ABSTRACT
The war against the Boers was in full swing, despite hopes of a quick British victory, especially after Lord Roberts had taken Pretoria. A vicious guerrilla warfare continued. The war was anything but unpopular: when the Boer ultimatum 1 was received in October 1899, some 10,500 men had volunteered and by 1900 the volunteer numbers had grown to 52,000. The almost half million White troops fighting on the British side included 49,000 volunteers from around the Empire. 2 But colonial volunteers residing in Britain were not accepted: The Inns of Court Volunteers refused to accept an Indian student. 3 The War Office had to be re-organised to deal with this massive war effort; G. S. Clarke, later Lord Sydenham of Combe, a member of the reorganising committee expressed the feelings of many when he stated that the Empire is ‘to some of us almost a religion.' 4 The Boers were presented to children by the prolific imperial propagandist G. A. Henty as ‘an ignorant race, a race almost without even the elements of civilization, ignorant and brutal beyond any existing white community'. 5
