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their wills, and calls it 'inevitable' or 'destiny.'

The stress of party politics makes this view a highly serviceable weapon of defence. When the plain man asks, in some concrete case of public conduct, 'Is it right to lie, steal, kill?' and wishes to press home some commonly accepted rule of right or wrong, praise of blame, this doctrine of 'the inevitable' is cast in his face; he is told that it is idle to enter minutely into the morals of a 'policy' which is in accordance with the natural evolution of events, or to scrutinize closely the pain, cruelty, and individual injustice which are involved in wide historic workings.

Let us test this doctrine as it has been applied to the South African War. The particular merits of the diplomacy of 1899, whether Chamberlain or Kruger was the more dishonest or malevolent, the validity of the particular grievances which Outlanders were said to suffer, the genuineness of the demand for the franchise, even the actual existence of a Dutch conspiracy – these, it is contended, are not the really vital issues; they do not furnish a real explanation or justification for the war. The struggle between two opposed ideals, two incompatible systems, was bound to come sooner