United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If it had not been for the marvellous celerity of the Boer, many of the men would have been captured at that farm. This was the 16th of December, 1901. The day I never shall forget in my life's history, and in the history of the Anglo-Boer War. The sun rose in splendour that morning, casting his rays upon me a man in the prime of life, full of energy and martial ambition.
As to the Transvaalers, the men have all had plenty of field practice before the previous war with England and since, in subduing formidable Kaffir rebellions, the last being the operations against the Magato chief, which terminated just before the outbreak of the present Anglo-Boer war.
McBride was really the one link between the two wars the Anglo-Boer and the Anglo-German War, to use a Sinn Fein phrase and if his later attitude was now impracticable, it was certainly logical and consistent with itself. The main difference, however, was in the circumstances, and these he, like many others, refused to admit had changed.
There had been, it seems, considerable feeling against England among the lower orders in this border town over the Anglo-Boer War, so that overhearing us speaking English, some half grown lads began shouting out at us "Verdamt Engelsch" and other pleasantries, and in a moment a crowd gathered about us.
The Anglo-Boer War is attributed to base motives on the part of the British Government, operating in collusion with capitalism to England's passion for annexation, her rapacious greed for the Transvaal gold, her inordinate ambition to universal commercial supremacy, etc. What a confusion of assertions and of self-refuting contradictions!
All these changes, however, took a long time, and were not effected before we had been subjected to two great disasters: one that of Cronje's capture on the 27th of February, 1900, the other, Prinsloo's surrender on the 1st of August, 1900, disasters which proved decisive epochs in the Anglo-Boer war.
Having spent the greater part of the Anglo-Boer war time in the Cape Colony, we had the opportunity of ascertaining some, if not all, of the reasons why so many Colonial British subjects took up arms against the forces of their lawful king and sovereign. These causes we shall here narrate.
A few preliminary pages of personal history I offer to those who followed me either in thought or deed during the Anglo-Boer War. My ancestors were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of his nativity and emigrated to South Africa.
The handsome Boer, or Anglo-Boer, sat on his horse stroking his beautiful beard and gazing curiously after John Niel's sturdy English-looking figure as he marched towards the cart, for, of course, the wounded vilderbeeste had long ago vanished. "I wonder," he said to himself aloud, as he turned his horse's head and rode leisurely away, "if the old volk are right after all, and if there is a God."
The only reason that they were not expressly declared contraband in the Anglo-Boer contest was the character of the war. Had the Transvaal been able to issue an authoritative declaration and insure respect for it by a command of the sea, horses and mules would have been considered technical contraband as in fact they were actual contraband, being nothing if they were not "warlike instruments."
Word Of The Day