Grobelaar.  ’That of course is your misfortune, and Mr. Chamberlain’s fault.

Self.  ’Not at all.  We are a peace-loving people, but we had no choice but to fight or be—­what was it your burghers told me in the camps?—­“driven into the sea.”  The responsibility of the war is upon you and your President.’

Grobelaar.  ’Don’t you believe that.  We did not want to fight.  We only wanted to be left alone.’

Self.  ‘You never wanted war?’

de Souza.  ’Ah, my God, no!  Do you think we would fight Great Britain for amusement?’

Self.  ’Then why did you make every preparation—­turn the Republics into armed camps—­prepare deep-laid plans for the invasion of our Colonies?’

Grobelaar.  ’Why, what could we do after the Jameson Raid?  We had to be ready to protect ourselves.’

Self.  ’Surely less extensive armaments would have been sufficient to guard against another similar inroad.’

Grobelaar.  ’But we knew your Government was behind the Raiders.  Jameson was in front, but Rhodes and your Colonial Office were at his elbow.’

Self.  ’As a matter of fact no two people were more disconcerted by the Raid than Chamberlain and Rhodes.  Besides, the British Government disavowed the Raiders’ action and punished the Raiders, who, I am quite prepared to admit, got no more than they deserved.’

de Souza.  ’I don’t complain about the British Government’s action at the time of the Raid.  Chamberlain behaved very honourably then.  But it was afterwards, when Rhodes was not punished, that we knew it was all a farce, and that the British Government was bent on our destruction.  When the burghers knew that Rhodes was not punished they lost all trust in England.’

Malan.  ’Ya, ya.  That Rhodes, he is the ... at the bottom of it all.  You wait and see what we will do to Rhodes when we take Kimberley.’

Self.  ’Then you maintain, de Souza, that the distrust caused in this country by the fact that Rhodes was not punished—­though how you can punish a man who breaks no law I cannot tell—­was the sole cause of your Government making these gigantic military preparations, because it is certain that these preparations were the actual cause of war.’

Grobelaar.  ’Why should they be a cause of war?  We would never have attacked you.’

Self.  ’But at this moment you are invading Cape Colony and Natal, while no British soldier has set foot on Republican soil.  Moreover, it was you who declared war upon us.’

Grobelaar.  ’Naturally we were not such fools as to wait till your army was here.  As soon as you began to send your army, we were bound to declare war.  If you had sent it earlier we should have fought earlier.  Really, Mr. Churchill, you must see that is only common sense.’