These men were of a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs.
Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness.

At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring.

They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves.

It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were the disappearing factors.
At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the two sections who represented the more extreme views and the unpolitical minds.

There was a small section, of which he was one, who were not cleverer financially than their friends, but who had political sense and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more concerned, at this dark moment, for the political and national consequences of the Raid, than for the certain set-back to the mining and financial enterprises of the Rand.