When the Boers went into a town, they never commandeered anything without paying cash for it, and in this matter they were far too lenient. I was sitting in the Transvaal Hotel in Pretoria one evening when a command of about forty men rode up. The commandant came into the office and asked the proprietor if he would give the men a meal; they had been marching since early morning without anything to eat. The man in charge (the proprietor, being an Englishman, had fled at the beginning of the war) asked if they could pay for the entertainment. The officer replied that they did not have enough money to pay the regular price, but that he would give all they had and would pay the rest later. The hotel man told him roughly that he was not running his place for fun, and that he could not feed the soldiers unless paid in advance. The commandant walked slowly out and told his burghers what had been said, and they wheeled their horses about and continued their march through the town, supperless. I do not believe there is another people on earth that would have done the same thing, and allowed that money-grasping hotel man to go on serving meals to men who were too cowardly to fight for their country, or to foreigners who had deserted their cause, but who happened to have enough money to satisfy his exorbitant demands.
Many of the burghers went out of Pretoria on the last days with scarcely enough to keep them alive, simply because they had no money, and they would not take by force even a portion of the stores piled high in every shop. The forbearance of these simple people was almost past belief.
CHAPTER VII.
The Railroad in Modern War
Major Burnham, the American Chief of Scouts for Lord Roberts.
