ng all that has happened, if human at all, his
Honour must indulge in a chuckle now and then to think how completely
he jockeyed everybody.{32} Not the least amusing recollection must be
that of the 'great trek' (Banjailand Trek), which his burghers
threatened to make into Mashonaland via Rhodes' Drift when Sir John
Willoughby gained his first experience of Oom Paul. The military
commander of Dr. Jameson's force had called on the President to add
weight to the remonstrances which were being made against the action
of the burghers in invading the Chartered territory, and the
President, playing his cards for a favourable settlement of
Swaziland, had replied that he had done all that he could, and events
must take their course. 'Tell him,' said Sir John to Dr. Leyds who
was interpreting, 'that if the trek is not stopped of course the
result will be war!' 'If it must be, let it be,' the old gentleman
answered quietly. 'Then tell him,' Sir John replied, 'that in that
case he will have to reckon with the British Army.' 'And tell _him_',
said the President, pointing placidly at his interviewer with his big
pipe, 'that I have reckoned with the British Army once before.' If
the recollection occurred to both men on January 2, it must have been
with different emotions.

In dealing with President Kruger's personal attitude it is not
perhaps pertinent but, it is interesting, to recall an incident of
his earlier career--a parallel between the prisoner and the
President. Oddly enough President Kruger was a rebel and a filibuster
himself in the days of his hot youth, and one of his earliest
diplomatic successes was in securing the release and pardon of
men who, in 1857, stood in exactly the same position as the
Uitlanders whom he imprisoned.

The story of the Potchefstroom revolt is little known in England, but
it is told in Theal's 'Standard History of South Africa,' and very
instructive reading it is. Dr. Hillier, of Johannesburg, one of the
Reformers, called attention just before the outbreak to the
extraordinary parallel between the revolt of Potchefstroom in 1857
against the dominance of Lydenburg and the condition of Johannesburg
in 1895 under the despotism of Pretoria. Dr. Hillier in his pamphlet
said:

In 1857 the Republic north of the Vaal attained its twentieth year.
It had increased in population, and had taken on, to some extent, the
habits and mode of life of a settled community. Mr. Pretorius and his
followers began