pied (p. 90). It was found that there was seldom any certainty that the lonely little houses on the veldt would not be used as refuges for "snipers" or as supply stations for the burghers on commando, or taken as rallying points for raiding bands or for observation of British movements. The people therefore were gathered from such districts into garrisoned camps where friends and foes alike have been sheltered and fed. Thus the Boers in the field were not under necessity to quit raiding and fighting in order to raise food on their farms for support of their families. Temporarily this has operated to keep the comman does from utterly breaking up, though slowly disintegrating by a steady process of attrition.

Report of Buildings Burned.

A parliamentary paper of May 14 gives a statement of buildings of all kinds-farm buildings, mills, cottages, hovels-burned by the military authorities during the war till the end of January, 1901.

The largest monthly numbers were 99 in September, 1900; 189 in October; 226 in November. After November, only nine were burned. The total is 634. Of the farms destroyed, the paper gives detailed account in each case, with the reasons for the destruction. By far the greater number were destroyed in punishment for definite offenses by the inhabitants, such as sniping, persistently harboring combatants, providing the enemy with supplies, helping in destruction on the railway, breaking oath of neutrality, treacherous abuse of the white flag. Less than one-fourth of the total were destroyed in carrying out the policy of laying waste districts used as a base by the enemy. Two houses were burned through a mistake; only one house was burned without orders.

Military Affairs.

BOER AND BRITISH LOSSES. The military field has been immense; the operations on it during May have been small, though numerous and steadily weakening for the Boers. A general view is supplied by Lord

Kitchener's series of reports to the War Office in London.

On May 18, Lord Kitchener reported 19 Boers killed, 14 wounded, 238 prisoners, 71 surrenders, 212 rifles and 105,000 rounds of ammunition captured. For the week ending May 27 he reported 63 Boers killed, 36 wounded, 267 prisoners, 83 surrenders.

On May 26, his report was: "A superior force of Boers made a determined attack on a convoy between Ventersdorp and Potchefstroom, May 23, but was driven off. Our loss was 4 killed, 30 wounded. The convoy arrived safely." On May 27 the Boers had a small success, capturing a British post of 41 men near Maraisburg, Cape Colony.

Summing up the official reports of Boer losses during May, lacking the last three days, they are found to number 1,718; of which 1,056 were prisoners, and 435 were surrenders. Late reports from Lord Kitchener show total Boer losses for the month of May exceeding 2,600.

The British loss reported for a period not definite, ending May 28, was 42 killed, 101 wounded-mostly in the Eastern Transvaal.

A REAL BATTLE.

The first engagement in several months worthy the name of battle was fought May 29 at Vlakfontein, in the southern Transvaal, on the DurbanJohannesburg railway, 45 miles southwest from Johannesburg. It was not a great battle, but the fighting was desperate. The Boers, numbering 1,200, under Delarey, did an unusual thing in making the attack; but the attack was not, as first reported, on an intrenched position held by General Dixon's force, but on his rear guard of 350 men returning to camp. Eventually as the main British force came into action the Boers were driven off, leaving 41 dead on the field. Their other losses are not known. The British killed and wounded numbered 178, a heavy loss for the numbers engaged. Lord Kitchener's report of the battle was so meager and the War Office so reticent that rumors were started in London of serious British defeats in the mining region and in the vicinity of Pretoria. Doubtless the Boers are

desirous of making the resumption of mining operations, now in rapid process, bear an aspect of danger.

BARBAROUS WARFARE.

The London "Times" reported the arrival at Ookiep, about the middle of May, of John Bok, one of three Namaqualand border scouts captured by the Boers when they raided Pella, March 2. His back shows terrible lacerations from the 112 lashes with a trace, which he received in the flogging inflicted on all three. The three were sentenced to death and made to dig their own graves, but the sentence was eventually commuted to enslavement to a burgher, and Bok afterward made his escape.

Lord Milner of Cape Town.

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Sir Alfred Milner, British high commissioner for South Africa, landed at Southampton, Eng., May 24, having been summoned home for a rest from the extraordinarily arduous and difficult labors in which he has been engaged since the period of negotiation which ended with such sudden plosion in war. Arriving in London he was greeted at Waterloo station by a distinguished company of government officials and public men, including Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, and Lord Roberts. By special invitation he went immediately to Marlborough House to be received by the King. From the King he received elevation to the peerage, and chose as his title, Lord Milner of Cape Town-more fully stated as Baron Milner of St. James, in the county of London, and of Cape Town, in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope.

