One knows not which most to pity, the blundering muddle-headed
President, or the wretched feeble-minded people who listen to him. Even
little English school-boys would have had the courage and sense to tell
the President how unfit to govern anything but a small pastorate on the
veld he had proved himself after such a speech, and have pointed out to
him that the two million pounds spent on unnecessary forts, had been the
means of starving the Zoutpansberg frontier, and that it was blasphemy
to make the Lord responsible for his own foolish and stupid
extravagance, besides adding insult to injury to accuse people with love
of horse-racing and gambling when they were starving through his
criminal folly.
The burghers, however, lacking the intelligence of English school-boys,
adjourn after the speech to banquet their venerable chief and to glorify
him.
At Heidelberg the President was asked if the Secret Service Fund was
divided into two sections. "Yes," he replied, "for I have to keep my
eyes wide open, and I have private detectives all over the country to
prevent any surprise like that of the Jameson raid occurring again."
What an extraordinary man, to devote 80,000 pounds a year fighting an
enemy that does not exist, when, according to his own words, his
burghers are dying of starvation at Zoutpansberg!