He comes, He surely comes:
And all eyes shall contemplate Him,
All hearts shall realise the deeds
Which He wrought here upon earth.”
Mesdames Ferreira and Bezuidenhout.
One of the three ladies standing up (in the accompanying photograph) is my daughter, now Mrs Ferreira; the other two are two Misses Bezuidenhout. They have there the very flags of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, which are their great treasure. The two Misses Bezuidenhout are the daughters of the Widow Bezuidenhout, my husband’s eldest sister. She is the mother of nine children; she too had her house burned down and all that she possessed taken away from her. I have often found her in tears, and she would say to me, “What is to become of us all? I and my children have not one single animal left alive, and everything on my farm has been destroyed!”
Her daughter (Mrs Bodenstein) is also a mother of seven children, and when I saw her she told me that she had nothing for her children, not a single blanket had been left to her. When she went to complain to the English officer, he only asked her, “Who is the man who did it?” The man who did it was nowhere to be found. But the harm had been done, and in the same way not one, but many had to suffer. May no other people in the world ever have to endure another such war so long as the world may last. I do not think that it can be forgotten. I cannot say who it was who were wrong, we or our adversaries. But this I can say, that it was terrible to bear. Never could I have thought that human beings could treat each other in such a way. I know well that war is one of the blackest things upon earth, still I cannot depart from all sense of justice and put down every sort of barbarity to war and consider it right. As we were known to the whole world as two Christian nations, I had thought that such things could not be allowed. But I have been taught that suffering and misery can go on increasing to the bitter end, and that in war no deed can be too hard or cruel to be committed.
Four of Mrs De la Rey’s children, with two little girl friends.