Probing at random I had touched a very sensitive nerve.  We had got down from underneath the political and reached the social.  What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule?  It is not Slagters Nek, nor Broomplatz, nor Majuba, nor the Jameson Raid.  Those incidents only fostered its growth.  It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man.  British government is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution.  Black is to be proclaimed the same as white.  The servant is to be raised against the master; the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.  The dominant race is to be deprived of their superiority; nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect.

I mused on the tangled skein of politics and party principles.  This Boer farmer was a very typical character, and represented to my mind all that was best and noblest in the African Dutch character.  Supposing he had been conducting Mr. Morley to Pretoria, not as a prisoner of war, but as an honoured guest, instead of me, what would their conversation have been?  How excellently they would have agreed on the general question of the war!  I could imagine the farmer purring with delight as his distinguished charge dilated in polished sentences upon liberty and the rights of nationalities.  Both would together have bewailed the horrors of war and the crime of aggression; both would have condemned the tendencies of modern Imperialism and Capitalism; both would have been in complete accord whenever the names of Rhodes, Chamberlain, or Milner were mentioned.  And the spectacle of this citizen soldier, called reluctant, yet not unwilling, from the quiet life of his farm to fight bravely in defence of the soil on which he lived, which his fathers had won by all manner of suffering and peril, and to preserve the independence which was his pride and joy, against great enemies of regulars—­surely that would have drawn the most earnest sympathy of the eminent idealist.  And then suddenly a change, a jarring note in the duet of agreement.

’We know how to treat Kaffirs in this country.  Fancy letting the black filth walk on the pavement!’

And after that no more agreement:  but argument growing keener and keener; gulf widening every moment.

’Educate a Kaffir!  Ah, that’s you English all over.  No, no, old chappie.  We educate ’em with a stick.  Treat ’em with humanity and consideration—­I like that.  They were put here by the God Almighty to work for us.  We’ll stand no damned nonsense from them.  We’ll keep them in their proper places.  What do you think?  Insist on their proper treatment will you?  Ah, that’s what we’re going to see about now.  We’ll settle whether you English are to interfere with us before this war is over.’