"You have to be careful that these principles are to be maintained in the reporting of the Boers." On the top floor of the New York Tower, in the staff cafeteria (which has now been temporarily converted into a conference room), Greystone told his subordinates, "First, be as neutral as possible, and don't completely side with the Boers, because to do so would undermine trust." We must be neutral, even as if it were too much. Neutral to the point where readers feel a little unbearable. As long as we carefully choose the factual content of the report, even if we don't speak up ourselves, the audience will be affected and perceived as their own opinion. So don't express your attitude directly in the report unless you have to. For example, the report from the previous two days was very good.

Also, don't reveal all the information at once. We had a clear advantage in reporting on this event, and that was that our preparation and access to information were much better than those of the British. The British are not necessarily aware of this, which makes them habitually lying. And at this time, we have to give those British people full opportunities to perform, you know, the current public opinion is not in their favor, they will definitely continue to justify, and some things are more justified, the more problems there are. We let them put on a show and tell all kinds of lies until they made the vast majority of people doubt our previous reports, and then we threw out the indisputable truth and broke them down. And at that time, the audience who had been deceived by them in advance would of course be very angry with the British, and unconditionally no longer believe them. At this point, we can add an attitude to our story. Just like my father, Mr. Scrooge MacDonald, in his case of slavery in China, is an example to us.

In short, this time, we need to put the whole of European public opinion in opposition to Britain, to put more pressure on Britain, and to force Britain to suspend its actions in South Africa in the short term, and at the same time to form a shape that makes the two sides more antagonistic and less likely to compromise in the long term, only in this way can we make more money. ”

Just as Glestone had predicted, after receiving a call back from Cecil Rhodes, London immediately activated the propaganda machine and began to claim that Jensen and others had only strayed into the Transvaal Republic and had not intended to invade. And the Transvaal attacked without asking any questions, and it was too cruel for one guy to kill so many people. As for the British expatriates conspiring with Jensen and others to launch a rebellion, this is a deliberate framing by the Boers, and it is absolutely not a fact.

Then, the British resorted to sensationalism, and their newspapers found a large number of relatives of the victims of the so-called "misunderstandings", wives, children, fathers and mothers, and so on, and made all kinds of calls in words or voices in various newspapers and on the radio, or recalled with tears in their eyes how good their relatives were, what devout Christians, what never did anything bad, and what did not even kill a chicken at home. All in all, they portrayed Jensen and his men as no different from Lady Maria.

In addition to these tactics, the British carried out counter-propaganda, in which they accused the Boers of being barbaric and vicious, portraying the Boers as if they were Arati or Temujin. At the same time, the Boers were accused of being consistently xenophobic and discriminating against the diaspora of other countries.

To say that the propaganda of the British is not unreasonable, and many of what the Boers did in South Africa can indeed be called barbaric. Especially when they treat those Zulu black corns, some of the methods are indeed no different from the barbarians that the Europeans use to scare children. However, it is not convenient for the British to blame the Boers on this ground, because the British have treated the Zulu and the Black Corn more excessively than the Boers. If you take this matter as an example, and scold it, I am afraid that there will be more ugly things for the British.

The result was a not-so-good counterproductive accusation that the Boers were barbarians. At this time, it was the end of the nineteenth century, and the barbarians of the world had been killed and were about to turn into South China tigers and giant pandas. There is a general rule in human society, that is, people always like to pin those beautiful imaginations on something far away from themselves. Therefore, people living in the two Han Dynasty always feel that the three generations were heaven at that time, and those living in the Sui and Tang dynasties must be called the two Han Dynasty. Even in an era when all countries are clearly going to, you can make a lot of brainless fans and fantasize about being able to travel through the past to be Gege, Fujin or even side Fujin all day long. Europeans have the same problem. With the threat of barbarians gone, coupled with the dissatisfaction with the unfair reality of the real society with the disparity between the rich and the poor, it became a popular literary and artistic style to sing the praises of the past, peaceful, idyllic life, and even the simple, naturally, unrebellious life of those uncivilized peoples.

