Fisher, Wessels and Wolmarans, delegates for the South African Republics, has been a disappointment to me.

I expected that these gentlemen would produce some arguments; they have contented themselves with giving us a summary of Dr.Reitz's pamphlet--"A Century of Wrongs." It ends with the same incitement to annexation, which was already to be found in the cry for help sent on the 17th of February, 1881, by the Transvaal to the Orange Free State--"Africa for the Afrikander, from the Zambesi to Simon's Bay!" The delegates recognise that the time for claiming new territories has passed; they describe themselves as a nation of mild and peace-loving men, the victims of perpetual English persecution.

I do not wish to discuss their way of dealing with historical facts, about which they are not so candid as was Mr.
Krueger in his 1881 manifesto, because what we are now interested in, is not that which happened in times long ago, but what has happened since the annexation of the Transvaal by England, on the 12th of April, 1877.

They do not say a word of the state of anarchy then prevailing in the Transvaal, nor of its military reserves, nor of the threatening attitude of Sekukuni and Cetewayo.

Whereas in the manifesto of 1881, with these facts still fresh in the memory of its author, it is said: "At the outset our military operations were not very successful.