With Sir Henry de Villiers the case is very
different, one feels throughout that the task is to him a congenial one,
and that the Boer cause has in him an excellent friend. Indeed, had he
been an advocate of their cause instead of a member of the Commission,
he could not have espoused their side on every occasion with greater
zeal. According to him they were always in the right, and in them he
could find no guile. Mr. Hofmeyer and President Brand exercised a wise
discretion from their own point of view, when they urged his appointment
as Special Commissioner. I now come to Sir Evelyn Wood, who was in the
position of an independent Englishman, neither prejudiced in favour
of the Boers, or the reverse, and on whom, as a military man, Lord
Kimberley would find it difficult to put the official screw. The results
of his happy position are obvious in the paper attached to the end of
the Report, and signed by him, in which he totally and entirely differs
from the majority of the Commission on every point of importance.
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