xpressed 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 we did not seek those
men's blood; we gave them quarter as soon as they asked for it, and after
that, though we knew very well they had done all that men could do to
involve us in a war of e