as to
inflame the imagination of the illiterate and uneducated Boer, and to
work upon his vanity and prejudices. That pernicious rag, Carl
Borckenhagen's "Bloemfontein Express," enormously contributed to
spreading this doctrine in the Orange Free State. I myself firmly
believe that the "Express" was subsidised by Kruger. It was no mystery
to me from where Borckenhagen, a full-blooded German, got his ardent
Free State patriotism.

'In the Transvaal this was done by the "Volksstem," written by a
Hollander and subsidised by Kruger; by the "Rand Post," also written by
a Hollander, also subsidised by Paul Kruger; and in the Cape Colony by
the "Patriot," which was started by intriguers and rebels to their own
Government, at the Paarl--a hot-bed of false Africanderism. "Ons Land"
may be an honest paper, but by fostering impossible ideas it has done us
incalculable harm. It grieves me to think that my poor people, through
want of education, had to swallow this poison undiluted.

'Is it possible to imagine that Steyn, Fischer, and the other educated
men of the Free State did not know that, following Kruger's hostile
policy of eliminating the preponderating Power in South Africa, meant
that that Power would be forced either to fight in self-preservation or
to disappear ignominiously? For I maintain that there were only two
courses open to England in answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to
fight or to retire from South Africa. It was only possible for men
suffering from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
suffering from, not to see the obvious or to doubt the issue.'

So much for a Boer's straightforward account of the forces at work, and
the influences which were at the back of those forces. It sums the
situation up tersely, but the situation itself was evident and dominated
Cape politics. The ambitions of Africanderdom were discussed in the
broad light of day in the editorial, in the sermon, in the speech,
though the details by which those ambitions were to be carried out were
only whispered on the Dutch stoeps.

Here are the opinions of Reitz, the man who more than all others, save
his master, has the blood of the fallen upon his conscience. It is taken
from the 'Reminiscences' of Mr. Theophilus Schreiner, the brother of the
ex-Prime Minister of the Cape:

'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in Bloemfontein
between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly after the retrocession
of