My Diocese During the War (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

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Excerpt from My Diocese During the War

But there is one respect in which even we who lived on the spot were quite at fault. Some of us, indeed, were at fault on two points. We never believed, till just before the event, that there would be war, and we never dreamed that if there were it would be anything very big.

As I look back to a year ago, I seem to see quite a different South Africa from that which I see now. There was Johannesburg with its anomalies, it is true. No one had any doubt that the existing condition of things could not go on permanently. The grievances of the Uitlanders were undoubted. And it was an impossible position that the paramount power in South Africa should always suffer its subjects to be treated like naughty children, surrounded with prohibitions and restrictions, and allowed none of the rights of citizenship. But, on the other hand, these grievances did not seem so very pressing. It was doubtful how far they really weighed on the majority of the Englishmen of the Rand, and especially on the working class, how far they were reaching the point of becoming intolerable. And, again, the deplorable blunder of the Jameson Raid was felt to have tied our hands - no one could say exactly for how long. And, thirdly, we (i speak, of course, for myself) did not really believe that, when the time came for firm pressure to be applied, Pretoria would hold out at the risk of war.

It was the Bloemfontein Conference that first began to open our eyes. Then it did begin to look as if the Transvaal had a stiffer backbone than we had supposed. Still, it might be bluff.

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