Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1902-04-19

side the strong old Boer and asked him
through the interpreter If there was
anything personally that he wished.
The answer was: Yes" he would
like to have his wife and his grandson,
who were in the laager, to be with him
wherever he might be going.
1t was agreed. An hour or two later
his 1000 men, who had given up their
arms, were waiting their issue of foo
rations. A two-wheeled Cape cart
was driven past them toward the Brit
ish headquarters, where Cronje was
smoking and waiting under a tree. The
cart-with a few blankets and domestic
belongings tied TO the back seat
brought Mrs. Cronje and her grandson,
a lad of II.
4 correspondent, who was hearing
the stories of Boer prisoners, noticed
that when they saw Mrs. Cronje going
TO join her husband they were for the
first time satisfied that fair play was
about. 1t might seem extraordinary
that they could have thought hat
Cronje's wish would be refused, eve
IL they knew Of it. But it is the fact,
AS seen, hat their misgivings about
what followed surrender were removed
only when they saw their generals
wife Join him and what they regarded
as the only possible right thing was
being done.
Emphasized In Jameson's Raid.
Rhodes faithful henchman, DR..
Jameson, made the division between
the married and the slngle-the mar
ried on the Bocr side and the single
on the British-abundantly plain in ms
reid. lie was and is a bachelor, n
among all the officers Of his command
who surrendered TO Cronje at krugers-
dorp there was not a married man.
They included younger brothers de
pending on allowances from parents OF
from %inheriting elder brothers in Eng
land, half-pay guardsmen, miscel-
laneous rolling stones-anything except
the only type OF whose existence the
Boer idea approved. The only evidence
OF feminine influence was the careful
diary of Captain, the Hon. Bobby
White, who a confided to its pages
with maidenly guilelessness by the light
of campfires on the border for the sig
nal to cross what they were all gong
to do, Why they were going TO do 1t,
and what he was to do with the win
nings hat he did not doubt would
come out of it.
Earlier than that, when the discov-
cry of the diamond and gold mines
transformed the problem that the
hunter voor-trekkers had been solving
In their own way, the Beers had for
consideration the spectacle OF the cell
bate. Alfred Belt, making many MIL
lions Of pounds in a very few years
| from financing the De Beers diamond
fields and the most powerful complna-
| ion of the Rand gold mines.
He came originally from Hamburg,
and he now lives in London, but his
strenuous days OF doing were in KIM
berley and johannesburg, where ne got
all the wealth thai made him the chief
| d~nancier of Rhodes British South
Africa company. He did not marry
and settle down in the country, ana Tor
that, among other reasons. the Beers
especially their women, dlsllked MIN,
and his case is typical.
Minor q B-cheior Also
In Lord Miner, now the personal repre-
sentative on the spot of the lord Of and
over the Transvaal," the Beers nave
found another bachelor. When he first
went to South Africa five years ago he
| occasionally went up-country to a cere-
monial in the north of the colony among
| the Cape Dutch, or to British
land, where he opened the railway extern
| sion among a considerable gathering OF
! Boer families. He brought no wife with
him, for ne had none; and no amount OF
gpeechmaking could make up for that
omission.
The Beers were quite frank about II.
They had no use for the university prize
litter making a personal career with their
| country as a steppingstone upward from
Egypt to India. He was an industrious
and deserving person who had saved him.
self from domestic ties because they
would interfere with MS work, and for
that he was bound TO be from the first
emphatically persona non grata.
rha ha1pn nf palihnnV has hppn 50 mi
form among those who have moved, as
the leading representatives of the British
empire, among the Beers that they took
II as q matter Of course when they
learned that Lord Kitchener was another
middle-aged bachelor. Lord Roberts,
with his hospital-visiting wife and daugh-
tiers, who were among them, the Beers
regarded as the exception which proves
the rule.
All Boer Leaders Married.
All the Boer leaders and the vast ma
jority Of their followers OF the age of full
manhood are married. II Is a mistake
to suppose that the country Boer women
are all in a ruck of unideaed embittered
peasantry.
The spirit Of the veldt Is in them and
they have never known n other. None
of them has ever left the country, anc
the comings and goings Of assertively
prosperous strangers with no apparent
domestic ties nave been In their mind
and hearts for years.
They see these conspicuous u~itlandcr:
remain a few years among them, Blu
never OF them, in high official and fnan'
cial stations, and then disappear, appar'
emily Indifferent to the country. the onl,
thing the Beers prize, it has all gone
to strengthen the spirit that
SADIE betwixt their souls TO be
The unplumb'd, salt, ~estranging sea.
When 1t was a question Of sending read
ing matter to the concentration camps, &
Boer woman, the wife OF a subordinate
land official in Pretoria, who had herself