WAR'S WANTON WASTE
Day after day we steadily worked our way _down_ to Koomati Poort, even
when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men
toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the
cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The
Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday,
though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we
could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.
[Sidenote: _A Surrendered Boer General._]
During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General
Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to
Pretoria _via_ the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had
joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been
allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That
oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother
Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more
set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes
than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off
Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King
David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, but also
in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore some not
remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.
Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path
and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once
more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was
sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present
were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns.
Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly
two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That
particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago
been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to
the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a
curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to
a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the
English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.
His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely
what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment
the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and
as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The
general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was
sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's
funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries
received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped
with their lives.
On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the triumphant
Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood reverently
beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general, who had
proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the few
concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good as
his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from one
of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards this
whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of peace
were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!
This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all
points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those
who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they
deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot
denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel
clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local
complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been
compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a
good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much
sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true.
Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so
in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered
to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles
that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who
thus proved false to their plighted troth were, alas, ministers of
the Dutch Reformed Church.
[Sidenote: _Two Unworthy Predikants._]
When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was
informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants
of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of
his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at
the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle
the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our
protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one
of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after
seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second
time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When
pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold
perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.
It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive
clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in
laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have
been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this
express promise that they should return to their farms there
personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced
them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far
afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish.
All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it
was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served
to pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently with
surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the
fault was not ours!
At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day,
and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or
destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt
as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still
left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task,
involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the
earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously
beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved
many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.
[Sidenote: _Two notable Advocates of Clemency._]
This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our
island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread
in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington
during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and
sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers,
simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He
recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run
means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if
they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is
Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his
diary:--"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a
glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may
humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British
fleet."
It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that
Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what
success let all the world bear witness!
[Sidenote: _Mines without Men, and Men without Meat._]
From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday,
we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the
Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven
miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit.
Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly
machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the
stern bidding of intruding war--that most potent disturber of the
industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were
cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house;
and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we
enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as
the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river
is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious
Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once
during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a
single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now
tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and
fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so
that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all
our camp. The incessant use of one's heels seems to be the best
preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops that
sickness of any sort really runs riot.
The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in
consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that
are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such
day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced
that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by
train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and
climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the
effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully
suggested this new version of an old-time melody--
Cheer, boys, cheer,
No more of idle sorrow;
Cheer, boys, cheer,
_There'll be another march to-morrow_.
But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the
sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on
three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's
rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to
wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and
putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well
supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never
satisfied.
[Sidenote: _Much fat in the fire._]
After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the
house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another
station on the Barberton branch; and here we found not only a fine
railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway sheds,
recently crammed full with government stores, mostly provisions, now
ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely destroyed. Thousands of
tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in all directions, and
like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had turned the confined
milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously ended its days by
merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good things here,
laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal troops, were
consumed in quite another fashion from that intended. Even accumulated
locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in some cases
elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all utility, by
the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets. The torch has
played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food
supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with
a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed
to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these innocents
drew full British rations, when thousands of British soldiers were
drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and Boer-beloved
way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of an era when,
constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,
Men will hang the trumpet in the hall,
And study war no more!
[Sidenote: _More fat and mightier flames._]
Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed
by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm just as we were commencing
our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge between the
courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and thence came
forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to renew
acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm had
somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be
found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring
conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.
On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate
push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main
line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty
made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four
battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one
battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a
sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes
outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they
were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a
ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line
in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train.
Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on,
and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them.
Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at
that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on
foot. We had indeed come by _rail_, but that we found was quite
another thing from travelling by _train_; and the sequel forcefully
reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding in a
sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully
removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the
situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so"
of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily
beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.
It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they
stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the
station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled,
not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food
stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself
out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains
of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which
paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and
there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning
furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career
by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and
that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where
it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken
sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the
semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so
flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served
out to be cooked as best it could be by the famished men some of them
laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was not that a
dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the station
were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any grate,
besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and no one
knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the
extreme.
[Sidenote: _A welcome lift by the way._]
Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we
nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of
certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little
that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the
mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such
holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a
forced march towards Koomati Poort.
The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen
miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of
the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was
I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and
thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few
miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so
accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the
Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was
twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had
already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of
it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to
because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense
on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially
when they happen to be his only pair.
[Sidenote: "_Rags and tatters get ye gone._"]
Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably
lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at
close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount
that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to
cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform
of my regiment, and _in it I will show_, or fall this day." Barely a
moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer
war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War
Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride
and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in
the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all
regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately
discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be
seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived.
The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and
disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On
this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman
wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of
the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the
word OATS, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man
in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained
were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to Bruges.
[Sidenote: _Destruction and still more destruction._]
On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly
lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our
next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless
wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved
in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We
were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that
was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them
a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile
they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns
and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence,
and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men
marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At
Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at
Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every
kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army;
though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had
flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition
waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the
British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made
every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty
nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the
14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty
locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened to linger
long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more than a
king's ransom!
That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and
bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the
arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp
surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our
march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best
we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst
of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we
had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at
four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find
ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch,
where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.
[Sidenote: _At Koomati Poort._]
On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to
General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of
leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit
of the Transvaal--and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to
fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War
declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe--indeed
the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small
arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a
distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes,
and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A
blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a
good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these last weeks
there were few casualties among the Boers, because they kept well out
of casualty range. They were so frightened they even forgot to snipe.
