Read it through once

There were many reasons for the Prince of Wales taking a keen interest in the war apart altogether from the natural and patriotic reason. A peculiarly large number of the sons of personal friends were at the front and many of them were fated to fall from time to time. The reputation of the officers engaged in the struggle was necessarily very dear to him. He knew them all and had many associations with their regiments and themselves. A blow to Sir George White, a disaster to Sir Redvers Buller, a danger to Col. Baden Powell, a threatened illness in the case of Lord Roberts, were all matters of personal concern to him as well as of national or patriotic interest. The central figure in the beginning of the war--the great personality of Mr. Cecil Rhodes--had long been a friend and had been received by the Prince upon a kindly social footing. Through the Duke of Fife's connection with the South African Chartered Company, the Prince must have been closely interested in all the earlier developments of the struggle and it could only have been by special permission that his son-in-law held a Director's place up to the actual outbreak of the war. Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner were both men who had been closely associated with his own Imperialistic projects and ideals and there can be little doubt--though it was never publicly expressed--that the Prince of Wales sympathised with the policy which has since made South African expansion and empire possible.