initial commit of ebook 25135HEADmain

314 files changed, 25726 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/25135-8.txt b/25135-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf3ce2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8466 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to
+Koomati Poort and Back, by Edward P. Lowry
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back
+
+
+Author: Edward P. Lowry
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2008  [eBook #25135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM
+BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25135-h.htm or 25135-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135/25135-h/25135-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135/25135-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Obvious printer's errors have been corrected; all other
+      inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
+      has been maintained.
+
+      Text enclosed by equal signs was in bold face (=bold=).
+
+      Text enclosed by asterisks was in an old font (*old font*).
+
+      Page 122: "After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been
+      secured off Cadiz by the _Actæan_ and the _Favorite_" should
+      probably be "After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been
+      secured off Cadiz by the _Active_ and the _Favorite_".
+
+
+
+
+WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE
+
+FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK
+
+by THE
+
+REV. E. P. LOWRY
+
+Senior Wesleyan Chaplain with the South African Field Force
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Horace Marshall & Son
+Temple House, Temple Avenue, E.C.
+1902
+
+
+
+
+                           TO
+                      THE OFFICERS,
+             NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN
+                  OF THE GUARDS' BRIGADE
+    THIS IMPERFECT RECORD OF THEIR HEROIC DARING, AND OF
+             THEIR YET MORE HEROIC ENDURANCE IS
+                  RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
+     IN TOKEN OF SINCEREST ADMIRATION, AND IN GRATEFUL
+      APPRECIATION OF NUMBERLESS COURTESIES RECEIVED
+          BY ONE OF THEIR FELLOW TRAVELLERS AND
+              CHAPLAINS THROUGHOUT THE BOER
+                   WAR OF 1899-1902
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The story of my long tramp with the Guards' Brigade was in part told
+through a series of letters that appeared in _The Methodist Recorder_,
+_The Methodist Times_, and other papers. The first portion of that
+series was republished in "Chaplains in Khaki," as also extensive
+selections in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." In this volume, therefore,
+to avoid needless repetition, the story begins with our triumphal
+occupation of Bloemfontein, and is continued till after the time of
+the breaking-up of the Guards' Brigade.
+
+No one will expect from a chaplain a technical and critical account of
+the complicated military operations he witnessed at the seat of war.
+For that he has no qualifications. Nor, on the other hand, would it be
+quite satisfactory if he wrote only of what the chaplains and other
+Christian workers were themselves privileged to do in connection with
+the war. That would necessitate great sameness, if not great tameness.
+These pages are rather intended to set forth the many-sided life of
+our soldiers on active service, their privations and perils, their
+failings and their heroisms, their rare endurance, and in some cases
+their unfeigned piety; that all may see what manner of men they were
+who in so many instances laid down their lives in the defence of the
+empire; and amid what stupendous difficulties they endeavoured to do
+their duty.
+
+We owe it to the fact that these men have volunteered in such numbers
+for military service that Britain alone of all European nations has
+thus far escaped the curse of the conscription. In that sense,
+therefore, they are the saviours and substitutes of the entire manhood
+of our nation. If they had not consented of their own accord to step
+into the breach, every able Englishman now at his desk, behind his
+counter, or toiling at his bench, must have run the risk of having had
+so to do. We owe to these men more than we have ever realised. It is
+but right, therefore, that more than ever they should henceforth live
+in an atmosphere of grateful kindliness, of Christian sympathy and
+effort.
+
+          "God bless you, Tommy Atkins,
+          _Here's your country's love to you!_"
+
+My authorities for the statements made in the introductory chapter are
+Fitzpatrick's "Pretoria from Within," and Martineau's "Life of Sir
+Bartle Frere." For the verifying or correcting of my own facts and
+figures, given later on, I have consulted Conan Doyle's "The Great
+Boer War," Stott's "The Invasion of Natal," and almost all other
+available literature relating to the subject.
+
+                                        EDWARD P. LOWRY.
+
+PRETORIA, _March 1902_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+  THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT                                   1
+
+Two Notable Dreamers--A Bankrupt Republic--The Man who
+Schemed as well as Dreamed--The Gold Plague--Hated Johannesburg
+--Boer preparations for War--Coming events cast their shadows
+before--The Ultimatum--The Rallying of the Clans--The
+Rousing of the Colonies.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT!                            14
+
+A capital little Capital--Famished Men and Famine Prices--
+Republican Commandeering--A Touching Story--The Price of
+Milk.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  A LONG HALT                                                       24
+
+Refits--Remounts--Regimental Pets--Civilian Hospitality and
+Soldiers' Homes--Soldiers' Christian Association Work--
+Rudyard Kipling's Mistake--All Fools' Day--Eastertide in
+Bloemfontein--The Epidemic and the Hospitals--All hands and
+houses to the rescue--A sad sample of Enteric--Church of
+England Chaplains at work.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN                    45
+
+A Pleasure Jaunt--Onwards, but Whither!--That Pom-Pom again
+--A Problem not quite solved--A Touching Sight--Rifle Firing
+and Firing Farms--Boer Treachery and the White Flag--The Pet
+Lamb still lives and learns--Right about face--From Worlds
+Unknown--The Bushmen and their Australian Chaplains.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL                                      57
+
+A Comedy--A Tragedy--A Wide Front and a Resistless Force--
+Brandfort--"Stop the War" Slanders--A Prisoner who tried to
+be a Poet--Militant Dutch Reformed Predikants--Our Australian
+Chaplain's pastoral experiences--The Welsh Chaplain.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL                                  70
+
+The Sand River Convention--Railway Wrecking and Repairing--
+The Tale, and Tails, of a Singed Overcoat--Lord Roberts as
+Hospital Visitor--President Steyn's Sjambok--A Sunday at last
+that was also a Sabbath--Military Police on the March--A
+General's glowing eulogy of the Guards--Good News by the way--
+Over the Vaal at last.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS                                         88
+
+A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front--Pathetic Scenes
+in Hospital--A Battlefield Scene no less Pathetic--Look on
+this Picture, and on that--A third-class Chaplain who proved a
+first-rate Chaplain--Running in the Wrong Man--A Wainman who
+proved a real Waggoner--Three bedfellows in a barn--A
+fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain--A
+Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers--Caring for the
+Wounded--How the Chaplain's own Tent was bullet-riddled--A
+Sample Set of Sunday Services.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY                       103
+
+At Cape Town and Wynberg--Saved from Drowning to sink in
+Hospital--A Pleasant Surprise--The Soldiers' Reception
+Committee--The other way about--Our near kinship to the Boers
+--More good Work on our right Flank.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY                                       113
+
+An elaborate night toilet--Capturing Clapham Junction--Dear
+diet and dangerous--No Wages but the Sjambok--The Gold Mines
+--The Soldiers' Share--The Golden City--Astonishing the
+Natives.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  PRETORIA--THE CITY OF ROSES                                    127
+
+Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday--"Light after Dark"--Why the
+Surrender?--Taking Possession--"Resurgam"--A Striking
+Incident--No Canteens and no Crime.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS                              142
+
+The State's Model School--Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer--The
+Waterfall Prisoners--A Soldier's Hymn--A big Supper Party--
+The Soldiers' Home--Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe--A Letter from
+Lord Kitchener--Also from Lord Roberts--A Song in praise of
+De Wet--Cordua and his Conspiracy--Hospital Work in Pretoria
+--The Wear and Tear of War--The Nursing Sisters--A Surprise
+Packet--Soldierly Gratitude--_The Ladysmith Lyre_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST                                         169
+
+The Boer way of saying "Bosh"--News from a far Country
+--Further fighting--Touch not, taste not, handle not--More
+Treachery and still more--The root of the matter--A Tight Fit
+--Obstructives on the Rail--Middleburg and the Doppers--
+August Bank Holiday--Blowing up Trains--A peculiar Mothers'
+Meeting--Aggressive Ladies--A Dutch Deacon's Testimony--A
+German Officer's Testimony.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+  THROUGH HELVETIA                                                 190
+
+The Fighting near Belfast--Feeding under Fire--A German
+Doctor's Confession--Friends in need are Friends indeed--The
+Invisible Sniper's Triumph--"He sets the mournful Prisoners
+free"--More Boer Slimness--A Boer Hospital--Foreign
+Mercenaries--A wounded Australian--Hotel Life on the Trek--
+A Sheep-pen of a Prison--Pretty Scenery and Superb.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  WAR'S WANTON WASTE                                               210
+
+A Surrendered Boer General--Two Unworthy Predikants--Two
+Notable Advocates of Clemency--Mines without Men, and Men
+without Meat--Much Fat in the Fire--More Fat and Mightier
+Flames--A Welcome Lift by the Way--"Rags and Tatters, get ye
+gone!"--Destruction and still more Destruction--At Koomati
+Poort--Two Notable Fugitives--The Propaganda of the Africander
+Bond--Ex-President Steyn--Paul Botha's opinion of this
+Ex-President.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA                               231
+
+Staggering Humanity--Food for Flames--A Crocodile in the
+Koomati--A Hippopotamus in the Koomati--A Via Dolorosa--
+Over the Line--Westward Ho!--Ruined Farms and Ruined Firms--
+Farewell to the Guards' Brigade!
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES                                     245
+
+Exhaustlessness of Boer resources--The Peculiarity of Boer
+Tactics--The Surprisers Surprised--Train Wrecking--The
+Refugee Camps--The Grit of the Guards--The Irregulars--The
+Testimony of the Cemetery--Death and Life in Pretoria.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+  PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY                                    261
+
+Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty--Prince Christian Victor--A
+Royal Funeral--A Touching Story--The Death of the Queen--
+The King's Coronation.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
+
+THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT
+
+
+When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the
+Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found
+wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found
+itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers
+boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as
+they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the
+average Boer understood the real purpose for which he was called to
+arms seems doubtful; but his leaders made no secret of their intention
+to drive the hated "Roineks" into the sea, and to claim, as the
+notorious "Bond" frankly put it, "all South Africa for the
+Africanders." The Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer of the Dutch Reformed Church
+freely admits that the watchword of the Western Boers was "Tafelburg
+toc," that is, "To Table Mountain"; and that their commandant said to
+him, "We will not rest till our flag floats there."
+
+Similarly on the eastern side it was their confident boast that
+presently they would be "eating fish and drinking coffee at sea-side
+Durban." There would thus be one flag floating over all South Africa;
+and that flag not the Union Jack but its supplanter.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Dreamers._]
+
+Now the Dutch have undoubtedly as absolute a right to dream dreams of
+wide dominion as we ourselves have; and this particular dream had no
+less undeniably been the chief delight of some among them for more
+than a decade twice told.
+
+Even PRESIDENT BRAND, of the Orange Free State, referring to Lord
+Carnarvon's pet idea of a federated South Africa, said: "His great
+scheme is a united South Africa _under the British Flag_. He dreams of
+it and so do I; but _under the flag of South Africa_." Much in the
+same strain PRESIDENT BURGERS, of the Transvaal Republic, when
+addressing a meeting of his countrymen in Holland, said: "In that
+far-off country the inhabitants dream of a future in which the people
+of Holland will recover their former greatness." He was convinced that
+within half a century there would be in South Africa a population of
+eight millions; all speaking the Dutch language; a _second_ Holland,
+as energetic and liberty-loving as the first; but greater in extent,
+and greater in power.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Bankrupt Republic._]
+
+Nevertheless, in this far-seeing President's day, the Transvaal, after
+fourteen years of doubtful independence, reached in 1877 its lowest
+depths of financial and political impotency. Its valiant burghers were
+vanquished in one serious conflict with the natives; and, emboldened
+thereby, the Zulus were audaciously threatening to eat them up, when
+Shepstone appeared upon the scene. "I thank my father Shepstone for
+his restraining message," said Cetewayo. "The Dutch have tired me out;
+and I intended to fight with them once, _only once_, and to drive them
+over the Vaal." The jails were thrown open because food was no longer
+obtainable for the prisoners. The State officials, including the
+President, knew not where to secure their stipends, and were
+hopelessly at variance among themselves. The Transvaal one-pound notes
+were selling for a single shilling, and the State treasury contained
+only twelve shillings and sixpence wherewith to pay the interest on a
+comparatively heavy State debt, besides almost innumerable other
+claims.
+
+No wonder, therefore, that Burgers, in disgust, declared he would
+sooner be a policeman under a strong government. "Matters are as bad
+as they ever can be," said he; "they cannot be worse!" Hence its
+annexation, in 1877, by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, without the
+assistance of a solitary soldier, but with the eager assent of
+thousands of the burghers, bade fair to prove the salvation of the
+Transvaal, and probably would have done, had the easily-to-be-obtained
+consent of the Volksraad been at once sought, and Lord Carnarvon's
+promise of speedy South African Federation, together with a generous
+measure of local self-government, been promptly redeemed. But European
+complications, with serious troubles on the Indian frontier, caused
+interminable delay in the maturing of this scheme; and as the
+disappointed Boers grew restive, a "Hold your Jaw" Act was passed,
+making it a penal offence for any Transvaaler even to discuss such
+questions. In our simplicity we sit upon the safety valve and then
+wonder why the boiler bursts. To the "Hold your Jaw" policy the Boer
+reply was an appeal to arms; and at Majuba in the spring of 1881 their
+rifles said what their jaws were forbidden to say. Majuba was indeed a
+mere skirmish, an affair of outposts; but Magersfontein and Spion Kop
+are the legitimate sons of Majuba.
+
+[Sidenote: _The man who Schemed as well as Dreamed._]
+
+Napoleon, with possibly a veiled reference to himself, once said to
+the French people, "You have the men, but where is _The Man_?" The
+Boers in the day of their uprising against British rule found "The
+Man" in PAUL STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of
+Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as
+their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness
+no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British
+subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of
+the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a
+consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a
+tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The great Trek"
+which in 1837 sought on the dangerous and dreary veldt beyond the Vaal
+a refuge from British rule. He it was who, surviving the terrors of
+those tragic times and trained in that stern school, became like Brand
+and Burgers a dreamer of dreams. He lived to baffle by his superior
+shrewdness, or slimness, all the arts of English diplomacy. In his
+later years this President manifestly deemed himself chosen of Heaven
+to make an end of British rule from the Zambesi to the sea. "The
+Transvaal shall never be shut up in a kraal," said he. A Sovereign
+International State he declared it was, or should be, with free access
+to the ocean; and how astonishingly near he came to the accomplishment
+of these bold aims we now know to our exceeding cost. Nevertheless, to
+this persistent dreamer of dreams the two South African Republics owe
+their extinction; while the British Empire owes to him more than to
+any other living man its fast approaching Federation.
+
+With surprising secrecy and success the Transvaal officials prepared
+for the inevitable conflict which the attempted fulfilment of such
+bold dreams involved, and in that preparation were rendered essential
+aid, first by the discovery, not far from Pretoria, of the richest
+goldfield in the whole world, which soon provided them with the
+necessary means; and next by the Jameson Raid, which provided them
+with the necessary excuse.
+
+To Steevens, the lamented correspondent of _The Daily Mail_, a Dopper
+editor and predikant said, "I do not think the Transvaal Government
+has been wise, and I told them they made a great mistake when they let
+people come in to the mines. _This gold will ruin you; to remain
+independent you must remain poor_"! Perhaps so! but the modern world
+is not built that way. No trekkers nowadays may take possession of
+half a continent, forbid all others to come in, and right round the
+frontier post up notices "Trespassers will be prosecuted." Even
+Robinson Crusoe had not long landed on his desolate isle when he was
+startled by the sight of a strange footprint on the seashore sand.
+Welcome or unwelcome, somebody else had come! Crusoe and his man
+Friday might set up no exclusive rights in a heritage that for a brief
+while seemed all their own. The Boer with his Kaffir bondsman has been
+compelled to learn the same distasteful lesson. The wealth of the
+Witwaters Rand was for those who could win it; and for that stupendous
+task the Boer had neither the necessary aptitude nor the necessary
+capital. It was not, therefore, for him to echo the cry of Edie
+Ochiltree when he found hid treasure amid the ruins of St Roth's
+Abbey--"Nae halvers and quarters,--hale o' mine ain and nane o' my
+neighbours." The bankrupt Boer had to let his enterprising neighbour
+in to do the digging, or get no gold at all.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hated Johannesberg._]
+
+Nevertheless, the upspringing as by magic of the great city of
+Johannesberg in the midst of the dreary veldt filled Kruger's soul
+with loathing. When once asked to permit prospecting for minerals
+around Pretoria, he replied, "Look at Johannesberg! We have enough
+gold and gold seekers in the country already!" The presence of this
+ever-growing multitude was felt to be a perpetual menace to Dutch, and
+more especially to Dopper supremacy. So, in his frankly confessed
+detestation of them, their Dopper President for five years at a
+stretch never once came near them, and when at last he ventured to
+halt within twenty miles of their great city it was thus he commenced
+his address to the crowd at Krugersdorp:--"Burghers, friends,
+_thieves_, _murderers_, _newcomers_, and others." The reek of the Rand
+was evidently even then in his nostrils; and the mediæval saint that
+could smell a heretic nine miles off was clearly akin to Kruger.
+Unfortunately for him the "newcomers" outnumbered the old by five to
+one, and were a bewilderingly mixed assortment, representing almost
+every nationality under the whole heaven. In what had suddenly become
+the chief city of the Transvaal, with a white population of over
+50,000, only seven per cent. were Dutch, and sixty-five per cent. were
+British. These aliens from many lands paid nearly nine-tenths of the
+taxes, yet were persistently denied all voice alike in national and
+municipal affairs. "Rights!" exclaimed the angry President when
+appealed to for redress, "Rights! They shall win them only over my
+dead body!" At whatever cost he was stubbornly resolved that as long
+as he lived the tail should still wag the dog instead of the dog the
+tail; and that a continually dwindling minority of simple farmer folk
+should rule an ever-growing majority of enterprising city men. Though
+the political equality of all white inhabitants was the underlying
+condition on which self-government was restored to the Transvaal, what
+the Doppers had won by bullets they would run no risk of losing
+through the ballot box, and so one measure of exclusion after another
+rapidly became law. When reminded that in other countries Outlanders
+were welcomed and soon given the franchise, the shrewd old President
+replied, "Yes! but in other countries the newcomers do not _outswamp_
+the old burghers." The whole grievance of the Boers is neatly summed
+up in that single sentence; and so far it proves them well entitled to
+our respectful pity.
+
+It was, however, mere fatalism resisting fate when to a deputation of
+complaining Outlanders Kruger said "Cease holding public meetings! Go
+back and tell your people I will never give them anything!" Similarly
+when in 1894 35,000 adult male Outlanders humbly petitioned that they
+might be granted some small representation in the councils of the
+Republic, which would have made loyal burghers of them all, the
+short-sighted President contended that he might just as well haul down
+the Transvaal flag at once. There was a strong Dopper conviction that
+to grant the franchise on any terms to this alien crowd would speedily
+degrade the Transvaal into a mere Johannesberg Republic; and they
+would sooner face any fate than that; so the Raad, with shouts of
+derision, rejected the Outlanders' petition as a saucy request to
+commit political suicide. They felt no inclining that way!
+Nevertheless one of their number ventured to say, "Now our country is
+gone. Nothing can settle this but fighting!" And that man was a
+prophet.
+
+[Sidenote: _Boer preparations for War._]
+
+For that fighting the President and his Hollander advisers began to
+prepare with a timeliness and thoroughness we can but admire, however
+much in due time we were made to smart thereby. Through the suicide of
+a certain State official it became known that in 1894--long therefore
+before the Raid--no less than £500,000 of Transvaal money had been
+sent to Europe for secret uses. Those secret uses, however, revealed
+themselves to us in due time at Magersfontein and Colenso. The
+Portuguese customs entries at Delagoa Bay will certify that from 1896
+to 1898 at least 200,000 rifles passed through that port to the
+Transvaal. It was an unexampled reserve for states so small. The
+artillery, too, these peace-loving Boers laid up in store against the
+time to come, not only exceeded in quantity, but also _outranged_, all
+that British South Africa at that time possessed. Their theology might
+be slightly out-of-date, but in these more material things the Boers
+were distinctly up-to-date. For many a week after the war began both
+the largest and the smallest shells that went curving across our
+battlefields were theirs; while many of our guns were mere popguns
+firing smoky powder, and almost as useless as catapults. It was not a
+new Raid these costly weapons were purchased to repel; neither men nor
+nations employ sledge-hammers to drive home tinned-tacks. It was a
+mighty Empire they were intended to assail; and a mighty Republic they
+were intended to create.
+
+When the fateful hour arrived for the hurling of the Ultimatum, in
+very deed "not a gaiter button" was found wanting on their side; and
+every fighting man was well within reach of his appointed post.
+Fierce-looking farmers from the remotest veldt, and sleek urban
+Hollanders, German artillerists, French generals, Irish-Americans,
+Colonial rebels, all were ready. The horse and his rider, prodigious
+supplies of food stuffs, and every conceivable variety of warlike
+stores, were planted at sundry strategic points along the Natal and
+Cape Colony frontiers. War then waited on a word and that word was
+soon spoken!
+
+[Sidenote: _Coming events cast their shadows before._]
+
+As early as September 18th, 1899, the Transvaal sent an unbending and
+defiant message to the British Government. On September 21st the
+Orange Free State, after forty years of closest friendship with
+England, officially resolved to cast in her lot with the Transvaal
+against England. On September 29th through railway communication
+between Natal and the Transvaal was stopped by order of the Transvaal
+Government. On September 30th twenty-six military trains left Pretoria
+and Johannesberg for the Natal border; and that same day saw 16,000
+Boers thus early massed near Majuba Hill. Yet at that very time the
+British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate
+not merely for defiance but even for defence. On October 3rd, a full
+week before the delivery of the Ultimatum, the Transvaal mail train to
+the Cape was stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold
+it carried, valued at £500,000, was seized by the Transvaal
+Government. Whether that capture be regarded merely as a premature act
+of war or as highway robbery, it leaves no room for doubt as to which
+side in this quarrel is the aggressor; and when at last the challenge
+came, even chaplains could with a clear conscience, though by no means
+with a light heart, set out for the seat of war.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Ultimatum._]
+
+Surely never since the world began was such an Ultimatum presented to
+one of the greatest Powers on earth by what were supposed to be two of
+the weakest. At the very time that armed and eager burghers were thus
+massing threateningly on our frontiers, the Queen it will be
+remembered was haughtily commanded to withdraw from those frontiers
+the pitifully few troops then guarding them; to recall, in the sight
+of all Europe, every soldier that in the course of the previous
+twelvemonth had been sent to our South African Colonies; and solemnly
+to pledge herself, at Boer bidding, that those then on the sea should
+not be suffered to set foot on African soil. Moreover, so urgent was
+this audacious demand that Pretoria allowed London only forty-eight
+hours in which to decide what should be its irrevocable doom, to lay
+aside the pride of empire, or pay the price of it in blood.
+
+Superb in its audacity was that demand: and, if war was indeed fated
+to come, this daring challenge was for England as serviceable a deed
+as unwitting foemen ever wrought.
+
+[Sidenote: _The rallying of the Clans._]
+
+It put a sudden end for a season to all controversy. It rallied in
+defence of our Imperial heritage almost every class, and every creed.
+It thrilled us all, like the blast of the warrior horn of Roderick
+Dhu, which transformed the very heather of the Highlands into fighting
+men. As the soldiers' laureate puts it "Duke's son and cook's son,"
+with rival haste responded to the martial call. To serve their
+assailed and sorrowing Queen, royal court and rural cottage gave
+freely of their best. It intensified the patriotism of us all; and
+probably never, since the days of the Armada, had the United Kingdom
+of Great Britain and Ireland found itself so essentially united.
+
+[Sidenote: _The rousing of the Colonies._]
+
+The effect of the Ultimatum throughout the length and breadth of
+Greater Britain was no less remarkable than its first results at home.
+Not only the two Colonies that, alas, were soon to be overrun by
+hostile hordes, and mercilessly looted, but also those farthest
+removed from the fray, instantly took fire, and burned with
+imperialistic zeal that stinted neither men nor means.
+
+          "A varied host, from kindred realms they come,
+           Brethren in arms, but rivals in renown."
+
+The declaration of war united the ends of the earth in a common
+enthusiasm, and sent a strange throb of brotherhood right round the
+globe. The whole empire at last awoke to a sense of its essential
+oneness. Australians and Canadians, men from Burma, from India and
+Ceylon, speedily joined hands on the far distant veldt in defence of
+what they proudly felt to be their heritage as well as ours. Their
+presence in the very forefront of the fray betokened the advent of a
+new era. Nobler looking men, or men of a nobler spirit, were never
+brought together at the unfurling of any banner. They were the outcome
+of competitions strangely keen and close. Sydney for instance called
+for five hundred volunteers; but within a few days _three thousand_
+five hundred valiant men were clamouring for acceptance. So was it in
+Montreal. So it was everywhere. Often too at no slight financial
+sacrifice was the post of peril sought. As a type of many more, I was
+told of an Australian doctor who paid a substitute £300 to carry on
+his practice, while he as a private joined the fighting ranks and
+faced cheerily the manifold privations of the hungry veldt. Rich is
+the empire that owns such sons; and myriads of them in the hour of
+impending conflict were ready to say--
+
+  "War? We would rather peace! But, MOTHER, if fight we must,
+  There are none of your sons on whom you can lean with a surer trust.
+  Bone of your bone are we; and in death would be dust of your dust!"
+
+It was the Ultimatum that thus linked to each other and to us those
+loyal hearts that longed to keep the empire whole; and thus President
+Kruger in his blindness became Greater Britain's boundless benefactor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT
+
+
+       "For old times' sake
+               Don't let enmity live;
+       For old times' sake
+               Say you will forget and forgive.
+       Life is too short for quarrel;
+               Hearts are too precious to break;
+       Shake hands and let us be friends
+               For old times' sake!"
+
+So gaily sang the Scots Guards as, in hope of speedy triumph and
+return, we left Southampton for Kruger's Land on the afternoon of
+October 21st, 1899.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+A Magersfontein Boer Trench.]
+
+Our last evening in England brought us the welcome tidings that on
+that day, the Boers who had thus early invaded Natal with a view to
+annexing it, had been badly beaten at Talana Hill. That seemed a good
+beginning; and it sent us to sea with lightsome hearts; nor was it
+till long after we landed in South Africa that we learned what had
+really taken place during our cheerful voyage;--that on the very day
+we embarked, the battle of Elandslaagte had been won by our
+hard-pressed comrades, but at a cost of 260 casualties; and that the
+very next day--The _Nubia's_ first Sunday at sea--Dundee with all its
+stores had perforce been abandoned by 4000 of our retreating troops,
+for whose relief, two days later, Tinta Inyoni was fought by General
+French; that on Oct. 29th while we were spending a tranquil Sunday
+in St Vincent's harbour there commenced the struggle that culminated
+in the Nicholson's Nek disaster; and that on Nov. 13th, while we were
+awaiting orders in Table Bay, the capture of our armoured train at
+Chieveley took place. Clearly it was blissful ignorance that begat our
+hopes of brief absence from home, and of the easy vanquishing of our
+hardy foes!
+
+Two days later I reached the Orange River; and, on the courteous
+suggestion of Lord Methuen, was attached to the mess of the 3rd
+Grenadier Guards, as was also my "guide, philosopher and friend" the
+Rev. T. F. Falkner our Anglican chaplain. Here I left my invaluable
+helper, Army Scripture Reader Pearce; while, with the Guards' Brigade
+now made complete by the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, I pushed forward to be present at the four battles which
+followed in startlingly swift succession, and which I have already
+with sufficient fulness described in "Chaplains in Khaki," viz.
+Belmont on Nov. 23rd, Graspan on Nov. 25th, Modder River on Nov. 28th,
+and the Magersfontein defeat on Dec. 11th, for which, however, the
+next Amajuba Day--Feb. 27th, 1900--brought us ample compensation in
+the surrender of Cronje and his 4000 veterans, with the ever memorable
+sequel to that surrender, the occupation of Bloemfontein by the
+British forces.
+
+[Sidenote: _A capital little Capital._]
+
+It would probably be difficult to find anywhere under the sun a more
+prosperous and promising little city, or one better governed than
+Bloemfontein, which the Guards entered on the afternoon of Tuesday,
+March 13th, 1900. There is not a scrap of cultivated land anywhere
+around it. It is very literally a child of the veldt; and still clings
+strangely to its nursing mother. Indeed the veldt is not only round
+about it on every side, but even asserts its presence in many an
+unfinished street. You are still on the veldt in the midst of the
+city; and the characteristic kopje is in full view here, there, and
+everywhere. On one side of the city is the old fort built by the
+British more than fifty years ago, and soon after vacated by them, but
+it is erected of course on a kopje, on one slope of which, part of the
+city now stands. On the opposite side of the town is a new fort; but
+that also crowns a kopje. This metropolis of what was then the Orange
+Free State, thus intensely African in its situation and surroundings,
+was nevertheless an every way worthy centre of a worthy State.
+
+Many of its public buildings are notably fine, as for instance the
+Government Offices over which it was my memorable privilege to see the
+Union Jack unceremoniously hoisted; and the Parliament Hall, on the
+opposite side of the same road, erected some twelve years ago at a
+cost of £80,000. The Grey College, which accommodates a hundred boy
+boarders, is an edifice of which almost any city would be proud; and
+"The Volk's Hospital," that is "The People's Hospital," is also an
+altogether admirable institution. From the commencement of the war
+this was used for the exclusive benefit of sick or wounded Boers and
+of captured Britishers who were in the same sore plight. Among these I
+found many English officers, who all bore witness to the kind and
+skilful treatment they had uniformly received from the hospital
+authorities; but when the Boer forces hurried away from Bloemfontein
+they were compelled to leave their sick and wounded behind; with the
+result that as at Jacobsdal, the English patients at once ceased to be
+prisoners, while the Boer patients at once became prisoners. So do the
+wheels of war and fortune go whirling round!
+
+With a white population of under ten thousand all told, a large
+proportion is of British descent; and presently a positively
+surprising number of Union Jacks sprang forth from their hiding-places
+and fluttered merrily all over the town. Everybody was thankful that
+no bombardment had taken place; but many even of the British residents
+regarded with sincere regret the final extinction of the independence
+of this once self-governed and well-governed Republic.
+
+[Sidenote: _Famished men and famine prices._]
+
+The story has now everywhere been told of the soldier lad who, when he
+caught sight of his first swarm of locusts, wonderingly exclaimed as
+he noted their peculiar colour, "I'm blest if the butterflies out here
+haven't put on khaki." Bloemfontein very soon did the same. Khaki of
+various shades and various degrees of dirtiness saluted me at every
+point. Khaki men upon khaki men swarmed everywhere. Brigade followed
+brigade in apparently endless succession; but all clad in the same
+irrepressible colour, till it became quite depressing. No wonder the
+townspeople soon took to calling the soldiers "locusts," not merely
+out of compliment to the gay colour of their costume, but also as
+aptly descriptive of their apparent countlessness. They seemed like
+the sands by the seashore, innumerable. They bade fair to swallow up
+the place.
+
+That last expression, however, suggests yet another point of
+resemblance. For longer than these men seemed able to remember, the
+order of the day had been "long marches and short rations." When,
+therefore, they reached this welcome halting-place they were simply
+famished; insatiably hungry, they eagerly spent their last coin in
+buying up whatever provisions had fortunately escaped the
+commandeering of the Boers. There was no looting, no lawlessness of
+any kind; and many a civilian gave his last loaf to a starving
+trooper. There was soon a famine in the place and no train to bring us
+fresh supplies. All the bakeries of the town were commandeered by the
+new government for the benefit of the troops; but like the five loaves
+of the gospel story, "What were they among so many?" I saw the men,
+like swarms of bees, clustering around the doors and clambering on to
+the window-sills of these establishments, enjoying apparently the
+smell of the baking bread, and cherishing the vain hope of being able
+to purchase a loaf when at last the ovens were emptied.
+
+So too at the grocers' shops, a "tail" was daily formed outside the
+door, which at intervals was cautiously opened to let in a few at a
+time of these clamorous customers, who presently retired by the back
+door, laden more or less with such articles as happened to be still in
+store; but muttering as they came out "this is like Klondyke," with
+evident reference not to Klondyke gold, but to Klondyke prices. It was
+not the traders that needed protection as against the troopers, but
+the troopers that needed protection as against some of the traders.
+Even proclamation prices were alarmingly high, as for instance, a
+shilling for a pound of sugar. Sixpence was the popular price for a
+cup of tea, often without milk or sugar. The quartermaster whose tent
+I shared was charged four shillings for a single "whisky and soda,"
+and was informed that if he wanted a bottle of whisky the price would
+be thirty-five shillings. On such terms tradesmen who, before the war,
+had laid in large and semi-secret stores now reaped a magnificent
+harvest. One provision merchant was reported to have thus sold £700
+worth of goods before breakfast on a certain Saturday morning, in
+which case he would perhaps reckon that on that particular date his
+breakfast had been well earned. It probably meant in part a wholesale
+army order; but even in that case it would be for cash, and not a case
+of commandeering after the fashion of the Boers.
+
+A crippled Scandinavian tailor told me that his constant charge,
+whether to Colonels or Kaffirs, was two shillings an hour; and that he
+thought his needle served him badly if it did not bring him in £6 a
+week. About the same time a single-handed but nimble-fingered barber
+claimed to have made £100 in one week out of the invading British; but
+his victims declared that his price was a shilling for a shave and two
+shillings for a clip. At those figures the seemingly impossible comes
+to pass--if only customers are plentiful enough. Oh for a business in
+Bloemfontein!
+
+[Sidenote: _Republican Commandeering._]
+
+The Republicans of South Africa have always been credited with an
+ingrained objection to paying rates and taxes even in war time; but
+they frankly recognise the reasonableness of governmental
+commandeering, and apparently submit to it without a murmur;
+especially when it hits most heavily the stranger within their gates.
+Accordingly, the war-law of the Orange Free State authorises the
+commandeering without payment of every available man, and of all
+available material of whatsoever kind within thirty days of war being
+declared. During those thirty days, therefore, the war-broom sweeps
+with a most commendable thoroughness; and all the more so, because
+after that date everything must be paid for at market values. Why pay,
+if being a little "previous" will serve the same purpose?
+
+A gentleman farmer whom it was my privilege to visit, some fifteen
+miles out from Bloemfontein, told me he had been thus commandeered to
+the extent of about £3100; the value of waggons, oxen, and produce, he
+was compelled gratuitously to supply to his non-taxing government. A
+specially prosperous store-keeper in the town was said to have had
+£600 worth of goods taken from him in the same way; but then, of
+course, he had the compensating comfort of feeling that he was not
+being taxed! Even Republics cannot make war quite without cost; and by
+this time some are beginning to discover that it is the most ruinously
+expensive of all pursuits.
+
+The Republican conscription was equally wide reaching; for every
+capable man between the ages of sixteen and sixty was required to
+place himself and his rifle at the service of the State. Even sons of
+British parentage, being burghers, were not allowed to cross the
+border and so escape this, in many a case, hateful obligation. Their
+life was forfeit, if they sought to evade the dread duties of the
+fighting line, and refused to level reluctant rifles against men
+speaking the same mother tongue. Some few, however, secured the rare
+privilege of acting simply as despatch riders, or as members of the
+Boer ambulance corps.
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching story._]
+
+One of the sons of my Methodist farmer friend had been thus employed
+at Magersfontein, but had now seized the first opportunity of taking
+the oath and returning to his home. With his own lips he told me that
+on that fatal field he had found the body of an English officer, in
+whose cold hand lay an open locket, and in the locket two portraits;
+one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still
+fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the
+blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's
+last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost
+that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price of
+that one locket?
+
+Yet, appositely enough, as, that same evening, I was being driven back
+to town in a buggy and four, a little maiden--perchance like the
+maiden of the locket--wonderingly exclaimed as she watched the sun
+sink in radiance behind a neighbouring hill: "Why! just look! The sky
+is English!" "How so?" asked her father. "Can't you see?" said the
+child; "it is all red, white, and blue!" which indeed it was!
+
+[Sidenote: _The price of milk._]
+
+But our title to this newly-conquered territory was by no means quite
+so unchallenged as such a complacent and complimentary sky might have
+led one to suppose. The heavens above us were for the moment English,
+but scarcely the earth beneath us; and certainly not the land beyond
+us. Great even thus far had been the price of conquest; but the full
+sum was not yet ready for the reckoning. No new Magersfontein awaited
+us, and no new Paardeberg; but the incessant risking of precious life,
+and much loss thereof in other fashions than those of the battlefield.
+
+Possibly one of the most distressing cases of that kind occurred only
+two days after near Karee, a few miles beyond Bloemfontein. The
+officers of the Guards had become famous for their care of their men,
+and for their constant endeavour to keep them well served with
+supplementary supplies of food. They foraged right and left, and
+bargained with the farmers for all available milk and butter and
+cheese and bread. Men on the march cannot always live on rations only,
+and good leadership looks after the larder as well as after the lives
+of the men. On this gracious errand there rode forth from the camp as
+fine a group of regimental officers as could possibly be found; to
+wit, the colonel of the Grenadiers, his adjutant and transport officer
+who, beyond most, were choice young men and goodly; also the colonel
+of one of the Coldstream battalions, and one orderly. Hiding near a
+neighbouring kopje was a small body of Zarps watching for a chance of
+sniping or capturing a seceding Boer. Of them our officers caught
+sight, and with characteristic British pluck sought to capture them.
+But on the kopje the Boers found effectual cover, plied their rifles
+vigorously and presently captured all their would-be captors. As at
+Belmont, and on the same day of the month, the colonel of the
+Grenadiers was wounded in two places; the transport officer, the son
+of one of our well-known generals, lost his right arm; the adjutant, a
+younger brother of a noted earl, was shot through the heart, and the
+life of the other colonel was for a while despaired of. It was in some
+senses the saddest disaster that had yet befallen the Guards' Brigade;
+and it was the outcome not of some decisive battle, but of a kindly
+quest for milk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A LONG HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Refits._]
+
+Before we could resume our march every commissariat store needed to be
+replenished, and every man required a new outfit from top to toe. If
+the march of the infantry had been much further prolonged we should
+have degenerated into a literally bootless expedition, for some of the
+men reached Bloemfontein with bare if not actually bleeding feet,
+while their nether garments were in a condition that beggared and
+baffled all description. Once smart Guardsmen had patched their
+trousers with odd bits of sacking, and in one case the words "Lime
+Juice Cordial" were still plainly visible on the sacking. So came that
+"cordial" and its victorious wearer into the vanquished capital.
+Others despairingly gave up all further attempts at patching, having
+repeatedly proved, as the Scriptures say, that the rent is thereby
+made worse. So they were perforce content to go about in such a
+condition of deplorable dilapidation as anywhere else would inevitably
+result in their being "run in" for flagrant disregard of public
+decorum.
+
+The Canadians took rank from the first as among the very finest troops
+in all the field, and adopted as their own the following singular
+marching song:--
+
+         "We will follow ROBERTS,
+          Follow, follow, follow;
+          Anywhere, everywhere,
+          We will follow him!"
+
+Brave fellows that they were, they meant it absolutely, utterly, even
+unto death. But thus without boots and other yet more essential
+belongings, how could they?
+
+[Sidenote: _Remounts._]
+
+The cavalry was in equally serious plight. It is said that Sir George
+White took with him into Ladysmith over 10,000 mules and horses, but
+brought away at the close of the siege less than 1100. Many of the
+rest had meanwhile been transformed into beefsteak and sausages. We
+also, during the month that brought us to Bloemfontein had used up a
+similar number. A cavalryman told me that out of 540 horses belonging
+to his regiment only 50 were left; and in that case the sausage-making
+machine was in no degree responsible for the diminished numbers. Yet a
+cavalryman without a horse is as helpless as a cripple without a
+crutch. It was therefore quite clear that most of our cavalry
+regiments would have to remain rooted to the spot till their remounts
+arrived.
+
+Not until May 1st was another forward move found possible; and during
+one of those weeks of waiting there happened the Sanna's Post
+disaster, a grievous surrender of some of our men at Reddersburg, a
+serious little fight at Karee, and a satisfactory skirmish at Boshof,
+which made an end of General de Villebois-Mareuil and his commando of
+foreign supporters of the Boers; but in none of these affairs were
+the Guards involved.
+
+[Sidenote: _Regimental Pets._]
+
+Meanwhile the men during their few leisure hours found it no easy
+matter to amuse themselves. In the rush for Bloemfontein, footballs
+and cricket bats were all left behind. There were no canteens and no
+open-air concerts. The only pets the men had left were pet animals,
+and of them they made the most. The Welsh, of course, had their goat
+to go before them, and were prouder of it than ever. The Canadians at
+Belmont bought a chimpanzee which still grinned at them from the top
+of its pole in front of their lines, and with patient perseverance,
+still did all the mischief its limited resources would permit; whereat
+the men were mightily pleased. The adjoining battalion boasted of
+possessing a yet more charming specimen of the monkey tribe; a mite of
+a monkey, and for a monkey almost a beauty; but as full of mischief as
+his bigger brother.
+
+Strange to tell, the Grenadiers' pet was, of all things in the world,
+a pet lamb; and of all persons in the world, the cook of the officers'
+mess was its kindly custodian. "Mary had a little lamb," says the
+nursery rhyme. So had we!
+
+         "Its fleece was white as snow;
+          And everywhere that Mary went
+          That lamb was sure to go!"
+
+So was it with ours! Walking amid camp-kettles, and dwelling among
+sometimes cruelly hungry men that lamb was jokingly called our
+"Emergency Rations," but it would have had to be a very serious
+emergency, indeed, to cut short that pet's career. Yet a lamb thus
+playing with soldiers, and marching with them from one camping ground
+to another, was well-nigh as odd a sight as I have ever yet seen.
+
+[Sidenote: _Civilian Hospitality and Soldiers' Homes._]
+
+During our six weeks of waiting I was for the most part the guest of
+the Rev. Stuart and Mrs Franklin, whose kindness to me was great with
+an exceeding greatness. Ever to be remembered also was the hospitality
+of the senior steward of the Wesleyan Church, who happened, like
+myself, to be a Cornishman; and from whose table there smiled upon me
+quite familiarly a bowl of real Cornish cream. Whole volumes would not
+suffice to express the emotions aroused in my Cornish breast by that
+sight of sights in a strange land.
+
+Through the kindness of these true friends we were enabled to open the
+Wesleyan Sunday School as a Soldiers' Home where the men were welcome
+to sing and play, read, and write letters to their hearts' content.
+Here also every afternoon from 200 to 700 soldiers were supplied with
+an excellent cup of tea and some bread and butter for threepence each.
+A threepenny piece is there called "a tickey," and till the troops
+arrived that was the lowest coin in use. An Orange Free Stater scorned
+to look at a penny; but a British soldier's pay is constructed on
+other lines; and what he thought of our "tickey" tea, the following
+unsolicited testimonial laughingly proves. It is an unfinished letter
+picked up in the street, and was probably dropped as the result of a
+specially hurried departure, when some passing officer looked in and
+shouted "Lights out!"
+
+                                        BLOEMFONTEIN, O.F.S.
+
+     DEAR MOTHER,--I can't say I care much for this place. Nothing to
+     see but kopjes all round; and if you want to buy anything, by
+     Jove, you have to pay a pretty price. For instance, cup of tea,
+     6d.; bottle of ginger beer, 6d.; cigarettes, 1s. a packet. But at
+     the Soldiers' Home a cup of tea is only 3d. Thanks to those in
+     authority, the S.H. is what I call our "haven of rest." I shan't
+     be sorry when I come home to _our own_ haven of rest, as it is
+     impossible to buy any luxuries on our little pay. Just fancy, a
+     small tin of jam, 2s. It's simply scandalous; and the inhabitants
+     seem to think Tommy has a mint of money.
+
+[Sidenote: _S.C.A. Work._]
+
+After a while similar Homes were opened in various parts of the town;
+but this long pause in our progress was a veritable harvest-time for
+all Christian workers; and especially for those of the S.C.A., who
+planted two magnificent marquees in the very midst of the men, and had
+the supreme satisfaction of seeing them crowded night after night and
+almost all day long. Every Sunday morning I was privileged to conduct
+one of my Parade Services under their sheltering canvas; and many a
+time in the course of each succeeding week took part in their
+enthusiastic religious gatherings.
+
+Here, as at Modder River, secular song was nowhere, while sacred song
+became all and in all. I am told that sometimes on the march,
+sometimes amid actual battle scenes, our lads caught up and encouraged
+themselves by chanting some more or less appropriate music-hall ditty.
+One battalion when sending a specially large consignment of whizzing
+bullets across into the Boer lines did so to the accompanying tune of
+
+         "You have to have 'em
+          Whether you want 'em or no!"
+
+Another fighting group, when specially hard pressed, began to sing
+"Let 'em all come!" But in the Bloemfontein camps I seldom heard any
+except songs of quite another type; and on one occasion was greatly
+touched by listening to a Colonial singing a sweet but unfamiliar
+melody about
+
+         "The pages that I love
+          In the Bible my mother gave to me."
+
+Even among men on active service, many of whom are nearing mid-life,
+and have long been married, mother's influence is still a supremely
+potent thing!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rudyard Kipling's Mistake._]
+
+Partly as the result of influences such as these, and partly as the
+result of prohibitory liquor laws, we became the most absolutely sober
+army Europe ever put into the field. Prior to our coming, no liquor
+might at any price be sold to a native; and there were in the whole
+country no beer shops, but only hotels bound to supply bed and board
+when required, and not liquor only, with the result that this fair
+land has long been almost as sober as it is sunny.
+
+The sale of intoxicants to the troops was equally restricted, and no
+liquor could be obtained by them except as a special favour on special
+terms. Absolutely the only concert or public meeting held in
+Bloemfontein while the Guards were in the neighbourhood was in
+connection with the Army Temperance Association, Lord Roberts himself
+presiding; and concerning him the soldiers playfully said, "He has
+water on the brain." Through all this weary time of waiting our troops
+were as temperate as Turks, and much more chaste; so that the
+soldiers' own pet laureate is reported to have declared, whether
+delightedly or disgustedly he alone knows, that this outing of our
+army in South Africa was none other than a huge Sunday School treat;
+so incomprehensibly proper was even the humblest private and so
+inconceivably unlike the Tommy Atkins described in his "Barrack-room
+Ballads," Kipling discovered in South Africa quite a new type of Tommy
+Atkins, and, as I think, of a pattern much more satisfactory.
+Nevertheless, in one small detail the laureate's simile seems gravely
+at fault. In the homeland no Sunday School treat was ever yet seen at
+which the girls did not greatly outnumber the boys; but on the African
+veldt the only girl of whom we ever seemed to gain even an occasional
+glimpse was--"The girl I left behind me."
+
+[Sidenote: _All Fools' Day._]
+
+During our stay in Bloemfontein a part of the Guard's Brigade was sent
+to protect the drift and broken railway bridge across the Modder River
+at "The Glen"; which was the first really pretty pleasure resort we
+had found in South Africa since Table Mountain and Table Bay had
+vanished from our view. Here the Grenadier officers had requisitioned
+for mess purposes a little railway schoolhouse, cool and shady, in the
+midst of the nearest approach to a real wood in all the regions round
+about; and here I purposed conducting my usual Sunday parade, but
+with my usual Sunday ill-fortune. On arrival I found the whole
+division that had been encamped just beyond the river had suddenly
+moved further on, quite out of reach; so the service arranged for them
+inevitably fell through.
+
+But on Saturday afternoon a set of ambulance waggons arrived, bringing
+in the first instalment of about 170 wounded men belonging to that
+same division. It was rumoured that the K.O.S.B.'s, in a sort of
+outpost affair, had landed in a Boer trap, planted of course near a
+convenient kopje; with the result that our ambulances were, as usual,
+speedily required. In the course of the campaign some of our troops
+developed a decided proficiency in finding such traps--by falling into
+them!
+
+Nevertheless, two battalions of Guards remained in camp, and they, at
+any rate, might be confidently relied on for a parade next morning.
+Indeed, one of the majors in charge, a devout Christian worker, told
+me he had purposed to himself conduct a service for my men if I had
+not arrived; and for that I thanked him heartily. Moreover, the men
+just then were busy gathering fuel and piling it for a camp-fire
+concert, to commence soon after dark that evening. Clearly, then, the
+Guards were anchored for some time to come, though their comrades
+beyond the river had vanished.
+
+I had yet to learn that the coming Sunday was "All Fools' Day," and
+that for those who had been busy thus scheming it was fittingly so
+called. At the mess that very evening our usual "orders" informed us
+that the men would parade for worship at 6.45 next morning; but
+within a few minutes a telegram arrived requiring the Coldstream
+battalion and half the Grenadiers to entrain for Bloemfontein at once,
+thence to proceed to some unnamed destination; and every man to take
+with him as much ammunition as he could carry. So, instead of a big
+bonfire and their blankets, the men at a moment's notice had to face a
+long night journey in open trucks, with the inspiring prospect of a
+severe fight at that journey's end. Nothing daunted, every man
+instantly got ready to obey the call; and just before midnight forty
+truck-loads of fighting men set out, they knew not whither, to meet
+they knew not what; but cheerily singing, as the train began to move,
+"The anchor's weighed." It was indeed!
+
+"What does it all mean?" asked one lad of another; but though vague
+rumours of disaster were rife,--(it proved to be the day of the
+Sanna's Post mishap),--nothing definite was known; and on the eve of
+"All Fools' Day" it seemed doubly wise to be wholesomely incredulous.
+So I retired to my shelter, made of biscuit boxes covered with a rug;
+and slept soundly till morning light appeared. Then the sun, which at
+its setting had smiled on two thousand men and their blanket shelters,
+at its rising looked in vain for men or blankets; all were gone, save
+a few Grenadiers left for outpost duty. I had come from Bloemfontein
+for nought. Just behind my shelter stood the pile of firewood neatly
+heaped in readiness for the previous night's camp fire, but never
+lighted; and close beside my shelter was spread on the ground fresh
+beef and mutton, enough to feed fifteen hundred men; but those fifteen
+hundred were now far away, nobody knew where; and of that fresh meat
+the main part was destined to speedy burial. Truly enough that Sunday
+was indeed "All Fools' Day"; though the fooling was on our part of a
+quite involuntary order!
+
+Yet in face of oft recurring disappointment and disaster the favourite
+motto of the Orange Free State amply justified itself, and will do to
+the end. It says _Alles zal recht komen_; which means, being
+interpreted, "All will come right." While God remains upon the throne
+that needs must be!
+
+[Sidenote: _Eastertide in Bloemfontein._]
+
+_Good Friday_ for many of us largely justified its name. It was a
+graciously good day. My first parade in a S.C.A. marquee was not only
+well attended but was also marked by much of hallowed influence. Then
+followed a second parade service in the Wesleyan church which was
+still more largely attended; and attended by men many of whose faces
+were delightfully familiar. It was an Aldershot parade service held in
+the heart of South Africa, and in what is supposed to be the hostile
+capital of a hostile state.
+
+In the course of the afternoon over five hundred paid a visit to our
+temporary Soldiers' Home for letter writing and the purchase of such
+light refreshments as we found it possible to provide in that famine
+haunted city. The evening we gave up to Christian song in that same
+Soldiers' Home; and when listening to so many familiar voices singing
+the old familiar hymns, some of us seemed for the moment almost to
+forget we were not in the hallowed "Glory Room" of the Aldershot Home.
+
+On _Easter Sunday_ at the two parade services in the Town Church the
+most notable thing was the visible eagerness with which men listened
+to the old, old story of Eastertide, and the overwhelming heartiness
+with which they sang our triumphant Easter hymns. There is a capital
+Wesleyan choir in Bloemfontein; but they told me they might as well
+whistle to drown the roaring of a whirlwind as attempt "to lead" the
+singing of the soldiers.
+
+At these Sunday morning parades the church was usually packed with
+khaki in every part. The gallery was filled to overflowing; chairs
+were placed in all the aisles on the ground floor; the choir squeezed
+themselves within the communion rail; and the choir seats were
+occupied by men in khaki, for the most part deplorably travel-stained
+and tattered. Soldiers sat on the pulpit stairs; and into the very
+pulpit khaki intruded, for I was there and of course in uniform. It
+was a most impressive sight, this coming together into the House of
+God of comrades in arms fresh from many a hard fought conflict and
+toilsome march.
+
+At one of these services a sergeant of the 12th Lancers was present;
+and his was just a typical case. It was at the battle of Magersfontein
+we had last met. On that memorable morning he and his troop rode past
+me to the fight; we grasped hands, whispered one to the other
+"494"[1]; and then parted to meet months after, unharmed amid all
+peril, in our Father's House in Bloemfontein. The thrill of such a
+meeting, which represents cases of that kind by the score, no one can
+fully understand till it becomes inwoven in his own experience. So we
+met, and remembering the way our God had led us, we sang as few men
+could
+
+         "Praise ye the Lord! 'tis good to raise
+          Your hearts and voices in His praise!"
+
+How good, supremely good, I have no words to tell!
+
+[Footnote 1: "God be with you till we meet again."--_Sacred Songs and
+Solos_, No. 494.]
+
+On that Easter afternoon there came a sudden summons to conduct
+another soldier's funeral. For a full hour and a half I watched and
+waited beyond the appointed time, while the digging of a shallow grave
+in difficult ground was being laboriously completed; and then in the
+name of Him who is the "Resurrection and the Life," we laid our
+soldier-brother in his lowly resting place, enwrapped only in his
+soldier-blanket. Meanwhile, in accordance with a touching Anglican
+custom, there came into the cemetery a long procession of choir boys
+and children singing Easter hymns, joining in Easter liturgies, and
+then proceeding to lay on the new made graves an offering of Easter
+flowers.
+
+At the Easter evening service I was surprised to see in the Wesleyan
+church another dense mass of khaki. Every man had been required to
+procure a separate personal "pass" in order to be present, and the
+evening was full of threatenings, threatenings that in due time
+justified themselves by a terrific thunderstorm, which resulted in
+nearly every tunic being drenched before it could reach its sheltering
+tent. Yet in spite of such forbiddings the men came in from the
+outlying camps, literally by hundreds, to attend that Easter evening
+service; and I deemed their presence there a notable tribute to the
+spiritual efficiency of spiritual work among our troops the wide world
+over.
+
+_Easter Monday_, as in England so in Bloemfontein, is a Bank holiday,
+and usually devoted to picnicking in The Glen, till the war put its
+foot thereon, as well as on much else that was pleasurable. My most
+urgent duty that day was the conducting of another military funeral;
+and thereupon in the cemetery I saw a triple sight significant of
+much.
+
+At the gate were some soldiers in charge of a mule waggon on which lay
+the body of a negro, awaiting burial. In the service of our common
+Queen that representative of the black-skinned race had just laid down
+his life. Inside the gates two graves were being dug; one by a group
+of Englishmen for an English comrade, and one by a group of Canadians
+for a comrade lent to us for kindred service by "Our Lady of the
+Snows." So now are lying side by side in South African soil these two
+typical representatives of the principal sections of the Anglo-Saxon
+race; their lives freely given, like that of their black brother, in
+the service and defence of one common heritage--that Christian empire
+which surely God himself has builded. Camp and cemetery alike teach
+one common lesson, and by the lips of the living and the dead enforce
+attention to the same vast victorious fact! Next day it was an
+Australian officer I saw laid in that same treasure-house of dead
+heroes. He that hath eyes to see let him see! This deplorable war,
+which thus brought together from afar the builders and binders of the
+empire, in an altogether amazing measure made them thereby of one
+mind and heart. It is life arising out of death; and surely every
+devout-minded Englishman will learn at last to say "This is the Lord's
+doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes!"
+
+[Sidenote: _The Epidemic and the Hospitals._]
+
+The first military funeral since the reoccupation of Bloemfontein by
+the British it fell to my lot to conduct two days after our arrival. A
+fine young guardsman who had taken part in each of our four famous
+battles, and in our recent march, just saw this goal of all our hopes
+and died. The fatal symptoms were evidently of a specially alarming
+type, for he was hastily buried with all his belongings, his slippers,
+his iron mug, his boots, his haversack, and the very stretcher on
+which he lay; then over all was poured some potent disinfectant. It
+was a gruesome sight! So to-day he lies in the self-same cemetery
+where rests many a British soldier who fell not far away in the fights
+of fifty years ago. It was British soil in those distant days, and is
+British soil again, but at how great cost we were now about to learn.
+
+That guardsman was the first fruits of a vast ingathering. In the
+course of the next few weeks over 6000 cases of enteric sprang up in
+the immediate neighbourhood of that one little town; and 1300 of its
+victims were presently laid in that same cemetery, which now holds so
+much of the empire's best, and towards which so many a mother-heart
+turns tearfully from almost every part of the Anglo-Saxon world. It
+was the after-math of Paardeberg, which claimed more lives long after,
+than in all its hours of slowly intensifying agony! Boers and
+Britons, both together, there were vastly fewer who sighed their last
+beside the Modder River banks than the sequent fever claimed at
+Bloemfontein; and all through the campaign the loss of life caused by
+sickness has been so much larger than through wounds as to justify the
+soldiers' favourite dictum respecting it: "Better three hits than one
+enteric."
+
+Such an epidemic, laying hold as it did in the course of a few weeks
+of one in five of all the troops within reach of Bloemfontein, is
+quite unexampled in the history of recent wars; and the Royal Army
+Medical Corps can scarcely be censured for being unable to adequately
+cope with it. They were 900 miles from their base, with only a broken
+railway by which to bring up supplies. The little town, already so
+severely commandeered by the Boers, could furnish next to nothing in
+the way of medical comforts or necessities. Every available bed, or
+blanket, or bit of sheeting, was bought up by the authorities; but if
+every private bedroom in the place had been ransacked, the
+requirements of the case even then could scarcely have been met.
+Possibly that ought to have been done, but all through this campaign
+our army rulers have been excessively tender-handed in such matters;
+forgetting that clemency to the vanquished is often cruelty to the
+victors. So in Bloemfontein healthy civilians, whether foes or
+friends, slept on feather beds, while suffering and delirious soldiers
+were stretched on an earthen floor that was sodden with almost
+incessant rain. Neither for that rain can the army doctors be held
+responsible, though it almost drove them to despair. Nor was it their
+fault that the Boers were allowed at this very time to capture the
+Bloemfontein waterworks, and shatter them. Bad water at Paardeberg
+caused the epidemic. Bad water at Bloemfontein brought it to a climax.
+In this little city of the sick the medical men had at one time a
+constant average of 1800 sufferers on their hands; mostly cases of
+enteric which, as truly as shot and shell, shows no respect of
+persons. Not only our fighting-men--soldiers of high degree and low
+degree alike--but non-combatants, chaplains, army scripture readers,
+war correspondents, doctors, and army nurses, it remorselessly claimed
+and victimised. In such a campaign the fighting line is not the chief
+point of peril, nor the fighting soldiers the only sufferers. Hospital
+work has its heroes, though not its trumpeters, and many a man of the
+Royal Army Medical Corps has as faithfully won his medal as any that
+handled rifle.
+
+[Sidenote: _All hands and houses to the rescue._]
+
+Our "Kopje-Book Maxims" told us that "two horses are enough to shift a
+camp--provided they are dead enough." Either the camp or the horses
+must be quickly shifted if pestilence is to be kept at bay; yet in
+spite of all shiftings, of all sanitary searchings and strivings, the
+fever refused to shift; the field hospitals were from the first
+hopelessly crowded out; and the city of death would quickly have
+become the city of despair, but for the timely arrival of sundry
+irregular helpers and organisations that had been lavishly equipped
+and sent out by private beneficence. Such was the huge Portman
+Hospital. In the Ramblers' Club and Grounds, the Longman Hospital was
+housed; and here I found Conan Doyle practising the healing art with
+presumably a skill rivalling that with which he penned his superb
+detective tales. In the forsaken barracks of the Orange Free State
+soldiery, the Sydney doctors established their house of healing,
+assisted by ambulance men and ambulance appliances unsurpassed by
+anything of the kind employed in any other part of Africa. Australia,
+like her sister colonies, sent to us her best; and bravely they bore
+themselves beside our best.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken at Pretoria, June 1900_
+
+Rev. T. F. Falkner, M.A. Chaplain to the Forces.
+
+Chaplain to the First Division and to the Guards' Brigade, South
+African Field Force, 1899-1900]
+
+To relieve the pressure thus created almost every public building in
+the town was requisitioned for hospital purposes; schools and clubs
+and colleges, the nunnery, the lunatic asylum, and even the stately
+Parliament Hall with its marble entrance and sumptuous fittings. The
+presidential chair, behind the presidential desk, still retained its
+original place on the presidential platform; but,--"how are the mighty
+fallen!" I saw it occupied by an obscure hospital orderly who was busy
+filling up a still more obscure hospital schedule. The whole floor of
+the building was so crowded with beds that all the senatorial chairs
+and desks had perforce been removed. The Orange Free State senators
+sitting on those aforesaid chairs had resolved in secret session, only
+a few eventful months before, to hurl in England's face an Ultimatum
+that made war inevitable, and brought our batteries and battalions to
+their very doors. But now they were fugitives every one from the city
+of their pride, which they had surrendered without striking a solitary
+blow for its defence; while the actual building in which their lunacy
+took final shape, and launched itself on an astonished Christendom,
+I beheld full to overflowing with the deadly fruit of their doing. In
+the very presence of the president's chair of state, here a Boer,
+there a Briton, it may be of New Zealand birth or Canadian born,
+moaned out his life, and so made his last mute protest against the
+outrage which rallied a whole empire in passionate self-defence.
+
+Among the more than thousand victims the Bloemfontein fever epidemic
+claimed, few were more lamented than a sergeant of the 3rd Grenadier
+Guards, who, according to the _Household Brigade Magazine_, had a
+specially curious experience in the assault on Grenadier Hill at the
+battle of Belmont, for "he was hit by no less than nine separate
+bullets, besides having his bayonet carried away, off his rifle, by
+another shot, making a total of ten hits. He continued till the end of
+the action with his company in the front of the attack, where on
+inspection it was found he had only actually five wounds; but besides
+some damage to his clothing had both pouches hit and all his
+cartridges exploded. He did not go to hospital till the next day, when
+he felt a little bruised and stiff." It really seemed hard to succumb
+to enteric after such a miraculous escape from the enemies' murderous
+fire.
+
+[Sidenote: _Church of England Chaplains at work._]
+
+The following letter by the Rev. T. F. Falkner refers to this period,
+and was sent originally to the Chaplain-General; but is here
+published, slightly abridged, as an excellent illustration of the
+spirit and work of the many chaplains of the Church of England who
+have taken part in this campaign:--
+
+     "I was particularly anxious that you should know the luxury in
+     which we are living in the matter of Church privileges, and the
+     keen appreciation which our people show of that which is so
+     freely offered. Nothing can exceed the kindness of the dean and
+     his clergy. They allow us to have the use of the cathedral on
+     Sunday mornings at nine o'clock for a parade service for the
+     Guards, and at 5.30 on Sunday evenings we have a special evensong
+     for the convenience of officers and men to enable them to get
+     back to barrack or camp in good time; in addition to this, we
+     have permission to hold a special mission service for soldiers on
+     Friday evenings at 6.30. There is a daily celebration as well as
+     Morning and Evening Prayer and Litany, while on Sundays there are
+     three celebrations of Holy Communion. These are luxuries to us
+     wayfarers on the veldt. Now for the appreciation of them. On the
+     Sunday after we came in, the cathedral choir volunteered their
+     help at our nine o'clock (Guards') parade, and the service was
+     home-like and hearty. The drums were there and rolled at the
+     Glorias, and 'God Save the Queen,' which was sung because it was
+     a parade service. I spoke to the men on the blessings of a
+     restful hour of worship in an English church after our
+     journeyings, and of the mercies which had been granted to us,
+     basing what I had to say on 'It is good for us to be here.' At
+     the morning service at 10.30 there was a large number of the
+     headquarter staff present, many of whom, Lord Roberts included,
+     stayed to the celebration.... At 7.30, the ordinary hour for
+     evensong, long before the service began the church was literally
+     _packed_ with officers and men, one vast mass of khaki; all
+     available chairs and forms were got in, and officers were put up
+     into the long chancel wherever room could be found for them. The
+     heartiness of that service, the reverence and devoutness of the
+     men, the uplifting of heart and voice in the familiar chants and
+     hymns, the clear manly enunciation of the Articles of our Faith,
+     and the ready responses, all combined to make the service a grand
+     evidence of the religious side of our men and a striking
+     testimony to their desire to worship their God in the beauty of
+     holiness. Many of us will remember that Sunday night with
+     thankfulness. Coney preached us a very excellent sermon. The few
+     civilians who were able to get in were much struck by the evident
+     sincerity and devout behaviour of the men who surrounded them.
+     And yet the Boers say 'the English _must_ lose because they have
+     no God.' One of the clergy told me a day or two after we got here
+     that he met one of our men outside the cathedral as he was
+     walking along, and the soldier accosted him. 'Beg pardon, sir,
+     is that an English church?' 'Yes,' said the clergyman. 'Might I
+     go in, sir?' 'Why, of course,' was the reply, 'it is open all
+     day.' 'Thank you, sir; I should just like to go in and say a
+     prayer for the wife and children;' and in he went.
+
+     "I felt after our first experience that it was hardly fair to
+     oust so many of the regular worshippers from their own place of
+     worship, and so we arranged for the extra service at 5.30. It was
+     to be purely a soldiers' service. But a word or two about the
+     Friday evening special Lenten service. Familiar hymns, a metrical
+     litany, and part of the Commination Service were gladly joined in
+     by a large number of men, the cathedral being more than half
+     full, and the archdeacon gave us a very helpful address. After
+     that service a good number of men stayed behind, at our
+     invitation, to practise psalms and hymns for the soldiers'
+     evening service on the following Sunday, a precaution which
+     served its purpose well. At that service the church was _filled_;
+     Lord Roberts came to it, and it was an ideal soldiers' service.
+     Coney and I took the service, Norman Lee and Southwell read the
+     lessons, Blackbourne was at the organ, and the dean preached. One
+     of the staff officers said afterwards that he had never enjoyed a
+     service so much, and I think many others had similar feelings.
+     But the flow of khaki-clad worshippers had not ceased, for no
+     sooner had our 5.30 service ended than men and officers began
+     coming in for the 7.30 ordinary service, and at that the chancel
+     and more than half the body of the church was again filled with
+     our troops. It _was_ cheering to see and comforting to share in.
+
+     "The morning of this Sunday I spent at Bishop's Glen, about
+     fourteen miles up the line, close to the bridge over the Modder
+     River which was blown up directly we got here, where two
+     battalions of the Guards were afterwards sent. I had to go up in
+     great haste on the Saturday to bury the adjutant of the 3rd
+     Grenadiers, who was killed the day before; a very sad task for
+     me, for having been with the battalion all along, I had got to
+     know him well and to appreciate him highly, as every one did who
+     knew him. I got to camp about 5.30 on Saturday evening, after
+     three and a half hours' heavy travelling along a muddy track over
+     the veldt, through dongas and drifts, and we laid him to rest on
+     a little knoll overlooking the well-wooded banks of what is
+     _there_ a pretty river, a short distance only from the broken
+     bridge, which stood out against a background of shrubs and trees
+     on the river side, and struck me as a fitting emblem of a strong
+     and useful life smitten down suddenly by an unseen hand. I
+     stayed the night at Glen, where Grenadiers and Coldstreams took
+     care of me, and on Sunday morning at seven we had our parade
+     service, followed by a celebration at the railway station, at
+     which we had a nice number of communicants.
+
+     "We find the hospital work here very heavy. There are no less
+     than ten public buildings in use as hospitals in the town: in
+     addition, of course, to our field hospitals, which are _full_.
+     For a short time last week I was left to do all this with two
+     chaplains besides myself. The chaplains here are splendid, so
+     keen and self-denying, nothing seems too much trouble; all going
+     strong and working hard. It is a pleasure to be with such men. We
+     are all distressed at our inability to do more, and conscious of
+     our failure to do what we would wish; but we do what we can. The
+     S.C.A. has two tents and are working on good lines, and the men
+     appreciate them. Lowry and I have walked the whole way so far,
+     save that I had a lift from Jacobsdal to Klip Drift, and I am
+     thankful to be able to say I have not been other than fit all
+     through. All the others have had horses to ride: they are welcome
+     to them. I am a bit proud of having had a share in that march
+     from Klip Drift to Bloemfontein, and am thankful for the strength
+     that was given me to do it. I am jealous for the honour of the
+     department, and all I want at the end of the campaign is that the
+     generals should say, the Church of England chaplains have done
+     their duty well. One said to me the other day, 'I _should_ like
+     to be mentioned in despatches.' I replied, 'I have no such wish.
+     To do that you must go where you have no business to be.' Our
+     chaplains are brave men; there's not one who would flinch if told
+     to go into the firing line; but the generals _all_ say that our
+     place is at the field hospital; moving quietly amongst the sick
+     and wounded when they are brought in, and burying the dead when
+     they are carried out. There's not one of our chaplains out here
+     who has not earned, so far as I can gather, kind words from those
+     with whom he serves, and I think you will find your selection has
+     been more than justified.
+
+     "We had an excellent meeting in connection with the A.T.A. in the
+     Bloemfontein Town Hall last night, with Lord Roberts in the
+     chair. He spoke admirably; and though most of the troops were out
+     of the city the hall was full."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN
+
+
+[Sidenote: _A pleasure jaunt._]
+
+During this six weeks of tarrying at Bloemfontein I found myself able
+to visit a most interesting Methodist family residing some twenty
+miles south of the town. For my sole benefit the express to the Cape
+was stopped at a certain platelayer's hut, and then a walk of about a
+mile across the veldt brought me to the pleasant country house of a
+venerable widow lady. Her belongings had of course been freely
+commandeered by the Boers on the outbreak of war; nor had the sons,
+being burghers, though loyal-hearted Britishers, been able to elude
+their liability to bear arms against their own kin. The two youngest,
+schoolboys still, though of conscript age, had been sent down south
+betimes; and so were well out of harm's way, but the two elder were
+not suffered to thus escape. One as a despatch rider, and one as a
+commissariat officer, they were compelled to serve a cause that did
+violence to their deepest convictions. On the first appearance
+therefore of the British, both brothers following the bidding of
+strongest blood bonds, transferred their allegiance, if not their
+service, to the other side. Thereupon they were so incessantly
+threatened with a volley of avenging Boer bullets they felt compelled
+to take a holiday trip to the Cape. Thus was their gentle mother with
+war still raging round her gates bereft of the presence, protection,
+and sorely needed aid of all her sons.
+
+We arranged for the holding in her home of an Easter Sunday evening
+service; and then returning to the railway were cheered by the speedy
+sight of a goods train bound for Bloemfontein. Whereupon I scrambled
+on to the top of a heavily loaded truck, and there, being a
+first-class passenger provided with a first-class ticket, travelled in
+first-class style, sitting awkwardly astride of nobody knows what. On
+the same truck rode a Colonial, an English cavalryman, and a Hindu who
+courteously threw over me a handsome rug when the chilly eve closed in
+upon us. A decidedly representative group were we atop that truck-load
+of miscellaneous munitions of war. And on into the darkness, and
+through the darkness, we thus rode till late at night we reached the
+lights of Bloemfontein.
+
+[Sidenote: _Onwards but whither?_]
+
+On Saturday, April 22nd, the colonel of my battalion informed his
+quartermaster that the next day his men would leave Kaffir River,
+proceed to Springfield, and thence to "worlds unknown!" That is
+precisely where we soon found ourselves. Early on Sunday morning I
+said "Good-bye" to Bloemfontein, expecting to see its face no more,
+for surely this must be the long looked for start towards golden
+Krugerland! At Kaffir River I found the Guards were some hours ahead
+of me, but was just in time to catch the tail of a long train of
+transport waggons belonging to them, so that fortunately there was no
+fear of my being left alone, and lost a second time upon the veldt.
+Thus commenced a long Sunday march, as we all supposed, to
+Springfield. Later on we learned it certainly was not Springfield we
+were slowly approaching; but that possibly night-fall would land us
+somewhere near the Waterworks recently shattered, and still held, by
+the Boers. Yet "not there, not there, my child," were our weary feet
+wending. We began to wonder whether they were wending anywhere; and to
+this hour nobody seems to know the name of the place where we that
+night rested. Perhaps it had no name! Soldiers on active service
+seldom walk by sight. It is theirs always "to _trust_ and obey." Even
+regimental officers seldom know precisely where their next
+stopping-place will be, or what presently they will be called upon to
+do. They often resemble the pieces on a chess board, which cannot see
+the hand that moves them and cannot tell why this piece instead of
+that is taken. To keep our adversaries if possible in the dark, we
+have ourselves to dwell in darkness; but it is a source of sore
+distress all the same. The troops hunger for information and seldom
+get it; so, to supply the lack they invent it; and then scornfully
+laugh at their own inventings. They would sooner travel anywhere than
+"through worlds unknown"; and yet somehow that becomes for them the
+commonest of all treks!
+
+[Sidenote: _That Pom-Pom again!_]
+
+While the afternoon was still new we heard on our near left the sound
+of heavy shell firing; of which, however, the men took no more notice
+than if they had been manoeuvring on Salisbury Plain. They marched on
+as stolidly and cheerily as ever, chatting and laughing as they
+marched. But presently there broke upon our ears the familiar sound of
+the pom-pom, which months ago at the Modder had so shaken everybody's
+nerves. Instantly there burst from the whole brigade a cry of
+recognition, and every man instinctively perceived that some grim
+business had begun. Another Sunday battle was raging just over the
+ridge, and the rest of that day's march had for its accompaniment the
+music of pom-poms, the rattle of rifle fire, and the thud of shells.
+But at the close of the day an officer somewhat discontentedly
+reported that "if" our artillery had only reached a certain place by a
+certain time, something splendid would have happened. Many of our
+rat-traps proved thus weak in the spring, and snapped too slowly,
+specially on Sundays. Some such disastrous "if" seemed to spring up in
+connection with most of our Sunday fights, though we still seem to
+cling fondly to the belief that for fighting the Lord's battles the
+Lord's day is of all days incomparably the best. It was on Sunday,
+December 10th, the disastrous attack on Stormberg was delivered; and
+on the evening of that same fatal Sunday the Highland Brigade marched
+out of the Modder River Camp to meet their doom on Magersfontein.
+Similarly on the night of Sunday, January 22nd, our men set out to
+win, and lose, Spion Kop. The Paardeberg calamity, the costliest of
+all our contests, was also a Sunday fight; and though in the face of
+such facts no man may dogmatise, such coincidences, all happening in
+the course of a few weeks, in the conduct of the same war, make one
+wonder whether Sunday is really a lucky day for purposes so dread, and
+whether the Boers are not justified in their supposed refusal to
+fight on Sundays excepting in self-defence. In that respect, I at any
+rate, am with the Boers as against the Britons.
+
+[Sidenote: _A problem not quite solved._]
+
+When night at last arrived, we had neither tents nor shelters of any
+sort provided for us, though the cold was searching, and everything
+around us was wet with heavy dew. Men and officers alike spread their
+waterproof sheets on the bare ground, and then made the best they
+could of one or two blankets in which to wrap themselves. Through the
+kindness, however, of my quartermaster friend, since dead, I was
+privileged to push my head and shoulders under a transport waggon
+which effectually sheltered me from wind and wet; and there, in the
+midst of mules and men, mostly darkies, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.
+
+Brief rest, however, of a more delicious kind I had already found in
+the course of that toilsome afternoon tramp described above. During a
+short halt by the way I lay upon my back watching a huge cloud of
+locusts flying far overhead, and thinking tenderly of those just then
+assembling at our Aldershot Sunday afternoon service of song, not
+forgetting the gentle lady who usually presides at the piano there.
+Then I took out my pocket Testament, and read Romans xii.: "If thine
+enemy hunger, feed him." But about that precise moment the adjoining
+kopje, with a shaking emphasis, said to me, "pom-pom," and again
+"pom-pom." But how to feed one's enemy while thus he speaks with
+defiant throat of brass, is a problem that still awaits a
+satisfactory solution!
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching sight._]
+
+In the course of the day I was greatly touched by the sight of an
+artillery horse that had fallen from uttermost fatigue, so that it had
+to be left to its fate on the pitiless veldt. It was now separated
+from its team, and all its harness had been removed; but when it found
+itself being deserted by its old companions in distress and strife, it
+cast after them a most piteous look, struggled, and struggled again to
+get on to its feet, and finally stood like a drunken man striving to
+steady himself, but absolutely unable to go a single step further. Ah,
+the bitterness alike for men and horses of such involuntary and
+irrecoverable falling out from the battle-line of life! Not actual
+dying, but this type of death is what some most dread!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rifle firing and firing farms._]
+
+When on Monday we resumed our march, it was still to the sound of the
+same iron-mouthed music; but now at last we could not only hear, but
+see some of the shell fire, and watch a few of the men that were
+taking part in the fight. Far away we noticed what looked like a line
+of beetles, each a good space from his fellow beetles, creeping
+towards the top of a ridge. These were some of our mounted men. Lower
+down the slope, but moving in the same direction, was a similar line
+of what looked like bees. These were some of our infantry, on whom the
+altogether invisible Boers were evidently directing their fire. As you
+must first catch your hare before you can cook it, so you must first
+sight a Boer before you can shift him; and the former task is
+frequently the more difficult of the two. In more senses than one
+short-sighted soldiers have had their day; and in all ranks those who
+cannot look far ahead must give place to those who can. Henceforth the
+most powerful field-glasses that can possibly be made, and the most
+perfect telescopes, must be supplied to all our officers; or on a
+still more disastrous scale than in this war the bees will drop their
+bullets among the beetles, and Britons will be killed by Britons.
+
+Later in the day, to my sincere grief, a beautiful Boer house was set
+on fire by our men, after careful inquiry into the facts by the
+provost-marshal, because the farmer occupying it had run up the white
+flag over his house, and then from under that flag our scouts had been
+shot at. Such acts of treachery became lamentably common, and had at
+all cost to be restricted by the only arguments a Voortrekker seemed
+able to understand; but the Boers in Natal had long before this proved
+adepts at kindling similar bonfires, though without any such
+provocation, and cannot therefore pose as martyrs over the burning of
+their own farms, however deplorable that burning be.
+
+[Sidenote: _Boer treachery and the white flag._]
+
+At Belmont a young officer of the Guards named Blundell was killed by
+a shot from a wounded Boer to whom he was offering a drink of water;
+and about the same time another Boer hoisted a white flag, which our
+men naturally mistook for a signal of surrender, but on rising to
+receive it, received instead a murderous volley of rifle fire, as the
+result of which the correspondent of _The Morning Post_ had his right
+arm hopelessly shattered.
+
+At Talana Hill, our first battle in Natal, the beaten Boers raised a
+white flag on a bamboo pole, but when our gunners thereupon ceased
+firing, "the brother" instead of surrendering bolted! At Colenso, a
+company of burghers with rifles flung over their backs, and waving a
+white flag, approached within a short distance of the foremost British
+trenches, but when our troops raised their heads to welcome these
+surrendering foes, they were instantly stormed at by shot and shell.
+At length General Buller found it necessary in face of such frequent
+treachery, officially to warn his whole army to be on their guard
+against the white flag, a flag which to his personal knowledge was
+already through such misuse stained with the blood of two gallant
+British officers, besides many men.
+
+It is said that when Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such
+a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father
+somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got
+into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things."
+Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:--"Well
+the devil may have taught me to scratch and bite, but the spitting is
+my own idea!" With equal justice the Boers may claim that though the
+ordinary horrors and agonies of war are of the devil, this persistent
+abuse of the white flag is their own idea. Of that practice they
+possess among civilized nations an absolute monopoly, and the red
+cross flag has often fared no better at their hands.
+
+But then it would be absurd and most unfair to blame the two
+Republics as a whole for this. No people on earth would approve such
+practices, and doubtless they were as great a pain to many an
+honourable Boer as they were to us. But upland farmers who have spent
+their lives in fighting savage beasts, and still more savage men, are
+slow to distinguish between lawful tricking and unlawful treachery,
+and are apt to account all things fair that help to win the game.
+
+[Sidenote: _The pet lamb still lives and learns!_]
+
+During this long trek through worlds unknown, our pet lamb, perchance
+taking encouragement from the example of the two chaplains, followed
+us all the way on foot, and became quite soldierly in its tastes and
+tendencies. It scorned even to look at its brother sheep on the veldt
+modestly feeding on coarse veldt grass; but on sardines and bacon-fat
+it seemed to thrive astonishingly; and both my bread and sugar it
+coolly commandeered. So rapid and complete is camp-life education,
+even when a pet lamb is the pupil!
+
+[Sidenote: _Right about face._]
+
+On the morning of our fifth day in "worlds unknown" we breakfasted
+soon after four, by starlight; and before sunrise were again trekking
+hard. About ten miles brought our almost interminable string of
+waggons to two ugly river drifts, across which, with much toil and
+shouting they were at last safely dragged. Then we suddenly halted and
+to our amazement were ordered to return whence we came. So across
+those two ugly drifts the waggons were again dragged; four o'clock in
+the afternoon found us on the precise spot where four o'clock in the
+morning had watched us breakfasting; and by the afternoon of the
+following Sunday we were back in Bloemfontein from which on the
+previous Sunday we had made so bold a dash for fame and fortune. In
+the course of those eight excessively toilsome days the Guards had
+captured three wounded Boers; but what else they had accomplished no
+one could ever guess. Somebody said, however, that something wonderful
+had been done by somebody somewhere in connection with that week of
+wonders; which was of course consoling; but it was only long after we
+learned that De Wet after laying siege to Wepener for seventeen days
+had made a sudden rush to reach his sure retreat in the north-east
+corner of the Free State; that we with other columns had been sent out
+to intercept him; and had as by a hair's breadth just managed to miss
+him. Such are the fortunes and misfortunes of war. As an attacking
+force, De Wet in the course of the war made some bold and brilliant
+moves, though always on a comparatively small scale; but in the art of
+running away and escaping capture, no matter by whom pursued, he has
+given himself more practice than probably any other general that ever
+lived. "Oh my God make him like a wheel!" We were a lumbering waggon
+chasing a light-winged wheel; and the wheel was winner!
