Mr. Wessels’s report to his clients induced the rank and file to agree under the altered circumstances to the third alternative, namely, pleading guilty, and they agreed to this under the impression, which without doubt had been suggested and deliberately fostered by the Government, that they were pleading guilty to a nominal offence, and would incur a monetary penalty in proportion.

In consultation with the leaders, Mr. Wessels reported the discussions with Dr. Coster as above given.  Both he and Mr. Solomon represented to them the gravity of the plea, and said that there was the possibility that the judge would invoke Roman-Dutch law and ignore the laws of the country, in which case it would be in his power to pass sentence of death.  In their opinion, they added, and in the opinion of Mr. Rose Innes and others, this would be a monstrous straining of the law, yet they felt bound to indicate the possibility.

The course before the prisoners was not indeed an attractive one, but it was not without its recommendations.  It would have been infinitely preferable to fight it out had there been a chance of a good fight, if even a losing one; but, apart from a verdict of guilty being an absolute certainty, the circumstances were against any possibility of effecting anything like a strong impeachment of the Government.  Moreover, the course now proposed would prevent any ‘giving away’ of Dr. Jameson, who had yet to be tried, and of others; and it also removed the necessity for individual defences by those among the prisoners who had been involved in a less degree than others.  The matter at that time appeared in one way to concern the leaders only.  If they were willing to take upon themselves the burden of the charge and secure the acquittal of others by accepting the full responsibility, it could only be regarded as a chivalrous act.  But there were some among the other the prisoners—­’Irreconcilables,’ as they were called—­who considered themselves equally responsible with the leaders, who strongly objected to shifting any portion of their responsibility upon others, and who desired to stand with those who were prepared to bear the brunt of the charge.  To them the suggestion to plead guilty was as gall and wormwood, and was regarded as another humiliation which they were required to endure, another climbing-down similar to the disarmament, and attended, like it, with exasperating and baffling complications and involvements that made refusal an impossibility.  The one call to which these men would respond was the call to stand together and have no divisions—­a cause for which they were still to make many sacrifices.  The irony of it was that in order to ‘stand together’ they had to agree to segregation.