His attitude toward human conflict is exactly the same. We say advisedly, after a long and intimate knowledge of the old-fashioned Boer, that never, in one instance, have we heard man or woman speak of war with joy, desire, or elation. For this folk there is no more glamour or amusement about war than for a nurse who has attended hundreds of cases of small-pox and cancer there is a glamour and glory about these diseases. It is with extreme difficulty that old men and women can be got to describe the conflicts they have lived through in their youth. After speaking a few minutes they will suddenly break off with: "Ah! but war is an awful thing! God grant that you may never see what we have seen, or go through what we have gone through." Not in any single case have we known the old Boer to vaunt himself on any success or act of courage. (With the young fashionable nineteenth-century descendants in towns, who have seen no fighting, it may be different.) Having known intimately for five years an elderly man, and having always noticed certain marks on his face, we inquired one day the cause, and were surprised to learn that he had been an actor in some most heroic scenes; having in one instance gone up a mountain alone to fetch down the wounded, and that he bore on his body at least ten scars, gained in different conflicts. Neither by this man nor by any of his family, whom we had known intimately for years, had the fact been mentioned. "Yes," said a close female relative quietly, when we questioned her on the matter, "he is a man who can fight; he is not afraid"; and that was all. She regarded his action in the same light as a ploughman's wife might regard her husband's power to plough twenty acres in a given time and who would show no lofty pride in stating it--it was "all in the day's work." The old-fashioned Boer never speaks of war without becoming solemn and reverential, and, metaphorically speaking, taking off his hat. "Man fights; but victory is of God."[73] [73] (_Note added in 1899._) This was illustrated when speaking some time back to a young Boer who was present at Doorn Kop, where Jameson surrendered, and who took part in that fight. We asked him what he thought of Jameson's men. He replied, slowly and quietly, that they were "flukse kerels" ("smart men"), adding: "You see, it was not that _we_ were better men than they were, but God was with us!"