+
+[Sidenote: _From worlds unknown._]
+
+While on this long trek I lighted on a newly-arrived contingent of
+Canadian mounted infantry which had come to our aid from worlds
+unknown. They proved to be a splendid body of men, and worthy
+compatriots of the earlier arrived Canadians who had rendered such
+heroic service at Paardeberg. Their Methodist chaplain, the Rev. Mr
+Lane, of Nova Scotia, seemed incontestably built on the same lines; a
+conspicuously strong man was he, and delightfully level-headed. I
+therefore all the more deeply deplored the early and heavy failure of
+his health, as the result of the severe hardships that hang round
+every campaigner's path, and his consequent return, invalided home.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Bushmen._.]
+
+About this same time another equally remarkable body, the Australian
+Bushmen, who, like the Canadians, had come from worlds unknown, were
+in the far north making their way _through_ worlds unknown to the
+relief of Mafeking. Their advance, says Conan Doyle, was one of the
+finest performances of the war. Assembled at their port of embarkation
+by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean
+to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand to Beira, transferred
+by a narrow gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, thence by a broader gauge
+to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of miles to Bulawayo,
+again transferred by trains for another four or five hundred miles to
+Ootsi, and then facing a further march of a hundred miles, they
+reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of the arrival of
+Plumer's relieving columns; and before that week was over the whole
+Empire was thrilled, almost to the point of delirium, by learning that
+at last the long-drawn siege of Mafeking was raised; and a defence of
+almost unexampled heroism was thus brought to a triumphant end.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Australian Chaplains._]
+
+From start to finish the Bushmen were accompanied by an earnest
+Methodist chaplain, whom I met only in Pretoria, the Rev. James Green,
+who, most fortunately, throughout the whole campaign, was not laid
+aside for a single day by wounds or sickness; and who, after returning
+home with this time-expired first contingent of Australian troops,
+came back in March 1902 with what, we hope, the speedy ending of the
+war will make their last contingent.
+
+Between Mr Green's two terms of service I was, however, ably assisted
+by yet another Australian Wesleyan chaplain, the Rev. R. G. Foreman,
+though he, like so many others, was early invalided home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL
+
+
+It was with feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May
+Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards
+Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a
+single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and
+waving flags and lavish hospitality; but none the less that charming
+little capital had made us pay dearly for its conquest, and for our
+six weeks of so-called rest on the sodden veldt around it. Its traders
+had levied heavy toll on the soldiers' slender pay; and no fabled
+monster of ancient times ever claimed so sore a tribute of human
+lives. It was not on the veldt but under it that hundreds of our lads
+found rest; and hundreds more were soon to share their fate. The
+victors had become victims, and the vanquished were avenged. Seldom
+have troops taken possession of any city with such unmixed
+satisfaction, or departed from it with such unfeigned eagerness.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Comedy._]
+
+My quartermaster friend and myself, unable to start with the Brigade,
+set out a few hours later, and tarried for the night at a Hollander
+platelayer's hut. The man spoke little English, and we less Dutch;
+but he welcomed us to the hospitality of his two-roomed home with a
+warmth that was overwhelming. His wife, when the war began, was sent
+away for safety's sake; and married men thus flung back upon their
+bachelorhood make poor cooks and caterers unless they happen to be
+soldiers on the trek; but this man, in his excitement at having such
+guests to entertain, expectorated violently all over the floor on
+which presently we expected to sleep; fire was soon kindled and coffee
+made; the quartermaster produced some tinned meat; I produced some
+tinned fruit; the ganger produced some tinned biscuits--in this
+campaign we have been saved by tin--and so by this joint-stock
+arrangement there was provided a feast that hungry royalty need not
+have disdained. Next our entertainer undertook to amuse his guests,
+and did it in a fashion never to be forgotten. He produced a box
+fitted up as a theatre stage--all made out of his own head, he
+said--and mostly wooden; there were two puppets on the stage, which
+were made to dance most vigorously by means of cords attached secretly
+to the ganger's foot, whilst his hands were no less vigorously
+employed on the concertina which provided the accompanying dance
+music. This delighted old man was the oddest figure of the three, as
+the perspiration poured down his grimy face. To light on such a comedy
+when on the war path would have been enough to make Momus laugh; and
+when the laugh was spent we swept the floor, for reasons already
+hinted at, sought refuge in our blankets; and long before breakfast
+time next morning landed in Karee Camp.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Tragedy._]
+
+To reach Karee we passed through "The Glen" lying beside the Upper
+Modder, where a deplorable tragedy had occurred not long before. A
+remarkably fine-looking sergeant of the Guards went to bathe in what
+he supposed were the deep waters of the Modder, and dived gleefully
+into deeps that alas were not deep. Striking the bottom with his head,
+instantly his neck was dislocated, and when I saw him a few hours
+after, though he was perfectly conscious and anxiously hopeful, he was
+paralysed from his shoulders downwards. A married man, his heart, too,
+was broken over such an undreamed of disaster, and in three weeks he
+died. The mauser is not the only reaping-machine the great harvester
+employs in war time. There have been over five hundred "accidental"
+deaths in the course of this campaign. At the Lower Modder we once
+arranged to hold a Sunday morning service for the swarms of native
+drivers in our camp, but in that case also were compelled to prove it
+is the unexpected that happens. One of the "boys" went to bathe that
+morning in the suddenly swollen river; he sank; and though search
+parties were at once sent out, the body was never recovered. So
+instead of a service we had this sad sensation.
+
+About that same time, and in that same camp, one of my most intimate
+companions, the quartermaster of the Scots Guards, was one moment
+laughing and chatting with me in his tent; but the next moment,
+without the slightest warning, he dropped back on his couch, and that
+same evening was laid by his sorrowing battalion in a garden-grave.
+The other quartermaster, who shared with me the ganger's hospitality
+and laughter, when the campaign was near its close, was found lying on
+the floor of his tent. He had fallen when no friendly hand was near to
+help, and had been dead for hours when discovered. My first campaign,
+and last, has stored my mind with tragic memories; it has filled my
+heart with tendernesses unfelt before; and perchance has taught me to
+interpret more truly that "life of lives" foreshadowed in Isaiah's
+saying: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."
+
+[Sidenote: _A wide front and a resistless force._]
+
+When, on the 3rd of May, we started from Karee Camp the Guards'
+Brigade consisted, as from the outset, of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and the 1st Scots Guards, all
+under the command of General Inigo Jones, from whom I received
+unfailing courtesy. With them was linked General Stephenson's Brigade,
+consisting of the Welsh, the Warwicks, the Essex, and the Yorks, these
+two Brigades forming the Eleventh Division under General Pole Carew.
+On our left was General Hutton with a strange medley of mounted
+infantry to which almost every part of the empire had contributed some
+of its noblest sons. On our right was General Tucker's Division, the
+Seventh; and beyond that again other Divisions, covering a front of
+about forty miles, which gradually narrowed down to twenty as we
+neared Kroonstad. Reserves were left at Bloemfontein under General
+Kelly Kenny; and Lord Methuen was on our remote left flank not far
+from Mafeking; while on our remote right was Rundle's Division, the
+Eighth. There thus set out for the conquest of the Transvaal a central
+force nearly 50,000 strong--the finest army by far that England had
+ever yet put into the field, and led by the ablest general she has
+produced since Wellington. Yet it perhaps would be more correct to
+speak of it as the first army _Greater_ Britain had ever fashioned;
+and in my presence Lord Roberts openly gloried in being the first
+general the empire had entrusted with the command of a really Imperial
+host. In this epoch-making conflict neither the commander nor the
+commanded had any cause to be ashamed one of the other.
+
+Yet from this point onward there was astonishingly little fighting.
+Before the campaign was over some of the guardsmen wore out several
+pairs of boots, but scarcely fired another bullet. The Boers were so
+out-manoeuvred that their mausers and machine-guns availed them
+little. They fought scarcely any but rear-guard actions, and their
+retreat was so rapid as to be almost a rout. Within about a month of
+leaving Bloemfontein the Guards' Brigade was in Pretoria; which,
+considering all they had to carry, and the constant repairing of the
+railway line required from day to day, would be considered good
+marching even if there had been no pom-poms planted to oppose
+progress.
+
+[Sidenote: _Brandfort._]
+
+When we left Karee it was confidently predicted that the Boers would
+make a stiff stand amid the kopjes which guard the prettily placed and
+prettily planted little town of Brandfort. So the next day and the
+day after we walked warily, while cannon to right of us and cannon to
+left of us volleyed and thundered. Little harm was however done; and
+as the second afternoon hastened to its sunset hour, we were gleefully
+informed that "the brother" had once more "staggered humanity" by a
+precipitate retreat from positions of apparently impregnable strength.
+So Brandfort passed into our hands for all that it was worth, which
+did not seem to be much; but what little there was, no man looted. All
+was bought and paid for as in Piccadilly; but at more than Piccadilly
+prices. Whatever else however could be purchased, no liquor was on
+sale; no intemperance was seen; no molestation of woman or child took
+place. So was it with rare exceptions from the very first; so was it
+with very rare exceptions to the very last.
+
+[Sidenote: _"Stop the War" slanders._]
+
+In this respect my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. W. Burgess, assures me
+that his experience tallies with mine, and he told me this tale as
+illustrative of it. At Hoekfontein he called at a farmhouse close to
+our camp, and in it he found an old woman of seventy and her husband,
+of whom she spoke as nearly ninety. "Do you believe in God?" she asked
+the chaplain, and added, "so do I, but I believe in hell as well; and
+would fling De Wet into it if I could." Then she proceeded to explain
+that her first husband was killed in the last war; that of her three
+sons commandeered in this war one was already slain, and that when the
+other two returned from the fighting line De Wet at once sent to fetch
+them back.
+
+"But look at the broken panel of that door," said the old lady. "Your
+men did that when I would not answer to their knocks, and they stole
+my fowls." "Very well," replied Burgess, "where yonder red flag is
+flying you will find General Ian Hamilton; go and tell him your
+story." As the result, a staff officer sent to inspect the premises
+asked the Dutch dame whether food or money should be given her by way
+of compensation, and whether £15 would fully cover all her loss? She
+seemed overwhelmingly pleased at such an offer in payment for a broken
+panel and a few fowls. "Very good," added the staff officer.
+"To-morrow I will send you £20, but," quoth he to Burgess, "we'll make
+the scouts that broke the panel pay the twenty!"
+
+In spite of all the real and the imaginary horrors recorded in "War
+against War," this has been the most humanely conducted struggle the
+world has ever seen; but would to God it were well over.
+
+[Sidenote: _A prisoner who tried to be a poet._]
+
+In the yard of the little town jail I saw nine prisoners of war, only
+two of whom were genuine Boers. Some were Scotch, some were English,
+some were Hollanders; and one a fiery Irishman, who expressed so
+fervent a wish to be free, to revel in further fightings against us,
+that it was deemed desirable to adorn his wrists with a pair of
+handcuffs. In one of the cells, it was clear some of our British
+soldiers had at an earlier date been incarcerated, and were fairly
+well satisfied with the treatment meted out to them. Written on the
+wall I found this interesting legend: No. 28696, I. M'Donald, 4th Reg.
+M. Inf., Warwick's Camp; taken prisoner 7-3-1900; arrived here
+11-3-1900. Also this, by a would-be poet called Wynn, a scout
+belonging to Roberts' Horse:--
+
+         "To all who may read:
+          I have been well treated
+          By all who have had me in charge
+          Since I've been a prisoner here."
+
+The poetry is not much; but the peace of mind which could pencil such
+lines in prison is a great deal!
+
+[Sidenote: _Militant Dutch reformed predikants._]
+
+The two best buildings in Brandfort appeared to be the church and
+manse belonging to the Dutch Reformed Community. The church seats 600,
+though the town contains only 300 whites. But then the worshippers
+come from near and far. Hence I found here, as at Bloemfontein that
+the farmers have their "church houses"--whole rows of them in the
+latter town--where with their families they reside from Saturday to
+Monday, especially on festival occasions, that they may be present at
+all the services of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. A typical Dutchman
+is nothing if he is not devout; though unfortunately his devoutness
+does not prevent his being exceeding "slim," which seems to some the
+crown of all excellencies.
+
+The young and intelligent pastor of this important country
+congregation on whom I called, was evidently an ardent patriot, like
+almost all his cloth. He had unfortunately firmly persuaded himself
+that the British fist had been thrust menacingly near the Orange Free
+State nose; and that therefore the owner of that aforesaid nose was
+perfectly justified in being the first to strike a deadly blow. He
+told me he had been for a month at Magersfontein, and that he was out
+on the Brandfort hills the day before I called watching our troops
+fighting their way towards the town. I understood him to say he had
+been shooting buck. What kind of buck is quite another question.
+Whether as a pastor his patriotism had confined itself to the use of
+Bunyan's favourite weapon, "all-prayer," on our approach; or whether
+as a burgher he had deemed it a part of his duty to employ smokeless
+powder to emphasise his patriotism, I was too polite to ask. But he
+pointed out to me on his verandah two old and useless sporting guns,
+which the day before he had handed to some of our officers, by whom
+they had been snapped in two and left lying on the floor. There they
+were pointed out to me by their late owner as part of the ravages of
+war. They were the only weapons he had in the house, he said, when he
+surrendered them.
+
+It was a very common trick on the part of surrendered burghers who
+took the oath of neutrality and gave up their arms, to hand in weapons
+that were thus worthless and to hide for future use what were of any
+value. We did not even attempt to take possession of any such a
+burgher's horse. We found him a soldier, and when he surrendered we
+left him a soldier, well horsed, well armed, and often deadlier as a
+pretended friend than as a professed foe. Because of that exquisite
+folly, which we misnamed "clemency," we have had to traverse the whole
+ground twice over, and found a guerilla war treading close on the
+heels of the great war.
+
+This young predikant with more of prudence, and perchance more of
+honour, recollected next morning that though, as he had truly said, he
+had no more weapons in the house, he had a beautiful mauser carbine
+hidden in his garden. There it got on his nerves and perhaps on his
+conscience; so calling in a passing officer of the Grenadier Guards he
+requested him to take possession of it, together with a hundred rounds
+of ammunition belonging to it. When with a sad smile he pointed out to
+me "the ravages of war" on his verandah floor my politeness again came
+to the rescue, and I said nothing about that lovely little mauser of
+his, which an hour before I had been curiously examining at our mess
+breakfast table. Too much frankness on that point would perhaps have
+spoiled our pleasant chat.
+
+[Sidenote: _Our Australian Chaplain's pastoral experiences._]
+
+In the course of that chat he candidly confessed himself to be
+thoroughly anti-British; and for his candour this young predikant is
+to be honoured; but some few of his ministerial brethren proved near
+akin to the ever-famous Vicar of Bray, whom an ancient song represents
+as saying:
+
+         "That this is law I will maintain
+            Unto my dying day, Sir;
+          That whatsoever king may reign,
+            I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir."
+
+So were there Dutch predikants who were decidedly anti-British while
+the British were over the hills and far away; but who fell in love
+with the Union Jack the moment it arrived; even if they did not set it
+fluttering from their own chimney-top. One such our chaplain with
+the Australian Bushmen met at Zeerust. When the Bushmen arrived this
+predikant was one of the first to welcome them, and helped to hoist
+the British flag. Then "the Roineks," that is the "red neck" English,
+retired for a while, and De La Rey arrived; whereupon the resident
+Boers went wild with joy, and whistled and shouted one of their
+favourite songs, "Vat jougoed entrek," which means "Pack your traps
+and trek." That was a broad hint to all pro-Britishers. So this
+interesting predikant hauled down the Union Jack, which his sons
+instantly tore to tatters, ran up the Boer flag, and drove De La Rey
+hither and thither in his own private carriage. Though to our
+Australian chaplain he expressed, still later on, his deep regret that
+"the Hollanders had forced the President into making war on England,"
+when Lord Methuen, in the strange whirligig of war, next drove out De
+La Rey from this same Zeerust, our versatile predikant's turn soon
+came to "Pack his traps and trek." Even in South Africa "Ye cannot
+serve two masters."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Welsh Chaplain._]
+
+After one day's rest at Brandfort the Guards resumed their march, and
+aided by some fighting, in which the Australians took a conspicuous
+part, we reached the Vet River, and encamped near its southern banks
+for the night. Here the newly-appointed Wesleyan Welsh chaplain, Rev.
+Frank Edwards, overtook me; and until it could be decided where he was
+to go or what he was to do, he was invited to become my brother-guest
+at the Grenadiers' mess.
+
+The next day being Sunday Mr Edwards had a speedy opportunity of
+learning how little the best intentioned chaplain can accomplish when
+at the front in actual war time. It was the sixth Sunday in succession
+I was doomed to spend, not in doing the work of a preacher but of a
+pedestrian. All other chaplains were often in the same sad but
+inevitable plight; and though Mr Edwards had come from far of set
+purpose to preach Christ in the Welsh tongue to Welshmen, had all the
+camp been Welsh he would that day have found himself absolutely
+helpless. We were all on the march; and the only type of Christian
+work then attemptable takes the form of a brief greeting in the name
+of Christ to the men who tramp beside us, though they are often too
+tired even to talk, and we are compelled to trudge on in stolid
+silence.
+
+The drift we had to cross that Sunday at the Vet was by far the worst
+we had yet reached in South Africa, and till all the waggons were
+safely over, the whole column was compelled to linger hard by. I
+therefore took advantage of that long pause to hurry on to Smaldeel
+Junction, where the headquarter staff was staying for the day. Here I
+was privileged to introduce Mr Edwards to the Field-Marshal, and was
+so fortunate as to secure his immediate appointment as Wesleyan
+chaplain to the whole of General Tucker's Division, with special
+attachment to the South Wales Borderers. This important and
+appropriate task successfully accomplished, I retired to rest under
+the broken fans of a shattered windmill.
+
+Mr Edwards' association with the Guards' Brigade was thus of very
+short duration; but some interesting glimpses of his after work are
+given, from his own pen, in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." I must,
+therefore, only add that he was early struck by a small fragment of a
+shell, and was at the same time fever-stricken, so that for ten weeks
+he remained on the sick list. Still more unluckily he had only just
+resumed work, when there developed a further attack of dysentery,
+fever and jaundice, which ended in his being invalided home. Thus,
+like many another chaplain, he found his South African career became
+one of suffering rather than of service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL
+
+
+After resting for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for
+Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some
+parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet
+one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of
+sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing
+the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about
+noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or
+rather heard, two artillery duels; the Boers half-heartedly opposing
+our passage, first at the Vet River just before we reached Smaldeel,
+and then at the Sand River, long since made famous by the Convention
+bearing that name.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Sand River Convention._]
+
+Though Great Britain is supposed to suffer from insatiable land hunger
+it is a notable truth that she has voluntarily surrendered more
+oversea territory than some important kingdoms ever possessed; but not
+one of these many surrenders proved half so disastrous to all
+concerned as that on which the Sand River Convention set its seal in
+1852. At that time our colonial possessions were accounted by many
+overtaxed statesmen to be all plague and no profit, involving the
+motherland in incessant native wars out of which she won for herself
+neither credit nor cash. That had proved specially true in South
+Africa. When, therefore, the Crimean war hove in sight with its
+manifold risks and its drain on our national resources, it was
+resolved to lessen our liabilities in that then unattractive quarter
+of the globe. The Transvaal was at that time a barren land, given over
+to wild beasts, and to Boers who seemed equally uncontrollable. An
+Ishmael life was theirs, their hand against every man's and every
+man's hand against them. Every little township was a law unto itself
+and almost every homestead; so the British Government threw up the
+thankless task of governing the ungovernable, as soon as a life and
+death struggle with Russia appeared inevitable. The Sand River
+Convention gave to the Transvaal absolute independence save only in
+what related to the treatment of the natives. There was to be no
+slavery in the Transvaal; but no Convention ever yet framed could
+apparently bind a Boer when his financial interests bade him break it.
+So set he his face to evade the conditions both of the Pretoria and
+the London Conventions of later date; and the one requirement of this
+first Convention he set at nought. During several following years he
+still hunted for slaves whom he took captive in native wars; sjamboked
+them into serving him without pay; bought them, sold them, but never
+called them slaves. They were "apprentices," which was a fine word for
+a foul thing. So was the Convention kept in the letter of it and
+broken in the spirit of it. For five-and-twenty years of widening and
+deepening anarchy that Convention remained in force, the Transvaal
+fighting with the Orange Free State, and Boer bidding defiance to Boer
+with bullets for his arguments. When little Lydenberg claimed the
+right to set up as an independent republic, Kruger himself reasoned
+with it at the muzzle of his rifle, as we have since been compelled to
+reason with him. So at last Shepstone appeared upon the scene to
+evolve order out of chaos; and though he knew it not, he was the true
+herald of the Guards' Brigade, and sundry others, that after many days
+crossed the Sand River to make an end for ever of all that the Sand
+River Convention involved.
+
+The year following that in which the Convention was signed, another
+step was taken in the same direction and independence was forced on
+the Orange Free State. The people protested, and pleaded for
+permission to still live under the protection of the British flag; but
+their prayers were as unavailing as "the groans of the Britons,"
+which, as recorded in the early pages of our own island story,
+followed the retiring swords of Rome. Now, after nearly forty years of
+uttermost neighbourliness, the Orange Free State, with machine gun and
+mauser hurls back the gift once so reluctantly accepted, and forces us
+to recall what now they still more reluctantly surrender. How
+bewildering are the ways of Fate!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+Broken Bridge at Modder River.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Railway wrecking and repairing._]
+
+The crossing of the drifts at the two rivers was almost as difficult a
+task as the overtaking of our ever retreating foes. The railway
+bridges over both these streams had been blown up by dynamite: some
+of the stone piers were shattered, and some of the iron girders hurled
+all atwist into the watery depths beneath; here and there culverts had
+similarly been destroyed, and at many a point the very rails had been
+torn by explosives till they looked like a pair of upturned arms
+imploring help from heaven. We noticed, however, when we got into the
+Transvaal that the Transvaalers took pity on their own portion of the
+line, and studiously refrained from shattering it. Some of them were
+probably shareholders. The less serious damages the Railway Pioneers
+and the Royal Engineers repaired with a speed that amazed us; and our
+supply trains never seemed to linger long in the rear of us, except
+when a massive river bridge was broken. Then a deviation line and a
+low level trestle bridge had to be constructed. At that fatigue work I
+have seen whole companies of once smart-looking Guardsmen toiling with
+spade and pick like Kaffirs, whilst some of their aristocratic
+officers, bearing lordly titles, played the part of gangers over these
+soldier-navvies. It was a new version and a more useful one of Ruskin
+and his collegiate road-makers.
+
+[Sidenote: _The tale, and tails, of a singed overcoat._]
+
+Bridge or no bridge, many a mile of transport waggons, of ammunition
+carts, of provision carts, with sundry naval guns, each drawn by a
+team of thirty-two oxen, had somehow to be got down the dangerous
+slope on one side of the drift, then across the stream, and up the
+still more difficult slope on the other side. It was a herculean
+task at which men and mules and horses toiled on far into the night.
+Meanwhile, when the troops reached their camping ground some miles
+beyond the river, they found they would have to wait for hours before
+they could get a scrap of beef or biscuit, and that it would probably
+be still longer before their overcoats or blankets arrived. For the
+hungry and shivering men this seemed an almost interminable interval,
+and for their officers it was scarcely less trying. A devoted
+Methodist non-commissioned officer perceiving my sorry plight most
+seasonably procured for me the loan of a capital military greatcoat. I
+also fortunately found a warm anthill, which the Boers earlier in the
+day had hollowed out and turned into an excellent stove or
+cooking-place. I stirred up the hot ashes inside with my
+walking-stick, but could find no trace of actual fire, so lay down
+beside the mound for the sake of its gentle warmth and instantly fell
+fast asleep. In my sleep I must have leaned hard against the anthill,
+for presently a burning sensation at my back awoke me, to discover
+that already a big hole had been charred in the coat I wore; and
+"alas! master, it was borrowed." Boer rifle fire never harmed a hair
+of my head, but this Boer fire did mischief nobody bargained for.
+Clearly our pursuit was much too hot for my personal comfort!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+The Deviation Bridge at Modder River.]
+
+A little earlier in the evening another glowing anthill had been found
+by one of our officers, and the thought of possible soup at once
+suggested itself. A three-legged crock was borrowed from a native and
+a fire of green mimosa shrub was laboriously coaxed into vigour by a
+young aspirant to a seat in the House of Lords. Into the crockful
+of water one of us cast a few meat lozenges reserved for just such a
+day of dire need; another found in his haversack a further slender
+store, which instantly shared the same fate. Somebody else cast into
+the pot the contents of a tiny tin of condensed beef tea; and with
+sundry other contributions of the same kind there was presently
+produced a delightful cup of soup for all concerned. To mend matters
+still further and to improve the no longer shining hours, an officer
+caught sight of a stray pig upon the veldt and shot it, just as though
+it had been a sniping "brother." A short time after a portion of that
+porker took its place among the lozenges and condensed beef tea in
+that simmering crock. So in an hour or two there followed another cup
+of glorious broth, with a dainty morsel of boiled pork for those who
+desired it:--
+
+         "Oh ye gods, what a glorious feast!"
+
+Soon after, our Cape cart with its load of iron mugs and tinned
+provisions reached that same crock side; while waggon loads of
+blankets, beef and biscuits, made possible a satisfactory night's
+rest, even on the frosty veldt, for all our well-wearied men.
+
+Kroonstad, the but recently proclaimed second capital of the Orange
+Free State, is a very inferior edition of Bloemfontein. There is not a
+single stately building, public or private, in the whole place--the
+Dutch Reformed Church, afterwards taken for hospital purposes, being
+the best, as it is meet and right God's House should always be.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lord Roberts as Hospital Visitor._]
+
+It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course
+without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing
+that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of
+pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of
+the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type. _Lord
+Roberts_ not only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance
+work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen
+took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet
+never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted.
+They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because
+of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of
+that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier
+appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers'
+Home:--
+
+     "Lord Roberts! Well, he's just _a father_. Often goes round
+     hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you
+     to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never
+     forgets to _see_ the man has what he asks for. Goes to the
+     hospital train--'Are you comfortable? Are you _sure_ you're
+     comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it.
+     But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?'
+     I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye
+     near,--tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a
+     clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he
+     will pray with him. He _is_ a lord!"
+
+Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly
+imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom
+his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by
+such a head!
+
+[Sidenote: _President Steyn's Sjambok._]
+
+On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn
+stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking
+to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted
+trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs
+Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and
+the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of
+despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free
+State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and
+for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for
+his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the
+penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. =Steyn's
+ambition awoke it!=
+
+Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself
+face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over
+the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station
+belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of £5000, and
+filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with
+paraffin by the =Boer Irish Brigade=, and given to the flames; while
+five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate.
+No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade
+was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a
+hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.
+
+It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs
+to the flames, and strove continually to tear up the rails along
+which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us
+to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of
+the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well
+that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants
+would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger,
+though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our
+tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left
+the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no
+voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were
+famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to
+our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully
+cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed
+thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not
+unfelt.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath._]
+
+To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found
+myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the
+Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9 A.M., and for the men of
+General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid
+a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it
+about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building,
+which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already
+of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began.
+I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women
+sitting on one side, the men on the other. There were three
+interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch;
+an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he
+speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had
+finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the
+collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as
+worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet
+this was a congregation of Kaffirs!
+
+At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the
+Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were
+both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate
+withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to
+whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for
+me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the
+favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still
+Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."
+
+[Sidenote: _Military Police on the march._]
+
+This memorable march from the Valsch to the Vaal was, in consequence
+of the transport difficulties already described, one of the hungriest
+in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was
+added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to
+procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly
+watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses
+that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry
+face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in
+utter disgust, if not despair.
+
+Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of Military
+Police whose one business it was to see that these famished men looted
+nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at protecting
+it was made. Such a house of course never contained food, and our men
+sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some cases almost
+demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few small sticks,
+or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.
+
+But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was
+instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling
+fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on
+payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:--
+
+         "Straight down the crooked lane
+          And right round the square,"
+
+where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you
+please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was
+precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but
+as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have
+with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of
+unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat
+poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed.
+Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando,
+his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might
+wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers
+could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at
+liberty to hunt for their lives but would not allow them to lay a
+finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose
+that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was
+never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police
+control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted
+hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in
+what market they had made their purchases or what price they had paid
+for their poultry.
+
+It would require a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and
+substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough
+trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved
+possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with
+that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me
+not unfrequently of the sons of the prophets, who, in a day of dearth
+went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and
+gathered thereof wild gourds and shred them into the pot and they
+could not eat thereof. Violent attacks of dysentery and kindred
+complaints only too plainly proved that occasionally in this case
+also, as in that ancient instance, there was apparently ample
+justification for the cry, "Oh thou man of God, there is death in the
+pot." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the lynx-eyed vigilance of the
+police, the smell from the pot was sometimes astonishingly like unto
+the smell of chicken-broth; which clearly shows what good cooking can
+accomplish even on the barren veldt.
+
+[Sidenote: _A General's glowing eulogy of the Guards._]
+
+This amazing ability of the Guards to face long marches with short
+rations was triumphantly maintained, not for a few months merely but
+to the very end of the campaign. In the February of 1901 it fell to
+the lot of the Scots Guards, for instance, to accompany General
+French's cavalry to the Swaziland border. They took with them no tents
+and the least possible amount of impedimenta of any kind. But for
+three weeks they had to face almost incessant rain, and as they had no
+shelter except a blanket full of holes, they were scarcely ever dry
+for half a dozen hours at a time. The streams were so swollen that
+they became impassable torrents, and the transport waggons were thus
+left far behind, with all food supplies. For eight or ten days at a
+stretch men and officers alike had no salt, no sugar, no tea, no
+coffee, no jam, no flour, bread or biscuits; no vegetables of any
+kind; but only one cupful of mealies or mealie meal per day, and as
+much fresh killed meat as their rebellious stomachs could digest
+without the aid of salt or mustard. Yet the only deaths were two by
+drowning; and at the close of the operations the general addressed
+them as follows:--
+
+General French's farewell speech to the 1st Brigade, Scots Guards at
+Vryheid, on April 1st, 1901:--
+
+     Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards.
+     The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close,
+     and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and
+     Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in
+     the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the
+     pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs
+     to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under
+     the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the
+     ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short
+     rations and for sometime none at all, you had to exist on the
+     meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At one
+     time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of the
+     weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but the
+     cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did a
+     great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most forcibly
+     was your extraordinary power of marching. I have frequently
+     noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry were engaged
+     (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have been
+     surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion close
+     behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and have
+     wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish to
+     remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion
+     performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news
+     has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated
+     attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way
+     in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the
+     sentries the attack was never developed.
+
+     Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the
+     battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his
+     qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had
+     hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand
+     unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the
+     campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great
+     assistance given to me during these operations. Should your
+     services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be
+     endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you
+     all good-bye.
+
+[Sidenote: _Good news by the way._]
+
+Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same
+boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of
+conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the
+news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely
+disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting
+event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months
+brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a
+superbly satisfactory send-off on our next perilous march to learn
+that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had at last
+actually taken place just four days before. It filled the whole camp
+with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided soldiers on
+the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the business as the
+multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the empire seem to
+have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a tiny garrison of
+for the most part untrained men; and therefore in itself of scant
+importance; but we also know that for many a critical week it had held
+back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong rush towards the
+Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one hand the staying
+power of British blood, and on the other the timidity and impotence of
+the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or stronghold to
+which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing; the very last
+of the series was safe at last, and after all that had been said about
+British blunderings, this event surely called for something more than
+commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was wont to say, "We
+are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we want: it is brains";
+but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over bullets. A new Wake had
+arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found a permanent place among
+the many names of renown in the long annals of our island story.
+
+It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that
+same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable
+Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally
+annexed to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its
+gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest
+responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and
+constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of
+righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It is a
+superb stewardship entrusted to us of God; and "it is required in
+stewards that they be found faithful."
+
+[Sidenote: _Over the Vaal at last._]
+
+All that week the Guards continued in hot pursuit of the Boers without
+so much as once catching sight of them. Repeatedly, however, we
+scrambled through huge patches of Indian or Kaffir corn, enough, so to
+say, to feed an army, but all left to rot and perish uncut. It was one
+of the few evidences which just then greeted us that war was really
+abroad in the land, and that they were no mere autumn manoeuvres in
+which we then were taking part. Some of the rightful owners of that
+corn were probably among our prisoners of war at St Helena, spending
+their mourning days in vainly wondering how long its hateful
+unfamiliar waves would keep them captive. Others had, perchance,
+themselves been garnered by the great Harvester, who ever gathers his
+fattest sheaves hard by the paths of war.
+
+Occasionally we came, in the course of our march, on a
+recently-deserted Boer camp, with empty tins strewn all about the
+place and the embers of camp fires still glowing, but never so much as
+a penny worth of loot lying on the ground. Either they had little to
+leave, or else they so utilised the railway in assisting to get their
+belongings away that in that respect they had the laugh of us
+continually. This final service rendered, the Boers made haste to
+prevent the rail being used by us; and so far as time or timidity
+would permit, they blew up every bridge, every culvert, as soon as
+their last train had crossed it. Fortunately of the long and beautiful
+bridge across the Vaal we found only one broad span broken.
+
+About nine o'clock on Sunday morning the troops reached Val Joen's
+Drift, the terminal station on the Orange Free State Railway. This
+drift it was that President Kruger had once resolved to close against
+all traffic in order the more effectually to strangle British trade in
+the Transvaal. Another mile or two through prodigiously deep sand,
+brought us to the Vaal River coal mines, with their great heaps of
+burning cinders or other refuse, which brought vividly to many a north
+countryman's remembrances kindred scenes in the neighbourhood of busy
+Bradford and prosperous Sunderland.
+
+Then came the great event to which the laborious travel of the last
+seven months had steadily led up, the crossing of the Vaal, and the
+planting of our victorious feet on Transvaal soil. Here we were
+assured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the
+natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities
+of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet
+to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could
+see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in
+position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauser bullets
+were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our foemen fled. Once in a
+Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an "English Reader," which
+strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar lines:--
+
+         "There is a land of every land the pride;
+          Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.
+          Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
+
+          Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!
+          Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
+          That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"
+
+Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but
+fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so
+dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade
+stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be
+conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the
+scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for
+hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were
+peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I
+leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful
+hallelujah in my heart!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS
+
+
+Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served
+as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one
+chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with
+whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close
+official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches
+whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I
+can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each,
+what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of
+Jehovah:--"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."
+
+Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among
+the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to
+place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them--the
+Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian--reference has already been
+made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the
+Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at
+the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was
+unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story
+however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There
+remain three whom I repeatedly saw, and who reported to me from time
+to time the progress of their work--viz. the Revs. M. F. Crewdson, T.
+H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words it will now
+be my privilege to introduce.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front._]
+
+Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at
+the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and
+became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one
+of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities
+and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him
+unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the
+troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of
+the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely
+duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve
+months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when,
+lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted
+not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape
+Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals
+and supply depôts became the scene of very active operations indeed,
+in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a
+prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are
+healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being
+intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pathetic scenes in Hospital._]
+
+Few chaplains in the course of this campaign have had so extensive an
+experience in hospital work as Mr Crewdson, and in the course of his
+correspondence he relates many pathetic incidents that came under his
+own personal observation. At De-Aar he found a lance-corporal with a
+fractured jaw and some twenty other slight or serious wounds, all
+caused by fragments of a single shell. "I was one of seven," he said,
+"entrenched in a little sangar on a hill. Hundreds of Boers and Blacks
+came up against us. One of the seven disappeared, four others were
+killed; so to my one surviving comrade I said, 'Look here, corporal,
+we'll stick this out till one of us is wounded then the other must
+look after him.'" Presently that unlucky shell made a victim of this
+plucky fellow; but a hero it could not make him. He was that already.
+
+A company of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong
+had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The
+lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital
+in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was
+his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot
+through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be
+removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder,
+with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's nothing, sir. I'll be
+at it again in a week." Some of them would say that, brave fellows, if
+their heads were blown off--or would try to!
+
+Writing from Colesberg at a somewhat later date Mr Crewdson informed
+me that going the round of hospitals,--where he met representatives
+from Ceylon, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and
+the United Kingdom,--had filled much of his time during the previous
+fortnight. "I cannot tell the sweet brave things I have heard from
+tongues that had almost lost their power to speak. One was a Canadian
+lad, who had passed through his course as a student for the ministry,
+and being refused as a chaplain had volunteered as a trooper, and when
+the chaplain tenderly asked, 'How are you, old man?' he received in a
+kind of gasp this reply: 'Trusting Jesus!' Another, now nearly
+convalescent, said, 'I have been a Christian for twenty years, but the
+weeks spent in hospital have taught me more of God, and of the wonders
+of His grace, than years of health.' His eyes glistened and then
+dimmed as with faltering voice he added, 'I want to say, that it was
+good for me that I was afflicted.'"
+
+[Sidenote: _A battlefield scene no less pathetic._]
+
+In the course of these incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an
+Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who
+told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two
+rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young
+well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect English accent
+said, "Are you much hurt, old fellow?" The Australian, suspecting
+treachery, turned white and trembled in spite of the stranger's kindly
+tone.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid of me, you are hurt enough already. Shall I get
+you some water?" was the instant Boer rejoinder to the Australian's
+signs of suspicion. The water was soon produced; and next there came
+forth from the pocket of that young Boer a couple of peaches, which
+were offered to the sufferer, and thankfully accepted.
+
+"You must be faint with this fierce sun beating on you," said this
+strange foeman; and thereupon he sat upon a rock for over an hour in
+such a position that his shadow sheltered the wounded man, and surely,
+as in Peter's story, that shadow must have had grace and healing in
+it. Ultimately an ambulance arrived, and this chivalrous Transvaaler
+crowned the helpfulness of that eventful hour by tenderly lifting the
+crippled Australian on to a stretcher, with an expression of hope that
+he would soon be well again.
+
+At the close of this unnatural conflict it is our best consolation to
+be divinely assured that the brotherliness which thus presented
+peaches to a wounded foe will ultimately triumph over the bitterness
+which winged the explosive bullet that well-nigh killed him.
+
+[Sidenote: _Look on this picture--and on that._]
+
+While it is undeniable that cases of chivalrous courtesy such as this
+occurred repeatedly in the course of the campaign, it is equally
+undeniable that the Boers sometimes deliberately set aside all the
+usages of civilized war. Mr Crewdson, for instance, says that after
+the Slingersfontein fight he met at least a dozen men who declared
+that the Boers drove up the hill in front of them hundreds of armed
+Kaffirs, and then themselves crept up on hands and knees under cover
+of this living moving wall. Such strategy is exceedingly slim; but
+they who make use of semi-savages must themselves for the time being
+be accounted near akin to them. One word from the Queen would have
+sufficed to let loose on the Boers the slaughterous fury of almost all
+native South Africa, but had that word been spoken there could have
+been found no forgiveness for it in this life or in the life to come.
+Yet Slingersfontein was not the only sad instance of this sort, for
+Sir Redvers Buller in his official report concerning Vaalkrantz
+solemnly declares that then also there were armed Kaffirs with the
+Boer forces, and that there also the Red flag was abominably abused,
+for he himself and his Staff saw portions of artillery conveyed by the
+Boers to a given position in an ambulance flying the Geneva flag. The
+loss of honour is ever out of all proportion to the help such
+treachery affords.
+
+[Sidenote: _A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain._]
+
+It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev.
+T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had
+proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the
+Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted
+himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once
+turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him
+they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received
+the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from
+Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his
+family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where
+a singular incident befell him.
+
+[Sidenote: _Running in the wrong man._]
+
+A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a
+Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all
+concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to
+speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the
+published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because
+after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was
+just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to
+be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he
+approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right
+password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a
+prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe
+keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new
+chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by
+the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a
+prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more
+painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did
+ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached
+to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own
+sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel
+in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Wainman who was a real waggoner._]
+
+Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully
+used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most
+popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the
+transport waggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift, and no
+amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One waggon
+thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is, therefore, a
+most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become an old
+colonist without learning a few things characteristic of colonial
+life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore volunteered
+to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padré's offer was,
+however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this small thing
+was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way, then next
+he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those staggering oxen
+English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones soothing and
+familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had appeared
+upon the scene that understood them, or that they could understand.
+Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether, and lo as
+by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon was out of the drift!
+"Brave padré," everybody cried. His name means "waggoner," and a right
+good waggoner he that day proved to be. This skilful compliance with
+one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws helped him immensely in the
+preaching of the Gospel. He became all the more powerful as a minister
+because so popular as a man. In many ways his mature local knowledge
+enabled him to become so exceptionally useful that he received
+promotion from a fourth to a third class acting chaplaincy, and the
+very officers who at first deemed his presence an infliction combined
+to present him with a handsome cigarette case in token of uttermost
+goodwill. You can't tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you
+give him a chance.
+
+[Sidenote: _Three bedfellows in a barn._]
+
+When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were
+being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he
+climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search
+for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal
+mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous
+hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on
+one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other--a delightful
+forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the
+kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a
+little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this
+campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.
+
+While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete
+remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving
+force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where
+I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of
+the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in
+Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the
+troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire
+his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an
+easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his
+generation well according to the will of God.
+
+[Sidenote: _A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate
+Chaplain._]
+
+The Rev. W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the
+Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service
+among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the
+lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and
+found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the
+battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column.
+Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no
+less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, and some were newly-won
+converts. Hence, at the close of Mr Burgess's very first voluntary
+service, one khaki man said to him, "I gave my heart to the Lord last
+Sunday on the line of march before we met the enemy"; while many more,
+though not perhaps walking in the clear shining of the light of God's
+countenance, yet spoke freely of their religious upbringing and
+relationships. It was possibly one such who, at the close of a little
+week-night service, where nearly all the men were drenched with recent
+rain, suggested the singing of "Love divine, all loves excelling." The
+character of that man's upbringing it is not difficult to divine.
+Another said, "I have a wife and four children who are praying for
+me"; while yet another added, "For me an aged mother prays." It would
+be strange indeed if such confessors were not themselves praying men.
+They were to be found by hundreds, probably by thousands, among the
+troops sent to South Africa. Never was an army so prayed for since the
+world began; and seldom, if ever, has an army contained so many who
+themselves were praying men.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers._]
+
+Nearly four months after the Stormberg tragedy, but only four days
+after that at Sanna's Post, Mr Burgess found himself, with three
+companies of the Irish Rifles and two of the Northumberland Fusiliers,
+cooped up on a kopje about three miles long not far from Reddersburg.
+With no water within reach, with no guns, and an almost exhausted
+store of rifle ammunition, this small detachment found itself indeed
+in evil plight when De Wet's commando of 3200 men put a girdle of
+rifle barrels around it, and then began a merciless cannonade with
+five guns. That cannonade indeed was merciless far beyond what the
+rules of modern war permit, for it seemed to be directed, if not
+mainly, certainly most effectually, on the ambulances and hospital
+tents, over which the Red Cross flag floated in vain. In the vivid
+description of the fight which Mr Burgess sent to me, he says that
+several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it
+was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of
+their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red
+Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer
+prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw
+up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the
+diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off,
+and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck
+till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thus
+turning himself into a navvy is probably no breach of the Geneva
+Convention, but all the same it is by no means an everyday occurrence;
+and those Boer prisoners would think none the worse of that Wesleyan
+predikant's prayers after watching the work, on their behalf, of that
+predikant's pick.
+
+The defence of Reddersburg was one of the least heroic in the whole
+record of the campaign, and the troops early next morning surrendered,
+not to resistless skill or rifle fire on the part of the Boers, but to
+the cravings of overmastering thirst. A relieving force was close at
+hand when they ran up the horrid white flag, and had they been aware
+of that fact we may be sure no surrender would have taken place. It
+requires scant genius to be wise after the event, and still scantier
+courage to denounce as lacking in courage this surrender of 500 to a
+force six times as large. That was on April 4th, and among those taken
+captive by De Wet was the Wesleyan chaplain. His horse, his kit, and
+all his belongings at the same time changed hands, and though he was
+solemnly assured all would be restored to him, that promise still
+awaits redemption.
+
+[Sidenote: _Caring for the Wounded._]
+
+Mr Burgess, though stripped of all he possessed, except what he wore,
+received De Wet's permission to search for the wounded as well as to
+bury the dead; and in one of his letters to me he tells of one
+mortally wounded whom he thus found, and who, in reply to the query,
+"Do you know Jesus?" replied, "I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour"; then
+recognising Mr Burgess as his chaplain, he added, "Pray for me!" so,
+amid onlooking stretcher-bearers and mounted Boers, the dying lad was
+commended to the eternal keeping of his Saviour. It is this element
+which has introduced itself into modern warfare which will presently
+make war impossible, except between wild beasts or wilder savages.
+Prayer on the battlefield, and the use on the same spot of explosive
+bullets, is too incongruous to have in it the element of perpetuity.
+
+The number of soldiers that thus die praying, or being prayed for, may
+be comparatively small; but even the unsaintly soldier, when wounded,
+often displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian
+endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had
+horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to
+his comrades--"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you
+like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one
+of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my
+cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer
+some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place of the tin
+whistle and cricket; but even here is evidence of the grit that has
+helped to make England great, and it by no means follows that saving
+grace also is not there. The most vigorous piety is not always the
+most vocal.
+
+After nearly four and twenty hours of terrific pelting by shot and
+shell, Mr Burgess tells me our total loss was only ten killed and
+thirty-five wounded. Not one in ten was hit; and so again was
+illustrated the comparative harmlessness of either Mauser or
+machine-gun fire against men fairly well sheltered. This war thus
+witnessed a strange anomaly. It used the deadliest of all weapons,
+and produced with them a percentage of deaths unexampled in its
+smallness.
+
+[Sidenote: _How the Chaplain's own tent was bullet-riddled._]
+
+Late on in the campaign Mr Burgess was moved, not to his own delight,
+from near Belfast to Germiston, but was speedily reconciled to the
+change by the receipt of the following letter from an officer of the
+Royal Berks:--
+
+     "Truly you are a lucky man to have left Wonderfontein on Monday;
+     and it may be that it saved your life, for the same night we were
+     attacked. It was a very misty night; but we all went to bed as
+     usual, and at midnight I was awakened by heavy rifle fire. Almost
+     immediately the bugle sounded the alarm, and everybody ran for
+     their posts like hares. From where I was it sounded as if the
+     Boers had really got into camp; but after two hours of very heavy
+     firing they retired. Yesterday morning, when I went over the
+     ground, _the first thing I saw was six or eight bullet holes
+     through your tent_; and one end of our mess had twenty-three
+     bullet marks in it. Nooitgedacht, Pan and Dalmanutha were all
+     attacked the same night at exactly the same hour, causing us a
+     few casualties at each place."
+
+It may perchance be for our good we are sometimes sent away from
+places where we fain would tarry.
+
+[Sidenote: _A sample set of Sunday Services._]
+
+The following typical extract is taken from Mr Burgess's Diary:--
+
+     "_Sunday, January 20th._--Rode out to Fort Dublin for church
+     parade at 9 A.M. Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out
+     to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully
+     a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town
+     church at 3.30 P.M., and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two
+     hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town
+     just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which
+     was well attended."
+
+         "Oh, day of _rest_ and gladness!"
+
+As the war was nearing its close, I sent Mr Burgess to labour along
+the blockhouse lines of communication, which have Bloemfontein for
+their centre. Here the authorities granted to him the use of a church
+railway van, in which he travelled almost ceaselessly between
+Brandfort and Norval's Pont, or beyond; and thus he too for a while
+became chaplain to part of the Guards' Brigade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY
+
+
+In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous
+chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed
+"Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as
+circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were
+formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in
+the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy
+were similarly employed, and supplemented the labours of the
+commissioned and acting Anglican chaplains sent out from England.
+Their local influence and local knowledge enabled them to render
+invaluable service, and great was their zeal in so doing. While the
+regular chaplains who came with the troops as a rule went with the
+troops, these fixtures in the great King's service were able not only
+to make arrangements for religious worship, but for almost every
+imaginable kind of ministry for the welfare of the men. They were
+often the Army Chaplain's right hand and in some cases his left hand
+too. It would be a grievous wrong, therefore to make no reference to
+what they attempted for God and the Empire, though it is impossible
+here to do more than hurriedly refer to a few typical cases that in
+due course were officially reported to me.
+
+[Sidenote: _At Cape Town and Wynberg._]
+
+The very day the Guards landed at Cape Town I was introduced to the
+Rev. B. E. Elderkin, who in conjunction with the Congregationalists at
+Seapoint made generous provision for the social enjoyment and
+spiritual profiting of the troops. I was also that same day taken to
+the Wynberg Hospital by the Rev. R. Jenkin, who, on alternate Sundays
+with the Presbyterian chaplain, conducted religious services there for
+the convalescents, and ministered in many ways to the sick and
+wounded, of whom there were sometimes as many as 2000 in actual
+residence. Among them Mr Jenkin could not fail to discover many cases
+of peculiar interest; and concerning one, a private of the Essex, he
+has supplied the following particulars:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Saved from drowning to sink in hospital._]
+
+This lad was badly wounded in the thigh on Sunday, March 11th,
+somewhere not far from Paardeberg, but he seems to have got so far
+into the Boer lines that our own shells fell around him and our own
+stretcher-bearers never reached him; so he lay all night, his wound
+undressed, and without one drink of water. Next day a mounted Boer
+caught sight of him, got off his horse, gave him a drink, and then
+passed on. On Wednesday, in sheer desperation, he wriggled to the
+river to get a drink, but in his feebleness fell in; was caught by the
+branch of a tree, and for more hours than seem credible thus hung,
+half in the water, half out, before he rallied sufficient strength to
+crawl out and up the bank. For five days he thus remained without
+food, and his festering wound unbandaged. On the Friday, when Lord
+Roberts offered to exchange six wounded prisoners, the Boers espied
+at last this useful hostage, took him to their laager, put a rough
+bandage round his thigh, and sent him into the British camp. He was
+still alive, full of hope, when Wynberg Hospital was reached, and
+responsive to all Mr Jenkin said concerning the mercy of God in
+Christ; but the long delay in dealing with his case rendered an
+operation necessary. There was no strength left with which to rally--a
+sudden collapse, and he was gone to meet his God. Fifteen days after
+he fell he was laid to rest, with full military honours, in the
+Wesleyan Cemetery at Wynberg. It is well that all fatal cases are not
+of that fearful type!
+
+Whilst the Guards were making their way to the Transvaal, the Rev. W.
+Meara, a refugee Wesleyan minister from Barberton, was doing
+altogether excellent work among the troops at East London; and has
+since gone back to Barberton as officiating clergyman to the troops
+there, where later on in 1902 I had the opportunity of personally
+noting what his zeal hath accomplished for our men.
+
+[Sidenote: _A pleasant surprise._]
+
+Concerning his army work while away from Barberton, Mr Meara sent me
+the following satisfactory report:--
+
+     "During the early part of my chaplaincy there were large numbers
+     of men in camp, and we held open-air services with blessed
+     results. The services were largely attended and much appreciated.
+     We then established a temporary Soldiers' Home; and after a
+     fortnight the Scripture Reader of the Northumberland Fusiliers
+     handed me over the responsibility, as he was proceeding with his
+     regiment to the front. The Home was on the camp ground, and so
+     was within easy reach of the men, who availed themselves fully of
+     its advantages. We provided mineral waters at cost prices, and
+     eatables, tobacco, etc., and for some weeks when there was a
+     great rush of men in camp upwards of £120 a week was taken. We
+     supplied ink, pens, notepaper, etc., free, and we had all kinds
+     of papers in the Reading Room. We agreed that any profits should
+     be sent to the Soldiers' Widows and Orphans Fund, and so before I
+     left East London we sent the sum of £43 to Sir A. Milner for the
+     fund above referred to. Besides the Soldiers' Home, we started a
+     Soldiers' 'Social Evening' on Wednesdays in Wesley Hall, which
+     was largely patronised by the men. I have found the officers
+     without a single exception ready to further my work in every way.
+     I had also a good deal of hospital work, which to me was full of
+     pathetic interest. I have had the joy of harvest in some
+     instances, for some of the men have been led to Christ. When I
+     purposed leaving, the circuit officials generously took the Town
+     Hall for two nights at a cost of £14 for my Farewell Service on
+     Sunday night, and the Farewell Social on Tuesday. The hall was
+     packed with about 1500 people on the Sunday. We had a grand
+     number of soldiers. Then on the Tuesday in the same hall there
+     were about 1000 people who sat down to tea, including from 400 to
+     500 soldiers. When tea was over I was to my surprise presented
+     with a purse of sovereigns from the circuit, and to my still
+     greater astonishment Col. Long of the Somerset Light Infantry
+     came on the platform, and spoke most appreciatively of my work
+     amongst the men, and their great regret at my departure. When he
+     had finished he called upon Sergt.-Master-Tailor Syer to make a
+     presentation to me on behalf of the men. It was a beautiful
+     walking-stick with a massive silver ferrule suitably inscribed,
+     and a very fine case of razors. Then every soldier in the hall
+     rose to his feet and gave the departing chaplain three cheers. It
+     was really one of the proudest moments in my life."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' Reception Committee._]
+
+Of the Durban Soldiers' Reception Committee the chairman was the Rev.
+G. Lowe, also a Transvaal refugee Wesleyan minister; and in a letter
+from him now lying on my table he states that he was sometimes on the
+landing jetty for fifteen hours at a stretch. He adds that he was the
+first to begin this work of welcoming the troops on landing at
+Durban, and obtained the permits to take in a few friends within the
+barriers for the distribution of fruit, tobacco and bread to the
+soldiers, on the purchase of which nearly £300 was expended.
+Twenty-five thousand troops were thus met; over £2000 sent home to the
+friends of the soldiers; more than 8000 letters announcing the safe
+arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being
+written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was
+most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the
+3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands £208, 18s. belonging to the
+men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only
+a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his
+personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own
+and other battalions.
+
+[Sidenote: _The other way about._]
+
+About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on
+the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here
+the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to
+welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily
+with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs
+Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging
+to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the
+Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place,
+while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers
+in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp,
+so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for a crowded military
+concert, which cleared £35 for the destitute poor of the town, mostly
+Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the fray, and on
+their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided an open-air
+concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the very
+neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very act of
+conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most of all
+this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish supplies
+of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with
+proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the
+other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes
+alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and _patriotic_
+songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as
+the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one
+such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free
+State:--
+
+  POPULAR PROMENADE CONCERT
+  TO BE HELD ON
+  _SATURDAY, 22nd DECEMBER 1900, at 4.45_ P.M.
+
+By the kind permission of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. A. E. DALZELL
+and the Officers of the 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry.
+
+PROGRAMME.
+
+  1. GRAND MARCH--"Princess Victoria"    _O'Keefe_   BAND.
+  2. SONG                                            Serg. COX,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  3. COON SONG                                       Trooper GREENWOOD,
+                                                       I.Y.
+  4. OVERTURE--"Norma"                   _Bellini_   BAND.
+  5. SENTIMENTAL SONG                                Corp. ASHLY,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  6. RECITATION                                      Corp. SAMPSON,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  7. CORNET SOLO--"My Pretty Jane"       _Bishop_    Band-Serg. BROOME.
+  8. SONG                                            Mr J. ILSLEY.
+  9. DESCRIPTIVE SONG                                Corporal COOKE,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  10. SELECTION--"The Belle of New York" _Kerker_    BAND.
+  11. SONG                                           Gunner HIGGINBOTHAM,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  12. SONG                                           Gunner M'GINTZ,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  13. VALSE--"Mia Cara"                  _Bucalossi_ BAND.
+  14. PATRIOTIC SONG                                 Serg. GEAR,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  15. COMIC SONG                                     Corporal CROWLY,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  16. GALOP--"En Route"                  _Clarke_    BAND.
+
+"_GOD SAVE THE QUEEN._"
+
+Admission to Ground--ONE SHILLING. Refreshments at reasonable prices.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: _Our near Kinship to the Boers._]
+
+Of another important fact which grew upon us later on, we gained our
+first glimpse during these early days. The Boers we found were in many
+respects startlingly near akin to us. They sprang originally from the
+same liberty-loving stock as ourselves. Hosts of them spoke correct
+and fluent English, while not a few of them were actually of English
+parentage. Moreover, the Hollanders and the English have so freely
+intermarried in South Africa that at one time it was fondly hoped the
+cradle rather than the rifle would finally settle our racial
+controversies. They are haunted by the same insatiable earth hunger as
+ourselves, and hence unceasingly persisted in violating the
+Conventions which forbade all further extension of Transvaal
+territory. As a people they are more narrowly Protestant than even we
+have ever been. The Doppers, of whom the President was chief, are
+Ultra-Puritans; and they would suffer none but members of a Protestant
+Church to have any vote or voice in their municipal or national
+affairs. Jews and Roman Catholics as such were absolutely
+disfranchised by them; and their singing, which later on we often
+heard, by its droning heaviness would have delighted the hearts of
+those Highland crofters who, at Aldershot, said they could not away
+with the jingling songs of Sankey. "Gie us the Psalms of David," they
+cried. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of
+Scotland are nearer akin than cousins; and when after Magersfontein
+our Presbyterian chaplain crossed over into the Boer lines to seek out
+and bury the dead, he was heartily hailed as a _Reformed_ minister,
+was treated with as much courtesy as though he had been one of their
+own predikants, and as the result was so favourably impressed that an
+imaginative mind might easily fancy him saying to Cronje, "Almost thou
+persuadest me to become a Boer!"
+
+Of all wars, civil wars are the most inexpressibly saddening; and this
+terrible struggle was largely of that type. Neighbours who had known
+each other intimately for years, members of the same church, and even
+of the same family, found themselves ranged on opposite sides in this
+awful fray. When Boer and Briton came to blows it was a _brother-bond_
+that was broken, in sight of the awestruck natives. It was once again
+even as in the days of old when Ephraim envied Judah and Judah vexed
+Ephraim! Nevertheless, times without number, a concert in the midst of
+strife, such as that described above, sufficed to draw together all
+classes in friendliest possible intercourse, and seemed a tuneful
+prophecy of the better days that are destined yet to dawn.
+
+[Sidenote: _More good work on our right flank._]
+
+We can only linger to take one more glance at this type of service by
+this type of worker before we proceed with our story of the Guards'
+advance. Winburg, like Heilbron, lay on our right flank, and was
+occupied by the troops about the same time as we entered Kroonstad.
+The Wesleyan clergyman was the only representative of the Churches
+left in the place; and the story of his devotion is outlined in the
+following memorandum to the D.A.A.G. with the official reply
+thereto:--
+
+                                        WINBURG, O. R. C.
+                                       _Dec. 21, 1900._
+
+     To MAJOR GOUGH, D.A.A.G.,
+
+     Kindly allow me to state a few facts in order to show the
+     exceptional character of my position and work, both before and
+     since the time of my appointment.
+
+     1. Previous to the occupation of Winburg by the British troops, I
+     was employed in attending to the sick and wounded English
+     soldiers who were brought here as prisoners of war by the Dutch
+     Forces.
+
+     2. During a period of at least five months--as no other chaplain
+     or clergyman was living within a distance of about fifty miles--I
+     was the only one available for religious services, either parade
+     or voluntary, for hospital visitation and burial duties, which
+     were then so urgently and frequently needed. We had six
+     hospitals, and occasionally as many as three funerals on the same
+     day.
+
+     3. From the date of the British occupation, May 5th, my knowledge
+     of the country and people--acquired during twenty-five years'
+     residence in various parts of the O. R. C.--has been at the
+     disposal of the military authorities. I have often acted as
+     interpreter and translator, and as such accompanied the
+     Commandant of Winburg when, a few weeks ago, he went to meet the
+     leader of the Boer forces near their laager in this district.
+
+     4. As almost all the English population left the town before the
+     war, our nearly empty church was then, and still remains,
+     available for the garrison troops. About nine-tenths of both my
+     Sunday and week-day congregations are soldiers, for whom all the
+     seats are free.
+
+     5. Immediately after the arrival of the British forces, our
+     church was utilised for an entirely undenominational Soldiers'
+     Home, and books for the emergency were supplied from my library.
+     Colonel Napier, who was then C.O. of Winburg, expressed his
+     appreciation of this part of our garrison work, and assisted in
+     its development. By his direction, the Home was removed to the
+     premises it now occupies. It consists of separate rooms for
+     reading, writing and refreshments; also rooms and kitchen for the
+     manageress. It is still under my superintendence.--Yours, C. HARMON.
+
+
+     (_Copy._) _Colonel Napier's Recommendation._
+
+     To STAFF OFFICER, Bloemfontein.
+
+     I strongly recommend that the Rev. C. Harmon be retained as an
+     acting chaplain to the troops. I can fully endorse all the
+     reverend gentleman has stated in the above memorandum. He has
+     been most useful to the Garrison and Military Authorities at
+     Winburg, and his thorough knowledge of the Dutch language makes
+     his services among the refugees and natives indispensable.
+
+                                        JOHN SCOTT NAPIER, Col.
+
+     WINBURG, _Jan. 3, 1901_.
+
+It is a supreme satisfaction to know that our men were thus in so many
+ways well served by the local clergy of South Africa, to whom our
+warmest thanks are due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY
+
+
+So utter, and for the time being so ludicrously complete, was the
+collapse of our adversaries' defence, that on that first night within
+the Transvaal border we lay down to rest on the open veldt without any
+slightest shelter, but also without any slightest fear, save only the
+fear of catching cold; and slept as undisturbed as though we had been
+slumbering amid hoar-frost and heather on the famous Fox Hills near
+Aldershot. On that particular Sunday night our tentless camp was
+visited by ten or twelve degrees of frost, so that when the morning
+dawned my wraps were as hoary as the hair of their owner is ever
+likely to become.
+
+[Sidenote: _An elaborate night toilet._]
+
+But then as the night, so must the nightdress be; and my personal
+toilet was arranged in the following tasteful fashion. Every garment
+worn during the heat of the day was of course worn throughout the
+chilly night, including boots; for at that season of the year we
+regularly went to bed with our boots on. Indeed the often footsore men
+were expressly forbidden to take them off at night, lest a possible
+night attack should find them in that important respect unready. Over
+the tunic was put a sweater, and over that a greatcoat, with a hideous
+woollen helmet as a crown of glory for the head, and a regulation
+blanket wrapped round the waist and legs. Then on the least rugged bit
+of ground within reach a waterproof sheet was spread, and on that was
+planted the "bag blanket," into which I carefully crept, having first
+thrown over it an old mackintosh as some small protection from the
+heavy evening dew and the early morning frost. So whether the ground
+proved rough as a nutmeg-grater or ribbed like a gridiron, I soon said
+good-night to the blushing stars above me and to the acres of
+slumbering soldiers all around. After that, few of us were in fit
+condition to judge whether there were ten degrees of frost or twelve
+till five o'clock next morning, when we sat on the whitened ground to
+breakfast by starlight. At that unkindly hour the least acute observer
+of Nature's varying moods could not fail to note that a midwinter dawn
+five thousand feet above the sea-level can even in South Africa be
+bitingly severe.
+
+[Sidenote: _Capturing Clapham Junction._]
+
+After two more days of heavy marching we found abundant and beautiful
+spar stones springing up out of the barren veldt, as in my native
+Cornwall; and we needed no seer to assure us that the vast and
+invaluable mining area of Johannesburg was close at hand. Presently we
+passed one big set of mining machinery after another, each with its
+huge heap of mine refuse. If only some clotted cream had been
+purchasable at one of the wayside houses, or a dainty pasty had
+anywhere appeared in sight, I could almost have fancied myself close
+to Camborne.
+
+Instead, however, of marching straight towards Johannesburg, we
+suddenly pounced on Elandsfontein, the most supremely important
+railway junction in all South Africa--its Clapham Junction--and
+following swiftly in the footsteps of Henry's mounted infantry took
+its defenders delightfully by surprise. The Gordons on our far left
+had about a hundred casualties, and the C.I.V.'s on our right,
+fighting valiantly, were also hard hit, but the Guards escaped
+unscathed. Shots enough, however, were fired to lead us to expect a
+serious fight, and to necessitate a further exhausting march of five
+or six miles, out and back, amid the mine heaps lying just beyond the
+junction. Fortunately, the fight proved no fight, but only a further
+flight; though the end of a specially heavy day's task brought with
+it, none the less, an abounding recompense. Whilst most of the Boers
+precipitately vanished, those unable to get away gave themselves up as
+prisoners of war, and thus without further effort we secured a
+position of vast strategic importance, including the terminus of the
+railway line leading to Natal; but it was also the terminus of the
+long line from Johannesburg and the regions beyond; so that there was
+now no way of escape for any of the rolling stock thereon. It might
+peradventure be destroyed before the troops could rescue it, but got
+away for the further service of the Boers it could not be. Among other
+acquisitions we captured at Elandsfontein a capitally equipped
+hospital train, hundreds of railway trucks laden more or less with
+valuable stores, and half a dozen locomotives with full head of steam
+on; so that had we arrived a little less suddenly, locomotives, trains
+and empty trucks would all have eluded our grasp and got safely to
+Pretoria. It was indeed an invaluable haul, especially for haulage
+purposes, and we had tramped 130 miles in the course of a single week
+to secure it!
+
+[Sidenote: _Dear diet and dangerous._]
+
+Long after dark, weary and footsore and famished, we stumbled back
+three miles to our chosen camping ground. Since the previous evening
+some of the Scots Guards had managed to secure only a hasty drink of
+coffee, so they told me, as their sole rations for the four-and-twenty
+hours; but they seemed as happy as they were hungry, like men proudly
+conscious that they had done a good day's work that brought them, so
+they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an
+undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over
+some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to
+traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire;
+scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at
+last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness
+proceeded as best they could to cook their dinners.
+
+Greatly to our surprise the people, who seemed mostly Dutch or of
+Dutch relationship, received us like those in the Orange Free State
+towns, with demonstrative kindness; and in many a case brought out
+their last loaf as a most welcome gift to the just then almost
+ravenous soldiery. Every scrap of available provisions was eagerly
+bought up, and here as elsewhere honestly paid for, often at prices
+that seemed far from honest. Months after at this very place I learned
+that eggs were being sold at from ten to fifteen shillings a dozen,
+and fowls at seven shillings a-piece!
+
+An Australian correspondent of the _London Times_ declares that as it
+was with us, so was it with the troops that he accompanied. About the
+very time we reached this Germiston Junction, his men, he says, were
+practically starving; and any other army in the world would have
+commandeered whatever food came in its way. He was with Rundle's
+Brigade, "the starving Eighth" as they were well called, seeing that
+for a while they were rationed on one and a half biscuits a day. Yet
+they gave Mr Stead's "ill-treated women" two shillings a loaf for
+bread that sixpence would have well paid for, and no one was allowed
+to bring foodstuffs away from any farmhouse without getting a written
+receipt from the vendor. If the military police caught a ragged
+Leinster packing a chicken down his trouser leg through a big hole in
+the seat, and he could not show a receipt for the bird, away went the
+man's purchase to the nearest Field Hospital. To this same
+representative of the Press the wife of a farmer still out fighting
+our troops naïvely said, "For goodness sake do keep those wicked
+Colonials away; I am terrified of them" (he was himself a
+Colonial)--"but I am so glad when the English come; they pay me so
+well." That was the experience of almost all who had anything to sell,
+alike in town and country; and this particular Frau confessed to
+having made a profit of ten clear pounds in a single week out of the
+bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some
+cases when they asked for bread our men got a bullet. Around many a
+farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of being
+fleeced.
+
+[Sidenote: _No wages but the Sjambok._]
+
+At Elandsfontein an almost frantic welcome was awarded us by the
+crowds of Kaffirs that eagerly watched our coming. As we marched
+through their Location almost the only darkie I spoke to happened to
+be a well-dressed intelligent Wesleyan, who said to me, "Good Boss, we
+are truly glad that you have come; for the last seven months the Boers
+have made us work without any wages except the sjambok across our
+backs." It is only fair to add that the burghers on commando during
+those same seven months were supposed to receive no wages; and the
+Kaffirs, who were commandeered for various kinds of service in
+connection with the war, could scarcely expect the Boer Government to
+deal more generously with them. From the very beginning, however, the
+Kaffirs in the Transvaal were often made to feel that their condition
+was near akin to that of slaves. The clauses in the Sand River
+Convention which were intended to be the Magna Charta of their
+liberties proved a delusion and a snare. Recent years, however, have
+effected immense improvements in their relative position and
+importance. Since the mines were opened their labour has been keenly
+competed for, and a more considerate feeling concerning them pervades
+all classes; but they are still regarded by many of their masters as
+having no actual rights either in Church or State. So when a
+victorious English army appeared upon the scene they fondly thought
+the day of their full emancipation had dawned, and in wildly excited
+accents they shouted as we passed, "=_Vic_toria! _Vic_toria!="
+Whereupon our scarcely less excited lads in responsive shouts replied,
+"=_Pre_toria! _Pre_toria!="
+
+Surely never was the inner meaning and significance of a great
+historic event more aptly voiced. The natives beheld in the advent of
+English rule the promise of ampler liberty and enlightenment under
+Victoria the Good; but the hearts of the soldiers were set on the
+speedy capture of Pretoria, as the crowning outcome of all their toil,
+and their probable turning-point towards home. Well said both!
+Pretoria! Victoria!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Gold Mines._]
+
+Lord Roberts' rapid march rescued from impending destruction the
+costly machinery and shafting of the Witwaterrand gold mines, in which
+capital to the extent of many millions had been sunk, and out of which
+many hundreds of millions are likely to be dug. By some strange freak
+of nature this lofty ridge, lying about 6000 feet above the sea level,
+and forming a narrow gold-bearing bed over a hundred miles long, is by
+universal confession the richest treasure-house the ransackers of the
+whole earth have yet brought to light. "The wealth of Ormuz or of
+Ind," immortalised by Milton's most majestic epic, the wealth of the
+Rand completely eclipses, and nothing imagined in the glowing pages of
+the "Arabian Nights" rivals in solid worth the sober realities now
+being unearthed along this uninviting ridge. It fortunately was not in
+the power of the Boer Government to carry off this as yet ungarnered
+treasure, or it would certainly have shared the fate of the cart-loads
+of gold in bar and coin with which President Kruger decamped from
+Pretoria; but it is beyond all controversy that many of that
+Government's officials favoured the proposal to wreck, as far as
+dynamite could, both the machinery and mines in mere wanton revenge on
+the hated Outlanders that mainly owned them. That policy was thwarted
+by the swiftfootedness of the troops, and by the tactfulness of
+Commandant Krause, through whose arranging Johannesburg was peacefully
+surrendered; but who now, by some strange irony of fate, lies a felon
+in an English jail!
+
+Nevertheless, later on enough mischief of this type was done to
+demonstrate how deadly a blow a few desperate men might have dealt at
+the chief industry of South Africa; and concerning it Sir Alfred
+Milner wrote as follows:--
+
+     Fortunately the damage done to the mines has not been large
+     relatively to the vast total amount of the fixed capital sunk in
+     them. The mining area is excessively difficult to guard against
+     purely predatory attacks having no military purpose, because it
+     is, so to speak, "all length and no breadth," one long thin line
+     stretching across the country from east to west for many miles.
+     Still, garrisoned as Johannesburg now is, it is only possible
+     successfully to attack a few points in it. Of the raids hitherto
+     made, and they have been fairly numerous, only one resulted in
+     any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the
+     single mine attacked amounted to £200,000, and it is estimated
+     that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is
+     only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the
+     most important. These facts may afford some indication of the
+     ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal
+     and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that
+     general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just
+     before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out.
+     However serious in some respects may have been the military
+     consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa
+     owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash put
+     forward by which the vast mining apparatus, the foundation of
+     all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening it.
+
+That this wonderful discovery of wealth was indirectly the main cause
+of the war is undeniable. But for the gold the children of "Oden the
+Goer," whose ever restless spirit has sent them round the globe, would
+never have found their way in any large numbers to the Transvaal.
+There would have been no overmastering Outlander element, no incurable
+race competitions and quarrels, no unendurable wrongs to redress; the
+Boer Republic might again have become bankrupt, or broken up into
+rival chieftaincies as of old, but it could not have become a menace
+to Great Britain, and would never have rallied the whole Empire to
+repel its assault on the Empire. It is too usually with blood that
+gold is bought!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' share._]
+
+The war was practically the purchase price of this prodigious wealth,
+but it effected no transfer in the ownership. It may have in part to
+provide for the expenses of the war, but it is not claimed by the
+British Government as part of the spoils of war; and when Local
+Government is granted it will still be included in local assets. The
+capitalists, colonists and Kaffirs who live and thrive through the
+mines will thrive yet more as the result of juster laws, ample
+security, and a more honest administration; but the soldiers whose
+heroism brought to pass the change profit nothing by it. The niggers
+driving our carts were paid £4 a month, while the khaki men who did
+the actual fighting were required to content themselves with anything
+over about fifteen pence a day.
+
+When Cortez, with his accompanying Spaniards, discovered Mexico, he
+sent word to its ruler, Montezuma, that his men were suffering from a
+peculiar form of heart disease which only gold could cure; so he
+desired him of his royal bounty to send them gold and still more gold.
+In the end those Spanish leeches drained the country dry; though when
+convoying their treasure across the sea no small portion of it was
+seized by English warships, and shared as loot among the captors.
+After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been secured off Cadiz by
+the _Actæan_ and the _Favorite_, each captain received £65,000 as
+prize-money (so Fitchett tells us); each lieutenant, £13,000; each
+petty officer, £2000; and each seaman, £500. Our fighting men and
+officers found in the Transvaal vastly ampler wealth, but no such luck
+and no such loot. Well would it be, however, if these mining
+Directorates when about to declare their next dividends should bethink
+them generously of the widows and orphans of those whose valour and
+strong-footedness rescued their mines from imminent plunder and
+destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Golden City._]
+
+Johannesburg, which we entered unopposed on May 31st, though it covers
+an enormous area and contains several fine buildings, is only fourteen
+years old, and consequently is still very largely in the corrugated
+iron stage of development which is always unlovely, and in this case
+proved specially so. Many of the houses were deserted, most of the
+stores were roughly barricaded, and there were signs not a few of
+recent violence and wholesale theft, at which none need wonder. Long
+before the war broke out there was presented to President Kruger and
+his Raad a petition for redress of grievances signed, as already
+stated, by adult male Outlanders that are said to have outnumbered the
+total Boer male population at that time of the whole Transvaal. Most
+of those who signed were resident on the Rand; and as soon as war hove
+in sight these "undesirables" were hurried across the border, leaving
+behind them in many cases well-furnished houses and well-stocked
+shops. More than ten thousand of them took up arms in defence of the
+Empire, and what befell their property is best told by the one
+Wesleyan minister who was privileged to remain all the time in the
+town, was the first to greet me when with the Guards I marched into
+the Market Square, and soon after established our first Wesleyan
+Soldiers' Home in the Transvaal. He, the Rev. S. L. Morris, on that
+point writes as follows:--
+
+     President Kruger proclaimed Sunday, May 27th, and the two
+     following days, as days of humiliation and prayer. Notices to
+     this effect were sent to officials and ministers, and doubtless
+     there were many who devoutly followed the directions. The conduct
+     of one large section of the Dutch people of Johannesburg was,
+     however, very strange. In Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last
+     ten years have seen the development of special locations where
+     the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these
+     are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived
+     as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots.
+     Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the
+     Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle
+     in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given
+     them, and there they built rough shanties, and formed communities
+     which were a South African counterpart to the submerged tenth of
+     England. There was this difference, that these _bywoners_ became
+     a great strength to the Kruger party. The males of sixteen years
+     of age and upwards had all the privileges which were denied to
+     the most influential of the _Uitlanders_. It was the votes of
+     Vrededorp, the poor Dutch quarter, that decided the
+     representation of Johannesburg in the Volksraad. On the days of
+     humiliation and prayer, when the army under Lord Roberts was
+     within twenty miles of Johannesburg, the families of these poor
+     burghers broke into the commissariat stores of their own
+     Government, into the food depôts from which doles had been
+     distributed, and into private stores; taking away to their homes,
+     goods, clothing and provisions of all sorts. Those who witnessed
+     the invasion of the great goods sheds where the Republican
+     commissariat had its headquarters say that the people defied the
+     officials, daring them to shoot them. I met many of these people
+     returning to their homes laden with spoils. Sometimes there was a
+     wheelbarrow heaped up with sacks of flour, or tins of biscuits,
+     or preserved meat. Men, women, children and Kaffir "boys" trudged
+     along with similar articles, or with bundles of boots and
+     clothing. Dr Krause, the commandant, did his best to secure order
+     and to repress looting, but he lacked the reliable agents who
+     alone could have controlled the people. This sort of thing was
+     going on on Monday and Tuesday, May 28th and 29th. But for the
+     astonishing marches by which Lord Roberts paralysed opposition,
+     and which enabled him to summon the town to surrender on the
+     Wednesday morning, it is hard to say what limit could have been
+     put to the disorder. In all probability the dangerous section of
+     the large Continental element in the population would have broken
+     out into crime. Looting had hitherto been confined to the
+     property which was left unprotected, and few unoccupied houses
+     had not been ransacked; but had the British occupation been
+     delayed a few days the consequences would have been disastrous.
+
+[Sidenote: _Astonishing the Natives._]
+
+As on that Thursday morning we tramped steadily from Germiston to
+Johannesburg we were greatly surprised to find near each successive
+mine crowds of natives all with apparently well oiled faces that
+literally shone in the sunlight; but natives of every conceivable
+shade of sableness, and in some cases of almost every permissible
+approach to nudity. They were for the most part what are called "raw
+Kaffirs"; and as we were astonished at their numbers after so many
+months of war and consequent stoppage of work, so were they also
+astonished at our numbers, and confided to our native minister their
+wonder at finding there were so many Englishmen in all the world as
+they that day saw upon the Rand. It was a vitally important object
+lesson that by this time has made its beneficent influence felt among
+all the tribes of the South African sub-continent.
+
+About noon, so Mr Morris told me, a company of Lancers came into the
+open space in front of the Court-house, and formed a hollow square
+around the flagstaff. Not long after Lord Roberts with his Staff, and
+Commandant Krause, rode into the square; then the Vierkleur slid down
+the staff, and instantly after up went Lady Roberts' little silken
+Union Jack. The British flag floated at last over this essentially
+British town, the sure pledge as we hope of honest government and of
+equal rights alike for Briton and for Boer. It was two o'clock before
+the Guards' Brigade reached this saluting point, but till nearly
+midnight one continuous stream of men and horses, of guns and
+ambulances, passed through the streets to their respective camping
+grounds. These well fagged troops by their fitness, even more than by
+their numbers, astonished many an onlooker who was by no means a "raw
+Kaffir"; and one old Dutchman expressed the thought of many minds when
+he said, "You seem able to turn out soldiers by machinery, _all of the
+same age_!"
+
+My excellent host of that red-letter day adds: "It is intensely
+gratifying to be able, after the lapse of more than nine months, to
+give our soldiers the same good name that was so well deserved then.
+To deny that there had been any offences would be ridiculous; but the
+absence of serious crime, and more particularly of gross offences,
+must be acknowledged to confer upon our South African army a unique
+distinction." That witness is true!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PRETORIA THE CITY OF ROSES
+
+
+War and worship live only on barest speaking terms, and to the latter
+the former makes few concessions; so it came to pass that Whitsunday,
+like so many another Sunday spent in South Africa, found us again upon
+the march, with the inevitable result that no parade service could
+possibly be held. Everybody, however, seemed full of confident
+expectation that the next day we should reach Pretoria, and perhaps
+take possession of it.
+
+[Sidenote: _Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday._]
+
+"If we take Pretoria on Whit-Monday," said one of the Guardsmen, "they
+will get the news in England next day, and then that will be Wet
+Tuesday"; which was a prophecy that seemed not in the least unlikely
+to be fulfilled, inasmuch as an Englishman's favourite way of showing
+his supreme delight is by accepting an extra drink, or offering one.
+Others were of opinion that, with a ring of forts around Pretoria on
+which hundreds of thousands of pounds had been expended, the Boer
+commanders would make a desperate stand in defence of their much loved
+capital, and so keep us at bay for many a day. But nothing daunted by
+such uncertainties as to what might be awaiting them, our men were on
+the march towards those famous forts early on Monday morning, and we
+soon found a lively Bank Holiday was in store for us. Shortly after
+noon, General French's cavalry having worked round to the north of the
+town, General Pole Carew prepared to attack on the south and our
+bombardment of the forts began, but drew from them no reply. All the
+Boer guns were elsewhere; and a little way behind our own busy naval
+guns, though hidden by the crest of the hill, lay the Grenadier Guards
+awaiting orders to take their place and part in the fray.
+
+Presently a sharp succession of Boer shells, intended for the
+aforesaid naval guns, came flying over our heads, and dropping among
+our men. One hit a horse, which no man will ride again; one struck an
+ambulance waggon, and scared its solitary fever patient almost out of
+his senses; one dropped close to where a group of generals had just
+before met in consultation; but only one of these Boer Whitsuntide
+presents burst, and even that, strange to tell, caused no casualties,
+though it drove a few kilted heroes to run for refuge into a deepish
+pit, near which I sat upon the ground, and watching, wondered where
+the next shell would burst. When a little later the Guards moved
+further to the right to take up a position still nearer to the town,
+Boer bullets came flying over that same ridge and planted themselves
+among our left flank men; but when we tried to pick up some of these
+leaden treasures to keep as curios, so deeply imbedded were they in
+the soil they could not be removed. Yet they were playfully spoken of
+as _spent_ bullets.
