Terrible it is to see that barren countryside, and to think of the depths of misery to which the once flourishing and happy Orange Free State had fallen, through joining in a quarrel with a nation which bore it nothing but sincere friendship and goodwill.

With nothing to gain and everything to lose, the part played by the Orange Free State in this South African drama is one of the most inconceivable things in history.

Never has a nation so deliberately and so causelessly committed suicide..