many who, as the war went on, enrolled themselves in the
various Volunteer Corps which were formed. These gave the benefit of their
experience to the British officers, who relied on the knowledge and
perception of their informants because of themselves, especially during
the first months which followed upon their landing, they could not come to
a clearly focused, impartial judgment of the difficulties with which they
found their efforts confronted. One must also remember that these officers
were mostly quite young men, full of enthusiasm, who flamed up whenever
the word rebellion was mentioned in their presence, and who, having
arrived in South Africa with the firm determination to win the war at all
costs, must not be blamed if in some cases they allowed their minds to be
poisoned by those who painted the plight of the country in such a
lugubrious tint. If, therefore, acts of what appeared to be cruelty were
committed by these officers, it would be very wrong to make them alone
responsible, because they were mostly done out of a spirit of self-defence
against an enemy whom they believed to be totally different from what he
was in reality, and who if only he had not been exasperated, would have
proved of better and healthier stuff than, superficially, his acts seemed
to indicate.

There was still another class of refugee, composed of what I would call
the rich elements of the Rand: the financiers, directors of companies;
managers and engineers of the different concerns to which Kimberley and
Johannesburg owed their celebrity. From the very first these rightly
weighed up the situation, and had been determined to secure all the
advantages which it held for anyone who gave himself the trouble to
examine it rationally. They came to Cape Town under the pretence of
putting their families out of harm's way, but in reality because they
wanted to be able to watch the development of the situation at its centre.
They hired houses at exorbitant prices in Cape Town itself, or the
suburbs, and lived the same kind of hospitable existence which had been
theirs in Johannesburg. Their intention was to be at hand at the
settlement, to put in their word when the question of the different
financial interests with which they were connected would crop up--as it
was bound to do.

The well-to-do executive class forming the last group had the greatest
cause to feel alarmed at the consequences which might follow upon the war.
Although they hoped