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The Psychology of Jingoism

their face signs of bias and of passion so clear as rightly to evoke suspicion. The educated man who falls back upon Sir A. Milner is, however, indisputably in the strongest position of defence.

But this is not the normal intellectual position of the educated Jingo. He professes to be convinced from evidence of the corruption of the Boer oligarchy, the reality of the Outlander grievances, and of the danger to British power in South Africa from a Dutch conspiracy, and of the right these facts gave us to coerce and annex the Republics. Now, here again we may discriminate. The minds of many so-called educated persons are so constituted that a conviction simply means that a certain quantity of evidence of some sort or other has been put before them, or merely that a statement has been reiterated many times. Many persons are convinced that there was a Boer conspiracy, and can even tell you what it was and what it aimed at, in the same manner as they are convinced that Colman's is the best mustard, and Bryant and May's the best matches. The minds of such persons are a hopeless prey to political financial intriguers, who can control a sufficient number of newspapers and of other avenues of public information. These persons