ing. In this case, as in many others, the victim was the
object of the private vengeance of a man who had had a grudge against him,
and repaid it in that abominable manner.

One of the worst mistakes among the many committed during the South
African War was to allow residents to be invested with what was nothing
less than unlimited authority over their fellow-citizens. The British
Government, which was made responsible for these acts, would never have
given its sanction to any one of them; mostly, it was unaware of the
original facts. The English military authorities dealt in absolute good
faith, which makes the more shameful the conduct of those who wilfully led
them into error. Their one fault was not to realise that certain
individuals were not fit to administer martial law. In one particular
district the man in authority seemed to have as the single aim of his life
the punishment of anyone with Dutch sympathies or of Dutch blood. It was
useless to appeal to him, because whenever a complaint was brought by an
inhabitant of the district he simply refused to listen to it, and poured a
torrent of abuse at the head of the bringer. One of his most notorious
actions was the treatment which, by his orders, was inflicted on an old
man who enjoyed the general esteem of both the English and the Dutch
community, a former member of the House of Assembly. His house was
searched, the floors were taken up, and the whole garden was dug out of
recognition in a search for documents that might have proved that his son,
or himself, or any other member of his family had been in correspondence
with the two Republics. All this kind of thing was done on hearsay
evidence, behind which lay personal motives. Had the settlement of the
country been left entirely in the hands of Lord Kitchener, nothing
approaching what I have related could have occurred. Unfortunately for all
concerned, this was precisely the thing which the Rhodesian and other
interests opposed. Much of the loyalty, about which such a fuss was made
at the Cape, was loyalty to the sovereign in the pocket, and not loyalty
to the Sovereign on the throne. This concern for wealth was seen in many
aspects of life in South Africa, and occasionally invaded drastically the
realm of social well-being. A case in point was the opposition by the
financial interests to a tax on brandy. In South Africa drunkenness was
one of the worst evils, especially among the coloured race, yet the
restricti