+
+[Sidenote: "_Light after dark._"]
+
+This grim music of gun and rifle was maintained almost till sunset,
+and then died away, leaving us in doubt whether the next day would
+witness a renewal of the fight, or whether, as on so many former
+occasions, the Boers under cover of the darkness would execute yet
+another strategic movement to the rear. That night we slept once more
+on the open veldt, made black by the vast sweep of recent grass fires;
+and next morning, after a starlight breakfast, I as usual retired to
+kneel in humble prayer, imploring the Divine guardianship and guidance
+for all in the midst of whom I dwelt. Presently I was startled by an
+outburst of wildest cheering from one group; and a moment after from a
+second; so springing to my feet I found our lads hurling their helmets
+in the air, and shouting like men demented. Not for the chaplains only
+that glad hour turned prayer to praise, and thrilled all hearts with
+patriotic if not pious pride.
+
+An officer was riding post-haste from point to point where our men
+were massed, bearing the delicious tidings that Pretoria too had
+unconditionally surrendered. The news swiftly sped from battalion to
+battery, and from battery to battalion. First here, then there, then
+far away yonder, the cheering rang out clear and loud as a trumpet
+call. Comrade congratulated comrade, while Christian men, with
+tear-filled eyes, reverently looked up and rendered thanks to Him of
+whom it is written, "Thine is the victory."
+
+[Sidenote: _Why the surrender?_]
+
+Remembering how feeble Mafeking was held for months by the merest
+handful of men pitted against a host, it is not easy to understand
+why this city of roses, so pretty, and of which the Boers were all so
+proud, was opened to its captors after only the merest pretence at
+opposition. Lord Roberts is reported to have said that in his opinion
+it occupied the strongest position he had yet seen in all South
+Africa; and to my non-professional mind it instantly brought to
+remembrance the familiar lines which tell how round about Jerusalem
+the hilly bulwarks rise. The surrender of such a centre of their
+national life must have been to the burghers like the plucking out of
+a right eye, or the cutting off of a right hand. How came it to pass,
+without an effort to hinder it?
+
+The German expert, Count Sternberg, who accompanied the Boers
+throughout the war, declared that though considered from the
+continental standpoint they are bad soldiers; in their own country, in
+ambushes or stratagems, which constitute their favourite type of
+warfare, "they are simply superb." He adds they would have achieved
+much greater success if they had not abandoned all idea of taking the
+offensive. "For that they lack courage; and to that lack of courage
+they owe their destruction."
+
+But their flight, like their long after continuance in guerilla types
+of warfare, points to quite another cause than this lack of courage.
+The Boer is proverbially a lover of his own; and so, though with
+liberal hand he laid waste bridge and culvert and plant, as he
+retreated along the railway line through the Orange River Colony,
+which was not his own, he became quite miserly in his use of dynamite
+when the Transvaal was reached, which was his own, and which would
+infallibly be restored to him, so he reckoned, when the war was over.
+So was it to be with Pretoria too! To the very last the fighting Boer
+believed that whatever his fate in the field of battle, if he were
+only dogged enough, and in any fashion prolonged the strife
+sufficiently, British patience would tire, as it had tired before;
+British plans and purposes and pledges would all be abandoned as
+aforetime they had been abandoned, and he would thus secure, even in
+the face of defeat, the fruits of victory. The importunate widow is
+the one New Testament character "the brother" implicitly believes in
+and imitates. Her tactics were his before the war, in the matter of
+the Conventions; and the wasteful prolonging of the war was a part of
+the same policy. Great Britain was to be forced by sheer weariness to
+give back to the Transvaal in some form its coveted independence, and
+with it, of course, Pretoria also. So he would on no account consent
+to let the city be bombarded. Our peaceful occupation was the best
+possible protection for property that would presently be again his
+own; and while he still went on with his desultory fighting we were
+quite welcome, at our own expense, to feed every Boer family we could
+find.
+
+Thus, like our own hunted Pretender, he held that however long
+delayed, the end was bound to restore to him his own; and he had not
+far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as
+one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton
+formally assured the Boers that the Vaal would flow backward through
+the Drakenberg Hills before the British would withdraw from the
+Transvaal. Three successive Secretaries of State, three successive
+High Commissioners, and two successive Houses of Commons deliberately
+endorsed that official assurance; yet though the Vaal turned not back
+Great Britain did; and to that magnanimous forgetting of the nation's
+oft-repeated pledge was due in part this new war and its intolerable
+prolonging. It does not pay thus to say and then unsay. Thereby all
+confidence, all sense of finality, is killed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Taking possession._]
+
+"Take your Grenadiers and open the ball," said Sir John Moore, as he
+appointed to his men their various positions in the famous fight at
+Corunna; and on this memorable 5th of June when the British finally
+took possession of Pretoria the Guards as at Belmont were again
+privileged to "open the ball." But whilst they were busy seizing the
+railway station and stock, with other points of strategic importance,
+I took my first hasty stroll through the city; and among the earliest
+objects of interest I came upon was the pedestal of a monument, with
+the scaffolding still around it, but quite complete, except that the
+actual statue which was to crown and constitute the summit was not
+there.
+
+"Whose monument is that?" I meekly asked. "Paul Kruger's," was the
+prompt reply; "but the statue, made in Rome, has not yet arrived,
+being detained at Delagoa Bay."
+
+That statue now probably never will arrive, and possibly enough some
+other figure,--perchance that of Victoria the Good,--will ultimately
+be placed on that expectant pedestal, so making the monument complete.
+"Which thing," as St Paul would say, "is an allegory!" That monument
+in its present form is a precise epitome of the man it was meant to
+honour. It is most complete by reason of its very incompleteness. The
+chief feature in this essentially strong man's career, as also in his
+monument, has reference to the foundation work he wrought. It was the
+finish that was a failure, and in much more important matters than
+this pile of chiselled granite, the work the late President commenced
+in the Transvaal its new rulers must make it their business to carry
+on, and, in worthier fashion, complete. We cannot begin _de novo_. For
+better for worse, on foundations laid by Boers, Britons must be
+content to build.
+
+Close by, forming the main feature on one side of the city Square,
+stood a remarkably fine building, intended to serve as a palace of
+justice, but, like the monument in front of it, it was still
+unfinished. In the Transvaal there was as yet no counterpart to that
+most important clause in our own Magna Charta, which says "We will not
+sell justice to any man." Corruption and coercion were familiar forces
+alike in the making and the administration of its laws. In more senses
+than one the Transvaal Government had not yet opened its courts of
+justice. They mutely awaited the coming of the new _régime_.
+
+In one of the main streets leading out of the Square stood the
+President's private residence; a gift-house, so it is said, accepted
+by him as a recompense for favours received. Compared with the
+Residency at Bloemfontein it is a singularly unpretentious dwelling
+and was in keeping rather with the economic habits, than with the
+private wealth, or official status, of its chief occupant. British
+sentinels had already been posted all about the place, and on the
+verandah sat a British officer with a long row of mausers lying at his
+feet. There too, one on each side of the main entrance, crouched
+Kruger's famous marble lions, silently watching that day's novel
+proceedings. Not even the presence of those men in khaki, nor that sad
+array of surrendered rifles, sufficed to draw from those stony
+guardians of their master's home so much as a muffled growl. They are
+believed to be of British origin, and I suspect that, so far as their
+nature permits, they cherish British sympathies; for they certainly
+showed no signs of lamenting over the ignoble departure of their lord.
+All regardless of the griefs of his deserted lady, they still placidly
+licked their paws; and as I cast on them a parting glance they gave to
+me, or seemed to, a knowing wink!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria_
+
+Dopper Church Opposite President Kruger's House Built by the Late
+President.]
+
+Precisely opposite the Residency is the handsome Dopper Church,
+wherein the President regularly worshipped, and not infrequently
+himself ministered in holy things. The church is nearly new, and like
+much else in Pretoria is still unfinished. The four dials have indeed
+been duly placed on the four faces of the clock tower; but in that
+tower there is as yet no clock; and round those clock dials there move
+no clock hands. No wonder Pretoria with its dominant Dopper Church,
+and its still more decidedly dominant Dopper President, mistook the
+true hour of its destiny, and madly made war precisely when peace
+was easiest of attainment. Kruger, dim-eyed and old, lived face to
+face continually with clock dials that betokened no progress, but,
+merely mocked the enquiring gaze. Which thing, the Chelsea Sage would
+say, was symbolical and significant of much!
+
+[Sidenote: "_Resurgam._"]
+
+In the centre of the before-mentioned Square is the large and usually
+crowded Dutch Reformed Church, doomed long ago, we were told, to be
+removed because of its exceeding unsightliness. Throughout the
+Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the
+central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent
+influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master
+in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited
+to witness one of the most interesting events of the century--the
+proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it,
+as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately
+"march past" of the British troops.
+
+Facing me, on the side of the Square opposite to that occupied by the
+Palace of Justice, were the creditably designed Government Buildings,
+including the Raadsaal, which was surmounted by a golden figure of
+Liberty bearing in her hand a battle-axe and flag. On the forefront of
+the building in bold lettering there was graven the favourite
+Transvaal watchword,
+
+          EENDRACT MAAKT MAGT,
+
+which, being interpreted means, "Right makes Might"; and that motto,
+as every Britisher could see, precisely explained our presence there
+that day. Inside there still remained, in its accustomed place, the
+state chair of the departed President, in which, later on, I ventured
+to sit; and all around were ranged the, to me, eloquent seats of his
+departed senators. In that very hall, just nine months before, those
+senators, in secret session, had resolved to hurl defiance at the
+might of Britain; and so precipitated a war by which two sister
+Republics were, as such, hurried out of existence. Now the very
+corridors by which I approached that hall were crowded with Boers
+wearied with the fruitless fight, and eager to hand in their weapons.
+
+In the waiting crowd outside I found a friend who courteously supplied
+me with a copy of a quite unique photograph--the only photograph taken
+of the solemn burial, a few hundred yards from where I stood, of a
+Union Jack, when that flag was hauled down in the Transvaal, and the
+British troops ingloriously retired. As shown in the photograph, over
+the grave was erected a slab, and on that slab was this most notable
+inscription:--
+
+                IN MEMORY
+                    OF
+             THE BRITISH FLAG
+  in the Transvaal; which departed this life
+             August 2nd, 1881.
+               Aged 4 years.
+
+       In other lands none knew thee
+             But to love thee.
+
+                 RESURGAM.
+
+No such burial had the world seen before, and few bolder prophecies
+than that "_I shall rise again_," can be found in the history of any
+land; but a few minutes it became my memorable privilege to witness
+the actual fulfilment of that patriotic prediction. As in
+Johannesburg, so here, it was Lady Roberts' pocket edition of the
+Union Jack that was used; and we looked on excitedly; but the Statue
+of Liberty looked down benignly, while that tiny flag crept up nearer
+and nearer to its golden feet. Liberty has never anything to fear from
+the approach of that flag!
+
+While in Pretoria the following story was told me by the soldier to
+whom it chiefly refers:--
+
+[Sidenote: _A Striking Incident._]
+
+At the Orange River a corporal of the Yorkshire Light Infantry
+received a pocket copy of the New Testament from a Christian worker,
+and placed it in his tunic by the side of his "field dressing." A
+godless man, who had been driven into the army by heavy drinking, he
+merely glanced at a verse or two, and then forgot its very presence in
+his pocket till he reached the battlefield of Graspan a few days later
+on. Then a Boer bullet passed right through the Testament and the
+dressing that lay beside it, was thereby deflected from its otherwise
+fatal course, and finally made a long surface wound on his right
+thigh. That wound he at once bound up with one of his putties, but for
+two hours was unable to stir from the place where he fell.
+
+Then he managed to limp back to his battalion, and piteously begged
+his adjutant not to let his name be put down on the casualty list,
+for, said he, "my mother is in feeble health, and if she saw my name
+in the papers among the wounded she would worry herself almost to
+death, as years ago when she heard of my being hit in Tirah." That
+brave request was granted, and he remained in the ranks marching as
+one unwounded.
+
+Yet neither this Providential deliverance nor the terrors that soon
+followed at Modder River sufficed to lure to either prayer or praise
+this godless, but surely not graceless, corporal. On the 27th of
+August, however, which happened to be his thirtieth birthday, a devout
+sergeant had the joy of winning him to Christian decision; and that
+day, as he told me in Pretoria, he resolved to find out for himself
+whether after thirty years of misery the mercy of the Lord could
+provide for him thirty years of happiness.
+
+[Sidenote: _No canteens and no crime._]
+
+On board the _Nubia_, amid piles of literature put on board for the
+amusement of the troops during the voyage, I discovered a quantity of
+pamphlets entitled "Beer Cellars and Beer Sellers," the purpose of
+which was to prove that the beer sellers were England's most
+indispensable patriots; that the beer cellars were England's best
+citadels; and that the beer trade in general was the very backbone of
+England's stability. It was horribly tantalising to the men in face of
+such teaching to find that there had been placed on board for them not
+so much as a solitary barrel of this much belauded beverage. Through
+all the voyage every man remained perforce a total abstainer. Yet
+there was not a single death among those sixteen hundred, nor a
+solitary instance of serious sickness. What does Burton say to that?
+
+As at sea, so on land, the authorities seemed more afraid of the
+beloved beer barrel than of the bullets of the Boers; and for the most
+part no countersign sufficed to secure for it admittance to our camps.
+An occasional tot of rum was distributed among the men; but even that
+seemed to be rather to satisfy a sentiment than to serve any really
+useful purpose. At any rate, some of the men, like myself, tramped all
+the way to Koomati Poort, often in the worst of weather, without
+taking a single tot, and were none the worse for so refraining, but
+rather so much the better.
+
+The effect on the character of the men was still more remarkable; and
+while in Pretoria I was repeatedly assured that some who had been a
+perpetual worry to their officers in beer-ridden England, on the
+beerless veldt, or in the liquorless towns of the Transvaal, speedily
+took rank among the most reliable men in all their regiment. To my
+colleague, the Rev. W. Burgess, a major of the Yorkshires, said
+"Nineteen-twentieths of the crime in the British army is due to drink.
+As a proof I have been at this outpost with 150 men for six weeks,
+where we have absolutely no drink, and there have been only two minor
+cases brought before me. There is no insubordination whatever, and if
+you do away with drink you have in the British army an ideal army.
+Whether or not men can be made sober by Act of Parliament, clearly
+they can by martial law!"
+
+With the men so sober, with a field-marshal so God-fearing, the
+constant outrages ascribed to them by slander-loving Englishmen at
+home, become a moral impossibility; and to that fact, after we had
+been long in possession of Pretoria, the principal minister of the
+Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal bore ready witness in the
+following letter sent by him to the Military Governor of Pretoria:--
+
+     Not a single instance of criminal assault or rape by
+     non-commissioned officers or men of the British army on Boer
+     women has come to my knowledge. I have asked several gentlemen
+     and their testimony is the same.... The discipline and general
+     moral conduct of His Majesty's troops in Pretoria is, under the
+     circumstances, better than I ever expected it would or could be.
+     There have certainly been cases of immoral conduct, but in no
+     single instance, so far as I know, has force been used. They only
+     go where they are invited and where they are welcome.
+
+                                   (Signed) H. S. BOSMAN.
+
+When such is the testimony of our adversaries, we need not hesitate to
+accept the similar tribute paid by Sir Redvers Buller to his army of
+abstainers in Natal:--"I am filled with admiration for the British
+soldiers," said he; "really the manner in which they have worked,
+fought, and endured during the last fortnight has been something more
+than human. Broiled in a burning sun by day, drenched in rain by
+night, lying but three hundred yards off an enemy, who shoots you if
+you show so much as a finger, they could hardly eat or drink by day;
+and as they were usually attacked by night, they got but little sleep;
+yet through it all they were as cheery and as willing as could be."
+
+Men so devoted when on duty, don't transform themselves, the drink
+being absent, into incarnate demons when off duty; and no dominion,
+therefore, has more cause to be proud of its defenders than our own!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS
+
+
+Pretoria is manifestly a city in process of being made, and has
+probably in store a magnificent future, though at present the shanty
+and the palace stand "cheek by jowl." Even the main roads leading into
+the town seemed atrociously bad as judged by English standards, and
+the paving of the principal streets was of a correspondingly perilous
+type. Yet the public buildings already referred to were not the only
+ones that claimed our commendation as signs of a progressive spirit.
+The Government Printing Works are remarkably handsome and complete;
+and while for educational purposes there is in Pretoria nothing quite
+comparable to Grey College at Bloemfontein, the secondary education of
+the late Republic's metropolis was well housed.
+
+[Sidenote: _The State's Model School._]
+
+There is, however, one building provided for that purpose which has
+acquired an enduring interest of quite another kind, and which I
+visited, when it became a hospital, with very mingled emotions. The
+State's Model School, during the early stages of the war, was utilised
+as a prison for the British officers captured by the Boers. How keenly
+these brave men felt and secretly resented their ill-fortune they were
+too proud to tell, but one of the noblest of them had become,
+through the terrors of a disastrous fight, so piteously demented for a
+while that he actually wore hanging from his neck a piece of cardboard
+announcing that it was he who lost the guns at Colenso. Some of them
+would rather have lost their lives than in such fashion have lost
+their liberty, and the story which tells how three of them regained
+that liberty by escaping from this very prison is one of the most
+thrilling among all the records of the war. Most noted of the three is
+Winston Churchill, whose own graphic pen has told how he eluded the
+most vigilant search and finally reached the sea. But the adventures
+of Captain Haldane and his non-commissioned companion reveal yet more
+of daring and endurance. Captured at the same time as Churchill, and
+through the same cause--the disaster on November 13th to the armoured
+train at Chieveley--these two effected their escape long after the hue
+and cry on the heels of Churchill had died away. Within what was
+supposed to be a day or two of the removal of all the officers to a
+more secure "birdcage" outside the town, those two gentlemen vanished
+under the floor of their room, through a kind of tiny trap-door that I
+have often seen, but which was then partly concealed by a bed, and was
+apparently never noticed by their Boer custodians. In this prison
+beneath a prison, damp and dark and dismal beyond all describing, and
+where there was no room to stand erect, these two officers found
+themselves doomed to dwell, not for days merely, but for weeks. They
+were of course hunted for high and low, and sought in every
+conceivable place except the right place. Food was guardedly passed
+down to them by two or three brother officers who shared their secret,
+and at last, more dead than alive, they emerged from their dungeon the
+moment they discovered the building was deserted, and then daringly
+faced the almost hopeless, yet successful, endeavour to smuggle
+themselves to far-distant Delagoa Bay. Evidently the element of
+romance has not yet died out of this prosaic age!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer._]
+
+Strangely sharing the fate of these British prisoners in this Model
+School was a godly and gifted minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. A
+Boer among Boers. He was never told why he was arrested by his brother
+Boers, and though kept under lock and key for months, he was never
+introduced to judge or jury. An advocate of peace, he was suspected of
+British leanings, and so almost before the war commenced rough hands
+were laid upon him. There was in the Transvaal a reign of terror.
+Secret service men were everywhere, and no one's reputation was safe,
+no one's position secure. In this land of newly-discovered gold men
+were driven to discover that the most golden thing of all was discreet
+silence on the part of those who differed from "the powers that be."
+So he who simply sought to avert war was suspected of British
+sympathies, and to his unutterable surprise presently found himself
+the fellow prisoner of many a still more unfortunate British officer.
+
+Of those officers, their character and intellectual attainments, he
+speaks in terms of highest praise. Their enforced leisure they
+devoted to various artistic and intellectual pursuits, and I have
+myself seen an admirably elaborate and accurate map of the Republics,
+covering the whole of a large classroom wall, drawn presumably from
+joint memory by these officers, who by its aid were able to trace the
+progress of the war as tidings filtered through to them by an
+ingenious system of signalling practised by sympathetic friends
+outside.
+
+By those same officers this Dutchman was invited to become their
+unofficial chaplain, and he writes of the devotional services
+consequently arranged as among the chief delights of his life, the
+favourite hymn he says being the following:--
+
+          Holy Father, in Thy mercy
+          Hear our anxious prayer.
+          Keep our loved ones, now far absent,
+                  'Neath Thy care.
+
+          Jesus, Saviour, let Thy presence
+          Be their light and pride.
+          Keep, Oh keep them, in their weakness,
+                  Near Thy side.
+
+          Holy Spirit, let Thy teaching
+          Sanctify their life.
+          Send Thy grace that they may conquer
+                  In all strife.
+
+It was to this much respected and much reviled predikant a Pretorian
+high official said: "We were determined to let it drift to a rupture
+with England, for then our dream would be realised of a Republic
+reaching to Table Mountain"; but surely such a song and such a scene
+in the State's Model School was a thing of which no man dreamed!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Waterfall prisoners._]
+
+The private soldiers who like these, their officers, had become
+prisoners of war, were for greater security removed from their
+racecourse camp to a huge prison-pen at the Waterfall, some ten or
+twelve miles up the Pietersburg line. They numbered in all about three
+thousand eight hundred, and for a while fared badly at their captors'
+hands. But ultimately a small committee was formed in Pretoria and
+£5000 subscribed, to be spent in mitigating their lot and ministering
+in many ways to their comfort. In these ministrations of mercy the
+Wesleyan minister, whose grateful guest I for a while became, as
+afterwards of the genial host and hostess at the Silverton Mission
+Parsonage, took a prominent and much appreciated part as the following
+letter abundantly proves:--
+
+  To the Rev. F. W. MACDONALD,
+  President, Wesleyan Church, London.
+
+                                        PRETORIA, _4th July 1900_.
+
+     SIR,--As chairman of a committee formed in January last for the
+     purpose of assisting the British prisoners of war, I have been
+     requested to bring officially to your notice the splendid work
+     done by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin. From my position I have been
+     thrown into intimate relationship with Mr Goodwin, and it is a
+     great pleasure to me to testify to his invaluable services. I am
+     not a member of your church, nor are my colleagues, but there is
+     a unanimous desire among the British subjects that were permitted
+     to remain in Pretoria, and who are therefore cognisant of Mr
+     Goodwin's work, to place his record before you. It is our united
+     hope that Mr Goodwin will receive some substantial mark of
+     appreciation from the Church of which he is so fine a
+     representative. I know of none finer in the highest sense in the
+     Church which knows no distinction of forms or creeds.--I have the
+     honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
+
+                                        (Sd.)  J. LEIGH WOOD.
+
+On my arrival in Pretoria Mr Goodwin was at my request at once
+appointed as Acting Army Chaplain, and shortly after received the
+following most gratifying communication:--
+
+                                        BRITISH AGENCY,
+                                        PRETORIA, _9th June 1900_.
+
+     DEAR SIR,--If you could kindly call on Lord Roberts some time
+     to-day or to-morrow, it would give him great pleasure to meet one
+     who has done so much for our prisoners of war.--Yours faithfully,
+
+                                        (Sd.)  H. V. CONAN,
+               The Rev. Goodwin.       _Lt.-Col., Mil. Sec._
+
+When Mr Goodwin accordingly called nothing could well exceed the
+warmth of the welcome and of the thanks the field-marshal graciously
+accorded him.
+
+Among the prisoners at the Waterfall was a well-known Wesleyan
+sergeant of the 18th Hussars, who rallied around him all such as were
+of a devout spirit and became the recognised leader of the religious
+life of the prison camp. I therefore requested him to supply me with a
+brief statement of what in this respect had been done by the prisoners
+for the prisoners. He accordingly sent me the following letter:--
+
+                                        PRETORIA, _7th July 1900_.
+
+     REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,--Long before you asked me to write an
+     account of the Christian work which was carried on from the 22nd
+     of October 1899 to the 6th of June 1900, among the British
+     prisoners of war at the Pretoria Racecourse, and afterwards at
+     Waterfall, it had occurred to me that for the encouragement of
+     other Christian workers particularly, and the members of the
+     Church of Christ generally, some record should be made of the
+     wonderful way in which God blessed us, and it is with the
+     greatest pleasure that I accede to your request.
+
+     I was one of the 160 who were taken prisoners after the battle of
+     Talana Hill (Dundee), and a few days after arriving at our
+     destination (Pretoria Racecourse) we heard some of our guard
+     singing psalms and we immediately decided to ask the commandant
+     for a tent for devotional purposes. It was given, and after the
+     first few nights, till we were released by our own forces seven
+     months afterwards, it was filled to overflowing nightly. On our
+     being removed to Waterfall, we enlarged our tent to three times
+     its original size, and later on we begged building material from
+     the commandant, and built a very nice hall with a platform and
+     seating accommodation for over 240. At last this became too small
+     and we went into the open air twice a week, when no less than 500
+     to 700 congregated to hear the old, old story of Jesus and His
+     love.
+
+     When we asked for the small tent we had no idea of the work
+     growing as it did. We used to meet together every night, a simple
+     gathering together of God's children, four in number, which
+     increased to one hundred, with the Lord Himself as teacher. Then
+     our comrades began to attend and we commenced to hold
+     evangelistic services, which were continued to the end.
+
+     When we got to Waterfall we started a Bible-class and a prayer
+     meeting, held alternately. The work was helped a great deal by
+     other Christian brothers, without whose services, co-operation,
+     fellowship and sympathy the work could hardly have been continued
+     for any length of time. But, after all, speaking after the manner
+     of men, our dear friend and pastor, the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, was
+     the one who really enabled us to carry on the work. As the
+     transport and commissariat are to any army, so Mr Goodwin was to
+     us.
+
+     On our application, the Boer Government consented to allow the
+     ministers of the various churches in Pretoria to visit us once a
+     month for the purpose of conducting divine service. Of course
+     such a privilege as this was greatly appreciated by the men, and
+     one cannot help wondering why such restrictions were placed upon
+     the ministers.
+
+     We had many cherished plans and bright hopes with regard to the
+     war, and when we were captured we found it hard to recognise the
+     ordering of the Lord in our new conditions and unaccustomed
+     circumstances; but we were taught some grand lessons, and we soon
+     found that even imprisonment has its compensations; and we have
+     to confess that His Presence makes the prison a palace. I have
+     heard many thank God for bringing them to Waterfall gaol.
+
+     During the months we spent together we realised that God was
+     blessing us in a most remarkable manner, and we may truly say
+     that our fellowship was with the Father and with His Son Jesus
+     Christ. Many backsliders were taught the folly of remaining away
+     from the Father, and many were turned from darkness unto light.
+     To Him be the glory.
+
+     On hearing of the near approach of our deliverers, and knowing
+     that soon we should all part, we had a farewell meeting and many
+     promised to write to me.
+
+     I received a number of letters ere we actually parted, but with
+     the injunction "not to be opened till separated," and from these
+     I intend making a few extracts which lead me like the Psalmist to
+     say "Because Thou hast been my help therefore in the shadow of
+     Thy wings will I rejoice."
+
+Of the extracts to which the sergeant refers it is impossible to give
+here more than a few brief samples; but even these may suffice to
+prove that our soldiers are by no means all, or mostly, sons of
+Belial, as their recent slanderers would have us believe.
+
+_A Bombardier_ of the 10th Mountain Battery writes--"I was brought to
+God on the 4th of February. I had often stood outside the tent and
+listened to the services, and one evening I went into the
+after-meeting and came away without Christ; but God was striving with
+me, and a few nights afterwards I realised that I was a hell-deserving
+sinner, and I cried unto God and He heard me; and that night I came
+away with Christ."
+
+_A Sergeant-major_ of Roberts' Horse says--"I am indeed grateful to
+God for the loving-kindness He has bestowed on me since my coming
+here as a prisoner of war. The meetings have been a great success and
+of the most orderly character."
+
+_A Sergeant_ of the Royal Irish Rifles adds--"Thanks be unto God, He
+opened my eyes on the night of the 21st of January 1900; and He has
+kept me ever since."
+
+_A Corporal_ of the Wilts, after telling of his capture at Rensberg,
+and his arrival at Waterfall, goes on to say--"I heard about the
+Gospel Tent from one of the Boer sentries, and I cannot express the
+happy feelings that passed through me when I saw the Christian band
+gathered together with one accord."
+
+_A Private_ of the Glosters relates the story of his own conversion,
+and then proceeds to say he shall never forget the meetings which were
+conducted by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, especially the one in which he
+administered to them the blessed Sacrament. It was a Pentecostal time,
+and it pleased the Lord to add unto them eight souls that same night,
+and six the night following.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Soldier's Hymn._]
+
+As the day of release drew near with all its inevitable excitement and
+unrest, certain British officers, themselves prisoners, were requested
+by the Boers to reside among these men at the Waterfall to ensure to
+the very last the maintenance of discipline; and the sanction of the
+Baptist minister who once conducted their parade service was sought by
+them for the singing of the following most touchingly appropriate
+hymn:--
+
+          Lord a nation humbly kneeling
+          For her soldiers cries to Thee;
+          Strong in faith and hope, appealing
+          That triumphant they may be.
+                Waking, sleeping,
+                'Neath Thy keeping,
+          Lead our troops to victory.
+
+          Of our sins we make confession,
+          Wealth and arrogance and pride;
+          But our hosts, against oppression,
+          March with Freedom's flowing tide.
+                Father, speed them,
+                Keep them, lead them,
+          God of armies, be their guide.
+
+          Man of Sorrows! Thou hast sounded
+          Every depth of human grief.
+          By Thy wounds, Oh, heal our wounded.
+          Give the fever's fire relief.
+                Hear us crying
+                For our dying,
+          Of consolers be Thou chief.
+
+          Take the souls that die for duty
+          In Thy tender pierced hand;
+          Crown the faulty lives with beauty,
+          Offered for their Fatherland.
+                All forgiving,
+                With the living
+          May they in Thy kingdom stand.
+
+          And if Victory should crown us,
+          May we take it as from Thee
+          As Thy nation deign to own us;
+          Merciful and strong and free.
+                Endless praising
+                To Thee raising,
+          Ever Thine may England be!
+
+Say their critics what they may, soldiers who compose such songs, and
+pen such testimonies, and conduct such services among themselves,
+seem scarcely the sort to "let hell loose in South Africa!"
+
+[Sidenote: _A big supper party._]
+
+Of the prisoners of war thus long detained in durance vile nearly a
+thousand were decoyed into a special train the night before the
+Guards' Brigade reached Pretoria. These deluded captives in their
+simplicity supposed they were being taken into the town to be there
+set at liberty; but instead of that they were hurried by, and, with
+the panic-stricken Boers, away and yet away, into their remotest
+eastern fastnesses, there presumably to be retained as long as
+possible as a sort of guarantee that the vastly larger number of Boers
+we held prisoners should be still generously treated by us. They might
+also prove useful in many ways if terms of peace came to be
+negotiated. So vanished for months their visions of speedy freedom!
+
+The rest who still remained within the prison fence, and were, of
+course, still unarmed, three days later were cruelly and treacherously
+shelled by a Boer commando on a distant hill. The Boer guards detailed
+for duty at the prison had deserted their posts, and under the cover
+of the white flag, gone into Pretoria to surrender. Our men,
+therefore, who were practically free, awaiting orders, when thus
+unceremoniously shelled, at once stampeded; and late on Thursday night
+about nine hundred of them, footsore and famished, arrived at Mr
+Goodwin's house seeking shelter. He was apparently the only friend
+they knew in Pretoria, and to have a friend yet not to use him is, of
+course, absurd! So to his door they came in crowds, dragging with
+them the Boer Maxim gun, by which they had so long been overawed.
+While tea and coffee for all this host were being hurriedly prepared
+by their slightly embarrassed host, I sought permission from a staff
+officer to house the men for the night in our Wesleyan schoolrooms,
+and in the huge Caledonian Hall adjoining, which was at once
+commandeered for the purpose. I also requested that a supply of
+rations might at utmost speed be provided for them. Accordingly, not
+long before midnight a waggon arrived bringing by some fortunate
+misreading of my information, provisions, not for nine hundred hungry
+men, but for the whole three thousand prisoners whom we were supposed
+to have welcomed as our guests. It may seem incredible, but men who at
+that late hour had fallen fast asleep upon the floor, at the sound of
+that waggon's wheels suddenly awoke; and still more wonderful to tell,
+when morning came those nine hundred men, of the rations for three
+thousand, had left untouched only a few paltry boxes of biscuits. A
+hospital patient recently recovered from fever once said to me, "I
+haven't an appetite for two, sir; I have an appetite for ten!" And
+these released prisoners had evidently for that particular occasion
+borrowed the appetite of that particular patient!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' Home._]
+
+The Caledonian Hall above referred to is a specially commodious
+building, and could not have been more admirably adapted for use as a
+Soldiers' Home if expressly erected for that purpose. It was
+accordingly commandeered by the military governor to be so used, and
+for months it was the most popular establishment in town or camp. At
+Johannesburg a Wesleyan and an Anglican Home were opened, both
+rendering excellent service; but as this was run on undenominational
+lines, it was left without a rival. It is a most powerful sign of the
+times that our military chiefs now unhesitatingly interest themselves
+in the moral and spiritual welfare of the men under their command.
+Some time before this Boer war commenced, on April 28, 1898, there was
+issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army a memorandum
+which would have done no discredit to the Religious Tract Society if
+published as one of their multitudinous leaflets. A copy was supplied
+presumably to every soldier sent to Africa; and the first few
+sentences which refer to what may happily be regarded as steadily
+diminishing evils, read as follows:--
+
+     It will be the duty of company officers to point out to the men
+     under their control, and particularly to young soldiers, the
+
+          _disastrous effect of giving way_
+
+     to habits of intemperance and immorality. The excessive use of
+     intoxicating liquors unfits the soldier for active work, blunts
+     his intelligence, and is a fruitful source of military crime. The
+     man who leads a vicious life
+
+          _enfeebles his constitution_
+
+     and exposes himself to the risk of contracting a disease of a
+     kind which has of late made terrible ravages in the British army.
+     Many men spend a great deal of the short time of their service in
+     the military hospitals, the wards of which are crowded with
+     patients, a large number of whom are permanently disfigured and
+     incapacitated from earning a livelihood in or out of the army.
+     Men tainted with this disease are
+
+          _useless while in the army_
+
+     and a burden to their friends after they have left it. Even those
+     who do not altogether break down are unfit for service in the
+     field, and would certainly be a source of weakness to their
+     regiments, and a discredit to their comrades if employed in war.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria_
+
+Soldiers' Home at Pretoria.]
+
+As one of the most effectual ways of combating these evils, and of
+providing an answer to the oft-repeated prayer, "Lead us not into
+temptation," Soldiers' Homes are now being so freely multiplied, that
+the Wesleyan Church has itself established over thirty, at a total
+cost of more than £50,000.
+
+[Sidenote: _Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe._]
+
+Some of those engaged in similar Christian work among the soldiers
+were gentlemen of ample private means who defrayed all their own
+expenses. Mr Anderson was thus attached to the Northumberland
+Fusiliers, and soon became a power for good among them. Mr and Mrs
+Osborn Howe did a really remarkable work in providing Soldiers' Homes,
+which followed the men from place to place over almost the entire
+field covered by our military operations, including Pretoria, and
+though they received quite a long list of subscriptions their own
+private resources have for years been freely placed at the Master's
+service, whether for work among soldiers or civilians.
+
+When late on in the campaign it was intimated by certain officials
+that Lord Kitchener was not in sympathy with such work and would not
+grant such facilities for its prosecution as Lord Roberts had done, Mr
+Osborn Howe received the following reply to a letter of enquiry on
+that point:--
+
+[Sidenote: _A letter from Lord Kitchener._]
+
+     I am directed by Lord Kitchener to acknowledge the receipt of
+     your letter of January 3rd. His Lordship much regrets that you
+     should have been led to imagine that his attitude towards your
+     work differs from that of Lord Roberts, and I am to inform you
+     that so far from that being the case, he is very deeply impressed
+     by the value of your work, and hopes that it may long continue
+     and increase.
+
+          Yours faithfully,
+                              (Signed)  W. H. CONGREVE, Major,
+                                        _Private Secretary_.
+
+Still more notable in this same connection is the fact that soon after
+Lord Roberts reached Cape Town to take supreme command, he caused to
+be issued the following most remarkable letter, which certainly marks
+a new departure in the usages of modern warfare, and carries us back
+in thought and spirit to the camps of Cromwell and his psalm-singing
+Ironsides, or to the times when Scotland's Covenanters were busy
+guarding for us the religious light and liberty which are to-day our
+goodliest heritage.
+
+[Sidenote: _Also from Lord Roberts._]
+
+                                        ARMY HEADQUARTERS, CAPE TOWN,
+                                             _January 23rd_.
+
+     DEAR SIR,--I am desired by Lord Roberts to ask you to be so kind
+     as to distribute to all ranks under your command the "Short
+     Prayer for the use of Soldiers in the Field," by the Primate of
+     Ireland, copies of which I now forward. His Lordship earnestly
+     hopes that it may be helpful to all of Her Majesty's soldiers who
+     are now serving in South Africa.
+
+          Yours faithfully,
+                              (Signed) NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, Colonel,
+                                        _Private Secretary_.
+
+     To the Commanding Officer.
+
+
+                         *The Prayer.*
+
+     ALMIGHTY FATHER, I have often sinned against Thee. O wash me in
+     the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Fill me with Thy Holy
+     Spirit, that I may lead a new life. Spare me to see again those
+     whom I love at home, or fit me for Thy presence in peace.
+
+     Strengthen us to quit ourselves like men in our right and just
+     cause. Keep us faithful unto death, calm in danger, patient in
+     suffering, merciful as well as brave, true to our Queen, our
+     country, and our colours.
+
+     If it be Thy will, enable us to win victory for England, and
+     above all grant us the better victory over temptation and sin,
+     over life and death, that we may be more than conquerors through
+     Him who loved us, and laid down His life for us, Jesus our
+     Saviour, the Captain of the Army of God. Amen.
+
+The general who officially invited all his troops to use such a prayer
+could not fail to prove a warm friend and patron of Soldiers' Homes;
+and to the Pretoria Home he came, not merely formally to declare it
+open, but to attend one of the many concerts given there, thus
+encouraging by his example both the workers and those for whom they
+worked. A supremely busy and burdened man, _that_ he made a part of
+his business; and surely he was wise, for one sober soldier is any day
+worth more than a dozen drunken ones.
+
+The general who thus deliberately encouraged his troops to live
+devoutly, instead of being deemed by them on that account unsoldierly
+or fanatic, secured such a place in their confidence and affection as
+few even of the most magnetic leaders among men ever managed to
+obtain. The pet name by which they always spoke of him implied no
+approach to unseemly familiarity, but betokened the same kind of
+attachment as the veteran hosts of Napoleon the Great intended to
+express when they admiringly called their dread master "The Little
+Corporal." He amply justified their confidence in him, and they amply
+justified his confidence in them; and so on resigning his command in
+South Africa he spoke of these "my comrades," as he called them, in
+terms as gratifying as they are uncommon:--
+
+     I am very proud that I am able to record, with the most absolute
+     truth, that the conduct of this army from first to last has been
+     exemplary. Not one single case of serious crime has been brought
+     to my notice--indeed, nothing that deserves the name of _crime_.
+     There has been no necessity for appeals or orders to the men to
+     behave properly. I have trusted implicitly to their own soldierly
+     feeling and good sense, and I have not trusted in vain. They bore
+     themselves like heroes on the battlefield, and like gentlemen on
+     all other occasions.
+
+[Sidenote: _A song in praise of De Wet._]
+
+Lord Lytton tells us that in the days of Edward the Confessor the rage
+for psalm singing was at its height in England so that sacred song
+excluded almost every other description of vocal music: but though in
+South Africa a similar trend revealed itself among the troops, their
+camp fire concerts, and the concerts in the Pretoria Soldiers' Home,
+were of an exclusively secular type. At one which it was my privilege
+to attend, Lady Roberts and her daughters were present as well as the
+general, who generously arranged for a cigar to be given to every man
+in the densely crowded hall when the concert closed. All the songs
+were by members of the general's staff, and were excellent; but one,
+composed presumably by the singer, was topical and sensational in a
+high degree. It was entitled: "Long as the world goes round"; and one
+verse assured us concerning "Brother Boer," with only too near an
+approach to truth,
+
+          He'll bury his mauser,
+          And break all his vows, sir,
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+Another verse reminded us of a still more melancholy fact which yet
+awakened no little mirth. It was in praise of De Wet, who in spite of
+his blue spectacles, seemed by far the most clear-sighted of all the
+Boer generals, and who, notwithstanding his illiteracy, was beyond all
+others well versed in the bewildering ways of the veldt. He apparently
+had no skill for the conducting of set battles, but for ambushing
+convoys, for capturing isolated detachments, for wrecking trains, and
+for himself eluding capture when fairly ringed round with keen
+pursuers beyond all counting, few could rival him. Like hunted
+Hereward, he seemed able to escape through a rat hole, and by his
+persistence in guerilla tactics not only seriously prolonged the war
+and enormously increased its cost, but also went far to make the
+desolation of his pet Republic complete. So there Lord Roberts sat and
+heard this sung by one of his staff:--
+
+          Of all the Boers we have come across yet,
+          None can compare with this Christian De Wet;
+          For him we seem quite unable to get--
+                  (Though Hildyard and Broadwood,
+                  And our Soudanese Lord _should_)--
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+They _should_ have got him, and they would have got him, if they
+could; but when Lord Roberts, long months after, set sail for home, he
+left De Wet still in the saddle. Then Kitchener, our Soudanese Lord,
+took up the running, and called on the Guards to aid him, but even
+they proved unequal to the hopeless task. "One pair of heels," they
+said, "can never overtake two pair of hoofs." Then our picked mounted
+men monopolised the "tally-ho" to little better purpose. De Wet's guns
+were captured, his convoys cut off, but him no man caught, and
+possibly to this very day he is still complacently humming "Tommies
+may come and Tommies may go, but I trot on for ever."
+
+[Sidenote: _Cordua and his Conspiracy._]
+
+The last verse of this sensational song had reference to yet another
+celebrity, but of a far more unsatisfactory type. All the earlier part
+of that Thursday I had spent in the second Raadsaal, attending a
+court-martial on one of our prisoners of war, Lieutenant Hans Cordua,
+late of the Transvaal State Artillery, who, having surrendered, was
+suffered to be at large on parole. In my presence he pleaded guilty,
+first to having broken his parole in violation of his solemn oath;
+secondly, to having attempted to break through the British lines
+disguised in British khaki, in order to communicate treasonably with
+Botha; and thirdly, to having conspired with sundry others to set fire
+to a certain portion of Pretoria with a view to facilitating a
+simultaneous attempt to kidnap Lord Roberts and all his staff. Cordua
+was with difficulty persuaded to withdraw the plea of guilty, so that
+he might have the benefit of any possible flaw his counsel could
+detect in the evidence; but in the end the death sentence was
+pronounced, confirmed, and duly executed in the garden of Pretoria
+Gaol on August 24th. It was from that court-martial I came to the
+Soldiers' Home Concert, sat close behind Lord Roberts, and listened to
+this song:--
+
+          Though the Boer some say is a practised thief,
+          Yet it certainly beggars all belief,
+          That he slimly should try _to steal our Chief_.
+          But no Hollander mobs
+          Shall kidnap our Bobs
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+[Sidenote: _Hospital Work in Pretoria._]
+
+Historians tell us that the hospital arrangements in some of our
+former wars were by no means free from fault. Hence Steevens in his
+"Crimean Campaign" asserts that while the camp hospitals absolutely
+lacked not only candles, but medicines, wooden legs were supplied to
+them from England so freely that there were finally four such legs for
+every man in hospital. Clearly those wooden legs were consigned by
+wooden heads. Even in this much better managed war the fever epidemic
+at Bloemfontein, combined with a month of almost incessant rain,
+overtaxed for a while, as we have seen, the resources and strength and
+organizing skill of a most willing and fairly competent medical staff.
+
+But Pretoria was plagued with no corresponding epidemic, and possessed
+incomparably ampler supplies, which were drawn on without stint. In
+addition to the Welsh, the Yeomanry, and other canvas hospitals
+planted in the suburbs, the splendid Palace of Justice was
+requisitioned for the use of the Irish hospital, which, like several
+others, was fitted out and furnished by private munificence. The
+principal school buildings were also placed at the disposal of the
+medical authorities, and were promptly made serviceable with whatever
+requisites the town could supply. To find suitable bedding, however,
+for so vast a number of patients was a specially difficult task. All
+the rugs and tablecloths the stores of the town contained were
+requisitioned for this purpose; green baize and crimson baize, repp
+curtains and plush, anything, everything remotely suitable, was
+claimed and cut up to serve as quilts and counterpanes, with the
+result that the beds looked picturesquely, if not grotesquely, gay.
+One ward, into which I walked, was playfully called "The Menagerie" by
+the men that occupied it, for on every bed was a showy rug, and on the
+face of every rug was woven the figure of some fearsome beast, Bengal
+tigers and British lions being predominant. It was in appearance a
+veritable lion's den, where our men dwelt in peace like so many modern
+Daniels, and found not harm but health and healing there.
+
+[Sidenote: _The wear and tear of War._]
+
+In this campaign the loss of life and vigour caused by sickness was
+enormously larger than that accounted for by bullet wounds and
+bayonets. At the Orange River, just before the Guards set out on their
+long march, thirty Grenadier officers stretched their legs under their
+genial colonel's "mahogany," which consisted of rough planks supported
+on biscuit boxes. Of those only nine were still with us when we
+reached Pretoria, and of the nine several had been temporarily
+disabled by sickness or wounds. The battalion at starting was about a
+thousand strong, and afterwards received various drafts amounting to
+about four hundred more; but only eight hundred marched into Pretoria.
+The Scots Guards, however, were so singularly fortunate as not to lose
+a single officer during the whole campaign.
+
+The non-combatants in this respect were scarcely less unfortunate than
+the bulk of their fighting comrades. A band of workers in the service
+of the Soldiers' Christian Association set out together from London
+for South Africa. There were six of them, but before the campaign was
+really half over only one still remained at his post. My faithful
+friend and helper, whom I left as army scripture reader at Orange
+River, after some months of devoted work was compelled to hasten home.
+A similar fate befell my Canadian, my Welsh, and one of my Australian
+colleagues. The highly esteemed Anglican chaplain to the Guards, who
+steadily tramped with them all the way to Pretoria and well earned his
+D.S.O., was forbidden by his medical advisers to proceed any further,
+and his successor, Canon Knox Little, whose praise as a preacher is in
+all the churches, found on reaching Koomati Poort that his strength
+was being overstrained, and so at once returned to the sacred duties
+of his English Canonry. Thus to many a non-combatant the medical staff
+was called to minister, and the veldt to provide a grave.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Nursing Sisters._]
+
+The presence of skilled lady-nurses in these Hospitals was of immense
+service, not merely as an aid to healing, but also as a refining and
+restraining influence among the men. In this direction they habitually
+achieved what even the appearing of a chaplain did not invariably
+suffice to accomplish. It was the cheering experience of Florence
+Nightingale repeated on a yet wider scale. In her army days oaths were
+greatly in fashion. The expletives of one of even the Crimean
+_generals_ became the jest of the camp; and when later in his career
+he took over the Aldershot Command, it was laughingly said "he _swore_
+himself in"; which doubtless he did in a double sense. Yet men trained
+in habits so evil when they came into the Scutari Hospital ceased to
+swear and forgot to grumble. Said "The Lady with the Lamp," "Never
+came from one of them any word, or any look, which a gentleman would
+not have used, and the tears came into my eyes as I think how amid
+scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the
+innate dignity, gentleness and chivalry of the men."
+
+Now as then there are other ministries than those of the pulpit; and
+hospitals in which such influences exert themselves, may well prove,
+in more directions than one, veritable "Houses of Healing."
+
+[Sidenote: _A Surprise Packet._]
+
+As illustrating how gratefully these men appreciate any slightest
+manifestation of interest in their welfare, mention may here be made
+of what I regard as the crowning surprise of my life. At the close of
+an open air parade service in Pretoria a sergeant of the Grenadiers
+stepped forward, and in the name of the non-commissioned officers and
+men of that battalion presented to me, in token of their goodwill, a
+silver pencil case and a gold watch. I could but reply that the
+goodwill of my comrades was to me beyond all price, and that this
+golden manifestation of it, this gift coming from such a source, I
+should treasure as a victorious fighting man would treasure a V.C.
+
+[Sidenote: _Soldierly Gratitude._]
+
+The kindnesses lavished on our soldiers, as far as circumstances would
+permit, throughout the whole course of this campaign, by civilian
+friends at home, in the Colonies, and in the conquered territories,
+defy all counting and all description. In some cases, indeed, valuable
+consignments intended for their comfort seem never to have reached
+their destination, but the knowledge that they were thus thought of
+and cared for had upon the men an immeasurable influence for good.
+Later on, even the people of Delagoa Bay sent a handsome Christmas
+hamper to every blockhouse between the frontier and Barberton, while
+at the same time the King of Portugal presented a superb white buck,
+wearing a suitably inscribed silver collar, to the Cornwalls who were
+doing garrison duty at Koomati Poort. But in Pretoria, where among
+other considerations my Wesleyan friends regularly provided a Saturday
+"Pleasant Hour," the soldiers in return invited the whole congregation
+to a "social," on which they lavished many a pound, and which they
+made a brilliant success. It was a startling instance of soldierly
+gratitude; and illustrates excellently the friendly attitude of the
+military and of the local civilians towards each other.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Ladysmith Lyre._]
+
+It sometimes happened among these much enduring men that the greater
+their misery the greater their mirth. Thus our captured officers,
+close guarded in the Pretoria Model School, and carefully cut off from
+all the news of the day, amused themselves by framing parodies on the
+absurd military intelligence published in the local Boer papers;
+whereof let the following verse serve as a sample:--
+
+          Twelve thousand British were laid low;
+          One Boer was wounded in the toe.
+          Such is the news we get to know
+                                  In prison.
+
+About this time there came into my hands a sample copy of _The
+Ladysmith Lyre_; but clearly though the last word in its title was
+perfectly correct as a matter of pronunciation the spelling was
+obviously inaccurate. It was a merry invention of news during the
+siege by men who were hemmed in from all other news; and so the
+grosser the falseness the greater the fun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In my own particular copy I found the following dialogue between two
+Irish soldiers:--
+
+First Private--"The captain told me to keep away from the enemy's
+foire!"
+
+Second Private--"What did you tell the Captain?"
+
+First Private--"I told him the Boers were so busy shelling they hadn't
+made any foire!"
+
+That is scarcely a brilliant jest; but then it was begotten amid the
+agonies of the siege.
+
+One of the poems published in this same copy of _The Ladysmith Lyre_
+has in it more of melancholy than of mirth. It tells of the hope
+deferred that maketh the heart sick; and gives us a more vivid idea
+than anything else yet printed of the secret distress of the men who
+saved Natal--a distress which we also shared. It is entitled--
+
+  "AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE."
+
+  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
+  Over all the quaint and curious yarns we've heard about the war,
+  Suddenly there came a rumour--(we can always take a few more)
+  Started by some chap who knows more than--the others knew before--
+  "We shall see the reinforcements in another--month or more!"
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  But we're waiting still for Clery, waiting, waiting, sick and weary
+  Of the strange and silly rumours we have often heard before.
+  And we now begin to fancy there's a touch of necromancy,
+  Something almost too uncanny, in the unregenerate Boer--
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  Though our hopes are undiminished that the war will soon be finished,
+  We would be a little happier if we knew a little more.
+  If we had a little fuller information about Buller;
+  News about Sir Redvers Buller, and his famous Army Corps;
+  Information of the General and his fighting Army Corps.
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  And the midnight shells uncertain, whistling through the night's
+       black curtain,
+  Thrill us, fill us with a touch of horror never felt before.
+  So to still the beating of our hearts, we kept repeating
+  "Some late visitor entreating entrance at the chamber door,
+                            This it is; and nothing more!"
+
+  Oh how slow the shells come dropping, sometimes bursting, sometimes
+       stopping,
+  As though themselves were weary of this very languid war.
+  How distinctly we'll remember all the weary dull November;
+  And it seems as if December will have little else in store;
+  And our Christmas dinner will be bully beef and plain stickfast.
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  Letham, Letham, tell us truly if there's any news come newly;
+  Not the old fantastic rumours we have often heard before:--
+  Desolate yet all undaunted! Is the town by Boers still haunted?
+  This is all the news that's wanted--tell us truly we implore--
+  Is there, _is there_ a relief force? Tell us, tell us, we implore!
+                            Only this and nothing more.
+
+  For we're waiting rather weary! Is there such a man as Clery?
+  Shall we ever see our wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?
+  Shall we ever see those others, who went southwards long before?
+  Shall we ever taste fresh butter? Tell us, tell us, we implore!
+                            We are answered--nevermore!
+
+When twenty months later the Scots Guards again found themselves in
+Pretoria they too began dolorously to enquire, "Shall we ever see our
+wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?" But meanwhile
+much occurred of which the following chapters are a brief record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST
+
+
+On reaching Pretoria, almost unopposed, our Guardsmen jumped to the
+hasty and quite unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was
+closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us
+would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has
+burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely
+long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no
+extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of its
+flame just when our personal convenience chances to clamour for such
+quenching. Indeed, the "flare and flicker" period sometimes proves,
+where war is concerned, scarcely less prolonged, and much more
+harassing, than the period of the full-fed flame. So Norman William
+found after the battle of Hastings. So Cromwell proved when the fight
+at Worcester was over. So the Americans discovered when they had
+captured Manila. Our occupation of Bloemfontein by no means made us
+instant masters of the whole Free State, and our presence in Pretoria
+we had yet to learn was not at all the same thing as the undisputed
+possession of the entire Transvaal. Indeed, the period that actually
+interposed between the two, proved the longest "fortnight" ever
+recorded.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lord Milner's explanation._]
+
+How that came about, however, is made quite clear by the following
+extract from the High Commissioner's despatches:--
+
+     If it had been possible for us to screen those portions of the
+     conquered territory, which were fast returning to peaceful
+     pursuits, from the incursions of the enemy still in the field, a
+     great deal of what is now most deplorable in the condition of
+     South Africa would never have been experienced. The vast extent
+     of the country, the necessity of concentrating our forces for the
+     long advance, first to Pretoria and then to Koomati Poort,
+     resulted in the country already occupied being left open to
+     raids, constantly growing in audacity, and fed by small
+     successes, on the part of a few bold and skilful guerilla leaders
+     who had nailed their colours to the mast.
+
+     The reappearance of these disturbers of the peace, first in the
+     south-east of the Orange River Colony, then in the south-west of
+     the Transvaal, and finally in every portion of the conquered
+     territory, placed those of the inhabitants who wanted to settle
+     down in a position of great difficulty. Instead of being made
+     prisoners of war, they had been allowed to remain on their farms
+     on taking the oath of neutrality, and many of them were really
+     anxious to keep it. But they had not the strength of mind, nor
+     from want of education, a sufficient appreciation of the
+     sacredness of the obligation which they had undertaken, to resist
+     the pressure of their old companions in arms when these
+     reappeared among them appealing to their patriotism and to their
+     fears. In a few weeks or months the very men whom we had spared
+     and treated with exceptional leniency were up in arms again,
+     justifying their breach of faith in many cases by the
+     extraordinary argument that we had not preserved them from the
+     temptation to commit it.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Boer way of saying "Bosh"._]
+
+Early in the long halt near Pretoria, at Silverton Camp, the Guards'
+Brigade was formally assembled to hear read a telegram from H.R.H. The
+Prince of Wales, congratulating them on the practical termination of
+the war; whereupon as though by positive prearrangement the Boers
+plumped a protesting shell in startlingly close proximity to where our
+cheering ranks not long before had stood. It was the Boer way of
+saying "bosh" to our ill-timed boast that the war was over.
+
+Botha and his irreconcilables were at this time occupying a formidable
+position, with a frontage of fifteen miles, near Pienaar's Poort,
+where the Delagoa line runs through a gap in the hills, fifteen miles
+east of Pretoria; and this position Lord Roberts found it essential to
+attack with 17,000 men and seventy guns on Monday, June 11th, that is
+just a week after the neighbouring capital had surrendered. The
+fighting extended over three days; French attacking on our left,
+Hamilton on our right, and Pole Carew in the centre keenly watching
+the development of these flanking movements. In the course of this
+stubborn contest the invisible Boers did for one brief while become
+visible, as they galloped into the open in hope of capturing the Q
+Battery, which had already won for itself renown by redeeming Sanna's
+Post from complete disaster. Then it was Hamilton ordered the
+memorable cavalry charge of the 12th Lancers, which saved the guns,
+and scattered the Boers, but cost us the life of its gallant and
+God-fearing Colonel Lord Airlie, who before the war greatly helped me
+in my work at Aldershot. The death of such a man made the battle of
+Diamond Hill a mournfully memorable one; for Lord Airlie combined in
+his own martial character the hardness of the diamond with its
+lustrous pureness; and his last words just before the fatal bullet
+pierced his heart, were said to be a characteristic rebuke of an
+excited and perhaps profane sergeant: "Pray, moderate your language!"
+Wholesome advice, none too often given, and much too seldom heeded!
+
+[Sidenote: _News from a far Country._]
+
+As the inevitable result of this further fighting, the men who had
+fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered
+just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other
+than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they,
+"and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were
+wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single
+fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets
+reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by
+the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone
+hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of
+nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in
+South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that
+it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and
+the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing,
+even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute.
+
+[Sidenote: _Further fighting._]
+
+Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient
+supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance
+possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers
+Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th,
+the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however
+Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a
+strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria
+under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a
+thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and
+there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha
+himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by
+Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the 29th of
+General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the Orange
+River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a very
+formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward move.
+
+[Sidenote: _Touch not, taste not, handle not._]
+
+On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to
+Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on
+Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest
+admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands
+of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the
+occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of
+their belongings touched, except as the result of a perfectly
+voluntary sale and purchase. Indeed, the identic day we left, turkeys,
+geese, ducks, and other "small deer," were still wandering round their
+native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had
+declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained
+from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties.
+Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a
+hostile peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when maintained in
+places where unmistakable treachery had been practised as in this
+identic neighbourhood.
+
+At Wolmaran's pleasant country house, close beside our camp, the white
+flag flew, and there our general took up his abode. Some members of
+this well-known family were still out on commando, but those that
+remained at home eagerly surrendered all arms, were profuse in
+professions of friendliness, and were duly pledged to formal
+neutrality. But a recent Transvaal law had reduced the wages of all
+Kaffirs from about twenty shillings to a uniform five shillings a
+week, and Wolmaran's unpaid or ill-paid negroes revenged themselves by
+revealing their master's secrets. Partly as the result of hints thus
+obtained, we found hidden in his garden over thirty rifles, the barrel
+of a Maxim gun, and about £10,000 in gold--presumably Government
+money; also a splendid supply of provisions was discovered--presumably
+Government stores; and in the family cemetery there was dug up a
+quantity of dynamite. The gentleman who thus gave up his arms, and in
+this fashion kept his oath, at once became our prisoner, but his house
+and its contents remained untouched. And when we left, some of his
+barndoor fowls were still there to see us off!
+
+This is a notable but typical illustration of the way in which, with
+unwise leniency, surrendered burghers were allowed access to our
+camps, and recompensed our reliance on their honour by revealing our
+secrets to our foes, and, when they dared, unearthing their buried
+arms to level them once more at our too confiding troops.
+
+[Sidenote: _More treachery and still more._]
+
+A march of fifteen or eighteen miles brought us to Bronkhorst Spruit,
+the scene of a dastardly massacre in December 1880, of the men of the
+Connaught Rangers, who, ere yet there was any declaration of war, were
+marching with their wives and children from Lydenburg to Pretoria. I
+stood bareheaded beside one of the mounds that hide their bones, close
+to the roadside where they fell, and bethought me of the strange
+Providence through which, nearly twenty years after the event, there
+was now marching past those very graves a vast avenging army on its
+way to those same mountain fastnesses whence our murdered comrades of
+the long ago set out on their fatal journey. Sowing and reaping are
+often far apart; but there is no sundering them!
+
+At our mess dinner that same evening the conversation turned to the
+kindred, but still more shameful deed recently devised, though happily
+in vain, at Johannesburg. There Cordua had indeed been out-Corduad by
+a conspiracy to assassinate in cold blood all the military officers
+attending some sports about to be held under military patronage at the
+racecourse. About eighty of the conspirators were captured in the very
+act of completing their plans. Nearly three hundred more were said to
+be implicated, and being chiefly of foreign extraction were quietly
+sent out of the country. It was the biggest thing in plots, and the
+wildest, that recent years have seen outside Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: _The root of the matter._]
+
+One often wonders how it comes to pass that people so demonstratively
+religious prove in so many cases conspicuously devoid of truth and
+honour and common honesty; but various explanations, each setting
+forth some partial contributory cause, may easily be conceived.
+
+As among Britons, so among Boers, there are, as a matter of course,
+varying degrees of loyalty to the moral law, and of sincerity in
+religious profession. It is therefore manifestly unfair to condemn a
+whole people because of individual immoralities. The outrageous deeds
+just described may well have been in large part the work of "lewd
+fellows of the baser sort," a sort of which the Transvaal has
+unfortunately no monopoly, and of which the better type of Boer scorns
+to become the apologist. Moreover, Johannesburg drew to itself with a
+rush a huge number not only of honourable adventurers, but also of
+wastrels, representing every class and clime under heaven. Many of
+these were commandeered or volunteered for service on the Boer side
+when war broke out, and by their lawlessnesses proved almost as great
+a terror to their friends as to their foes. Young Cordua was of
+foreign birth, and there were few genuine Boers among the Johannesburg
+conspirators; but it was the Transvaal they blindly sought to serve;
+and so on the shoulders of the whole Transvaal community is laid, none
+too justly, the entire blame for such mistakes.
+
+Then too, however mistakenly, I cannot but think the peculiar type of
+piety cherished by the Boers is largely responsible for the moral
+obliquity of which, justly or unjustly, I heard complaints continually
+from those who professed to know them well. These sons of the
+Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting zeal
+of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock, and
+with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and
+narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not
+remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect,
+and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to take liberties
+with the law of the Lord. They deem themselves a chosen race to whom a
+new Canaan has been divinely given, and in defence of whom Jehovah
+Himself is bound to fight. At the commencement of the campaign it was
+common talk that "they had commandeered the Almighty." Their piety and
+practice are largely modelled on Old Testament lines. They used God's
+name and quoted Scripture _ad nauseam_ even in State correspondence.
+Their President was also their High Priest; yet in business
+transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings
+with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their
+own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The
+bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a
+Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me
+that proverb and practice too commonly keep company.
+
+It is a perilous thing for men or nations to deem themselves in any
+exclusive sense Heaven's favourites. Such conceptions do not minister
+to heavenly-mindedness, or beget lives of ethic beauty. The ancient
+Hebrews, blinded by this very belief, became "worse than the
+heathen," and herein lies a solemn warning alike for the beaten Boer
+and the boastful Briton! There is no true religion where there is no
+all round righteousness; and wheresoever that is wanting the wrath of
+God cannot but abide.
+
+[Sidenote: _A tight fit._]
+
+Our next day's march ended just as a heavy thunderstorm with still
+heavier rain broke upon us; so the Grenadier officers pitched their
+mess as close as they could get to the sheltering wall of a decidedly
+stenchful Kaffir cottage. There we stood in the drenching wet and ate
+our evening meal, which was lunch and dinner in one. In that
+one-roomed cottage, with a smoking fire on the floor and a heap of
+mealie corn-cobs in the corner, there slept that night two Kaffir men,
+one Kaffir woman, four Kaffir piccaninnies, four West Australian
+officers, one officer of the Guards on the corn-cobs, a quantity of
+live poultry, and a dead goat; its sleep, of course, being that from
+which there is no awaking. That they were not all stifled before
+morning is astonishing, but the fact remains that the goat alone
+failed to greet the dawn.
+
+Nearly every man in the camp was that night soaked to the skin, and
+for once the Guards made no attempt to sing at or to sing down the
+storm. As they apologetically explained at breakfast time, they were
+really "too down on their luck" to try. But with my usual good fortune
+I managed to pass the night absolutely dry, and that too without
+borrowing a corner of that horrid Kaffir cottage. The next night found
+us at Brugspruit, close to a colliery, where we stayed a considerable
+while, and managed to house ourselves in comparative comfort, that
+gradually became near akin to luxury. Here the junior officers
+courteously assisted me to shovel up an earthen shelter, with a sheet
+of corrugated iron for a roof, and thus protected I envied no
+millionaire his marble halls, though my blankets were sometimes wet
+with evening dew, and the ground white with morning frost.
+
+[Sidenote: _Obstructives on the Rail._]
+
+During the long halt of the Grenadiers at Brugspruit, the Scots Guards
+remained at Balmoral, moving thence to Middelburg, and one of the
+Coldstream battalions was detailed to guard the Oliphant River,
+station, and bridge, which I crossed when on my way to Middelburg to
+conduct a Sunday parade service there; but at the river station the
+train tarried too brief a while and the battalion was too completely
+hidden on the far side of a rough kopje to permit my gaining even a
+passing glance of their camp. In South Africa full often the so-called
+sheep and their appointed shepherd found themselves thus unwittingly
+forbidden to see each others' face.
+
+A little later on we found the line in possession, not of the Boers,
+but of a big drove of horses which seemed bent on proving that they
+could outdo even the Boers themselves in the rapidity of their retreat
+before an advancing foe. Mile after mile they galloped, but mile after
+mile they kept to the track, just in front of our engine, which
+whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger.
+Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish
+to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But
+as we slowed our pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and when
+once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer desperation
+our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of breath, while
+he pelted the nearest of the drove with stones, and sought to scare it
+with flourishes of his official cap. But that horse behaved like a
+dull-headed ass, and cared no more for the waving of official caps
+than for the wild screaming of our steam whistle. We were losing time
+horribly fast because our pace was thus made so horribly slow. Finally
+a pilot engine came down from Middelburg to ascertain what had become
+of our long belated train, and this unlooked for movement from the
+rear fortunately proved too much for the nerves of even such
+determined obstructionists. It scared them as effectually as a
+flanking movement scared the Boers. They broke in terror from the line
+and, Boerlike, vanished.
+
+[Sidenote: _Middelburg and the Doppers._]
+
+Middelburg we found to be a thriving village, which will probably grow
+into an important town when the mineral wealth of the district is in
+due time developed. At present the principal building is as usual the
+Dutch Reformed Church, the pastor of which had forsaken the female
+portion of his flock to follow the fortunes of the fighting section.
+There are also two good-sized Dopper churches, which habitually remain
+void and empty all the year round, except on one Sunday in each
+quarter, when the farmer folk come from near and far to hold a fair,
+and to celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper--"The night meal,"
+as they appropriately call it. These are the four great events of
+the Dopper year, and of this tiny city's business life.
+
+The Dopper is the ultra Boer of South Africa, the Puritan of Puritans,
+the Covenanter of Covenanters, whose religious creed and conduct are
+compacted of manifold rigidities, and who would deem it as
+unpardonable a sin to shave off his beard, as it would have been for
+an early Methodist preacher to wear one. Formerly Doppers and
+Methodists both piously combed their hair over their foreheads, and
+clipped it in a straight line just above the eyebrows. But alas! in
+this as in many other directions, Methodists and Doppers have alike
+become "subject to vanity." In these degenerate days "the fringe" has
+flitted from the masculine to the feminine brow; and now that it is
+"crinkled" no longer claims to be a badge of superior sanctity. In one
+of these Dopper churches the Rev. W. Frost long conducted Wesleyan
+services, the crowding troops having made our own church far too
+small.
+
+The other, on the occasion of my first visit, was occupied by Canon
+Knox Little, who there conducted the Anglican parade service, and
+preached with great fervour from the very pulpit whence, some months
+before, President Kruger had delivered a discourse presumably of a
+decidedly different type. But the Wesleyan church immediately
+adjoining the camping ground of the 2nd Coldstream battalion, which I
+had the privilege that day of reopening, was at a later period used
+for a brief while by the Roman Catholic chaplains. War is a strange
+revolutionist if not always a reformer.
+
+[Sidenote: _August Bank Holiday._]
+
+The next day, which was August Bank Holiday, I returned in safety to
+Brugspruit, but only to discover that in those parts even railway
+travelling had become a thing of deadly peril. I there saw two trains
+just arrived from Pretoria, the trucks filled with remount horses and
+cavalry men on their way to join General French's force. The first
+engine bore three bullet holes in its encasing water tank, holes which
+the driver had hastily plugged with wood, so preventing the loss of
+all his water and the fatal stoppage of the train. Several of the
+trucks were riddled with bullet-holes, and in one I saw a dead horse,
+shot, lying under the feet of its comrades; while in another truck,
+splashed with great clots of blood, similarly lay yet another horse
+almost dead. Several more were wounded but still remained upon their
+feet, and still had before them a journey of many miles ere their
+wounds could receive attention, or the living be severed from the
+dead. For horses this has been a specially fagging and fatal war, and
+for them there are no well-earned medals!
+
+The second engine bore kindred bullet holes in its water tank. A shot
+had smashed the glass in the window of the break-van in which some
+officers were travelling; and in one of the trucks I was shown a hole
+in the thick timber made by a bullet, which, after passing through two
+inches of wood, had pierced a lancer's breast and killed him, besides
+shattering the wrist of yet another lancer. Those trains had just been
+fired at by a mounted Boer patrol which had caught our men literally
+napping. Most of them were lying fast asleep in the bottom of the
+trucks, with their unloaded carbines beside or under them, so that
+not a solitary reply shot was fired as the trains sped past the point
+of peril.
+
+After repeated disasters of this kind had occurred, orders were issued
+forbidding men to travel in such careless and unguarded fashion; while
+all journeying that was not indispensible was peremptorily stopped! My
+own contemplated visit to Pretoria next day was consequently postponed
+till there came some more urgent call or some more convenient season.
+
+On this part of the line the troops had often to be their own stokers
+and drivers, with the result that sniping Boers were not the only
+peril a passenger had to fear. From Dalmanutha in those delightsome
+days a train was due to start as usual with one engine behind and one
+in front. The driver of the leading engine blew his whistle and opened
+his regulator. The driver of the back engine did the same, but somehow
+the train refused to move. It was supposed the breaks were on, but it
+was presently discovered that the rear engine had reversed its gear,
+and there had thus commenced a tug of war--the one engine pulling its
+hardest against the other and neither winning a prize. In those days
+railway life became rich in comedies and tragedies, especially the
+latter, whereof let one further illustration of much later date, as
+described by Mr Burgess, suffice:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Blowing up trains._]
+
+At Heidelberg on Thursday, March 7th, at ten o'clock in the morning
+there was a loud report as of a gun firing from one of the forts; but
+it was soon known that it was an explosion of dynamite on the line
+about a mile and a half from the railway station. The Boers had
+evidently placed dynamite under the metals, and it is supposed that
+while they were doing this, a number of them came down and engaged the
+outposts, and that was the firing that was heard in the town. A flat
+trolley with a European ganger and seven coolies and natives went over
+the first mine without exploding it; but on reaching the second, about
+a mile beyond, an explosion took place. The ganger after being blown
+fifty feet, escaped most miraculously with only a few bruises. Sad to
+relate three Indians were blown to pieces so as hardly to be
+recognised, and two others were seriously hurt. Immediately after this
+first explosion, a construction train left the Heidelberg railway
+station, and exploded the mine which the trolley had failed to
+explode; but fortunately very little damage was done as they had taken
+the precaution to place a truck in front of the engine. The second
+explosion occurred about a mile from the station and was plainly
+visible to those standing on the platform.
+
+[Sidenote: _A peculiar Mothers' Meeting._]
+
+On setting out a second time from Brugspruit for Middleburg to conduct
+the Sunday services there, I was astonished to find the train
+consisted of about a dozen trucks, some open, some closed, but all
+filled to overflowing with Dutch women and Dutch children of every
+sort and size. Flags were fluttering from almost every truck, no khaki
+man carrying arms was suffered to travel by that train, and when the
+Roman Catholic chaplain and myself entered the break-van we seemed to
+be taking charge of a gigantic Mothers' Meeting out for a holiday,
+babies and all, or else to be escorting a big Sunday School to "Happy
+Hampstead" for its annual treat. It was the second large consignment
+of the sort which General Botha had consented to receive, and of which
+we were anxious to be rid. They were some of the wives and offspring
+of his fighting men, and were in most cases foodless, friendless,
+dependent for their daily bread on British bounty. It was therefore
+more fitting their own folk should feed them, as they were abundantly
+able and willing to do. Moreover, among them were women who had acted
+as spies, while others had hidden arms in their homes, so that to us
+they had become a serious peril, as well as a serious expense. We were
+consequently glad to be quit of them, and sincerely regretted that the
+capture of Barberton later on made us again their custodians.
+
+[Sidenote: _Aggressive Ladies._]
+
+Our first parade service next morning was held in the Wesleyan church,
+and was followed by open-air worship in the outlying encampment of the
+Scots Guards. The evening voluntary service was delightfully hearty
+and delightfully well attended. But most of the afternoon was spent at
+the railway station waiting for and watching the arrival of yet
+another train load of women and children on their way to realms
+beyond! Seven-and-twenty truck loads presently reached Middelburg in
+most defiant mood, for they waved their home-made Transvaal flags in
+our faces; they had bedecked themselves with Transvaal ribbons and
+Transvaal rosettes almost from head to foot. They shaded their faces
+with parasols in which the four Transvaal colours were combined; and
+they sang with every possible variety of discordancy Transvaal hymns,
+especially the Transvaal national anthem. But unless these gentle
+ladies can cook and stitch vastly better than they seemed able to
+sing, their husbands and brothers are much to be pitied.
+
+Their patriotism was so pronounced and aggressive that they literally
+spat at the soldiers, and assured them that no money of theirs would
+ever suffice to purchase the paltriest flag they carried. The seeds of
+ill-will and hate for all things British had been planted in the mind
+and heart of almost every Boer child long before the war began, but
+those seeds ripened rapidly, and the reaping bids fair to be
+prolonged.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Dutch Deacon's Testimony._]
+
+Before this weary conflict came to a close, nearly every Boer family
+was gathered in from the perils and privations of the war-wasted
+veldt; and so, while nearly 30,000 burghers were detained as prisoners
+of war at various points across the sea, their wives and children, to
+the number of over 100,000, were tenderly cared for in English laagers
+all along the line of rails or close to conveniently situated towns.
+Slanderous statements have been made as to the treatment meted out to
+these unfortunates, for which my visits revealed no warrant; but of
+more value is the testimony of one of their own church officials, who
+carefully inspected the women's refuge camp at Port Elizabeth, and
+reported the result to the local Intelligence Department. This deacon
+of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr T. J. Ferreira, says:--
+
+     I came down here on hearing of the reports at Steytlerville of
+     the bad treatment the women exiles are receiving from the
+     military. I was determined to find out the truth, and publish
+     same in the Dutch and English papers. I stayed in the camp all
+     day, and dined with the exiles. The food was excellent--I had
+     roast lamb, soup, potatoes, bread, coffee, and biscuits. All was
+     well cooked and perfectly satisfactory; the soup and meat were
+     especially well cooked. The women and children are happy, have no
+     complaints, and are quite content to stay where they are until
+     they can return to their homes. I shall return to Steytlerville
+     and let everybody know how humane the treatment is. The statement
+     that the women were ragged and barefooted and had to bathe within
+     sight of the military is a shameful falsehood.
+
+[Sidenote: _A German Officer's Testimony._]
+
+On August the 24th General Pole Carew with the Guards' Brigade
+occupied Belfast, and a few days later Roberts and Buller combined to
+drive Botha from the last position along the Delagoa Line that he made
+any serious attempt to defend; and among those taken prisoners by us
+at Dalmanutha was a German officer, who in due time was sent to
+Ceylon, and there acquired enough knowledge of English to express in
+it his views concerning the Boers he served, and the British he
+opposed. He says among other things that he was wounded five times and
+received no pay for all his pains. He declares concerning the Boers
+that "they often ran away from commando and kept quiet, and said to
+the English that they would not fight any more; but when the district
+was pacified they took up arms again and looted. They don't know
+anything about word of honour or oath. They put white flags upon their
+houses, and fired in the neighbourhood of them. The English were far
+too lenient at the beginning, and therefore they are now at the
+opposite extreme.
+
+"You should have seen the flourishing Natal, how it was laid waste by
+the Boers. This looting instinct in them is far stronger than the
+fighting one. There were also lots of Boers who were praying the whole
+day instead of fighting; and their officers were perhaps the best
+prayers and preachers, but certainly the worst fighters; whereas I
+must confess that the English, although they were headed by very bad
+generals, very often behaved like good soldiers and finally defeated
+the greatest difficulties.
+
+"The English infantry is splendidly brave and rather skilful; they are
+good shots too. Tommy Atkins is a wonderful, merry, good-hearted chap,
+always full of fun and good spirits, and he behaves very kind towards
+the prisoners.
+
+"When I was captured, an English colonel who was rather haughty, asked
+me which English general I thought the best; whereupon I instantly
+answered 'Tommy Atkins!'"
+
+That clever German critic merely put an old long ago discovered truth
+in new form! "If I blundered," said Wellington, "I could always rely
+on my soldiers to pull me through." General Pole Carew when, near the
+close of the war, he was presented with a sword of honour by my native
+city, Truro, repeated the remark of a distinguished continental
+soldier attached to his division, who said after seeing British
+soldiers marching bootless and fighting foodless, he placed the
+British army "foremost among European armies." So say they all! The
+German prisoner in Ceylon spoke words of truth and soberness when he
+said our private soldier is in some respects our best general.
+
+General Tommy Atkins I salute you! You are a credit to your country!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THROUGH HELVETIA
+
+
+[Sidenote: _The fighting near Belfast._]
+
+On August 24th the tiny little town of Belfast was reached by General
+Pole Carew's division, including the Guards' Brigade; but though our
+advent was unopposed, there was heavy fighting on our right, where
+General Buller, newly arrived from Natal, had the day before
+approached the immensely strong Boer position at Bergendal. There the
+Johannesburg police, the most valorous of all the burgher forces, made
+their last heroic stand three days later, and were so completely wiped
+out, that Kruger is reported to have been moved to tears when the
+tidings reached him. It was the last stand the Boer still had nerve
+enough to make, and after Belfast their continuous retreat quickened
+into almost a rout. It was on Sunday, the 26th, the Guards moved out
+to take part in the general assault, and waited for hours behind the
+shelter of Monument Hill while General French developed his flanking
+movement on the left. Boer bullets fell freely among us while thus
+tarrying, and compelled our field hospital to retire further down the
+slope to a position of comparative safety. Late that afternoon the
+Guards marched over the brow to face what bade fair to be another
+serious Sunday battle, yet without any slightest sign of flinching.
+"How dear is life to all men," said dying Nelson. It may be so; but
+these men and their officers from first to last, when duty called,
+seemed never to count their lives dear unto them. A few casualties,
+caused by chance bullets, occurred among them before the day closed,
+but scarcely so much as a solitary Boer was seen by the clearest
+sighted of them. Once again outflanked, "the brother" once again had
+fled, and in the deepening darkness we groped our way to our next
+camping ground.
+
+In our Napoleonic wars the favourite command alike on land and sea
+was, "Engage the enemy more closely." Each fleet or army kept well in
+sight of its antagonist, and the fighting was often at such close
+quarters that musket muzzle touched musket muzzle; but at Belfast Lord
+Roberts' front was thirty miles in width, and our generals could only
+guess where their foemen hid by watching for the fire-flash of their
+long range guns. In offensive warfare the visible contends with the
+invisible, and it is good generalship that conquers it. At Albuera
+Soult asserted there was no beating British troops in spite of their
+generals. But Lord Roberts' generalship seems never to have been at
+fault, however remote the foe, and thanks thereto Belfast proved to be
+about the last big fight of the whole campaign.
+
+[Sidenote: _Feeding under fire._]
+
+Early next morning we were vigorously shelled by the still defiant
+Boers, but from the, for them, fairly safe distance of nearly five
+miles. Just as the Grenadier officers had finished their breakfast and
+retired a few yards further afield to get just beyond the reach of
+those impressive salutations, a shell plumped down precisely where we
+had been sitting. It made its mark, though fortunately only on the
+bare bosom of mother earth; but later on in the same day, while we
+were finishing lunch, another shrapnel burst, almost over our heads,
+so badly injured a doctor's horse tethered close by that it had to be
+killed, and compelled another somewhat rapid retirement on our part to
+the far side of a neighbouring bog. In war time all our feasts are
+movable!
+
+[Sidenote: _A German Doctor's Confession._]
+
+Before leaving Belfast I called on a German doctor who had been in
+charge of a Boer military hospital planted in that hamlet, and who
+told me that for twelve months he had been in the compulsory employ of
+the Transvaal Government. Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had
+accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly
+sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received
+no payment for his services except in promissory notes--which were
+worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been
+landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet;
+as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had
+seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering instead
+the bandolier and rifle. Thus were fighting men and mercenaries
+smuggled through Portuguese territory to the Boer fighting lines; and
+in this as in many other ways was that red cross abused. He wastes his
+time who tries to teach the Boers some new trick. In this war they
+have amply proved that in that matter they have nought to learn,
+except the unwisdom of it all, and the sureness of the retribution it
+involves. Even in battle and battle times clean hands are best.
+
+[Sidenote: _Friends in need are friends indeed._]
+
+On leaving the neighbourhood of Belfast we soon found ourselves
+marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region
+of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any
+foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in
+all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a
+touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with fleecy
+mist, resembled not remotely the snow-clad Alps. Indeed, during that
+whole week the toils and travels of the Guards brought to the mind of
+many the familiar story of Hannibal and his vast army crossing the
+Alps; only the Carthaginian general had no heavy guns and long lines
+of ammunition waggons to add to his already enormous difficulties; his
+men had little to carry on their broad backs compared with what a
+modern Guardsman has to shoulder; nor did Hannibal take with him a
+small army corps of newspaper correspondents to chronicle all the
+petty disasters and delays met with by the way. Few commanders-in-chief
+are lovers of correspondents, whether of the professional or of the
+private type. Tell-tale tongues and pens may perchance do more
+mischief than machine guns and mausers!
