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Literature of the South African Jl'ar 315 information as to the inner history of the conduct of the campaign. Nor was that all. As soon as it became known that that journal proposed to produce a history of the war and had appointed IIr. L. S. Amery, its chief correspondent in South Africa, as its editor, there was a disposition both amongst the higher authorities and amongst regimental officers to assist in the task. The Times reaped the benefit of that reputation for impartiality which on the whole is justly its due. Equipped with these military advantages and with the other resources of a great journal, very high expectations were formed of the history which would be produced under such auspices. It is perhaps a matter of opinion how far these expectations have been fulfilled in the first three volumes. The first, it is true, is in every way worthy of its birthplace. Dealing exhaustively with the course of the w-ar, it sets forth with excellent judgment and tact the history of the political disputes between Great Britain and the South African Republic, which were so abruptly referred to the arbitration of arms by President Kruger's ultimatum. The right- eousness of the British cause, and the truth that the sole object of Lord Salisbury's government was to obtain " equal rights for all white men in South Africa " are vindicated with a lucidity and accuracy unlikely to be surpassed. The volume may therefore be accepted as a complete historical statement of Great Britain's case. The second volume opens with the story of the actual campaign, and carries it forward to the events of the " Black Week " with its triple defeats of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso. The third covers the ground from the decision to send out Lord Roberts to the occupation of Bloemfontein. The Ti)ncs contemporaries have, with one exception, been unanimous in giving a reception no less favorable to these two volumes than that accorded to the first. The second volume was read eagerly by the general public, and was regarded for the moment as fulfilling in every way the requirements of military history. The marked diminution of in- terest in South African War literature which lapse of time and the overshadowing of that campaign by events in the Far East have occasioned much reduced the number of readers of the third volume, but by those civilians who have read it it is certainly deemed to reach the high standard of its predecessors. From a literary point of view, so far as men whose trade it is to fight and not to make literature may judge, soldiers indorse this verdict. The ease with which the writers unravel their intricate story and unroll before the reader's eye the varying drama of the war discloses literary gifts of the highest order, and stamps the book as one which, what- AM. HIST. REV., VOL. .II. — 21.