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 declining to accept it, however, until assured by him that it was his purpose to retire.

The efforts of the burghers of South Africa to protect their homes against the aggressions of the strongest empire of the world seeking to get possession of their gold and diamond mines appealed to me strongly. Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jamieson represented the ordinary type of adventurers, always to be found on the outskirts of civilization, ready to run the risk of hanging in order to take the chance of seizing what does not belong to them. In my opinion, no man who has been minister to a foreign court, especially to England, which is our natural rival and in time of stress has always been our foe, ought to be permitted to be Secretary of State of the United States. John Hay, who is generally much lauded for diplomacy and whom I should like to approve, because of his literary attainments and because he wrote to me some kindly letters and spoke pleasantly of me in his Life of Lincoln, should never have held that responsible position. The meanest thing in American annals is the fact that we aided the British Empire to crush a little republic by sending our mules and supplies. One of the greatest mistakes we have ever made was in throwing our sympathies and moral support to Japan in her war with Russia. The latter country had been our friend in the War of 1812, during the Rebellion and when she sold us Alaska. The merest tyro ought to have been able to see that with our ownership of the Philippines and our Pacific Coast, a struggle with Japan is in the future inevitable. Both of these blunders were due to the fact that John Hay used his potent influence in behalf of England. Some years ago it was my fortune to see at a bookbinder's the letters and invitations with which he was coddled by the king and nobility of London and which he was having bound in crushed levant for his posterity to admire. Very few men are strong enough to resist such blandishments. I wrote three letters upon the Boer War for the New York Sun. Rh