+
+At the latter end of the week our men had to climb over what seemed to
+be the backbone of that terrific region, with results almost
+disastrous to our long train of transport waggons. Botha, whose
+retreat towards Lydenberg our flanking movement had apparently
+prevented, we failed to find; so after fighting a mild rear-guard
+action, we scarce knew with whom, we encamped that night for the first
+and last time side by side with Buller's column.
+
+The major part, however, of the Grenadier battalion remained till next
+morning far away in the rear to guard our huge convoy while climbing
+up and climbing down the perilous ridge just referred to, with the
+result that some of us forming the advanced party found ourselves
+without food or shelter. Yet the soldierly courtesy which has so often
+hastened to my help during this campaign did not fail in this new hour
+of need. A sergeant-major of the bearer company most graciously lent
+me his own overcoat, the night being bitterly cold; the officers of
+the Scots Guards not only invited me to dine with them, but one of
+them supplied me with a rug, whilst another pressed on me the loan of
+his mackintosh "to keep off the dew," and thus enwrapped I lay once
+more on the bare ground, well sheltered behind a sheet of corrugated
+iron, which I fortunately found stuck on end as though put there by
+some unknown Boer benefactor for my special benefit. In fashion thus
+lordly were all my wants continually supplied. The wild wind that
+night blew away a second sheet of iron that another young officer,
+with almost filial thoughtfulness, placed over me after I had gone to
+rest, but the original sheet maintained its perpendicular position,
+and by its welcome protection supplied me with a fresh illustration of
+the familiar saying, "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east
+wind."
+
+[Sidenote: _An Invisible Sniper's Triumph._]
+
+Thus toiling we reached at last a plateau about 5000 feet above sea
+level, from which we looked down into the famous Waterfall Gorge, a
+sheer descent of 1000 feet. Down into it there drops from Waterval
+Boven the cogwheel section of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and in it there
+nestles a Swiss-like village, with hotel and hospital and railway
+workshops. As at Abraham's Kraal we captured the President's silk hat
+but let the President's head escape, so here we captured the
+President's professional cook, but the day before we arrived the
+President's private railway car,--his ever-shifting capital,--had
+eluded our pursuit, together with the President himself and the golden
+capital, in the shape of abounding coin he carried with him. The
+tidings proved to us a feast of Tantallus, so near and yet so far! How
+our men sighed for a sight of that car, and for the fingering of that
+coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of
+Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved
+distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in
+the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this day have
+never been disgorged.
+
+From even descending into that gorge the whole brigade of Guards was
+held back for four-and-twenty hours by a solitary invisible sniper,
+hidden, no one could find out where, in some secure crevice of the
+opposite cliff. One of our mounted officers riding down to take
+possession of the village was seriously wounded; and some of the
+scouts already there were compelled through the same course to keep
+under close shelter. So the naval guns, the field guns, and the
+pom-poms were each in turn called to the rescue, and gaily rained shot
+and shell for hours on every hump and hollow of that opposite cliff,
+but all in vain; for after each thunderous discharge on our side,
+there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on the
+other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited to
+fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion, till
+it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the
+gorge could possibly have failed to receive its own particular bullet;
+but
+
+         "What gave rise to no little surprise,
+          Nobody seemed one farthing the worse!"
+
+Just as the sun set the last sound we heard was the parting "ping" of
+Brother Invisible. So no man might descend into the depths that night,
+hotel or no hotel! Even at midnight we were startled out of our sleep
+by the quite unexpected boom of our big guns, which had, of course
+during daylight, been trained on a farmhouse lying far back from the
+precipice opposite to us, and were thus fired in the dead of night
+under the impression that the sniper, and perhaps his friends, were
+peacefully slumbering there. If so, the chances are he sniped no more.
+Next day at noon we began to clamber down to the level of the railway
+line, and found ourselves in undisturbed possession, after so
+prolonged and costly a bombardment called forth by a single, stubborn
+mauser.
+
+[Sidenote: _"He sets the mournful prisoners free."_]
+
+Meanwhile the eighteen hundred English prisoners who had so long been
+kept in durance vile at Nooitgedacht, the next station on the rail to
+Portuguese Africa, received their unconditional release, with the
+exception of a few officers, still retained as hostages; and all the
+afternoon, indeed far on into the night, these men came straggling,
+now in small groups and now in large, into our expectant and excited
+camp. They told us of the crowds of disconsolate Boers, some by road,
+some by rail, who had passed their prison enclosure in precipitate
+retreat, bearing waggon loads of killed or wounded with them. Among
+them were men of almost all nationalities, including a few surviving
+members of the late Johannesburg police, who declared that during that
+one week they had lost no less than one hundred and fifteen of their
+own special comrades.
+
+The prisoners also informed us that the Boer officer who dismissed
+them expressed the belief that in a few days more Boer and Briton
+would again be friends--an expectation we were slow to share, however
+eager we might be to see this miracle of miracles actually wrought. In
+the very midst of the battle of the Baltic, Nelson sent a letter to
+the Danish Prince Regent, with whom he was then fighting, and
+addressed it thus: "To the Danes, the Brothers of Englishmen." Within
+little more than half a century from that date the daughter of the
+Danish throne became heir to the Queenship of England's throne; and
+our Laureate rightly voiced the whole nation's feeling when to that
+fair bride he said:
+
+          "We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee."
+
+When Nelson penned that strange address amid the flash and fire of
+actual battle, it was with the true insight of a seer. The furious
+foes of his day are the fast friends of ours, and by the end of
+another half-century a similar transformation may be wrought in the
+present relationship between Boer and Briton, who are quite as near
+akin as Dane and Englishman. But to lightly talk of such foes becoming
+friends "in a few days" is to misread the meaning and measure of a
+controversy that is more than a century old. Between victors and
+vanquished, both of so dogged a type, it requires more than a mere
+treaty of peace to beget goodwill.
+
+[Sidenote: _More Boer Slimness._]
+
+Some of these now released prisoners were among the very first to be
+captured, and so had spent many weary weeks in the Waterval Prison
+near Pretoria, and were among those who had been decoyed away to these
+remote and seemingly unassailable mountain fastnesses. They had thus
+been in bonds altogether ten interminable months. Multiplied hardships
+had during that period necessarily been theirs, and others for which
+there was no real need or excuse; but they frankly confessed that as a
+whole their treatment by the Boers, though leaving much to be desired,
+had seldom been hard or vindictive.
+
+There were others of these prisoners, however, who were sick or
+wounded, and therefore were quite unable to climb from the open door
+of their prison to our lofty camp; so to fetch these I saw seven
+ambulance waggons made ready to set out with the usual complement of
+medical orderlies and doctors. These I seriously thought of
+accompanying on their errand of mercy, but was mercifully hindered.
+Those red cross waggons we saw no more for ever. The Boers were said
+to be short of waggons, and asserted that in some way some of our men
+had done them recent wrong which they wished to avenge. But whatever
+the supposed provocation or pretext, it was in violation of all the
+recognised usages of war that those waggons were captured and kept. It
+was no less an outrage to make prisoners of doctors and orderlies
+arriving on such an errand. No protests on their part or pleadings for
+speedy return to duty prevailed. They were compelled to accompany or
+precede the Boers in their flight to Delagoa Bay, from thence were
+shipped to Durban, and after long delay rejoined the Brigade on its
+return to Pretoria. For such high-handed proceedings the Transvaal
+Government clearly cannot be held responsible, for at that time it had
+ceased to exist, and more than ever the head of each commando had
+become a law unto himself. It would be false to say that a fine sense
+of honour did not anywhere exist in the now defunct Republic, but it
+is perfectly fair to assert that on the warpath our troops were
+compelled to tread it was not often found. Yet in every department of
+life he that contendeth for the mastery is never permanently crowned
+unless he contend lawfully.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Boer Hospital._]
+
+The prettily situated and well appointed hospital at Waterval Onder
+was originally erected for the use of men employed on the railway, but
+for months prior to the arrival of the British troops had been in
+possession of the Boer Government, and was full of sick and wounded
+burghers, with whom I had many an interesting chat and by whom I was
+assured that though we might think it strange they still had hope of
+ultimate success. Among the rest was a German baron, well trained of
+course, as all Germans are, for war, who on the outbreak of
+hostilities had consented at Johannesburg to be commandeered, burgher
+or no burgher, to fight the battles of the Boers, in the justice of
+whose cause he avowed himself a firm believer. He therefore became an
+artillery officer in the service of the Transvaal, and while so
+employed had been badly hit by the British artillery, with the result
+that his right arm was blown off, his left arm horribly shattered, and
+two shrapnel bullets planted in his breast. Yet seldom has extreme
+suffering been borne in more heroic fashion than by him, and he
+actually told me, in tones of admiration, that the British artillery
+practice was really "beautiful." On such a point he should surely be a
+competent judge seeing that he was himself a professor of the art, and
+had long stood not behind but in front of our guns, which is precisely
+where all critics ought to be planted. Their criticisms would then be
+something worth.
+
+[Sidenote: _Foreign Mercenaries._]
+
+The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the nations
+of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been encouraged to
+settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal Government long
+before the war began--on the railway, at the dynamite works, in the
+mines; and so were all ready for the rifle the moment the rifle was
+ready for them. At once they formed themselves into vigorous commandoes,
+according to their various nationalities,--Scandinavian, Hollander,
+French, and German. Even after the war began these foreign commandoes
+were largely recruited from Europe; French and German steamers landed
+parties of volunteers for the burgher forces nearly every week at
+Lorenço Marques. The French steamer _Gironde_ brought an unusually large
+contingent, a motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion
+of suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous
+of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As far
+back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish Brigade
+assisting the French to fight against the English, and with such fiery
+courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which had robbed him
+of such excellent fighting material. But at the same time there was
+about them so much of reckless folly that their departure from the
+Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight of the wild geese."
+New broods of these same wild geese found their way to the Transvaal,
+and there made for themselves a name, not as resistless fighters, but as
+irrestrainable looters. These men linked to the bywoners, or squatters,
+the penniless Dutch of South Africa, did little to help the cause they
+espoused, but many a time have caused every honest God-fearing burgher
+to blush by reason of their irrepressible lawlessness.
+
+[Sidenote: _A wounded Australian._]
+
+Among the British patients in this hospital was a magnificent young
+Australian, who it was feared had been mortally wounded in a small
+scrimmage round a farmhouse not far away, but who apparently began
+decidedly to mend from the time the general came to his bedside to say
+he should be recommended for the distinguished service medal. "That
+has done me more good than medicine," said he to me a few minutes
+after. Nevertheless, when ten days later we returned from Koomati
+Poort, he lay asleep in the little Waterval Cemetery, alas, like
+Milton's Lycidas, "dead ere his prime."
+
+These Australians being all mounted men, and of an exceptionally
+fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such
+outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide
+from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in
+that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage
+men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of
+no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts
+till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown
+himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the
+undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag
+treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been
+victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of their
+officers, Lieutenant White, was thus treacherously shot while going to
+answer the white flag displayed by the Boers. He was the pet of the
+Bushmen's Corps, and concerning him his own men said, "We all loved
+him, and will avenge him." So round his open grave his comrades
+solemnly joined hands and pledged themselves never again to recognise
+the waving of a Boer white flag. My assistant chaplain, with the
+Bushmen, himself an Australian, emphatically declared that as in the
+beginning so was it to the end; his men were killed not in fair fight
+but by murderous sniping. He was with them when Pietersburg was
+surrendered without a fight, but when they marched through to take
+possession they were resolutely shot at with explosive bullets from a
+barricaded house in the centre of the town, till the angry Bushmen
+broke open the door, and then the sniper sniped no more. On reaching
+the northern outskirts they again found themselves sniped, they knew
+not from whence. Several horses were wounded, a trooper was killed on
+the spot; so was Lieutenant Walters; and Captain Sayles was so badly
+hit he died two days afterwards. Yet no fighting was going on. The
+town was undefended, and the Boers in full retreat. This sniper was at
+last discovered hiding almost close at hand in a big patch of tall
+African grass. He turned out to be a Hollander schoolmaster, who,
+finding himself surrounded, sprang upon his knees, threw up his arms
+and laughingly cried, "All right, khakis, I surrender!" But that was
+his last laugh; and he lies asleep to-day in the same cemetery as his
+three victims.
+
+That cemetery soon after I saw; and in the adjoining camp messed with
+a group of irregular officers, some of whom ultimately yielded to this
+spirit of lawless avenging, but were, in consequence, sternly
+court-marshalled, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law. It is,
+however, the only case of the kind that has come to my knowledge
+during thirty months of provocative strife.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hotel Life on the Trek._]
+
+Close to the railway station at Waterval Onder was a comfortable
+little hotel, kept by a French proprietor, whose French cook had
+deserted him, and who would not therefore undertake to cater for the
+Grenadier officers, though he courteously placed his dining-room at
+their disposal, with all that appertained thereto; and sold to them
+almost his entire stock of drinkables, probably at fancy prices. The
+men of the Norfolk Regiment are to this day called "Holy Boys" because
+their forbears in the Peninsular War, so it is said, gave their Bibles
+for a glass of wine; but the Norfolks are not the only lovers of
+high-class liquor the army contains, though army Bibles will not now
+suffice to buy it. British officers on the trek, however, not only
+know how to appreciate exquisitely any appropriate home comforts, when
+for a brief while procurable, but also how to surrender them
+unmurmuringly at a moment's notice when duty so requires. We had been
+in possession of our well-appointed hotel table only two days when a
+sudden order sent us all trekking once again.
+
+It is worth noting that this French hotelkeeper and the German baron
+in the adjoining hospital had both fought, though of course on
+opposite sides, in the great Franco-Prussian war of thirty years ago,
+and now they found themselves overwhelmed by another great war wave
+in one of the remotest and seemingly most inaccessible fastnesses of
+South Central Africa. In this new war between Boer and Briton the
+German lost a limb, if not his life, and the Frenchman a large part of
+his fortune. So intimately are men of all nationalities now bound in
+the same bundle of life!
+
+[Sidenote: _A Sheep-pen of a Prison._]
+
+On Monday afternoon we marched to Nooitgedacht, where the prisoners
+already referred to had been confined like sheep in a pen for many a
+weary week. That pen was made by a double-barbed wire fence; the inner
+fence consisting of ten strands of wire, about eight inches apart, and
+the outer fence of five strands, with sundry added entanglements; and
+a series of powerful electric lights was specially provided to watch
+and protect the whole vast area thus enclosed. It gave me a violent
+spasm of heart sickness as I thought of English officers and men by
+hundreds being thus ignominiously hemmed in and worse sheltered than
+convicts. They had latterly been allowed to erect for themselves
+grotesquely rough hovels or hutches, many of which they set on fire
+when suddenly permitted to escape, so that as I found it the whole
+place looked indescribably dirty and desolate.
+
+Even the shelters provided for the officers, and the hospital hastily
+erected for the sick, were scarcely fit to stable horses in, and were
+by official decree doomed to be given to the flames as the surest way
+of getting rid of the vermin and other vilenesses, of which they
+contained so rich a store. Here I found huge medicine bottles, never
+made for the purpose, on which the names of sundry of our sick
+officers remained written, to wit: "Lieut. Mowbray, one tablespoonful
+four times a day. 3. VIII. 1900." In one of these bunks I found a
+packet of religious leaflets, one of which contained Hart's familiar
+hymn:--
+
+          Come ye weary, heavy laden,
+          Lost and ruined by the fall;
+          If you tarry till you are better,
+          You will never come at all.
+                Not the righteous,
+          Sinners, Jesus came to call.
+
+Although, therefore, religious services were never held in that prison
+pen, the men were not left absolutely without religious counsel and
+consolation. I was unfeignedly glad thus to find in that horrible
+place medicine for the soul as well as physic for the body, and some
+of those leaflets I brought away; but the physic I thought it safest
+not to sample.
+
+Over this unique combination of prison house and hospital there
+floated a very roughly-made and utterly tattered red cross flag, which
+now serves as a memento of one of the most humiliating sights it ever
+fell to my lot to witness, and I could not help picturing to myself
+the overpowering heartache those prisoners must have felt as hour
+after hour they were hurried farther and yet farther still through
+deep defiles and vast mountain fastnesses into a region where it must
+have seemed as though hope or help could never reach them. But "men,
+not mountains, determine the fate of nations"; and to-day, through
+the mercy of our God, that pestilential pen is no longer any
+Englishman's prison.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pretty scenery, and superb._]
+
+Our next halting place was at Godwand River, still on the Delagoa
+line, and here we found a wee bit of river scenery almost rivalling
+the beauty of the stream that has given to Lynmouth its world-wide
+fame. At this little frequented place two rivers meet, which even in
+the driest part of the dry season are still real rivers, and would
+both make superb trout streams, if once properly stocked, as many a
+river at home has been.
+
+But just a little farther on we found scenery immeasurably more grand
+than anything we had ever seen before. The Dutch name of this
+astounding place is Kaapsche Hoop, which seems reminiscent of "The
+Cape of Good Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It
+apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the
+earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is
+also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of
+Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other
+possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however,
+much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance
+to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks
+so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied
+the artistic taste, and would have yielded fresh inspiration to the
+soul of a Gustave Doré. The rocks are evidently all igneous and
+volcanic, but often stand apart in separate columns, and sometimes
+bear a striking resemblance to enormous beasts or images that might
+once have served for Oriental idols.
+
+Indeed, looked at by the bewitching but deceptive light of the moon,
+the whole place lends itself supremely well to every man's individual
+fancy, and even my unimaginative mind could easily have brought itself
+to see here a once majestic antediluvian city with its palaces and
+temples, but now wrecked and ruined by manifold upheavals of nature,
+and worn into rarest mockeries of its ancient splendours by the wild
+storms of many a millennium.
+
+What I did certainly see, however, among those rocks were sundry
+roughly constructed shelters for snipers, who were therefrom to have
+picked off our men and horses as they crossed the adjacent drift.
+Terrible havoc might have been wrought in the ranks of the Guards'
+Brigade, without apparently the loss of a single Transvaaler's life,
+but there is no citadel under the sun the Boers just then had heart
+enough to hold.
+
+Immediately adjoining this unique city of rocks is a stupendous cliff
+from which, our best travelled officers say, the finest panoramic view
+in the whole world is obtained. The cliff drops almost straight down
+twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be
+seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across
+what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was
+seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of
+many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range
+rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I visited
+twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot of the
+nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this plateau
+looked as though the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic had broken in
+at that end with overwhelming force, and then had been suddenly
+arrested and petrified while wave still battled with wave. It is such
+a view of far-reaching grandeur as I may never hope to see again, even
+were I to roam the wide world round; and could Kaapsche Hoop, with its
+absolutely fascinating attractiveness, be transplanted to, say
+Greenwich Park, any enterprising vendor of tea and shrimps who managed
+to secure a vested interest in the same, might reasonably hope to make
+such a fortune out of it as even a Rothschild need not despise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAR'S WANTON WASTE
+
+
+Day after day we steadily worked our way _down_ to Koomati Poort, even
+when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men
+toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the
+cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The
+Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday,
+though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we
+could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Surrendered Boer General._]
+
+During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General
+Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to
+Pretoria _via_ the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had
+joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been
+allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That
+oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother
+Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more
+set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes
+than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off
+Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King
+David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, but also
+in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore some not
+remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.
+
+Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path
+and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once
+more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was
+sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present
+were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns.
+Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly
+two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That
+particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago
+been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to
+the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a
+curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to
+a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the
+English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.
+
+His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely
+what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment
+the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and
+as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The
+general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was
+sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's
+funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries
+received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped
+with their lives.
+
+On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the triumphant
+Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood reverently
+beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general, who had
+proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the few
+concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good as
+his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from one
+of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards this
+whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of peace
+were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!
+
+This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all
+points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those
+who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they
+deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot
+denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel
+clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local
+complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been
+compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a
+good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much
+sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true.
+Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so
+in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered
+to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles
+that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who
+thus proved false to their plighted troth were, alas, ministers of
+the Dutch Reformed Church.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two Unworthy Predikants._]
+
+When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was
+informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants
+of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of
+his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at
+the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle
+the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our
+protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one
+of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after
+seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second
+time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When
+pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold
+perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.
+
+It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive
+clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in
+laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have
+been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this
+express promise that they should return to their farms there
+personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced
+them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far
+afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish.
+All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it
+was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served
+to pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently with
+surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the
+fault was not ours!
+
+At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day,
+and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or
+destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt
+as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still
+left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task,
+involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the
+earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously
+beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved
+many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Advocates of Clemency._]
+
+This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our
+island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread
+in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington
+during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and
+sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers,
+simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He
+recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run
+means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if
+they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is
+Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his
+diary:--"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a
+glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may
+humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British
+fleet."
+
+It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that
+Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what
+success let all the world bear witness!
+
+[Sidenote: _Mines without Men, and Men without Meat._]
+
+From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday,
+we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the
+Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven
+miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit.
+Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly
+machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the
+stern bidding of intruding war--that most potent disturber of the
+industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were
+cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house;
+and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we
+enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as
+the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river
+is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious
+Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once
+during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a
+single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now
+tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and
+fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so
+that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all
+our camp. The incessant use of one's heels seems to be the best
+preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops that
+sickness of any sort really runs riot.
+
+The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in
+consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that
+are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such
+day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced
+that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by
+train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and
+climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the
+effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully
+suggested this new version of an old-time melody--
+
+          Cheer, boys, cheer,
+          No more of idle sorrow;
+          Cheer, boys, cheer,
+          _There'll be another march to-morrow_.
+
+But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the
+sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on
+three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's
+rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to
+wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and
+putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well
+supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never
+satisfied.
+
+[Sidenote: _Much fat in the fire._]
+
+After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the
+house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another
+station on the Barberton branch; and here we found not only a fine
+railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway sheds,
+recently crammed full with government stores, mostly provisions, now
+ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely destroyed. Thousands of
+tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in all directions, and
+like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had turned the confined
+milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously ended its days by
+merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good things here,
+laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal troops, were
+consumed in quite another fashion from that intended. Even accumulated
+locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in some cases
+elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all utility, by
+the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets. The torch has
+played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food
+supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with
+a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed
+to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these innocents
+drew full British rations, when thousands of British soldiers were
+drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and Boer-beloved
+way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of an era when,
+constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,
+
+          Men will hang the trumpet in the hall,
+          And study war no more!
+
+[Sidenote: _More fat and mightier flames._]
+
+Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed
+by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm just as we were commencing
+our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge between the
+courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and thence came
+forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to renew
+acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm had
+somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be
+found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring
+conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.
+
+On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate
+push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main
+line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty
+made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four
+battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one
+battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a
+sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes
+outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they
+were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a
+ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line
+in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train.
+Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on,
+and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them.
+Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at
+that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on
+foot. We had indeed come by _rail_, but that we found was quite
+another thing from travelling by _train_; and the sequel forcefully
+reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding in a
+sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully
+removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the
+situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so"
+of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily
+beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.
+
+It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they
+stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the
+station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled,
+not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food
+stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself
+out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains
+of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which
+paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and
+there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning
+furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career
+by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and
+that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where
+it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken
+sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the
+semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so
+flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served
+out to be cooked as best it could be by the famished men some of them
+laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was not that a
+dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the station
+were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any grate,
+besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and no one
+knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the
+extreme.
+
+[Sidenote: _A welcome lift by the way._]
+
+Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we
+nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of
+certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little
+that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the
+mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such
+holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a
+forced march towards Koomati Poort.
+
+The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen
+miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of
+the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was
+I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and
+thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few
+miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so
+accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the
+Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was
+twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had
+already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of
+it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to
+because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense
+on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially
+when they happen to be his only pair.
+
+[Sidenote: "_Rags and tatters get ye gone._"]
+
+Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably
+lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at
+close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount
+that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to
+cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform
+of my regiment, and _in it I will show_, or fall this day." Barely a
+moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer
+war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War
+Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride
+and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in
+the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all
+regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately
+discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be
+seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived.
+The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and
+disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On
+this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman
+wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of
+the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the
+word OATS, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man
+in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained
+were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to Bruges.
+
+[Sidenote: _Destruction and still more destruction._]
+
+On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly
+lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our
+next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless
+wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved
+in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We
+were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that
+was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them
+a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile
+they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns
+and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence,
+and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men
+marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At
+Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at
+Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every
+kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army;
+though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had
+flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition
+waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the
+British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made
+every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty
+nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the
+14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty
+locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened to linger
+long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more than a
+king's ransom!
+
+That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and
+bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the
+arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp
+surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our
+march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best
+we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst
+of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we
+had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at
+four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find
+ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch,
+where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.
+
+[Sidenote: _At Koomati Poort._]
+
+On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to
+General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of
+leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit
+of the Transvaal--and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to
+fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War
+declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe--indeed
+the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small
+arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a
+distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes,
+and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A
+blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a
+good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these last weeks
+there were few casualties among the Boers, because they kept well out
+of casualty range. They were so frightened they even forgot to snipe.
+The valiant old President so long ago as September 11th had fled with
+his splendidly well-filled money bags across the Portuguese frontier;
+abandoning his burghers who were still in the field to whatever might
+chance to be their fate. That fate he watched, and waited for, from
+the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the
+Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at
+Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe
+still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst,
+broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic
+spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special trains
+beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men from many
+lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous example,
+seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on the 24th,
+the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more, who were
+mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay to become
+like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the Portuguese.
+
+To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for
+they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway
+bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large
+financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.
+
+Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the Crocodile
+with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw in
+midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the two
+Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a ridge
+of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and the
+Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of Portuguese
+flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim Boer had
+planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might make his
+last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our
+approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on
+their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the
+guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a
+solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat
+prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils
+were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that
+hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We
+praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of
+Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this
+result.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Fugitives._]
+
+The _Household Brigade Magazine_ tells an amusing story of a Guardsman
+hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied
+with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right
+loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled
+his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless him!" Such
+a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his own
+loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he exclaimed,
+"Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for him I
+would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"
+
+The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness
+begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of
+Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has
+not been without beneficent influence on our national character and
+destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the
+consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and
+Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its
+tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so
+bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all
+the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war
+began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot
+understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to
+his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon,
+for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely
+will the Vierkleur be victorious."
+
+[Sidenote: _The propaganda of the Africander Bond._]
+
+What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made
+abundantly plain in the pages of _De Patriot_, the once official organ
+of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written:
+"The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the
+British flag. That will never happen. There is just one hindrance to
+Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away,
+and within a year the Confederation under the Free Africander flag
+would be established; but so long as the English flag remains here the
+Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The British must just have
+Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and
+give over all Africa to the Africanders."
+
+It then adds: "Let every Africander in this Colony (that is, the Cape)
+for the sake of security take care that he has a good rifle and a box
+of cartridges, and that he knows how to use them." English trade is to
+be boycotted, nor is this veiled hostility to end even there. "Sell no
+land to Englishmen! We especially say this to our Transvaal brethren.
+The Boers are the landowners, and the proud little Englishmen are
+dependent on the Boers. Now that the war against the English
+Government is over, the war against the English language must begin.
+It must be considered a disgrace to speak English. The English
+governess is a pest. Africander parents, banish this pest from your
+houses!"
+
+Now, however, that Kruger is gone, and the Africander Bond has well
+nigh given up the ghost, English governesses in South Africa will be
+given another chance, which is at least some small compensation for
+all the cost and complicated consequences of this wanton war.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ex-President Steyn_.]
+
+Martinus Theunis Steyn, late President of what was once the Orange
+Free State, is in almost all respects a marked contrast to the
+Transvaal President, whose folly he abetted and whose flight for a
+while he shared. Steyn, speaking broadly, is almost young enough to be
+Kruger's grandson, and was never, as Kruger was from his birth, a
+British subject, for he was born at Wynburg some few years after the
+Orange Free State received its independence. Whilst Kruger was never
+for a single hour under the schoolmaster's rod, and is laughingly said
+even now to be unable to read anything which he has not first
+committed to memory, Steyn is a man of considerable culture, having
+been trained in England as a barrister, and having practised at the
+bar in Bloemfontein for six years before he became President. He
+therefore could not plead ignorance as his excuse when he flung his
+ultimatum in the face of Great Britain and Ireland. Whilst Kruger was
+a man of war from his youth, a "strong, unscrupulous, grim, determined
+man," Steyn never saw a shot fired in his life except in sport till
+this war began, yet all strangely it was the fighting President who
+fled from the face of the Guards, with all their multitudinous
+comrades in arms, and never rested till the sea removed him beyond
+their reach, while the lawyerly President, the man of peace, doubled
+back on his pursuers, returned by rugged by-paths to the land he had
+ruined, and there in association with De Wet became even more a
+fugitive than ancient Cain or the men of Adullam's cave.
+
+That many of his own people hotly disapproved of the course their
+infatuated ruler took is common knowledge; but by no one has that fact
+been more powerfully emphasised than by Paul Botha in his famous book
+"From Boer to Boer." Rightly or wrongly, this is what, briefly put,
+Botha says:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President._]
+
+     When as a Free Stater I think of the war and realise that we have
+     lost the independence of our little state, I feel that I could
+     curse Martinus Theunis Steyn who used his country as a stepping
+     stone for the furtherance of his own private ends. He sold his
+     country to the Transvaal in the hope that Paul Kruger's mantle
+     would fall on him. The first time Kruger visited the Orange Free
+     State after Steyn's election the latter introduced him at a
+     public banquet with these words, "This is my Father!" The thought
+     occurred to me at the time, "Yes, and you are waiting for your
+     father's shoes." He hoped to succeed "his father" as President of
+     the combined republics of united South Africa. For this giddy
+     vision he ignored the real interests of our little state, and
+     dragged the country into an absolutely unnecessary and insane
+     war. I maintain there were only two courses open to England in
+     answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to fight, or to retire
+     from South Africa--and it was only possible for men suffering
+     from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
+     suffering from, to doubt the issue.
+
+     I ask any man to tell me what quarrel we had with England? Was
+     any injury done to us? Such questions make one's hair stand on
+     end. Whether knave or fool, Steyn did not prepare himself
+     adequately for his gigantic undertaking. He commenced this war
+     with a firm trust in God and the most gross negligence. But it is
+     impossible to reason with the men now at the front. With the
+     exception of a few officials these men consist of ignorant
+     "bywoners," augmented by desperate men from the Cape who have
+     nothing to lose, and who lead a jolly rollicking life on
+     commando, stealing and looting from the farmers who have
+     surrendered, and whom they opprobriously call "handsuppers!"
+
+     These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell
+     them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken
+     prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me,
+     after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians,
+     Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily;
+     that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a
+     small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men
+     who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds
+     of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and
+     cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every
+     valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are
+     not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to
+     dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.
+
+As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim
+to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same
+reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no
+kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I
+tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was
+only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted
+what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont--"Every man
+of you deserves promotion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA
+
+
+Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards'
+Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its
+juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to
+take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the
+endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently
+been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!
+
+[Sidenote: _Staggering Humanity._]
+
+Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have
+often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this
+period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their
+purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many
+opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched
+through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one
+might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our
+last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently
+pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder
+onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us.
+A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On
+September 17th, precisely a week before we arrived at Koomati,
+special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across the
+frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity--to
+France, to Germany, to Russia--and amid the curious collection of
+things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I
+saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the
+owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain
+English, thus:--
+
+  P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.
+
+That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own
+to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though
+in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with
+men of almost every nationality under heaven.
+
+[Sidenote: _Food for Flames._]
+
+Humanity was scarcely less severely staggered by the lavish
+destruction of food stuffs and rolling stock we were that day
+compelled to witness. In the sidings of the Koomati railway station,
+as at Kaap Muiden, I found not less than half a mile of loaded trucks
+all blazing furiously. The goods shed was also in flames, and so was a
+gigantic heap of coals for locomotive use, which was still smouldering
+months afterwards. Along the Selati branch I saw what I was told
+amounted to over five miles of empty trucks that had fortunately
+escaped destruction, and later on proved to us of prodigious use.
+
+A war correspondent, who had been with the Portuguese for weeks
+awaiting our advent, assured me that the Boers were so dismayed by the
+tidings of our approach that at first they precipitately fled leaving
+everything untouched; but finding we apparently delayed for a few
+hours our coming, they ventured across the great railway bridge in a
+red cross ambulance train, on which they felt certain we should not
+fire even if our scouts were already in possession of the place; and
+so from the shelter of the red cross these firebrands stepped forth to
+perform their task of almost immeasurable destruction. It is however
+only fair to add that the great majority of these mischief-makers were
+declared to be not genuine Boers, but mercenaries,--a much-mixed
+multitude whose ignominious departure from the Transvaal will minister
+much to its future wholesomeness and honesty.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Crocodile in the Koomati._]
+
+Next morning while with several officers I was enjoying a before
+breakfast bathe, a cry of alarm was raised, and presently I saw those
+who had hurried out of the water taking careful aim at a crocodile
+clinging to a rock in midstream. Revolver shot after revolver shot was
+fired, but I quickly perceived it was the very same crocodile I had
+seen at that very same spot the day before; and as it was quite dead
+then I concluded it was probably still dead, though the officers thus
+furiously assailing it had not yet discovered the fact; so leaving
+them to continue their revolver practice I quietly returned to the
+bubbling waters and finished my bathe in peace.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Hippopotamus in the Koomati._]
+
+Later on a continuous rifle fire at the river side close to the
+Guards' camp attracted general attention, and on going to see what it
+all meant I found a group of Colonials had thus been popping for hours
+at a huge hippopotamus hiding in a deep pool close to the opposite
+bank. Every time the poor brute put its nose above the surface of the
+water half a dozen bullets splashed all around it though apparently
+without effect. The Grenadier officers pronounced such proceedings
+cruel and cowardly, but were without authority to put a stop to it.
+The crocodile is deemed lawful sport because it endangers life, but
+the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it rarely does harm, and is
+growing rarer year by year. I ventured therefore to tell these
+Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad as their marksmanship,
+and that the pleasure which springs from inflicting profitless pain
+was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached to deaf ears, and when soon
+after our camp was broken up that Hippo. was still their target.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Via Dolorosa._]
+
+On the second day of our brief stay at Koomati Poort, I crossed the
+splendid seven spanned bridge over the Koomati River, and noticed that
+the far end was guarded by triple lines of barbed wire, nor was other
+evidence lacking that the Boers purposed to give us a parting blizzard
+under the very shadow of the Portuguese frontier flags.
+
+Then came a sight not often surpassed since Napoleon's flight from
+Moscow. Right up to the Portuguese frontier the slopes of the railway
+line were strewn with every imaginable and unimaginable form of loot
+and wreckage, flung out of the trains as they flew along by the
+frightened burghers. Telegraph instruments, crutches, and rocking
+chairs, frying pans and packets of medicinal powders, wash-hand basins
+and tins of Danish butter lay there in wild profusion; likewise a
+homely wooden box that looked up at me and said "Eat Quaker Oats."
+
+At one point I found a great pile of rifles over which paraffin had
+been freely poured and then set on fire. Hundreds more, broken and
+scattered, were flung in all directions. Then, too, I saw cases of
+dynamite, live shells of every sort and size, and piles of boxes on
+which was painted
+
+                    "_Explosive_ Safety Cartridges
+          Supplied by Vickers, Maxim & Co.; for the use of
+          the Government of the South African Republic."
+
+Likewise boxes of ammunition, broken and unbroken bearing the brand of
+"Kynoch Brothers, Birmingham" were there in piles; and it was while
+some men of the Gordons were superintending the destruction of this
+ammunition that a terrific explosion occurred a few days later by
+which three of them were killed and twenty-one wounded, including the
+"Curio" of the regiment, who was stuck all over with splinters like
+pins in a cushion; and in spite of seven-and-twenty wounds had the
+daring to survive. Byron somewhere tells of an eagle pierced by an
+arrow winged with a feather from its own breast, and in this war many
+a British hero has been riddled by bullets that British hands have
+fashioned. Moreover, among these bullets that thus littered that
+railway track I found vast quantities of the soft-nosed and slit
+varieties of which I brought away some samples; and others coated with
+a something green as verdigris. It is said that in love and war all is
+fair; but we should have more readily believed in the much belauded
+piety of the Boers, if it had deigned to dispense with "soft noses"
+and "explosive safeties," which were none the less cruel or unlawful
+because of British make!
+
+Whole stacks of sugar I also found, in flaming haste to turn
+themselves into rippling lakes of decidedly overdone toffee; and in
+similar fashion piled up sacks of coffee berries were roasting
+themselves not wisely but too well. Pyramids of flour were much in the
+same way baking themselves into cakes, monstrously misshapen, and much
+more badly burnt than King Alfred's ever were. "The Boers are poor
+cooks," laughingly explained our men; "they bake in bulk without
+proper mixing." Nevertheless, along that line everything seemed very
+much mixed indeed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Over the Line._]
+
+On reaching the Portuguese frontier I somewhat ceremoniously saluted
+the Portuguese flag, to the evident satisfaction of the Portuguese
+marines who mounted guard beside it. There were just then about 600 of
+them on duty at Resina Garcia, and as they were for the most part
+dressed in spotless white they looked delightsomely clean and cool.
+Indeed, the contrast between their uniforms and ours was almost
+painfully acute; but it was the contrast between men of war's men in
+holiday attire, which no war had ever touched, and weary war-men
+tattered and torn by ten months' constant contact with its roughest
+usage. A shameful looking lot we were--but ashamed we were not!
+
+As these foreigners on frontier guard knew not a word of English, and
+I unfortunately knew not a word of Portuguese, there seemed small
+chance of any very luminous conversation; but presently I pronounced
+the magic word "Padré," and pointed to the cross upon my collar, when
+lo! a look of intelligence crept into the very dullest face. They
+passed on the word in approving tones from one to another, and I was
+instantly supplied with quite a new illustration of the ancient
+legend, "In hoc signo vinces." In token of respect for my chaplain's
+badge, without passport or payment, I was at once courteously allowed
+to cross the line and set foot in Portuguese Africa. There are
+compensations in every lot, even in a parson's!
+
+The village immediately beyond the frontier is little else than a
+block or two of solidly built barracks, and a well appointed railway
+station, with its inevitable refreshment room, in which a group of
+officers representing the two nationalities were enjoying a friendly
+lunch. But great was my surprise on discovering that the vivacious
+Portuguese proprietor presiding behind the bar was a veritable
+Scotchman hailing from queenly Edinburgh; and still greater was my
+surprise on hearing a sweetly familiar accent on the lips of a
+Colonial scout hungrily waiting on the platform outside till the
+aforesaid officers' lunch was over, and he, a private, might be
+permitted to purchase an equally satisfying lunch and eat it in that
+same refreshment room. It was the accent of the far away "West
+Countree," and told me its owner was like myself a Cornishman. Yet
+what need to be surprised? Were I to take the wings of the morning and
+fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, I should probably find there
+as at Resina Garcia, thriving Scotchman in possession, and a famished
+Cornishman waiting at his gate. To these two, in this fashion, have
+been apportioned the outposts of the habitable globe!
+
+[Sidenote: _Westward Ho!_]
+
+It was to everybody's extreme surprise and delight that at noon on
+Thursday we received sudden orders to leave Koomati Poort at once, and
+to leave it not on foot but by rail. The huge baboon, therefore, which
+had become our latest regimental pet and terror, was promptly
+transferred to other custody, and our scanty kits were packed with
+utmost speed. We soon discovered, however, that it was one thing to
+reach the appointed railway station, and quite another to find the
+appointed train. Two locomotives, in apparently sound condition, had
+been selected from among a multitude of utterly wrecked and ruined
+ones, but serviceable trucks had also to be warily chosen from among
+the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these
+trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long
+before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the
+postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on
+the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was
+to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we
+attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind
+us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.]
+
+As all the regular railway employés had fled with the departing Boers,
+it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to
+do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times
+amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully
+handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey
+engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur
+drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take
+on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get
+it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our
+second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the
+injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a
+quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we
+were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out,
+and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long
+time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a
+journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might
+have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to
+wreck the train immediately following ours--so inflicting fatal or
+other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.
+
+Meanwhile we noted that "fever" trees, with stems of a peculiarly
+green and bilious hue, abounded on both sides the line; trees so
+called, not because they produce fever, but because their presence
+infallibly indicates an area in which fever habitually prevails.
+Hundreds of the troops that followed us into the fatal valley were
+speedily fever-stricken, and it is with a sense of devoutest gratitude
+I record the fact that the Guards' Brigade not only entered Koomati
+Port without the loss of a single life by bullets, but also left it
+without the loss of a single life by fever.
+
+At first at the foot of every incline we were compelled to pause while
+our engines, one in front and one behind, got up an ampler pressure of
+steam, but presently it was suggested that the hundreds of Guardsmen
+on board the train should tumble out of the trucks and shove, which
+accordingly they did, the Colonel himself assenting and assisting. So
+sometimes shoving, always steaming, we pursued our shining way, as we
+fondly supposed, towards Hyde Park corner and "Home, sweet Home."
+
+At Waterval Onder we stayed the night, and I was thus enabled to visit
+once again the tiny international cemetery, referred to in a former
+chapter, where I had laid to rest an unnamed, because unrecognised,
+private of the Devons. Now close beside him in that silent land lay
+the superbly-built Australian, whom I had so often visited in the
+adjoining hospital, and whom our general had promised to recommend for
+"The Distinguished Service Medal." Not yet eighteen, his life work was
+early finished; but by heroisms such as his has our vast South African
+domain been bought; and by graves such as his are the far sundered
+parts of our world-wide empire knit together.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ruined farms and ruined firms._]
+
+Throughout this whole journey I was painfully impressed not only by
+the almost total absence of all signs of present-day cultivation, even
+where such cultivation could not but prove richly remunerative, but
+also by the still sadder fact that many of the farmhouses we sighted
+were in ruins. Along this Delagoa line, as in other parts of the
+Transvaal, there had been so much sniping at trains, and so many
+cases of scouts being fired at from farmhouses over which the white
+flag floated, that this particular form of retribution and repression,
+which we none the less deplored, seemed essential to the safety of all
+under our protection; and in defence thereof I heard quoted, as
+peculiarly appropriate to the Boer temperament and tactics, the
+familiar lines:--
+
+          Softly, gently, touch a nettle,
+          And it stings you for your pains;
+          Grasp it like a man of mettle,
+          And it soft as silk remains.
+
+Amajuba led to a fatal misjudgement of the British by the Boer. In all
+leniency, the latter now recognises only an encouraging lack of grit,
+which persuades him to prolong the contest by whatever tactics suit
+him best. Its effect resembles that of the Danegeld our Saxon fathers
+paid their oversea invaders, with a view to staying all further
+strife. Their gifts were interpreted as a sign of craven fear, and
+merely taught the recipients to clamour greedily for more. Long before
+this cruel war closed it became clear as noonday that Boer hostilities
+could not be bought off by a crippling clemency, and that an
+ever-discriminating severity is, in practice, mercy of the truest and
+most effective type.
+
+How great the pressure on the military authorities became in
+consequence of these frequent breakages of the railway line, and how
+serious the inconvenience to the mercantile community, as indeed to
+the whole civil population, may be judged from the fact that only on
+the day of my return from Resina Garcia did the Pretoria merchants
+receive their first small consignments of food stuffs since the
+arrival of the British troops some four months before. Clothing,
+boots, indeed goods of any other type than food, they had still not
+the faintest hope of getting up from the coast for many a week to
+come. War is always hard alike on public stores and private cupboards;
+but seldom have the supplies of any town, not actually undergoing a
+siege, been more nearly exhausted than were those of Pretoria at the
+time now referred to. For hungry and impecunious folk the City of
+Roses was fast becoming a bed of thorns.
+
+[Sidenote: _Farewell to the Guards' Brigade._]
+
+From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our
+homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was
+broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was
+accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point,
+therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.
+
+For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely
+uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of
+camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night
+and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses
+immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect.
+Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all
+respects my warmest admiration.
+
+Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that
+they were all God-fearing men; nor did many among them claim to be
+such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was their
+traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr
+Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of
+our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never
+hear any of them swear. The colonel is very severe on those who use
+bad language, and if he hears any he says, 'I tell you I will not
+allow it. If you want to use such language go out on to the veldt and
+swear at the stones, but I will not permit you to contaminate the men
+by such language in the lines. I won't have it!'"
+
+Not all battalions in the British army are built that way, nor do all
+British officers row in the same boat with that aforesaid colonel.
+Nevertheless, I am prepared to echo the opinion expressed by Julian
+Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:--"They were
+emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud,
+polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and
+spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to
+those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had
+been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of
+them represented families of historic and world-wide renown. It was,
+therefore, somewhat of an astonishment to see such men continually
+roughing it in a fashion that navvies would scarcely consent to do at
+home; drinking water that, as our colonel said, one would not
+willingly give to a dog; and sometimes sleeping in ditches without
+even a rug to cover them.
+
+Wild assertions have been made in some ill-informed papers about these
+officers being ill-informed, and even Conan Doyle complains that he
+saw only one young officer studying an Army Text-Book in the course of
+the whole campaign; but then, when kits are cut down to a maximum
+weight of thirty-seven pounds, what room is there for books even on
+tactics? The tactics of actual battle are better teachers than any
+text-books; and a cool head, with a courageous heart, is often of more
+value in a tight corner than any amount of merely technical knowledge.
+It is true that some of our officers have blundered, but then, in most
+cases, it was their first experience of real war, especially of war
+amid conditions entirely novel. It was more personal initiative, not
+more text-book; more caution, not more courage that was most commonly
+required. To inspire his men with tranquil confidence, one officer
+after another exposed himself to needless perils, and was, as we fear,
+wastefully done to death. But be that as it may the Guards' Brigade,
+men and officers alike, I rank among the bravest of the brave; and my
+association with them for so long a season, I reckon one of the
+highest honours of a happy life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES
+
+
+What Conan Doyle rightly described as "The great _Boer_ War" came
+eventually to be called yet more correctly "The great _Bore_ War." It
+grew into a weariness that might well have worn out the patience and
+exhausted the resources of almost any nation. No one for a moment
+imagined when we reached Koomati Poort that we had come only to the
+half-way house of our toils and travels, and that there still lay
+ahead of us another twelve months' cruel task. From the very first to
+the very finish it has been a war of sharp surprises, and to most the
+sharpest surprise of all has been this its wasteful and wanton
+prolonging.
+
+[Sidenote: _Exhaustlessness of Boer resources._]
+
+We wondered early, and we wondered late, at the seeming
+exhaustlessness of the Boer resources. In their frequent flights they
+destroyed, or left for us to capture, almost fabulously large supplies
+of food and ammunition; yet at the end of two years of such incessant
+waste Kaffirs were still busy pointing out to us remote caves filled
+with food stuffs, as in Seccicuni's country, or large pits loaded to
+the brim with cases of cartridges. A specially influential Boer
+prisoner told me he himself had been present at many such burials,
+when 250 cases of mauser ammunition were thus secreted in one place,
+and then a similar quantity in another, and I have it on the most
+absolute authority possible that when the war began the Boers
+possessed not less than 70,000,000 rounds of ball cartridge, and
+200,000 rifles of various patterns, which would be tantamount to two
+for every adult Dutchman in all South Africa. Kruger, in declaring
+war, did not leap before he looked, or put the kettle on the fire
+without first procuring an ample supply of coal to keep it boiling.
+For many a month before hostilities commenced, if not for years, all
+South Africa lay in the hollow of Kruger's hand, excepting only the
+seaport towns commanded by our naval guns. At any moment he could have
+overrun our South African colonies and none could have said him nay.
+These colonies we held, though we knew it not, on Boer sufferance. At
+the end of two years of incessant fighting we barely made an end of
+the invasion of Cape Colony and Natal, and the altogether unsuspected
+difficulty of the task is the true index of the deadliness of the
+peril from which this dreadful war has delivered the whole empire.
+
+[Sidenote: _The peculiarity of the Boer tactics._]
+
+How it was the Boers did not succeed at the very outset in driving the
+British into the sea, when we had only skeleton forces to oppose them,
+was best explained to me by a son of the late State Secretary, who
+penned the ultimatum, and whom I found among our prisoners in
+Pretoria. The Boers are not farmers. Speaking broadly there is
+scarcely an acre of ploughed land in all the Transvaal. "The men are
+shepherds, their trade hath been to feed cattle." But before they
+could thus, like the Patriarchs, become herdsmen, they perforce still,
+like their much loved Hebrew prototypes, had to become hunters, and
+clear the land of savage beasts and savage men. The hunter's
+instincts, the hunter's tactics were theirs, and no hunter comes out
+into the open if he can help it. It is no branch of his business to
+make a display of his courage and to court death. His part is to kill,
+so silently, so secretly, as to avoid being killed. Traps and
+tricking, not to say treachery, and shooting from behind absolutely
+safe cover, are the essential points in a hunter's tactics. Caution to
+him is more than courage, and it is precisely along those lines the
+Boers make war. In almost every case when they ventured into the open
+it was the doing of their despised foreign auxiliaries. The kind of
+courage required for the actual conquest of the colonies the Boers had
+never cultivated or acquired. The men who in six months and six days
+could not rush little Mafeking hoped in vain to capture Cape Town,
+unless they caught it napping. But in defensive warfare, in cunningly
+setting snares like that at Sanna's Post, in skilful concealment as at
+Modder River, when all day long most of our men were quite unable to
+discover on which side of the stream the Boer entrenchments were, and
+in what they called clever trickery, but we called treachery, they are
+absolutely unsurpassable. So was it through the earlier stages of the
+campaign. So was it through the later stages.
+
+Another cause of Boer failure as explained to me by the State
+Secretary's son was the inexperience and incompetency of their
+generals, who had won what little renown was theirs in Zulu or Kaffir
+wars. Amajuba, at which only about half a battalion of our troops took
+part, was the biggest battle they had ever fought against the British,
+and it led the more illiterate among them to believe they could whip
+all England's armies as easily as they could sjambok a Kaffir. Their
+leaders of course knew better, but even they believed there was being
+played a game of bluff on both sides, with this vital difference,
+however--we bluffed, and, as they full well knew, did not prepare;
+they bluffed, and, to an extent we never knew, did prepare. Though
+therefore their generals were amateurs in the arts of modern warfare
+as so many of our own proved to be, they confidently reckoned that, if
+they could strike a staggering blow whilst we were as yet unready,
+they would inevitably win a second Amajuba. Magnanimity would again
+leave them masters of the situation, and if not, European intervention
+would presently compel us to arbitrate away our claims. But Joubert's
+softness, Schoeman's incompetency and Cronje's surrender spoiled the
+project just when success seemed in sight. One other cause of Boer
+failure which remained in force to the very last was their utter lack
+of discipline. My specially frank and intelligent informant said no
+Boer ever took part in a fight unless he felt so inclined. He claimed
+liberty to ignore the most urgent commands of his field cornet, and
+might even unreproved slap him in the face. Such decidedly independent
+fighting may serve for the defence of an almost inaccessible kopje,
+but an attack conducted on such lines is almost sure to fall to
+pieces. It was therefore seldom attempted, but many a lawless deed
+was done, like firing on ambulances and funeral parties, for which no
+leader can well be held responsible.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Surprisers Surprised._]
+
+This light formation lent itself, however, excellently well to the
+success of the guerilla type of warfare, which the Boers maintained
+for more than twelve months after all their principal towns were
+taken. Solitary snipers were thus able from safe distances to pick off
+unsuspecting man, or horse, or ox, and, if in danger of being traced,
+could hide the bandolier and pose as a peace-loving citizen seeking
+his own lost ox.
+
+In some cases small detachments of our men on convoy or outpost duty
+were cut off by these ever-watchful, ever-wandering bands of Boers,
+and an occasional gun or pom-pom was temporarily captured, a result
+for which in one case at least extra rum rations were reputed to be
+responsible. But it must be remembered that our men and officers,
+regular and irregular alike, were as inexperienced as the Boers in
+many of the novel duties this war devolved upon them; that the
+Transvaal lends itself as scarcely any other country under the sun
+could do to just such surprises, and that the ablest generals served
+by the trustiest scouts have in the most heroic periods of our history
+sometimes found themselves face to face with the unforeseen. We are
+assured, for instance, that even on the eve of Waterloo both Blucher
+and Wellington were caught off their guard by their great antagonist.
+On June 15th, at the very moment when the French columns were
+actually crossing the Belgian frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar
+explaining his intention to take the offensive about a fortnight
+hence; and Blucher only a few days before had sent word to his wife
+that the Allies would soon enter France, for if they waited where they
+were for another year, Bonaparte would never attack them. Yet the very
+next day, June 16th, at Ligny, Bonaparte hurled himself like a
+thunderbolt on Blucher, and three days after, Wellington, having
+rushed from the Brussels ballroom to the battlefield at Waterloo,
+there saved himself and Europe, "so as by fire."
+
+The occasional surprises our troops have sustained in the Transvaal
+need not stagger us, however much they ruffle our national
+complacency. They are not the first we have had to face, and may
+possibly prove by no means the last; but it is at least some sort of
+solace to know that however often we were surprised during the last
+long lingering stages of the war, our men yet more frequently
+surprised their surprisers. Whilst I was still there in July 1901,
+there were brought into Pretoria the surviving members of the
+Executive of the late Orange Free State, all notable men, all caught
+in their night-dresses--President Steyn alone escaping in shirt and
+pants; whilst his entire bodyguard, consisting of sixty burghers, were
+at the same time sent as prisoners to Bloemfontein. Laager after
+laager during those weary months was similarly surprised, and waggons
+and oxen and horses beyond all counting were captured, till apparently
+scarcely a horse or hoof or pair of heels was left on all the
+far-reaching veldt. The Boers resolutely chose ruin rather than
+surrender, and so, alas, the ruin came; for many, ruin beyond all
+remedy!
+
+[Sidenote: _Train Wrecking._]
+
+During this same period of despairing resistance the Boers imparted to
+the practice of train wrecking the finish of a fine art. At first they
+confined their attentions to troop trains, which are presumably lawful
+game; and as I was returning from Koomati Poort the troop train that
+immediately followed that on which I travelled was thus thrown off the
+rails near Pan, and about twenty of the Coldstream Guards, by whose
+side I had tramped for so many months, were killed or severely
+injured. The provision trains on which not the soldiers only, but the
+Boers' own wives and children, depended for daily food, were wrecked,
+looted or set on fire. Finally, they took to dynamiting ordinary
+passenger trains, and robbed of their personal belongings helpless
+women, including nursing sisters.
+
+In Pretoria, I had the privilege of conversing with a cultured and
+godly lady who told me that she had been twice wrecked on her one
+journey up from the coast, and that the wrecking was as usual of a
+fatal type though fortunately not for her. Like one of the ironies of
+fate seemed the fact, of which she further informed me, that she had
+brought with her from England some hundreds of pounds' worth of bodily
+comforts, and yet more abounding spiritual consolations for free
+distribution among the wives and children of the very men who thus in
+one single journey had twice placed her life in deadly peril.
+
+Among the Bush Veldt Carabineers at Pietersburg I found an
+engine-driver who in the course of a few months had thus been shot at
+and shattered by Boer drivers till he grew so sick of it that he threw
+up a situation worth £30 a month and joined the Fighting Scouts by way
+of finding some less perilous vocation. On the Sunday I spent there I
+worshipped with the Gordons who had survived the siege of Ladysmith;
+the day following as I returned to Pretoria, the train I travelled by
+was thrice ineffectually sniped; but soon after the turn of these same
+Gordons came to escort a train on that same line when nearly every man
+among them was killed or wounded, including their officer, and a
+sergeant with whom during that visit I had bowed in private prayer;
+but the driver, stoker and guard were deliberately led aside and shot
+after capture in cold blood. So my friend in the Carabineers had not
+long to wait for the justifying of his strange choice. Not until
+Norman William had planted stout Norman castles at every commanding
+point could he complete the conquest of our Motherland; and not until
+sturdy little block-houses sprang up thick and fast beside 5000 miles
+of rail and road was travelling in the Transvaal robbed of its worst
+peril, and the subjugation of the country made complete.
+
+The worst of all our railway smashes, however, occurred close to
+Pretoria, and was caused by what seemed a bit of criminal
+carelessness, which resulted in a terrific collision. A Presbyterian
+chaplain who was in the damaged train showed me his battered and
+broken travelling trunk; but close beside the wreckage I saw the
+more terribly broken bodies of nine brave men awaiting burial. It was
+a tragedy too exquisitely distressing to be here described.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Refugee Camps._]
+
+When the two Republics were formally annexed to the British Crown all
+the women and children scattered far and wide over the interminable
+veldt, were made British subjects by the very act; and from that hour
+for their support and safety the British Government became
+responsible. Yet all ordinary traffic by road or rail had long been
+stopped. All country stores were speedily cleared and closed. All farm
+stock or produce was gathered up and carried off, first by one set of
+hungry belligerents, then by the others; physic was still more scarce
+than food, and prowling bands of blacks or whites intensified the
+peril. The creation of huge concentration camps, all within easy reach
+of some railway, thus became an urgent necessity. No such prodigious
+enterprise could be carried through its initial stages without
+hardships having to be endured by such vast hosts of refugees,
+hardships only less severe than those the troops themselves sustained.
+
+What I saw of these camps at Hiedelburg, Barberton, and elsewhere made
+me wonder that so much had been done, and so well done; but a gentle
+lady sent from England to look for faults and flaws, and who was
+lovingly doing her best to find them, complained to me that all the
+tents were not quite sound, which I can quite believe. Canvas that is
+in constant use won't last for ever, and it is quite conceivable that
+at the end of a two years' campaign some of the tents in use were
+visibly the worse for wear. Thousands of our soldiers, however, went
+for a while without tents of any sort, while the families of their
+foes were being thus carefully sheltered in such tents as could then
+be procured. It is, moreover, in some measure reassuring to remember
+that the winter weather here is almost perfect, not a solitary shower
+falling for weeks together, and that within these tents were army
+blankets both thick and plentiful.
+
+Complaint was also made in my presence that mutton, and yet again
+mutton, and only mutton, was supplied to the refugee camps by way of
+fresh meat rations, and that, moreover, a whole carcase, being mostly
+skin and bone, sometimes weighed only about twelve pounds. It is quite
+true that the scraggy Transvaal sheep would be looked down on and
+despised by their fat and far-famed English cousins, especially at
+that season of the year when the veldt is as bare and barren as the
+Sahara; but it surely is no fault of the British Government that not a
+green blade can anywhere be seen during these long rainless months,
+and that consequently all the flocks look famished. South African
+mutton is, at the best of times, a by no means dainty dish to set
+before a king, much less before the wife of a belligerent Boer; but
+British officers and men had to feed upon it and be content.
+
+That no fresh beef, however, was by any chance supplied sounded to me
+quite a new charge, and set me enquiring as to its accuracy. I
+therefore wrote to one of the meat contractors, whom I personally knew
+as a man of specially good repute, and in reply was informed that for
+seven months he had regularly supplied the refugee camp in his
+neighbourhood with fresh beef as well as mutton, neither being always
+prime, he said, but the best that in war time the veldt could be made
+to yield! Those who hunt for grievances at a time like this can always
+find them, though when weighed in the balances they may perchance
+prove even lighter than Transvaal sheep.
+
+It is undeniable that the child mortality in these refugee camps has
+been high compared with the average that prevails in a healthy English
+town. But the South African average, especially during the fever
+season, usually reaches quite another figure. A Hollander predikant,
+whom I found among our prisoners, told me that he, his wife, and his
+three children were all down with fever, but were without physic, and
+almost without food, when the English found them in the low country
+beyond Pietersburg, and brought them into camp. Nearly all their
+neighbours were in the same sad plight, and several died before they
+could be moved. In that and similar cases the camp mortality was bound
+to be high, but it takes a free-tongued Britisher to assert that it
+was the fault of the ever brutal British. In some camps there was an
+epidemic of measles, which occasionally occurs even in the happy
+homeland; but in the least sanitary refugee camp the mortality was
+never so high as in some of our own military fever camps, where the
+epidemic raged like a plague, and for many a weary week refused to be
+stayed. It should be remembered also that all the healthy manhood of
+the country was either still out on commando or in the oversea camps
+provided for our prisoners of war. The men brought in as refugees were
+only those who had no fight left in them--the halt, the maimed, the
+blind, the sick of every sort, the bent by extreme old age, the dying.
+I was startled by the specimens I saw. Here were gathered all the
+frailnesses and infirmities of two Republics; and to test an
+improvised camp of such a class by the standards which we rightly
+apply to an average English town is as misleading as it is
+mischievous.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Grit of the Guards._]
+
+When voyaging on _The Nubia_ with the Scots Guards they often
+laughingly assured me it was the merest "walk over" that awaited us,
+and so in due time we discovered it to be. But it was a walk over well
+nigh the whole of South Africa, especially for these Scots. While
+during the second year of the war the Grenadiers were doing excellent
+work, chiefly in the northern part of Cape Colony, and the Coldstreams
+were similarly employed mainly along the lines of communication in the
+Orange River Colony, the Scots Guards trekked north, south, east and
+west. As a mere matter of mileage but much more as a matter of
+endurance they broke all previous records.
+
+I have more than once written so warmly in praise of the daring and
+endurance of these men as to make me fear my words might for that very
+reason be heavily discounted. I was therefore delighted to find in
+Julian Ralph's "At Pretoria" a kindred eulogy: "When I passed through
+the camps of the Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstream Guards the other
+day, I thought I never saw men more wretchedly and pitifully
+circumstanced. The officers are the drawing-room pets of London
+society, which in large measure they rule.... Well, there they were on
+the veldt looking like a lot of half drowned rats, as indeed they had
+been ever since the cold season and the rains had set in. You would
+not like to see a vagabond dog fare as they were doing. They had no
+tents. They could get no dry wood to make fires with. They were soaked
+to the bone night and day, and they stood about in mud toe-deep.
+Titled and untitled alike all were in the same scrape, and all were
+stoutly insisting that it didn't matter; it was all in the game."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Irregulars._]
+
+During this second period of the war the staying powers of the
+Irregulars was no less severely tested. Here and there there was a
+momentary failure, but as a whole the men did superbly. Multitudes of
+the Colonials, who on completing their first term of service, returned
+to Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, actually re-enlisted for a
+second term, and in several cases paid their own passage to the Cape
+in order to rejoin. The Colonials are incomparably keener Imperialists
+than we ourselves claim to be. Some of the officers of these Irregular
+troops were themselves of a most irregular type, and in the case of
+town, or mine, or cattle, Guards were occasionally chosen, not with
+reference to any martial fitness they might possess, but because of
+their knowledge of and influence over the men they now commanded, and
+previously in civilian life had probably employed. One of these called
+his men to "fall in--_two thick_!" and another, when he wanted to halt
+his Guards, is reported to have thrown up his arms and said, "Whoa!
+Stop!" None need wonder if troops so handled sometimes found
+themselves in a tight corner. Yet of these newly recruited Irregulars,
+as of the most staid Reservists, there was good reason to be proud;
+and as concerning his own Irregulars in the Peninsular War Wellington
+said that with them he could go anywhere or do anything, so were these
+also as a whole entitled to similar confidence and to a similar
+tribute.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Testimony of the Cemetery._]
+
+How fully these citizen soldiers hazarded their lives for the empire
+every cemetery in South Africa bears sad and silent witness, including
+the one I know so well in Pretoria. Indeed that particular
+burial-place is to me the most pathetic spot on earth, and enshrines
+in striking fashion the whole history of the Transvaal, whereof only
+one or two illustrations can here be given. In a tiny walled
+enclosure--a cemetery within a cemetery--filled with the soldier
+victims of our earlier wars, I found a slab whereon was this
+inscription:--
+
+              "To the memory of Corporal Henry Watson,
+            Who died at Pretoria 17th May 1877; aged 25 years.
+              He was the first British Soldier to give up his
+              life in the service of his Country, _on the annexation_
+              of the Transvaal Republic!"
+
+Near by on another slab I read:--
+
+            "In loving memory of John Mitchell Elliott
+            Aged 37. Captain and Paymaster of the 94th Regiment,
+            Who was killed for Queen and Country
+            while crossing the Vaal River on the night of
+            Dec. 29th, 1880."
+
+There, too, I found one other slab which recorded in this strange
+style the closing of a most ignoble chapter in our imperial history:--
+
+     "This Cemetery was planted, and the graves left in good repair by
+     the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, _prior to the evacuation_
+     of Pretoria, 1881."
+
+Two brief decades rush away, and once again that same cemetery opens
+wide its gates to welcome new battalions of British soldiers, each of
+whom like his forerunner of 1877 "gave up his life in the service of
+his country"; but these late-comers represent every province and
+almost every hamlet of a far-reaching empire, as well as every branch
+of the service; while over all and applicable to all alike is the
+epitaph on the tomb of the Hampshire Volunteers, "We answered duty's
+call!"
+
+[Sidenote: _Death and Life in Pretoria._]
+
+The Dutch section of that cemetery also witnessed some sensational
+scenes during the period now referred to.
+
+On July 20th Mrs Kruger, the ex-President's wife, died, and as one of
+a prodigious crowd I attended her homely funeral. She was herself
+well-nigh the homeliest woman in Pretoria, and one of the most
+illiterate; but precisely because she was content to be her simple
+God-fearing self, put on no airs, and intermeddled not in matters
+beyond her ken, she was universally respected and regretted.
+
+During this second period of the war the troops in Pretoria continued
+to justify Lord Roberts' description of them as "the best-behaved army
+in the world." The Sunday evening services in Wesley Church were
+always crowded with them, and the nightly meetings held in the
+S.A.G.M. marquees were not only wonderfully well attended but were
+also marked by much spiritual power. Pretoria, after we took
+possession of it, witnessed many a tear, and occasional tragedies; but
+it was in Pretoria I heard a young Canadian soldier sing the following
+song, which aptly illustrates the type of life to which many a trooper
+has more or less fully attained during this South African campaign:--
+
+            I'm walking close to Jesus' side,
+              So close that I can hear
+            The softest whispers of His love
+              In fellowship so dear,
+            _And feel His great Almighty hand
+            Protects me in this hostile land_.
+                    Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,
+                    I've Jesus with me all the time!
+
+            I'm leaning on His loving breast
+              Along life's weary way;
+            My path illumined by His smiles
+              Grows brighter day by day;
+            _No foes, no woes, my heart can fear
+            With my Almighty Friend so near_.
+                    Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,
+                    I've Jesus with me all the time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY
+
+
+During the next few months many events occurred in Pretoria of vital
+interest to the whole empire, and especially to the various members of
+the Royal Family. To these this seems the fittest place to refer,
+though most of them took place during my various return visits to
+Pretoria, and are therefore not precisely ranged in due chronologic
+order.
+
+[Sidenote: _Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty._]
+
+It was an ever memorable scene I witnessed in the Kirk Square when the
+Union Jack was once more formally hoisted in the midst of armed men, a
+miscellaneous crowd of cheering civilians, and an important group of
+Basuto chiefs who had been specially invited to witness the
+ceremonious annexation of the conquered territory and to hear
+proclaimed the Royal pleasure that the erstwhile "South African
+Republic" should henceforth be known by the new, yet older, title of
+"The Transvaal."
+
+So came to an end the Queen's Suzerainty;--an ill-omened term, which
+had proved fruitful in all conceivable kinds of misinterpretation, and
+made possible the misunderstandings and controversies that culminated
+in this cruel and wasteful war. So was resumed the Queen's
+Sovereignty, which as subsequent events proved, ought never to have
+been renounced; and so too was made plain the way for that ultimate
+federation of all South Africa, under one glorious flag, for which
+Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere long years before had laboured
+apparently in vain. This fresh unfurling of that flag was a pledge of
+equal liberties alike for Boer and Briton, as well as of fair play to
+the natives. It was a guarantee that the Pax Britannica would
+henceforth be maintained from the Zambesi to the Cape, and that in
+this vast area, well nigh as large as all Europe, there would be
+nursed into matureness and majestic strength, a new Anglo-Saxon
+nation, essentially Christian, essentially liberty-loving, and
+rivalling in wealth, in enterprise and prowess, the ripest promise of
+united Canada, and newly federated Australia.
+
+In this Imperial conflict the heroic fashion in which both those
+Commonwealths rallied for the defence of our Imperial flag is one of
+the most hopeful facts in modern history. "Waterloo," said Wellington,
+"did more than any other battle I know of toward the true object of
+all battles--the peace of the world." A similar comment both by
+victors and vanquished may possibly hereafter be made concerning this
+deplorable Boer war. But that can come to pass only provided we as a
+united people strive to cherish more fully the spirit embodied in
+Kipling's Diamond Jubilee Recessional:
+
+              God of our fathers, known of old,--
+                Lord of our far-flung battle-line,--
+              Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold
+                Dominion over palm and pine,--
+              Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+              Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+                     *       *       *
+
+              For heathen heart that puts her trust
+                In reeking tube and iron shard--
+              All valiant dust that builds on dust,
+                And guarding calls not Thee to guard,--
+              For frantic boast and foolish word,
+              Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!--AMEN.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Christian Victor._]
+
+To Dr Macgregor the Queen is reported to have said at Balmoral in
+November 1900, "My heart bleeds for these terrible losses. The war
+lies heavy on my heart." And Lord Wantage assures us that her
+Majesty's very last words, spoken only a few weeks later, were "Oh
+that peace may come!" Both assertions may well find credence; so
+characteristic are they of her whom all men revered and loved. As the
+head and representative of the whole empire, every bereavement caused
+by the war had in it for her a kind of personal element. But her
+sympathies and sufferings were destined to become more than merely
+vicarious. As in connection with one of our petty West African wars
+she was compelled to mourn the death of Prince Henry of Battenberg, so
+in the course of this South African war death again invaded her own
+immediate circle. The griefs that hastened her end were strongly
+personal as well as representative, and so made her all the more the
+true representative of those she ruled.
+
+It was in the early days of that dull November, tidings reached her
+and us of the dangerous illness of Prince Christian Victor. Not alone
+in name was he Christian; and not alone in name was he Victor. On the
+voyage out, in the _Braemar Castle_, through the absence of a
+chaplain, the prince conducted divine worship with the troops. One of
+our best appointed hospital trains was "The Princess Christian
+Victor," so called presumably because provided by the bounty of his
+and her princely hands and hearts. He was what Sir Ascelin declared
+"The last of the English" to be--"A very perfect knight, beloved and
+honoured of all men."
+
+It therefore alarmed both town and camp to learn that enteric, the
+deadliest of all a soldier's foes, had claimed him, like so many a
+lowlier man, for its prey, and that his life was in mortal peril. At
+that time he was a patient in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital which
+consisted of Mr T. W. Beckett's beautiful mansion, and a formidable
+array of tents that almost covered the whole of the extensive grounds.
+Here prince and private alike reaped the fruit of the lavish
+beneficence which provided and maintained this magnificent hospital.
+All that wealth could procure was there of skill and tenderness, and
+such appliances as the healing art requires. All was there, except the
+power to command success. With what seemed startling suddenness the
+prince's vital powers collapsed, and the half masting of flags, far
+and wide, told to friend and foe the tidings of the Queen's
+irreparable loss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_
+
+Part of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's
+Mansion at Pretoria.]
+
+[Sidenote: _A Royal Funeral._]
+
+It was at first proposed that the body of the prince should be taken
+to England for interment, and certain companies of the Grenadiers, to
+which battalion I was still attached, were detailed for escort duty,
+but finally it was decided all fittingly that he should be laid to
+rest in the city where he fell, and among the comrades who like him
+had laid down life in defence of Queen and duty. So Pretoria witnessed
+a stately funeral, the like of which South Africa had never seen
+before, as the Queen's own kinsman was borne, by the martial
+representatives of the whole empire, to the quiet cemetery which this
+war had so enlarged and so enriched.
+
+Disease and fatal woundings combined cost us in this strangely
+protracted conflict, scarcely more lives than the one great fight at
+Waterloo, where on the English side alone 15,000 fell,--for the most
+part to rise no more. In this South African war, up to January 31st,
+1901, about 7700 of our men had died of disease; 700 by accidents; and
+4300 of wounds. But this Pretoria cemetery like that at Bloemfontein,
+where 1500 interments took place in less than fifteen months, affords
+striking testimony to the common loyalty of all classes throughout the
+empire. Volunteers belonging to the Imperial Light Horse, raised
+exclusively in South Africa here lie, side by side, with volunteers
+belonging to the Imperial Yeomanry, raised exclusively in England.
+Sons of the empire, from Canadian Vancouver and Australian Victoria,
+here find a common sepulchre. The soldier prince whose dwelling was in
+king's palaces here becomes, as in the conflict of the battlefield so
+in the quiet of a hero's grave, a comrade of the private soldier whose
+dwelling was a cottage; and be it noted, the death of the lowliest may
+involve quite as much of heartbreak as the lordliest.
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching story._]
+
+At the close of a simple military funeral in this same cemetery, the
+orderly in charge came to me and said, "I never felt so much over any
+case. This grave means four orphans left to the care of an invalid
+mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for
+his family when he got back: but _this_ is the end of it!" That dead
+soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades
+was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung
+over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed.
+It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was
+a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a
+trumpeter; but they are none the less terrible on that account; and if
+half the truth were known and realised concerning the horrors and
+heartbreak caused by war, all Christendom would clamour for its speedy
+superseding by honest Courts of Arbitration.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_
+
+Wesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.]
+
+[Sidenote: _The death of the Queen._]
+
+I was still in Pretoria when tidings arrived concerning the illness
+and death of the Queen; and was present in that same Kirk Square when
+King Edward VII. was proclaimed "Overlord of the Transvaal." In
+connection with the former event a memorial service, at which the
+military were largely represented, was held in Wesley Church on
+Sunday, January 27th. The Rev. Geo. Weavind, as well as Rev. H. W.
+Goodwin, took part in the proceedings, and I was privileged to deliver
+the following address which may serve to illustrate, once for all, the
+type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:--
+
+  "I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."
+  --Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).
+
+As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender
+as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no
+mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's
+grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite
+exactness our common attitude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any
+other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We
+behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and
+almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over
+the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus
+feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.
+
+I. _It is the death of the representative_ MOTHER _of our race and age
+that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us._ For any record of
+such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history.
+She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any
+potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy
+memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen
+Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of
+Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in
+her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as
+capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old
+age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not
+by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of
+statesmanship will she be longest and most lovingly remembered. Put
+it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own person she honoured
+family life and kept it pure, when for generations such pureness had
+seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most popular portraits
+represent her as the centre of a group of her own children,
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren--a chain of living royalties
+reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in Israel
+before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by potent
+blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The Queen
+retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last she
+lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore even
+imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than that
+by which the new King conveyed to the Lord Mayor of London, tidings of
+the great Queen's death:--
+
+     "My beloved Mother passed peacefully away, at 6.30, _surrounded
+     by her children and grandchildren_."
+
+In the midst of her children she lived; and all fittingly in the midst
+of her children she died!
+
+As her most signal virtues were of the domestic type, so also her
+acutest sorrows were domestic. A father's strongly tender love, or
+wisely-watchful care, she never knew. In one sad year there was taken
+from her her long-widowed mother, and her almost idolized husband,
+Albert the Good.
+
+            "Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
+             Whose glory was redeeming human wrong;
+             Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;
+             ... thro' all the tract of years,
+             Wearing the white flower of a blameless life."
+
+Concerning that great sorrow, the Queen was wont in homely phrase to
+say that it made so large a hole in her heart, all other sorrows
+dropped lightly through. Nevertheless of other sorrows too she was
+called to bear no common share. As you are all well aware, two of the
+daughters of our widowed Queen have themselves long been widows. Two
+of her sons perished in their ripening prime. Her favourite daughter,
+the Princess Alice, and her favourite grandson, the heir-presumptive
+to her throne, drooped beside her like flowers untimely touched by
+frost; and within the last few weeks we ourselves have seen yet
+another of her grandsons laid beneath the sod in this very city of
+Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we call to mind
+that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in
+the service of his queen--and ours; and perchance the Queen herself
+rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called
+in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people,
+whom recent events have made so desolate.
+
+Reverentially we may venture to say that in all afflictions she was
+afflicted, and thus endeared herself to those she ruled as no other
+monarch ever did. Because she was Queen of Sorrows she became also
+Queen of Hearts.
+
+That of which we have just spoken was indeed her last sore
+bereavement; and now that to her who shed such countless tears there
+has come the end of all grief, we have therewith witnessed the full
+and final prevailings of her Laureate's familiar prayer:--
+
+                                "May all love
+            His love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee;
+            The love of all thy sons encompass thee,
+            The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,
+            The love of all thy people comfort thee:
+            _Till God's love set thee at his side again_."
+
+The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a nobler bridal
+day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!
+
+II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle
+of her own household. _She was emphatically the mother of her
+people_--a people multitudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One
+fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her
+gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere
+satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and
+to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow
+beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and
+church of every class and creed, men render thanks for one "who
+wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their God that
+
+            "A thousand claims to reverence closed
+            In her, as mother, wife, and queen."
+
+Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations
+became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have
+become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She
+rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of
+the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating
+hurricane in the West, called forth from her an instant telegram of
+queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every effort for the
+betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest. The east end of
+London, only less well than the west, was known to her. From Windsor
+to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that with her own hand she
+might distribute flowers among her wounded soldiers, and with her own
+lips speak to them words of solace. At that same inclement season she
+crossed the Irish Channel to show her vulnerable face once more among
+her Irish people, and I should not marvel if for such a queen some
+would even dare to die!
+
+It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than
+with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among
+us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to
+find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence
+crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked
+immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a
+majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love
+and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best
+informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!
+
+III. _Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely
+due to the unexampled length of her reign._
+
+That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found
+in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the
+first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three
+elder sons all died childless, and that her own father died within a
+few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly a
+special gift of God to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest
+of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to
+last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a
+regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months
+longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity
+upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There
+was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious
+illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to
+cease at once to work and live.
+
+So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser,
+the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall
+soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent
+intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became
+increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her
+life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side
+amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new
+acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us
+are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.
+
+Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes
+in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the
+result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a
+dastardly assassin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield
+and exceeding great reward deigned to compass our Queen with songs of
+deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and that she
+may long reign over us is a petition that in special measure has
+prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and
+two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the
+inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our
+streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!
+
+IV. _The Queen's whole reign was frankly based on the fear of God_;
+and to find such in English history I fear we shall have to travel
+back a full thousand years to the days of Alfred the Great, who was
+also Alfred the Good, and whose favourite saying was
+
+            "Come what may come,
+            God's will be welcome!"
+
+When Victoria was still a girl of fifteen she was solemnly confirmed
+in the Chapel Royal, and in her case that impressive service
+manifestly meant--what alas, it does not always imply--a life
+henceforth wholly given to God.
+
+At two o'clock in the morning of June 21st, 1837, she was roused from
+her slumbers in old Kensington Palace, and hastily flinging a shawl
+over her nightdress, she presently stood in the presence of the Lord
+Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to learn from their lips
+that her royal uncle had given up the ghost, and that she, a trembling
+maid of just eighteen, was Queen. Thereupon, so we are told, her eyes
+filled with tears, her lips quivered, and turning to the Archbishop
+she said, "Pray for me!" So that instant all three lowly bowed
+imploring heaven's help. The Queen began her reign upon her knees.
+Her first act of conscious royalty was thus to render heartfelt homage
+to "The Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence came it to pass
+
+            "Her court was pure, her life sincere."
+
+Her favourite recreations were consequently not those provided by the
+ballroom, the card-table, the racecourse, or even the theatre. Music,
+the simple charms of country life, and, manifold ministries of mercy,
+were the pastimes that became her best; and she never appeared in the
+eyes of her people more truly royal than when seen sitting by the
+bedside of a Highland cottager, reading to the sick out of God's own
+Gospel the wonderful words of life.
+
+We are here at liberty to use a scriptural phrase and to add that she
+"married in the Lord." Royal etiquette required that the Queen should
+herself select the lover destined to share the pleasures and
+responsibilities of her high position, and her choice fell not on one
+renowned for gaiety, for wealth or wit, but on one in whom she
+recognised the double gift of abounding good sense and the grace of
+our Lord Jesus Christ. For a choice so supremely wise, and for a
+marriage so supremely happy, all thoughtful Englishmen still render
+thanks to God.
+
+Her piety was as broad as it was deep and practical. The head of the
+Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only;
+but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the
+Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her
+warm appreciation of the work done for God and man by "The people
+called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerance in things
+pertaining to godliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that all
+creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. For
+that reason among others the Queen required that historic service
+should be held in the open air, on the steps, it is true, of our
+stateliest cathedral; but none the less under God's own arching sky,
+which makes the whole earth a temple. We owe not a little of our
+religious liberty to the personal influence and example of our much
+lamented Queen; and we, therefore, show ourselves worthy to have been
+her subjects, only when we shun utterly all indifference concerning
+things divine, yet give no place to bigotry; when we seek out not the
+worst, but the best, in every man, and honestly strive to make the
+best of that best.
+
+V. _With the new century we suddenly find ourselves subjects of a new
+Sovereign_, and with equal sincerity, if not with equal fervour, we
+say, "God save the King." May his reign also like that of his
+predecessor bring blessing to many lands! We crave not for him, and
+seek not in him, unexampled greatness. We desire chiefly that he may
+"love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with his God." His rich legacy
+of newly-created loyalty he will thus assuredly retain and augment.
