for a long period is apt to so monopolize and infatuate the mind as to
totally vitiate and pervert the sense of discernment between right and
wrong, both as to the legitimacy of the object and the means to be
employed for its attainment. As the realization remains deferred and the
efforts are increased, the object from being considered legitimate is by
degrees invested with merit, a halo of virtue is added to the aspect,
its pursuit is viewed as a duty by fair or by questionable means, the
end justifying the latter. All, it is said, is fair in love and warfare.
This diagnosis appears particularly applicable to President Krüger and
State Secretary F.W. Reitz, both men of sincere piety (perhaps also to
Mr. Schreiner), who would have abandoned their project and renounced and
repudiated the Afrikaner Bond if ever they had doubted its legitimacy of
principle. So also with most of the other Boer leaders and their clergy
too. The agencies must have been exceedingly subtle, and the jugglery
and artifice superhuman, to operate such processes of reasoning, such
deception and aberration in honest-minded and even godly persons.

As to the bulk of the Boer people, they are simply led by their chiefs
and superiors, in whom they repose unquestioning confidence. They go
unreasoningly with the stream of opinion under the firm belief that all
is divinely sanctioned, including rebellion and violence, and blindly
obey their call, considering their cause analogous to that of the Jews
of old, who were enjoined to spoil the Egyptians and then to pass over
and conquer their land of promise. No papal bull of indulgence ever
freed people's consciences more than the Boer people now feel in regard
to the warfare in which they are engaged.