The head of our State then was still full of hope!
How I then, as always, envied persons of an optimistic nature, persons who never gave way to despair! If there were not men like President Steyn and General de Wet in the world, no obstacles, seemingly insuperable, would ever be surmounted.
We held the solemn day of thanksgiving and of prayer—the first on the farm of Mr. Nicolaas Kruger, the second on the farm of Mr. Willem Blignaut, and then I parted from our lovable and indomitable President, in the hope of joining him shortly afterwards. But this did not happen until the 24th of October.
CHAPTER XX
ANOTHER BRITISH PROCLAMATION
I went to Witzieshoek to visit my friend Mr. J. J. Ross. What an Elim the place was to me during the week I stayed there. The surroundings seemed to transport me two years back into the past. His children reminded me of my own!
And the books in the study! I read—no, I tasted—here a line from this author, there a page from another, which is wrong!—oh, I know that! But still it satisfies a person of my temperament and tastes no less than, though perhaps more ethereally, it does the reader—yes, the reader—to devour every book, word for word, that he attacks.
I skimmed—not that I always do this with books: no, generally I too read; but now I merely skimmed—here a little and there a little. Besides, I had no time for reading. But I had experienced enough to know now, after having had so many months of the war, where to seek the greatest minds.
I saw that the man who dips his pen in ink is greater than he who stains his sword with blood. The man who, out of sight and unaffected by the world's turmoil, gives his life to the thoughts which are born in travail, and which, whatever men may say, do rule the world—that man is greater than he who, in the great world outside, is made a hero of by a senseless rabble, because he leads a hundred thousand men. This man leads an army; that man leads the world.
When I was at Witzieshoek, the English passed through Harrismith to Bethlehem, as they were in the habit of doing almost every week. This time they had an extract from a proclamation by Lord Kitchener, which they left behind in their camps, on the buttresses of the bridge over Elands River, and elsewhere. It was not long before the full text of the proclamation[11] appeared, and this was not only sent to the Governments, but officers came out with flags of truce to the different commandos.
This proclamation made known that the officers and members of the Government would be banished from South Africa if they did not surrender before the 15th of September 1901; and that the cost of support of the families of all burghers who were still under arms on that date would be claimable against such burghers, and would be a charge upon their properties, movable as well as immovable. The English had therefore again issued a proclamation. And how was this received by our burghers?