BOER COMMISSARY—-"MEALIE PAP" AS A RATION—I TAKE COMMAND OF THE IRISH BRIGADE—WAR DECLARED.
Before we begin to fight I must say something about the fighters, and will commence with the Boer and his readiness for war. The Boer is a simple, unpretentious farmer, with a long beard, rather long hair, a powerful physical frame, a man inured to all kinds of hardships, who daily looks after his horses, cattle and sheep. He has a lot of Kaffir families on his farm, to whom he gives all the land they wish for cultivation, on the condition that they put in his little patch of mealies (corn), and oats. To the Kaffir boys who stay at the farm house, and make themselves useful at all kinds of odd jobs, he gives each a cow at the end of the year. This means a great deal to the Kaffir boy, for when he has as many as eight head of cattle, he has the price he must pay for a wife; and to have a wife is every Kaffir boy's ambition.
Every night and every morning the Boer has religious services in his house, and all the family attend. A visitor may attend or not as he pleases.
The Boer cares not what your religion is, nor of what your church may be, and it does not concern him whether you have any religion or not. He looks after his own soul, and grants you the privilege of looking after yours. He will never impose his beliefs upon you, nor will he ask you your religion. He simply takes it for granted that you are a Christian, a God-fearing individual. He is a domestic man whose greatest happiness is in his home, with his wife and children—and he generally has plenty of children. When he visits his neighbors on Sunday, the whole family visits with him. They all go to church on Sunday, and after the services are over, they all remind me of a happy reunion of a family that has long been separated. In his way, he is as simple as a child, hospitable and generous to a fault, ready to extend the helping hand to friend or stranger, modest and retiring; but when once you try to deprive him of his liberty, you will find that he will fight to the bitter end, regardless of the odds against him.
For months previous to the war, the English Press was busy trying to let the world know what a savage the Boer really was, and especially how intolerant he was, as regards the Catholics. There was an object in spreading broadcast all these outrageous lies; because England wished the world to believe, that in waging war against the Boer, she was really doing a service toward God and humanity. The Irish people were Catholics; so the press told how bitter the Boer is against the Catholic, how he tramples him down, and tries to drive him out of the country. All this infamous lying was for the sole purpose of inducing the Irish to enlist in the British army, and I regret to say that the Irish fell into the trap. Thousands of them joined the British army, and to-day thousands of them are buried in South Africa. Few English are buried in South Africa, but the graves of the Irish and Scotch can be counted by the thousand.
Leaving aside the religious aspect of the man, the Boer reminds me very forcibly of our South-westerners, in appearance; and especially in his riding and shooting ability. I have given a lengthy, but an honest and faithful portrait of the Boer, because the subsidized press of England spent itself in trying to disgrace him in the eyes of the world, for no other reason than to cover up the English Government's infamy in forcing a most unholy and damnable war on the God fearing Boer race of South Africa.
During the time of intense excitement in the towns of South Africa, and in London, the unmindful Boer was quietly and religiously pursuing his daily routine work on his remote farm. It never occurred to him that his quiet was liable to be disturbed at any moment by an exploding bomb that might force him to leave his wife and little ones for two years and eight months, and possibly forever. Occasionally he heard the distant rumble of impending war, but he gave it no heed, for his ear had become accustomed to such sounds during the last twenty years. He could see no reason for war and therefore dismissed the subject from his mind. The Transvaal Government and the Free State Government had, all told, a standing army of about 900 artillerymen who manned their forty cannon and sixty maxims. The artillerists were farmer boys, smooth-faced, and from sixteen to eighteen years old. They were trained by Boer officers principally. I think there were as officers, also, two young Hollanders, and two Germans, who had long resided in the Transvaal.
These young Boer officers and smooth-faced farmer boys proved themselves the most remarkable artillerists in the world. The Free State and Transvaal were exactly on the same footing as to readiness for war, and neither was, therefore, in any sense of the word, prepared for a struggle with the mightiest Empire of the world.
The total population of the Free State and Transvaal combined did not exceed 250,000 men, women and children; while that of Great Britain and her colonies runs up to something like 350,000,000. The Transvaal and the Free State are two inland countries several hundred miles from the coast; so England had no reason to fear trouble in landing her troops at any of her many coast towns. The Transvaal and the Free State are divided into districts, and each district is divided into veldtcornetcies. In each veldtcornetcy there is a veldtcornet, elected by his constituents, who is a civil officer in time of peace and the military leader of the men in his veldtcornetcy, in time of war.