t they should have been strengthened and deepened by the
trying circumstances of the years during which the country was
convulsed by such unspeakable tragedies.

Although the position held by these men debarred them from taking any
part whatsoever in the events of the war, their sympathies were
undoubtedly with the people of South Africa. They suffered with and
for their friends, and they must frequently have been weighed down by
a sense of their powerlessness to alleviate the distress around them,
which they were forced to witness; but they were, without exception,
men of high integrity, and observed with strict honour the obligations
laid upon them by their position of trust.

Needless to say, they were not aware of the conspiracies which were
carried on at Harmony; to this day they are ignorant of the dangers to
which the van Warmelos were exposed and the hazardous nature of many
of the enterprises in which mother and daughter were engaged, and I
look forward with delight to the privilege of presenting each of these
gentlemen with a copy of this book, in which they will find so many
revelations of an unexpected and startling nature.

It is not my intention to go into the details of the first encounters
with the enemy, nor to describe the siege-comedy of Mafeking, where
Baden-Powell, as principal actor, maintained a humorous correspondence
with the Boers; nor of Kimberley, where Cecil Rhodes said he felt as
safe as in Piccadilly; nor of Dundee, where the Boers were said to
have found a large number of brand-new side-saddles, originally
destined to be used by British officers on arrival at the capital,
where they hoped to take the ladies of Pretoria riding, but ultimately
consigned to the flames by the indignant brothers and lovers of those
very ladies; nor of the fine linen, silver, cut-glass, and fingerbowls
found and destroyed by the Boers in the luxurious British camp at
Dundee. I shall not dwell upon the glorious victories of the first
months, the capture of armoured trains, the blowing up of bridges, the
besieging of towns, the arrival in Pretoria of the first British
prisoners and the long sojourn of British officers in captivity in the
Model School--from where, incidentally, Winston Churchill escaped in
an ingenious way--and the crushing news of the first Boer reverses at
Dundee and Elandslaagte.

Are these historical events not fully recorded in other books, by
other writers more competent than myself?