Boer colonies are destined to share in the prosperity and advancement in store for the whole territory to an extent that could not have been approached, perhaps for centuries, if they had remained purely distinct, immovable, obstructing groups, opposing and hampering the advance of progress at every step and persistently blind to their own larger interests. It is quite possible that if the powers in control of the Boer policy had been sufficiently enlightened to grant reasonable democratic privileges to the advance agents of modern civilization in South Africa, fostering instead of obstructing free industrial development with political and educational opportunities, they could have retained their independence in South Africa as naturally as Holland and Belgium and Denmark maintain themselves undisturbed among their powerful European neighbors, and could have become important co-operators in the great advance movement. Even if a liberal policy by the Boers, in view of the steady inflow of immigration had resulted in time in a natural passing of political control into other hands, by the mere fact of the overwhelming outnumbering of the old Boer population, it would simply have been the conclusive evidence that such an outcome was inevitable in the nature of the case. Only, it would then have come without the terrible cost of war and humiliation of forced surrender of national independence. The Terms of Among the significant evidences of fitness to exercise the authority now secured in South Africa are the magnani mous terms accorded by England to the defeated enemy. Having spent more than $800,000,000 in this war, |