+
+It is commonly said that this new century, like the last, has begun
+with a notable lack of notable men, but, nevertheless, never yet have
+we been left without trusty leaders in the hour of national necessity;
+and as it has been so will it be!
+
+            "We thank Thee, Lord, when Thou hast need,
+            The man aye ripens for the deed!"
+
+Yet the new century clamours importunately, not so much for great men,
+as for good men. All greatness perishes that is not broad based on
+godliness. The best gift for this new era that God Himself can bestow
+upon our people, is the grace of deep-toned repentance, an impassioned
+love of righteousness, a never flinching resolve to walk in newness of
+life; for then will the brightness of even the Victorian era be
+splendidly outshone, and heaven itself will hasten to make all things
+new. We who believe in Christ have learned to say:--
+
+            "Oh Thou bleeding Lamb
+            The true morality is love of Thee!"
+
+Along that same path of love divine lies also the truest patriotism
+and the speediest perfecting of our national life. I pray you,
+therefore, let the God of your late Queen be yet more completely your
+God; her Saviour your Saviour; and make this Memorial Service doubly
+memorable by bowing this moment at His feet,
+
+            "In full and glad surrender."
+
+[Sidenote: _The King's Coronation._]
+
+On Saturday, March 22nd, 1902, Schalk Burger, late State-Secretary
+Reitz, and General Lucas Meyer are reported to have appeared in
+Pretoria, presumably with a view to the submission of those they
+represent to the sovereign authority of our new King, whose
+approaching Coronation, Pretoria, even while I write, is preparing to
+celebrate with unexampled splendour. It is intended to break all
+previous festival records, and some of the Guards may only too
+probably still be there to share therein. But that is quite another
+story, and must find for itself quite another historian. Meanwhile--
+
+            "*God send His people peace!*"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM
+BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25135-8.txt or 25135-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25135-8.zip b/25135-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09c17cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-8.zip
diff --git a/25135-h.zip b/25135-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b8e37e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h.zip
diff --git a/25135-h/25135-h.htm b/25135-h/25135-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..878ac83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/25135-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8778 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back, by Edward P. Lowry</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+
+body {font-size: 1em; text-align: justify; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 5%;}
+
+h1  {font-size: 140%; text-align: center; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+h1.pg  {font-size: 190%; text-align: center; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em;}
+h2  {font-size: 130%; text-align: center; margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+h3  {font-size: 130%; text-align: center; margin-top: 4em;}
+h3.pg  {font-size: 110%; text-align: center; margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em;}
+
+a:focus, a:active { outline:#ffee66 solid 2px; background-color:#ffee66;}
+a:focus img, a:active img {outline: #ffee66 solid 2px; }
+
+hr {width: 20%; text-align: center;}
+p {text-indent: 1em;}
+
+table {border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed;
+       width: 90%; margin-left: 5%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;}
+
+.pagenum  {visibility: hidden;
+           position: absolute; right:0; text-align: right;
+           font-size: 10px;
+           font-weight: normal; font-variant: normal;
+           font-style: normal;  letter-spacing: normal;
+           color: #C0C0C0; background-color: inherit;}
+
+.quote {margin-left: 5%; font-size: 95%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;}
+.poem {text-indent: 0em; font-size: 95%;}
+.poem20 {text-indent: 0em; margin-left: 20%; font-size: 95%;}
+.poem30 {text-indent: 0em; margin-left: 30%; font-size: 95%;}
+.poem40 {text-indent: 0em; margin-left: 40%; font-size: 95%;}
+.resume {text-indent: 0em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+.chapter {text-align: center; font-size: 105%; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+span.sidenote {font-size: 75%; font-style: italic;
+         margin-left: -10%; width: 10%;
+         clear: left; float: left;
+         text-indent: 0em; text-align: left;
+         padding: 0.5em 1.5em 0.5em 0.2em;}
+
+.smcap  {font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 95%;}
+.smcap85  {font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 85%;}
+.italic {font-style: italic;}
+
+.small {font-size: 80%;}
+.smaller {font-size: smaller;}
+.font90 {font-size: 90%;}
+.font105 {font-size: 105%;}
+.font110 {font-size: 110%; line-height: 1.3em;}
+.font120 {font-size: 120%; line-height: 1.5em;}
+
+.p0_t {margin-top: 0em;}
+.p0_b {margin-bottom: 0em;}
+.p0_tb {margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em;}
+.p2 {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;}
+.p4 {margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 1em;}
+
+.center {text-align: center;}
+.right {text-align: right;}
+.ralign {position: absolute; right: 5%; top: auto;}
+.noindent {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+.left20 {margin-left: 20%;}
+.left40 {margin-left: 40%;}
+.left50 {margin-left: 50%;}
+.left60 {margin-left: 60%;}
+
+.tn p {margin-left: 10%; width: 80%; text-indent: 0em; font-size: 85%;}
+.poem20 p {text-indent: 0em;}
+.poem30 p {text-indent: 0em;}
+.quote p.poem30 {font-size: 100%;}
+
+.add1em {margin-left: 1em;}
+.add2em {margin-left: 2em;}
+.add25em {margin-left: 2.5em;}
+.add3em {margin-left: 3em;}
+.add35em {margin-left: 3.5em;}
+.add8em {margin-left: 8em;}
+.add9em {margin-left: 9em;}
+
+.spaced1 {letter-spacing: 1em;}
+
+.figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+             height: 5px; }
+	pre		{font-size: 85%; }
+-->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to
+Koomati Poort and Back, by Edward P. Lowry</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back</p>
+<p>Author: Edward P. Lowry</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 22, 2008  [eBook #25135]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers,<br>
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3></center><br><br>
+
+<div class="tn"><p>Transcriber's Note:</p>
+
+<p>Page 122: "After the treasure ship <i>Hermione</i> had thus been secured
+off Cadiz by the <i>Actæan</i> and the <i>Favorite</i>" should probably be
+"After the treasure ship <i>Hermione</i> had thus been secured
+off Cadiz by the <i>Active</i> and the <i>Favorite</i>".</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<a id="img001" name="img001"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="400" height="579" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Deale, Blomfontein</p>
+<p>Rev. E. P. LOWRY.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>WITH THE<br>
+  GUARDS' BRIGADE</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center font120">FROM BLOEMFONTEIN<br>
+  TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center">BY THE</p>
+
+<p class="center font120">REV. E. P. LOWRY</p>
+
+<p class="center">SENIOR WESLEYAN CHAPLAIN WITH THE SOUTH AFRICAN FIELD FORCE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p class="p4 center">London<br>
+  HORACE MARSHALL &amp; SON<br>
+  TEMPLE HOUSE, TEMPLE AVENUE, E.C.<br>
+  1902</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center font110">TO<br>
+  THE OFFICERS,<br>
+  NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN<br>
+  OF THE GUARDS' BRIGADE</p>
+<p class="center smcap85">THIS IMPERFECT RECORD OF THEIR HEROIC DARING, AND OF<br>
+  THEIR YET MORE HEROIC ENDURANCE IS<br>
+  RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,<br>
+  IN TOKEN OF SINCEREST ADMIRATION, AND IN GRATEFUL<br>
+  APPRECIATION OF NUMBERLESS COURTESIES RECEIVED<br>
+  BY ONE OF THEIR FELLOW TRAVELLERS AND<br>
+  CHAPLAINS THROUGHOUT THE BOER<br>
+  WAR OF 1899-1902</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>(p. vii)</span> PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>The story of my long tramp with the Guards' Brigade was in part told
+through a series of letters that appeared in <span class="italic">The Methodist Recorder</span>,
+<span class="italic">The Methodist Times</span>, and other papers. The first portion of that
+series was republished in "Chaplains in Khaki," as also extensive
+selections in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." In this volume, therefore,
+to avoid needless repetition, the story begins with our triumphal
+occupation of Bloemfontein, and is continued till after the time of
+the breaking-up of the Guards' Brigade.</p>
+
+<p>No one will expect from a chaplain a technical and critical account of
+the complicated military operations he witnessed at the seat of war.
+For that he has no qualifications. Nor, on the other hand, would it be
+quite satisfactory if he wrote only of what the chaplains and other
+Christian workers were themselves privileged to do in connection with
+the war. That would necessitate great sameness, if not great tameness.
+These pages are rather intended to set forth the many-sided life of
+our soldiers on active service, their privations and perils, their
+failings and their heroisms, their rare endurance, and in some cases
+their unfeigned piety; that all may see what manner of men they were
+who in so many instances laid down their lives in the defence of the
+empire; and amid what stupendous difficulties they endeavoured to do
+their duty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageviii" name="pageviii"></a>(p. viii)</span> We owe it to the fact that these men have volunteered in
+such numbers for military service that Britain alone of all European
+nations has thus far escaped the curse of the conscription. In that
+sense, therefore, they are the saviours and substitutes of the entire
+manhood of our nation. If they had not consented of their own accord
+to step into the breach, every able Englishman now at his desk, behind
+his counter, or toiling at his bench, must have run the risk of having
+had so to do. We owe to these men more than we have ever realised. It
+is but right, therefore, that more than ever they should henceforth
+live in an atmosphere of grateful kindliness, of Christian sympathy
+and effort.</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">"God bless you, Tommy Atkins,<br>
+  <span class="italic">Here's your country's love to you!</span>"</p>
+
+<p>My authorities for the statements made in the introductory chapter are
+Fitzpatrick's "Pretoria from Within," and Martineau's "Life of Sir
+Bartle Frere." For the verifying or correcting of my own facts and
+figures, given later on, I have consulted Conan Doyle's "The Great
+Boer War," Stott's "The Invasion of Natal," and almost all other
+available literature relating to the subject.</p>
+
+<p class="left60 smcap">Edward P. Lowry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pretoria</span>, <span class="italic">March 1902</span>.</p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageix" name="pageix"></a>(p. ix)</span> CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<a id="toc" name="toc"></a>
+<p class="p2 center font105">INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="ralign">PAGE</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Ultimatum and what led to it</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page001" title="Link to page 1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Two Notable Dreamers&mdash;A Bankrupt Republic&mdash;The Man who Schemed as well
+as Dreamed&mdash;The Gold Plague&mdash;Hated Johannesburg&mdash;Boer preparations for
+War&mdash;Coming events cast their shadows before&mdash;The Ultimatum&mdash;The
+Rallying of the Clans&mdash;The Rousing of the Colonies.</p>
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">On the way to Bloemfontein, and in it!</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page014" title="Link to page 14">14</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">A capital little Capital&mdash;Famished Men and Famine Prices&mdash;Republican
+Commandeering&mdash;A Touching Story&mdash;The Price of Milk.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER II</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Long Halt</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page024" title="Link to page 24">24</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Refits&mdash;Remounts&mdash;Regimental Pets&mdash;Civilian Hospitality and Soldiers'
+Homes&mdash;Soldiers' Christian Association Work&mdash;Rudyard Kipling's
+Mistake&mdash;All Fools' Day&mdash;Eastertide in Bloemfontein&mdash;The Epidemic and
+the Hospitals&mdash;All hands and houses to the rescue&mdash;A sad sample of
+Enteric&mdash;Church of England Chaplains at work.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER III</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Through Worlds Unknown and from Worlds Unknown</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page045" title="Link to page 45">45</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">A Pleasure Jaunt&mdash;Onwards, but Whither!&mdash;That Pom-Pom again&mdash;A Problem
+not quite solved&mdash;A Touching Sight&mdash;Rifle Firing and Firing
+Farms&mdash;Boer Treachery and the White Flag&mdash;The Pet Lamb still lives and
+learns&mdash;Right about face&mdash;From Worlds Unknown&mdash;The Bushmen and their
+Australian Chaplains.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagex" name="pagex"></a>(p. x)</span> CHAPTER IV</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Quick March to the Transvaal</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page057" title="Link to page 57">57</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">A Comedy&mdash;A Tragedy&mdash;A Wide Front and a Resistless
+Force&mdash;Brandfort&mdash;"Stop the War" Slanders&mdash;A Prisoner who tried to be
+a Poet&mdash;Militant Dutch Reformed Predikants&mdash;Our Australian Chaplain's
+pastoral experiences&mdash;The Welsh Chaplain.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER V</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To the Valsch River and the Vaal</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page070" title="Link to page 70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">The Sand River Convention&mdash;Railway Wrecking and Repairing&mdash;The Tale,
+and Tails, of a Singed Overcoat&mdash;Lord Roberts as Hospital
+Visitor&mdash;President Steyn's Sjambok&mdash;A Sunday at last that was also a
+Sabbath&mdash;Military Police on the March&mdash;A General's glowing eulogy of
+the Guards&mdash;Good News by the way&mdash;Over the Vaal at last.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER VI</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Chapter about Chaplains</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page088" title="Link to page 88">88</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front&mdash;Pathetic Scenes in
+Hospital&mdash;A Battlefield Scene no less Pathetic&mdash;Look on this Picture,
+and on that&mdash;A third-class Chaplain who proved a first-rate
+Chaplain&mdash;Running in the Wrong Man&mdash;A Wainman who proved a real
+Waggoner&mdash;Three bedfellows in a barn&mdash;A fourth-class Chaplain that was
+also a first-rate Chaplain&mdash;A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the
+Boers&mdash;Caring for the Wounded&mdash;How the Chaplain's own Tent was
+bullet-riddled&mdash;A Sample Set of Sunday Services.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER VII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Helpful Work of the Officiating Clergy</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page103" title="Link to page 103">103</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">At Cape Town and Wynberg&mdash;Saved from Drowning to sink in Hospital&mdash;A
+Pleasant Surprise&mdash;The Soldiers' Reception Committee&mdash;The other way
+about&mdash;Our near kinship to the Boers&mdash;More good Work on our right
+Flank.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER VIII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Getting to the Golden City</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page113" title="Link to page 113">113</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">An elaborate night toilet&mdash;Capturing Clapham Junction&mdash;Dear diet and
+dangerous&mdash;No Wages but the Sjambok&mdash;The Gold Mines&mdash;The Soldiers'
+Share&mdash;The Golden City&mdash;Astonishing the Natives.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexi" name="pagexi"></a>(p. xi)</span> CHAPTER IX</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pretoria&mdash;the City of Roses</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page127" title="Link to page 127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday&mdash;"Light after Dark"&mdash;Why the
+Surrender?&mdash;Taking Possession&mdash;"Resurgam"&mdash;A Striking Incident&mdash;No
+Canteens and no Crime.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER X</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pretorian Incidents and Impressions</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page142" title="Link to page 142">142</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">The State's Model School&mdash;Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer&mdash;The Waterfall
+Prisoners&mdash;A Soldier's Hymn&mdash;A big Supper Party&mdash;The Soldiers'
+Home&mdash;Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe&mdash;A Letter from Lord Kitchener&mdash;Also from
+Lord Roberts&mdash;A Song in praise of De Wet&mdash;Cordua and his
+Conspiracy&mdash;Hospital Work in Pretoria&mdash;The Wear and Tear of War&mdash;The
+Nursing Sisters&mdash;A Surprise Packet&mdash;Soldierly Gratitude&mdash;<span class="italic">The
+Ladysmith Lyre</span>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XI</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">From Pretoria to Belfast</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page169" title="Link to page 169">169</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">The Boer way of saying "Bosh"&mdash;News from a far Country&mdash;Further
+fighting&mdash;Touch not, taste not, handle not&mdash;More Treachery and still
+more&mdash;The root of the matter&mdash;A Tight Fit&mdash;Obstructives on the
+Rail&mdash;Middleburg and the Doppers&mdash;August Bank Holiday&mdash;Blowing up
+Trains&mdash;A peculiar Mothers' Meeting&mdash;Aggressive Ladies&mdash;A Dutch
+Deacon's Testimony&mdash;A German Officer's Testimony.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Through Helvetia</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page190" title="Link to page 190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">The Fighting near Belfast&mdash;Feeding under Fire&mdash;A German Doctor's
+Confession&mdash;Friends in need are Friends indeed&mdash;The Invisible Sniper's
+Triumph&mdash;"He sets the mournful Prisoners free"&mdash;More Boer Slimness&mdash;A
+Boer Hospital&mdash;Foreign Mercenaries&mdash;A wounded Australian&mdash;Hotel Life
+on the Trek&mdash;A Sheep-pen of a Prison&mdash;Pretty Scenery and Superb.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XIII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">War's Wanton Waste</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page210" title="Link to page 210">210</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">A Surrendered Boer General&mdash;Two Unworthy Predikants&mdash;Two Notable
+Advocates of Clemency&mdash;Mines without Men, and Men <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexii" name="pagexii"></a>(p. xii)</span> without
+Meat&mdash;Much Fat in the Fire&mdash;More Fat and Mightier Flames&mdash;A Welcome
+Lift by the Way&mdash;"Rags and Tatters, get ye gone!"&mdash;Destruction and
+still more Destruction&mdash;At Koomati Poort&mdash;Two Notable Fugitives&mdash;The
+Propaganda of the Africander Bond&mdash;Ex-President Steyn&mdash;Paul Botha's
+opinion of this Ex-President.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XIV</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">From Portuguese Africa to Pretoria</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page231" title="Link to page 231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Staggering Humanity&mdash;Food for Flames&mdash;A Crocodile in the Koomati&mdash;A
+Hippopotamus in the Koomati&mdash;A Via Dolorosa&mdash;Over the Line&mdash;Westward
+Ho!&mdash;Ruined Farms and Ruined Firms&mdash;Farewell to the Guards' Brigade!</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XV</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A War of Ceaseless Surprises</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page245" title="Link to page 245">245</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Exhaustlessness of Boer resources&mdash;The Peculiarity of Boer
+Tactics&mdash;The Surprisers Surprised&mdash;Train Wrecking&mdash;The Refugee
+Camps&mdash;The Grit of the Guards&mdash;The Irregulars&mdash;The Testimony of the
+Cemetery&mdash;Death and Life in Pretoria.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font105">CHAPTER XVI</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pretoria and the Royal Family</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page261" title="Link to page 261">261</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="resume">Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty&mdash;Prince Christian Victor&mdash;A Royal
+Funeral&mdash;A Touching Story&mdash;The Death of the Queen&mdash;The King's
+Coronation.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page001" name="page001"></a>(p. 001)</span> INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT</p>
+
+
+<p>When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the
+Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found
+wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found
+itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers
+boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as
+they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the
+average Boer understood the real purpose for which he was called to
+arms seems doubtful; but his leaders made no secret of their intention
+to drive the hated "Roineks" into the sea, and to claim, as the
+notorious "Bond" frankly put it, "all South Africa for the
+Africanders." The Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer of the Dutch Reformed Church
+freely admits that the watchword of the Western Boers was "Tafelburg
+toc," that is, "To Table Mountain"; and that their commandant said to
+him, "We will not rest till our flag floats there."</p>
+
+<p>Similarly on the eastern side it was their confident boast that
+presently they would be "eating fish and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page002" name="page002"></a>(p. 002)</span> drinking coffee at
+sea-side Durban." There would thus be one flag floating over all South
+Africa; and that flag not the Union Jack but its supplanter.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Two notable Dreamers.</span>
+
+<p>Now the Dutch have undoubtedly as absolute a right to dream dreams of
+wide dominion as we ourselves have; and this particular dream had no
+less undeniably been the chief delight of some among them for more
+than a decade twice told.</p>
+
+<p>Even <span class="smcap">President Brand</span>, of the Orange Free State, referring to Lord
+Carnarvon's pet idea of a federated South Africa, said: "His great
+scheme is a united South Africa <span class="italic">under the British Flag</span>. He dreams of
+it and so do I; but <span class="italic">under the flag of South Africa</span>." Much in the
+same strain <span class="smcap">President Burgers</span>, of the Transvaal Republic, when
+addressing a meeting of his countrymen in Holland, said: "In that
+far-off country the inhabitants dream of a future in which the people
+of Holland will recover their former greatness." He was convinced that
+within half a century there would be in South Africa a population of
+eight millions; all speaking the Dutch language; a <span class="italic">second</span> Holland,
+as energetic and liberty-loving as the first; but greater in extent,
+and greater in power.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Bankrupt Republic.</span>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in this far-seeing President's day, the Transvaal, after
+fourteen years of doubtful independence, reached in 1877 its lowest
+depths of financial and political impotency. Its valiant burghers were
+vanquished in one serious conflict with the natives; and, emboldened
+thereby, the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page003" name="page003"></a>(p. 003)</span> Zulus were audaciously threatening to eat them
+up, when Shepstone appeared upon the scene. "I thank my father
+Shepstone for his restraining message," said Cetewayo. "The Dutch have
+tired me out; and I intended to fight with them once, <span class="italic">only once</span>, and
+to drive them over the Vaal." The jails were thrown open because food
+was no longer obtainable for the prisoners. The State officials,
+including the President, knew not where to secure their stipends, and
+were hopelessly at variance among themselves. The Transvaal one-pound
+notes were selling for a single shilling, and the State treasury
+contained only twelve shillings and sixpence wherewith to pay the
+interest on a comparatively heavy State debt, besides almost
+innumerable other claims.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder, therefore, that Burgers, in disgust, declared he would
+sooner be a policeman under a strong government. "Matters are as bad
+as they ever can be," said he; "they cannot be worse!" Hence its
+annexation, in 1877, by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, without the
+assistance of a solitary soldier, but with the eager assent of
+thousands of the burghers, bade fair to prove the salvation of the
+Transvaal, and probably would have done, had the easily-to-be-obtained
+consent of the Volksraad been at once sought, and Lord Carnarvon's
+promise of speedy South African Federation, together with a generous
+measure of local self-government, been promptly redeemed. But European
+complications, with serious troubles on the Indian frontier, caused
+interminable delay in the maturing of this scheme; and as the
+disappointed Boers grew restive, a "Hold your Jaw" Act was passed,
+making it a penal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page004" name="page004"></a>(p. 004)</span> offence for any Transvaaler even to
+discuss such questions. In our simplicity we sit upon the safety valve
+and then wonder why the boiler bursts. To the "Hold your Jaw" policy
+the Boer reply was an appeal to arms; and at Majuba in the spring of
+1881 their rifles said what their jaws were forbidden to say. Majuba
+was indeed a mere skirmish, an affair of outposts; but Magersfontein
+and Spion Kop are the legitimate sons of Majuba.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The man who Schemed as well as Dreamed.</span>
+
+<p>Napoleon, with possibly a veiled reference to himself, once said to
+the French people, "You have the men, but where is <span class="italic">The Man</span>?" The
+Boers in the day of their uprising against British rule found "The
+Man" in <span class="smcap">Paul Stephanus Kruger</span>. To all South Africa a veritable "man of
+Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as
+their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness
+no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British
+subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of
+the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a
+consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a
+tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The great Trek"
+which in 1837 sought on the dangerous and dreary veldt beyond the Vaal
+a refuge from British rule. He it was who, surviving the terrors of
+those tragic times and trained in that stern school, became like Brand
+and Burgers a dreamer of dreams. He lived to baffle by his superior
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page005" name="page005"></a>(p. 005)</span> shrewdness, or slimness, all the arts of English diplomacy.
+In his later years this President manifestly deemed himself chosen of
+Heaven to make an end of British rule from the Zambesi to the sea.
+"The Transvaal shall never be shut up in a kraal," said he. A
+Sovereign International State he declared it was, or should be, with
+free access to the ocean; and how astonishingly near he came to the
+accomplishment of these bold aims we now know to our exceeding cost.
+Nevertheless, to this persistent dreamer of dreams the two South
+African Republics owe their extinction; while the British Empire owes
+to him more than to any other living man its fast approaching
+Federation.</p>
+
+<p>With surprising secrecy and success the Transvaal officials prepared
+for the inevitable conflict which the attempted fulfilment of such
+bold dreams involved, and in that preparation were rendered essential
+aid, first by the discovery, not far from Pretoria, of the richest
+goldfield in the whole world, which soon provided them with the
+necessary means; and next by the Jameson Raid, which provided them
+with the necessary excuse.</p>
+
+<p>To Steevens, the lamented correspondent of <span class="italic">The Daily Mail</span>, a Dopper
+editor and predikant said, "I do not think the Transvaal Government
+has been wise, and I told them they made a great mistake when they let
+people come in to the mines. <span class="italic">This gold will ruin you; to remain
+independent you must remain poor</span>"! Perhaps so! but the modern world
+is not built that way. No trekkers nowadays may take possession
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page006" name="page006"></a>(p. 006)</span> of half a continent, forbid all others to come in, and right round the
+frontier post up notices "Trespassers will be prosecuted." Even
+Robinson Crusoe had not long landed on his desolate isle when he was
+startled by the sight of a strange footprint on the seashore sand.
+Welcome or unwelcome, somebody else had come! Crusoe and his man
+Friday might set up no exclusive rights in a heritage that for a brief
+while seemed all their own. The Boer with his Kaffir bondsman has been
+compelled to learn the same distasteful lesson. The wealth of the
+Witwaters Rand was for those who could win it; and for that stupendous
+task the Boer had neither the necessary aptitude nor the necessary
+capital. It was not, therefore, for him to echo the cry of Edie
+Ochiltree when he found hid treasure amid the ruins of St Roth's
+Abbey&mdash;"Nae halvers and quarters,&mdash;hale o' mine ain and nane o' my
+neighbours." The bankrupt Boer had to let his enterprising neighbour
+in to do the digging, or get no gold at all.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Hated Johannesberg.</span>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the upspringing as by magic of the great city of
+Johannesberg in the midst of the dreary veldt filled Kruger's soul
+with loathing. When once asked to permit prospecting for minerals
+around Pretoria, he replied, "Look at Johannesberg! We have enough
+gold and gold seekers in the country already!" The presence of this
+ever-growing multitude was felt to be a perpetual menace to Dutch, and
+more especially to Dopper supremacy. So, in his frankly confessed
+detestation of them, their Dopper President for five years at a
+stretch <span class="pagenum"><a id="page007" name="page007"></a>(p. 007)</span> never once came near them, and when at last he
+ventured to halt within twenty miles of their great city it was thus
+he commenced his address to the crowd at Krugersdorp:&mdash;"Burghers,
+friends, <span class="italic">thieves</span>, <span class="italic">murderers</span>, <span class="italic">newcomers</span>, and others." The reek of
+the Rand was evidently even then in his nostrils; and the mediæval
+saint that could smell a heretic nine miles off was clearly akin to
+Kruger. Unfortunately for him the "newcomers" outnumbered the old by
+five to one, and were a bewilderingly mixed assortment, representing
+almost every nationality under the whole heaven. In what had suddenly
+become the chief city of the Transvaal, with a white population of
+over 50,000, only seven per cent. were Dutch, and sixty-five per cent.
+were British. These aliens from many lands paid nearly nine-tenths of
+the taxes, yet were persistently denied all voice alike in national
+and municipal affairs. "Rights!" exclaimed the angry President when
+appealed to for redress, "Rights! They shall win them only over my
+dead body!" At whatever cost he was stubbornly resolved that as long
+as he lived the tail should still wag the dog instead of the dog the
+tail; and that a continually dwindling minority of simple farmer folk
+should rule an ever-growing majority of enterprising city men. Though
+the political equality of all white inhabitants was the underlying
+condition on which self-government was restored to the Transvaal, what
+the Doppers had won by bullets they would run no risk of losing
+through the ballot box, and so one measure of exclusion after another
+rapidly became law. When reminded <span class="pagenum"><a id="page008" name="page008"></a>(p. 008)</span> that in other countries
+Outlanders were welcomed and soon given the franchise, the shrewd old
+President replied, "Yes! but in other countries the newcomers do not
+<span class="italic">outswamp</span> the old burghers." The whole grievance of the Boers is
+neatly summed up in that single sentence; and so far it proves them
+well entitled to our respectful pity.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, mere fatalism resisting fate when to a deputation of
+complaining Outlanders Kruger said "Cease holding public meetings! Go
+back and tell your people I will never give them anything!" Similarly
+when in 1894 35,000 adult male Outlanders humbly petitioned that they
+might be granted some small representation in the councils of the
+Republic, which would have made loyal burghers of them all, the
+short-sighted President contended that he might just as well haul down
+the Transvaal flag at once. There was a strong Dopper conviction that
+to grant the franchise on any terms to this alien crowd would speedily
+degrade the Transvaal into a mere Johannesberg Republic; and they
+would sooner face any fate than that; so the Raad, with shouts of
+derision, rejected the Outlanders' petition as a saucy request to
+commit political suicide. They felt no inclining that way!
+Nevertheless one of their number ventured to say, "Now our country is
+gone. Nothing can settle this but fighting!" And that man was a
+prophet.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Boer preparations for War.</span>
+
+<p>For that fighting the President and his Hollander advisers began to
+prepare with a timeliness and thoroughness we can but admire, however
+much in due time we were made to smart thereby. Through the suicide of
+a certain State <span class="pagenum"><a id="page009" name="page009"></a>(p. 009)</span> official it became known that in 1894&mdash;long
+therefore before the Raid&mdash;no less than £500,000 of Transvaal money
+had been sent to Europe for secret uses. Those secret uses, however,
+revealed themselves to us in due time at Magersfontein and Colenso.
+The Portuguese customs entries at Delagoa Bay will certify that from
+1896 to 1898 at least 200,000 rifles passed through that port to the
+Transvaal. It was an unexampled reserve for states so small. The
+artillery, too, these peace-loving Boers laid up in store against the
+time to come, not only exceeded in quantity, but also <span class="italic">outranged</span>, all
+that British South Africa at that time possessed. Their theology might
+be slightly out-of-date, but in these more material things the Boers
+were distinctly up-to-date. For many a week after the war began both
+the largest and the smallest shells that went curving across our
+battlefields were theirs; while many of our guns were mere popguns
+firing smoky powder, and almost as useless as catapults. It was not a
+new Raid these costly weapons were purchased to repel; neither men nor
+nations employ sledge-hammers to drive home tinned-tacks. It was a
+mighty Empire they were intended to assail; and a mighty Republic they
+were intended to create.</p>
+
+<p>When the fateful hour arrived for the hurling of the Ultimatum, in
+very deed "not a gaiter button" was found wanting on their side; and
+every fighting man was well within reach of his appointed post.
+Fierce-looking farmers from the remotest veldt, and sleek urban
+Hollanders, German artillerists, French generals, Irish-Americans,
+Colonial rebels, all were ready. The horse <span class="pagenum"><a id="page010" name="page010"></a>(p. 010)</span> and his rider,
+prodigious supplies of food stuffs, and every conceivable variety of
+warlike stores, were planted at sundry strategic points along the
+Natal and Cape Colony frontiers. War then waited on a word and that
+word was soon spoken!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Coming events cast their shadows before.</span>
+
+<p>As early as September 18th, 1899, the Transvaal sent an unbending and
+defiant message to the British Government. On September 21st the
+Orange Free State, after forty years of closest friendship with
+England, officially resolved to cast in her lot with the Transvaal
+against England. On September 29th through railway communication
+between Natal and the Transvaal was stopped by order of the Transvaal
+Government. On September 30th twenty-six military trains left Pretoria
+and Johannesberg for the Natal border; and that same day saw 16,000
+Boers thus early massed near Majuba Hill. Yet at that very time the
+British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate
+not merely for defiance but even for defence. On October 3rd, a full
+week before the delivery of the Ultimatum, the Transvaal mail train to
+the Cape was stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold
+it carried, valued at £500,000, was seized by the Transvaal
+Government. Whether that capture be regarded merely as a premature act
+of war or as highway robbery, it leaves no room for doubt as to which
+side in this quarrel is the aggressor; and when at last the challenge
+came, even chaplains could with a clear conscience, though by no means
+with a light heart, set out for the seat of war.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page011" name="page011"></a>(p. 011)</span> The Ultimatum.</span>
+
+<p>Surely never since the world began was such an Ultimatum presented to
+one of the greatest Powers on earth by what were supposed to be two of
+the weakest. At the very time that armed and eager burghers were thus
+massing threateningly on our frontiers, the Queen it will be
+remembered was haughtily commanded to withdraw from those frontiers
+the pitifully few troops then guarding them; to recall, in the sight
+of all Europe, every soldier that in the course of the previous
+twelvemonth had been sent to our South African Colonies; and solemnly
+to pledge herself, at Boer bidding, that those then on the sea should
+not be suffered to set foot on African soil. Moreover, so urgent was
+this audacious demand that Pretoria allowed London only forty-eight
+hours in which to decide what should be its irrevocable doom, to lay
+aside the pride of empire, or pay the price of it in blood.</p>
+
+<p>Superb in its audacity was that demand: and, if war was indeed fated
+to come, this daring challenge was for England as serviceable a deed
+as unwitting foemen ever wrought.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The rallying of the Clans.</span>
+
+<p>It put a sudden end for a season to all controversy. It rallied in
+defence of our Imperial heritage almost every class, and every creed.
+It thrilled us all, like the blast of the warrior horn of Roderick
+Dhu, which transformed the very heather of the Highlands into fighting
+men. As the soldiers' laureate puts it "Duke's son and cook's son,"
+with rival haste responded to the martial call. To serve <span class="pagenum"><a id="page012" name="page012"></a>(p. 012)</span>
+their assailed and sorrowing Queen, royal court and rural cottage gave
+freely of their best. It intensified the patriotism of us all; and
+probably never, since the days of the Armada, had the United Kingdom
+of Great Britain and Ireland found itself so essentially united.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The rousing of the Colonies.</span>
+
+<p>The effect of the Ultimatum throughout the length and breadth of
+Greater Britain was no less remarkable than its first results at home.
+Not only the two Colonies that, alas, were soon to be overrun by
+hostile hordes, and mercilessly looted, but also those farthest
+removed from the fray, instantly took fire, and burned with
+imperialistic zeal that stinted neither men nor means.</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">"A varied host, from kindred realms they come,<br>
+  Brethren in arms, but rivals in renown."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">The declaration of war united the ends of the earth in a common
+enthusiasm, and sent a strange throb of brotherhood right round the
+globe. The whole empire at last awoke to a sense of its essential
+oneness. Australians and Canadians, men from Burma, from India and
+Ceylon, speedily joined hands on the far distant veldt in defence of
+what they proudly felt to be their heritage as well as ours. Their
+presence in the very forefront of the fray betokened the advent of a
+new era. Nobler looking men, or men of a nobler spirit, were never
+brought together at the unfurling of any banner. They were the outcome
+of competitions strangely keen and close. Sydney for instance called
+for five hundred volunteers; but within a few days <span class="italic">three thousand</span>
+five hundred valiant men were clamouring for acceptance. So was it in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page013" name="page013"></a>(p. 013)</span> Montreal. So it was everywhere. Often too at no slight
+financial sacrifice was the post of peril sought. As a type of many
+more, I was told of an Australian doctor who paid a substitute £300 to
+carry on his practice, while he as a private joined the fighting ranks
+and faced cheerily the manifold privations of the hungry veldt. Rich
+is the empire that owns such sons; and myriads of them in the hour of
+impending conflict were ready to say&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">"War? We would rather peace! But, <span class="smcap">Mother</span>, if fight we must,<br>
+  There are none of your sons on whom you can lean with a surer trust.<br>
+  Bone of your bone are we; and in death would be dust of your dust!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">It was the Ultimatum that thus linked to each other and to us those
+loyal hearts that longed to keep the empire whole; and thus President
+Kruger in his blindness became Greater Britain's boundless benefactor.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page014" name="page014"></a>(p. 014)</span> CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT</p>
+
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "For old times' sake<br>
+<span class="add35em">Don't let enmity live;</span><br>
+  For old times' sake<br>
+<span class="add35em">Say you will forget and forgive.</span><br>
+  Life is too short for quarrel;<br>
+<span class="add35em">Hearts are too precious to break;</span><br>
+  Shake hands and let us be friends<br>
+<span class="add35em">For old times' sake!"</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">So gaily sang the Scots Guards as, in hope of speedy triumph and
+return, we left Southampton for Kruger's Land on the afternoon of
+October 21st, 1899.</p>
+
+<a id="img002" name="img002"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="500" height="296" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Westerman</p>
+<p>A Magersfontein Boer Trench.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our last evening in England brought us the welcome tidings that on
+that day, the Boers who had thus early invaded Natal with a view to
+annexing it, had been badly beaten at Talana Hill. That seemed a good
+beginning; and it sent us to sea with lightsome hearts; nor was it
+till long after we landed in South Africa that we learned what had
+really taken place during our cheerful voyage;&mdash;that on the very day
+we embarked, the battle of Elandslaagte had been won by our
+hard-pressed comrades, but at a cost of 260 casualties; and that the
+very next day&mdash;The <span class="italic">Nubia's</span> first Sunday at sea&mdash;Dundee with all its
+stores had perforce been abandoned by 4000 of our retreating troops,
+for whose relief, two days later, Tinta Inyoni was fought by General
+French; that on Oct. 29th while we were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page015" name="page015"></a>(p. 015)</span> spending a
+tranquil Sunday in St Vincent's harbour there commenced the struggle
+that culminated in the Nicholson's Nek disaster; and that on Nov.
+13th, while we were awaiting orders in Table Bay, the capture of our
+armoured train at Chieveley took place. Clearly it was blissful
+ignorance that begat our hopes of brief absence from home, and of the
+easy vanquishing of our hardy foes!</p>
+
+<p>Two days later I reached the Orange River; and, on the courteous
+suggestion of Lord Methuen, was attached to the mess of the 3rd
+Grenadier Guards, as was also my "guide, philosopher and friend" the
+Rev. T. F. Falkner our Anglican chaplain. Here I left my invaluable
+helper, Army Scripture Reader Pearce; while, with the Guards' Brigade
+now made complete by the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, I pushed forward to be present at the four battles which
+followed in startlingly swift succession, and which I have already
+with sufficient fulness described in "Chaplains in Khaki," viz.
+Belmont on Nov. 23rd, Graspan on Nov. 25th, Modder River on Nov. 28th,
+and the Magersfontein defeat on Dec. 11th, for which, however, the
+next Amajuba Day&mdash;Feb. 27th, 1900&mdash;brought us ample compensation in
+the surrender of Cronje and his 4000 veterans, with the ever memorable
+sequel to that surrender, the occupation of Bloemfontein by the
+British forces.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A capital little Capital.</span>
+
+<p>It would probably be difficult to find anywhere under the sun a more
+prosperous and promising little city, or one better governed than
+Bloemfontein, which the Guards entered on the afternoon of Tuesday,
+March 13th, 1900. There is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page016" name="page016"></a>(p. 016)</span> not a scrap of cultivated land
+anywhere around it. It is very literally a child of the veldt; and
+still clings strangely to its nursing mother. Indeed the veldt is not
+only round about it on every side, but even asserts its presence in
+many an unfinished street. You are still on the veldt in the midst of
+the city; and the characteristic kopje is in full view here, there,
+and everywhere. On one side of the city is the old fort built by the
+British more than fifty years ago, and soon after vacated by them, but
+it is erected of course on a kopje, on one slope of which, part of the
+city now stands. On the opposite side of the town is a new fort; but
+that also crowns a kopje. This metropolis of what was then the Orange
+Free State, thus intensely African in its situation and surroundings,
+was nevertheless an every way worthy centre of a worthy State.</p>
+
+<p>Many of its public buildings are notably fine, as for instance the
+Government Offices over which it was my memorable privilege to see the
+Union Jack unceremoniously hoisted; and the Parliament Hall, on the
+opposite side of the same road, erected some twelve years ago at a
+cost of £80,000. The Grey College, which accommodates a hundred boy
+boarders, is an edifice of which almost any city would be proud; and
+"The Volk's Hospital," that is "The People's Hospital," is also an
+altogether admirable institution. From the commencement of the war
+this was used for the exclusive benefit of sick or wounded Boers and
+of captured Britishers who were in the same sore plight. Among these I
+found many English officers, who all bore witness to the kind
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page017" name="page017"></a>(p. 017)</span> and skilful treatment they had uniformly received from the
+hospital authorities; but when the Boer forces hurried away from
+Bloemfontein they were compelled to leave their sick and wounded
+behind; with the result that as at Jacobsdal, the English patients at
+once ceased to be prisoners, while the Boer patients at once became
+prisoners. So do the wheels of war and fortune go whirling round!</p>
+
+<p>With a white population of under ten thousand all told, a large
+proportion is of British descent; and presently a positively
+surprising number of Union Jacks sprang forth from their hiding-places
+and fluttered merrily all over the town. Everybody was thankful that
+no bombardment had taken place; but many even of the British residents
+regarded with sincere regret the final extinction of the independence
+of this once self-governed and well-governed Republic.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Famished men and famine prices.</span>
+
+<p>The story has now everywhere been told of the soldier lad who, when he
+caught sight of his first swarm of locusts, wonderingly exclaimed as
+he noted their peculiar colour, "I'm blest if the butterflies out here
+haven't put on khaki." Bloemfontein very soon did the same. Khaki of
+various shades and various degrees of dirtiness saluted me at every
+point. Khaki men upon khaki men swarmed everywhere. Brigade followed
+brigade in apparently endless succession; but all clad in the same
+irrepressible colour, till it became quite depressing. No wonder the
+townspeople soon took to calling the soldiers "locusts," not merely
+out of compliment to the gay <span class="pagenum"><a id="page018" name="page018"></a>(p. 018)</span> colour of their costume, but
+also as aptly descriptive of their apparent countlessness. They seemed
+like the sands by the seashore, innumerable. They bade fair to swallow
+up the place.</p>
+
+<p>That last expression, however, suggests yet another point of
+resemblance. For longer than these men seemed able to remember, the
+order of the day had been "long marches and short rations." When,
+therefore, they reached this welcome halting-place they were simply
+famished; insatiably hungry, they eagerly spent their last coin in
+buying up whatever provisions had fortunately escaped the
+commandeering of the Boers. There was no looting, no lawlessness of
+any kind; and many a civilian gave his last loaf to a starving
+trooper. There was soon a famine in the place and no train to bring us
+fresh supplies. All the bakeries of the town were commandeered by the
+new government for the benefit of the troops; but like the five loaves
+of the gospel story, "What were they among so many?" I saw the men,
+like swarms of bees, clustering around the doors and clambering on to
+the window-sills of these establishments, enjoying apparently the
+smell of the baking bread, and cherishing the vain hope of being able
+to purchase a loaf when at last the ovens were emptied.</p>
+
+<p>So too at the grocers' shops, a "tail" was daily formed outside the
+door, which at intervals was cautiously opened to let in a few at a
+time of these clamorous customers, who presently retired by the back
+door, laden more or less with such articles as happened to be still in
+store; but muttering as they came out "this is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page019" name="page019"></a>(p. 019)</span> like
+Klondyke," with evident reference not to Klondyke gold, but to
+Klondyke prices. It was not the traders that needed protection as
+against the troopers, but the troopers that needed protection as
+against some of the traders. Even proclamation prices were alarmingly
+high, as for instance, a shilling for a pound of sugar. Sixpence was
+the popular price for a cup of tea, often without milk or sugar. The
+quartermaster whose tent I shared was charged four shillings for a
+single "whisky and soda," and was informed that if he wanted a bottle
+of whisky the price would be thirty-five shillings. On such terms
+tradesmen who, before the war, had laid in large and semi-secret
+stores now reaped a magnificent harvest. One provision merchant was
+reported to have thus sold £700 worth of goods before breakfast on a
+certain Saturday morning, in which case he would perhaps reckon that
+on that particular date his breakfast had been well earned. It
+probably meant in part a wholesale army order; but even in that case
+it would be for cash, and not a case of commandeering after the
+fashion of the Boers.</p>
+
+<p>A crippled Scandinavian tailor told me that his constant charge,
+whether to Colonels or Kaffirs, was two shillings an hour; and that he
+thought his needle served him badly if it did not bring him in £6 a
+week. About the same time a single-handed but nimble-fingered barber
+claimed to have made £100 in one week out of the invading British; but
+his victims declared that his price was a shilling for a shave and two
+shillings for a clip. At those figures the seemingly impossible comes
+to pass&mdash;if only <span class="pagenum"><a id="page020" name="page020"></a>(p. 020)</span> customers are plentiful enough. Oh for a
+business in Bloemfontein!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Republican Commandeering.</span>
+
+<p>The Republicans of South Africa have always been credited with an
+ingrained objection to paying rates and taxes even in war time; but
+they frankly recognise the reasonableness of governmental
+commandeering, and apparently submit to it without a murmur;
+especially when it hits most heavily the stranger within their gates.
+Accordingly, the war-law of the Orange Free State authorises the
+commandeering without payment of every available man, and of all
+available material of whatsoever kind within thirty days of war being
+declared. During those thirty days, therefore, the war-broom sweeps
+with a most commendable thoroughness; and all the more so, because
+after that date everything must be paid for at market values. Why pay,
+if being a little "previous" will serve the same purpose?</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman farmer whom it was my privilege to visit, some fifteen
+miles out from Bloemfontein, told me he had been thus commandeered to
+the extent of about £3100; the value of waggons, oxen, and produce, he
+was compelled gratuitously to supply to his non-taxing government. A
+specially prosperous store-keeper in the town was said to have had
+£600 worth of goods taken from him in the same way; but then, of
+course, he had the compensating comfort of feeling that he was not
+being taxed! Even Republics cannot make war quite without cost; and by
+this time some are beginning to discover that it is the most ruinously
+expensive of all pursuits.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page021" name="page021"></a>(p. 021)</span> The Republican conscription was equally wide reaching; for
+every capable man between the ages of sixteen and sixty was required
+to place himself and his rifle at the service of the State. Even sons
+of British parentage, being burghers, were not allowed to cross the
+border and so escape this, in many a case, hateful obligation. Their
+life was forfeit, if they sought to evade the dread duties of the
+fighting line, and refused to level reluctant rifles against men
+speaking the same mother tongue. Some few, however, secured the rare
+privilege of acting simply as despatch riders, or as members of the
+Boer ambulance corps.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A touching story.</span>
+
+<p>One of the sons of my Methodist farmer friend had been thus employed
+at Magersfontein, but had now seized the first opportunity of taking
+the oath and returning to his home. With his own lips he told me that
+on that fatal field he had found the body of an English officer, in
+whose cold hand lay an open locket, and in the locket two portraits;
+one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still
+fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the
+blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's
+last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost
+that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price of
+that one locket?</p>
+
+<p>Yet, appositely enough, as, that same evening, I was being driven back
+to town in a buggy and four, a little maiden&mdash;perchance like the
+maiden of the locket&mdash;wonderingly exclaimed as she watched the sun
+sink in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page022" name="page022"></a>(p. 022)</span> radiance behind a neighbouring hill: "Why! just
+look! The sky is English!" "How so?" asked her father. "Can't you
+see?" said the child; "it is all red, white, and blue!" which indeed
+it was!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The price of milk.</span>
+
+<p>But our title to this newly-conquered territory was by no means quite
+so unchallenged as such a complacent and complimentary sky might have
+led one to suppose. The heavens above us were for the moment English,
+but scarcely the earth beneath us; and certainly not the land beyond
+us. Great even thus far had been the price of conquest; but the full
+sum was not yet ready for the reckoning. No new Magersfontein awaited
+us, and no new Paardeberg; but the incessant risking of precious life,
+and much loss thereof in other fashions than those of the battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly one of the most distressing cases of that kind occurred only
+two days after near Karee, a few miles beyond Bloemfontein. The
+officers of the Guards had become famous for their care of their men,
+and for their constant endeavour to keep them well served with
+supplementary supplies of food. They foraged right and left, and
+bargained with the farmers for all available milk and butter and
+cheese and bread. Men on the march cannot always live on rations only,
+and good leadership looks after the larder as well as after the lives
+of the men. On this gracious errand there rode forth from the camp as
+fine a group of regimental officers as could possibly be found; to
+wit, the colonel of the Grenadiers, his adjutant and transport officer
+who, beyond most, were choice young men and goodly; also the colonel
+of one of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page023" name="page023"></a>(p. 023)</span> Coldstream battalions, and one orderly. Hiding
+near a neighbouring kopje was a small body of Zarps watching for a
+chance of sniping or capturing a seceding Boer. Of them our officers
+caught sight, and with characteristic British pluck sought to capture
+them. But on the kopje the Boers found effectual cover, plied their
+rifles vigorously and presently captured all their would-be captors.
+As at Belmont, and on the same day of the month, the colonel of the
+Grenadiers was wounded in two places; the transport officer, the son
+of one of our well-known generals, lost his right arm; the adjutant, a
+younger brother of a noted earl, was shot through the heart, and the
+life of the other colonel was for a while despaired of. It was in some
+senses the saddest disaster that had yet befallen the Guards' Brigade;
+and it was the outcome not of some decisive battle, but of a kindly
+quest for milk.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page024" name="page024"></a>(p. 024)</span> CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">A LONG HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN</p>
+
+
+<span class="sidenote">Refits.</span>
+
+<p>Before we could resume our march every commissariat store needed to be
+replenished, and every man required a new outfit from top to toe. If
+the march of the infantry had been much further prolonged we should
+have degenerated into a literally bootless expedition, for some of the
+men reached Bloemfontein with bare if not actually bleeding feet,
+while their nether garments were in a condition that beggared and
+baffled all description. Once smart Guardsmen had patched their
+trousers with odd bits of sacking, and in one case the words "Lime
+Juice Cordial" were still plainly visible on the sacking. So came that
+"cordial" and its victorious wearer into the vanquished capital.
+Others despairingly gave up all further attempts at patching, having
+repeatedly proved, as the Scriptures say, that the rent is thereby
+made worse. So they were perforce content to go about in such a
+condition of deplorable dilapidation as anywhere else would inevitably
+result in their being "run in" for flagrant disregard of public
+decorum.</p>
+
+<p>The Canadians took rank from the first as among the very finest troops
+in all the field, and adopted as their own the following singular
+marching song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page025" name="page025"></a>(p. 025)</span> "We will follow <span class="smcap">Roberts</span>,<br>
+  Follow, follow, follow;<br>
+  Anywhere, everywhere,<br>
+  We will follow him!"</p>
+
+<p>Brave fellows that they were, they meant it absolutely, utterly, even
+unto death. But thus without boots and other yet more essential
+belongings, how could they?</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Remounts.</span>
+
+<p>The cavalry was in equally serious plight. It is said that Sir George
+White took with him into Ladysmith over 10,000 mules and horses, but
+brought away at the close of the siege less than 1100. Many of the
+rest had meanwhile been transformed into beefsteak and sausages. We
+also, during the month that brought us to Bloemfontein had used up a
+similar number. A cavalryman told me that out of 540 horses belonging
+to his regiment only 50 were left; and in that case the sausage-making
+machine was in no degree responsible for the diminished numbers. Yet a
+cavalryman without a horse is as helpless as a cripple without a
+crutch. It was therefore quite clear that most of our cavalry
+regiments would have to remain rooted to the spot till their remounts
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Not until May 1st was another forward move found possible; and during
+one of those weeks of waiting there happened the Sanna's Post
+disaster, a grievous surrender of some of our men at Reddersburg, a
+serious little fight at Karee, and a satisfactory skirmish at Boshof,
+which made an end of General de Villebois-Mareuil and his commando of
+foreign supporters of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page026" name="page026"></a>(p. 026)</span> the Boers; but in none of these
+affairs were the Guards involved.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Regimental Pets.</span>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the men during their few leisure hours found it no easy
+matter to amuse themselves. In the rush for Bloemfontein, footballs
+and cricket bats were all left behind. There were no canteens and no
+open-air concerts. The only pets the men had left were pet animals,
+and of them they made the most. The Welsh, of course, had their goat
+to go before them, and were prouder of it than ever. The Canadians at
+Belmont bought a chimpanzee which still grinned at them from the top
+of its pole in front of their lines, and with patient perseverance,
+still did all the mischief its limited resources would permit; whereat
+the men were mightily pleased. The adjoining battalion boasted of
+possessing a yet more charming specimen of the monkey tribe; a mite of
+a monkey, and for a monkey almost a beauty; but as full of mischief as
+his bigger brother.</p>
+
+<p>Strange to tell, the Grenadiers' pet was, of all things in the world,
+a pet lamb; and of all persons in the world, the cook of the officers'
+mess was its kindly custodian. "Mary had a little lamb," says the
+nursery rhyme. So had we!</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Its fleece was white as snow;<br>
+  And everywhere that Mary went<br>
+  That lamb was sure to go!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">So was it with ours! Walking amid camp-kettles, and dwelling among
+sometimes cruelly hungry men that lamb was jokingly called our
+"Emergency Rations," <span class="pagenum"><a id="page027" name="page027"></a>(p. 027)</span> but it would have had to be a very
+serious emergency, indeed, to cut short that pet's career. Yet a lamb
+thus playing with soldiers, and marching with them from one camping
+ground to another, was well-nigh as odd a sight as I have ever yet
+seen.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Civilian Hospitality and Soldiers' Homes.</span>
+
+<p>During our six weeks of waiting I was for the most part the guest of
+the Rev. Stuart and Mrs Franklin, whose kindness to me was great with
+an exceeding greatness. Ever to be remembered also was the hospitality
+of the senior steward of the Wesleyan Church, who happened, like
+myself, to be a Cornishman; and from whose table there smiled upon me
+quite familiarly a bowl of real Cornish cream. Whole volumes would not
+suffice to express the emotions aroused in my Cornish breast by that
+sight of sights in a strange land.</p>
+
+<p>Through the kindness of these true friends we were enabled to open the
+Wesleyan Sunday School as a Soldiers' Home where the men were welcome
+to sing and play, read, and write letters to their hearts' content.
+Here also every afternoon from 200 to 700 soldiers were supplied with
+an excellent cup of tea and some bread and butter for threepence each.
+A threepenny piece is there called "a tickey," and till the troops
+arrived that was the lowest coin in use. An Orange Free Stater scorned
+to look at a penny; but a British soldier's pay is constructed on
+other lines; and what he thought of our "tickey" tea, the following
+unsolicited testimonial laughingly proves. It is an unfinished letter
+picked <span class="pagenum"><a id="page028" name="page028"></a>(p. 028)</span> up in the street, and was probably dropped as the
+result of a specially hurried departure, when some passing officer
+looked in and shouted "Lights out!"</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="left60 smcap">Bloemfontein, O.F.S.
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mother</span>,&mdash;I can't say I care much for this place. Nothing to
+     see but kopjes all round; and if you want to buy anything, by
+     Jove, you have to pay a pretty price. For instance, cup of tea,
+     6d.; bottle of ginger beer, 6d.; cigarettes, 1s. a packet. But at
+     the Soldiers' Home a cup of tea is only 3d. Thanks to those in
+     authority, the S.H. is what I call our "haven of rest." I shan't
+     be sorry when I come home to <span class="italic">our own</span> haven of rest, as it is
+     impossible to buy any luxuries on our little pay. Just fancy, a
+     small tin of jam, 2s. It's simply scandalous; and the inhabitants
+     seem to think Tommy has a mint of money.</p></div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">S.C.A. Work.</span>
+
+<p>After a while similar Homes were opened in various parts of the town;
+but this long pause in our progress was a veritable harvest-time for
+all Christian workers; and especially for those of the S.C.A., who
+planted two magnificent marquees in the very midst of the men, and had
+the supreme satisfaction of seeing them crowded night after night and
+almost all day long. Every Sunday morning I was privileged to conduct
+one of my Parade Services under their sheltering canvas; and many a
+time in the course of each succeeding week took part in their
+enthusiastic religious gatherings.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as at Modder River, secular song was nowhere, while sacred song
+became all and in all. I am told that sometimes on the march,
+sometimes amid actual battle scenes, our lads caught up and encouraged
+themselves by chanting some more or less appropriate music-hall ditty.
+One battalion when sending a specially large <span class="pagenum"><a id="page029" name="page029"></a>(p. 029)</span> consignment of
+whizzing bullets across into the Boer lines did so to the accompanying
+tune of</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "You have to have 'em<br>
+  Whether you want 'em or no!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Another fighting group, when specially hard pressed, began to sing
+"Let 'em all come!" But in the Bloemfontein camps I seldom heard any
+except songs of quite another type; and on one occasion was greatly
+touched by listening to a Colonial singing a sweet but unfamiliar
+melody about</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "The pages that I love<br>
+  In the Bible my mother gave to me."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Even among men on active service, many of whom are nearing mid-life,
+and have long been married, mother's influence is still a supremely
+potent thing!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Rudyard Kipling's Mistake.</span>
+
+<p>Partly as the result of influences such as these, and partly as the
+result of prohibitory liquor laws, we became the most absolutely sober
+army Europe ever put into the field. Prior to our coming, no liquor
+might at any price be sold to a native; and there were in the whole
+country no beer shops, but only hotels bound to supply bed and board
+when required, and not liquor only, with the result that this fair
+land has long been almost as sober as it is sunny.</p>
+
+<p>The sale of intoxicants to the troops was equally restricted, and no
+liquor could be obtained by them except as a special favour on special
+terms. Absolutely the only concert or public meeting held in
+Bloemfontein while the Guards were in the neighbourhood was in
+connection with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page030" name="page030"></a>(p. 030)</span> the Army Temperance Association, Lord
+Roberts himself presiding; and concerning him the soldiers playfully
+said, "He has water on the brain." Through all this weary time of
+waiting our troops were as temperate as Turks, and much more chaste;
+so that the soldiers' own pet laureate is reported to have declared,
+whether delightedly or disgustedly he alone knows, that this outing of
+our army in South Africa was none other than a huge Sunday School
+treat; so incomprehensibly proper was even the humblest private and so
+inconceivably unlike the Tommy Atkins described in his "Barrack-room
+Ballads," Kipling discovered in South Africa quite a new type of Tommy
+Atkins, and, as I think, of a pattern much more satisfactory.
+Nevertheless, in one small detail the laureate's simile seems gravely
+at fault. In the homeland no Sunday School treat was ever yet seen at
+which the girls did not greatly outnumber the boys; but on the African
+veldt the only girl of whom we ever seemed to gain even an occasional
+glimpse was&mdash;"The girl I left behind me."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">All Fools' Day.</span>
+
+<p>During our stay in Bloemfontein a part of the Guard's Brigade was sent
+to protect the drift and broken railway bridge across the Modder River
+at "The Glen"; which was the first really pretty pleasure resort we
+had found in South Africa since Table Mountain and Table Bay had
+vanished from our view. Here the Grenadier officers had requisitioned
+for mess purposes a little railway schoolhouse, cool and shady, in the
+midst of the nearest approach to a real wood in all the regions round
+about; and here I purposed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page031" name="page031"></a>(p. 031)</span> conducting my usual Sunday
+parade, but with my usual Sunday ill-fortune. On arrival I found the
+whole division that had been encamped just beyond the river had
+suddenly moved further on, quite out of reach; so the service arranged
+for them inevitably fell through.</p>
+
+<p>But on Saturday afternoon a set of ambulance waggons arrived, bringing
+in the first instalment of about 170 wounded men belonging to that
+same division. It was rumoured that the K.O.S.B.'s, in a sort of
+outpost affair, had landed in a Boer trap, planted of course near a
+convenient kopje; with the result that our ambulances were, as usual,
+speedily required. In the course of the campaign some of our troops
+developed a decided proficiency in finding such traps&mdash;by falling into
+them!</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, two battalions of Guards remained in camp, and they, at
+any rate, might be confidently relied on for a parade next morning.
+Indeed, one of the majors in charge, a devout Christian worker, told
+me he had purposed to himself conduct a service for my men if I had
+not arrived; and for that I thanked him heartily. Moreover, the men
+just then were busy gathering fuel and piling it for a camp-fire
+concert, to commence soon after dark that evening. Clearly, then, the
+Guards were anchored for some time to come, though their comrades
+beyond the river had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I had yet to learn that the coming Sunday was "All Fools' Day," and
+that for those who had been busy thus scheming it was fittingly so
+called. At the mess that very evening our usual "orders" informed us
+that the men would parade for worship at 6.45 next morning; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page032" name="page032"></a>(p. 032)</span>
+but within a few minutes a telegram arrived requiring the Coldstream
+battalion and half the Grenadiers to entrain for Bloemfontein at once,
+thence to proceed to some unnamed destination; and every man to take
+with him as much ammunition as he could carry. So, instead of a big
+bonfire and their blankets, the men at a moment's notice had to face a
+long night journey in open trucks, with the inspiring prospect of a
+severe fight at that journey's end. Nothing daunted, every man
+instantly got ready to obey the call; and just before midnight forty
+truck-loads of fighting men set out, they knew not whither, to meet
+they knew not what; but cheerily singing, as the train began to move,
+"The anchor's weighed." It was indeed!</p>
+
+<p>"What does it all mean?" asked one lad of another; but though vague
+rumours of disaster were rife,&mdash;(it proved to be the day of the
+Sanna's Post mishap),&mdash;nothing definite was known; and on the eve of
+"All Fools' Day" it seemed doubly wise to be wholesomely incredulous.
+So I retired to my shelter, made of biscuit boxes covered with a rug;
+and slept soundly till morning light appeared. Then the sun, which at
+its setting had smiled on two thousand men and their blanket shelters,
+at its rising looked in vain for men or blankets; all were gone, save
+a few Grenadiers left for outpost duty. I had come from Bloemfontein
+for nought. Just behind my shelter stood the pile of firewood neatly
+heaped in readiness for the previous night's camp fire, but never
+lighted; and close beside my shelter was spread on the ground fresh
+beef and mutton, enough to feed fifteen hundred men; but those fifteen
+hundred were now far away, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page033" name="page033"></a>(p. 033)</span> nobody knew where; and of that
+fresh meat the main part was destined to speedy burial. Truly enough
+that Sunday was indeed "All Fools' Day"; though the fooling was on our
+part of a quite involuntary order!</p>
+
+<p>Yet in face of oft recurring disappointment and disaster the favourite
+motto of the Orange Free State amply justified itself, and will do to
+the end. It says <span class="italic">Alles zal recht komen</span>; which means, being
+interpreted, "All will come right." While God remains upon the throne
+that needs must be!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Eastertide in Bloemfontein.</span>
+
+<p><span class="italic">Good Friday</span> for many of us largely justified its name. It was a
+graciously good day. My first parade in a S.C.A. marquee was not only
+well attended but was also marked by much of hallowed influence. Then
+followed a second parade service in the Wesleyan church which was
+still more largely attended; and attended by men many of whose faces
+were delightfully familiar. It was an Aldershot parade service held in
+the heart of South Africa, and in what is supposed to be the hostile
+capital of a hostile state.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the afternoon over five hundred paid a visit to our
+temporary Soldiers' Home for letter writing and the purchase of such
+light refreshments as we found it possible to provide in that famine
+haunted city. The evening we gave up to Christian song in that same
+Soldiers' Home; and when listening to so many familiar voices singing
+the old familiar hymns, some of us seemed for the moment almost to
+forget we were not in the hallowed "Glory Room" of the Aldershot Home.</p>
+
+<p>On <span class="italic">Easter Sunday</span> at the two parade services in the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page034" name="page034"></a>(p. 034)</span> Town
+Church the most notable thing was the visible eagerness with which men
+listened to the old, old story of Eastertide, and the overwhelming
+heartiness with which they sang our triumphant Easter hymns. There is
+a capital Wesleyan choir in Bloemfontein; but they told me they might
+as well whistle to drown the roaring of a whirlwind as attempt "to
+lead" the singing of the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>At these Sunday morning parades the church was usually packed with
+khaki in every part. The gallery was filled to overflowing; chairs
+were placed in all the aisles on the ground floor; the choir squeezed
+themselves within the communion rail; and the choir seats were
+occupied by men in khaki, for the most part deplorably travel-stained
+and tattered. Soldiers sat on the pulpit stairs; and into the very
+pulpit khaki intruded, for I was there and of course in uniform. It
+was a most impressive sight, this coming together into the House of
+God of comrades in arms fresh from many a hard fought conflict and
+toilsome march.</p>
+
+<p>At one of these services a sergeant of the 12th Lancers was present;
+and his was just a typical case. It was at the battle of Magersfontein
+we had last met. On that memorable morning he and his troop rode past
+me to the fight; we grasped hands, whispered one to the other
+"494"<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1" title="Go to footnote 1"><span class="smaller">[1]</span></a>; and then parted to meet months after, unharmed amid all
+peril, in our Father's House in Bloemfontein. The thrill of such a
+meeting, which represents cases of that kind by the score, no one can
+fully understand <span class="pagenum"><a id="page035" name="page035"></a>(p. 035)</span> till it becomes inwoven in his own
+experience. So we met, and remembering the way our God had led us, we
+sang as few men could</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Praise ye the Lord! 'tis good to raise<br>
+  Your hearts and voices in His praise!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">How good, supremely good, I have no words to tell!</p>
+
+<p>On that Easter afternoon there came a sudden summons to conduct
+another soldier's funeral. For a full hour and a half I watched and
+waited beyond the appointed time, while the digging of a shallow grave
+in difficult ground was being laboriously completed; and then in the
+name of Him who is the "Resurrection and the Life," we laid our
+soldier-brother in his lowly resting place, enwrapped only in his
+soldier-blanket. Meanwhile, in accordance with a touching Anglican
+custom, there came into the cemetery a long procession of choir boys
+and children singing Easter hymns, joining in Easter liturgies, and
+then proceeding to lay on the new made graves an offering of Easter
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>At the Easter evening service I was surprised to see in the Wesleyan
+church another dense mass of khaki. Every man had been required to
+procure a separate personal "pass" in order to be present, and the
+evening was full of threatenings, threatenings that in due time
+justified themselves by a terrific thunderstorm, which resulted in
+nearly every tunic being drenched before it could reach its sheltering
+tent. Yet in spite of such forbiddings the men came in from the
+outlying camps, literally by hundreds, to attend that Easter evening
+service; and I deemed their presence there a notable <span class="pagenum"><a id="page036" name="page036"></a>(p. 036)</span> tribute
+to the spiritual efficiency of spiritual work among our troops the
+wide world over.</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">Easter Monday</span>, as in England so in Bloemfontein, is a Bank holiday,
+and usually devoted to picnicking in The Glen, till the war put its
+foot thereon, as well as on much else that was pleasurable. My most
+urgent duty that day was the conducting of another military funeral;
+and thereupon in the cemetery I saw a triple sight significant of
+much.</p>
+
+<p>At the gate were some soldiers in charge of a mule waggon on which lay
+the body of a negro, awaiting burial. In the service of our common
+Queen that representative of the black-skinned race had just laid down
+his life. Inside the gates two graves were being dug; one by a group
+of Englishmen for an English comrade, and one by a group of Canadians
+for a comrade lent to us for kindred service by "Our Lady of the
+Snows." So now are lying side by side in South African soil these two
+typical representatives of the principal sections of the Anglo-Saxon
+race; their lives freely given, like that of their black brother, in
+the service and defence of one common heritage&mdash;that Christian empire
+which surely God himself has builded. Camp and cemetery alike teach
+one common lesson, and by the lips of the living and the dead enforce
+attention to the same vast victorious fact! Next day it was an
+Australian officer I saw laid in that same treasure-house of dead
+heroes. He that hath eyes to see let him see! This deplorable war,
+which thus brought together from afar the builders and binders of the
+empire, in an altogether amazing measure made <span class="pagenum"><a id="page037" name="page037"></a>(p. 037)</span> them thereby
+of one mind and heart. It is life arising out of death; and surely
+every devout-minded Englishman will learn at last to say "This is the
+Lord's doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes!"</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Epidemic and the Hospitals.</span>
+
+<p>The first military funeral since the reoccupation of Bloemfontein by
+the British it fell to my lot to conduct two days after our arrival. A
+fine young guardsman who had taken part in each of our four famous
+battles, and in our recent march, just saw this goal of all our hopes
+and died. The fatal symptoms were evidently of a specially alarming
+type, for he was hastily buried with all his belongings, his slippers,
+his iron mug, his boots, his haversack, and the very stretcher on
+which he lay; then over all was poured some potent disinfectant. It
+was a gruesome sight! So to-day he lies in the self-same cemetery
+where rests many a British soldier who fell not far away in the fights
+of fifty years ago. It was British soil in those distant days, and is
+British soil again, but at how great cost we were now about to learn.</p>
+
+<p>That guardsman was the first fruits of a vast ingathering. In the
+course of the next few weeks over 6000 cases of enteric sprang up in
+the immediate neighbourhood of that one little town; and 1300 of its
+victims were presently laid in that same cemetery, which now holds so
+much of the empire's best, and towards which so many a mother-heart
+turns tearfully from almost every part of the Anglo-Saxon world. It
+was the after-math of Paardeberg, which claimed more lives long after,
+than in all its hours of slowly intensifying agony! Boers and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page038" name="page038"></a>(p. 038)</span> Britons, both together, there were vastly fewer who sighed
+their last beside the Modder River banks than the sequent fever
+claimed at Bloemfontein; and all through the campaign the loss of life
+caused by sickness has been so much larger than through wounds as to
+justify the soldiers' favourite dictum respecting it: "Better three
+hits than one enteric."</p>
+
+<p>Such an epidemic, laying hold as it did in the course of a few weeks
+of one in five of all the troops within reach of Bloemfontein, is
+quite unexampled in the history of recent wars; and the Royal Army
+Medical Corps can scarcely be censured for being unable to adequately
+cope with it. They were 900 miles from their base, with only a broken
+railway by which to bring up supplies. The little town, already so
+severely commandeered by the Boers, could furnish next to nothing in
+the way of medical comforts or necessities. Every available bed, or
+blanket, or bit of sheeting, was bought up by the authorities; but if
+every private bedroom in the place had been ransacked, the
+requirements of the case even then could scarcely have been met.
+Possibly that ought to have been done, but all through this campaign
+our army rulers have been excessively tender-handed in such matters;
+forgetting that clemency to the vanquished is often cruelty to the
+victors. So in Bloemfontein healthy civilians, whether foes or
+friends, slept on feather beds, while suffering and delirious soldiers
+were stretched on an earthen floor that was sodden with almost
+incessant rain. Neither for that rain can the army doctors be held
+responsible, though it almost drove them to despair. Nor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page039" name="page039"></a>(p. 039)</span> was
+it their fault that the Boers were allowed at this very time to
+capture the Bloemfontein waterworks, and shatter them. Bad water at
+Paardeberg caused the epidemic. Bad water at Bloemfontein brought it
+to a climax. In this little city of the sick the medical men had at
+one time a constant average of 1800 sufferers on their hands; mostly
+cases of enteric which, as truly as shot and shell, shows no respect
+of persons. Not only our fighting-men&mdash;soldiers of high degree and low
+degree alike&mdash;but non-combatants, chaplains, army scripture readers,
+war correspondents, doctors, and army nurses, it remorselessly claimed
+and victimised. In such a campaign the fighting line is not the chief
+point of peril, nor the fighting soldiers the only sufferers. Hospital
+work has its heroes, though not its trumpeters, and many a man of the
+Royal Army Medical Corps has as faithfully won his medal as any that
+handled rifle.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">All hands and houses to the rescue.</span>
+
+<p>Our "Kopje-Book Maxims" told us that "two horses are enough to shift a
+camp&mdash;provided they are dead enough." Either the camp or the horses
+must be quickly shifted if pestilence is to be kept at bay; yet in
+spite of all shiftings, of all sanitary searchings and strivings, the
+fever refused to shift; the field hospitals were from the first
+hopelessly crowded out; and the city of death would quickly have
+become the city of despair, but for the timely arrival of sundry
+irregular helpers and organisations that had been lavishly equipped
+and sent out by private beneficence. Such was the huge Portman
+Hospital. In the Ramblers' Club and Grounds, the Longman Hospital was
+housed; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page040" name="page040"></a>(p. 040)</span> and here I found Conan Doyle practising the healing
+art with presumably a skill rivalling that with which he penned his
+superb detective tales. In the forsaken barracks of the Orange Free
+State soldiery, the Sydney doctors established their house of healing,
+assisted by ambulance men and ambulance appliances unsurpassed by
+anything of the kind employed in any other part of Africa. Australia,
+like her sister colonies, sent to us her best; and bravely they bore
+themselves beside our best.</p>
+
+<a id="img003" name="img003"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img003.jpg" width="400" height="550" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph taken at Pretoria, June 1900</p>
+<p>Rev. T. F. Falkner, M.A. Chaplain to the Forces.</p>
+
+<p>Chaplain to the First Division and to the Guards' Brigade, South
+African Field Force, 1899-1900.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To relieve the pressure thus created almost every public building in
+the town was requisitioned for hospital purposes; schools and clubs
+and colleges, the nunnery, the lunatic asylum, and even the stately
+Parliament Hall with its marble entrance and sumptuous fittings. The
+presidential chair, behind the presidential desk, still retained its
+original place on the presidential platform; but,&mdash;"how are the mighty
+fallen!" I saw it occupied by an obscure hospital orderly who was busy
+filling up a still more obscure hospital schedule. The whole floor of
+the building was so crowded with beds that all the senatorial chairs
+and desks had perforce been removed. The Orange Free State senators
+sitting on those aforesaid chairs had resolved in secret session, only
+a few eventful months before, to hurl in England's face an Ultimatum
+that made war inevitable, and brought our batteries and battalions to
+their very doors. But now they were fugitives every one from the city
+of their pride, which they had surrendered without striking a solitary
+blow for its defence; while the actual building in which their lunacy
+took final shape, and launched itself <span class="pagenum"><a id="page041" name="page041"></a>(p. 041)</span> on an astonished
+Christendom, I beheld full to overflowing with the deadly fruit of
+their doing. In the very presence of the president's chair of state,
+here a Boer, there a Briton, it may be of New Zealand birth or
+Canadian born, moaned out his life, and so made his last mute protest
+against the outrage which rallied a whole empire in passionate
+self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>Among the more than thousand victims the Bloemfontein fever epidemic
+claimed, few were more lamented than a sergeant of the 3rd Grenadier
+Guards, who, according to the <span class="italic">Household Brigade Magazine</span>, had a
+specially curious experience in the assault on Grenadier Hill at the
+battle of Belmont, for "he was hit by no less than nine separate
+bullets, besides having his bayonet carried away, off his rifle, by
+another shot, making a total of ten hits. He continued till the end of
+the action with his company in the front of the attack, where on
+inspection it was found he had only actually five wounds; but besides
+some damage to his clothing had both pouches hit and all his
+cartridges exploded. He did not go to hospital till the next day, when
+he felt a little bruised and stiff." It really seemed hard to succumb
+to enteric after such a miraculous escape from the enemies' murderous
+fire.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Church of England Chaplains at work.</span>
+
+<p>The following letter by the Rev. T. F. Falkner refers to this period,
+and was sent originally to the Chaplain-General; but is here
+published, slightly abridged, as an excellent illustration of the
+spirit and work of the many chaplains of the Church of England who
+have taken part in this campaign:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page042" name="page042"></a>(p. 042)</span> "I was particularly anxious that you should know the
+     luxury in which we are living in the matter of Church privileges,
+     and the keen appreciation which our people show of that which is
+     so freely offered. Nothing can exceed the kindness of the dean
+     and his clergy. They allow us to have the use of the cathedral on
+     Sunday mornings at nine o'clock for a parade service for the
+     Guards, and at 5.30 on Sunday evenings we have a special evensong
+     for the convenience of officers and men to enable them to get
+     back to barrack or camp in good time; in addition to this, we
+     have permission to hold a special mission service for soldiers on
+     Friday evenings at 6.30. There is a daily celebration as well as
+     Morning and Evening Prayer and Litany, while on Sundays there are
+     three celebrations of Holy Communion. These are luxuries to us
+     wayfarers on the veldt. Now for the appreciation of them. On the
+     Sunday after we came in, the cathedral choir volunteered their
+     help at our nine o'clock (Guards') parade, and the service was
+     home-like and hearty. The drums were there and rolled at the
+     Glorias, and 'God Save the Queen,' which was sung because it was
+     a parade service. I spoke to the men on the blessings of a
+     restful hour of worship in an English church after our
+     journeyings, and of the mercies which had been granted to us,
+     basing what I had to say on 'It is good for us to be here.' At
+     the morning service at 10.30 there was a large number of the
+     headquarter staff present, many of whom, Lord Roberts included,
+     stayed to the celebration.... At 7.30, the ordinary hour for
+     evensong, long before the service began the church was literally
+     <span class="italic">packed</span> with officers and men, one vast mass of khaki; all
+     available chairs and forms were got in, and officers were put up
+     into the long chancel wherever room could be found for them. The
+     heartiness of that service, the reverence and devoutness of the
+     men, the uplifting of heart and voice in the familiar chants and
+     hymns, the clear manly enunciation of the Articles of our Faith,
+     and the ready responses, all combined to make the service a grand
+     evidence of the religious side of our men and a striking
+     testimony to their desire to worship their God in the beauty of
+     holiness. Many of us will remember that Sunday night with
+     thankfulness. Coney preached us a very excellent sermon. The few
+     civilians who were able to get in were much struck by the evident
+     sincerity and devout behaviour of the men who surrounded them.
+     And yet the Boers say 'the English <span class="italic">must</span> lose
+     because they have no God.' One of the clergy told me a day or two
+     after we got here that he met one of our men outside the
+     cathedral as he was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page043" name="page043"></a>(p. 043)</span> walking along, and the soldier
+     accosted him. 'Beg pardon, sir, is that an English church?'
+     'Yes,' said the clergyman. 'Might I go in, sir?' 'Why, of
+     course,' was the reply, 'it is open all day.' 'Thank you, sir; I
+     should just like to go in and say a prayer for the wife and
+     children;' and in he went.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt after our first experience that it was hardly fair to
+     oust so many of the regular worshippers from their own place of
+     worship, and so we arranged for the extra service at 5.30. It was
+     to be purely a soldiers' service. But a word or two about the
+     Friday evening special Lenten service. Familiar hymns, a metrical
+     litany, and part of the Commination Service were gladly joined in
+     by a large number of men, the cathedral being more than half
+     full, and the archdeacon gave us a very helpful address. After
+     that service a good number of men stayed behind, at our
+     invitation, to practise psalms and hymns for the soldiers'
+     evening service on the following Sunday, a precaution which
+     served its purpose well. At that service the church was <span class="italic">filled</span>;
+     Lord Roberts came to it, and it was an ideal soldiers' service.
+     Coney and I took the service, Norman Lee and Southwell read the
+     lessons, Blackbourne was at the organ, and the dean preached. One
+     of the staff officers said afterwards that he had never enjoyed a
+     service so much, and I think many others had similar feelings.
+     But the flow of khaki-clad worshippers had not ceased, for no
+     sooner had our 5.30 service ended than men and officers began
+     coming in for the 7.30 ordinary service, and at that the chancel
+     and more than half the body of the church was again filled with
+     our troops. It <span class="italic">was</span> cheering to see and comforting to share in.</p>
+
+<p>"The morning of this Sunday I spent at Bishop's Glen, about
+     fourteen miles up the line, close to the bridge over the Modder
+     River which was blown up directly we got here, where two
+     battalions of the Guards were afterwards sent. I had to go up in
+     great haste on the Saturday to bury the adjutant of the 3rd
+     Grenadiers, who was killed the day before; a very sad task for
+     me, for having been with the battalion all along, I had got to
+     know him well and to appreciate him highly, as every one did who
+     knew him. I got to camp about 5.30 on Saturday evening, after
+     three and a half hours' heavy travelling along a muddy track over
+     the veldt, through dongas and drifts, and we laid him to rest on
+     a little knoll overlooking the well-wooded banks of what is
+     <span class="italic">there</span> a pretty river, a short distance only from the broken
+     bridge, which stood out against a background of shrubs and trees
+     on the river side, and struck me as a fitting emblem of a strong
+     <span class="pagenum"><a id="page044" name="page044"></a>(p. 044)</span> and useful life smitten down suddenly by an unseen
+     hand. I stayed the night at Glen, where Grenadiers and
+     Coldstreams took care of me, and on Sunday morning at seven we
+     had our parade service, followed by a celebration at the railway
+     station, at which we had a nice number of communicants.</p>
+
+<p>"We find the hospital work here very heavy. There are no less
+     than ten public buildings in use as hospitals in the town: in
+     addition, of course, to our field hospitals, which are <span class="italic">full</span>.
+     For a short time last week I was left to do all this with two
+     chaplains besides myself. The chaplains here are splendid, so
+     keen and self-denying, nothing seems too much trouble; all going
+     strong and working hard. It is a pleasure to be with such men. We
+     are all distressed at our inability to do more, and conscious of
+     our failure to do what we would wish; but we do what we can. The
+     S.C.A. has two tents and are working on good lines, and the men
+     appreciate them. Lowry and I have walked the whole way so far,
+     save that I had a lift from Jacobsdal to Klip Drift, and I am
+     thankful to be able to say I have not been other than fit all
+     through. All the others have had horses to ride: they are welcome
+     to them. I am a bit proud of having had a share in that march
+     from Klip Drift to Bloemfontein, and am thankful for the strength
+     that was given me to do it. I am jealous for the honour of the
+     department, and all I want at the end of the campaign is that the
+     generals should say, the Church of England chaplains have done
+     their duty well. One said to me the other day, 'I <span class="italic">should</span> like
+     to be mentioned in despatches.' I replied, 'I have no such wish.
