The ultimatum cabled to England had no sooner expired at 5 p.m. on the 11th October last than the same evening and on the very next and succeeding days appeared, published all over the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, “Government Gazettes extraordinary,” filling scores of pages, comprising proclamations of martial law, and the hundred and one enactments and provisions regulating that new condition.  Their preambles stated:  Whereas in secret session on such and such dates (that is to say, months previous) the honourable First Volksraad had passed this or that law—­or whereas the two Volksraads, assembled in secret session, had authorized the Government to frame such and such laws, to come into force immediately after publication.  This shows at least a studious purpose months beforehand to be in complete readiness, for it obviously took no little time to prepare all those laws, and have them ready in type for despatch and publication as had been done.  It accords with the assumption that war had been predetermined, and this is further confirmed by numerous statements, publicly made by Volksraad members, and also by President Steyn’s famous and now historic message to President Krueger some short time before, in the laconic and oracular words, “We are ready.”

That the Afrikaner Bond had been for years past preparing for its coup d’etat is further shown by the following incidents which can be substantiated by the writer:—­

During the days of the Jameson raid a very prominent Transvaal Boer, holding office and who had two sons at the scene of the disturbance, remarked at a public place in conversation with other burghers:—­

“England just wants to annex the Transvaal, and no doubt the Orange Free State too.  This we know; but what she does not know is, that we can at this moment reverse the tale—­we can seize in one day Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban, and within a very short time turn every Englishman out of the Colonies, out of the land which England has robbed us of.”

Those words were spoken by a Bond man who is known to rarely speak in public.  When asked by a Uitlander how it could be done, he relapsed into his usual prudent reticence, and merely remarked grimly, “We can do it.”

But for subsequent revelations and the present sequel those words would have been forgotten, and were at the time attributed by some to mere boastful exuberance.

In July last the topic was discussed by some Boers at the house of a highly placed military official, about the five per cent. tax upon the profits of the gold industry.  One said it should be raised to twenty-five per cent. for the benefit of the burgher estate.  That official, who, by the way, had just returned from a gathering of country officials at Pretoria, sententiously replied “that it was no more a question of any tribute, but of taking the mines altogether out of the capitalists’ hands”; and when another burgher interposed a doubt as to the fairness of such a proceeding, that official continued by saying, “Fairness indeed! it is we who have submitted to unfairness only too long—­ons wil nou Engelse schiet (we want now to go on the battue of Englishmen).”