LORD MILNER OF CAPE TOWN was born in Germany, the son of a German professor in the University of Tubingen. His mother was the daughter of a British general. After thorough training at a German school, he studied at King's College, and then at Oxford, where his standing as a scholar was so high as to lead Dean Church to characterize him as "the finest flower of human culture which had been reared at

Oxford in that generation." He early overcame the British prejudice against his German birth and childhood training; and at Balliol College, with the peculiar "fascination" which Lord Rosebery attributed to him, he won the esteem and confidence of Jowett. Entering into journalism, his work on the "Pall Mall Gazette" brought him the acquaintance of Lord Goschen, who soon secured him as his confidential secretary, reposing in him such unbounded confidence as to procure his appointment as the representative of the British government in the Egyptian cabinet. After some years of service in this position, he was brought back to England to be president of the Board of Inland Revenue.

The time came when a man was needed in South Africa as high commissioner of the British Crown, who could deal with the Dutch burghers of the Cape Colony, with the European adventurers, with the native races, and with the capitalists and mine owners led by Cecil Rhodes. There was a strange complexity of unassimilable interests. Milner's clarity and penetration of intellect, his power of sympathetic approach, his unbending resoluteness in action, commended him for this difficult post. It was thought that he would be able to show to all concerned that Great Britain was exercising power in Cape Colony not through a man who was the serviceable commissioner of Cecil Rhodes with his clique of mine owners, but through an actual commissioner of the British Crown. Men conversant with South African affairs count Sir Alfred Milner's most difficult and most beneficial work as governor to have been his reduction of Rhodes and his associates in mining control from their accustomed position as managers of the government to that of submissive helpers of the governor. For, while clipping their power, he has kept their friendship. His elevation to the peerage is universally felt-except by those who desire the triumph of the Boers to have been appropriate to his character and earned by his achieve

ments.

EUROPEAN CONTINENTAL POLITICS.

Fallacious Signs of Trouble.

On the European horizon an imaginative observer can usually see signs of international trouble. There are always sparks liable to be fanned into a local flame which will spread into a

the danger that anything will be actually burned. There are now too many values at risk to admit of any extremely careless proceedings. Only a maniac nation could in these days be playing with fire. The risks are not only numerous; they have also grown during the later years with a rapidity and into a vastness beyond computation. Besides the immense modern in

over, emerge at every intersection of national paths, and these paths now lead over all continents and make stepping-stones of the isles in every

sea.

These obvious perils doubtless tend to make rulers use for avoidance of war a caution demanded to-day also by a civilization which has developed the quality of mercy beyond any degree

her contention, and however unprepared she may at first have been to maintain it, such a nation is not likely to be left out of account in European politics.

But much more impressive on the special field of international relations are two patent facts:

1. By the Boer War, England has been brought to take note of her military deficiencies and to enter zealously on the work of reforming them.

2. In the attack on England, which, though centred in South Africa, was soon shown to have the sympathy of nearly all the great European nations, the latent fire of patriotism was instantly kindled as on sacrificial altars throughout all England's "pendencies beyond seas, and money and men were lavishly offered and even pressed on her acceptance. As by a touch on a hitherto unawakened national nerve, the unwieldy and undemonstrative colonial empire, girdling the globe, became unified and consolidated. The Australian colonies, which a British publicist of note declared not many years ago would be detached from England "if England

should ever be engaged in a serious struggle," sprang to her side urging acceptance of their money and freely offering their blood. And so with Canada. As a result of the Boer war the British empire is unified, consolidated, and vitalized throughout its whole extent as never before.

The imperial unity which Lord Rosebery declared years ago was the passion of his life, but for which neither he as prime minister nor Mr. Chamberlain as colonial secretary was able to produce or propose a workable bond, has been suddenly forged as by a single stroke from an invisible hand in the white heat of war. Not yet are all the working details of a federated empire arranged in terms of law, but the great fact now presents itself as a new phase in British history, and as a quite new element, of which ae martial array of continental Europe will have to take account.

The moral and material strength of this new imperialism is evinced in its basal doctrine now beginning to take its slow practical development-"that wherever there are self-governing communities owning a common British allegiance, there also the responsi

VICE-ADMIRAL FOURNIER,

COMMANDING FRENCH MEDITERRANEAN FLEET. Vol. 11-19.

M. DE LANESSAN,

FRENCH MINISTER OF MARINE.

bility of governing the whole empire shall be shared." Sooner or later the responsibility for defense brings the responsibility for governance.

German Antipathy to England.

While the German government has seldom if ever shown such friendliness to England as during the last three months, the German populace has expressed bitter animosity. Two main reasons are assigned for this feeling. One is, that Germany h; only within the period of one generation developed into a great nation-adding to its long precedence in certain departments of literature, first the repute of the leading military power in Europe, and then in very recent years an immense success in manufactures and commerce. In these last particulars its one great rival in Europe is England; wherefore England is not loved. The other reason for German animosity is the South African war. Kruger, Steyn, and the Boer leaders, are not true Holland Dutch; they are of German stock; and had they been able to expel England from South Africa, affairs might have been so shaped as to tend toward a German protectorate with privileges of large value for German trade. Besides, Germany looks with hungry eyes on Holland, which little kingdom it