installed himself in an hotel at
Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was
imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden,
and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which
he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was
talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches,
and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in
hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of
themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their
oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever,
and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The
effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English
that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The
knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the
Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over
South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected
the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at.
In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the
British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it
been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the
movement received would have vanished.

As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing
the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the
task--for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given
to the world--of explaining by what steps and on what terms the
Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came
into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did
not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle
of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything
more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the
great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be
unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action
approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies
might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But
this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely
Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the
end, and to avoid a