xtermination with a great nation, we sent their
leader home to his own country to be tried by his own countrymen, and the
rank and file we forgave freely. We may be a nation of white savages, but
our past does not prove it, and if Britain wins in the war now going on she
will have to be very generous indeed before we will need to blush for our
conduct."

"Why should not the white population of South Africa be ready to live under
the protection of Britain? The yoke cannot be so heavy when men of all
creeds, colours, and nationalities who have lived under that rule for years
are now ready to volunteer to fight for her, even against you, who have
admittedly done them no direct wrong?"

"Why should we live under any flag but our own?" replied the old fighting
man passionately. "We came here and found the country a wilderness in the
hands of savages; we fought our way into the land step by step, holding our
own with our rifles; we had to live lives of fearful hardships, facing wild
beasts and wilder men; we won with the strong hand the land we live in. Why
should we bow our necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke of silk?"
And as he spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks
of the Boers who were standing around him.

"You, of course, blame all the Colonials, Australians and others, for
coming to fight against you?" I asked. "I don't know that I do, or that my
people do, in a sense," the veteran replied. "It all depends upon the
spirit which animated them. If your Australians, who are of British blood,
came here to fight for your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just
and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did right, for a son will
help his mother, if he be a son worth having; but if the Australians came
here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in
time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though
God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, yet, in His own time, He will
surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears;
for whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our
lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause."

"What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters?"

I asked the question carelessly, but the answer that I got brought me to my
bearings quickly, for then I learnt that more than one gallant Australian
officer dear to me had fallen, never t