e Imperial Government was still hopeful of
a friendly settlement with the Transvaal, but if this hope were
disappointed they looked to the Orange Free State to preserve strict
neutrality and to prevent military intervention by any of its citizens.
They undertook that in that case the integrity of the Free State
frontier would be strictly preserved. Finally, he stated that there was
absolutely no cause to disturb the good relations between the Free
State and Great Britain, since we were animated by the most friendly
intentions towards them. To this the President returned a somewhat
ungracious answer, to the effect that he disapproved of our action
towards the Transvaal, and that he regretted the movement of troops,
which would be considered a menace by the burghers. A subsequent
resolution of the Free State Raad, ending with the words, 'Come what
may, the Free State will honestly and faithfully fulfill its obligations
towards the Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing
between the two republics,' showed how impossible it was that this
country, formed by ourselves and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel
with us, could be saved from being drawn into the whirlpool. Everywhere,
from over both borders, came the news of martial preparations. Already
at the end of September troops and armed burghers were gathering
upon the frontier, and the most incredulous were beginning at last to
understand that the shadow of a great war was really falling across
them. Artillery, war munitions, and stores were being accumulated
at Volksrust upon the Natal border, showing where the storm might be
expected to break. On the last day of September, twenty-six military
trains were reported to have left Pretoria and Johannesburg for that
point. At the same time news came of a concentration at Malmani, upon
the Bechuanaland border, threatening the railway line and the British
town of Mafeking, a name destined before long to be familiar to the
world.

On October 3rd there occurred what was in truth an act of war, although
the British Government, patient to the verge of weakness, refused to
regard it as such, and continued to draw up their final state paper. The
mail train from the Transvaal to Cape Town was stopped at Vereeniging,
and the week's shipment of gold for England, amounting to about half a
million pounds, was taken by the Boer Government. In a debate at Cape
Town upon the same day the Africander Minister of the Interior a