1 [page/s missing] the company. It's very hard to refuse.
2
3 Johannesburg is now practically depopulated, & the women & children
4are fleeing out of the Free State also into the Colony. But I have not
5the slightest doubt war will spread throughout the whole country.
6
7 You scorn my love for England & English men. Well I have traveled a
8bit about the world I have lived in South Africa, 30 out of forty-odd
9years of my life, & still the noblest dearest & most beloved humans I
10have met remain Englishmen in the main. Not only you & Carpenter & all
11the others I personally love & admire, but such men as dear old
12General Sir William Butler, who threw up his post here as general in
13the British army & has gone home because he said the war would be a
14gross immorality, are to me as fine representatives of the race human
15as any I am likely to see, according to my view. And this is not
16taking into view the great army of the dead from Shakespeare & Milton
17to Shelly, Darwin, George Elliot & Browning. An Englishman is like a
18Jew he seems to be either Christ or Judas; but on the whole much as I
19love all races of men I have yet been thrown into contact with I think
20we do pretty well. Not better than other races, but [page/s missing]
21
22 if a cultured person, with any knowledge of human nature!!
23
24 An old Boer woman I once knew after half an hour running down the
25English for their pride & selfishness & cruelty, said "And yet, when
26you do get an Englishman good he's the ?best on earth."
27
28 However I have written a whole long article almost a book on the
29Englishman in Africa which will explain my views. Public affairs are
30so bad one can't write of them any more. Dear old Herbert Spencer has
31spoken & Morley & other but they have
32
33^waited till it was too late. Six months ago it would have saved the
34situation.
35
36 Olive^
37