From the first the Bund was regarded with suspicion by not only English politicians in the Colony, but by a few of the more sober and statesmanlike leaders amongst the Dutch. They were, however, won over, as time passed, except the President of the Orange Free State. Sir John Brand--he had accepted knighthood from the Queen as an evidence of his British sympathies--absolutely refused to have anything to do with it. "I entertain," said he, "grave doubts as to whether the path the Afrikander Bund has adopted is calculated to lead to that union and fraternization which is so indispensable for the bright future of South Africa. According to my conception the institution of the Bund appears to be desirous of exalting itself above the established Government and forming an _imperium in imperio_." But, wise and far-seeing as were these views, the Free State President could not hold back his own people from sharing in the movement. Mr. F. W. Reitz, then a Judge at Bloemfontein, afterwards President in succession to Sir John Brand, and, finally, State Secretary of the Transvaal under President Kruger, joined enthusiastically in its organization, and soon had many branches in the Free State itself. Of this period in the history of the Bund, Mr. Theodore Schreiner, son of a German missionary, brother of the Cape Premier and of Olive Schreiner--the bitter anti-British writer--has described an interesting incident in the _Cape Times_. [Sidenote: Mr. Reitz and the Present War] He says that in 1882 Mr. Reitz earnestly endeavored to persuade him to join the organization, and that the conversation which took place upon his final refusal was so striking as to indelibly convince him that in the mind of Reitz and of other Dutch leaders it constituted, even then, a distinct and matured plot for the driving of British authority out of South Africa. "During the seventeen years that have elapsed," says Mr. Schreiner, "I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means--the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the Legislature--until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr. Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause. Believe me, sir, the day on which F. W. Reitz sat down to pen his Ultimatum to Great Britain was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one which has, for long years, been looked forward to by him with eager longing and expectation."