society was a bewildering experience. For example, venereal 

 disease changed abruptly from the remote subject of schoolboy 

 jokes to stark reality, for in the lives of these men it appeared to 

 occupy the status of the common cold in mine, a curse but in- 

 evitable. After about a month some of us were returned to school 

 as too young for campaign, and I went on to University life at 

 Stellenbosch. As I was set on taking part in the war, I arranged at 

 once to go to England to join the Royal Flying Corps after my 

 'Intermediate' Examination at the end of the year (191 5). How- 

 ever, General Smuts, at that time almost a god to me, appealed to 

 everyone to enlist for German East Africa first, so instead of 

 learning to soar through the skies, I became an earth-bound, 

 foot-slogging infantry-man instead. Thousands of half-trained 

 men of all ages were jammed into a transport at Durban, and fed 

 mainly on bread, tinned rabbit, and tea. While most others 

 gambled I counted heads and life-boats and was appalled at the 

 quotient, but we got safely to Mombasa, and thence to the badly 

 mismanaged campaign that followed. 



After sundry misadventures, including contracting malaria, 

 dysentery, and the acute rheumatic enlargement of several major 

 joints, I spent some months in military hospitals, first in Kenya, 

 where I nearly died, then was shipped, helpless, back to the Union, 

 and to hospital at Wynberg. Eventually I returned, virtually a 

 physical wreck, to University life at Stellenbosch, where again 

 even those students most strongly opposed to my convictions 

 respected them, perhaps even more than before. Still racked with 

 fever, and more often ill than well, I continued my studies until 

 the end of 1918. Then came another abrupt change from Afri- 

 kaner Stellenbosch to Cambridge in England, where I carried out 

 research work in chemistry. University life there was in many 

 ways different from what I had known. Some of the students 

 occasionally indulged in destructive riots, and the cost of the 

 damage to public and University property, sometimes thousands 

 of pounds, was covered by levies imposed by the University, 

 which had to be paid equally by all students, the innocent majority 

 as well. 



In some of my vacations I travelled and tramped various 

 countries on the Continent, learning to speak German and some 

 Italian, and a good deal besides. I travelled widely and saw a good 



