As it was, when I remembered, which it took me some time to do, for a while I went near to insanity.
I recollect lying there in that hut and wondering how the Almighty could have permitted such a deed as I had seen done.

How could it be reconciled with any theory of a loving and merciful Father?
Those poor Boers, whatever their faults, and they had many, like the rest of us, were in the main good and honest men according to their lights.

Yet they had been doomed to be thus brutally butchered at the nod of a savage despot, their wives widowed, their children left fatherless, or, as it proved in the end, in most cases murdered or orphaned! The mystery was too great--great enough to throw off its balance the mind of a young man who had witnessed such a fearsome scene as I have described.
For some days really I think that my reason hung just upon the edge of that mental precipice.

In the end, however, reflection and education, of which I had a certain amount, thanks to my father, came to my aid.

I recalled that such massacres, often on an infinitely larger scale, had happened a thousand times in history, and that still through them, often, indeed, by means of them, civilisation has marched forward, and mercy and peace have kissed each other over the bloody graves of the victims.
Therefore even in my youth and inexperience I concluded that some ineffable purpose was at work through this horror, and that the lives of those poor men which had been thus sacrificed were necessary to that purpose.