. In the Free State every
resident may be commandeered, and I believe forty-eight hours counts as
"residence." You see the advantage of an extended franchise. The penalty
for escape is confiscation of property, and five years' imprisonment or
L500 fine, if caught. The few British who remained have had all their
horses, carts, and supplies taken. Some are set to serve the ambulance;
a few will be sent to watch Basutoland; but most of them have abandoned
their property and risked the escape to Natal, slipping down the railway
under bales or built up in the luggage vans like nuns in a brick wall.
In one case the Boers commandeered three wool trucks on the frontier.
Those trucks were shunted on to a siding for the night, and in the
morning the wool looked strangely shrunk somehow. Yet it was not wool
that had been taken out and smuggled through by the next train. For Scot
helps Scot, and it is Scots who work the railway. It pays to be a Scot
out here. I have only met one Irishman, and he was unhappy.

But for the grotesque side of refugee unhappiness one should see the
native train which comes down every night from Newcastle way, and
disappears towards Maritzburg and safety. Native workers of every
kind--servants, labourers, miners--are throwing up their places and
rushing towards the sea. The few who can speak English say, "Too plenty
bom-bom!" as sufficient explanation of their panic. The Government has
now fitted the open trucks with cross-seats and side-bars for their
convenience, and so, hardly visible in the darkness, the black crowd
rolls up to the platform. Instantly black hands with pinkish palms are
thrust through all the bars, as in a monkey-house. Black heads jabber
and click with excitement. White teeth suddenly appear from nowhere. It
is for bread and tin-meats they clamour, and they are willing to pay.
But a loaf costs a shilling. Everything costs a shilling here, unless it
costs half-a-crown; and Natal grows fat on war. A shilling for a bit of
bread! What is the good of Christianity? So the dusky hands are
withdrawn, and the poor Zulu with untutored maw goes starving on. But if
any still doubt our primitive ancestry, let them hear that Zulu's
outcries of pain, or watch the fortunate man who has really got a loaf,
and gripping it with both hands, gnaws it in his corner, turning his
suspicious eyes to right and left with fear.

The air is full of wild rumours. A boy riding over Laing's Nek saw 1,000
armed Boe