With Both Armies in South Africa
by Richard Harding Davis

The following is an extract from a book of first-hand experiences by Richard Harding Davis, a U.S. author of romantic novels and short stories and the best known reporter of his generation.

CHAPTER IV
My First Sight of the Boer

After I had met the Boers and found them to be the most misrepresented and misunderstood people of this century, I sympathized with them entirely. And I believe that the people of England, who were betrayed into this war by Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Rhodes, who misrepresented facts, who suppressed the truth, who dangled before their eyes advantages they will never enjoy, and frightened them with evils which never threatened and which never will exist. I believe if those people could learn the truth, by three months of inquiry in the Transvaal, which was the way I learned it, their sympathies would be much as mine.

It is hard to say exactly what we expected to find. Since I have reached the Transvaal I have been so busy taking in new ideas about the Boer and getting rid of most of the old ones, that the original picture I had of him has become dim and elusive. Yet mine was probably the impression of him which is still held by some millions of my fellow-countrymen.

A young man in a starched khaki uniform put his head in at the window of the railroad carriage, and at sight of the ladies took off his hat. That was my first meeting with the "foul and unkempt" Boer. He wanted passports, and he asked in excellent English if I would come with him to the commandant. The commandant was an immense, jolly, busy man, in a suit of ready-made "store" clothes and a white helmet. He shook hands and bowed and laughed and brought me to a grave, long-bearded man, who looked like a well-to-do New Jersey farmer. The latter wrote his initials on my passport and gave some orders to the railway official in the red hat.

"That is all right now," said the commandant. "You need not open your luggage. It is all passed."

I have seldom met with greater good-natured kindness and politeness than I encountered on my first entrance into the Transvaal, a politeness and simple courtesy which have continued ever since.

Toward midday we had our first sight of the Boer militant. He was a red-bearded farmer with a slouch hat, carrying a bandolier over his shoulder and a Mauser in his hand. He could not possibly appreciate the intense interest with which we regarded him. The ambulance corps surrounded him in an admiring, double circle. He was not exactly what they had expected to see. He was neither ferocious nor sullen, nor a wild man of the bush.

He was, instead, a simple, kindly eyed, uneducated farmer. He had been home on furlough to see his wife, and was going back again to the firing-line. He was going back without any pay, without any enticements or medals or rewards or pensions, without the assurance that in his absence an Absent Minded Beggar fund or a Mansion House purse would support his wife and children.

No one had offered him the freedom of any city; none of the American millionaires who had dug their money out of the soil of his country had subscribed to give him a hospital ship; no pretty ladies poured out tea for him at Sherry's under the patronage of Mrs. Langtry and Olga Nethersole; no kind friends presented him with a field-glass, nor "a housewife," nor a copy of " Bloc on War," or Baden Powell's "Aid to Scouting," nor a Kodak camera, nor a bottle of meat tabloids, nor a sparklet squeezer, nor a Mappin & Webb's wrist watch, nor a patent water-filter, nor a knit night-cap, nor khaki pajamas, nor a pair of Stowassers. Fancy going to war without Stowassers and a bottle of tan dressing. This Boer soldier had his bandolier and his rifle, and at parting, the station-master, who had been in the same commando, shook hands with him and said : "Goodbye, Piet." That was his "send-off," and it was likely to be his epitaph.

CHAPTER V
Pretoria in Wartime

It must be because the English are so conscious of the injustice of this war that they rail as they do at the Boer. The Boer, with his independence threatened, might be excused if he railed at the men who are trying to rob him, but he does not. lie is only somewhat hurt and a good deal dazed at the charges they make against him, but he is still good-humored, calm, and determined.

For the last four months I have sat in tents, on steamer-decks, and on the terrace of the Mount Nelson Hotel and listened to old friends from London talk on this war with a spirit of intolerance, unfairness, and credulity which made me doubt if they could possibly be the same sportsmanlike, healthy-minded, well-balanced men that I had formerly known. Never in its most unlicensed moments did the yellow press of America concoct such absurd stories, as clean-limbed, clean-minded English officers will believe and retell against the Boer, their enemy, whom few of them, except those who have surrendered, have ever seen.

Compare their attitude of mind toward the Boer with the attitude of the Boer toward them-the Boer who has had to suffer many things, who has every excuse to censure, who has much to forgive.

One hundred and eighty thousand picked men, "from all the world," "going to Table Bay" to fight thirty thousand farmers, clerks, attorneys, shopkeepers, and school-boys, for the gold that lies in the Rand-gold which has made the Boer neither happy nor rich. For have you ever heard of a Boer who has dug his fortune out of the gold mines? Do you know one Boer who owns a steam yacht or who has built a house in Park Lane?

The Boer owns the soil from which the gold comes, but the Uitlander owns the gold. What money the Boer has taken out of the mines by means of taxes, concessions, the dynamite monopoly, and the liquor law, has not gone into his pockets, but into weapons of war; has not been spent in another country, but in defending his own. When gold was first discovered here, the republic was on the verge of bankruptcy, and a Boer burgher rushed to the President in great delight to acquaint him with the news and to assure him that now that gold was found, the credit of the country was secured.

"Gold!" growled Kruger. "Do you know what gold is? For every ounce of that gold you will pay with tears of blood. Go to your farm and read the Book. It will tell you what gold is."