ch discouraged; if your people keep on like this the Free
State will break up.' He raised his voice, 'Ladysmith hold out a month?
Not possible; we shall give it a fortnight's more bombardment, and then
you will just see how the burghers will scramble into their trenches.
Plenty of whisky then, ha, ha, ha!' Then lower, 'I wish to God I could
get away from this, but I don't know what to do; they are always
suspecting me and watching me, and I have to keep on pretending I want
them to win. This is a terrible position for a man to be in: curse the
filthy Dutchmen!'

I said, 'Will Methuen get to Kimberley?'

'I don't know, but he gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they
say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is
very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but
lies; all lies, I tell you. _(Crescendo)_ Look at the lies that have
been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have
called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have
treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way your
people have treated our prisoners--put them on board ship to make them
sea-sick! Don't you call that cruel?' Here Gunning broke in that it was
time for visitors to leave the prison. And so my strange guest, a
feather blown along by the wind, without character or stability, a
renegade, a traitor to his blood and birthplace, a time-server, had to
hurry away. I took his measure; nor did his protestations of alarm
excite my sympathy, and yet somehow I did not feel unkindly towards him;
a weak man is a pitiful object in times of trouble. Some of our
countrymen who were living in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State at
the outbreak of the war have been placed in such difficult positions and
torn by so many conflicting emotions that they must be judged very
tolerantly. How few men are strong enough to stand against the
prevailing currents of opinion! Nor, after the desertion of the British
residents in the Transvaal in 1881, have we the right to judge their
successors harshly if they have failed us, for it was Great and Mighty
Britain who was the renegade and traitor then.

No sooner had I reached Pretoria than I demanded my release from the
Government, on the grounds that I was a Press correspondent and a
non-combatant. So many people have found it difficult to reconcile this
position with the accounts which have been published of what tra