It was
tacitly understood, if not definitely promised, that the conditions
which the British Government would be prepared to grant would not
differ much in essentials from those which had been refused by the
Boers a twelvemonth before, after the Middelburg interview.
On May 15th the Boer conference opened at Vereeniging. Sixty-four
delegates from the commandos met with the military and political
chiefs of the late republics, the whole amounting to 150 persons. A
more singular gathering has not met in our time. There was Botha,
the young lawyer, who had found himself by a strange turn of fate
commanding a victorious army in a great war. De Wet was there, with
his grim mouth and sun-browned face; De la Rey, also, with the
grizzled beard and the strong aquiline features. There, too, were
the politicians, the grey-bearded, genial Reitz, a little graver
than when he looked upon 'the whole matter as an immense joke,' and
the unfortunate Steyn, stumbling and groping, a broken and ruined
man. The burly Lucas Meyer, smart young Smuts fresh from the siege
of Ookiep, Beyers from the north, Kemp the dashing cavalry leader,
Muller the hero of many fights--all these with many others of their
sun-blackened, gaunt, hard-featured comrades were grouped within
the great tent of Vereeniging.
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