"Take that picture out of your button-hole," said I. "What do you mean by wearing a thing like that when you are under British rule, and have been both protected and generously treated?"
I made a mental promise to see that he did not wear that emblem much longer, and then turning to the soldiers I said, "Men, did you not see what this man is wearing? Why do you spend your money on a man whose sympathies are with the Boers? Give his shop the cold shoulder, and he will soon see that he is making a mistake."
The appeal was in vain. The men instantly began to look very uncomfortable. They rolled their eyes up to the ceiling or pinned their gaze on the floor. No one said a word or even shot a glance of approval in my direction. They did not care. Tommy does not care--never cares--about anything, apparently.
I tried to keep my promise. Search was made for that tobacconist, but he never served behind his counter after that visit of mine. He saved the military the trouble of sending him to Capetown.
Lively days were those for rebels and irreconcilables. The men who had most ardently furthered the cause of the Bond and the Transvaal war party, and who had the indecency to loiter in the town, were quickly weeded out and sent to the Boer prison camp near Capetown. If we could not always tell who were our friends, these mischievous wretches were worse off, for, ofttimes, their old neighbours, tired of the war and awake to the folly of keeping it up, pointed them out to the military, and retailed their nauseous histories.
"I feel a little like a lieutenant of Fouché," said one correspondent to me. "I had pointed out to me a former editor of one of the local papers whose pen was used with vitriol and who did as much as any man to degrade and spoil this little country. I was told that he is still talking angrily and abusively of us, and I was indignant. I mentioned the case to a prominent military officer and in three hours the man was a prisoner on his way to Capetown. I feel as if I was living in Paris in the French revolution--very creepy and uncomfortable. I shall keep my discoveries of such rascals to myself after this."
In this number mine was the leader entitled, "Do we Spare the Rod too Much?" A friendly visitor, whose signature "L. D.-J." unfortunately fails to recall his full name to my mind, wrote a very interesting sketch called "Towards War," which shows with fidelity to the truth how the mere process of going to war prepares one for the war itself. Mr. Landon wrote the first true account most of us saw or heard of the mishap at Karree Siding, where four of our officers were shot, on March 23, while riding over the country on a search for forage. Lieut. Lygon, who was one of the killed, was an intimate and beloved friend of Mr. Landon, who mourned him deeply and most lovingly looked after his burial and the proper marking of his grave. Death had come too close to all of us far too often, but never quite so close to any one of us as in this instance.