The presence of the moneyed class at the Cape had also another drawback:  it exasperated the poorer refugees, who could not forgive those who, too, had fled the Rand, for having so successfully saved their own belongings from the general ruin and remained rich, when so many of those who had directly or indirectly helped them to acquire their wealth were starving at their door.  In reality the magnates of the Rand spent huge sums in the relief of their poorer brethren in misfortune.  I know from personal experience, having often solicited them in favour of, say, some unfortunate Russian Jew or a destitute Englishman who had lost all his earthly belongings through the war.  These millionaires, popularly accused of being so hardhearted, were always ready with their purses to help those who appealed to their charity.  But the fact that they were able to live in large and luxurious houses whilst so many others were starving in hovels, that their wives wore diamonds and pearls, and that they seemed still to be able to gratify their every desire, exasperated the multitude of envious souls congregated at the Cape.

A general feeling of uneasiness and of unpleasantness began to weigh on the whole atmosphere, and as it was hardly possible for anyone to attack openly those who had inexhaustible purses, it became the fashion to say that the Dutch were responsible for the general misfortune, and to discover means of causing them unpleasantness.

On the other hand, as the war went on and showed no signs of subsiding, the resources of those who, with perfect confidence in its short duration, had left the Rand at a moment’s notice, began to dwindle the more quickly insomuch as they had not properly economised in the beginning, when the general idea was prevalent that the English army would enter Pretoria for the Christmas following upon the beginning of the war, and that an era of unlimited prosperity was about to dawn in the Transvaal.  I do believe that among certain circles the idea was rooted that once President Kruger had been expelled from the Rand its mines would become a sort of public property accessible to the whole community at large, and controlled by all those who showed any inclination for doing so.

The mine owners themselves looked upon the situation from a totally different point of view.  They had gathered far too much experience concerning the state of things in South Africa to nurse illusions as to the results of a war which was bound to put an end to the corruption of the Transvaal Republic.  They would have preferred infinitely to let things remain in the condition into which they had drifted since the Raid, because they understood that a strong British Government would be interested in putting an end to the abuses which had transformed the Rand into an annexe of the Stock Exchange of almost every European capital.  But, as the war had broken out, they preferred that it should end, in the establishment of a regular administration which could neither be bought nor persuaded to serve interests in preference to the public.  They did not relish the possible triumph of a single man, backed by a powerful financial company, with whom they had never lived upon particularly affectionate terms.