FOR FREEDOM'S CAUSE.
BY TROOPER G. SIMES, ROBERTS' HORSE.
Not with vain boastfulness, careless, unheeding,
Left we our homes and prepared for the fray.
Sadly we answered our wives' gentle pleading,
Hearing the summons we turned to obey.
Not for the worth of the Rand's golden treasures,
Neither dominion, nor riches, nor power,
Ever had moved us to leave city pleasures,
Ever had held us together an hour.
'Twas not for this that we turned to assail you,
'Twas not for this that we entered the strife.
Loud though your country with tears may bewail you,
Can she blame us for this waste of young life?
What we have asked of you that we have given.
Down in the South you may live and be free.
When we have gained that for which we have striven,
Then we will come and will share it with thee.
Freedom you value but hoard as a miser;
Freedom we value but offer to all.
But of the conflict now sadder and wiser,
Blame you not us, but yourself, for your fall.
CHAPTER XVII
The Censor As an Editor
Finding us without a "Leader" for the Day, Lord Stanley writes one.
"The Friend" of April 3rd began its reading matter with a leader by the Censor. When he came to look over our proofs on that day he learned that we had not been able to find time to write an editorial. The value of a series of leading articles calculated either to inspire the army or to pacify or instruct the Boers had been newly impressed upon us by Sir Alfred Milner, and had, without doubt, been discussed at the headquarters of the Field Marshal.
"I will see if I can write one," said Lord Stanley, and, seating himself by the smaller table, where pens and paper were at hand, he began and finished the editorial here reproduced, without even one of the "false starts" which even we who are most practised so often make; and, so far as I recollect, without more than two or three erasures of words. This gave me a new view of the capabilities of our censor—a view in which he appeared more than ever the fittest man in all the army for his exacting post.