The valiant old President so long ago as September 11th had fled with
his splendidly well-filled money bags across the Portuguese frontier;
abandoning his burghers who were still in the field to whatever might
chance to be their fate. That fate he watched, and waited for, from
the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the
Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at
Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe
still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst,
broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic
spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special trains
beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men from many
lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous example,
seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on the 24th,
the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more, who were
mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay to become
like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the Portuguese.
To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for
they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway
bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large
financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.
Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the Crocodile
with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw in
midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the two
Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a ridge
of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and the
Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of Portuguese
flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim Boer had
planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might make his
last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our
approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on
their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the
guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a
solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat
prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils
were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that
hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We
praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of
Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this
result.
[Sidenote: _Two notable Fugitives._]
The _Household Brigade Magazine_ tells an amusing story of a Guardsman
hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied
with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right
loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled
his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless him!" Such
a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his own
loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he exclaimed,
"Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for him I
would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"
The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness
begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of
Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has
not been without beneficent influence on our national character and
destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the
consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and
Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its
tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so
bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all
the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war
began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot
understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to
his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon,
for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely
will the Vierkleur be victorious."
[Sidenote: _The propaganda of the Africander Bond._]
What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made
abundantly plain in the pages of _De Patriot_, the once official organ
of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written:
"The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the
British flag. That will never happen. There is just one hindrance to
Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away,
and within a year the Confederation under the Free Africander flag
would be established; but so long as the English flag remains here the
Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The British must just have
Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and
give over all Africa to the Africanders."
It then adds: "Let every Africander in this Colony (that is, the Cape)
for the sake of security take care that he has a good rifle and a box
of cartridges, and that he knows how to use them." English trade is to
be boycotted, nor is this veiled hostility to end even there. "Sell no
land to Englishmen! We especially say this to our Transvaal brethren.
The Boers are the landowners, and the proud little Englishmen are
dependent on the Boers. Now that the war against the English
Government is over, the war against the English language must begin.
It must be considered a disgrace to speak English. The English
governess is a pest. Africander parents, banish this pest from your
houses!"
Now, however, that Kruger is gone, and the Africander Bond has well
nigh given up the ghost, English governesses in South Africa will be
given another chance, which is at least some small compensation for
all the cost and complicated consequences of this wanton war.
[Sidenote: _Ex-President Steyn_.]
Martinus Theunis Steyn, late President of what was once the Orange
Free State, is in almost all respects a marked contrast to the
Transvaal President, whose folly he abetted and whose flight for a
while he shared. Steyn, speaking broadly, is almost young enough to be
Kruger's grandson, and was never, as Kruger was from his birth, a
British subject, for he was born at Wynburg some few years after the
Orange Free State received its independence. Whilst Kruger was never
for a single hour under the schoolmaster's rod, and is laughingly said
even now to be unable to read anything which he has not first
committed to memory, Steyn is a man of considerable culture, having
been trained in England as a barrister, and having practised at the
bar in Bloemfontein for six years before he became President. He
therefore could not plead ignorance as his excuse when he flung his
ultimatum in the face of Great Britain and Ireland. Whilst Kruger was
a man of war from his youth, a "strong, unscrupulous, grim, determined
man," Steyn never saw a shot fired in his life except in sport till
this war began, yet all strangely it was the fighting President who
fled from the face of the Guards, with all their multitudinous
comrades in arms, and never rested till the sea removed him beyond
their reach, while the lawyerly President, the man of peace, doubled
back on his pursuers, returned by rugged by-paths to the land he had
ruined, and there in association with De Wet became even more a
fugitive than ancient Cain or the men of Adullam's cave.
That many of his own people hotly disapproved of the course their
infatuated ruler took is common knowledge; but by no one has that fact
been more powerfully emphasised than by Paul Botha in his famous book
"From Boer to Boer." Rightly or wrongly, this is what, briefly put,
Botha says:--
[Sidenote: _Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President._]
When as a Free Stater I think of the war and realise that we have
lost the independence of our little state, I feel that I could
curse Martinus Theunis Steyn who used his country as a stepping
stone for the furtherance of his own private ends. He sold his
country to the Transvaal in the hope that Paul Kruger's mantle
would fall on him. The first time Kruger visited the Orange Free
State after Steyn's election the latter introduced him at a
public banquet with these words, "This is my Father!" The thought
occurred to me at the time, "Yes, and you are waiting for your
father's shoes." He hoped to succeed "his father" as President of
the combined republics of united South Africa. For this giddy
vision he ignored the real interests of our little state, and
dragged the country into an absolutely unnecessary and insane
war. I maintain there were only two courses open to England in
answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to fight, or to retire
from South Africa--and it was only possible for men suffering
from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
suffering from, to doubt the issue.
I ask any man to tell me what quarrel we had with England? Was
any injury done to us? Such questions make one's hair stand on
end. Whether knave or fool, Steyn did not prepare himself
adequately for his gigantic undertaking. He commenced this war
with a firm trust in God and the most gross negligence. But it is
impossible to reason with the men now at the front. With the
exception of a few officials these men consist of ignorant
"bywoners," augmented by desperate men from the Cape who have
nothing to lose, and who lead a jolly rollicking life on
commando, stealing and looting from the farmers who have
surrendered, and whom they opprobriously call "handsuppers!"
These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell
them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken
prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me,
after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians,
Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily;
that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a
small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men
who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds
of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and
cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every
valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are
not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to
dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.
As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim
to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same
reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no
kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I
tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was
only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted
what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont--"Every man
of you deserves promotion."