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"I appeal to the forbearance of the delegates," he said, "for making any speech at this meeting. I fear I am unable to give as rose-coloured a report as my brother Free-Staters have done: My district has been continually harassed by the enemy's troops, and great devastation has been wrought.
To tell the truth, there was not a man amongst us who would have asked better than to make prisoners of the Cape Mounted Rifles and of Brabant's Horse. They were Afrikanders, and as Afrikanders, although neither Free-Staters nor Transvaalers, they ought, in our opinion, to have been ashamed to fight against us.
Thus it fell to my lot to take over the command of the Free-Staters. The Commander-in-Chief of these Free State burghers, as well as of those who were camped round Kimberley, was Mr. C.J. Wessels; Mr. E.R. Grobler commanded at Colesberg, and Mr. J.H. Olivier at Stormberg. I spent my first few days at Magersfontein in organizing the Free State burghers.
He should have kept his supplies at Kroonstad, or, better still, at Bloemfontein, until he had reconstructed all the railway bridges which we had blown up on the line to Pretoria. Lord Roberts had already begun to trust the Free-Staters too much; and he had forgotten that, whatever else we may have been thinking about, never for a single moment had we thought of surrendering our country.
With the sole exception of the skirmish between the Harrismith burghers and the Carabineers at Bester Station on the 18th of October, when Jonson, a burgher of Harrismith, was killed the earliest victim in our fight for freedom this was the first fighting the Free-Staters had seen. We occupied kopjes which formed a large semicircle to the west of the railway between Ladysmith and Dundee.
It was Steyn and Botha, with two men of the name of Steytler, and two other Free-Staters whose names I have forgotten, who managed to escape from the ship that lay anchored in the harbour of Ceylon. They swam a distance of several miles to a Russian ship, by which they were carried to one of the Russian ports, where they received every hospitality.
If Commandant Meijer had had sufficient time to collect a commando in the Colony, I am sure that he would have proved that the younger generation of Free-Staters, to whom he and Willem Pretorius belonged, possess qualities which were entirely unsuspected before the war began. On the 8th of December three columns of the enemy appeared from Kroonstad.
Also we Free-Staters had endured much from the Basutos, in the wars of 1865 and 1867. History had thus taught us to place Brandwachten round our laagers at night, and to reconnoitre during the hours of darkness as well as in the day-time.
It is rather from a wish to give a proof of his undaunted courage that I quote his words. "Are you afraid of things like that?" he asked, when Scheepers had given my message. "Just you go and shoot them down, and catch them when they run." At Paardenberg's Drift there were some Free-Staters' camps that stood apart from the others.
I have poured out my whole soul. If I did fly, it was only because one man cannot stand against twelve. After the Transvaalers had crossed the Vaal River, I took twelve hundred men to Heilbron, where there was already a party of my burghers. General Roux with other Free-Staters was stationed east of Senekal, and the remainder of our forces lay near Lindley.
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