That was before the fatal 27th of February on which Cronje surrendered.

I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small States, came to get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great Britain in a life or death struggle; and almost invariably they informed me that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an active part in the struggle on their behalf, and, furthermore, they had been taught to think that Britain’s Empire was rotten to the core, so much so that as soon as war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall away from her and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap once again into open and bloody mutiny.  They expressed themselves as being dumbfounded when they heard that Australian troops were rallying under the Union Jack, and seemed to feel most bitterly that the men from the land of the Southern Cross were in arms against them.  “We fell out with England, and we thought we had to fight England.  Instead we find we have to fight people from all parts of the world, Colonials like ourselves.  Surely Australia and Canada might have kept out of this fight, and allowed us to battle it out with the country we had a quarrel with.”

“The Canadians and Australians are of British blood.”

“Well, what if they are?  Ain’t plenty of the Cape Volunteers who are fighting under President Kruger’s banner born of Dutch parents?  Yet, because they fight against Englishmen, you call them all rebels, and talk of punishing them when the war is over, if you win, just because they lived on your side of the border and not on ours.  Would you ask one Boer to fight against another Boer simply because he lived on one side of a river and his blood relation lived on the other?  You Britishers brag of your pride of blood, and draw your fighting stock from all parts of the world in war time, but you have no generosity; you won’t allow other people to be proud of their blood too.”

I tried to persuade them that I did not for one moment think that Britain would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and pointed out that, in my small opinion, such a course would be foreign to the traditions of the Motherland; and was often met with the retort that if England did so the shame would be hers, not theirs.  Many a time I was told to remember the Jameson raid and the manner in which the Boers treated not only the leaders of that band of adventurers, but the men also.  “Look here,” said one old fighting man to me, as he leant with negligent grace on his rifle, “I was one of those who helped to corner Jameson and his men, and I can tell you that we Boers knew very well that we would have been acting within our rights if we had shot Jameson and every man he had with him, because his was not an act of war—­it was an act of piracy; and had we done so, and England had attempted to avenge the deed, half the civilised world would have ranged themselves on our side; but