+     To do that you must go where you have no business to be.' Our
+     chaplains are brave men; there's not one who would flinch if told
+     to go into the firing line; but the generals <span class="italic">all</span> say that our
+     place is at the field hospital; moving quietly amongst the sick
+     and wounded when they are brought in, and burying the dead when
+     they are carried out. There's not one of our chaplains out here
+     who has not earned, so far as I can gather, kind words from those
+     with whom he serves, and I think you will find your selection has
+     been more than justified.</p>
+
+<p>"We had an excellent meeting in connection with the A.T.A. in the
+     Bloemfontein Town Hall last night, with Lord Roberts in the
+     chair. He spoke admirably; and though most of the troops were out
+     of the city the hall was full."<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page045" name="page045"></a>(p. 045)</span> CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN</p>
+
+
+<span class="sidenote">A pleasure jaunt.</span>
+
+<p>During this six weeks of tarrying at Bloemfontein I found myself able
+to visit a most interesting Methodist family residing some twenty
+miles south of the town. For my sole benefit the express to the Cape
+was stopped at a certain platelayer's hut, and then a walk of about a
+mile across the veldt brought me to the pleasant country house of a
+venerable widow lady. Her belongings had of course been freely
+commandeered by the Boers on the outbreak of war; nor had the sons,
+being burghers, though loyal-hearted Britishers, been able to elude
+their liability to bear arms against their own kin. The two youngest,
+schoolboys still, though of conscript age, had been sent down south
+betimes; and so were well out of harm's way, but the two elder were
+not suffered to thus escape. One as a despatch rider, and one as a
+commissariat officer, they were compelled to serve a cause that did
+violence to their deepest convictions. On the first appearance
+therefore of the British, both brothers following the bidding of
+strongest blood bonds, transferred their allegiance, if not their
+service, to the other side. Thereupon they were so incessantly
+threatened with a volley of avenging Boer <span class="pagenum"><a id="page046" name="page046"></a>(p. 046)</span> bullets they felt
+compelled to take a holiday trip to the Cape. Thus was their gentle
+mother with war still raging round her gates bereft of the presence,
+protection, and sorely needed aid of all her sons.</p>
+
+<p>We arranged for the holding in her home of an Easter Sunday evening
+service; and then returning to the railway were cheered by the speedy
+sight of a goods train bound for Bloemfontein. Whereupon I scrambled
+on to the top of a heavily loaded truck, and there, being a
+first-class passenger provided with a first-class ticket, travelled in
+first-class style, sitting awkwardly astride of nobody knows what. On
+the same truck rode a Colonial, an English cavalryman, and a Hindu who
+courteously threw over me a handsome rug when the chilly eve closed in
+upon us. A decidedly representative group were we atop that truck-load
+of miscellaneous munitions of war. And on into the darkness, and
+through the darkness, we thus rode till late at night we reached the
+lights of Bloemfontein.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Onwards but whither?</span>
+
+<p>On Saturday, April 22nd, the colonel of my battalion informed his
+quartermaster that the next day his men would leave Kaffir River,
+proceed to Springfield, and thence to "worlds unknown!" That is
+precisely where we soon found ourselves. Early on Sunday morning I
+said "Good-bye" to Bloemfontein, expecting to see its face no more,
+for surely this must be the long looked for start towards golden
+Krugerland! At Kaffir River I found the Guards were some hours ahead
+of me, but was just in time to catch the tail of a long train of
+transport waggons belonging to them, so <span class="pagenum"><a id="page047" name="page047"></a>(p. 047)</span> that fortunately
+there was no fear of my being left alone, and lost a second time upon
+the veldt. Thus commenced a long Sunday march, as we all supposed, to
+Springfield. Later on we learned it certainly was not Springfield we
+were slowly approaching; but that possibly night-fall would land us
+somewhere near the Waterworks recently shattered, and still held, by
+the Boers. Yet "not there, not there, my child," were our weary feet
+wending. We began to wonder whether they were wending anywhere; and to
+this hour nobody seems to know the name of the place where we that
+night rested. Perhaps it had no name! Soldiers on active service
+seldom walk by sight. It is theirs always "to <span class="italic">trust</span> and obey." Even
+regimental officers seldom know precisely where their next
+stopping-place will be, or what presently they will be called upon to
+do. They often resemble the pieces on a chess board, which cannot see
+the hand that moves them and cannot tell why this piece instead of
+that is taken. To keep our adversaries if possible in the dark, we
+have ourselves to dwell in darkness; but it is a source of sore
+distress all the same. The troops hunger for information and seldom
+get it; so, to supply the lack they invent it; and then scornfully
+laugh at their own inventings. They would sooner travel anywhere than
+"through worlds unknown"; and yet somehow that becomes for them the
+commonest of all treks!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">That Pom-Pom again!</span>
+
+<p>While the afternoon was still new we heard on our near left the sound
+of heavy shell firing; of which, however, the men took no more notice
+than if they had been man[oe]uvring on Salisbury Plain. They marched
+on as stolidly and cheerily as ever, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page048" name="page048"></a>(p. 048)</span> chatting and laughing
+as they marched. But presently there broke upon our ears the familiar
+sound of the pom-pom, which months ago at the Modder had so shaken
+everybody's nerves. Instantly there burst from the whole brigade a cry
+of recognition, and every man instinctively perceived that some grim
+business had begun. Another Sunday battle was raging just over the
+ridge, and the rest of that day's march had for its accompaniment the
+music of pom-poms, the rattle of rifle fire, and the thud of shells.
+But at the close of the day an officer somewhat discontentedly
+reported that "if" our artillery had only reached a certain place by a
+certain time, something splendid would have happened. Many of our
+rat-traps proved thus weak in the spring, and snapped too slowly,
+specially on Sundays. Some such disastrous "if" seemed to spring up in
+connection with most of our Sunday fights, though we still seem to
+cling fondly to the belief that for fighting the Lord's battles the
+Lord's day is of all days incomparably the best. It was on Sunday,
+December 10th, the disastrous attack on Stormberg was delivered; and
+on the evening of that same fatal Sunday the Highland Brigade marched
+out of the Modder River Camp to meet their doom on Magersfontein.
+Similarly on the night of Sunday, January 22nd, our men set out to
+win, and lose, Spion Kop. The Paardeberg calamity, the costliest of
+all our contests, was also a Sunday fight; and though in the face of
+such facts no man may dogmatise, such coincidences, all happening in
+the course of a few weeks, in the conduct of the same war, make one
+wonder whether Sunday is really a lucky day for purposes so dread, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page049" name="page049"></a>(p. 049)</span> whether the Boers are not justified in their supposed
+refusal to fight on Sundays excepting in self-defence. In that
+respect, I at any rate, am with the Boers as against the Britons.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A problem not quite solved.</span>
+
+<p>When night at last arrived, we had neither tents nor shelters of any
+sort provided for us, though the cold was searching, and everything
+around us was wet with heavy dew. Men and officers alike spread their
+waterproof sheets on the bare ground, and then made the best they
+could of one or two blankets in which to wrap themselves. Through the
+kindness, however, of my quartermaster friend, since dead, I was
+privileged to push my head and shoulders under a transport waggon
+which effectually sheltered me from wind and wet; and there, in the
+midst of mules and men, mostly darkies, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.</p>
+
+<p>Brief rest, however, of a more delicious kind I had already found in
+the course of that toilsome afternoon tramp described above. During a
+short halt by the way I lay upon my back watching a huge cloud of
+locusts flying far overhead, and thinking tenderly of those just then
+assembling at our Aldershot Sunday afternoon service of song, not
+forgetting the gentle lady who usually presides at the piano there.
+Then I took out my pocket Testament, and read Romans xii.: "If thine
+enemy hunger, feed him." But about that precise moment the adjoining
+kopje, with a shaking emphasis, said to me, "pom-pom," and again
+"pom-pom." But how to feed one's enemy while thus he speaks with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page050" name="page050"></a>(p. 050)</span> defiant throat of brass, is a problem that still awaits a
+satisfactory solution!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A touching sight.</span>
+
+<p>In the course of the day I was greatly touched by the sight of an
+artillery horse that had fallen from uttermost fatigue, so that it had
+to be left to its fate on the pitiless veldt. It was now separated
+from its team, and all its harness had been removed; but when it found
+itself being deserted by its old companions in distress and strife, it
+cast after them a most piteous look, struggled, and struggled again to
+get on to its feet, and finally stood like a drunken man striving to
+steady himself, but absolutely unable to go a single step further. Ah,
+the bitterness alike for men and horses of such involuntary and
+irrecoverable falling out from the battle-line of life! Not actual
+dying, but this type of death is what some most dread!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Rifle firing and firing farms.</span>
+
+<p>When on Monday we resumed our march, it was still to the sound of the
+same iron-mouthed music; but now at last we could not only hear, but
+see some of the shell fire, and watch a few of the men that were
+taking part in the fight. Far away we noticed what looked like a line
+of beetles, each a good space from his fellow beetles, creeping
+towards the top of a ridge. These were some of our mounted men. Lower
+down the slope, but moving in the same direction, was a similar line
+of what looked like bees. These were some of our infantry, on whom the
+altogether invisible Boers were evidently directing their fire. As you
+must first catch your hare before you can cook it, so you must first
+sight a Boer before you can shift him; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page051" name="page051"></a>(p. 051)</span> and the former task
+is frequently the more difficult of the two. In more senses than one
+short-sighted soldiers have had their day; and in all ranks those who
+cannot look far ahead must give place to those who can. Henceforth the
+most powerful field-glasses that can possibly be made, and the most
+perfect telescopes, must be supplied to all our officers; or on a
+still more disastrous scale than in this war the bees will drop their
+bullets among the beetles, and Britons will be killed by Britons.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day, to my sincere grief, a beautiful Boer house was set
+on fire by our men, after careful inquiry into the facts by the
+provost-marshal, because the farmer occupying it had run up the white
+flag over his house, and then from under that flag our scouts had been
+shot at. Such acts of treachery became lamentably common, and had at
+all cost to be restricted by the only arguments a Voortrekker seemed
+able to understand; but the Boers in Natal had long before this proved
+adepts at kindling similar bonfires, though without any such
+provocation, and cannot therefore pose as martyrs over the burning of
+their own farms, however deplorable that burning be.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Boer treachery and the white flag.</span>
+
+<p>At Belmont a young officer of the Guards named Blundell was killed by
+a shot from a wounded Boer to whom he was offering a drink of water;
+and about the same time another Boer hoisted a white flag, which our
+men naturally mistook for a signal of surrender, but on rising to
+receive it, received instead a murderous volley of rifle fire, as the
+result of which the correspondent of <span class="italic">The Morning Post</span> had his right
+arm hopelessly shattered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page052" name="page052"></a>(p. 052)</span> At Talana Hill, our first battle in Natal, the beaten Boers
+raised a white flag on a bamboo pole, but when our gunners thereupon
+ceased firing, "the brother" instead of surrendering bolted! At
+Colenso, a company of burghers with rifles flung over their backs, and
+waving a white flag, approached within a short distance of the
+foremost British trenches, but when our troops raised their heads to
+welcome these surrendering foes, they were instantly stormed at by
+shot and shell. At length General Buller found it necessary in face of
+such frequent treachery, officially to warn his whole army to be on
+their guard against the white flag, a flag which to his personal
+knowledge was already through such misuse stained with the blood of
+two gallant British officers, besides many men.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that when Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such
+a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father
+somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got
+into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things."
+Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:&mdash;"Well
+the devil may have taught me to scratch and bite, but the spitting is
+my own idea!" With equal justice the Boers may claim that though the
+ordinary horrors and agonies of war are of the devil, this persistent
+abuse of the white flag is their own idea. Of that practice they
+possess among civilized nations an absolute monopoly, and the red
+cross flag has often fared no better at their hands.</p>
+
+<p>But then it would be absurd and most unfair to blame <span class="pagenum"><a id="page053" name="page053"></a>(p. 053)</span> the two
+Republics as a whole for this. No people on earth would approve such
+practices, and doubtless they were as great a pain to many an
+honourable Boer as they were to us. But upland farmers who have spent
+their lives in fighting savage beasts, and still more savage men, are
+slow to distinguish between lawful tricking and unlawful treachery,
+and are apt to account all things fair that help to win the game.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The pet lamb still lives and learns!</span>
+
+<p>During this long trek through worlds unknown, our pet lamb, perchance
+taking encouragement from the example of the two chaplains, followed
+us all the way on foot, and became quite soldierly in its tastes and
+tendencies. It scorned even to look at its brother sheep on the veldt
+modestly feeding on coarse veldt grass; but on sardines and bacon-fat
+it seemed to thrive astonishingly; and both my bread and sugar it
+coolly commandeered. So rapid and complete is camp-life education,
+even when a pet lamb is the pupil!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Right about face.</span>
+
+<p>On the morning of our fifth day in "worlds unknown" we breakfasted
+soon after four, by starlight; and before sunrise were again trekking
+hard. About ten miles brought our almost interminable string of
+waggons to two ugly river drifts, across which, with much toil and
+shouting they were at last safely dragged. Then we suddenly halted and
+to our amazement were ordered to return whence we came. So across
+those two ugly drifts the waggons were again dragged; four o'clock in
+the afternoon found us on the precise spot where four o'clock in the
+morning had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page054" name="page054"></a>(p. 054)</span> watched us breakfasting; and by the afternoon of
+the following Sunday we were back in Bloemfontein from which on the
+previous Sunday we had made so bold a dash for fame and fortune. In
+the course of those eight excessively toilsome days the Guards had
+captured three wounded Boers; but what else they had accomplished no
+one could ever guess. Somebody said, however, that something wonderful
+had been done by somebody somewhere in connection with that week of
+wonders; which was of course consoling; but it was only long after we
+learned that De Wet after laying siege to Wepener for seventeen days
+had made a sudden rush to reach his sure retreat in the north-east
+corner of the Free State; that we with other columns had been sent out
+to intercept him; and had as by a hair's breadth just managed to miss
+him. Such are the fortunes and misfortunes of war. As an attacking
+force, De Wet in the course of the war made some bold and brilliant
+moves, though always on a comparatively small scale; but in the art of
+running away and escaping capture, no matter by whom pursued, he has
+given himself more practice than probably any other general that ever
+lived. "Oh my God make him like a wheel!" We were a lumbering waggon
+chasing a light-winged wheel; and the wheel was winner!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">From worlds unknown.</span>
+
+<p>While on this long trek I lighted on a newly-arrived contingent of
+Canadian mounted infantry which had come to our aid from worlds
+unknown. They proved to be a splendid body of men, and worthy
+compatriots of the earlier arrived Canadians who had rendered such
+heroic service at Paardeberg. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page055" name="page055"></a>(p. 055)</span> Their Methodist chaplain, the
+Rev. Mr Lane, of Nova Scotia, seemed incontestably built on the same
+lines; a conspicuously strong man was he, and delightfully
+level-headed. I therefore all the more deeply deplored the early and
+heavy failure of his health, as the result of the severe hardships
+that hang round every campaigner's path, and his consequent return,
+invalided home.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Bushmen..</span>
+
+<p>About this same time another equally remarkable body, the Australian
+Bushmen, who, like the Canadians, had come from worlds unknown, were
+in the far north making their way <span class="italic">through</span> worlds unknown to the
+relief of Mafeking. Their advance, says Conan Doyle, was one of the
+finest performances of the war. Assembled at their port of embarkation
+by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean
+to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand to Beira, transferred
+by a narrow gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, thence by a broader gauge
+to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of miles to Bulawayo,
+again transferred by trains for another four or five hundred miles to
+Ootsi, and then facing a further march of a hundred miles, they
+reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of the arrival of
+Plumer's relieving columns; and before that week was over the whole
+Empire was thrilled, almost to the point of delirium, by learning that
+at last the long-drawn siege of Mafeking was raised; and a defence of
+almost unexampled heroism was thus brought to a triumphant end.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page056" name="page056"></a>(p. 056)</span> The Australian Chaplains.</span>
+
+<p>From start to finish the Bushmen were accompanied by an earnest
+Methodist chaplain, whom I met only in Pretoria, the Rev. James Green,
+who, most fortunately, throughout the whole campaign, was not laid
+aside for a single day by wounds or sickness; and who, after returning
+home with this time-expired first contingent of Australian troops,
+came back in March 1902 with what, we hope, the speedy ending of the
+war will make their last contingent.</p>
+
+<p>Between Mr Green's two terms of service I was, however, ably assisted
+by yet another Australian Wesleyan chaplain, the Rev. R. G. Foreman,
+though he, like so many others, was early invalided home.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page057" name="page057"></a>(p. 057)</span> CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL</p>
+
+
+<p>It was with feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May
+Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards
+Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a
+single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and
+waving flags and lavish hospitality; but none the less that charming
+little capital had made us pay dearly for its conquest, and for our
+six weeks of so-called rest on the sodden veldt around it. Its traders
+had levied heavy toll on the soldiers' slender pay; and no fabled
+monster of ancient times ever claimed so sore a tribute of human
+lives. It was not on the veldt but under it that hundreds of our lads
+found rest; and hundreds more were soon to share their fate. The
+victors had become victims, and the vanquished were avenged. Seldom
+have troops taken possession of any city with such unmixed
+satisfaction, or departed from it with such unfeigned eagerness.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Comedy.</span>
+
+<p>My quartermaster friend and myself, unable to start with the Brigade,
+set out a few hours later, and tarried for the night at a Hollander
+platelayer's hut. The man spoke little English, and we <span class="pagenum"><a id="page058" name="page058"></a>(p. 058)</span> less
+Dutch; but he welcomed us to the hospitality of his two-roomed home
+with a warmth that was overwhelming. His wife, when the war began, was
+sent away for safety's sake; and married men thus flung back upon
+their bachelorhood make poor cooks and caterers unless they happen to
+be soldiers on the trek; but this man, in his excitement at having
+such guests to entertain, expectorated violently all over the floor on
+which presently we expected to sleep; fire was soon kindled and coffee
+made; the quartermaster produced some tinned meat; I produced some
+tinned fruit; the ganger produced some tinned biscuits&mdash;in this
+campaign we have been saved by tin&mdash;and so by this joint-stock
+arrangement there was provided a feast that hungry royalty need not
+have disdained. Next our entertainer undertook to amuse his guests,
+and did it in a fashion never to be forgotten. He produced a box
+fitted up as a theatre stage&mdash;all made out of his own head, he
+said&mdash;and mostly wooden; there were two puppets on the stage, which
+were made to dance most vigorously by means of cords attached secretly
+to the ganger's foot, whilst his hands were no less vigorously
+employed on the concertina which provided the accompanying dance
+music. This delighted old man was the oddest figure of the three, as
+the perspiration poured down his grimy face. To light on such a comedy
+when on the war path would have been enough to make Momus laugh; and
+when the laugh was spent we swept the floor, for reasons already
+hinted at, sought refuge in our blankets; and long before breakfast
+time next morning landed in Karee Camp.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page059" name="page059"></a>(p. 059)</span> A Tragedy.</span>
+
+<p>To reach Karee we passed through "The Glen" lying beside the Upper
+Modder, where a deplorable tragedy had occurred not long before. A
+remarkably fine-looking sergeant of the Guards went to bathe in what
+he supposed were the deep waters of the Modder, and dived gleefully
+into deeps that alas were not deep. Striking the bottom with his head,
+instantly his neck was dislocated, and when I saw him a few hours
+after, though he was perfectly conscious and anxiously hopeful, he was
+paralysed from his shoulders downwards. A married man, his heart, too,
+was broken over such an undreamed of disaster, and in three weeks he
+died. The mauser is not the only reaping-machine the great harvester
+employs in war time. There have been over five hundred "accidental"
+deaths in the course of this campaign. At the Lower Modder we once
+arranged to hold a Sunday morning service for the swarms of native
+drivers in our camp, but in that case also were compelled to prove it
+is the unexpected that happens. One of the "boys" went to bathe that
+morning in the suddenly swollen river; he sank; and though search
+parties were at once sent out, the body was never recovered. So
+instead of a service we had this sad sensation.</p>
+
+<p>About that same time, and in that same camp, one of my most intimate
+companions, the quartermaster of the Scots Guards, was one moment
+laughing and chatting with me in his tent; but the next moment,
+without the slightest warning, he dropped back on his couch, and that
+same evening was laid by his sorrowing battalion in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page060" name="page060"></a>(p. 060)</span> a
+garden-grave. The other quartermaster, who shared with me the ganger's
+hospitality and laughter, when the campaign was near its close, was
+found lying on the floor of his tent. He had fallen when no friendly
+hand was near to help, and had been dead for hours when discovered. My
+first campaign, and last, has stored my mind with tragic memories; it
+has filled my heart with tendernesses unfelt before; and perchance has
+taught me to interpret more truly that "life of lives" foreshadowed in
+Isaiah's saying: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our
+sorrows."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A wide front and a resistless force.</span>
+
+<p>When, on the 3rd of May, we started from Karee Camp the Guards'
+Brigade consisted, as from the outset, of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and the 1st Scots Guards, all
+under the command of General Inigo Jones, from whom I received
+unfailing courtesy. With them was linked General Stephenson's Brigade,
+consisting of the Welsh, the Warwicks, the Essex, and the Yorks, these
+two Brigades forming the Eleventh Division under General Pole Carew.
+On our left was General Hutton with a strange medley of mounted
+infantry to which almost every part of the empire had contributed some
+of its noblest sons. On our right was General Tucker's Division, the
+Seventh; and beyond that again other Divisions, covering a front of
+about forty miles, which gradually narrowed down to twenty as we
+neared Kroonstad. Reserves were left at Bloemfontein under General
+Kelly Kenny; and Lord Methuen was on our <span class="pagenum"><a id="page061" name="page061"></a>(p. 061)</span> remote left flank
+not far from Mafeking; while on our remote right was Rundle's
+Division, the Eighth. There thus set out for the conquest of the
+Transvaal a central force nearly 50,000 strong&mdash;the finest army by far
+that England had ever yet put into the field, and led by the ablest
+general she has produced since Wellington. Yet it perhaps would be
+more correct to speak of it as the first army <span class="italic">Greater</span> Britain had
+ever fashioned; and in my presence Lord Roberts openly gloried in
+being the first general the empire had entrusted with the command of a
+really Imperial host. In this epoch-making conflict neither the
+commander nor the commanded had any cause to be ashamed one of the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Yet from this point onward there was astonishingly little fighting.
+Before the campaign was over some of the guardsmen wore out several
+pairs of boots, but scarcely fired another bullet. The Boers were so
+out-man&oelig;uvred that their mausers and machine-guns availed them
+little. They fought scarcely any but rear-guard actions, and their
+retreat was so rapid as to be almost a rout. Within about a month of
+leaving Bloemfontein the Guards' Brigade was in Pretoria; which,
+considering all they had to carry, and the constant repairing of the
+railway line required from day to day, would be considered good
+marching even if there had been no pom-poms planted to oppose
+progress.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Brandfort.</span>
+
+<p>When we left Karee it was confidently predicted that the Boers would
+make a stiff stand amid the kopjes which guard the prettily placed and
+prettily planted little town of Brandfort. So the next <span class="pagenum"><a id="page062" name="page062"></a>(p. 062)</span> day
+and the day after we walked warily, while cannon to right of us and
+cannon to left of us volleyed and thundered. Little harm was however
+done; and as the second afternoon hastened to its sunset hour, we were
+gleefully informed that "the brother" had once more "staggered
+humanity" by a precipitate retreat from positions of apparently
+impregnable strength. So Brandfort passed into our hands for all that
+it was worth, which did not seem to be much; but what little there
+was, no man looted. All was bought and paid for as in Piccadilly; but
+at more than Piccadilly prices. Whatever else however could be
+purchased, no liquor was on sale; no intemperance was seen; no
+molestation of woman or child took place. So was it with rare
+exceptions from the very first; so was it with very rare exceptions to
+the very last.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">"Stop the War" slanders.</span>
+
+<p>In this respect my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. W. Burgess, assures me
+that his experience tallies with mine, and he told me this tale as
+illustrative of it. At Hoekfontein he called at a farmhouse close to
+our camp, and in it he found an old woman of seventy and her husband,
+of whom she spoke as nearly ninety. "Do you believe in God?" she asked
+the chaplain, and added, "so do I, but I believe in hell as well; and
+would fling De Wet into it if I could." Then she proceeded to explain
+that her first husband was killed in the last war; that of her three
+sons commandeered in this war one was already slain, and that when the
+other two returned from the fighting line De Wet at once sent to fetch
+them back.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page063" name="page063"></a>(p. 063)</span> "But look at the broken panel of that door," said the old
+lady. "Your men did that when I would not answer to their knocks, and
+they stole my fowls." "Very well," replied Burgess, "where yonder red
+flag is flying you will find General Ian Hamilton; go and tell him
+your story." As the result, a staff officer sent to inspect the
+premises asked the Dutch dame whether food or money should be given
+her by way of compensation, and whether £15 would fully cover all her
+loss? She seemed overwhelmingly pleased at such an offer in payment
+for a broken panel and a few fowls. "Very good," added the staff
+officer. "To-morrow I will send you £20, but," quoth he to Burgess,
+"we'll make the scouts that broke the panel pay the twenty!"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all the real and the imaginary horrors recorded in "War
+against War," this has been the most humanely conducted struggle the
+world has ever seen; but would to God it were well over.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A prisoner who tried to be a poet.</span>
+
+<p>In the yard of the little town jail I saw nine prisoners of war, only
+two of whom were genuine Boers. Some were Scotch, some were English,
+some were Hollanders; and one a fiery Irishman, who expressed so
+fervent a wish to be free, to revel in further fightings against us,
+that it was deemed desirable to adorn his wrists with a pair of
+handcuffs. In one of the cells, it was clear some of our British
+soldiers had at an earlier date been incarcerated, and were fairly
+well satisfied with the treatment meted out to them. Written on the
+wall I found this interesting legend: No. 28696, I. M'Donald, 4th Reg.
+M. Inf., Warwick's Camp; taken prisoner 7-3-1900; arrived here
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page064" name="page064"></a>(p. 064)</span> 11-3-1900. Also this, by a would-be poet called Wynn, a
+scout belonging to Roberts' Horse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "To all who may read:<br>
+  I have been well treated<br>
+  By all who have had me in charge<br>
+  Since I've been a prisoner here."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">The poetry is not much; but the peace of mind which could pencil such
+lines in prison is a great deal!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Militant Dutch reformed predikants.</span>
+
+<p>The two best buildings in Brandfort appeared to be the church and
+manse belonging to the Dutch Reformed Community. The church seats 600,
+though the town contains only 300 whites. But then the worshippers
+come from near and far. Hence I found here, as at Bloemfontein that
+the farmers have their "church houses"&mdash;whole rows of them in the
+latter town&mdash;where with their families they reside from Saturday to
+Monday, especially on festival occasions, that they may be present at
+all the services of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. A typical Dutchman
+is nothing if he is not devout; though unfortunately his devoutness
+does not prevent his being exceeding "slim," which seems to some the
+crown of all excellencies.</p>
+
+<p>The young and intelligent pastor of this important country
+congregation on whom I called, was evidently an ardent patriot, like
+almost all his cloth. He had unfortunately firmly persuaded himself
+that the British fist had been thrust menacingly near the Orange Free
+State nose; and that therefore the owner of that aforesaid nose was
+perfectly justified in being the first to strike a deadly blow.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page065" name="page065"></a>(p. 065)</span> He told me he had been for a month at Magersfontein, and
+that he was out on the Brandfort hills the day before I called
+watching our troops fighting their way towards the town. I understood
+him to say he had been shooting buck. What kind of buck is quite
+another question. Whether as a pastor his patriotism had confined
+itself to the use of Bunyan's favourite weapon, "all-prayer," on our
+approach; or whether as a burgher he had deemed it a part of his duty
+to employ smokeless powder to emphasise his patriotism, I was too
+polite to ask. But he pointed out to me on his verandah two old and
+useless sporting guns, which the day before he had handed to some of
+our officers, by whom they had been snapped in two and left lying on
+the floor. There they were pointed out to me by their late owner as
+part of the ravages of war. They were the only weapons he had in the
+house, he said, when he surrendered them.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very common trick on the part of surrendered burghers who
+took the oath of neutrality and gave up their arms, to hand in weapons
+that were thus worthless and to hide for future use what were of any
+value. We did not even attempt to take possession of any such a
+burgher's horse. We found him a soldier, and when he surrendered we
+left him a soldier, well horsed, well armed, and often deadlier as a
+pretended friend than as a professed foe. Because of that exquisite
+folly, which we misnamed "clemency," we have had to traverse the whole
+ground twice over, and found a guerilla war treading close on the
+heels of the great war.</p>
+
+<p>This young predikant with more of prudence, and perchance <span class="pagenum"><a id="page066" name="page066"></a>(p. 066)</span>
+more of honour, recollected next morning that though, as he had truly
+said, he had no more weapons in the house, he had a beautiful mauser
+carbine hidden in his garden. There it got on his nerves and perhaps
+on his conscience; so calling in a passing officer of the Grenadier
+Guards he requested him to take possession of it, together with a
+hundred rounds of ammunition belonging to it. When with a sad smile he
+pointed out to me "the ravages of war" on his verandah floor my
+politeness again came to the rescue, and I said nothing about that
+lovely little mauser of his, which an hour before I had been curiously
+examining at our mess breakfast table. Too much frankness on that
+point would perhaps have spoiled our pleasant chat.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Our Australian Chaplain's pastoral experiences.</span>
+
+<p>In the course of that chat he candidly confessed himself to be
+thoroughly anti-British; and for his candour this young predikant is
+to be honoured; but some few of his ministerial brethren proved near
+akin to the ever-famous Vicar of Bray, whom an ancient song represents
+as saying:</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "That this is law I will maintain<br>
+<span class="add1em">Unto my dying day, Sir;</span><br>
+  That whatsoever king may reign,<br>
+<span class="add1em">I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir."</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">So were there Dutch predikants who were decidedly anti-British while
+the British were over the hills and far away; but who fell in love
+with the Union Jack the moment it arrived; even if they did not set it
+fluttering from their own chimney-top. One such our chaplain <span class="pagenum"><a id="page067" name="page067"></a>(p. 067)</span>
+with the Australian Bushmen met at Zeerust. When the Bushmen arrived
+this predikant was one of the first to welcome them, and helped to
+hoist the British flag. Then "the Roineks," that is the "red neck"
+English, retired for a while, and De La Rey arrived; whereupon the
+resident Boers went wild with joy, and whistled and shouted one of
+their favourite songs, "Vat jougoed entrek," which means "Pack your
+traps and trek." That was a broad hint to all pro-Britishers. So this
+interesting predikant hauled down the Union Jack, which his sons
+instantly tore to tatters, ran up the Boer flag, and drove De La Rey
+hither and thither in his own private carriage. Though to our
+Australian chaplain he expressed, still later on, his deep regret that
+"the Hollanders had forced the President into making war on England,"
+when Lord Methuen, in the strange whirligig of war, next drove out De
+La Rey from this same Zeerust, our versatile predikant's turn soon
+came to "Pack his traps and trek." Even in
+South Africa "Ye cannot serve two masters."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Welsh Chaplain.</span>
+
+<p>After one day's rest at Brandfort the Guards resumed their march, and
+aided by some fighting, in which the Australians took a conspicuous
+part, we reached the Vet River, and encamped near its southern banks
+for the night. Here the newly-appointed Wesleyan Welsh chaplain, Rev.
+Frank Edwards, overtook me; and until it could be decided where he was
+to go or what he was to do, he was invited to become my brother-guest
+at the Grenadiers' mess.</p>
+
+<p>The next day being Sunday Mr Edwards had a speedy <span class="pagenum"><a id="page068" name="page068"></a>(p. 068)</span>
+opportunity of learning how little the best intentioned chaplain can
+accomplish when at the front in actual war time. It was the sixth
+Sunday in succession I was doomed to spend, not in doing the work of a
+preacher but of a pedestrian. All other chaplains were often in the
+same sad but inevitable plight; and though Mr Edwards had come from
+far of set purpose to preach Christ in the Welsh tongue to Welshmen,
+had all the camp been Welsh he would that day have found himself
+absolutely helpless. We were all on the march; and the only type of
+Christian work then attemptable takes the form of a brief greeting in
+the name of Christ to the men who tramp beside us, though they are
+often too tired even to talk, and we are compelled to trudge on in
+stolid silence.</p>
+
+<p>The drift we had to cross that Sunday at the Vet was by far the worst
+we had yet reached in South Africa, and till all the waggons were
+safely over, the whole column was compelled to linger hard by. I
+therefore took advantage of that long pause to hurry on to Smaldeel
+Junction, where the headquarter staff was staying for the day. Here I
+was privileged to introduce Mr Edwards to the Field-Marshal, and was
+so fortunate as to secure his immediate appointment as Wesleyan
+chaplain to the whole of General Tucker's Division, with special
+attachment to the South Wales Borderers. This important and
+appropriate task successfully accomplished, I retired to rest under
+the broken fans of a shattered windmill.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Edwards' association with the Guards' Brigade was thus of very
+short duration; but some interesting glimpses <span class="pagenum"><a id="page069" name="page069"></a>(p. 069)</span> of his after
+work are given, from his own pen, in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." I
+must, therefore, only add that he was early struck by a small fragment
+of a shell, and was at the same time fever-stricken, so that for ten
+weeks he remained on the sick list. Still more unluckily he had only
+just resumed work, when there developed a further attack of dysentery,
+fever and jaundice, which ended in his being invalided home. Thus,
+like many another chaplain, he found his South African career became
+one of suffering rather than of service.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page070" name="page070"></a>(p. 070)</span> CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL</p>
+
+
+<p>After resting for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for
+Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some
+parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet
+one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of
+sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing
+the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about
+noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or
+rather heard, two artillery duels; the Boers half-heartedly opposing
+our passage, first at the Vet River just before we reached Smaldeel,
+and then at the Sand River, long since made famous by the Convention
+bearing that name.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Sand River Convention.</span>
+
+<p>Though Great Britain is supposed to suffer from insatiable land hunger
+it is a notable truth that she has voluntarily surrendered more
+oversea territory than some important kingdoms ever possessed; but not
+one of these many surrenders proved half so disastrous to all
+concerned as that on which the Sand River Convention set its seal in
+1852. At that time our colonial possessions were accounted by many
+overtaxed statesmen to be all <span class="pagenum"><a id="page071" name="page071"></a>(p. 071)</span> plague and no profit,
+involving the motherland in incessant native wars out of which she won
+for herself neither credit nor cash. That had proved specially true in
+South Africa. When, therefore, the Crimean war hove in sight with its
+manifold risks and its drain on our national resources, it was
+resolved to lessen our liabilities in that then unattractive quarter
+of the globe. The Transvaal was at that time a barren land, given over
+to wild beasts, and to Boers who seemed equally uncontrollable. An
+Ishmael life was theirs, their hand against every man's and every
+man's hand against them. Every little township was a law unto itself
+and almost every homestead; so the British Government threw up the
+thankless task of governing the ungovernable, as soon as a life and
+death struggle with Russia appeared inevitable. The Sand River
+Convention gave to the Transvaal absolute independence save only in
+what related to the treatment of the natives. There was to be no
+slavery in the Transvaal; but no Convention ever yet framed could
+apparently bind a Boer when his financial interests bade him break it.
+So set he his face to evade the conditions both of the Pretoria and
+the London Conventions of later date; and the one requirement of this
+first Convention he set at nought. During several following years he
+still hunted for slaves whom he took captive in native wars; sjamboked
+them into serving him without pay; bought them, sold them, but never
+called them slaves. They were "apprentices," which was a fine word for
+a foul thing. So was the Convention kept in the letter of it and
+broken in the spirit of it. For five-and-twenty <span class="pagenum"><a id="page072" name="page072"></a>(p. 072)</span> years of
+widening and deepening anarchy that Convention remained in force, the
+Transvaal fighting with the Orange Free State, and Boer bidding
+defiance to Boer with bullets for his arguments. When little Lydenberg
+claimed the right to set up as an independent republic, Kruger himself
+reasoned with it at the muzzle of his rifle, as we have since been
+compelled to reason with him. So at last Shepstone appeared upon the
+scene to evolve order out of chaos; and though he knew it not, he was
+the true herald of the Guards' Brigade, and sundry others, that after
+many days crossed the Sand River to make an end for ever of all that
+the Sand River Convention involved.</p>
+
+<p>The year following that in which the Convention was signed, another
+step was taken in the same direction and independence was forced on
+the Orange Free State. The people protested, and pleaded for
+permission to still live under the protection of the British flag; but
+their prayers were as unavailing as "the groans of the Britons,"
+which, as recorded in the early pages of our own island story,
+followed the retiring swords of Rome. Now, after nearly forty years of
+uttermost neighbourliness, the Orange Free State, with machine gun and
+mauser hurls back the gift once so reluctantly accepted, and forces us
+to recall what now they still more reluctantly surrender. How
+bewildering are the ways of Fate!</p>
+
+<a id="img004" name="img004"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img004.jpg" width="500" height="337" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Westerman</p>
+<p>Broken Bridge at Modder River.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Railway wrecking and repairing.</span>
+
+<p>The crossing of the drifts at the two rivers was almost as difficult a
+task as the overtaking of our ever retreating foes. The railway
+bridges over both these streams <span class="pagenum"><a id="page073" name="page073"></a>(p. 073)</span> had been blown up by
+dynamite: some of the stone piers were shattered, and some of the iron
+girders hurled all atwist into the watery depths beneath; here and
+there culverts had similarly been destroyed, and at many a point the
+very rails had been torn by explosives till they looked like a pair of
+upturned arms imploring help from heaven. We noticed, however, when we
+got into the Transvaal that the Transvaalers took pity on their own
+portion of the line, and studiously refrained from shattering it. Some
+of them were probably shareholders. The less serious damages the
+Railway Pioneers and the Royal Engineers repaired with a speed that
+amazed us; and our supply trains never seemed to linger long in the
+rear of us, except when a massive river bridge was broken. Then a
+deviation line and a low level trestle bridge had to be constructed.
+At that fatigue work I have seen whole companies of once smart-looking
+Guardsmen toiling with spade and pick like Kaffirs, whilst some of
+their aristocratic officers, bearing lordly titles, played the part of
+gangers over these soldier-navvies. It was a new version and a more
+useful one of Ruskin and his collegiate road-makers.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The tale, and tails, of a singed overcoat.</span>
+
+<p>Bridge or no bridge, many a mile of transport waggons, of ammunition
+carts, of provision carts, with sundry naval guns, each drawn by a
+team of thirty-two oxen, had somehow to be got down the dangerous
+slope on one side of the drift, then across the stream, and up the
+still more difficult slope on the other side. It was a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page074" name="page074"></a>(p. 074)</span>
+herculean task at which men and mules and horses toiled on far into
+the night. Meanwhile, when the troops reached their camping ground
+some miles beyond the river, they found they would have to wait for
+hours before they could get a scrap of beef or biscuit, and that it
+would probably be still longer before their overcoats or blankets
+arrived. For the hungry and shivering men this seemed an almost
+interminable interval, and for their officers it was scarcely less
+trying. A devoted Methodist non-commissioned officer perceiving my
+sorry plight most seasonably procured for me the loan of a capital
+military greatcoat. I also fortunately found a warm anthill, which the
+Boers earlier in the day had hollowed out and turned into an excellent
+stove or cooking-place. I stirred up the hot ashes inside with my
+walking-stick, but could find no trace of actual fire, so lay down
+beside the mound for the sake of its gentle warmth and instantly fell
+fast asleep. In my sleep I must have leaned hard against the anthill,
+for presently a burning sensation at my back awoke me, to discover
+that already a big hole had been charred in the coat I wore; and
+"alas! master, it was borrowed." Boer rifle fire never harmed a hair
+of my head, but this Boer fire did mischief nobody bargained for.
+Clearly our pursuit was much too hot for my personal comfort!</p>
+
+<a id="img005" name="img005"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img005.jpg" width="500" height="294" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Westerman</p>
+<p>The Deviation Bridge at Modder River.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A little earlier in the evening another glowing anthill had been found
+by one of our officers, and the thought of possible soup at once
+suggested itself. A three-legged crock was borrowed from a native and
+a fire of green mimosa shrub was laboriously coaxed into vigour by a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page075" name="page075"></a>(p. 075)</span> young aspirant to a seat in the House of Lords. Into the
+crockful of water one of us cast a few meat lozenges reserved for just
+such a day of dire need; another found in his haversack a further
+slender store, which instantly shared the same fate. Somebody else
+cast into the pot the contents of a tiny tin of condensed beef tea;
+and with sundry other contributions of the same kind there was
+presently produced a delightful cup of soup for all concerned. To mend
+matters still further and to improve the no longer shining hours, an
+officer caught sight of a stray pig upon the veldt and shot it, just
+as though it had been a sniping "brother." A short time after a
+portion of that porker took its place among the lozenges and condensed
+beef tea in that simmering crock. So in an hour or two there followed
+another cup of glorious broth, with a dainty morsel of boiled pork for
+those who desired it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">"Oh ye gods, what a glorious feast!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Soon after, our Cape cart with its load of iron mugs and tinned
+provisions reached that same crock side; while waggon loads of
+blankets, beef and biscuits, made possible a satisfactory night's
+rest, even on the frosty veldt, for all our well-wearied men.</p>
+
+<p>Kroonstad, the but recently proclaimed second capital of the Orange
+Free State, is a very inferior edition of Bloemfontein. There is not a
+single stately building, public or private, in the whole place&mdash;the
+Dutch Reformed Church, afterwards taken for hospital purposes, being
+the best, as it is meet and right God's House should always be.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page076" name="page076"></a>(p. 076)</span> Lord Roberts as Hospital Visitor.</span>
+
+<p>It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course
+without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing
+that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of
+pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of
+the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type. <span class="italic">Lord
+Roberts</span> not only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance
+work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen
+took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet
+never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted.
+They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because
+of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of
+that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier
+appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers'
+Home:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     "Lord Roberts! Well, he's just <span class="italic">a father</span>. Often goes round
+     hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you
+     to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never
+     forgets to <span class="italic">see</span> the man has what he asks for. Goes to the
+     hospital train&mdash;'Are you comfortable? Are you <span class="italic">sure</span> you're
+     comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it.
+     But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?'
+     I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye
+     near,&mdash;tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a
+     clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he
+     will pray with him. He <span class="italic">is</span> a lord!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly
+imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom
+his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by
+such a head!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page077" name="page077"></a>(p. 077)</span> President Steyn's Sjambok.</span>
+
+<p>On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn
+stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking
+to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted
+trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs
+Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and
+the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of
+despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free
+State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and
+for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for
+his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the
+penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. <strong>Steyn's
+ambition awoke it!</strong></p>
+
+<p>Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself
+face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over
+the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station
+belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of £5000, and
+filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with
+paraffin by the <strong>Boer Irish Brigade</strong>, and given to the flames; while
+five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate.
+No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade
+was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a
+hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs
+to the flames, and strove continually to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page078" name="page078"></a>(p. 078)</span> tear up the rails
+along which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children
+for us to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in
+spite of the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full
+well that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants
+would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger,
+though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our
+tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left
+the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no
+voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were
+famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to
+our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully
+cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed
+thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not
+unfelt.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath.</span>
+
+<p>To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found
+myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the
+Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>, and for the men of
+General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid
+a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it
+about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building,
+which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already
+of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began.
+I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women
+sitting on one side, the men on the other. There were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page079" name="page079"></a>(p. 079)</span> three
+interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch;
+an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he
+speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had
+finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the
+collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as
+worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet
+this was a congregation of Kaffirs!</p>
+
+<p>At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the
+Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were
+both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate
+withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to
+whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for
+me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the
+favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still
+Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Military Police on the march.</span>
+
+<p>This memorable march from the Valsch to the Vaal was, in consequence
+of the transport difficulties already described, one of the hungriest
+in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was
+added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to
+procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly
+watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses
+that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry
+face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in
+utter disgust, if not despair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page080" name="page080"></a>(p. 080)</span> Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of
+Military Police whose one business it was to see that these famished
+men looted nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at
+protecting it was made. Such a house of course never contained food,
+and our men sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some
+cases almost demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few
+small sticks, or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.</p>
+
+<p>But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was
+instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling
+fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on
+payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Straight down the crooked lane<br>
+  And right round the square,"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you
+please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was
+precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but
+as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have
+with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of
+unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat
+poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed.
+Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando,
+his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might
+wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers
+could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at
+liberty to hunt for their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page081" name="page081"></a>(p. 081)</span> lives but would not allow them to
+lay a finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to
+suppose that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the
+police was never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away
+from police control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like
+an inverted hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom
+asked in what market they had made their purchases or what price they
+had paid for their poultry.</p>
+
+<p>It would require a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and
+substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough
+trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved
+possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with
+that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me
+not unfrequently of the sons of the prophets, who, in a day of dearth
+went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and
+gathered thereof wild gourds and shred them into the pot and they
+could not eat thereof. Violent attacks of dysentery and kindred
+complaints only too plainly proved that occasionally in this case
+also, as in that ancient instance, there was apparently ample
+justification for the cry, "Oh thou man of God, there is death in the
+pot." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the lynx-eyed vigilance of the
+police, the smell from the pot was sometimes astonishingly like unto
+the smell of chicken-broth; which clearly shows what good cooking can
+accomplish even on the barren veldt.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A General's glowing eulogy of the Guards.</span>
+
+<p>This amazing ability of the Guards to face long marches with short
+rations was triumphantly maintained, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page082" name="page082"></a>(p. 082)</span> not for a few months
+merely but to the very end of the campaign. In the February of 1901 it
+fell to the lot of the Scots Guards, for instance, to accompany
+General French's cavalry to the Swaziland border. They took with them
+no tents and the least possible amount of impedimenta of any kind. But
+for three weeks they had to face almost incessant rain, and as they
+had no shelter except a blanket full of holes, they were scarcely ever
+dry for half a dozen hours at a time. The streams were so swollen that
+they became impassable torrents, and the transport waggons were thus
+left far behind, with all food supplies. For eight or ten days at a
+stretch men and officers alike had no salt, no sugar, no tea, no
+coffee, no jam, no flour, bread or biscuits; no vegetables of any
+kind; but only one cupful of mealies or mealie meal per day, and as
+much fresh killed meat as their rebellious stomachs could digest
+without the aid of salt or mustard. Yet the only deaths were two by
+drowning; and at the close of the operations the general addressed
+them as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>General French's farewell speech to the 1st Brigade, Scots Guards at
+Vryheid, on April 1st, 1901:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards.
+     The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close,
+     and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and
+     Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in
+     the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the
+     pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs
+     to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under
+     the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the
+     ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short
+     rations and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page083" name="page083"></a>(p. 083)</span> for sometime none at all, you had to exist
+     on the meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At
+     one time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of
+     the weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but
+     the cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did
+     a great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most
+     forcibly was your extraordinary power of marching. I have
+     frequently noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry
+     were engaged (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have
+     been surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion
+     close behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and
+     have wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish
+     to remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion
+     performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news
+     has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated
+     attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way
+     in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the
+     sentries the attack was never developed.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the
+     battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his
+     qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had
+     hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand
+     unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the
+     campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great
+     assistance given to me during these operations. Should your
+     services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be
+     endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you
+     all good-bye.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Good news by the way.</span>
+
+<p>Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same
+boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of
+conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the
+news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely
+disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting
+event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months
+brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a
+superbly satisfactory <span class="pagenum"><a id="page084" name="page084"></a>(p. 084)</span> send-off on our next perilous march to
+learn that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had
+at last actually taken place just four days before. It filled the
+whole camp with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided
+soldiers on the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the
+business as the multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the
+empire seem to have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a
+tiny garrison of for the most part untrained men; and therefore in
+itself of scant importance; but we also know that for many a critical
+week it had held back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong
+rush towards the Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one
+hand the staying power of British blood, and on the other the timidity
+and impotence of the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or
+stronghold to which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing;
+the very last of the series was safe at last, and after all that had
+been said about British blunderings, this event surely called for
+something more than commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was
+wont to say, "We are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we
+want: it is brains"; but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over
+bullets. A new Wake had arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found
+a permanent place among the many names of renown in the long annals of
+our island story.</p>
+
+<p>It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that
+same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable
+Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally
+annexed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page085" name="page085"></a>(p. 085)</span> to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed
+its gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest
+responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and
+constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of
+righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It is a
+superb stewardship entrusted to us of God; and "it is required in
+stewards that they be found faithful."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Over the Vaal at last.</span>
+
+<p>All that week the Guards continued in hot pursuit of the Boers without
+so much as once catching sight of them. Repeatedly, however, we
+scrambled through huge patches of Indian or Kaffir corn, enough, so to
+say, to feed an army, but all left to rot and perish uncut. It was one
+of the few evidences which just then greeted us that war was really
+abroad in the land, and that they were no mere autumn man&oelig;uvres in
+which we then were taking part. Some of the rightful owners of that
+corn were probably among our prisoners of war at St Helena, spending
+their mourning days in vainly wondering how long its hateful
+unfamiliar waves would keep them captive. Others had, perchance,
+themselves been garnered by the great Harvester, who ever gathers his
+fattest sheaves hard by the paths of war.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally we came, in the course of our march, on a
+recently-deserted Boer camp, with empty tins strewn all about the
+place and the embers of camp fires still glowing, but never so much as
+a penny worth of loot lying on the ground. Either they had little to
+leave, or else they so utilised the railway in assisting to get their
+belongings <span class="pagenum"><a id="page086" name="page086"></a>(p. 086)</span> away that in that respect they had the laugh of
+us continually. This final service rendered, the Boers made haste to
+prevent the rail being used by us; and so far as time or timidity
+would permit, they blew up every bridge, every culvert, as soon as
+their last train had crossed it. Fortunately of the long and beautiful
+bridge across the Vaal we found only one broad span broken.</p>
+
+<p>About nine o'clock on Sunday morning the troops reached Val Joen's
+Drift, the terminal station on the Orange Free State Railway. This
+drift it was that President Kruger had once resolved to close against
+all traffic in order the more effectually to strangle British trade in
+the Transvaal. Another mile or two through prodigiously deep sand,
+brought us to the Vaal River coal mines, with their great heaps of
+burning cinders or other refuse, which brought vividly to many a north
+countryman's remembrances kindred scenes in the neighbourhood of busy
+Bradford and prosperous Sunderland.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the great event to which the laborious travel of the last
+seven months had steadily led up, the crossing of the Vaal, and the
+planting of our victorious feet on Transvaal soil. Here we were
+assured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the
+natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities
+of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet
+to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could
+see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in
+position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauser
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page087" name="page087"></a>(p. 087)</span> bullets were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our
+foemen fled. Once in a Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an
+"English Reader," which strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar
+lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem30">
+<p>"There is a land of every land the pride;<br>
+  Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.<br>
+  Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?</p>
+
+<p>Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!<br>
+  Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,<br>
+  That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but
+fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so
+dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade
+stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be
+conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the
+scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for
+hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were
+peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I
+leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful
+hallelujah in my heart!<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page088" name="page088"></a>(p. 088)</span> CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS</p>
+
+
+<p>Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served
+as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one
+chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with
+whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close
+official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches
+whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I
+can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each,
+what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of
+Jehovah:&mdash;"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."</p>
+
+<p>Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among
+the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to
+place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them&mdash;the
+Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian&mdash;reference has already been
+made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the
+Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at
+the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was
+unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story
+however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There
+remain three whom <span class="pagenum"><a id="page089" name="page089"></a>(p. 089)</span> I repeatedly saw, and who reported to me
+from time to time the progress of their work&mdash;viz. the Revs. M. F.
+Crewdson, T. H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words
+it will now be my privilege to introduce.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front.</span>
+
+<p>Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at
+the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and
+became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one
+of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities
+and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him
+unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the
+troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of
+the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely
+duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve
+months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when,
+lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted
+not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape
+Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals
+and supply depôts became the scene of very active operations indeed,
+in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a
+prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are
+healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being
+intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page090" name="page090"></a>(p. 090)</span> Pathetic scenes in Hospital.</span>
+
+<p>Few chaplains in the course of this campaign have had so extensive an
+experience in hospital work as Mr Crewdson, and in the course of his
+correspondence he relates many pathetic incidents that came under his
+own personal observation. At De-Aar he found a lance-corporal with a
+fractured jaw and some twenty other slight or serious wounds, all
+caused by fragments of a single shell. "I was one of seven," he said,
+"entrenched in a little sangar on a hill. Hundreds of Boers and Blacks
+came up against us. One of the seven disappeared, four others were
+killed; so to my one surviving comrade I said, 'Look here, corporal,
+we'll stick this out till one of us is wounded then the other must
+look after him.'" Presently that unlucky shell made a victim of this
+plucky fellow; but a hero it could not make him. He was that already.</p>
+
+<p>A company of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong
+had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The
+lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital
+in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was
+his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot
+through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be
+removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder,
+with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's nothing, sir. I'll be
+at it again in a week." Some of them would say that, brave fellows, if
+their heads were blown off&mdash;or would try to!</p>
+
+<p>Writing from Colesberg at a somewhat later date Mr <span class="pagenum"><a id="page091" name="page091"></a>(p. 091)</span> Crewdson
+informed me that going the round of hospitals,&mdash;where he met
+representatives from Ceylon, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand,
+South Africa and the United Kingdom,&mdash;had filled much of his time
+during the previous fortnight. "I cannot tell the sweet brave things I
+have heard from tongues that had almost lost their power to speak. One
+was a Canadian lad, who had passed through his course as a student for
+the ministry, and being refused as a chaplain had volunteered as a
+trooper, and when the chaplain tenderly asked, 'How are you, old man?'
+he received in a kind of gasp this reply: 'Trusting Jesus!' Another,
+now nearly convalescent, said, 'I have been a Christian for twenty
+years, but the weeks spent in hospital have taught me more of God, and
+of the wonders of His grace, than years of health.' His eyes glistened
+and then dimmed as with faltering voice he added, 'I want to say, that
+it was good for me that I was afflicted.'"</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A battlefield scene no less pathetic.</span>
+
+<p>In the course of these incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an
+Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who
+told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two
+rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young
+well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect English accent
+said, "Are you much hurt, old fellow?" The Australian, suspecting
+treachery, turned white and trembled in spite of the stranger's kindly
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be afraid of me, you are hurt enough already. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page092" name="page092"></a>(p. 092)</span>
+Shall I get you some water?" was the instant Boer rejoinder to the
+Australian's signs of suspicion. The water was soon produced; and next
+there came forth from the pocket of that young Boer a couple of
+peaches, which were offered to the sufferer, and thankfully accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be faint with this fierce sun beating on you," said this
+strange foeman; and thereupon he sat upon a rock for over an hour in
+such a position that his shadow sheltered the wounded man, and surely,
+as in Peter's story, that shadow must have had grace and healing in
+it. Ultimately an ambulance arrived, and this chivalrous Transvaaler
+crowned the helpfulness of that eventful hour by tenderly lifting the
+crippled Australian on to a stretcher, with an expression of hope that
+he would soon be well again.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of this unnatural conflict it is our best consolation to
+be divinely assured that the brotherliness which thus presented
+peaches to a wounded foe will ultimately triumph over the bitterness
+which winged the explosive bullet that well-nigh killed him.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Look on this picture&mdash;and on that.</span>
+
+<p>While it is undeniable that cases of chivalrous courtesy such as this
+occurred repeatedly in the course of the campaign, it is equally
+undeniable that the Boers sometimes deliberately set aside all the
+usages of civilized war. Mr Crewdson, for instance, says that after
+the Slingersfontein fight he met at least a dozen men who declared
+that the Boers drove up the hill in front of them hundreds of armed
+Kaffirs, and then themselves crept up on hands and knees under cover
+of this living moving wall. Such strategy is exceedingly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page093" name="page093"></a>(p. 093)</span>
+slim; but they who make use of semi-savages must themselves for the
+time being be accounted near akin to them. One word from the Queen
+would have sufficed to let loose on the Boers the slaughterous fury of
+almost all native South Africa, but had that word been spoken there
+could have been found no forgiveness for it in this life or in the
+life to come. Yet Slingersfontein was not the only sad instance of
+this sort, for Sir Redvers Buller in his official report concerning
+Vaalkrantz solemnly declares that then also there were armed Kaffirs
+with the Boer forces, and that there also the Red flag was abominably
+abused, for he himself and his Staff saw portions of artillery
+conveyed by the Boers to a given position in an ambulance flying the
+Geneva flag. The loss of honour is ever out of all proportion to the
+help such treachery affords.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain.</span>
+
+<p>It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev.
+T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had
+proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the
+Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted
+himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once
+turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him
+they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received
+the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from
+Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his
+family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where
+a singular incident befell him.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page094" name="page094"></a>(p. 094)</span> Running in the wrong man.</span>
+
+<p>A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a
+Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all
+concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to
+speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the
+published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because
+after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was
+just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to
+be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he
+approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right
+password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a
+prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe
+keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new
+chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by
+the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a
+prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more
+painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did
+ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached
+to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own
+sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel
+in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Wainman who was a real waggoner.</span>
+
+<p>Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully
+used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most
+popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the
+transport <span class="pagenum"><a id="page095" name="page095"></a>(p. 095)</span> waggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift,
+and no amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One
+waggon thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is,
+therefore, a most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become
+an old colonist without learning a few things characteristic of
+colonial life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore
+volunteered to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padré's
+offer was, however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this
+small thing was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way,
+then next he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those
+staggering oxen English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones
+soothing and familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had
+appeared upon the scene that understood them, or that they could
+understand. Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull
+altogether, and lo as by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon
+was out of the drift! "Brave padré," everybody cried. His name means
+"waggoner," and a right good waggoner he that day proved to be. This
+skilful compliance with one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws
+helped him immensely in the preaching of the Gospel. He became all the
+more powerful as a minister because so popular as a man. In many ways
+his mature local knowledge enabled him to become so exceptionally
+useful that he received promotion from a fourth to a third class
+acting chaplaincy, and the very officers who at first deemed his
+presence an infliction combined to present him with a handsome
+cigarette case <span class="pagenum"><a id="page096" name="page096"></a>(p. 096)</span> in token of uttermost goodwill. You can't
+tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you give him a chance.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Three bedfellows in a barn.</span>
+
+<p>When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were
+being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he
+climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search
+for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal
+mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous
+hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on
+one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other&mdash;a delightful
+forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the
+kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a
+little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this
+campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.</p>
+
+<p>While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete
+remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving
+force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where
+I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of
+the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in
+Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the
+troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire
+his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an
+easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his
+generation well according to the will of God.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page097" name="page097"></a>(p. 097)</span> A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a
+first-rate Chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the
+Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service
+among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the
+lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and
+found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the
+battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column.
+Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no
+less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, and some were newly-won
+converts. Hence, at the close of Mr Burgess's very first voluntary
+service, one khaki man said to him, "I gave my heart to the Lord last
+Sunday on the line of march before we met the enemy"; while many more,
+though not perhaps walking in the clear shining of the light of God's
+countenance, yet spoke freely of their religious upbringing and
+relationships. It was possibly one such who, at the close of a little
+week-night service, where nearly all the men were drenched with recent
+rain, suggested the singing of "Love divine, all loves excelling." The
+character of that man's upbringing it is not difficult to divine.
+Another said, "I have a wife and four children who are praying for
+me"; while yet another added, "For me an aged mother prays." It would
+be strange indeed if such confessors were not themselves praying men.
+They were to be found by hundreds, probably by thousands, among the
+troops sent to South Africa. Never was an army so prayed for since the
+world began; and seldom, if ever, has an <span class="pagenum"><a id="page098" name="page098"></a>(p. 098)</span> army contained so
+many who themselves were praying men.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers.</span>
+
+<p>Nearly four months after the Stormberg tragedy, but only four days
+after that at Sanna's Post, Mr Burgess found himself, with three
+companies of the Irish Rifles and two of the Northumberland Fusiliers,
+cooped up on a kopje about three miles long not far from Reddersburg.
+With no water within reach, with no guns, and an almost exhausted
+store of rifle ammunition, this small detachment found itself indeed
+in evil plight when De Wet's commando of 3200 men put a girdle of
+rifle barrels around it, and then began a merciless cannonade with
+five guns. That cannonade indeed was merciless far beyond what the
+rules of modern war permit, for it seemed to be directed, if not
+mainly, certainly most effectually, on the ambulances and hospital
+tents, over which the Red Cross flag floated in vain. In the vivid
+description of the fight which Mr Burgess sent to me, he says that
+several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it
+was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of
+their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red
+Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer
+prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw
+up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the
+diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off,
+and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck
+till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thus
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page099" name="page099"></a>(p. 099)</span> turning himself into a navvy is probably no breach of the
+Geneva Convention, but all the same it is by no means an everyday
+occurrence; and those Boer prisoners would think none the worse of
+that Wesleyan predikant's prayers after watching the work, on their
+behalf, of that predikant's pick.</p>
+
+<p>The defence of Reddersburg was one of the least heroic in the whole
+record of the campaign, and the troops early next morning surrendered,
+not to resistless skill or rifle fire on the part of the Boers, but to
+the cravings of overmastering thirst. A relieving force was close at
+hand when they ran up the horrid white flag, and had they been aware
+of that fact we may be sure no surrender would have taken place. It
+requires scant genius to be wise after the event, and still scantier
+courage to denounce as lacking in courage this surrender of 500 to a
+force six times as large. That was on April 4th, and among those taken
+captive by De Wet was the Wesleyan chaplain. His horse, his kit, and
+all his belongings at the same time changed hands, and though he was
+solemnly assured all would be restored to him, that promise still
+awaits redemption.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Caring for the Wounded.</span>
+
+<p>Mr Burgess, though stripped of all he possessed, except what he wore,
+received De Wet's permission to search for the wounded as well as to
+bury the dead; and in one of his letters to me he tells of one
+mortally wounded whom he thus found, and who, in reply to the query,
+"Do you know Jesus?" replied, "I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour"; then
+recognising Mr Burgess as his chaplain, he added, "Pray for me!" so,
+amid onlooking stretcher-bearers and mounted Boers, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>(p. 100)</span> the
+dying lad was commended to the eternal keeping of his Saviour. It is
+this element which has introduced itself into modern warfare which
+will presently make war impossible, except between wild beasts or
+wilder savages. Prayer on the battlefield, and the use on the same
+spot of explosive bullets, is too incongruous to have in it the
+element of perpetuity.</p>
+
+<p>The number of soldiers that thus die praying, or being prayed for, may
+be comparatively small; but even the unsaintly soldier, when wounded,
+often displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian
+endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had
+horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to
+his comrades&mdash;"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you
+like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one
+of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my
+cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer
+some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place of the tin
+whistle and cricket; but even here is evidence of the grit that has
+helped to make England great, and it by no means follows that saving
+grace also is not there. The most vigorous piety is not always the
+most vocal.</p>
+
+<p>After nearly four and twenty hours of terrific pelting by shot and
+shell, Mr Burgess tells me our total loss was only ten killed and
+thirty-five wounded. Not one in ten was hit; and so again was
+illustrated the comparative harmlessness of either Mauser or
+machine-gun fire against men fairly well sheltered. This war thus
+witnessed a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>(p. 101)</span> strange anomaly. It used the deadliest of all
+weapons, and produced with them a percentage of deaths unexampled in
+its smallness.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">How the Chaplain's own tent was bullet-riddled.</span>
+
+<p>Late on in the campaign Mr Burgess was moved, not to his own delight,
+from near Belfast to Germiston, but was speedily reconciled to the
+change by the receipt of the following letter from an officer of the
+Royal Berks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     "Truly you are a lucky man to have left Wonderfontein on Monday;
+     and it may be that it saved your life, for the same night we were
+     attacked. It was a very misty night; but we all went to bed as
+     usual, and at midnight I was awakened by heavy rifle fire. Almost
+     immediately the bugle sounded the alarm, and everybody ran for
+     their posts like hares. From where I was it sounded as if the
+     Boers had really got into camp; but after two hours of very heavy
+     firing they retired. Yesterday morning, when I went over the
+     ground, <span class="italic">the first thing I saw was six or eight bullet holes
+     through your tent</span>; and one end of our mess had twenty-three
+     bullet marks in it. Nooitgedacht, Pan and Dalmanutha were all
+     attacked the same night at exactly the same hour, causing us a
+     few casualties at each place."</p>
+
+<p>It may perchance be for our good we are sometimes sent away from
+places where we fain would tarry.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A sample set of Sunday Services.</span>
+
+<p>The following typical extract is taken from Mr Burgess's Diary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>"<span class="italic">Sunday, January 20th.</span>&mdash;Rode out to Fort Dublin for church
+     parade at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out
+     to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully
+     a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town
+     church at 3.30 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two
+     hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town
+     just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which
+     was well attended."</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Oh, day of <span class="italic">rest</span> and gladness!"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As the war was nearing its close, I sent Mr Burgess to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>(p. 102)</span>
+labour along the blockhouse lines of communication, which have
+Bloemfontein for their centre. Here the authorities granted to him the
+use of a church railway van, in which he travelled almost ceaselessly
+between Brandfort and Norval's Pont, or beyond; and thus he too for a
+while became chaplain to part of the Guards' Brigade.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>(p. 103)</span> CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY</p>
+
+
+<p>In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous
+chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed
+"Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as
+circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were
+formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in
+the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy
+were similarly employed, and supplemented the labours of the
+commissioned and acting Anglican chaplains sent out from England.
+Their local influence and local knowledge enabled them to render
+invaluable service, and great was their zeal in so doing. While the
+regular chaplains who came with the troops as a rule went with the
+troops, these fixtures in the great King's service were able not only
+to make arrangements for religious worship, but for almost every
+imaginable kind of ministry for the welfare of the men. They were
+often the Army Chaplain's right hand and in some cases his left hand
+too. It would be a grievous wrong, therefore to make no reference to
+what they attempted for God and the Empire, though it is impossible
+here to do more than hurriedly refer to a few typical cases that in
+due course were officially reported to me.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>(p. 104)</span> At Cape Town and Wynberg.</span>
+
+<p>The very day the Guards landed at Cape Town I was introduced to the
+Rev. B. E. Elderkin, who in conjunction with the Congregationalists at
+Seapoint made generous provision for the social enjoyment and
+spiritual profiting of the troops. I was also that same day taken to
+the Wynberg Hospital by the Rev. R. Jenkin, who, on alternate Sundays
+with the Presbyterian chaplain, conducted religious services there for
+the convalescents, and ministered in many ways to the sick and
+wounded, of whom there were sometimes as many as 2000 in actual
+residence. Among them Mr Jenkin could not fail to discover many cases
+of peculiar interest; and concerning one, a private of the Essex, he
+has supplied the following particulars:&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Saved from drowning to sink in hospital.</span>
+
+<p>This lad was badly wounded in the thigh on Sunday, March 11th,
+somewhere not far from Paardeberg, but he seems to have got so far
+into the Boer lines that our own shells fell around him and our own
+stretcher-bearers never reached him; so he lay all night, his wound
+undressed, and without one drink of water. Next day a mounted Boer
+caught sight of him, got off his horse, gave him a drink, and then
+passed on. On Wednesday, in sheer desperation, he wriggled to the
+river to get a drink, but in his feebleness fell in; was caught by the
+branch of a tree, and for more hours than seem credible thus hung,
+half in the water, half out, before he rallied sufficient strength to
+crawl out and up the bank. For five days he thus remained without
+food, and his festering wound unbandaged. On the Friday, when Lord
+Roberts offered to exchange six <span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>(p. 105)</span> wounded prisoners, the Boers
+espied at last this useful hostage, took him to their laager, put a
+rough bandage round his thigh, and sent him into the British camp. He
+was still alive, full of hope, when Wynberg Hospital was reached, and
+responsive to all Mr Jenkin said concerning the mercy of God in
+Christ; but the long delay in dealing with his case rendered an
+operation necessary. There was no strength left with which to rally&mdash;a
+sudden collapse, and he was gone to meet his God. Fifteen days after
+he fell he was laid to rest, with full military honours, in the
+Wesleyan Cemetery at Wynberg. It is well that all fatal cases are not
+of that fearful type!</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the Guards were making their way to the Transvaal, the Rev. W.
+Meara, a refugee Wesleyan minister from Barberton, was doing
+altogether excellent work among the troops at East London; and has
+since gone back to Barberton as officiating clergyman to the troops
+there, where later on in 1902 I had the opportunity of personally
+noting what his zeal hath accomplished for our men.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A pleasant surprise.</span>
+
+<p>Concerning his army work while away from Barberton, Mr Meara sent me
+the following satisfactory report:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     "During the early part of my chaplaincy there were large numbers
+     of men in camp, and we held open-air services with blessed
+     results. The services were largely attended and much appreciated.
+     We then established a temporary Soldiers' Home; and after a
+     fortnight the Scripture Reader of the Northumberland Fusiliers
+     handed me over the responsibility, as he was proceeding with his
+     regiment to the front. The Home was on the camp ground, and so
+     was within easy reach of the men, who availed themselves fully of
+     its advantages. We <span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>(p. 106)</span> provided mineral waters at cost
+     prices, and eatables, tobacco, etc., and for some weeks when
+     there was a great rush of men in camp upwards of £120 a week was
+     taken. We supplied ink, pens, notepaper, etc., free, and we had
+     all kinds of papers in the Reading Room. We agreed that any
+     profits should be sent to the Soldiers' Widows and Orphans Fund,
+     and so before I left East London we sent the sum of £43 to Sir A.
+     Milner for the fund above referred to. Besides the Soldiers'
+     Home, we started a Soldiers' 'Social Evening' on Wednesdays in
+     Wesley Hall, which was largely patronised by the men. I have
+     found the officers without a single exception ready to further my
+     work in every way. I had also a good deal of hospital work, which
+     to me was full of pathetic interest. I have had the joy of
+     harvest in some instances, for some of the men have been led to
+     Christ. When I purposed leaving, the circuit officials generously
+     took the Town Hall for two nights at a cost of £14 for my
+     Farewell Service on Sunday night, and the Farewell Social on
+     Tuesday. The hall was packed with about 1500 people on the
+     Sunday. We had a grand number of soldiers. Then on the Tuesday in
+     the same hall there were about 1000 people who sat down to tea,
+     including from 400 to 500 soldiers. When tea was over I was to my
+     surprise presented with a purse of sovereigns from the circuit,
+     and to my still greater astonishment Col. Long of the Somerset
+     Light Infantry came on the platform, and spoke most
+     appreciatively of my work amongst the men, and their great regret
+     at my departure. When he had finished he called upon
+     Sergt.-Master-Tailor Syer to make a presentation to me on behalf
+     of the men. It was a beautiful walking-stick with a massive
+     silver ferrule suitably inscribed, and a very fine case of
+     razors. Then every soldier in the hall rose to his feet and gave
+     the departing chaplain three cheers. It was really one of the
+     proudest moments in my life."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Soldiers' Reception Committee.</span>
+
+<p>Of the Durban Soldiers' Reception Committee the chairman was the Rev.
+G. Lowe, also a Transvaal refugee Wesleyan minister; and in a letter
+from him now lying on my table he states that he was sometimes on the
+landing jetty for fifteen hours at a stretch. He adds that he was the
+first to begin this work of welcoming <span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>(p. 107)</span> the troops on landing
+at Durban, and obtained the permits to take in a few friends within
+the barriers for the distribution of fruit, tobacco and bread to the
+soldiers, on the purchase of which nearly £300 was expended.
+Twenty-five thousand troops were thus met; over £2000 sent home to the
+friends of the soldiers; more than 8000 letters announcing the safe
+arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being
+written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was
+most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the
+3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands £208, 18s. belonging to the
+men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only
+a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his
+personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own
+and other battalions.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The other way about.</span>
+
+<p>About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on
+the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here
+the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to
+welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily
+with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs
+Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging
+to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the
+Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place,
+while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers
+in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp,
+so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>(p. 108)</span> a crowded
+military concert, which cleared £35 for the destitute poor of the
+town, mostly Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the
+fray, and on their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided
+an open-air concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the
+very neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very
+act of conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most
+of all this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish
+supplies of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with
+proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the
+other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes
+alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and <span class="italic">patriotic</span>
+songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as
+the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one
+such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free
+State:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table  class="font90" border="0" cellpadding="0" summary="Concert">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="5%">
+    <col width="40%">
+    <col width="20%">
+    <col width="35%">
+</colgroup>
+
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4" class="center">
+  POPULAR PROMENADE CONCERT<br>
+  TO BE HELD ON<br>
+  <span class="italic">SATURDAY, 22nd DECEMBER 1900, at 4.45</span> <span class="smcap">P.M.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4"><hr></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4" class="center">
+  By the kind permission of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. <span class="smcap">A. E. Dalzell</span><br>
+  and the Officers of the 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4"><hr></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4" class="center">PROGRAMME.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">1. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Grand March</span>&mdash;"Princess Victoria"</td>
+<td class="center"><span class="italic">O'Keefe</span></td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Band</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">2. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Serg. <span class="smcap">Cox</span>, 1st O.L.I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">3. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Coon Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Trooper <span class="smcap">Greenwood</span>, I.Y.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">4. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Overture</span>&mdash;"Norma"</td>
+<td class="center"><span class="italic">Bellini</span></td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Band</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">5. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Sentimental Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Corp. <span class="smcap">Ashly</span>, 1st O.L.I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">6. </td>
+<td><span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>(p. 109)</span> <span class="smcap">Recitation</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Corp. <span class="smcap">Sampson</span>, R.G.A.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">7. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Cornet Solo</span>&mdash;"My Pretty Jane"</td>
+<td class="center"><span class="italic">Bishop</span></td>
+<td>Band-Serg. <span class="smcap">Broome</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">8. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Mr <span class="smcap">J. Ilsley</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">9. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Descriptive Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Corporal <span class="smcap">Cooke</span>, 1st O.L.I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">10. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Selection</span>&mdash;"The Belle of New York"</td>
+<td class="center"><span class="italic">Kerker</span></td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Band</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">11. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Gunner <span class="smcap">Higginbotham</span>, R.G.A.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">12. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Gunner <span class="smcap">M'Gintz</span>, R.G.A.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">13. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Valse</span>&mdash;"Mia Cara"</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td><span class="italic">Bucalossi</span>  <span class="smcap">Band</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">14.</td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Patriotic Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Serg. <span class="smcap">Gear</span>, 1st O.L.I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">15.</td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Comic Song</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Corporal <span class="smcap">Crowly</span>, 1st O.L.I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="right">16.</td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Galop</span>&mdash;"En Route"</td>
+<td class="center"><span class="italic">Clarke</span></td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Band</span>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="center" colspan="4">"<span class="italic">GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.</span>"</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="4"><hr></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="center smaller" colspan="4">Admission to Ground&mdash;<span class="smcap">One Shilling</span>.
+<span class="add2em">Refreshments at reasonable prices.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Our near Kinship to the Boers.</span>
+
+<p>Of another important fact which grew upon us later on, we gained our
+first glimpse during these early days. The Boers we found were in many
+respects startlingly near akin to us. They sprang originally from the
+same liberty-loving stock as ourselves. Hosts of them spoke correct
+and fluent English, while not a few of them were actually of English
+parentage. Moreover, the Hollanders and the English have so freely
+intermarried in South Africa that at one time it was fondly hoped the
+cradle rather than the rifle would finally settle our racial
+controversies. They are haunted by the same insatiable earth hunger as
+ourselves, and hence unceasingly persisted in violating the
+Conventions which forbade all further extension of Transvaal
+territory. As a people they are more narrowly Protestant than even we
+have ever been. The Doppers, of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>(p. 110)</span> whom the President was
+chief, are Ultra-Puritans; and they would suffer none but members of a
+Protestant Church to have any vote or voice in their municipal or
+national affairs. Jews and Roman Catholics as such were absolutely
+disfranchised by them; and their singing, which later on we often
+heard, by its droning heaviness would have delighted the hearts of
+those Highland crofters who, at Aldershot, said they could not away
+with the jingling songs of Sankey. "Gie us the Psalms of David," they
+cried. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of
+Scotland are nearer akin than cousins; and when after Magersfontein
+our Presbyterian chaplain crossed over into the Boer lines to seek out
+and bury the dead, he was heartily hailed as a <span class="italic">Reformed</span> minister,
+was treated with as much courtesy as though he had been one of their
+own predikants, and as the result was so favourably impressed that an
+imaginative mind might easily fancy him saying to Cronje, "Almost thou
+persuadest me to become a Boer!"</p>
+
+<p>Of all wars, civil wars are the most inexpressibly saddening; and this
+terrible struggle was largely of that type. Neighbours who had known
+each other intimately for years, members of the same church, and even
+of the same family, found themselves ranged on opposite sides in this
+awful fray. When Boer and Briton came to blows it was a <span class="italic">brother-bond</span>
+that was broken, in sight of the awestruck natives. It was once again
+even as in the days of old when Ephraim envied Judah and Judah vexed
+Ephraim! Nevertheless, times without number, a concert in the midst of
+strife, such as that described above, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>(p. 111)</span> sufficed to draw
+together all classes in friendliest possible intercourse, and seemed a
+tuneful prophecy of the better days that are destined yet to dawn.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">More good work on our right flank.</span>
+
+<p>We can only linger to take one more glance at this type of service by
+this type of worker before we proceed with our story of the Guards'
+advance. Winburg, like Heilbron, lay on our right flank, and was
+occupied by the troops about the same time as we entered Kroonstad.
+The Wesleyan clergyman was the only representative of the Churches
+left in the place; and the story of his devotion is outlined in the
+following memorandum to the D.A.A.G. with the official reply
+thereto:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="left60"><span class="smcap">Winburg, O. R. C.</span><br>
+<span class="italic">Dec. 21, 1900.</span></p>
+
+<p>To <span class="smcap">Major Gough</span>, D.A.A.G.,</p>
+
+<p><span class="add35em">Kindly</span> allow me to state a few facts in order to show the
+     exceptional character of my position and work, both before and
+     since the time of my appointment.</p>
+
+<p>1. Previous to the occupation of Winburg by the British troops, I
+     was employed in attending to the sick and wounded English
+     soldiers who were brought here as prisoners of war by the Dutch
+     Forces.</p>
+
+<p>2. During a period of at least five months&mdash;as no other chaplain
+     or clergyman was living within a distance of about fifty miles&mdash;I
+     was the only one available for religious services, either parade
+     or voluntary, for hospital visitation and burial duties, which
+     were then so urgently and frequently needed. We had six
+     hospitals, and occasionally as many as three funerals on the same
+     day.</p>
+
+<p>3. From the date of the British occupation, May 5th, my knowledge
+     of the country and people&mdash;acquired during twenty-five years'
+     residence in various parts of the O. R. C.&mdash;has been at the
+     disposal of the military authorities. I have often acted as
+     interpreter and translator, and as such accompanied the
+     Commandant of Winburg <span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>(p. 112)</span> when, a few weeks ago, he went to
+     meet the leader of the Boer forces near their laager in this
+     district.</p>
+
+<p>4. As almost all the English population left the town before the
+     war, our nearly empty church was then, and still remains,
+     available for the garrison troops. About nine-tenths of both my
+     Sunday and week-day congregations are soldiers, for whom all the
+     seats are free.</p>
+
+<p>5. Immediately after the arrival of the British forces, our
+     church was utilised for an entirely undenominational Soldiers'
+     Home, and books for the emergency were supplied from my library.
+     Colonel Napier, who was then C.O. of Winburg, expressed his
+     appreciation of this part of our garrison work, and assisted in
+     its development. By his direction, the Home was removed to the
+     premises it now occupies. It consists of separate rooms for
+     reading, writing and refreshments; also rooms and kitchen for the
+     manageress. It is still under my superintendence.&mdash;Yours, <span class="smcap">C.