For example, Gauguin, who had already had a certain influence at that time, and was regarded as a master of painting art, simply left Europe to live with the indigenous people on the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific out of suspicion of European civilization and traditional art. With his straightforward, pure, almost primitive art shapes and colors, he expresses his feelings brought by nature's cues and his admiration for the island's "darling of nature". And this has inspired a large number of European literary and artistic youths to imagine the "barbaric" Boers, and even become the idols in the hearts of some literary and artistic youths. Think, far away from the hustle and bustle of Europe, a farmstead carved out on the mysterious and distant African continent, where in the morning the sun rises and the men mount their horses, catch up with the cattle and sheep, and go to the pastures, while the women tend to the sick foals on the estates, or the newly transplanted unknown African flowers and plants in the yards. In the evening the men returned, still on horseback, with spears on their backs, and with cattle and sheep, except that the carriage brought back the carcasses of terrible lions, which tried to attack the flock, and then they were killed and thrown on the wagon. Then, the stars rose in a completely different sky from Europe, and even the moon appeared to be exceptionally bright, and a bonfire was lit in the courtyard in front of the house, and the cheeks of men and women were reddened by the bonfire...... What a beautiful and romantic picture.

At this time, Greystone, who had discovered this tendency, certainly did not waste such an opportunity, and he immediately organized a group of writers and began to depict the peace and beauty of Boer life as much as possible, and printed a large number of Thoreau's "Walden" in Europe in the United States. He even had a few "painters" found among the Boers, and held an exhibition in Paris, followed by a tour to other European cities.

To be honest, the level of those Boer "painters" is not very good, but taking advantage of the "original" wind, it has actually attracted a lot of attention. Their crude brushstrokes, boasted by MacDonald's gunslingers as naturally plain, have abandoned their outward appearance in favor of their inner truth...... Greystone also arranged for a group of reporters to do an exclusive interview with them, and took this opportunity to make an artistic depiction of the simple and natural life of the Boers.

The art of words is such a wonderful thing, even if it is rotten, as long as you can depict it, it can still be depicted in people's hearts. For example, those isolated mountain towns in Xiangxi during the Republic of China, so that today's literary and artistic young people really travel there to stay for half a month, they will definitely turn them into the boss in "Party A and Party B" who claims to be tired of eating chickens, ducks and fish, but finally eats all the mice in the village. But this does not prevent Mr. Shen Congwen from portraying it like a fairyland, nor does it prevent those young people from exclaiming "It would be great if I could return to that era" after being tired of city life.

In the process, an unexpected thing even happened, when this exhibition was held in Berlin, a famous literary and artistic young man, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, actually came to visit and bought one of them.

And that's not all, after returning home, the Wenqing Emperor actually sent another telegram to the Transvaal government, publicly congratulating them on their victory in defending the country. This behavior immediately aroused the anger of the British, who quickly reacted by protesting to Germany.

After the protest, Wilhelm II seemed to find that his actions were too rash, but for the sake of face, he could not take back the congratulatory telegram, which was an empty statement that he did not mean to offend Britain.

Two months later, the Boer court began its trial of the British expatriate rebellion case.

Because of the previous propaganda, when the Boer court was opened, it was rare that many media reporters came from far and wide to cover the situation (in fact, these newspapers received funding in the name of independent foundations).

"Every qiē must cooperate with the publicity." Prior to this, the Boers seemed to have the support of the whole of Europe, albeit only morally, because of the effective propaganda, but this had already satisfied President Kruger. Especially in the emerging powers, he was even more pleased with the congratulatory telegram sent to him by the Emperor of Germany. He felt it was a wise choice to outsource the publicity to the McDonald consortium. So when the representative of the MacDonald consortium suggested to him that the court proceedings must also be done for propaganda purposes, the president readily agreed and gave such instructions. So, with the trial, a well-prepared performance began.