MEN I HAVE PAINTED
left President Krüger master of the situation in Africa. Mr. Addicks, brother of the notorious aspirant to represent Delaware in the Senate, had just returned from England, where he had been a guest at several country houses, and he was recounting the various views upon the rights and wrongs of the situation he had heard from his English friends, ending by saying, with great satisfaction, that "Oom Paul had been too clever for the British, who were easily hoodwinked." There was a consensus of opinion that the Boers had rightly won, and that the affair was finished. I rose to go, and said quietly, "It is not settled; there will be and must be another war. It may come in two or in ten years, but England must be paramount in Africa."
My point is this: that if I could foresee another war, why did not the British Government, with all the means at its disposal for obtaining information, foresee it and prepare for it? I am expressing no sympathy and taking no sides, but though we may neither approve nor disapprove of the "flu," when it first shows itself it is as well to provide a nurse and a doctor.
All this has nothing to do with portrait painting. Mr. Balfour would have nothing to do with it, so I determined to challenge him in his own field—to him I was, of course, invisible.
Years after the episode in the club, the second Boer War had begun. A party of men were shooting partridges over the picturesque hills of Pembrokeshire—a member of Parliament, his brother, a local justice of the peace, a retired Indian colonel, a master of foxhounds, and myself. The member said, "This war will not be over so soon as the Government expects." "No," I replied, "they
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