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Now we were obliged to celebrate it by giving up the only two guns with which we could still shoot, and which we were now to see turned upon ourselves. My feelings on that day I can never forget! Those Englishmen who go by the name of "Pro-Boers" are the best fitted to describe the anguish which then overpowered me, for they stood up for justice even against their own people.
How we long for the settlement you cannot imagine, nor can you imagine with what disgust and impatience we regard every endeavour on the part of the pro-Boers, as they are called, to divert the natural and inevitable course of things.
There were, however, several notable exceptions, men who were not afraid to speak the truth about their enemies or their country's enemies, regardless of what others might think or say of themselves, regardless whether they would be called Boer-sympathisers or pro-Boers. Such men we shall ever revere and hold in estimation because they dared to speak the truth, cost what it would.
The doctor and nurses worked to the very utmost, and I am pleased to say the epidemic is stamped out. No doubt this is what caused the talk by the pro-Boers in the House of Commons and elsewhere, but it is one of those epidemics which could not be prevented among the class of people we have here.
The Irish and even the Welsh were largely pro-Boers, so were some of the most English of the English. No one could have been more English than Fox, yet he denounced the war with Napoleon. No one could be more English than Cobden, but he denounced the war in the Crimea. It is really extraordinary to find a united England. Indeed, until lately, it was extraordinary to find a united Englishman.
There was, especially in New England, an ardent and sincere minority which was violently opposed to the war and openly denounced it as an unjustifiable aggression. Its attitude has been made fairly familiar to English readers by the first series of Lowell's "Bigelow Papers." This minority corresponded roughly to those who in England were called "Pro-Boers."
It must surely be clear to the feeblest brain that if Priam possessed moles he would expose them. The minority, who talked of psychology and the artistic temperament, were regarded as the cousins of Little Englanders and the direct descendants of pro-Boers. Still, the thing ought to be proved or disproved. Why didn't the judge commit him for contempt of court?
We had been told that the "Myrtle Grove" was haunted by ghosts, but the ghosts, if any there were, must have been pro-Boers, since they never disturbed us. But though we had no ghostly visitors we certainly had some of another kind. The house was perfectly infested by particularly large and bold rats.
But the day will come of this I am convinced when not Pro-Boers only, but all England will acknowledge our rights the rights which we shall then have earned by our quiet faithfulness and obedience. I cannot believe that any father will look without pity on a child who comes to him as a child should obedient and submissive.
Inevitably, it was spotted here and there with smart topical hits of the early years of the century; but that, they said, would be all right. They could freshen it up in a couple of evenings; it was simply a matter of deleting allusions to pro-Boers and substituting lines about Marconi shares and mangel-wurzels. "It'll be all right," they assured Roland; "this is real revue."
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