"As
soon as I see them coming, I shall take my mare and go and hide in the
hills."
The mother did not say anything. She bore up bravely, as our women ever
do, Heaven bless them! Was it not but some ten miles from this very spot
that years before a handful of our pioneers had gained the victory at
Vecht Kop, when the women loaded the guns and handed them to the men as
the latter unflinchingly beat back the tremendous horde of maddened
blacks that flung themselves against the hastily drawn circle of
waggons. Does not one old lady still bear the scars of the nineteen
stabs she received on that day? Our women are women indeed, and worthy
mothers of the race that yet shall people all Africa and rule itself.
Do not think I am flying too high. The average Boer family numbers ten
children. Boys are in the majority. If at present we have thirty
thousand warriors (I am not counting the wasters), it follows that in
two generations we shall have three hundred thousand. Taking the
proportion then, as now, of ten to one, Britain will have to employ
against us in 1940 no less than three million men! And when that time
comes, the children of to-day will have the recollection of the
concentration camps and of a few other little trifles to strengthen
their backbone.
The concentration camps! Fit subject for Dante, who in the _Divina
Comedia_ portrays as no other can the maddened heart of a father doomed
to see his children waste away before his very eyes.
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