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When this cry of anguish reached England, the English people were deeply pained. They were full of admiration for the bravery of the Boers. The fact that such a small nationality should sustain a conflict with their world-wide empire was rankling in their minds. But when the cry of agony raised by the women in the concentration camps reached England not through themselves, not through their men,—they were fighting valiantly on the battlefield,—but through a few high-souled Englishmen and women who were then in South Africa, the English people began to relent. The late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman read the mind of the English nation and raised his voice against the war. The late Mr Stead publicly prayed and invited others to pray, that God might decree the English a defeat in the war. This was a wonderful sight. Real suffering bravely borne melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering or tapas. And there lies the key to Satyagraha.

The result was that the peace of Vereeniging was concluded, and eventually all the four Colonies of South Africa were united under one Government. Although every Indian who reads newspapers knows about this peace, there are a few facts connected with it, which perhaps are not within the knowledge of many. The Union did not immediately follow the peace, but each Colony had its own legislature. The ministry was not fully responsible to the legislature. The Transvaal and the Free State were governed on Crown Colony lines. Generals Botha and Smuts were not the men to be satisfied with such restricted freedom. They kept aloof from the Legislative Council. They non-co-operated. They fiatly refused to have anything to do with the Government. Lord Milner made a pungent speech, in the course of which he said that General Botha need not have attached so much importance to himself. The country’s Government could well be carried on without him. Lord Milner thus decided to stage Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

I have written in unstinted praise of the bravery, the

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