+     Harmon</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="center">(<span class="italic">Copy.</span>) <span class="italic">Colonel Napier's Recommendation.</span></p>
+
+<p>To <span class="smcap">Staff Officer</span>, Bloemfontein.</p>
+
+<p><span class="add35em">I strongly</span> recommend that the Rev. C. Harmon be retained as an
+     acting chaplain to the troops. I can fully endorse all the
+     reverend gentleman has stated in the above memorandum. He has
+     been most useful to the Garrison and Military Authorities at
+     Winburg, and his thorough knowledge of the Dutch language makes
+     his services among the refugees and natives indispensable.</p>
+
+<p class="left60"><span class="smcap">John Scott Napier</span>, Col.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Winburg</span>, <span class="italic">Jan. 3, 1901</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is a supreme satisfaction to know that our men were thus in so many
+ways well served by the local clergy of South Africa, to whom our
+warmest thanks are due.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>(p. 113)</span> CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY</p>
+
+
+<p>So utter, and for the time being so ludicrously complete, was the
+collapse of our adversaries' defence, that on that first night within
+the Transvaal border we lay down to rest on the open veldt without any
+slightest shelter, but also without any slightest fear, save only the
+fear of catching cold; and slept as undisturbed as though we had been
+slumbering amid hoar-frost and heather on the famous Fox Hills near
+Aldershot. On that particular Sunday night our tentless camp was
+visited by ten or twelve degrees of frost, so that when the morning
+dawned my wraps were as hoary as the hair of their owner is ever
+likely to become.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">An elaborate night toilet.</span>
+
+<p>But then as the night, so must the nightdress be; and my personal
+toilet was arranged in the following tasteful fashion. Every garment
+worn during the heat of the day was of course worn throughout the
+chilly night, including boots; for at that season of the year we
+regularly went to bed with our boots on. Indeed the often footsore men
+were expressly forbidden to take them off at night, lest a possible
+night attack should find them in that important respect unready. Over
+the tunic was put a sweater, and over that a greatcoat, with a hideous
+woollen helmet as a crown <span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>(p. 114)</span> of glory for the head, and a
+regulation blanket wrapped round the waist and legs. Then on the least
+rugged bit of ground within reach a waterproof sheet was spread, and
+on that was planted the "bag blanket," into which I carefully crept,
+having first thrown over it an old mackintosh as some small protection
+from the heavy evening dew and the early morning frost. So whether the
+ground proved rough as a nutmeg-grater or ribbed like a gridiron, I
+soon said good-night to the blushing stars above me and to the acres
+of slumbering soldiers all around. After that, few of us were in fit
+condition to judge whether there were ten degrees of frost or twelve
+till five o'clock next morning, when we sat on the whitened ground to
+breakfast by starlight. At that unkindly hour the least acute observer
+of Nature's varying moods could not fail to note that a midwinter dawn
+five thousand feet above the sea-level can even in South Africa be
+bitingly severe.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Capturing Clapham Junction.</span>
+
+<p>After two more days of heavy marching we found abundant and beautiful
+spar stones springing up out of the barren veldt, as in my native
+Cornwall; and we needed no seer to assure us that the vast and
+invaluable mining area of Johannesburg was close at hand. Presently we
+passed one big set of mining machinery after another, each with its
+huge heap of mine refuse. If only some clotted cream had been
+purchasable at one of the wayside houses, or a dainty pasty had
+anywhere appeared in sight, I could almost have fancied myself close
+to Camborne.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, however, of marching straight towards Johannesburg, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>(p. 115)</span>
+we suddenly pounced on Elandsfontein, the most supremely important
+railway junction in all South Africa&mdash;its Clapham Junction&mdash;and
+following swiftly in the footsteps of Henry's mounted infantry took
+its defenders delightfully by surprise. The Gordons on our far left
+had about a hundred casualties, and the C.I.V.'s on our right,
+fighting valiantly, were also hard hit, but the Guards escaped
+unscathed. Shots enough, however, were fired to lead us to expect a
+serious fight, and to necessitate a further exhausting march of five
+or six miles, out and back, amid the mine heaps lying just beyond the
+junction. Fortunately, the fight proved no fight, but only a further
+flight; though the end of a specially heavy day's task brought with
+it, none the less, an abounding recompense. Whilst most of the Boers
+precipitately vanished, those unable to get away gave themselves up as
+prisoners of war, and thus without further effort we secured a
+position of vast strategic importance, including the terminus of the
+railway line leading to Natal; but it was also the terminus of the
+long line from Johannesburg and the regions beyond; so that there was
+now no way of escape for any of the rolling stock thereon. It might
+peradventure be destroyed before the troops could rescue it, but got
+away for the further service of the Boers it could not be. Among other
+acquisitions we captured at Elandsfontein a capitally equipped
+hospital train, hundreds of railway trucks laden more or less with
+valuable stores, and half a dozen locomotives with full head of steam
+on; so that had we arrived a little less suddenly, locomotives, trains
+and empty trucks would all have eluded our grasp and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>(p. 116)</span> got
+safely to Pretoria. It was indeed an invaluable haul, especially for
+haulage purposes, and we had tramped 130 miles in the course of a
+single week to secure it!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Dear diet and dangerous.</span>
+
+<p>Long after dark, weary and footsore and famished, we stumbled back
+three miles to our chosen camping ground. Since the previous evening
+some of the Scots Guards had managed to secure only a hasty drink of
+coffee, so they told me, as their sole rations for the four-and-twenty
+hours; but they seemed as happy as they were hungry, like men proudly
+conscious that they had done a good day's work that brought them, so
+they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an
+undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over
+some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to
+traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire;
+scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at
+last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness
+proceeded as best they could to cook their dinners.</p>
+
+<p>Greatly to our surprise the people, who seemed mostly Dutch or of
+Dutch relationship, received us like those in the Orange Free State
+towns, with demonstrative kindness; and in many a case brought out
+their last loaf as a most welcome gift to the just then almost
+ravenous soldiery. Every scrap of available provisions was eagerly
+bought up, and here as elsewhere honestly paid for, often at prices
+that seemed far from honest. Months after at this very place I learned
+that eggs were being sold at <span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>(p. 117)</span> from ten to fifteen shillings a
+dozen, and fowls at seven shillings a-piece!</p>
+
+<p>An Australian correspondent of the <span class="italic">London Times</span> declares that as it
+was with us, so was it with the troops that he accompanied. About the
+very time we reached this Germiston Junction, his men, he says, were
+practically starving; and any other army in the world would have
+commandeered whatever food came in its way. He was with Rundle's
+Brigade, "the starving Eighth" as they were well called, seeing that
+for a while they were rationed on one and a half biscuits a day. Yet
+they gave Mr Stead's "ill-treated women" two shillings a loaf for
+bread that sixpence would have well paid for, and no one was allowed
+to bring foodstuffs away from any farmhouse without getting a written
+receipt from the vendor. If the military police caught a ragged
+Leinster packing a chicken down his trouser leg through a big hole in
+the seat, and he could not show a receipt for the bird, away went the
+man's purchase to the nearest Field Hospital. To this same
+representative of the Press the wife of a farmer still out fighting
+our troops naïvely said, "For goodness sake do keep those wicked
+Colonials away; I am terrified of them" (he was himself a
+Colonial)&mdash;"but I am so glad when the English come; they pay me so
+well." That was the experience of almost all who had anything to sell,
+alike in town and country; and this particular Frau confessed to
+having made a profit of ten clear pounds in a single week out of the
+bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some
+cases when they asked for bread our men <span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>(p. 118)</span> got a bullet. Around
+many a farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of
+being fleeced.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">No wages but the Sjambok.</span>
+
+<p>At Elandsfontein an almost frantic welcome was awarded us by the
+crowds of Kaffirs that eagerly watched our coming. As we marched
+through their Location almost the only darkie I spoke to happened to
+be a well-dressed intelligent Wesleyan, who said to me, "Good Boss, we
+are truly glad that you have come; for the last seven months the Boers
+have made us work without any wages except the sjambok across our
+backs." It is only fair to add that the burghers on commando during
+those same seven months were supposed to receive no wages; and the
+Kaffirs, who were commandeered for various kinds of service in
+connection with the war, could scarcely expect the Boer Government to
+deal more generously with them. From the very beginning, however, the
+Kaffirs in the Transvaal were often made to feel that their condition
+was near akin to that of slaves. The clauses in the Sand River
+Convention which were intended to be the Magna Charta of their
+liberties proved a delusion and a snare. Recent years, however, have
+effected immense improvements in their relative position and
+importance. Since the mines were opened their labour has been keenly
+competed for, and a more considerate feeling concerning them pervades
+all classes; but they are still regarded by many of their masters as
+having no actual rights either in Church or State. So when a
+victorious English army appeared upon the scene they fondly thought
+the day of their full emancipation had dawned, and in wildly excited
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>(p. 119)</span> accents they shouted as we passed, "<strong><span class="italic">Vic</span>toria! <span class="italic">Vic</span>toria!</strong>"
+Whereupon our scarcely less excited lads in responsive shouts replied,
+"<strong><span class="italic">Pre</span>toria! <span class="italic">Pre</span>toria!</strong>"</p>
+
+<p>Surely never was the inner meaning and significance of a great
+historic event more aptly voiced. The natives beheld in the advent of
+English rule the promise of ampler liberty and enlightenment under
+Victoria the Good; but the hearts of the soldiers were set on the
+speedy capture of Pretoria, as the crowning outcome of all their toil,
+and their probable turning-point towards home. Well said both!
+Pretoria! Victoria!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Gold Mines.</span>
+
+<p>Lord Roberts' rapid march rescued from impending destruction the
+costly machinery and shafting of the Witwaterrand gold mines, in which
+capital to the extent of many millions had been sunk, and out of which
+many hundreds of millions are likely to be dug. By some strange freak
+of nature this lofty ridge, lying about 6000 feet above the sea level,
+and forming a narrow gold-bearing bed over a hundred miles long, is by
+universal confession the richest treasure-house the ransackers of the
+whole earth have yet brought to light. "The wealth of Ormuz or of
+Ind," immortalised by Milton's most majestic epic, the wealth of the
+Rand completely eclipses, and nothing imagined in the glowing pages of
+the "Arabian Nights" rivals in solid worth the sober realities now
+being unearthed along this uninviting ridge. It fortunately was not in
+the power of the Boer Government to carry off this as yet ungarnered
+treasure, or it would certainly have shared the fate of the cart-loads
+of gold in bar and coin with which President Kruger <span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>(p. 120)</span> decamped
+from Pretoria; but it is beyond all controversy that many of that
+Government's officials favoured the proposal to wreck, as far as
+dynamite could, both the machinery and mines in mere wanton revenge on
+the hated Outlanders that mainly owned them. That policy was thwarted
+by the swiftfootedness of the troops, and by the tactfulness of
+Commandant Krause, through whose arranging Johannesburg was peacefully
+surrendered; but who now, by some strange irony of fate, lies a felon
+in an English jail!</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, later on enough mischief of this type was done to
+demonstrate how deadly a blow a few desperate men might have dealt at
+the chief industry of South Africa; and concerning it Sir Alfred
+Milner wrote as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     Fortunately the damage done to the mines has not been large
+     relatively to the vast total amount of the fixed capital sunk in
+     them. The mining area is excessively difficult to guard against
+     purely predatory attacks having no military purpose, because it
+     is, so to speak, "all length and no breadth," one long thin line
+     stretching across the country from east to west for many miles.
+     Still, garrisoned as Johannesburg now is, it is only possible
+     successfully to attack a few points in it. Of the raids hitherto
+     made, and they have been fairly numerous, only one resulted in
+     any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the
+     single mine attacked amounted to £200,000, and it is estimated
+     that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is
+     only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the
+     most important. These facts may afford some indication of the
+     ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal
+     and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that
+     general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just
+     before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out.
+     However serious in some respects may have been the military
+     consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa
+     owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash put
+     forward by which the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>(p. 121)</span> vast mining apparatus, the
+     foundation of all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening
+     it.</p>
+
+<p>That this wonderful discovery of wealth was indirectly the main cause
+of the war is undeniable. But for the gold the children of "Oden the
+Goer," whose ever restless spirit has sent them round the globe, would
+never have found their way in any large numbers to the Transvaal.
+There would have been no overmastering Outlander element, no incurable
+race competitions and quarrels, no unendurable wrongs to redress; the
+Boer Republic might again have become bankrupt, or broken up into
+rival chieftaincies as of old, but it could not have become a menace
+to Great Britain, and would never have rallied the whole Empire to
+repel its assault on the Empire. It is too usually with blood that
+gold is bought!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Soldiers' share.</span>
+
+<p>The war was practically the purchase price of this prodigious wealth,
+but it effected no transfer in the ownership. It may have in part to
+provide for the expenses of the war, but it is not claimed by the
+British Government as part of the spoils of war; and when Local
+Government is granted it will still be included in local assets. The
+capitalists, colonists and Kaffirs who live and thrive through the
+mines will thrive yet more as the result of juster laws, ample
+security, and a more honest administration; but the soldiers whose
+heroism brought to pass the change profit nothing by it. The niggers
+driving our carts were paid £4 a month, while the khaki men who did
+the actual fighting were required to content themselves with anything
+over about fifteen pence a day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>(p. 122)</span> When Cortez, with his accompanying Spaniards, discovered
+Mexico, he sent word to its ruler, Montezuma, that his men were
+suffering from a peculiar form of heart disease which only gold could
+cure; so he desired him of his royal bounty to send them gold and
+still more gold. In the end those Spanish leeches drained the country
+dry; though when convoying their treasure across the sea no small
+portion of it was seized by English warships, and shared as loot among
+the captors. After the treasure ship <span class="italic">Hermione</span> had thus been secured
+off Cadiz by the <span class="italic">Actæan</span> and the
+<span class="italic">Favorite</span>, each captain received £65,000 as prize-money (so Fitchett
+tells us); each lieutenant, £13,000; each petty officer, £2000; and
+each seaman, £500. Our fighting men and officers found in the
+Transvaal vastly ampler wealth, but no such luck and no such loot.
+Well would it be, however, if these mining Directorates when about to
+declare their next dividends should bethink them generously of the
+widows and orphans of those whose valour and strong-footedness rescued
+their mines from imminent plunder and destruction.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Golden City.</span>
+
+<p>Johannesburg, which we entered unopposed on May 31st, though it covers
+an enormous area and contains several fine buildings, is only fourteen
+years old, and consequently is still very largely in the corrugated
+iron stage of development which is always unlovely, and in this case
+proved specially so. Many of the houses were deserted, most of the
+stores were roughly barricaded, and there were signs not a few of
+recent violence and wholesale theft, at which none need <span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>(p. 123)</span>
+wonder. Long before the war broke out there was presented to President
+Kruger and his Raad a petition for redress of grievances signed, as
+already stated, by adult male Outlanders that are said to have
+outnumbered the total Boer male population at that time of the whole
+Transvaal. Most of those who signed were resident on the Rand; and as
+soon as war hove in sight these "undesirables" were hurried across the
+border, leaving behind them in many cases well-furnished houses and
+well-stocked shops. More than ten thousand of them took up arms in
+defence of the Empire, and what befell their property is best told by
+the one Wesleyan minister who was privileged to remain all the time in
+the town, was the first to greet me when with the Guards I marched
+into the Market Square, and soon after established our first Wesleyan
+Soldiers' Home in the Transvaal. He, the Rev. S. L. Morris, on that
+point writes as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     President Kruger proclaimed Sunday, May 27th, and the two
+     following days, as days of humiliation and prayer. Notices to
+     this effect were sent to officials and ministers, and doubtless
+     there were many who devoutly followed the directions. The conduct
+     of one large section of the Dutch people of Johannesburg was,
+     however, very strange. In Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last
+     ten years have seen the development of special locations where
+     the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these
+     are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived
+     as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots.
+     Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the
+     Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle
+     in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given
+     them, and there they built rough shanties, and formed communities
+     which were a South African counterpart to the submerged tenth of
+     England. There was this difference, that these <span class="italic">bywoners</span> became
+     a great strength to the Kruger party. The males of sixteen years
+     of age and upwards <span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>(p. 124)</span> had all the privileges which were
+     denied to the most influential of the <span class="italic">Uitlanders</span>. It was the
+     votes of Vrededorp, the poor Dutch quarter, that decided the
+     representation of Johannesburg in the Volksraad. On the days of
+     humiliation and prayer, when the army under Lord Roberts was
+     within twenty miles of Johannesburg, the families of these poor
+     burghers broke into the commissariat stores of their own
+     Government, into the food depôts from which doles had been
+     distributed, and into private stores; taking away to their homes,
+     goods, clothing and provisions of all sorts. Those who witnessed
+     the invasion of the great goods sheds where the Republican
+     commissariat had its headquarters say that the people defied the
+     officials, daring them to shoot them. I met many of these people
+     returning to their homes laden with spoils. Sometimes there was a
+     wheelbarrow heaped up with sacks of flour, or tins of biscuits,
+     or preserved meat. Men, women, children and Kaffir "boys" trudged
+     along with similar articles, or with bundles of boots and
+     clothing. Dr Krause, the commandant, did his best to secure order
+     and to repress looting, but he lacked the reliable agents who
+     alone could have controlled the people. This sort of thing was
+     going on on Monday and Tuesday, May 28th and 29th. But for the
+     astonishing marches by which Lord Roberts paralysed opposition,
+     and which enabled him to summon the town to surrender on the
+     Wednesday morning, it is hard to say what limit could have been
+     put to the disorder. In all probability the dangerous section of
+     the large Continental element in the population would have broken
+     out into crime. Looting had hitherto been confined to the
+     property which was left unprotected, and few unoccupied houses
+     had not been ransacked; but had the British occupation been
+     delayed a few days the consequences would have been disastrous.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Astonishing the Natives.</span>
+
+<p>As on that Thursday morning we tramped steadily from Germiston to
+Johannesburg we were greatly surprised to find near each successive
+mine crowds of natives all with apparently well oiled faces that
+literally shone in the sunlight; but natives of every conceivable
+shade of sableness, and in some cases of almost every permissible
+approach to nudity. They were for the most part what are called
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>(p. 125)</span> "raw Kaffirs"; and as we were astonished at their numbers
+after so many months of war and consequent stoppage of work, so were
+they also astonished at our numbers, and confided to our native
+minister their wonder at finding there were so many Englishmen in all
+the world as they that day saw upon the Rand. It was a vitally
+important object lesson that by this time has made its beneficent
+influence felt among all the tribes of the South African
+sub-continent.</p>
+
+<p>About noon, so Mr Morris told me, a company of Lancers came into the
+open space in front of the Court-house, and formed a hollow square
+around the flagstaff. Not long after Lord Roberts with his Staff, and
+Commandant Krause, rode into the square; then the Vierkleur slid down
+the staff, and instantly after up went Lady Roberts' little silken
+Union Jack. The British flag floated at last over this essentially
+British town, the sure pledge as we hope of honest government and of
+equal rights alike for Briton and for Boer. It was two o'clock before
+the Guards' Brigade reached this saluting point, but till nearly
+midnight one continuous stream of men and horses, of guns and
+ambulances, passed through the streets to their respective camping
+grounds. These well fagged troops by their fitness, even more than by
+their numbers, astonished many an onlooker who was by no means a "raw
+Kaffir"; and one old Dutchman expressed the thought of many minds when
+he said, "You seem able to turn out soldiers by machinery, <span class="italic">all of the
+same age</span>!"</p>
+
+<p>My excellent host of that red-letter day adds: "It is intensely
+gratifying to be able, after the lapse of more <span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>(p. 126)</span> than nine
+months, to give our soldiers the same good name that was so well
+deserved then. To deny that there had been any offences would be
+ridiculous; but the absence of serious crime, and more particularly of
+gross offences, must be acknowledged to confer upon our South African
+army a unique distinction." That witness is true!<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>(p. 127)</span> CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">PRETORIA THE CITY OF ROSES</p>
+
+
+<p>War and worship live only on barest speaking terms, and to the latter
+the former makes few concessions; so it came to pass that Whitsunday,
+like so many another Sunday spent in South Africa, found us again upon
+the march, with the inevitable result that no parade service could
+possibly be held. Everybody, however, seemed full of confident
+expectation that the next day we should reach Pretoria, and perhaps
+take possession of it.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday.</span>
+
+<p>"If we take Pretoria on Whit-Monday," said one of the Guardsmen, "they
+will get the news in England next day, and then that will be Wet
+Tuesday"; which was a prophecy that seemed not in the least unlikely
+to be fulfilled, inasmuch as an Englishman's favourite way of showing
+his supreme delight is by accepting an extra drink, or offering one.
+Others were of opinion that, with a ring of forts around Pretoria on
+which hundreds of thousands of pounds had been expended, the Boer
+commanders would make a desperate stand in defence of their much loved
+capital, and so keep us at bay for many a day. But nothing daunted by
+such uncertainties as to what might be awaiting them, our men were on
+the march towards those <span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>(p. 128)</span> famous forts early on Monday
+morning, and we soon found a lively Bank Holiday was in store for us.
+Shortly after noon, General French's cavalry having worked round to
+the north of the town, General Pole Carew prepared to attack on the
+south and our bombardment of the forts began, but drew from them no
+reply. All the Boer guns were elsewhere; and a little way behind our
+own busy naval guns, though hidden by the crest of the hill, lay the
+Grenadier Guards awaiting orders to take their place and part in the
+fray.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a sharp succession of Boer shells, intended for the
+aforesaid naval guns, came flying over our heads, and dropping among
+our men. One hit a horse, which no man will ride again; one struck an
+ambulance waggon, and scared its solitary fever patient almost out of
+his senses; one dropped close to where a group of generals had just
+before met in consultation; but only one of these Boer Whitsuntide
+presents burst, and even that, strange to tell, caused no casualties,
+though it drove a few kilted heroes to run for refuge into a deepish
+pit, near which I sat upon the ground, and watching, wondered where
+the next shell would burst. When a little later the Guards moved
+further to the right to take up a position still nearer to the town,
+Boer bullets came flying over that same ridge and planted themselves
+among our left flank men; but when we tried to pick up some of these
+leaden treasures to keep as curios, so deeply imbedded were they in
+the soil they could not be removed. Yet they were playfully spoken of
+as <span class="italic">spent</span> bullets.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>(p. 129)</span> "<span class="italic">Light after dark.</span>"</span>
+
+<p>This grim music of gun and rifle was maintained almost till sunset,
+and then died away, leaving us in doubt whether the next day would
+witness a renewal of the fight, or whether, as on so many former
+occasions, the Boers under cover of the darkness would execute yet
+another strategic movement to the rear. That night we slept once more
+on the open veldt, made black by the vast sweep of recent grass fires;
+and next morning, after a starlight breakfast, I as usual retired to
+kneel in humble prayer, imploring the Divine guardianship and guidance
+for all in the midst of whom I dwelt. Presently I was startled by an
+outburst of wildest cheering from one group; and a moment after from a
+second; so springing to my feet I found our lads hurling their helmets
+in the air, and shouting like men demented. Not for the chaplains only
+that glad hour turned prayer to praise, and thrilled all hearts with
+patriotic if not pious pride.</p>
+
+<p>An officer was riding post-haste from point to point where our men
+were massed, bearing the delicious tidings that Pretoria too had
+unconditionally surrendered. The news swiftly sped from battalion to
+battery, and from battery to battalion. First here, then there, then
+far away yonder, the cheering rang out clear and loud as a trumpet
+call. Comrade congratulated comrade, while Christian men, with
+tear-filled eyes, reverently looked up and rendered thanks to Him of
+whom it is written, "Thine is the victory."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Why the surrender?</span>
+
+<p>Remembering how feeble Mafeking was held for months by the merest
+handful of men pitted against a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>(p. 130)</span> host, it is not easy to
+understand why this city of roses, so pretty, and of which the Boers
+were all so proud, was opened to its captors after only the merest
+pretence at opposition. Lord Roberts is reported to have said that in
+his opinion it occupied the strongest position he had yet seen in all
+South Africa; and to my non-professional mind it instantly brought to
+remembrance the familiar lines which tell how round about Jerusalem
+the hilly bulwarks rise. The surrender of such a centre of their
+national life must have been to the burghers like the plucking out of
+a right eye, or the cutting off of a right hand. How came it to pass,
+without an effort to hinder it?</p>
+
+<p>The German expert, Count Sternberg, who accompanied the Boers
+throughout the war, declared that though considered from the
+continental standpoint they are bad soldiers; in their own country, in
+ambushes or stratagems, which constitute their favourite type of
+warfare, "they are simply superb." He adds they would have achieved
+much greater success if they had not abandoned all idea of taking the
+offensive. "For that they lack courage; and to that lack of courage
+they owe their destruction."</p>
+
+<p>But their flight, like their long after continuance in guerilla types
+of warfare, points to quite another cause than this lack of courage.
+The Boer is proverbially a lover of his own; and so, though with
+liberal hand he laid waste bridge and culvert and plant, as he
+retreated along the railway line through the Orange River Colony,
+which was not his own, he became quite <span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>(p. 131)</span> miserly in his use of
+dynamite when the Transvaal was reached, which was his own, and which
+would infallibly be restored to him, so he reckoned, when the war was
+over. So was it to be with Pretoria too! To the very last the fighting
+Boer believed that whatever his fate in the field of battle, if he
+were only dogged enough, and in any fashion prolonged the strife
+sufficiently, British patience would tire, as it had tired before;
+British plans and purposes and pledges would all be abandoned as
+aforetime they had been abandoned, and he would thus secure, even in
+the face of defeat, the fruits of victory. The importunate widow is
+the one New Testament character "the brother" implicitly believes in
+and imitates. Her tactics were his before the war, in the matter of
+the Conventions; and the wasteful prolonging of the war was a part of
+the same policy. Great Britain was to be forced by sheer weariness to
+give back to the Transvaal in some form its coveted independence, and
+with it, of course, Pretoria also. So he would on no account consent
+to let the city be bombarded. Our peaceful occupation was the best
+possible protection for property that would presently be again his
+own; and while he still went on with his desultory fighting we were
+quite welcome, at our own expense, to feed every Boer family we could
+find.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, like our own hunted Pretender, he held that however long
+delayed, the end was bound to restore to him his own; and he had not
+far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as
+one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton
+formally assured <span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>(p. 132)</span> the Boers that the Vaal would flow backward
+through the Drakenberg Hills before the British would withdraw from
+the Transvaal. Three successive Secretaries of State, three successive
+High Commissioners, and two successive Houses of Commons deliberately
+endorsed that official assurance; yet though the Vaal turned not back
+Great Britain did; and to that magnanimous forgetting of the nation's
+oft-repeated pledge was due in part this new war and its intolerable
+prolonging. It does not pay thus to say and then unsay. Thereby all
+confidence, all sense of finality, is killed.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Taking possession.</span>
+
+<p>"Take your Grenadiers and open the ball," said Sir John Moore, as he
+appointed to his men their various positions in the famous fight at
+Corunna; and on this memorable 5th of June when the British finally
+took possession of Pretoria the Guards as at Belmont were again
+privileged to "open the ball." But whilst they were busy seizing the
+railway station and stock, with other points of strategic importance,
+I took my first hasty stroll through the city; and among the earliest
+objects of interest I came upon was the pedestal of a monument, with
+the scaffolding still around it, but quite complete, except that the
+actual statue which was to crown and constitute the summit was not
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose monument is that?" I meekly asked. "Paul Kruger's," was the
+prompt reply; "but the statue, made in Rome, has not yet arrived,
+being detained at Delagoa Bay."</p>
+
+<p>That statue now probably never will arrive, and possibly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>(p. 133)</span>
+enough some other figure,&mdash;perchance that of Victoria the Good,&mdash;will
+ultimately be placed on that expectant pedestal, so making the
+monument complete. "Which thing," as St Paul would say, "is an
+allegory!" That monument in its present form is a precise epitome of
+the man it was meant to honour. It is most complete by reason of its
+very incompleteness. The chief feature in this essentially strong
+man's career, as also in his monument, has reference to the foundation
+work he wrought. It was the finish that was a failure, and in much
+more important matters than this pile of chiselled granite, the work
+the late President commenced in the Transvaal its new rulers must make
+it their business to carry on, and, in worthier fashion, complete. We
+cannot begin <span class="italic">de novo</span>. For better for worse, on foundations laid by
+Boers, Britons must be content to build.</p>
+
+<p>Close by, forming the main feature on one side of the city Square,
+stood a remarkably fine building, intended to serve as a palace of
+justice, but, like the monument in front of it, it was still
+unfinished. In the Transvaal there was as yet no counterpart to that
+most important clause in our own Magna Charta, which says "We will not
+sell justice to any man." Corruption and coercion were familiar forces
+alike in the making and the administration of its laws. In more senses
+than one the Transvaal Government had not yet opened its courts of
+justice. They mutely awaited the coming of the new <span class="italic">régime</span>.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the main streets leading out of the Square stood the
+President's private residence; a gift-house, so it is said, accepted
+by him as a recompense for favours <span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>(p. 134)</span> received. Compared with
+the Residency at Bloemfontein it is a singularly unpretentious
+dwelling and was in keeping rather with the economic habits, than with
+the private wealth, or official status, of its chief occupant. British
+sentinels had already been posted all about the place, and on the
+verandah sat a British officer with a long row of mausers lying at his
+feet. There too, one on each side of the main entrance, crouched
+Kruger's famous marble lions, silently watching that day's novel
+proceedings. Not even the presence of those men in khaki, nor that sad
+array of surrendered rifles, sufficed to draw from those stony
+guardians of their master's home so much as a muffled growl. They are
+believed to be of British origin, and I suspect that, so far as their
+nature permits, they cherish British sympathies; for they certainly
+showed no signs of lamenting over the ignoble departure of their lord.
+All regardless of the griefs of his deserted lady, they still placidly
+licked their paws; and as I cast on them a parting glance they gave to
+me, or seemed to, a knowing wink!</p>
+
+<a id="img006" name="img006"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="500" height="366" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria</p>
+<p>Dopper Church Opposite President Kruger's House<br>
+<span class="small">Built by the Late President.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Precisely opposite the Residency is the handsome Dopper Church,
+wherein the President regularly worshipped, and not infrequently
+himself ministered in holy things. The church is nearly new, and like
+much else in Pretoria is still unfinished. The four dials have indeed
+been duly placed on the four faces of the clock tower; but in that
+tower there is as yet no clock; and round those clock dials there move
+no clock hands. No wonder Pretoria with its dominant Dopper Church,
+and its still more decidedly dominant Dopper President, mistook the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>(p. 135)</span> true hour of its destiny, and madly made war precisely
+when peace was easiest of attainment. Kruger, dim-eyed and old, lived
+face to face continually with clock dials that betokened no progress,
+but, merely mocked the enquiring gaze. Which thing, the Chelsea Sage
+would say, was symbolical and significant of much!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">"<span class="italic">Resurgam.</span>"</span>
+
+<p>In the centre of the before-mentioned Square is the large and usually
+crowded Dutch Reformed Church, doomed long ago, we were told, to be
+removed because of its exceeding unsightliness. Throughout the
+Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the
+central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent
+influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master
+in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited
+to witness one of the most interesting events of the century&mdash;the
+proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it,
+as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately
+"march past" of the British troops.</p>
+
+<p>Facing me, on the side of the Square opposite to that occupied by the
+Palace of Justice, were the creditably designed Government Buildings,
+including the Raadsaal, which was surmounted by a golden figure of
+Liberty bearing in her hand a battle-axe and flag. On the forefront of
+the building in bold lettering there was graven the favourite
+Transvaal watchword,</p>
+
+<p class="center">EENDRACT MAAKT MAGT,</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">which, being interpreted means, "Right makes Might"; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>(p. 136)</span> and
+that motto, as every Britisher could see, precisely explained our
+presence there that day. Inside there still remained, in its
+accustomed place, the state chair of the departed President, in which,
+later on, I ventured to sit; and all around were ranged the, to me,
+eloquent seats of his departed senators. In that very hall, just nine
+months before, those senators, in secret session, had resolved to hurl
+defiance at the might of Britain; and so precipitated a war by which
+two sister Republics were, as such, hurried out of existence. Now the
+very corridors by which I approached that hall were crowded with Boers
+wearied with the fruitless fight, and eager to hand in their weapons.</p>
+
+<p>In the waiting crowd outside I found a friend who courteously supplied
+me with a copy of a quite unique photograph&mdash;the only photograph taken
+of the solemn burial, a few hundred yards from where I stood, of a
+Union Jack, when that flag was hauled down in the Transvaal, and the
+British troops ingloriously retired. As shown in the photograph, over
+the grave was erected a slab, and on that slab was this most notable
+inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote center p0_b">
+            <span class="smcap">In Memory</span><br>
+                OF<br>
+        THE BRITISH FLAG<br>
+  in the Transvaal; which departed this life<br>
+        August 2nd, 1881.<br>
+          Aged 4 years.</p>
+
+<p class="p0_tb poem40">In other lands none knew thee<br>
+  But to love thee.</p>
+
+<p class="center p0_t">RESURGAM.
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>(p. 137)</span> No such burial had the world seen before, and few bolder
+prophecies than that "<span class="italic">I shall rise again</span>," can be found in the
+history of any land; but a few minutes it became my memorable
+privilege to witness the actual fulfilment of that patriotic
+prediction. As in Johannesburg, so here, it was Lady Roberts' pocket
+edition of the Union Jack that was used; and we looked on excitedly;
+but the Statue of Liberty looked down benignly, while that tiny flag
+crept up nearer and nearer to its golden feet. Liberty has never
+anything to fear from the approach of that flag!</p>
+
+<p>While in Pretoria the following story was told me by the soldier to
+whom it chiefly refers:&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Striking Incident.</span>
+
+<p>At the Orange River a corporal of the Yorkshire Light Infantry
+received a pocket copy of the New Testament from a Christian worker,
+and placed it in his tunic by the side of his "field dressing." A
+godless man, who had been driven into the army by heavy drinking, he
+merely glanced at a verse or two, and then forgot its very presence in
+his pocket till he reached the battlefield of Graspan a few days later
+on. Then a Boer bullet passed right through the Testament and the
+dressing that lay beside it, was thereby deflected from its otherwise
+fatal course, and finally made a long surface wound on his right
+thigh. That wound he at once bound up with one of his putties, but for
+two hours was unable to stir from the place where he fell.</p>
+
+<p>Then he managed to limp back to his battalion, and piteously begged
+his adjutant not to let his name be put <span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>(p. 138)</span> down on the casualty
+list, for, said he, "my mother is in feeble health, and if she saw my
+name in the papers among the wounded she would worry herself almost to
+death, as years ago when she heard of my being hit in Tirah." That
+brave request was granted, and he remained in the ranks marching as
+one unwounded.</p>
+
+<p>Yet neither this Providential deliverance nor the terrors that soon
+followed at Modder River sufficed to lure to either prayer or praise
+this godless, but surely not graceless, corporal. On the 27th of
+August, however, which happened to be his thirtieth birthday, a devout
+sergeant had the joy of winning him to Christian decision; and that
+day, as he told me in Pretoria, he resolved to find out for himself
+whether after thirty years of misery the mercy of the Lord could
+provide for him thirty years of happiness.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">No canteens and no crime.</span>
+
+<p>On board the <span class="italic">Nubia</span>, amid piles of literature put on board for the
+amusement of the troops during the voyage, I discovered a quantity of
+pamphlets entitled "Beer Cellars and Beer Sellers," the purpose of
+which was to prove that the beer sellers were England's most
+indispensable patriots; that the beer cellars were England's best
+citadels; and that the beer trade in general was the very backbone of
+England's stability. It was horribly tantalising to the men in face of
+such teaching to find that there had been placed on board for them not
+so much as a solitary barrel of this much belauded beverage. Through
+all the voyage every man remained perforce a total abstainer. Yet
+there was not a single death among <span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>(p. 139)</span> those sixteen hundred,
+nor a solitary instance of serious sickness. What does Burton say to
+that?</p>
+
+<p>As at sea, so on land, the authorities seemed more afraid of the
+beloved beer barrel than of the bullets of the Boers; and for the most
+part no countersign sufficed to secure for it admittance to our camps.
+An occasional tot of rum was distributed among the men; but even that
+seemed to be rather to satisfy a sentiment than to serve any really
+useful purpose. At any rate, some of the men, like myself, tramped all
+the way to Koomati Poort, often in the worst of weather, without
+taking a single tot, and were none the worse for so refraining, but
+rather so much the better.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on the character of the men was still more remarkable; and
+while in Pretoria I was repeatedly assured that some who had been a
+perpetual worry to their officers in beer-ridden England, on the
+beerless veldt, or in the liquorless towns of the Transvaal, speedily
+took rank among the most reliable men in all their regiment. To my
+colleague, the Rev. W. Burgess, a major of the Yorkshires, said
+"Nineteen-twentieths of the crime in the British army is due to drink.
+As a proof I have been at this outpost with 150 men for six weeks,
+where we have absolutely no drink, and there have been only two minor
+cases brought before me. There is no insubordination whatever, and if
+you do away with drink you have in the British army an ideal army.
+Whether or not men can be made sober by Act of Parliament, clearly
+they can by martial law!"</p>
+
+<p>With the men so sober, with a field-marshal so God-fearing, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>(p. 140)</span>
+the constant outrages ascribed to them by slander-loving Englishmen at
+home, become a moral impossibility; and to that fact, after we had
+been long in possession of Pretoria, the principal minister of the
+Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal bore ready witness in the
+following letter sent by him to the Military Governor of Pretoria:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Not a single instance of criminal assault or rape by
+     non-commissioned officers or men of the British army on Boer
+     women has come to my knowledge. I have asked several gentlemen
+     and their testimony is the same.... The discipline and general
+     moral conduct of His Majesty's troops in Pretoria is, under the
+     circumstances, better than I ever expected it would or could be.
+     There have certainly been cases of immoral conduct, but in no
+     single instance, so far as I know, has force been used. They only
+     go where they are invited and where they are welcome.</p>
+
+<p class="left60">(Signed) <span class="smcap add2em">H. S. Bosman.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When such is the testimony of our adversaries, we need not hesitate to
+accept the similar tribute paid by Sir Redvers Buller to his army of
+abstainers in Natal:&mdash;"I am filled with admiration for the British
+soldiers," said he; "really the manner in which they have worked,
+fought, and endured during the last fortnight has been something more
+than human. Broiled in a burning sun by day, drenched in rain by
+night, lying but three hundred yards off an enemy, who shoots you if
+you show so much as a finger, they could hardly eat or drink by day;
+and as they were usually attacked by night, they got but little sleep;
+yet through it all they were as cheery and as willing as could be."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>(p. 141)</span> Men so devoted when on duty, don't transform themselves, the
+drink being absent, into incarnate demons when off duty; and no
+dominion, therefore, has more cause to be proud of its defenders than
+our own!<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>(p. 142)</span> CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS</p>
+
+
+<p>Pretoria is manifestly a city in process of being made, and has
+probably in store a magnificent future, though at present the shanty
+and the palace stand "cheek by jowl." Even the main roads leading into
+the town seemed atrociously bad as judged by English standards, and
+the paving of the principal streets was of a correspondingly perilous
+type. Yet the public buildings already referred to were not the only
+ones that claimed our commendation as signs of a progressive spirit.
+The Government Printing Works are remarkably handsome and complete;
+and while for educational purposes there is in Pretoria nothing quite
+comparable to Grey College at Bloemfontein, the secondary education of
+the late Republic's metropolis was well housed.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The State's Model School.</span>
+
+<p>There is, however, one building provided for that purpose which has
+acquired an enduring interest of quite another kind, and which I
+visited, when it became a hospital, with very mingled emotions. The
+State's Model School, during the early stages of the war, was utilised
+as a prison for the British officers captured by the Boers. How keenly
+these brave men felt and secretly resented their ill-fortune they were
+too proud to tell, but one of the noblest of them had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>(p. 143)</span>
+become, through the terrors of a disastrous fight, so piteously
+demented for a while that he actually wore hanging from his neck a
+piece of cardboard announcing that it was he who lost the guns at
+Colenso. Some of them would rather have lost their lives than in such
+fashion have lost their liberty, and the story which tells how three
+of them regained that liberty by escaping from this very prison is one
+of the most thrilling among all the records of the war. Most noted of
+the three is Winston Churchill, whose own graphic pen has told how he
+eluded the most vigilant search and finally reached the sea. But the
+adventures of Captain Haldane and his non-commissioned companion
+reveal yet more of daring and endurance. Captured at the same time as
+Churchill, and through the same cause&mdash;the disaster on November 13th
+to the armoured train at Chieveley&mdash;these two effected their escape
+long after the hue and cry on the heels of Churchill had died away.
+Within what was supposed to be a day or two of the removal of all the
+officers to a more secure "birdcage" outside the town, those two
+gentlemen vanished under the floor of their room, through a kind of
+tiny trap-door that I have often seen, but which was then partly
+concealed by a bed, and was apparently never noticed by their Boer
+custodians. In this prison beneath a prison, damp and dark and dismal
+beyond all describing, and where there was no room to stand erect,
+these two officers found themselves doomed to dwell, not for days
+merely, but for weeks. They were of course hunted for high and low,
+and sought in every conceivable place except the right place. Food was
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>(p. 144)</span> guardedly passed down to them by two or three brother
+officers who shared their secret, and at last, more dead than alive,
+they emerged from their dungeon the moment they discovered the
+building was deserted, and then daringly faced the almost hopeless,
+yet successful, endeavour to smuggle themselves to far-distant Delagoa
+Bay. Evidently the element of romance has not yet died out of this
+prosaic age!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer.</span>
+
+<p>Strangely sharing the fate of these British prisoners in this Model
+School was a godly and gifted minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. A
+Boer among Boers. He was never told why he was arrested by his brother
+Boers, and though kept under lock and key for months, he was never
+introduced to judge or jury. An advocate of peace, he was suspected of
+British leanings, and so almost before the war commenced rough hands
+were laid upon him. There was in the Transvaal a reign of terror.
+Secret service men were everywhere, and no one's reputation was safe,
+no one's position secure. In this land of newly-discovered gold men
+were driven to discover that the most golden thing of all was discreet
+silence on the part of those who differed from "the powers that be."
+So he who simply sought to avert war was suspected of British
+sympathies, and to his unutterable surprise presently found himself
+the fellow prisoner of many a still more unfortunate British officer.</p>
+
+<p>Of those officers, their character and intellectual attainments, he
+speaks in terms of highest praise. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>(p. 145)</span> Their enforced leisure
+they devoted to various artistic and intellectual pursuits, and I have
+myself seen an admirably elaborate and accurate map of the Republics,
+covering the whole of a large classroom wall, drawn presumably from
+joint memory by these officers, who by its aid were able to trace the
+progress of the war as tidings filtered through to them by an
+ingenious system of signalling practised by sympathetic friends
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>By those same officers this Dutchman was invited to become their
+unofficial chaplain, and he writes of the devotional services
+consequently arranged as among the chief delights of his life, the
+favourite hymn he says being the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem30">
+<p>Holy Father, in Thy mercy<br>
+  Hear our anxious prayer.<br>
+  Keep our loved ones, now far absent,<br>
+<span class="add35em">'Neath Thy care.</span></p>
+
+<p>Jesus, Saviour, let Thy presence<br>
+  Be their light and pride.<br>
+  Keep, Oh keep them, in their weakness,<br>
+<span class="add35em">Near Thy side.</span></p>
+
+<p>Holy Spirit, let Thy teaching<br>
+  Sanctify their life.<br>
+  Send Thy grace that they may conquer<br>
+<span class="add35em">In all strife.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It was to this much respected and much reviled predikant a Pretorian
+high official said: "We were determined to let it drift to a rupture
+with England, for then our dream would be realised of a Republic
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>(p. 146)</span> reaching to Table Mountain"; but surely such a song and such
+a scene in the State's Model School was a thing of which no man
+dreamed!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Waterfall prisoners.</span>
+
+<p>The private soldiers who like these, their officers, had become
+prisoners of war, were for greater security removed from their
+racecourse camp to a huge prison-pen at the Waterfall, some ten or
+twelve miles up the Pietersburg line. They numbered in all about three
+thousand eight hundred, and for a while fared badly at their captors'
+hands. But ultimately a small committee was formed in Pretoria and
+£5000 subscribed, to be spent in mitigating their lot and ministering
+in many ways to their comfort. In these ministrations of mercy the
+Wesleyan minister, whose grateful guest I for a while became, as
+afterwards of the genial host and hostess at the Silverton Mission
+Parsonage, took a prominent and much appreciated part as the following
+letter abundantly proves:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+
+<p>To the Rev. <span class="smcap">F. W. Macdonald</span>,<br>
+  President, Wesleyan Church, London.</p>
+
+<p class="left60"><span class="smcap">Pretoria</span>, <span class="italic">4th July 1900</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;As chairman of a committee formed in January last for the
+     purpose of assisting the British prisoners of war, I have been
+     requested to bring officially to your notice the splendid work
+     done by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin. From my position I have been
+     thrown into intimate relationship with Mr Goodwin, and it is a
+     great pleasure to me to testify to his invaluable services. I am
+     not a member of your church, nor are my colleagues, but there is
+     a unanimous desire among the British subjects that were permitted
+     to remain in Pretoria, and who are therefore cognisant of Mr
+     Goodwin's work, to place his record before you. It is our united
+     hope that Mr Goodwin will receive some substantial mark of
+     appreciation from the Church <span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>(p. 147)</span> of which he is so fine a
+     representative. I know of none finer in the highest sense in the
+     Church which knows no distinction of forms or creeds.&mdash;I have the
+     honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p class="left60">(Sd.)  <span class="add2em smcap">J. Leigh Wood.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On my arrival in Pretoria Mr Goodwin was at my request at once
+appointed as Acting Army Chaplain, and shortly after received the
+following most gratifying communication:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+
+<p class="left60"><span class="smcap">British Agency</span>,<br>
+<span class="smcap">Pretoria</span>, <span class="italic">9th June 1900</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;If you could kindly call on Lord Roberts some time
+     to-day or to-morrow, it would give him great pleasure to meet one
+     who has done so much for our prisoners of war.&mdash;Yours faithfully,</p>
+
+<p><span class="left60">(Sd.)</span> <span class="add2em smcap">H. V. Conan</span>,<br>
+  The Rev. Goodwin. <span class="left50"><span class="italic">Lt.-Col., Mil. Sec.</span></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Mr Goodwin accordingly called nothing could well exceed the
+warmth of the welcome and of the thanks the field-marshal graciously
+accorded him.</p>
+
+<p>Among the prisoners at the Waterfall was a well-known Wesleyan
+sergeant of the 18th Hussars, who rallied around him all such as were
+of a devout spirit and became the recognised leader of the religious
+life of the prison camp. I therefore requested him to supply me with a
+brief statement of what in this respect had been done by the prisoners
+for the prisoners. He accordingly sent me the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="left60"><span class="smcap">Pretoria</span>, <span class="italic">7th July 1900</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Reverend and Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;Long before you asked me to write an
+     account of the Christian work which was carried on from the 22nd
+     of October 1899 to the 6th of June 1900, among the British
+     prisoners of war at the Pretoria Racecourse, and afterwards at
+     Waterfall, it had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>(p. 148)</span> occurred to me that for the
+     encouragement of other Christian workers particularly, and the
+     members of the Church of Christ generally, some record should be
+     made of the wonderful way in which God blessed us, and it is with
+     the greatest pleasure that I accede to your request.</p>
+
+<p>I was one of the 160 who were taken prisoners after the battle of
+     Talana Hill (Dundee), and a few days after arriving at our
+     destination (Pretoria Racecourse) we heard some of our guard
+     singing psalms and we immediately decided to ask the commandant
+     for a tent for devotional purposes. It was given, and after the
+     first few nights, till we were released by our own forces seven
+     months afterwards, it was filled to overflowing nightly. On our
+     being removed to Waterfall, we enlarged our tent to three times
+     its original size, and later on we begged building material from
+     the commandant, and built a very nice hall with a platform and
+     seating accommodation for over 240. At last this became too small
+     and we went into the open air twice a week, when no less than 500
+     to 700 congregated to hear the old, old story of Jesus and His
+     love.</p>
+
+<p>When we asked for the small tent we had no idea of the work
+     growing as it did. We used to meet together every night, a simple
+     gathering together of God's children, four in number, which
+     increased to one hundred, with the Lord Himself as teacher. Then
+     our comrades began to attend and we commenced to hold
+     evangelistic services, which were continued to the end.</p>
+
+<p>When we got to Waterfall we started a Bible-class and a prayer
+     meeting, held alternately. The work was helped a great deal by
+     other Christian brothers, without whose services, co-operation,
+     fellowship and sympathy the work could hardly have been continued
+     for any length of time. But, after all, speaking after the manner
+     of men, our dear friend and pastor, the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, was
+     the one who really enabled us to carry on the work. As the
+     transport and commissariat are to any army, so Mr Goodwin was to
+     us.</p>
+
+<p>On our application, the Boer Government consented to allow the
+     ministers of the various churches in Pretoria to visit us once a
+     month for the purpose of conducting divine service. Of course
+     such a privilege as this was greatly appreciated by the men, and
+     one cannot help wondering why such restrictions were placed upon
+     the ministers.</p>
+
+<p>We had many cherished plans and bright hopes with regard to the
+     war, and when we were captured we found it hard to recognise the
+     <span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>(p. 149)</span> ordering of the Lord in our new conditions and
+     unaccustomed circumstances; but we were taught some grand
+     lessons, and we soon found that even imprisonment has its
+     compensations; and we have to confess that His Presence makes the
+     prison a palace. I have heard many thank God for bringing them to
+     Waterfall gaol.</p>
+
+<p>During the months we spent together we realised that God was
+     blessing us in a most remarkable manner, and we may truly say
+     that our fellowship was with the Father and with His Son Jesus
+     Christ. Many backsliders were taught the folly of remaining away
+     from the Father, and many were turned from darkness unto light.
+     To Him be the glory.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing of the near approach of our deliverers, and knowing
+     that soon we should all part, we had a farewell meeting and many
+     promised to write to me.</p>
+
+<p>I received a number of letters ere we actually parted, but with
+     the injunction "not to be opened till separated," and from these
+     I intend making a few extracts which lead me like the Psalmist to
+     say "Because Thou hast been my help therefore in the shadow of
+     Thy wings will I rejoice."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of the extracts to which the sergeant refers it is impossible to give
+here more than a few brief samples; but even these may suffice to
+prove that our soldiers are by no means all, or mostly, sons of
+Belial, as their recent slanderers would have us believe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">A Bombardier</span> of the 10th Mountain Battery writes&mdash;"I was brought to
+God on the 4th of February. I had often stood outside the tent and
+listened to the services, and one evening I went into the
+after-meeting and came away without Christ; but God was striving with
+me, and a few nights afterwards I realised that I was a hell-deserving
+sinner, and I cried unto God and He heard me; and that night I came
+away with Christ."</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">A Sergeant-major</span> of Roberts' Horse says&mdash;"I am indeed grateful to
+God for the loving-kindness He has <span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>(p. 150)</span> bestowed on me since my
+coming here as a prisoner of war. The meetings have been a great
+success and of the most orderly character."</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">A Sergeant</span> of the Royal Irish Rifles adds&mdash;"Thanks be unto God, He
+opened my eyes on the night of the 21st of January 1900; and He has
+kept me ever since."</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">A Corporal</span> of the Wilts, after telling of his capture at Rensberg,
+and his arrival at Waterfall, goes on to say&mdash;"I heard about the
+Gospel Tent from one of the Boer sentries, and I cannot express the
+happy feelings that passed through me when I saw the Christian band
+gathered together with one accord."</p>
+
+<p><span class="italic">A Private</span> of the Glosters relates the story of his own conversion,
+and then proceeds to say he shall never forget the meetings which were
+conducted by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, especially the one in which he
+administered to them the blessed Sacrament. It was a Pentecostal time,
+and it pleased the Lord to add unto them eight souls that same night,
+and six the night following.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Soldier's Hymn.</span>
+
+<p>As the day of release drew near with all its inevitable excitement and
+unrest, certain British officers, themselves prisoners, were requested
+by the Boers to reside among these men at the Waterfall to ensure to
+the very last the maintenance of discipline; and the sanction of the
+Baptist minister who once conducted their parade service was sought by
+them for the singing of the following most touchingly appropriate
+hymn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem30">
+<p>Lord a nation humbly kneeling<br>
+  For her soldiers cries to Thee;<br>
+  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>(p. 151)</span> Strong in faith and hope, appealing<br>
+  That triumphant they may be.<br>
+<span class="add3em">Waking, sleeping,</span><br>
+<span class="add3em">'Neath Thy keeping,</span><br>
+  Lead our troops to victory.</p>
+
+<p>Of our sins we make confession,<br>
+  Wealth and arrogance and pride;<br>
+  But our hosts, against oppression,<br>
+  March with Freedom's flowing tide.<br>
+<span class="add3em">Father, speed them,</span><br>
+<span class="add3em">Keep them, lead them,</span><br>
+  God of armies, be their guide.</p>
+
+<p>Man of Sorrows! Thou hast sounded<br>
+  Every depth of human grief.<br>
+  By Thy wounds, Oh, heal our wounded.<br>
+  Give the fever's fire relief.<br>
+<span class="add3em">Hear us crying</span><br>
+<span class="add3em">For our dying,</span><br>
+  Of consolers be Thou chief.</p>
+
+<p>Take the souls that die for duty<br>
+  In Thy tender pierced hand;<br>
+  Crown the faulty lives with beauty,<br>
+  Offered for their Fatherland.<br>
+<span class="add3em">All forgiving,</span><br>
+<span class="add3em">With the living</span><br>
+  May they in Thy kingdom stand.</p>
+
+<p>And if Victory should crown us,<br>
+  May we take it as from Thee<br>
+  As Thy nation deign to own us;<br>
+  Merciful and strong and free.<br>
+<span class="add3em">Endless praising</span><br>
+<span class="add3em">To Thee raising,</span><br>
+  Ever Thine may England be!</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Say their critics what they may, soldiers who compose such songs, and
+pen such testimonies, and conduct such <span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>(p. 152)</span> services among
+themselves, seem scarcely the sort to "let hell loose in South
+Africa!"</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A big supper party.</span>
+
+<p>Of the prisoners of war thus long detained in durance vile nearly a
+thousand were decoyed into a special train the night before the
+Guards' Brigade reached Pretoria. These deluded captives in their
+simplicity supposed they were being taken into the town to be there
+set at liberty; but instead of that they were hurried by, and, with
+the panic-stricken Boers, away and yet away, into their remotest
+eastern fastnesses, there presumably to be retained as long as
+possible as a sort of guarantee that the vastly larger number of Boers
+we held prisoners should be still generously treated by us. They might
+also prove useful in many ways if terms of peace came to be
+negotiated. So vanished for months their visions of speedy freedom!</p>
+
+<p>The rest who still remained within the prison fence, and were, of
+course, still unarmed, three days later were cruelly and treacherously
+shelled by a Boer commando on a distant hill. The Boer guards detailed
+for duty at the prison had deserted their posts, and under the cover
+of the white flag, gone into Pretoria to surrender. Our men,
+therefore, who were practically free, awaiting orders, when thus
+unceremoniously shelled, at once stampeded; and late on Thursday night
+about nine hundred of them, footsore and famished, arrived at Mr
+Goodwin's house seeking shelter. He was apparently the only friend
+they knew in Pretoria, and to have a friend yet not to use him is, of
+course, absurd! So to his door they came in crowds, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>(p. 153)</span> dragging
+with them the Boer Maxim gun, by which they had so long been overawed.
+While tea and coffee for all this host were being hurriedly prepared
+by their slightly embarrassed host, I sought permission from a staff
+officer to house the men for the night in our Wesleyan schoolrooms,
+and in the huge Caledonian Hall adjoining, which was at once
+commandeered for the purpose. I also requested that a supply of
+rations might at utmost speed be provided for them. Accordingly, not
+long before midnight a waggon arrived bringing by some fortunate
+misreading of my information, provisions, not for nine hundred hungry
+men, but for the whole three thousand prisoners whom we were supposed
+to have welcomed as our guests. It may seem incredible, but men who at
+that late hour had fallen fast asleep upon the floor, at the sound of
+that waggon's wheels suddenly awoke; and still more wonderful to tell,
+when morning came those nine hundred men, of the rations for three
+thousand, had left untouched only a few paltry boxes of biscuits. A
+hospital patient recently recovered from fever once said to me, "I
+haven't an appetite for two, sir; I have an appetite for ten!" And
+these released prisoners had evidently for that particular occasion
+borrowed the appetite of that particular patient!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Soldiers' Home.</span>
+
+<p>The Caledonian Hall above referred to is a specially commodious
+building, and could not have been more admirably adapted for use as a
+Soldiers' Home if expressly erected for that purpose. It was
+accordingly commandeered by the military governor to be so used, and
+for months it was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>(p. 154)</span> the most popular establishment in town or
+camp. At Johannesburg a Wesleyan and an Anglican Home were opened,
+both rendering excellent service; but as this was run on
+undenominational lines, it was left without a rival. It is a most
+powerful sign of the times that our military chiefs now unhesitatingly
+interest themselves in the moral and spiritual welfare of the men
+under their command. Some time before this Boer war commenced, on
+April 28, 1898, there was issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the
+British Army a memorandum which would have done no discredit to the
+Religious Tract Society if published as one of their multitudinous
+leaflets. A copy was supplied presumably to every soldier sent to
+Africa; and the first few sentences which refer to what may happily be
+regarded as steadily diminishing evils, read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>It will be the duty of company officers to point out to the men
+     under their control, and particularly to young soldiers, the</p>
+
+<p class="center italic">disastrous effect of giving way</p>
+
+<p>to habits of intemperance and immorality. The excessive use of
+     intoxicating liquors unfits the soldier for active work, blunts
+     his intelligence, and is a fruitful source of military crime. The
+     man who leads a vicious life</p>
+
+<p class="center italic">enfeebles his constitution</p>
+
+<p>and exposes himself to the risk of contracting a disease of a
+     kind which has of late made terrible ravages in the British army.
+     Many men spend a great deal of the short time of their service in
+     the military hospitals, the wards of which are crowded with
+     patients, a large number of whom are permanently disfigured and
+     incapacitated from earning a livelihood in or out of the army.
+     Men tainted with this disease are</p>
+
+<p class="center italic"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>(p. 155)</span> useless while in the army</p>
+
+<p>and a burden to their friends after they have left it. Even those
+     who do not altogether break down are unfit for service in the
+     field, and would certainly be a source of weakness to their
+     regiments, and a discredit to their comrades if employed in war.</p>
+</div>
+
+<a id="img007" name="img007"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img007.jpg" width="500" height="297" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria</p>
+<p>Soldiers' Home at Pretoria.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As one of the most effectual ways of combating these evils, and of
+providing an answer to the oft-repeated prayer, "Lead us not into
+temptation," Soldiers' Homes are now being so freely multiplied, that
+the Wesleyan Church has itself established over thirty, at a total
+cost of more than £50,000.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe.</span>
+
+<p>Some of those engaged in similar Christian work among the soldiers
+were gentlemen of ample private means who defrayed all their own
+expenses. Mr Anderson was thus attached to the Northumberland
+Fusiliers, and soon became a power for good among them. Mr and Mrs
+Osborn Howe did a really remarkable work in providing Soldiers' Homes,
+which followed the men from place to place over almost the entire
+field covered by our military operations, including Pretoria, and
+though they received quite a long list of subscriptions their own
+private resources have for years been freely placed at the Master's
+service, whether for work among soldiers or civilians.</p>
+
+<p>When late on in the campaign it was intimated by certain officials
+that Lord Kitchener was not in sympathy with such work and would not
+grant such facilities for its prosecution as Lord Roberts had done, Mr
+Osborn Howe received the following reply to a letter of enquiry on
+that point:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>(p. 156)</span> A letter from Lord Kitchener.</span>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I am directed by Lord Kitchener to acknowledge the receipt of
+     your letter of January 3rd. His Lordship much regrets that you
+     should have been led to imagine that his attitude towards your
+     work differs from that of Lord Roberts, and I am to inform you
+     that so far from that being the case, he is very deeply impressed
+     by the value of your work, and hopes that it may long continue
+     and increase.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours faithfully,</p>
+<p><span class="left50">(Signed)</span>  <span class="add2em smcap">W. H. Congreve</span>, Major,<br>
+<span class="left60 italic">Private Secretary</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Still more notable in this same connection is the fact that soon after
+Lord Roberts reached Cape Town to take supreme command, he caused to
+be issued the following most remarkable letter, which certainly marks
+a new departure in the usages of modern warfare, and carries us back
+in thought and spirit to the camps of Cromwell and his psalm-singing
+Ironsides, or to the times when Scotland's Covenanters were busy
+guarding for us the religious light and liberty which are to-day our
+goodliest heritage.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Also from Lord Roberts.</span>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Army Headquarters, Cape Town</span>, <span class="italic">January 23rd</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;I am desired by Lord Roberts to ask you to be so kind
+     as to distribute to all ranks under your command the "Short
+     Prayer for the use of Soldiers in the Field," by the Primate of
+     Ireland, copies of which I now forward. His Lordship earnestly
+     hopes that it may be helpful to all of Her Majesty's soldiers who
+     are now serving in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours faithfully,
+<p class="left40 p0_b">(Signed)  <span class="add2em smcap">Neville Chamberlain</span>, Colonel,</p>
+<p class="left60 italic p0_t">Private Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>To the Commanding Officer.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center smcap"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>(p. 157)</span> <strong>The Prayer.</strong></p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p><span class="smcap">Almighty Father</span>, I have often sinned against Thee. O wash me in
+     the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Fill me with Thy Holy
+     Spirit, that I may lead a new life. Spare me to see again those
+     whom I love at home, or fit me for Thy presence in peace.</p>
+
+<p>Strengthen us to quit ourselves like men in our right and just
+     cause. Keep us faithful unto death, calm in danger, patient in
+     suffering, merciful as well as brave, true to our Queen, our
+     country, and our colours.</p>
+
+<p>If it be Thy will, enable us to win victory for England, and
+     above all grant us the better victory over temptation and sin,
+     over life and death, that we may be more than conquerors through
+     Him who loved us, and laid down His life for us, Jesus our
+     Saviour, the Captain of the Army of God. Amen.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The general who officially invited all his troops to use such a prayer
+could not fail to prove a warm friend and patron of Soldiers' Homes;
+and to the Pretoria Home he came, not merely formally to declare it
+open, but to attend one of the many concerts given there, thus
+encouraging by his example both the workers and those for whom they
+worked. A supremely busy and burdened man, <span class="italic">that</span> he made a part of
+his business; and surely he was wise, for one sober soldier is any day
+worth more than a dozen drunken ones.</p>
+
+<p>The general who thus deliberately encouraged his troops to live
+devoutly, instead of being deemed by them on that account unsoldierly
+or fanatic, secured such a place in their confidence and affection as
+few even of the most magnetic leaders among men ever managed to
+obtain. The pet name by which they always spoke of him implied no
+approach to unseemly familiarity, but betokened the same kind of
+attachment as the veteran hosts of Napoleon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>(p. 158)</span> the Great
+intended to express when they admiringly called their dread master
+"The Little Corporal." He amply justified their confidence in him, and
+they amply justified his confidence in them; and so on resigning his
+command in South Africa he spoke of these "my comrades," as he called
+them, in terms as gratifying as they are uncommon:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">I am very proud that I am able to record, with the most absolute
+     truth, that the conduct of this army from first to last has been
+     exemplary. Not one single case of serious crime has been brought
+     to my notice&mdash;indeed, nothing that deserves the name of <span class="italic">crime</span>.
+     There has been no necessity for appeals or orders to the men to
+     behave properly. I have trusted implicitly to their own soldierly
+     feeling and good sense, and I have not trusted in vain. They bore
+     themselves like heroes on the battlefield, and like gentlemen on
+     all other occasions.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A song in praise of De Wet.</span>
+
+<p>Lord Lytton tells us that in the days of Edward the Confessor the rage
+for psalm singing was at its height in England so that sacred song
+excluded almost every other description of vocal music: but though in
+South Africa a similar trend revealed itself among the troops, their
+camp fire concerts, and the concerts in the Pretoria Soldiers' Home,
+were of an exclusively secular type. At one which it was my privilege
+to attend, Lady Roberts and her daughters were present as well as the
+general, who generously arranged for a cigar to be given to every man
+in the densely crowded hall when the concert closed. All the songs
+were by members of the general's staff, and were excellent; but one,
+composed presumably by the singer, was topical and sensational in a
+high degree. It was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>(p. 159)</span> entitled: "Long as the world goes
+round"; and one verse assured us concerning "Brother Boer," with only
+too near an approach to truth,</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">He'll bury his mauser,<br>
+  And break all his vows, sir,<br>
+  Long as the world goes round!</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Another verse reminded us of a still more melancholy fact which yet
+awakened no little mirth. It was in praise of De Wet, who in spite of
+his blue spectacles, seemed by far the most clear-sighted of all the
+Boer generals, and who, notwithstanding his illiteracy, was beyond all
+others well versed in the bewildering ways of the veldt. He apparently
+had no skill for the conducting of set battles, but for ambushing
+convoys, for capturing isolated detachments, for wrecking trains, and
+for himself eluding capture when fairly ringed round with keen
+pursuers beyond all counting, few could rival him. Like hunted
+Hereward, he seemed able to escape through a rat hole, and by his
+persistence in guerilla tactics not only seriously prolonged the war
+and enormously increased its cost, but also went far to make the
+desolation of his pet Republic complete. So there Lord Roberts sat and
+heard this sung by one of his staff:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">Of all the Boers we have come across yet,<br>
+  None can compare with this Christian De Wet;<br>
+  For him we seem quite unable to get&mdash;<br>
+<span class="add35em">(Though Hildyard and Broadwood,</span><br>
+<span class="add35em">And our Soudanese Lord <span class="italic">should</span>)&mdash;</span><br>
+  Long as the world goes round!</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">They <span class="italic">should</span> have got him, and they would have got him, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>(p. 160)</span> if
+they could; but when Lord Roberts, long months after, set sail for
+home, he left De Wet still in the saddle. Then Kitchener, our
+Soudanese Lord, took up the running, and called on the Guards to aid
+him, but even they proved unequal to the hopeless task. "One pair of
+heels," they said, "can never overtake two pair of hoofs." Then our
+picked mounted men monopolised the "tally-ho" to little better
+purpose. De Wet's guns were captured, his convoys cut off, but him no
+man caught, and possibly to this very day he is still complacently
+humming "Tommies may come and Tommies may go, but I trot on for ever."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Cordua and his Conspiracy.</span>
+
+<p>The last verse of this sensational song had reference to yet another
+celebrity, but of a far more unsatisfactory type. All the earlier part
+of that Thursday I had spent in the second Raadsaal, attending a
+court-martial on one of our prisoners of war, Lieutenant Hans Cordua,
+late of the Transvaal State Artillery, who, having surrendered, was
+suffered to be at large on parole. In my presence he pleaded guilty,
+first to having broken his parole in violation of his solemn oath;
+secondly, to having attempted to break through the British lines
+disguised in British khaki, in order to communicate treasonably with
+Botha; and thirdly, to having conspired with sundry others to set fire
+to a certain portion of Pretoria with a view to facilitating a
+simultaneous attempt to kidnap Lord Roberts and all his staff. Cordua
+was with difficulty persuaded to withdraw the plea of guilty, so that
+he might have the benefit of any possible flaw his counsel <span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>(p. 161)</span>
+could detect in the evidence; but in the end the death sentence was
+pronounced, confirmed, and duly executed in the garden of Pretoria
+Gaol on August 24th. It was from that court-martial I came to the
+Soldiers' Home Concert, sat close behind Lord Roberts, and listened to
+this song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">Though the Boer some say is a practised thief,<br>
+  Yet it certainly beggars all belief,<br>
+  That he slimly should try <span class="italic">to steal our Chief</span>.<br>
+  But no Hollander mobs<br>
+  Shall kidnap our Bobs<br>
+  Long as the world goes round!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Hospital Work in Pretoria.</span>
+
+<p>Historians tell us that the hospital arrangements in some of our
+former wars were by no means free from fault. Hence Steevens in his
+"Crimean Campaign" asserts that while the camp hospitals absolutely
+lacked not only candles, but medicines, wooden legs were supplied to
+them from England so freely that there were finally four such legs for
+every man in hospital. Clearly those wooden legs were consigned by
+wooden heads. Even in this much better managed war the fever epidemic
+at Bloemfontein, combined with a month of almost incessant rain,
+overtaxed for a while, as we have seen, the resources and strength and
+organizing skill of a most willing and fairly competent medical staff.</p>
+
+<p>But Pretoria was plagued with no corresponding epidemic, and possessed
+incomparably ampler supplies, which were drawn on without stint. In
+addition to the Welsh, the Yeomanry, and other canvas hospitals
+planted in the suburbs, the splendid Palace of Justice was
+requisitioned <span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>(p. 162)</span> for the use of the Irish hospital, which, like
+several others, was fitted out and furnished by private munificence.
+The principal school buildings were also placed at the disposal of the
+medical authorities, and were promptly made serviceable with whatever
+requisites the town could supply. To find suitable bedding, however,
+for so vast a number of patients was a specially difficult task. All
+the rugs and tablecloths the stores of the town contained were
+requisitioned for this purpose; green baize and crimson baize, repp
+curtains and plush, anything, everything remotely suitable, was
+claimed and cut up to serve as quilts and counterpanes, with the
+result that the beds looked picturesquely, if not grotesquely, gay.
+One ward, into which I walked, was playfully called "The Menagerie" by
+the men that occupied it, for on every bed was a showy rug, and on the
+face of every rug was woven the figure of some fearsome beast, Bengal
+tigers and British lions being predominant. It was in appearance a
+veritable lion's den, where our men dwelt in peace like so many modern
+Daniels, and found not harm but health and healing there.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The wear and tear of War.</span>
+
+<p>In this campaign the loss of life and vigour caused by sickness was
+enormously larger than that accounted for by bullet wounds and
+bayonets. At the Orange River, just before the Guards set out on their
+long march, thirty Grenadier officers stretched their legs under their
+genial colonel's "mahogany," which consisted of rough planks supported
+on biscuit boxes. Of those only nine were still with us when we
+reached Pretoria, and of the nine several had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>(p. 163)</span> been
+temporarily disabled by sickness or wounds. The battalion at starting
+was about a thousand strong, and afterwards received various drafts
+amounting to about four hundred more; but only eight hundred marched
+into Pretoria. The Scots Guards, however, were so singularly fortunate
+as not to lose a single officer during the whole campaign.</p>
+
+<p>The non-combatants in this respect were scarcely less unfortunate than
+the bulk of their fighting comrades. A band of workers in the service
+of the Soldiers' Christian Association set out together from London
+for South Africa. There were six of them, but before the campaign was
+really half over only one still remained at his post. My faithful
+friend and helper, whom I left as army scripture reader at Orange
+River, after some months of devoted work was compelled to hasten home.
+A similar fate befell my Canadian, my Welsh, and one of my Australian
+colleagues. The highly esteemed Anglican chaplain to the Guards, who
+steadily tramped with them all the way to Pretoria and well earned his
+D.S.O., was forbidden by his medical advisers to proceed any further,
+and his successor, Canon Knox Little, whose praise as a preacher is in
+all the churches, found on reaching Koomati Poort that his strength
+was being overstrained, and so at once returned to the sacred duties
+of his English Canonry. Thus to many a non-combatant the medical staff
+was called to minister, and the veldt to provide a grave.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Nursing Sisters.</span>
+
+<p>The presence of skilled lady-nurses in these Hospitals was of immense
+service, not merely as an aid to healing, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>(p. 164)</span> but also as a
+refining and restraining influence among the men. In this direction
+they habitually achieved what even the appearing of a chaplain did not
+invariably suffice to accomplish. It was the cheering experience of
+Florence Nightingale repeated on a yet wider scale. In her army days
+oaths were greatly in fashion. The expletives of one of even the
+Crimean <span class="italic">generals</span> became the jest of the camp; and when later in his
+career he took over the Aldershot Command, it was laughingly said "he
+<span class="italic">swore</span> himself in"; which doubtless he did in a double sense. Yet men
+trained in habits so evil when they came into the Scutari Hospital
+ceased to swear and forgot to grumble. Said "The Lady with the Lamp,"
+"Never came from one of them any word, or any look, which a gentleman
+would not have used, and the tears came into my eyes as I think how
+amid scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all
+the innate dignity, gentleness and chivalry of the men."</p>
+
+<p>Now as then there are other ministries than those of the pulpit; and
+hospitals in which such influences exert themselves, may well prove,
+in more directions than one, veritable "Houses of Healing."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Surprise Packet.</span>
+
+<p>As illustrating how gratefully these men appreciate any slightest
+manifestation of interest in their welfare, mention may here be made
+of what I regard as the crowning surprise of my life. At the close of
+an open air parade service in Pretoria a sergeant of the Grenadiers
+stepped forward, and in the name of the non-commissioned officers and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>(p. 165)</span> men of that battalion presented to me, in token of their
+goodwill, a silver pencil case and a gold watch. I could but reply
+that the goodwill of my comrades was to me beyond all price, and that
+this golden manifestation of it, this gift coming from such a source,
+I should treasure as a victorious fighting man would treasure a V.C.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Soldierly Gratitude.</span>
+
+<p>The kindnesses lavished on our soldiers, as far as circumstances would
+permit, throughout the whole course of this campaign, by civilian
+friends at home, in the Colonies, and in the conquered territories,
+defy all counting and all description. In some cases, indeed, valuable
+consignments intended for their comfort seem never to have reached
+their destination, but the knowledge that they were thus thought of
+and cared for had upon the men an immeasurable influence for good.
+Later on, even the people of Delagoa Bay sent a handsome Christmas
+hamper to every blockhouse between the frontier and Barberton, while
+at the same time the King of Portugal presented a superb white buck,
+wearing a suitably inscribed silver collar, to the Cornwalls who were
+doing garrison duty at Koomati Poort. But in Pretoria, where among
+other considerations my Wesleyan friends regularly provided a Saturday
+"Pleasant Hour," the soldiers in return invited the whole congregation
+to a "social," on which they lavished many a pound, and which they
+made a brilliant success. It was a startling instance of soldierly
+gratitude; and illustrates excellently the friendly attitude of the
+military and of the local civilians towards each other.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>(p. 166)</span> The Ladysmith Lyre.</span>
+
+<p>It sometimes happened among these much enduring men that the greater
+their misery the greater their mirth. Thus our captured officers,
+close guarded in the Pretoria Model School, and carefully cut off from
+all the news of the day, amused themselves by framing parodies on the
+absurd military intelligence published in the local Boer papers;
+whereof let the following verse serve as a sample:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">Twelve thousand British were laid low;<br>
+  One Boer was wounded in the toe.<br>
+  Such is the news we get to know<br>
+<span class="add9em">In prison.</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">About this time there came into my hands a sample copy of <span class="italic">The
+Ladysmith Lyre</span>; but clearly though the last word in its title was
+perfectly correct as a matter of pronunciation the spelling was
+obviously inaccurate. It was a merry invention of news during the
+siege by men who were hemmed in from all other news; and so the
+grosser the falseness the greater the fun.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">In my own particular copy I found the following dialogue between two
+Irish soldiers:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>First Private&mdash;"The captain told me to keep away from the enemy's
+foire!"</p>
+
+<p>Second Private&mdash;"What did you tell the Captain?"</p>
+
+<p>First Private&mdash;"I told him the Boers were so busy shelling they hadn't
+made any foire!"</p>
+
+<p>That is scarcely a brilliant jest; but then it was begotten amid the
+agonies of the siege.</p>
+
+<p>One of the poems published in this same copy of <span class="italic">The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>(p. 167)</span>
+Ladysmith Lyre</span> has in it more of melancholy than of mirth. It tells
+of the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick; and gives us a more
+vivid idea than anything else yet printed of the secret distress of
+the men who saved Natal&mdash;a distress which we also shared. It is
+entitled&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem20">
+<p class="left20">"AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE."</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,<br>
+  Over all the quaint and curious yarns we've heard about the war,<br>
+  Suddenly there came a rumour&mdash;(we can always take a few more)<br>
+  Started by some chap who knows more than&mdash;the others knew before&mdash;<br>
+  "We shall see the reinforcements in another&mdash;month or more!"<br>
+<span class="add9em">Only this and nothing more!</span></p>
+
+<p>But we're waiting still for Clery, waiting, waiting, sick and weary<br>
+  Of the strange and silly rumours we have often heard before.<br>
+  And we now begin to fancy there's a touch of necromancy,<br>
+  Something almost too uncanny, in the unregenerate Boer&mdash;<br>
+<span class="add9em">Only this and nothing more!</span></p>
+
+<p>Though our hopes are undiminished that the war will soon be finished,<br>
+  We would be a little happier if we knew a little more.<br>
+  If we had a little fuller information about Buller;<br>
+  News about Sir Redvers Buller, and his famous Army Corps;<br>
+  Information of the General and his fighting Army Corps.<br>
+<span class="add9em">Only this and nothing more!</span></p>
+
+<p>And the midnight shells uncertain, whistling through the night's black curtain,<br>
+  Thrill us, fill us with a touch of horror never felt before.<br>
+  So to still the beating of our hearts, we kept repeating<br>
+  "Some late visitor entreating entrance at the chamber door,<br>
+<span class="add9em">This it is; and nothing more!"</span></p>
+
+<p>Oh how slow the shells come dropping, sometimes bursting, sometimes stopping,<br>
+  As though themselves were weary of this very languid war.<br>
+  How distinctly we'll remember all the weary dull November;<br>
+  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>(p. 168)</span> And it seems as if December will have little else in store;<br>
+  And our Christmas dinner will be bully beef and plain stickfast.<br>
+<span class="add9em">Only this and nothing more!</span></p>
+
+<p>Letham, Letham, tell us truly if there's any news come newly;<br>
+  Not the old fantastic rumours we have often heard before:&mdash;<br>
+  Desolate yet all undaunted! Is the town by Boers still haunted?<br>
+  This is all the news that's wanted&mdash;tell us truly we implore&mdash;<br>
+  Is there, <span class="italic">is there</span> a relief force? Tell us, tell us, we implore!<br>
+<span class="add9em">Only this and nothing more.</span></p>
+
+<p>For we're waiting rather weary! Is there such a man as Clery?<br>
+  Shall we ever see our wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?<br>
+  Shall we ever see those others, who went southwards long before?<br>
+  Shall we ever taste fresh butter? Tell us, tell us, we implore!<br>
+<span class="add9em">We are answered&mdash;nevermore!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">When twenty months later the Scots Guards again found themselves in
+Pretoria they too began dolorously to enquire, "Shall we ever see our
+wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?" But meanwhile
+much occurred of which the following chapters are a brief record.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>(p. 169)</span> CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST</p>
+
+
+<p>On reaching Pretoria, almost unopposed, our Guardsmen jumped to the
+hasty and quite unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was
+closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us
+would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has
+burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely
+long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no
+extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of its
+flame just when our personal convenience chances to clamour for such
+quenching. Indeed, the "flare and flicker" period sometimes proves,
+where war is concerned, scarcely less prolonged, and much more
+harassing, than the period of the full-fed flame. So Norman William
+found after the battle of Hastings. So Cromwell proved when the fight
+at Worcester was over. So the Americans discovered when they had
+captured Manila. Our occupation of Bloemfontein
+by no means made us instant masters of the whole Free State, and our
+presence in Pretoria we had yet to learn was not at all the same thing
+as the undisputed possession of the entire Transvaal. Indeed, the
+period that actually interposed between <span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>(p. 170)</span> the two, proved the
+longest "fortnight" ever recorded.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Lord Milner's explanation.</span>
+
+<p>How that came about, however, is made quite clear by the following
+extract from the High Commissioner's despatches:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>If it had been possible for us to screen those portions of the
+     conquered territory, which were fast returning to peaceful
+     pursuits, from the incursions of the enemy still in the field, a
+     great deal of what is now most deplorable in the condition of
+     South Africa would never have been experienced. The vast extent
+     of the country, the necessity of concentrating our forces for the
+     long advance, first to Pretoria and then to Koomati Poort,
+     resulted in the country already occupied being left open to
+     raids, constantly growing in audacity, and fed by small
+     successes, on the part of a few bold and skilful guerilla leaders
+     who had nailed their colours to the mast.</p>
+
+<p>The reappearance of these disturbers of the peace, first in the
+     south-east of the Orange River Colony, then in the south-west of
+     the Transvaal, and finally in every portion of the conquered
+     territory, placed those of the inhabitants who wanted to settle
+     down in a position of great difficulty. Instead of being made
+     prisoners of war, they had been allowed to remain on their farms
+     on taking the oath of neutrality, and many of them were really
+     anxious to keep it. But they had not the strength of mind, nor
+     from want of education, a sufficient appreciation of the
+     sacredness of the obligation which they had undertaken, to resist
+     the pressure of their old companions in arms when these
+     reappeared among them appealing to their patriotism and to their
+     fears. In a few weeks or months the very men whom we had spared
+     and treated with exceptional leniency were up in arms again,
+     justifying their breach of faith in many cases by the
+     extraordinary argument that we had not preserved them from the
+     temptation to commit it.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Boer way of saying "Bosh".</span>
+
+<p>Early in the long halt near Pretoria, at Silverton Camp, the Guards'
+Brigade was formally assembled to hear read a telegram from H.R.H. The
+Prince of Wales, congratulating them on the practical termination of
+the war; whereupon as though <span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>(p. 171)</span> by positive prearrangement the
+Boers plumped a protesting shell in startlingly close proximity to
+where our cheering ranks not long before had stood. It was the Boer
+way of saying "bosh" to our ill-timed boast that the war was over.</p>
+
+<p>Botha and his irreconcilables were at this time occupying a formidable
+position, with a frontage of fifteen miles, near Pienaar's Poort,
+where the Delagoa line runs through a gap in the hills, fifteen miles
+east of Pretoria; and this position Lord Roberts found it essential to
+attack with 17,000 men and seventy guns on Monday, June 11th, that is
+just a week after the neighbouring capital had surrendered. The
+fighting extended over three days; French attacking on our left,
+Hamilton on our right, and Pole Carew in the centre keenly watching
+the development of these flanking movements. In the course of this
+stubborn contest the invisible Boers did for one brief while become
+visible, as they galloped into the open in hope of capturing the Q
+Battery, which had already won for itself renown by redeeming Sanna's
+Post from complete disaster. Then it was Hamilton ordered the
+memorable cavalry charge of the 12th Lancers, which saved the guns,
+and scattered the Boers, but cost us the life of its gallant and
+God-fearing Colonel Lord Airlie, who before the war greatly helped me
+in my work at Aldershot. The death of such a man made the battle of
+Diamond Hill a mournfully memorable one; for Lord Airlie combined in
+his own martial character the hardness of the diamond with its
+lustrous pureness; and his last words just before the fatal bullet
+pierced his heart, were said to be a characteristic rebuke <span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>(p. 172)</span>
+of an excited and perhaps profane sergeant: "Pray, moderate your
+language!" Wholesome advice, none too often given, and much too seldom
+heeded!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">News from a far Country.</span>
+
+<p>As the inevitable result of this further fighting, the men who had
+fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered
+just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other
+than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they,
+"and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were
+wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single
+fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets
+reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by
+the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone
+hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of
+nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in
+South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that
+it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and
+the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing,
+even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Further fighting.</span>
+
+<p>Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient
+supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance
+possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers
+Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th,
+the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>(p. 173)</span> Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly
+despatched a strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west
+of Pretoria under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung
+himself like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at
+Nitral's Nek, and there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July
+16th, Botha himself once more attacked our forces, but was again
+driven off by Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the
+29th of General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the
+Orange River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a
+very formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward
+move.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Touch not, taste not, handle not.</span>
+
+<p>On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to
+Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on
+Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest
+admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands
+of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the
+occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of
+their belongings touched, except as the result of a perfectly
+voluntary sale and purchase. Indeed, the identic day we left, turkeys,
+geese, ducks, and other "small deer," were still wandering round their
+native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had
+declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained
+from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties.
+Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a
+hostile <span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>(p. 174)</span> peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when
+maintained in places where unmistakable treachery had been practised
+as in this identic neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>At Wolmaran's pleasant country house, close beside our camp, the white
+flag flew, and there our general took up his abode. Some members of
+this well-known family were still out on commando, but those that
+remained at home eagerly surrendered all arms, were profuse in
+professions of friendliness, and were duly pledged to formal
+neutrality. But a recent Transvaal law had reduced the wages of all
+Kaffirs from about twenty shillings to a uniform five shillings a
+week, and Wolmaran's unpaid or ill-paid negroes revenged themselves by
+revealing their master's secrets. Partly as the result of hints thus
+obtained, we found hidden in his garden over thirty rifles, the barrel
+of a Maxim gun, and about £10,000 in gold&mdash;presumably Government
+money; also a splendid supply of provisions was discovered&mdash;presumably
+Government stores; and in the family cemetery there was dug up a
+quantity of dynamite. The gentleman who thus gave up his arms, and in
+this fashion kept his oath, at once became our prisoner, but his house
+and its contents remained untouched. And when we left, some of his
+barndoor fowls were still there to see us off!</p>
+
+<p>This is a notable but typical illustration of the way in which, with
+unwise leniency, surrendered burghers were allowed access to our
+camps, and recompensed our reliance on their honour by revealing our
+secrets to our foes, and, when they dared, unearthing their buried
+arms to level them once more at our too confiding troops.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>(p. 175)</span> More treachery and still more.</span>
+
+<p>A march of fifteen or eighteen miles brought us to Bronkhorst Spruit,
+the scene of a dastardly massacre in December 1880, of the men of the
+Connaught Rangers, who, ere yet there was any declaration of war, were
+marching with their wives and children from Lydenburg to Pretoria. I
+stood bareheaded beside one of the mounds that hide their bones, close
+to the roadside where they fell, and bethought me of the strange
+Providence through which, nearly twenty years after the event, there
+was now marching past those very graves a vast avenging army on its
+way to those same mountain fastnesses whence our murdered comrades of
+the long ago set out on their fatal journey. Sowing and reaping are
+often far apart; but there is no sundering them!</p>
+
+<p>At our mess dinner that same evening the conversation turned to the
+kindred, but still more shameful deed recently devised, though happily
+in vain, at Johannesburg. There Cordua had indeed been out-Corduad by
+a conspiracy to assassinate in cold blood all the military officers
+attending some sports about to be held under military patronage at the
+racecourse. About eighty of the conspirators were captured in the very
+act of completing their plans. Nearly three hundred more were said to
+be implicated, and being chiefly of foreign extraction were quietly
+sent out of the country. It was the biggest thing in plots, and the
+wildest, that recent years have seen outside Russia.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The root of the matter.</span>
+
+<p>One often wonders how it comes to pass that people so demonstratively
+religious prove in so many cases <span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>(p. 176)</span> conspicuously devoid of
+truth and honour and common honesty; but various explanations, each
+setting forth some partial contributory cause, may easily be
+conceived.</p>
+
+<p>As among Britons, so among Boers, there are, as a matter of course,
+varying degrees of loyalty to the moral law, and of sincerity in
+religious profession. It is therefore manifestly unfair to condemn a
+whole people because of individual immoralities. The outrageous deeds
+just described may well have been in large part the work of "lewd
+fellows of the baser sort," a sort of which the Transvaal has
+unfortunately no monopoly, and of which the better type of Boer scorns
+to become the apologist. Moreover, Johannesburg drew to itself with a
+rush a huge number not only of honourable adventurers, but also of
+wastrels, representing every class and clime under heaven. Many of
+these were commandeered or volunteered for service on the Boer side
+when war broke out, and by their lawlessnesses proved almost as great
+a terror to their friends as to their foes. Young Cordua was of
+foreign birth, and there were few genuine Boers among the Johannesburg
+conspirators; but it was the Transvaal they blindly sought to serve;
+and so on the shoulders of the whole Transvaal community is laid, none
+too justly, the entire blame for such mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>Then too, however mistakenly, I cannot but think the peculiar type of
+piety cherished by the Boers is largely responsible for the moral
+obliquity of which, justly or unjustly, I heard complaints continually
+from those who <span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>(p. 177)</span> professed to know them well. These sons of
+the Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting
+zeal of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock,
+and with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and
+narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not
+remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect,
+and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to take liberties
+with the law of the Lord. They deem themselves a chosen race to whom a
+new Canaan has been divinely given, and in defence of whom Jehovah
+Himself is bound to fight. At the commencement of the campaign it was
+common talk that "they had commandeered the Almighty." Their piety and
+practice are largely modelled on Old Testament lines. They used God's
+name and quoted Scripture <span class="italic">ad nauseam</span> even in State correspondence.
+Their President was also their High Priest; yet in business
+transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings
+with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their
+own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The
+bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a
+Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me
+that proverb and practice too commonly keep company.</p>
+
+<p>It is a perilous thing for men or nations to deem themselves in any
+exclusive sense Heaven's favourites. Such conceptions do not minister
+to heavenly-mindedness, or beget lives of ethic beauty. The ancient
+Hebrews, blinded by this very belief, became "worse than the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>(p. 178)</span>
+heathen," and herein lies a solemn warning alike for the beaten Boer
+and the boastful Briton! There is no true religion where there is no
+all round righteousness; and wheresoever that is wanting the wrath of
+God cannot but abide.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A tight fit.</span>
+
+<p>Our next day's march ended just as a heavy thunderstorm with still
+heavier rain broke upon us; so the Grenadier officers pitched their
+mess as close as they could get to the sheltering wall of a decidedly
+stenchful Kaffir cottage. There we stood in the drenching wet and ate
+our evening meal, which was lunch and dinner in one. In that
+one-roomed cottage, with a smoking fire on the floor and a heap of
+mealie corn-cobs in the corner, there slept that night two Kaffir men,
+one Kaffir woman, four Kaffir piccaninnies, four West Australian
+officers, one officer of the Guards on the corn-cobs, a quantity of
+live poultry, and a dead goat; its sleep, of course, being that from
+which there is no awaking. That they were not all stifled before
+morning is astonishing, but the fact remains that the goat alone
+failed to greet the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly every man in the camp was that night soaked to the skin, and
+for once the Guards made no attempt to sing at or to sing down the
+storm. As they apologetically explained at breakfast time, they were
+really "too down on their luck" to try. But with my usual good fortune
+I managed to pass the night absolutely dry, and that too without
+borrowing a corner of that horrid Kaffir cottage. The next night found
+us at Brugspruit, close to a colliery, where we stayed a considerable
+while, and managed to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>(p. 179)</span> house ourselves in comparative
+comfort, that gradually became near akin to luxury. Here the junior
+officers courteously assisted me to shovel up an earthen shelter, with
+a sheet of corrugated iron for a roof, and thus protected I envied no
+millionaire his marble halls, though my blankets were sometimes wet
+with evening dew, and the ground white with morning frost.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Obstructives on the Rail.</span>
+
+<p>During the long halt of the Grenadiers at Brugspruit, the Scots Guards
+remained at Balmoral, moving thence to Middelburg, and one of the
+Coldstream battalions was detailed to guard the Oliphant River,
+station, and bridge, which I crossed when on my way to Middelburg to
+conduct a Sunday parade service there; but at the river station the
+train tarried too brief a while and the battalion was too completely
+hidden on the far side of a rough kopje to permit my gaining even a
+passing glance of their camp. In South Africa full often the so-called
+sheep and their appointed shepherd found themselves thus unwittingly
+forbidden to see each others' face.</p>
+
+<p>A little later on we found the line in possession, not of the Boers,
+but of a big drove of horses which seemed bent on proving that they
+could outdo even the Boers themselves in the rapidity of their retreat
+before an advancing foe. Mile after mile they galloped, but mile after
+mile they kept to the track, just in front of our engine, which
+whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger.
+Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish
+to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But
+as we slowed our <span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>(p. 180)</span> pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and
+when once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer
+desperation our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of
+breath, while he pelted the nearest of the drove with stones, and
+sought to scare it with flourishes of his official cap. But that horse
+behaved like a dull-headed ass, and cared no more for the waving of
+official caps than for the wild screaming of our steam whistle. We
+were losing time horribly fast because our pace was thus made so
+horribly slow. Finally a pilot engine came down from Middelburg to
+ascertain what had become of our long belated train, and this unlooked
+for movement from the rear fortunately proved too much for the nerves
+of even such determined obstructionists. It scared them as effectually
+as a flanking movement scared the Boers. They broke in terror from the
+line and, Boerlike, vanished.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Middelburg and the Doppers.</span>
+
+<p>Middelburg we found to be a thriving village, which will probably grow
+into an important town when the mineral wealth of the district is in
+due time developed. At present the principal building is as usual the
+Dutch Reformed Church, the pastor of which had forsaken the female
+portion of his flock to follow the fortunes of the fighting section.
+There are also two good-sized Dopper churches, which habitually remain
+void and empty all the year round, except on one Sunday in each
+quarter, when the farmer folk come from near and far to hold a fair,
+and to celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper&mdash;"The night meal,"
+as they appropriately call it. These are the four great <span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>(p. 181)</span>
+events of the Dopper year, and of this tiny city's business life.</p>
+
+<p>The Dopper is the ultra Boer of South Africa, the Puritan of Puritans,
+the Covenanter of Covenanters, whose religious creed and conduct are
+compacted of manifold rigidities, and who would deem it as
+unpardonable a sin to shave off his beard, as it would have been for
+an early Methodist preacher to wear one. Formerly Doppers and
+Methodists both piously combed their hair over their foreheads, and
+clipped it in a straight line just above the eyebrows. But alas! in
+this as in many other directions, Methodists and Doppers have alike
+become "subject to vanity." In these degenerate days "the fringe" has
+flitted from the masculine to the feminine brow; and now that it is
+"crinkled" no longer claims to be a badge of superior sanctity. In one
+of these Dopper churches the Rev. W. Frost long conducted Wesleyan
+services, the crowding troops having made our own church far too
+small.</p>
+
+<p>The other, on the occasion of my first visit, was occupied by Canon
+Knox Little, who there conducted the Anglican parade service, and
+preached with great fervour from the very pulpit whence, some months
+before, President Kruger had delivered a discourse presumably of a
+decidedly different type. But the Wesleyan church immediately
+adjoining the camping ground of the 2nd Coldstream battalion, which I
+had the privilege that day of reopening, was at a later period used
+for a brief while by the Roman Catholic chaplains. War is a strange
+revolutionist if not always a reformer.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>(p. 182)</span> August Bank Holiday.</span>
+
+<p>The next day, which was August Bank Holiday, I returned in safety to
+Brugspruit, but only to discover that in those parts even railway
+travelling had become a thing of deadly peril. I there saw two trains
+just arrived from Pretoria, the trucks filled with remount horses and
+cavalry men on their way to join General French's force. The first
+engine bore three bullet holes in its encasing water tank, holes which
+the driver had hastily plugged with wood, so preventing the loss of
+all his water and the fatal stoppage of the train. Several of the
+trucks were riddled with bullet-holes, and in one I saw a dead horse,
+shot, lying under the feet of its comrades; while in another truck,
+splashed with great clots of blood, similarly lay yet another horse
+almost dead. Several more were wounded but still remained upon their
+feet, and still had before them a journey of many miles ere their
+wounds could receive attention, or the living be severed from the
+dead. For horses this has been a specially fagging and fatal war, and
+for them there are no well-earned medals!</p>
+
+<p>The second engine bore kindred bullet holes in its water tank. A shot
+had smashed the glass in the window of the break-van in which some
+officers were travelling; and in one of the trucks I was shown a hole
+in the thick timber made by a bullet, which, after passing through two
+inches of wood, had pierced a lancer's breast and killed him, besides
+shattering the wrist of yet another lancer. Those trains had just been
+fired at by a mounted Boer patrol which had caught our men literally
+napping. Most of them were lying fast asleep in the bottom of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>(p. 183)</span> trucks, with their unloaded carbines beside or under them,
+so that not a solitary reply shot was fired as the trains sped past
+the point of peril.</p>
+
+<p>After repeated disasters of this kind had occurred, orders were issued
+forbidding men to travel in such careless and unguarded fashion; while
+all journeying that was not indispensible was peremptorily stopped! My
+own contemplated visit to Pretoria next day was consequently postponed
+till there came some more urgent call or some more convenient season.</p>
+
+<p>On this part of the line the troops had often to be their own stokers
+and drivers, with the result that sniping Boers were not the only
+peril a passenger had to fear. From Dalmanutha in those delightsome
+days a train was due to start as usual with one engine behind and one
+in front. The driver of the leading engine blew his whistle and opened
+his regulator. The driver of the back engine did the same, but somehow
+the train refused to move. It was supposed the breaks were on, but it
+was presently discovered that the rear engine had reversed its gear,
+and there had thus commenced a tug of war&mdash;the one engine pulling its
+hardest against the other and neither winning a prize. In those days
+railway life became rich in comedies and tragedies, especially the
+latter, whereof let one further illustration of much later date, as
+described by Mr Burgess, suffice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Blowing up trains.</span>
+
+<p>At Heidelberg on Thursday, March 7th, at ten o'clock in the morning
+there was a loud report as of a gun firing from one of the forts; but
+it was soon known that it was an explosion of dynamite on the line
+about a mile <span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>(p. 184)</span> and a half from the railway station. The Boers
+had evidently placed dynamite under the metals, and it is supposed
+that while they were doing this, a number of them came down and
+engaged the outposts, and that was the firing that was heard in the
+town. A flat trolley with a European ganger and seven coolies and
+natives went over the first mine without exploding it; but on reaching
+the second, about a mile beyond, an explosion took place. The ganger
+after being blown fifty feet, escaped most miraculously with only a
+few bruises. Sad to relate three Indians were blown to pieces so as
+hardly to be recognised, and two others were seriously hurt.
+Immediately after this first explosion, a construction train left the
+Heidelberg railway station, and exploded the mine which the trolley
+had failed to explode; but fortunately very little damage was done as
+they had taken the precaution to place a truck in front of the engine.
+The second explosion occurred about a mile from the station and was
+plainly visible to those standing on the platform.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A peculiar Mothers' Meeting.</span>
+
+<p>On setting out a second time from Brugspruit for Middleburg to conduct
+the Sunday services there, I was astonished to find the train
+consisted of about a dozen trucks, some open, some closed, but all
+filled to overflowing with Dutch women and Dutch children of every
+sort and size. Flags were fluttering from almost every truck, no khaki
+man carrying arms was suffered to travel by that train, and when the
+Roman Catholic chaplain and myself entered the break-van we seemed to
+be taking charge of a gigantic <span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>(p. 185)</span> Mothers' Meeting out for a
+holiday, babies and all, or else to be escorting a big Sunday School
+to "Happy Hampstead" for its annual treat. It was the second large
+consignment of the sort which General Botha had consented to receive,
+and of which we were anxious to be rid. They were some of the wives
+and offspring of his fighting men, and were in most cases foodless,
+friendless, dependent for their daily bread on British bounty. It was
+therefore more fitting their own folk should feed them, as they were
+abundantly able and willing to do. Moreover, among them were women who
+had acted as spies, while others had hidden arms in their homes, so
+that to us they had become a serious peril, as well as a serious
+expense. We were consequently glad to be quit of them, and sincerely
+regretted that the capture of Barberton later on made us again their
+custodians.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Aggressive Ladies.</span>
+
+<p>Our first parade service next morning was held in the Wesleyan church,
+and was followed by open-air worship in the outlying encampment of the
+Scots Guards. The evening voluntary service was delightfully hearty
+and delightfully well attended. But most of the afternoon was spent at
+the railway station waiting for and watching the arrival of yet
+another train load of women and children on their way to realms
+beyond! Seven-and-twenty truck loads presently reached Middelburg in
+most defiant mood, for they waved their home-made Transvaal flags in
+our faces; they had bedecked themselves with Transvaal ribbons and
+Transvaal rosettes almost from head to foot. They shaded their faces
+with parasols in which the four Transvaal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>(p. 186)</span> colours were
+combined; and they sang with every possible variety of discordancy
+Transvaal hymns, especially the Transvaal national anthem. But unless
+these gentle ladies can cook and stitch vastly better than they seemed
+able to sing, their husbands and brothers are much to be pitied.</p>
+
+<p>Their patriotism was so pronounced and aggressive that they literally
+spat at the soldiers, and assured them that no money of theirs would
+ever suffice to purchase the paltriest flag they carried. The seeds of
+ill-will and hate for all things British had been planted in the mind
+and heart of almost every Boer child long before the war began, but
+those seeds ripened rapidly, and the reaping bids fair to be
+prolonged.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Dutch Deacon's Testimony.</span>
+
+<p>Before this weary conflict came to a close, nearly every Boer family
+was gathered in from the perils and privations of the war-wasted
+veldt; and so, while nearly 30,000 burghers were detained as prisoners
+of war at various points across the sea, their wives and children, to
+the number of over 100,000, were tenderly cared for in English laagers
+all along the line of rails or close to conveniently situated towns.
+Slanderous statements have been made as to the treatment meted out to
+these unfortunates, for which my visits revealed no warrant; but of
+more value is the testimony of one of their own church officials, who
+carefully inspected the women's refuge camp at Port Elizabeth, and
+reported the result to the local Intelligence Department. This deacon
+of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr T. J. Ferreira, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>(p. 187)</span> I came down here on hearing of the reports at
+     Steytlerville of the bad treatment the women exiles are receiving
+     from the military. I was determined to find out the truth, and
+     publish same in the Dutch and English papers. I stayed in the
+     camp all day, and dined with the exiles. The food was
+     excellent&mdash;I had roast lamb, soup, potatoes, bread, coffee, and
+     biscuits. All was well cooked and perfectly satisfactory; the
+     soup and meat were especially well cooked. The women and children
+     are happy, have no complaints, and are quite content to stay
+     where they are until they can return to their homes. I shall
+     return to Steytlerville and let everybody know how humane the
+     treatment is. The statement that the women were ragged and
+     barefooted and had to bathe within sight of the military is a
+     shameful falsehood.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A German Officer's Testimony.</span>
+
+<p>On August the 24th General Pole Carew with the Guards' Brigade
+occupied Belfast, and a few days later Roberts and Buller combined to
+drive Botha from the last position along the Delagoa Line that he made
+any serious attempt to defend; and among those taken prisoners by us
+at Dalmanutha was a German officer, who in due time was sent to
+Ceylon, and there acquired enough knowledge of English to express in
+it his views concerning the Boers he served, and the British he
+opposed. He says among other things that he was wounded five times and
+received no pay for all his pains. He declares concerning the Boers
+that "they often ran away from commando and kept quiet, and said to
+the English that they would not fight any more; but when the district
+was pacified they took up arms again and looted. They don't know
+anything about word of honour or oath. They put white flags upon their
+houses, and fired in the neighbourhood of them. The English were far
+too lenient at the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>(p. 188)</span> beginning, and therefore they are now at
+the opposite extreme.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have seen the flourishing Natal, how it was laid waste by
+the Boers. This looting instinct in them is far stronger than the
+fighting one. There were also lots of Boers who were praying the whole
+day instead of fighting; and their officers were perhaps the best
+prayers and preachers, but certainly the worst fighters; whereas I
+must confess that the English, although they were headed by very bad
+generals, very often behaved like good soldiers and finally defeated
+the greatest difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"The English infantry is splendidly brave and rather skilful; they are
+good shots too. Tommy Atkins is a wonderful, merry, good-hearted chap,
+always full of fun and good spirits, and he behaves very kind towards
+the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>"When I was captured, an English colonel who was rather haughty, asked
+me which English general I thought the best; whereupon I instantly
+answered 'Tommy Atkins!'"</p>
+
+<p>That clever German critic merely put an old long ago discovered truth
+in new form! "If I blundered," said Wellington, "I could always rely
+on my soldiers to pull me through." General Pole Carew when, near the
+close of the war, he was presented with a sword of honour by my native
+city, Truro, repeated the remark of a distinguished continental
+soldier attached to his division, who said after seeing British
+soldiers marching bootless and fighting foodless, he placed the
+British army "foremost <span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>(p. 189)</span> among European armies." So say they
+all! The German prisoner in Ceylon spoke words of truth and soberness
+when he said our private soldier is in some respects our best general.</p>
+
+<p>General Tommy Atkins I salute you! You are a credit to your country!<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>(p. 190)</span> CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">THROUGH HELVETIA</p>
+
+
+<span class="sidenote">The fighting near Belfast.</span>
+
+<p>On August 24th the tiny little town of Belfast was reached by General
+Pole Carew's division, including the Guards' Brigade; but though our
+advent was unopposed, there was heavy fighting on our right, where
+General Buller, newly arrived from Natal, had the day before
+approached the immensely strong Boer position at Bergendal. There the
+Johannesburg police, the most valorous of all the burgher forces, made
+their last heroic stand three days later, and were so completely wiped
+out, that Kruger is reported to have been moved to tears when the
+tidings reached him. It was the last stand the Boer still had nerve
+enough to make, and after Belfast their continuous retreat quickened
+into almost a rout. It was on Sunday, the 26th, the Guards moved out
+to take part in the general assault, and waited for hours behind the
+shelter of Monument Hill while General French developed his flanking
+movement on the left. Boer bullets fell freely among us while thus
+tarrying, and compelled our field hospital to retire further down the
+slope to a position of comparative safety. Late that afternoon the
+Guards marched over the brow to face what bade fair to be another
+serious Sunday battle, yet without any slightest sign of flinching.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>(p. 191)</span> "How dear is life to all men," said dying Nelson. It may be
+so; but these men and their officers from first to last, when duty
+called, seemed never to count their lives dear unto them. A few
+casualties, caused by chance bullets, occurred among them before the
+day closed, but scarcely so much as a solitary Boer was seen by the
+clearest sighted of them. Once again outflanked, "the brother" once
+again had fled, and in the deepening darkness we groped our way to our
+next camping ground.</p>
+
+<p>In our Napoleonic wars the favourite command alike on land and sea
+was, "Engage the enemy more closely." Each fleet or army kept well in
+sight of its antagonist, and the fighting was often at such close
+quarters that musket muzzle touched musket muzzle; but at Belfast Lord
+Roberts' front was thirty miles in width, and our generals could only
+guess where their foemen hid by watching for the fire-flash of their
+long range guns. In offensive warfare the visible contends with the
+invisible, and it is good generalship that conquers it. At Albuera
+Soult asserted there was no beating British troops in spite of their
+generals. But Lord Roberts' generalship seems never to have been at
+fault, however remote the foe, and thanks thereto Belfast proved to be
+about the last big fight of the whole campaign.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Feeding under fire.</span>
+
+<p>Early next morning we were vigorously shelled by the still defiant
+Boers, but from the, for them, fairly safe distance of nearly five
+miles. Just as the Grenadier officers had finished their breakfast and
+retired a few yards further afield to get just beyond the reach of
+those impressive salutations, a shell <span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>(p. 192)</span> plumped down precisely
+where we had been sitting. It made its mark, though fortunately only
+on the bare bosom of mother earth; but later on in the same day, while
+we were finishing lunch, another shrapnel burst, almost over our
+heads, so badly injured a doctor's horse tethered close by that it had
+to be killed, and compelled another somewhat rapid retirement on our
+part to the far side of a neighbouring bog. In war time all our feasts
+are movable!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A German Doctor's Confession.</span>
+
+<p>Before leaving Belfast I called on a German doctor who had been in
+charge of a Boer military hospital planted in that hamlet, and who
+told me that for twelve months he had been in the compulsory employ of
+the Transvaal Government. Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had
+accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly
+sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received
+no payment for his services except in promissory notes&mdash;which were
+worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been
+landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet;
+as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had
+seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering instead
+the bandolier and rifle. Thus were fighting men and mercenaries
+smuggled through Portuguese territory to the Boer fighting lines; and
+in this as in many other ways was that red cross abused. He wastes his
+time who tries to teach the Boers some new trick. In this war they
+have amply proved that in that matter they have nought to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>(p. 193)</span>
+learn, except the unwisdom of it all, and the sureness of the
+retribution it involves. Even in battle and battle times clean hands
+are best.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Friends in need are friends indeed.</span>
+
+<p>On leaving the neighbourhood of Belfast we soon found ourselves
+marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region
+of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any
+foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in
+all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a
+touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with fleecy
+mist, resembled not remotely the snow-clad Alps. Indeed, during that
+whole week the toils and travels of the Guards brought to the mind of
+many the familiar story of Hannibal and his vast army crossing the
+Alps; only the Carthaginian general had no heavy guns and long lines
+of ammunition waggons to add to his already enormous difficulties; his
+men had little to carry on their broad backs compared with what a
+modern Guardsman has to shoulder; nor did Hannibal take with him a
+small army corps of newspaper correspondents to chronicle all the
+petty disasters and delays met with by the way. Few
+commanders-in-chief are lovers of correspondents, whether of the
+professional or of the private type. Tell-tale tongues and pens may
+perchance do more mischief than machine guns and mausers!</p>
+
+<p>At the latter end of the week our men had to climb over what seemed to
+be the backbone of that terrific region, with results almost
+disastrous to our long train of transport waggons. Botha, whose
+retreat towards <span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>(p. 194)</span> Lydenberg our flanking movement had
+apparently prevented, we failed to find; so after fighting a mild
+rear-guard action, we scarce knew with whom, we encamped that night
+for the first and last time side by side with Buller's column.</p>
+
+<p>The major part, however, of the Grenadier battalion remained till next
+morning far away in the rear to guard our huge convoy while climbing
+up and climbing down the perilous ridge just referred to, with the
+result that some of us forming the advanced party found ourselves
+without food or shelter. Yet the soldierly courtesy which has so often
+hastened to my help during this campaign did not fail in this new hour
+of need. A sergeant-major of the bearer company most graciously lent
+me his own overcoat, the night being bitterly cold; the officers of
+the Scots Guards not only invited me to dine with them, but one of
+them supplied me with a rug, whilst another pressed on me the loan of
+his mackintosh "to keep off the dew," and thus enwrapped I lay once
+more on the bare ground, well sheltered behind a sheet of corrugated
+iron, which I fortunately found stuck on end as though put there by
+some unknown Boer benefactor for my special benefit. In fashion thus
+lordly were all my wants continually supplied. The wild wind that
+night blew away a second sheet of iron that another young officer,
+with almost filial thoughtfulness, placed over me after I had gone to
+rest, but the original sheet maintained its perpendicular position,
+and by its welcome protection supplied me with a fresh illustration of
+the familiar saying, "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east
+wind."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>(p. 195)</span> An Invisible Sniper's Triumph.</span>
+
+<p>Thus toiling we reached at last a plateau about 5000 feet above sea
+level, from which we looked down into the famous Waterfall Gorge, a
+sheer descent of 1000 feet. Down into it there drops from Waterval
+Boven the cogwheel section of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and in it there
+nestles a Swiss-like village, with hotel and hospital and railway
+workshops. As at Abraham's Kraal we captured the President's silk hat
+but let the President's head escape, so here we captured the
+President's professional cook, but the day before we arrived the
+President's private railway car,&mdash;his ever-shifting capital,&mdash;had
+eluded our pursuit, together with the President himself and the golden
+capital, in the shape of abounding coin he carried with him. The
+tidings proved to us a feast of Tantallus, so near and yet so far! How
+our men sighed for a sight of that car, and for the fingering of that
+coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of
+Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved
+distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in
+the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this day have
+never been disgorged.</p>
+
+<p>From even descending into that gorge the whole brigade of Guards was
+held back for four-and-twenty hours by a solitary invisible sniper,
+hidden, no one could find out where, in some secure crevice of the
+opposite cliff. One of our mounted officers riding down to take
+possession of the village was seriously wounded; and some of the
+scouts already there were compelled <span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>(p. 196)</span> through the same course
+to keep under close shelter. So the naval guns, the field guns, and
+the pom-poms were each in turn called to the rescue, and gaily rained
+shot and shell for hours on every hump and hollow of that opposite
+cliff, but all in vain; for after each thunderous discharge on our
+side, there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on
+the other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited
+to fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion,
+till it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the
+gorge could possibly have failed to receive its own particular bullet;
+but</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "What gave rise to no little surprise,<br>
+  Nobody seemed one farthing the worse!"</p>
+
+<p>Just as the sun set the last sound we heard was the parting "ping" of
+Brother Invisible. So no man might descend into the depths that night,
+hotel or no hotel! Even at midnight we were startled out of our sleep
+by the quite unexpected boom of our big guns, which had, of course
+during daylight, been trained on a farmhouse lying far back from the
+precipice opposite to us, and were thus fired in the dead of night
+under the impression that the sniper, and perhaps his friends, were
+peacefully slumbering there. If so, the chances are he sniped no more.
+Next day at noon we began to clamber down to the level of the railway
+line, and found ourselves in undisturbed possession, after so
+prolonged and costly a bombardment called forth by a single, stubborn
+mauser.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">"He sets the mournful prisoners free."</span>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the eighteen hundred English prisoners who <span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>(p. 197)</span> had so
+long been kept in durance vile at Nooitgedacht, the next station on
+the rail to Portuguese Africa, received their unconditional release,
+with the exception of a few officers, still retained as hostages; and
+all the afternoon, indeed far on into the night, these men came
+straggling, now in small groups and now in large, into our expectant
+and excited camp. They told us of the crowds of disconsolate Boers,
+some by road, some by rail, who had passed their prison enclosure in
+precipitate retreat, bearing waggon loads of killed or wounded with
+them. Among them were men of almost all nationalities, including a few
+surviving members of the late Johannesburg police, who declared that
+during that one week they had lost no less than one hundred and
+fifteen of their own special comrades.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoners also informed us that the Boer officer who dismissed
+them expressed the belief that in a few days more Boer and Briton
+would again be friends&mdash;an expectation we were slow to share, however
+eager we might be to see this miracle of miracles actually wrought. In
+the very midst of the battle of the Baltic, Nelson sent a letter to
+the Danish Prince Regent, with whom he was then fighting, and
+addressed it thus: "To the Danes, the Brothers of Englishmen." Within
+little more than half a century from that date the daughter of the
+Danish throne became heir to the Queenship of England's throne; and
+our Laureate rightly voiced the whole nation's feeling when to that
+fair bride he said:</p>
+
+<p class="poem center">"We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>(p. 198)</span> When Nelson penned that strange address amid the flash and
+fire of actual battle, it was with the true insight of a seer. The
+furious foes of his day are the fast friends of ours, and by the end
+of another half-century a similar transformation may be wrought in the
+present relationship between Boer and Briton, who are quite as near
+akin as Dane and Englishman. But to lightly talk of such foes becoming
+friends "in a few days" is to misread the meaning and measure of a
+controversy that is more than a century old. Between victors and
+vanquished, both of so dogged a type, it requires more than a mere
+treaty of peace to beget goodwill.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">More Boer Slimness.</span>
+
+<p>Some of these now released prisoners were among the very first to be
+captured, and so had spent many weary weeks in the Waterval Prison
+near Pretoria, and were among those who had been decoyed away to these
+remote and seemingly unassailable mountain fastnesses. They had thus
+been in bonds altogether ten interminable months. Multiplied hardships
+had during that period necessarily been theirs, and others for which
+there was no real need or excuse; but they frankly confessed that as a
+whole their treatment by the Boers, though leaving much to be desired,
+had seldom been hard or vindictive.</p>
+
+<p>There were others of these prisoners, however, who were sick or
+wounded, and therefore were quite unable to climb from the open door
+of their prison to our lofty camp; so to fetch these I saw seven
+ambulance waggons made ready to set out with the usual complement of
+medical orderlies and doctors. These I seriously thought <span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>(p. 199)</span> of
+accompanying on their errand of mercy, but was mercifully hindered.
+Those red cross waggons we saw no more for ever. The Boers were said
+to be short of waggons, and asserted that in some way some of our men
+had done them recent wrong which they wished to avenge. But whatever
+the supposed provocation or pretext, it was in violation of all the
+recognised usages of war that those waggons were captured and kept. It
+was no less an outrage to make prisoners of doctors and orderlies
+arriving on such an errand. No protests on their part or pleadings for
+speedy return to duty prevailed. They were compelled to accompany or
+precede the Boers in their flight to Delagoa Bay, from thence were
+shipped to Durban, and after long delay rejoined the Brigade on its
+return to Pretoria. For such high-handed proceedings the Transvaal
+Government clearly cannot be held responsible, for at that time it had
+ceased to exist, and more than ever the head of each commando had
+become a law unto himself. It would be false to say that a fine sense
+of honour did not anywhere exist in the now defunct Republic, but it
+is perfectly fair to assert that on the warpath our troops were
+compelled to tread it was not often found. Yet in every department of
+life he that contendeth for the mastery is never permanently crowned
+unless he contend lawfully.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Boer Hospital.</span>
+
+<p>The prettily situated and well appointed hospital at Waterval Onder
+was originally erected for the use of men employed on the railway, but
+for months prior to the arrival of the British troops had been in
+possession <span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>(p. 200)</span> of the Boer Government, and was full of sick and
+wounded burghers, with whom I had many an interesting chat and by whom
+I was assured that though we might think it strange they still had
+hope of ultimate success. Among the rest was a German baron, well
+trained of course, as all Germans are, for war, who on the outbreak of
+hostilities had consented at Johannesburg to be commandeered, burgher
+or no burgher, to fight the battles of the Boers, in the justice of
+whose cause he avowed himself a firm believer. He therefore became an
+artillery officer in the service of the Transvaal, and while so
+employed had been badly hit by the British artillery, with the result
+that his right arm was blown off, his left arm horribly shattered, and
+two shrapnel bullets planted in his breast. Yet seldom has extreme
+suffering been borne in more heroic fashion than by him, and he
+actually told me, in tones of admiration, that the British artillery
+practice was really "beautiful." On such a point he should surely be a
+competent judge seeing that he was himself a professor of the art, and
+had long stood not behind but in front of our guns, which is precisely
+where all critics ought to be planted. Their criticisms would then be
+something worth.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Foreign Mercenaries.</span>
+
+<p>The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the
+nations of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been
+encouraged to settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal
+Government long before the war <span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>(p. 201)</span> began&mdash;on the railway, at
+the dynamite works, in the mines; and so were all ready for the rifle
+the moment the rifle was ready for them. At once they formed
+themselves into vigorous commandoes, according to their various
+nationalities,&mdash;Scandinavian, Hollander, French, and German. Even
+after the war began these foreign commandoes were largely recruited
+from Europe; French and German steamers landed parties of volunteers
+for the burgher forces nearly every week at Lorenço Marques. The
+French steamer <span class="italic">Gironde</span> brought an unusually large contingent, a
+motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion of
+suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous
+of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As
+far back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish
+Brigade assisting the French to fight against the English, and with
+such fiery courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which
+had robbed him of such excellent fighting material. But at the same
+time there was about them so much of reckless folly that their
+departure from the Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight
+of the wild geese." New broods of these same wild geese found their
+way to the Transvaal, and there made for themselves a name, not as
+resistless fighters, but as irrestrainable looters. These men linked
+to the bywoners, or squatters, the penniless Dutch of South Africa,
+did little to help the cause they espoused, but many a time have
+caused every honest God-fearing burgher to blush by reason of their
+irrepressible lawlessness.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>(p. 202)</span> A wounded Australian.</span>
+
+<p>Among the British patients in this hospital was a magnificent young
+Australian, who it was feared had been mortally wounded in a small
+scrimmage round a farmhouse not far away, but who apparently began
+decidedly to mend from the time the general came to his bedside to say
+he should be recommended for the distinguished service medal. "That
+has done me more good than medicine," said he to me a few minutes
+after. Nevertheless, when ten days later we returned from Koomati
+Poort, he lay asleep in the little Waterval Cemetery, alas, like
+Milton's Lycidas, "dead ere his prime."</p>
+
+<p>These Australians being all mounted men, and of an exceptionally
+fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such
+outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide
+from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in
+that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage
+men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of
+no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts
+till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown
+himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the
+undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag
+treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been
+victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of their
+officers, Lieutenant White, was thus treacherously shot while going to
+answer the white flag displayed by the Boers. He was the pet of the
+Bushmen's Corps, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>(p. 203)</span> concerning him his own men said, "We
+all loved him, and will avenge him." So round his open grave his
+comrades solemnly joined hands and pledged themselves never again to
+recognise the waving of a Boer white flag. My assistant chaplain, with
+the Bushmen, himself an Australian, emphatically declared that as in
+the beginning so was it to the end; his men were killed not in fair
+fight but by murderous sniping. He was with them when Pietersburg was
+surrendered without a fight, but when they marched through to take
+possession they were resolutely shot at with explosive bullets from a
+barricaded house in the centre of the town, till the angry Bushmen
+broke open the door, and then the sniper sniped no more. On reaching
+the northern outskirts they again found themselves sniped, they knew
+not from whence. Several horses were wounded, a trooper was killed on
+the spot; so was Lieutenant Walters; and Captain Sayles was so badly
+hit he died two days afterwards. Yet no fighting was going on. The
+town was undefended, and the Boers in full retreat. This sniper was at
+last discovered hiding almost close at hand in a big patch of tall
+African grass. He turned out to be a Hollander schoolmaster, who,
+finding himself surrounded, sprang upon his knees, threw up his arms
+and laughingly cried, "All right, khakis, I surrender!" But that was
+his last laugh; and he lies asleep to-day in the same cemetery as his
+three victims.</p>
+
+<p>That cemetery soon after I saw; and in the adjoining camp messed with
+a group of irregular officers, some of whom ultimately yielded to this
+spirit of lawless <span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>(p. 204)</span> avenging, but were, in consequence,
+sternly court-marshalled, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law.
+It is, however, the only case of the kind that has come to my
+knowledge during thirty months of provocative strife.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Hotel Life on the Trek.</span>
+
+<p>Close to the railway station at Waterval Onder was a comfortable
+little hotel, kept by a French proprietor, whose French cook had
+deserted him, and who would not therefore undertake to cater for the
+Grenadier officers, though he courteously placed his dining-room at
+their disposal, with all that appertained thereto; and sold to them
+almost his entire stock of drinkables, probably at fancy prices. The
+men of the Norfolk Regiment are to this day called "Holy Boys" because
+their forbears in the Peninsular War, so it is said, gave their Bibles
+for a glass of wine; but the Norfolks are not the only lovers of
+high-class liquor the army contains, though army Bibles will not now
+suffice to buy it. British officers on the trek, however, not only
+know how to appreciate exquisitely any appropriate home comforts, when
+for a brief while procurable, but also how to surrender them
+unmurmuringly at a moment's notice when duty so requires. We had been
+in possession of our well-appointed hotel table only two days when a
+sudden order sent us all trekking once again.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth noting that this French hotelkeeper and the German baron
+in the adjoining hospital had both fought, though of course on
+opposite sides, in the great Franco-Prussian war of thirty years ago,
+and now they <span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>(p. 205)</span> found themselves overwhelmed by another great
+war wave in one of the remotest and seemingly most inaccessible
+fastnesses of South Central Africa. In this new war between Boer and
+Briton the German lost a limb, if not his life, and the Frenchman a
+large part of his fortune. So intimately are men of all nationalities
+now bound in the same bundle of life!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Sheep-pen of a Prison.</span>
+
+<p>On Monday afternoon we marched to Nooitgedacht, where the prisoners
+already referred to had been confined like sheep in a pen for many a
+weary week. That pen was made by a double-barbed wire fence; the inner
+fence consisting of ten strands of wire, about eight inches apart, and
+the outer fence of five strands, with sundry added entanglements; and
+a series of powerful electric lights was specially provided to watch
+and protect the whole vast area thus enclosed. It gave me a violent
+spasm of heart sickness as I thought of English officers and men by
+hundreds being thus ignominiously hemmed in and worse sheltered than
+convicts. They had latterly been allowed to erect for themselves
+grotesquely rough hovels or hutches, many of which they set on fire
+when suddenly permitted to escape, so that as I found it the whole
+place looked indescribably dirty and desolate.</p>
+
+<p>Even the shelters provided for the officers, and the hospital hastily
+erected for the sick, were scarcely fit to stable horses in, and were
+by official decree doomed to be given to the flames as the surest way
+of getting rid of the vermin and other vilenesses, of which they
+contained so rich a store. Here I found huge medicine <span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>(p. 206)</span>
+bottles, never made for the purpose, on which the names of sundry of
+our sick officers remained written, to wit: "Lieut. Mowbray, one
+tablespoonful four times a day. 3. VIII. 1900." In one of these bunks
+I found a packet of religious leaflets, one of which contained Hart's
+familiar hymn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  Come ye weary, heavy laden,<br>
+  Lost and ruined by the fall;<br>
+  If you tarry till you are better,<br>
+  You will never come at all.<br>
+<span class="add25em">Not the righteous,</span><br>
+  Sinners, Jesus came to call.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Although, therefore, religious services were never held in that prison
+pen, the men were not left absolutely without religious counsel and
+consolation. I was unfeignedly glad thus to find in that horrible
+place medicine for the soul as well as physic for the body, and some
+of those leaflets I brought away; but the physic I thought it safest
+not to sample.</p>
+
+<p>Over this unique combination of prison house and hospital there
+floated a very roughly-made and utterly tattered red cross flag, which
+now serves as a memento of one of the most humiliating sights it ever
+fell to my lot to witness, and I could not help picturing to myself
+the overpowering heartache those prisoners must have felt as hour
+after hour they were hurried farther and yet farther still through
+deep defiles and vast mountain fastnesses into a region where it must
+have seemed as though hope or help could never reach them. But "men,
+not mountains, determine the fate of nations"; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>(p. 207)</span> and to-day,
+through the mercy of our God, that pestilential pen is no longer any
+Englishman's prison.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Pretty scenery, and superb.</span>
+
+<p>Our next halting place was at Godwand River, still on the Delagoa
+line, and here we found a wee bit of river scenery almost rivalling
+the beauty of the stream that has given to Lynmouth its world-wide
+fame. At this little frequented place two rivers meet, which even in
+the driest part of the dry season are still real rivers, and would
+both make superb trout streams, if once properly stocked, as many a
+river at home has been.</p>
+
+<p>But just a little farther on we found scenery immeasurably more grand
+than anything we had ever seen before. The Dutch name of this
+astounding place is Kaapsche Hoop, which seems reminiscent of "The
+Cape of Good Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It
+apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the
+earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is
+also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of
+Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other
+possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however,
+much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance
+to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks
+so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied
+the artistic taste, and would have yielded fresh inspiration to the
+soul of a Gustave Doré. The rocks are evidently all igneous and
+volcanic, but often stand apart in separate columns, and sometimes
+bear a striking resemblance to enormous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>(p. 208)</span> beasts or images
+that might once have served for Oriental idols.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, looked at by the bewitching but deceptive light of the moon,
+the whole place lends itself supremely well to every man's individual
+fancy, and even my unimaginative mind could easily have brought itself
+to see here a once majestic antediluvian city with its palaces and
+temples, but now wrecked and ruined by manifold upheavals of nature,
+and worn into rarest mockeries of its ancient splendours by the wild
+storms of many a millennium.</p>
+
+<p>What I did certainly see, however, among those rocks were sundry
+roughly constructed shelters for snipers, who were therefrom to have
+picked off our men and horses as they crossed the adjacent drift.
+Terrible havoc might have been wrought in the ranks of the Guards'
+Brigade, without apparently the loss of a single Transvaaler's life,
+but there is no citadel under the sun the Boers just then had heart
+enough to hold.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately adjoining this unique city of rocks is a stupendous cliff
+from which, our best travelled officers say, the finest panoramic view
+in the whole world is obtained. The cliff drops almost straight down
+twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be
+seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across
+what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was
+seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of
+many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range
+rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I <span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>(p. 209)</span>
+visited twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot
+of the nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this
+plateau looked as though the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic had
+broken in at that end with overwhelming force, and then had been
+suddenly arrested and petrified while wave still battled with wave. It
+is such a view of far-reaching grandeur as I may never hope to see
+again, even were I to roam the wide world round; and could Kaapsche
+Hoop, with its absolutely fascinating attractiveness, be transplanted
+to, say Greenwich Park, any enterprising vendor of tea and shrimps who
+managed to secure a vested interest in the same, might reasonably hope
+to make such a fortune out of it as even a Rothschild need not
+despise.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>(p. 210)</span> CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">WAR'S WANTON WASTE</p>
+
+
+<p>Day after day we steadily worked our way <span class="italic">down</span> to Koomati Poort, even
+when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men
+toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the
+cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The
+Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday,
+though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we
+could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Surrendered Boer General.</span>
+
+<p>During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General
+Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to
+Pretoria <span class="italic">via</span> the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had
+joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been
+allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That
+oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother
+Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more
+set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes
+than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off
+Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King
+David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>(p. 211)</span>
+but also in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore
+some not remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.</p>
+
+<p>Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path
+and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once
+more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was
+sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present
+were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns.
+Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly
+two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That
+particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago
+been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to
+the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a
+curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to
+a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the
+English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.</p>
+
+<p>His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely
+what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment
+the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and
+as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The
+general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was
+sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's
+funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries
+received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped
+with their lives.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>(p. 212)</span> On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the
+triumphant Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood
+reverently beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general,
+who had proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the
+few concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good
+as his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from
+one of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards
+this whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of
+peace were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!</p>
+
+<p>This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all
+points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those
+who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they
+deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot
+denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel
+clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local
+complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been
+compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a
+good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much
+sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true.
+Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so
+in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered
+to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles
+that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who
+thus proved <span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>(p. 213)</span> false to their plighted troth were, alas,
+ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Two Unworthy Predikants.</span>
+
+<p>When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was
+informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants
+of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of
+his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at
+the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle
+the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our
+protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one
+of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after
+seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second
+time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When
+pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold
+perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.</p>
+
+<p>It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive
+clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in
+laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have
+been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this
+express promise that they should return to their farms there
+personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced
+them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far
+afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish.
+All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it
+was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served
+to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>(p. 214)</span> pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently
+with surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the
+fault was not ours!</p>
+
+<p>At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day,
+and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or
+destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt
+as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still
+left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task,
+involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the
+earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously
+beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved
+many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Two notable Advocates of Clemency.</span>
+
+<p>This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our
+island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread
+in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington
+during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and
+sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers,
+simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He
+recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run
+means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if
+they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is
+Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his
+diary:&mdash;"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a
+glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may
+humanity <span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>(p. 215)</span> after victory be the predominant feature in the
+British fleet."</p>
+
+<p>It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that
+Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what
+success let all the world bear witness!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Mines without Men, and Men without Meat.</span>
+
+<p>From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday,
+we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the
+Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven
+miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit.
+Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly
+machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the
+stern bidding of intruding war&mdash;that most potent disturber of the
+industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were
+cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house;
+and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we
+enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as
+the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river
+is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious
+Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once
+during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a
+single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now
+tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and
+fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so
+that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all
+our camp. The incessant <span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>(p. 216)</span> use of one's heels seems to be the
+best preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops
+that sickness of any sort really runs riot.</p>
+
+<p>The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in
+consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that
+are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such
+day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced
+that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by
+train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and
+climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the
+effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully
+suggested this new version of an old-time melody&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  Cheer, boys, cheer,<br>
+  No more of idle sorrow;<br>
+  Cheer, boys, cheer,<br>
+  <span class="italic">There'll be another march to-morrow</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the
+sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on
+three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's
+rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to
+wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and
+putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well
+supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Much fat in the fire.</span>
+
+<p>After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the
+house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another
+station on the Barberton <span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>(p. 217)</span> branch; and here we found not only
+a fine railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway
+sheds, recently crammed full with government stores, mostly
+provisions, now ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely
+destroyed. Thousands of tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in
+all directions, and like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had
+turned the confined milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously
+ended its days by merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good
+things here, laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal
+troops, were consumed in quite another fashion from that intended.
+Even accumulated locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in
+some cases elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all
+utility, by the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets.
+The torch has played a comparatively small part in this contest; but
+it is food supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the
+Boers, with a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food,
+bequeathed to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these
+innocents drew full British rations, when thousands of British
+soldiers were drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and
+Boer-beloved way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of
+an era when, constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  Men will hang the trumpet in the hall,<br>
+  And study war no more!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">More fat and mightier flames.</span>
+
+<p>Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed
+by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm <span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>(p. 218)</span> just as we were
+commencing our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge
+between the courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and
+thence came forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to
+renew acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm
+had somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be
+found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring
+conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate
+push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main
+line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty
+made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four
+battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one
+battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a
+sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes
+outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they
+were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a
+ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line
+in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train.
+Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on,
+and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them.
+Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at
+that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on
+foot. We had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>(p. 219)</span> indeed come by <span class="italic">rail</span>, but that we found was
+quite another thing from travelling by <span class="italic">train</span>; and the sequel
+forcefully reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding
+in a sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully
+removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the
+situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so"
+of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily
+beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they
+stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the
+station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled,
+not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food
+stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself
+out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains
+of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which
+paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and
+there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning
+furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career
+by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and
+that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where
+it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken
+sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the
+semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so
+flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served
+out to be cooked as best it <span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>(p. 220)</span> could be by the famished men
+some of them laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was
+not that a dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the
+station were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any
+grate, besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and
+no one knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in
+the extreme.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A welcome lift by the way.</span>
+
+<p>Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we
+nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of
+certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little
+that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the
+mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such
+holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a
+forced march towards Koomati Poort.</p>
+
+<p>The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen
+miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of
+the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was
+I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and
+thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few
+miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so
+accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the
+Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was
+twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had
+already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of
+it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to
+because my solitary <span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>(p. 221)</span> pair of boots was unfortunately in a
+double sense on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his
+boots, especially when they happen to be his only pair.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">"<span class="italic">Rags and tatters get ye gone.</span>"</span>
+
+<p>Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably
+lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at
+close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount
+that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to
+cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform
+of my regiment, and <span class="italic">in it I will show</span>, or fall this day." Barely a
+moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer
+war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War
+Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride
+and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in
+the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all
+regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately
+discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be
+seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived.
+The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and
+disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On
+this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman
+wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of
+the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the
+word <span class="smcap">Oats</span>, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man
+in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>(p. 222)</span> were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to
+Bruges.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Destruction and still more destruction.</span>
+
+<p>On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly
+lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our
+next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless
+wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved
+in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We
+were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that
+was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them
+a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile
+they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns
+and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence,
+and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men
+marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At
+Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at
+Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every
+kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army;
+though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had
+flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition
+waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the
+British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made
+every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty
+nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the
+14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>(p. 223)</span> locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened
+to linger long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more
+than a king's ransom!</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and
+bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the
+arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp
+surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our
+march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best
+we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst
+of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we
+had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at
+four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find
+ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch,
+where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">At Koomati Poort.</span>
+
+<p>On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to
+General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of
+leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit
+of the Transvaal&mdash;and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to
+fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War
+declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe&mdash;indeed
+the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small
+arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a
+distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes,
+and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>(p. 224)</span>
+attain. A blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he
+must be a good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these
+last weeks there were few casualties among the Boers, because they
+kept well out of casualty range. They were so frightened they even
+forgot to snipe. The valiant old President so long ago as September
+11th had fled with his splendidly well-filled money bags across the
+Portuguese frontier; abandoning his burghers who were still in the
+field to whatever might chance to be their fate. That fate he watched,
+and waited for, from the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's
+veranda close by the Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime
+on his stoep at Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side,
+his well-used pipe still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third
+at Chislehurst, broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more
+pathetic spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special
+trains beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men
+from many lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous
+example, seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on
+the 24th, the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more,
+who were mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay
+to become like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the
+Portuguese.</p>
+
+<p>To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for
+they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway
+bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large
+financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>(p. 225)</span> Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the
+Crocodile with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw
+in midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the
+two Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a
+ridge of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and
+the Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of
+Portuguese flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim
+Boer had planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might
+make his last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our
+approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on
+their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the
+guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a
+solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat
+prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils
+were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that
+hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We
+praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of
+Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this
+result.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Two notable Fugitives.</span>
+
+<p>The <span class="italic">Household Brigade Magazine</span> tells an amusing story of a Guardsman
+hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied
+with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right
+loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled
+his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless <span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>(p. 226)</span>
+him!" Such a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his
+own loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he
+exclaimed, "Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for
+him I would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"</p>
+
+<p>The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness
+begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of
+Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has
+not been without beneficent influence on our national character and
+destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the
+consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and
+Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its
+tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so
+bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all
+the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war
+began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot
+understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to
+his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon,
+for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely
+will the Vierkleur be victorious."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The propaganda of the Africander Bond.</span>
+
+<p>What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made
+abundantly plain in the pages of <span class="italic">De Patriot</span>, the once official organ
+of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written:
+"The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the
+British <span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>(p. 227)</span> flag. That will never happen. There is just one
+hindrance to Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them
+take that away, and within a year the Confederation under the Free
+Africander flag would be established; but so long as the English flag
+remains here the Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The
+British must just have Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on
+the road to India, and give over all Africa to the Africanders."</p>
+
+<p>It then adds: "Let every Africander in this Colony (that is, the Cape)
+for the sake of security take care that he has a good rifle and a box
+of cartridges, and that he knows how to use them." English trade is to
+be boycotted, nor is this veiled hostility to end even there. "Sell no
+land to Englishmen! We especially say this to our Transvaal brethren.
+The Boers are the landowners, and the proud little Englishmen are
+dependent on the Boers. Now that the war against the English
+Government is over, the war against the English language must begin.
+It must be considered a disgrace to speak English. The English
+governess is a pest. Africander parents, banish this pest from your
+houses!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, that Kruger is gone, and the Africander Bond has well
+nigh given up the ghost, English governesses in South Africa will be
+given another chance, which is at least some small compensation for
+all the cost and complicated consequences of this wanton war.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Ex-President Steyn.</span>
+
+<p>Martinus Theunis Steyn, late President of what was once the Orange
+Free State, is in almost all respects a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>(p. 228)</span> marked contrast to
+the Transvaal President, whose folly he abetted and whose flight for a
+while he shared. Steyn, speaking broadly, is almost young enough to be
+Kruger's grandson, and was never, as Kruger was from his birth, a
+British subject, for he was born at Wynburg some few years after the
+Orange Free State received its independence. Whilst Kruger was never
+for a single hour under the schoolmaster's rod, and is laughingly said
+even now to be unable to read anything which he has not first
+committed to memory, Steyn is a man of considerable culture, having
+been trained in England as a barrister, and having practised at the
+bar in Bloemfontein for six years before he became President. He
+therefore could not plead ignorance as his excuse when he flung his
+ultimatum in the face of Great Britain and Ireland. Whilst Kruger was
+a man of war from his youth, a "strong, unscrupulous, grim, determined
+man," Steyn never saw a shot fired in his life except in sport till
+this war began, yet all strangely it was the fighting President who
+fled from the face of the Guards, with all their multitudinous
+comrades in arms, and never rested till the sea removed him beyond
+their reach, while the lawyerly President, the man of peace, doubled
+back on his pursuers, returned by rugged by-paths to the land he had
+ruined, and there in association with De Wet became even more a
+fugitive than ancient Cain or the men of Adullam's cave.</p>
+
+<p>That many of his own people hotly disapproved of the course their
+infatuated ruler took is common knowledge; but by no one has that fact
+been more powerfully emphasised <span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>(p. 229)</span> than by Paul Botha in his
+famous book "From Boer to Boer." Rightly or wrongly, this is what,
+briefly put, Botha says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President.</span>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>When as a Free Stater I think of the war and realise that we have
+     lost the independence of our little state, I feel that I could
+     curse Martinus Theunis Steyn who used his country as a stepping
+     stone for the furtherance of his own private ends. He sold his
+     country to the Transvaal in the hope that Paul Kruger's mantle
+     would fall on him. The first time Kruger visited the Orange Free
+     State after Steyn's election the latter introduced him at a
+     public banquet with these words, "This is my Father!" The thought
+     occurred to me at the time, "Yes, and you are waiting for your
+     father's shoes." He hoped to succeed "his father" as President of
+     the combined republics of united South Africa. For this giddy
+     vision he ignored the real interests of our little state, and
+     dragged the country into an absolutely unnecessary and insane
+     war. I maintain there were only two courses open to England in
+     answer to Kruger's challenging policy&mdash;to fight, or to retire
+     from South Africa&mdash;and it was only possible for men suffering
+     from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
+     suffering from, to doubt the issue.</p>
+
+<p>I ask any man to tell me what quarrel we had with England? Was
+     any injury done to us? Such questions make one's hair stand on
+     end. Whether knave or fool, Steyn did not prepare himself
+     adequately for his gigantic undertaking. He commenced this war
+     with a firm trust in God and the most gross negligence. But it is
+     impossible to reason with the men now at the front. With the
+     exception of a few officials these men consist of ignorant
+     "bywoners," augmented by desperate men from the Cape who have
+     nothing to lose, and who lead a jolly rollicking life on
+     commando, stealing and looting from the farmers who have
+     surrendered, and whom they opprobriously call "handsuppers!"</p>
+
+<p>These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell
+     them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken
+     prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me,
+     after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians,
+     Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily;
+     that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a
+     small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men
+     who are <span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>(p. 230)</span> terrifying their own people. I could instance
+     hundreds of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious
+     thieves and cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of
+     every valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on
+     commando are not safe from their depredations. They have even set
+     fire to dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim
+to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same
+reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no
+kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I
+tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was
+only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted
+what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont&mdash;"Every man
+of you deserves promotion."<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>(p. 231)</span> CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA</p>
+
+
+<p>Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards'
+Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its
+juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to
+take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the
+endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently
+been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Staggering Humanity.</span>
+
+<p>Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have
+often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this
+period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their
+purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many
+opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched
+through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one
+might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our
+last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently
+pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder
+onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us.
+A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On
+September 17th, precisely a week <span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>(p. 232)</span> before we arrived at
+Koomati, special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across
+the frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity&mdash;to
+France, to Germany, to Russia&mdash;and amid the curious collection of
+things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I
+saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the
+owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain
+English, thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own
+to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though
+in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with
+men of almost every nationality under heaven.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Food for Flames.</span>
+
+<p>Humanity was scarcely less severely staggered by the lavish
+destruction of food stuffs and rolling stock we were that day
+compelled to witness. In the sidings of the Koomati railway station,
+as at Kaap Muiden, I found not less than half a mile of loaded trucks
+all blazing furiously. The goods shed was also in flames, and so was a
+gigantic heap of coals for locomotive use, which was still smouldering
+months afterwards. Along the Selati branch I saw what I was told
+amounted to over five miles of empty trucks that had fortunately
+escaped destruction, and later on proved to us of prodigious use.</p>
+
+<p>A war correspondent, who had been with the Portuguese for weeks
+awaiting our advent, assured me that the Boers were so dismayed by the
+tidings of our approach that at first they precipitately fled leaving
+everything <span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>(p. 233)</span> untouched; but finding we apparently delayed for
+a few hours our coming, they ventured across the great railway bridge
+in a red cross ambulance train, on which they felt certain we should
+not fire even if our scouts were already in possession of the place;
+and so from the shelter of the red cross these firebrands stepped
+forth to perform their task of almost immeasurable destruction. It is
+however only fair to add that the great majority of these
+mischief-makers were declared to be not genuine Boers, but
+mercenaries,&mdash;a much-mixed multitude whose ignominious departure from
+the Transvaal will minister much to its future wholesomeness and
+honesty.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Crocodile in the Koomati.</span>
+
+<p>Next morning while with several officers I was enjoying a before
+breakfast bathe, a cry of alarm was raised, and presently I saw those
+who had hurried out of the water taking careful aim at a crocodile
+clinging to a rock in midstream. Revolver shot after revolver shot was
+fired, but I quickly perceived it was the very same crocodile I had
+seen at that very same spot the day before; and as it was quite dead
+then I concluded it was probably still dead, though the officers thus
+furiously assailing it had not yet discovered the fact; so leaving
+them to continue their revolver practice I quietly returned to the
+bubbling waters and finished my bathe in peace.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Hippopotamus in the Koomati.</span>
+
+<p>Later on a continuous rifle fire at the river side close to the
+Guards' camp attracted general attention, and on going to see what it
+all meant I found a group of Colonials had thus been popping for hours
+at a huge hippopotamus hiding in a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>(p. 234)</span> deep pool close to the
+opposite bank. Every time the poor brute put its nose above the
+surface of the water half a dozen bullets splashed all around it
+though apparently without effect. The Grenadier officers pronounced
+such proceedings cruel and cowardly, but were without authority to put
+a stop to it. The crocodile is deemed lawful sport because it
+endangers life, but the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it
+rarely does harm, and is growing rarer year by year. I ventured
+therefore to tell these Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad
+as their marksmanship, and that the pleasure which springs from
+inflicting profitless pain was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached
+to deaf ears, and when soon after our camp was broken up that Hippo.
+was still their target.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Via Dolorosa.</span>
+
+<p>On the second day of our brief stay at Koomati Poort, I crossed the
+splendid seven spanned bridge over the Koomati River, and noticed that
+the far end was guarded by triple lines of barbed wire, nor was other
+evidence lacking that the Boers purposed to give us a parting blizzard
+under the very shadow of the Portuguese frontier flags.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a sight not often surpassed since Napoleon's flight from
+Moscow. Right up to the Portuguese frontier the slopes of the railway
+line were strewn with every imaginable and unimaginable form of loot
+and wreckage, flung out of the trains as they flew along by the
+frightened burghers. Telegraph instruments, crutches, and rocking
+chairs, frying pans and packets of medicinal powders, wash-hand basins
+and tins of Danish butter lay there in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>(p. 235)</span> wild profusion;
+likewise a homely wooden box that looked up at me and said "Eat Quaker
+Oats."</p>
+
+<p>At one point I found a great pile of rifles over which paraffin had
+been freely poured and then set on fire. Hundreds more, broken and
+scattered, were flung in all directions. Then, too, I saw cases of
+dynamite, live shells of every sort and size, and piles of boxes on
+which was painted</p>
+
+<p class="quote center">
+  "<span class="italic">Explosive</span> Safety Cartridges<br>
+  Supplied by Vickers, Maxim &amp; Co.; for the use of<br>
+  the Government of the South African Republic."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Likewise boxes of ammunition, broken and unbroken bearing the brand of
+"Kynoch Brothers, Birmingham" were there in piles; and it was while
+some men of the Gordons were superintending the destruction of this
+ammunition that a terrific explosion occurred a few days later by
+which three of them were killed and twenty-one wounded, including the
+"Curio" of the regiment, who was stuck all over with splinters like
+pins in a cushion; and in spite of seven-and-twenty wounds had the
+daring to survive. Byron somewhere tells of an eagle pierced by an
+arrow winged with a feather from its own breast, and in this war many
+a British hero has been riddled by bullets that British hands have
+fashioned. Moreover, among these bullets that thus littered that
+railway track I found vast quantities of the soft-nosed and slit
+varieties of which I brought away some samples; and others coated with
+a something green as verdigris. It is said that in love and war all is
+fair; but we should have more readily believed in the much belauded
+piety of the Boers, if it had deigned to dispense with "soft noses"
+and "explosive <span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>(p. 236)</span> safeties," which were none the less cruel or
+unlawful because of British make!</p>
+
+<p>Whole stacks of sugar I also found, in flaming haste to turn
+themselves into rippling lakes of decidedly overdone toffee; and in
+similar fashion piled up sacks of coffee berries were roasting
+themselves not wisely but too well. Pyramids of flour were much in the
+same way baking themselves into cakes, monstrously misshapen, and much
+more badly burnt than King Alfred's ever were. "The Boers are poor
+cooks," laughingly explained our men; "they bake in bulk without
+proper mixing." Nevertheless, along that line everything seemed very
+much mixed indeed.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Over the Line.</span>
+
+<p>On reaching the Portuguese frontier I somewhat ceremoniously saluted
+the Portuguese flag, to the evident satisfaction of the Portuguese
+marines who mounted guard beside it. There were just then about 600 of
+them on duty at Resina Garcia, and as they were for the most part
+dressed in spotless white they looked delightsomely clean and cool.
+Indeed, the contrast between their uniforms and ours was almost
+painfully acute; but it was the contrast between men of war's men in
+holiday attire, which no war had ever touched, and weary war-men
+tattered and torn by ten months' constant contact with its roughest
+usage. A shameful looking lot we were&mdash;but ashamed we were not!</p>
+
+<p>As these foreigners on frontier guard knew not a word of English, and
+I unfortunately knew not a word of Portuguese, there seemed small
+chance of any very luminous conversation; but presently I pronounced
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>(p. 237)</span> magic word "Padré," and pointed to the cross upon my
+collar, when lo! a look of intelligence crept into the very dullest
+face. They passed on the word in approving tones from one to another,
+and I was instantly supplied with quite a new illustration of the
+ancient legend, "In hoc signo vinces." In token of respect for my
+chaplain's badge, without passport or payment, I was at once
+courteously allowed to cross the line and set foot in Portuguese
+Africa. There are compensations in every lot, even in a parson's!</p>
+
+<p>The village immediately beyond the frontier is little else than a
+block or two of solidly built barracks, and a well appointed railway
+station, with its inevitable refreshment room, in which a group of
+officers representing the two nationalities were enjoying a friendly
+lunch. But great was my surprise on discovering that the vivacious
+Portuguese proprietor presiding behind the bar was a veritable
+Scotchman hailing from queenly Edinburgh; and still greater was my
+surprise on hearing a sweetly familiar accent on the lips of a
+Colonial scout hungrily waiting on the platform outside till the
+aforesaid officers' lunch was over, and he, a private, might be
+permitted to purchase an equally satisfying lunch and eat it in that
+same refreshment room. It was the accent of the far away "West
+Countree," and told me its owner was like myself a Cornishman. Yet
+what need to be surprised? Were I to take the wings of the morning and
+fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, I should probably find there
+as at Resina Garcia, thriving Scotchman in possession, and a famished
+Cornishman waiting at his gate. To <span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>(p. 238)</span> these two, in this
+fashion, have been apportioned the outposts of the habitable globe!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Westward Ho!</span>
+
+<p>It was to everybody's extreme surprise and delight that at noon on
+Thursday we received sudden orders to leave Koomati Poort at once, and
+to leave it not on foot but by rail. The huge baboon, therefore, which
+had become our latest regimental pet and terror, was promptly
+transferred to other custody, and our scanty kits were packed with
+utmost speed. We soon discovered, however, that it was one thing to
+reach the appointed railway station, and quite another to find the
+appointed train. Two locomotives, in apparently sound condition, had
+been selected from among a multitude of utterly wrecked and ruined
+ones, but serviceable trucks had also to be warily chosen from among
+the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these
+trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long
+before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the
+postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on
+the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was
+to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we
+attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind
+us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review.</p>
+
+<a id="img008" name="img008"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img008.jpg" width="500" height="358" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Westerman</p>
+<p>Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As all the regular railway employés had fled with the departing Boers,
+it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to
+do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times
+amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>(p. 239)</span> handled that they at once degenerated into the merest
+donkey engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur
+drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take
+on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get
+it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our
+second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the
+injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a
+quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we
+were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out,
+and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long
+time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a
+journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might
+have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to
+wreck the train immediately following ours&mdash;so inflicting fatal or
+other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we noted that "fever" trees, with stems of a peculiarly
+green and bilious hue, abounded on both sides the line; trees so
+called, not because they produce fever, but because their presence
+infallibly indicates an area in which fever habitually prevails.
+Hundreds of the troops that followed us into the fatal valley were
+speedily fever-stricken, and it is with a sense of devoutest gratitude
+I record the fact that the Guards' Brigade not only entered Koomati
+Port without the loss of a single life by bullets, but also left it
+without the loss of a single life by fever.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>(p. 240)</span> At first at the foot of every incline we were compelled to
+pause while our engines, one in front and one behind, got up an ampler
+pressure of steam, but presently it was suggested that the hundreds of
+Guardsmen on board the train should tumble out of the trucks and
+shove, which accordingly they did, the Colonel himself assenting and
+assisting. So sometimes shoving, always steaming, we pursued our
+shining way, as we fondly supposed, towards Hyde Park corner and
+"Home, sweet Home."</p>
+
+<p>At Waterval Onder we stayed the night, and I was thus enabled to visit
+once again the tiny international cemetery, referred to in a former
+chapter, where I had laid to rest an unnamed, because unrecognised,
+private of the Devons. Now close beside him in that silent land lay
+the superbly-built Australian, whom I had so often visited in the
+adjoining hospital, and whom our general had promised to recommend for
+"The Distinguished Service Medal." Not yet eighteen, his life work was
+early finished; but by heroisms such as his has our vast South African
+domain been bought; and by graves such as his are the far sundered
+parts of our world-wide empire knit together.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Ruined farms and ruined firms.</span>
+
+<p>Throughout this whole journey I was painfully impressed not only by
+the almost total absence of all signs of present-day cultivation, even
+where such cultivation could not but prove richly remunerative, but
+also by the still sadder fact that many of the farmhouses we sighted
+were in ruins. Along this Delagoa line, as in other parts of the
+Transvaal, there had been so much sniping at trains, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>(p. 241)</span> and so
+many cases of scouts being fired at from farmhouses over which the
+white flag floated, that this particular form of retribution and
+repression, which we none the less deplored, seemed essential to the
+safety of all under our protection; and in defence thereof I heard
+quoted, as peculiarly appropriate to the Boer temperament and tactics,
+the familiar lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  Softly, gently, touch a nettle,<br>
+  And it stings you for your pains;<br>
+  Grasp it like a man of mettle,<br>
+  And it soft as silk remains.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Amajuba led to a fatal misjudgement of the British by the Boer. In all
+leniency, the latter now recognises only an encouraging lack of grit,
+which persuades him to prolong the contest by whatever tactics suit
+him best. Its effect resembles that of the Danegeld our Saxon fathers
+paid their oversea invaders, with a view to staying all further
+strife. Their gifts were interpreted as a sign of craven fear, and
+merely taught the recipients to clamour greedily for more. Long before
+this cruel war closed it became clear as noonday that Boer hostilities
+could not be bought off by a crippling clemency, and that an
+ever-discriminating severity is, in practice, mercy of the truest and
+most effective type.</p>
+
+<p>How great the pressure on the military authorities became in
+consequence of these frequent breakages of the railway line, and how
+serious the inconvenience to the mercantile community, as indeed to
+the whole civil population, may be judged from the fact that only on
+the day of my return from Resina Garcia did the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>(p. 242)</span> Pretoria
+merchants receive their first small consignments of food stuffs since
+the arrival of the British troops some four months before. Clothing,
+boots, indeed goods of any other type than food, they had still not
+the faintest hope of getting up from the coast for many a week to
+come. War is always hard alike on public stores and private cupboards;
+but seldom have the supplies of any town, not actually undergoing a
+siege, been more nearly exhausted than were those of Pretoria at the
+time now referred to. For hungry and impecunious folk the City of
+Roses was fast becoming a bed of thorns.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Farewell to the Guards' Brigade.</span>
+
+<p>From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our
+homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was
+broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was
+accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point,
+therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.</p>
+
+<p>For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely
+uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of
+camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night
+and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses
+immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect.
+Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all
+respects my warmest admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that
+they were all God-fearing men; nor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>(p. 243)</span> did many among them claim
+to be such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was
+their traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr
+Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of
+our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never
+hear any of them swear. The colonel is very severe on those who use
+bad language, and if he hears any he says, 'I tell you I will not
+allow it. If you want to use such language go out on to the veldt and
+swear at the stones, but I will not permit you to contaminate the men
+by such language in the lines. I won't have it!'"</p>
+
+<p>Not all battalions in the British army are built that way, nor do all
+British officers row in the same boat with that aforesaid colonel.
+Nevertheless, I am prepared to echo the opinion expressed by Julian
+Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:&mdash;"They were
+emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud,
+polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and
+spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to
+those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had
+been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of
+them represented families of historic and world-wide renown. It was,
+therefore, somewhat of an astonishment to see such men continually
+roughing it in a fashion that navvies would scarcely consent to do at
+home; drinking water that, as our colonel said, one would not
+willingly give to a dog; and sometimes sleeping in ditches without
+even a rug to cover them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>(p. 244)</span> Wild assertions have been made in some ill-informed papers
+about these officers being ill-informed, and even Conan Doyle
+complains that he saw only one young officer studying an Army
+Text-Book in the course of the whole campaign; but then, when kits are
+cut down to a maximum weight of thirty-seven pounds, what room is
+there for books even on tactics? The tactics of actual battle are
+better teachers than any text-books; and a cool head, with a
+courageous heart, is often of more value in a tight corner than any
+amount of merely technical knowledge. It is true that some of our
+officers have blundered, but then, in most cases, it was their first
+experience of real war, especially of war amid conditions entirely
+novel. It was more personal initiative, not more text-book; more
+caution, not more courage that was most commonly required. To inspire
+his men with tranquil confidence, one officer after another exposed
+himself to needless perils, and was, as we fear, wastefully done to
+death. But be that as it may the Guards' Brigade, men and officers
+alike, I rank among the bravest of the brave; and my association with
+them for so long a season, I reckon one of the highest honours of a
+happy life.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>(p. 245)</span> CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES</p>
+
+
+<p>What Conan Doyle rightly described as "The great <span class="italic">Boer</span> War" came
+eventually to be called yet more correctly "The great <span class="italic">Bore</span> War." It
+grew into a weariness that might well have worn out the patience and
+exhausted the resources of almost any nation. No one for a moment
+imagined when we reached Koomati Poort that we had come only to the
+half-way house of our toils and travels, and that there still lay
+ahead of us another twelve months' cruel task. From the very first to
+the very finish it has been a war of sharp surprises, and to most the
+sharpest surprise of all has been this its wasteful and wanton
+prolonging.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Exhaustlessness of Boer resources.</span>
+
+<p>We wondered early, and we wondered late, at the seeming
+exhaustlessness of the Boer resources. In their frequent flights they
+destroyed, or left for us to capture, almost fabulously large supplies
+of food and ammunition; yet at the end of two years of such incessant
+waste Kaffirs were still busy pointing out to us remote caves filled
+with food stuffs, as in Seccicuni's country, or large pits loaded to
+the brim with cases of cartridges. A specially influential Boer
+prisoner told me he himself had been present at many such burials,
+when 250 cases of mauser ammunition <span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>(p. 246)</span> were thus secreted in
+one place, and then a similar quantity in another, and I have it on
+the most absolute authority possible that when the war began the Boers
+possessed not less than 70,000,000 rounds of ball cartridge, and
+200,000 rifles of various patterns, which would be tantamount to two
+for every adult Dutchman in all South Africa. Kruger, in declaring
+war, did not leap before he looked, or put the kettle on the fire
+without first procuring an ample supply of coal to keep it boiling.
+For many a month before hostilities commenced, if not for years, all
+South Africa lay in the hollow of Kruger's hand, excepting only the
+seaport towns commanded by our naval guns. At any moment he could have
+overrun our South African colonies and none could have said him nay.
+These colonies we held, though we knew it not, on Boer sufferance. At
+the end of two years of incessant fighting we barely made an end of
+the invasion of Cape Colony and Natal, and the altogether unsuspected
+difficulty of the task is the true index of the deadliness of the
+peril from which this dreadful war has delivered the whole empire.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The peculiarity of the Boer tactics.</span>
+
+<p>How it was the Boers did not succeed at the very outset in driving the
+British into the sea, when we had only skeleton forces to oppose them,
+was best explained to me by a son of the late State Secretary, who
+penned the ultimatum, and whom I found among our prisoners in
+Pretoria. The Boers are not farmers. Speaking broadly there is
+scarcely an acre of ploughed land in all the Transvaal. "The men are
+shepherds, their trade hath <span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>(p. 247)</span> been to feed cattle." But before
+they could thus, like the Patriarchs, become herdsmen, they perforce
+still, like their much loved Hebrew prototypes, had to become hunters,
+and clear the land of savage beasts and savage men. The hunter's
+instincts, the hunter's tactics were theirs, and no hunter comes out
+into the open if he can help it. It is no branch of his business to
+make a display of his courage and to court death. His part is to kill,
+so silently, so secretly, as to avoid being killed. Traps and
+tricking, not to say treachery, and shooting from behind absolutely
+safe cover, are the essential points in a hunter's tactics. Caution to
+him is more than courage, and it is precisely along those lines the
+Boers make war. In almost every case when they ventured into the open
+it was the doing of their despised foreign auxiliaries. The kind of
+courage required for the actual conquest of the colonies the Boers had
+never cultivated or acquired. The men who in six months and six days
+could not rush little Mafeking hoped in vain to capture Cape Town,
+unless they caught it napping. But in defensive warfare, in cunningly
+setting snares like that at Sanna's Post, in skilful concealment as at
+Modder River, when all day long most of our men were quite unable to
+discover on which side of the stream the Boer entrenchments were, and
+in what they called clever trickery, but we called treachery, they are
+absolutely unsurpassable. So was it through the earlier stages of the
+campaign. So was it through the later stages.</p>
+
+<p>Another cause of Boer failure as explained to me by the State
+Secretary's son was the inexperience and incompetency <span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>(p. 248)</span> of
+their generals, who had won what little renown was theirs in Zulu or
+Kaffir wars. Amajuba, at which only about half a battalion of our
+troops took part, was the biggest battle they had ever fought against
+the British, and it led the more illiterate among them to believe they
+could whip all England's armies as easily as they could sjambok a
+Kaffir. Their leaders of course knew better, but even they believed
+there was being played a game of bluff on both sides, with this vital
+difference, however&mdash;we bluffed, and, as they full well knew, did not
+prepare; they bluffed, and, to an extent we never knew, did prepare.
+Though therefore their generals were amateurs in the arts of modern
+warfare as so many of our own proved to be, they confidently reckoned
+that, if they could strike a staggering blow whilst we were as yet
+unready, they would inevitably win a second Amajuba. Magnanimity would
+again leave them masters of the situation, and if not, European
+intervention would presently compel us to arbitrate away our claims.
+But Joubert's softness, Schoeman's incompetency and Cronje's surrender
+spoiled the project just when success seemed in sight. One other cause
+of Boer failure which remained in force to the very last was their
+utter lack of discipline. My specially frank and intelligent informant
+said no Boer ever took part in a fight unless he felt so inclined. He
+claimed liberty to ignore the most urgent commands of his field
+cornet, and might even unreproved slap him in the face. Such decidedly
+independent fighting may serve for the defence of an almost
+inaccessible kopje, but an attack conducted on such lines is almost
+sure to fall to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>(p. 249)</span> pieces. It was therefore seldom attempted,
+but many a lawless deed was done, like firing on ambulances and
+funeral parties, for which no leader can well be held responsible.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Surprisers Surprised.</span>
+
+<p>This light formation lent itself, however, excellently well to the
+success of the guerilla type of warfare, which the Boers maintained
+for more than twelve months after all their principal towns were
+taken. Solitary snipers were thus able from safe distances to pick off
+unsuspecting man, or horse, or ox, and, if in danger of being traced,
+could hide the bandolier and pose as a peace-loving citizen seeking
+his own lost ox.</p>
+
+<p>In some cases small detachments of our men on convoy or outpost duty
+were cut off by these ever-watchful, ever-wandering bands of Boers,
+and an occasional gun or pom-pom was temporarily captured, a result
+for which in one case at least extra rum rations were reputed to be
+responsible. But it must be remembered that our men and officers,
+regular and irregular alike, were as inexperienced as the Boers in
+many of the novel duties this war devolved upon them; that the
+Transvaal lends itself as scarcely any other country under the sun
+could do to just such surprises, and that the ablest generals served
+by the trustiest scouts have in the most heroic periods of our history
+sometimes found themselves face to face with the unforeseen. We are
+assured, for instance, that even on the eve of Waterloo both Blucher
+and Wellington were caught off their guard by their great antagonist.
+On June 15th, at the very moment when the French <span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>(p. 250)</span> columns
+were actually crossing the Belgian frontier, Wellington wrote to the
+Czar explaining his intention to take the offensive about a fortnight
+hence; and Blucher only a few days before had sent word to his wife
+that the Allies would soon enter France, for if they waited where they
+were for another year, Bonaparte would never attack them. Yet the very
+next day, June 16th, at Ligny, Bonaparte hurled himself like a
+thunderbolt on Blucher, and three days after, Wellington, having
+rushed from the Brussels ballroom to the battlefield at Waterloo,
+there saved himself and Europe, "so as by fire."</p>
+
+<p>The occasional surprises our troops have sustained in the Transvaal
+need not stagger us, however much they ruffle our national
+complacency. They are not the first we have had to face, and may
+possibly prove by no means the last; but it is at least some sort of
+solace to know that however often we were surprised during the last
+long lingering stages of the war, our men yet more frequently
+surprised their surprisers. Whilst I was still there in July 1901,
+there were brought into Pretoria the surviving members of the
+Executive of the late Orange Free State, all notable men, all caught
+in their night-dresses&mdash;President Steyn alone escaping in shirt and
+pants; whilst his entire bodyguard, consisting of sixty burghers, were
+at the same time sent as prisoners to Bloemfontein. Laager after
+laager during those weary months was similarly surprised, and waggons
+and oxen and horses beyond all counting were captured, till apparently
+scarcely a horse or hoof or pair of heels was left on all the
+far-reaching veldt. The Boers resolutely chose ruin rather than
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>(p. 251)</span> surrender, and so, alas, the ruin came; for many, ruin
+beyond all remedy!</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Train Wrecking.</span>
+
+<p>During this same period of despairing resistance the Boers imparted to
+the practice of train wrecking the finish of a fine art. At first they
+confined their attentions to troop trains, which are presumably lawful
+game; and as I was returning from Koomati Poort the troop train that
+immediately followed that on which I travelled was thus thrown off the
+rails near Pan, and about twenty of the Coldstream Guards, by whose
+side I had tramped for so many months, were killed or severely
+injured. The provision trains on which not the soldiers only, but the
+Boers' own wives and children, depended for daily food, were wrecked,
+looted or set on fire. Finally, they took to dynamiting ordinary
+passenger trains, and robbed of their personal belongings helpless
+women, including nursing sisters.</p>
+
+<p>In Pretoria, I had the privilege of conversing with a cultured and
+godly lady who told me that she had been twice wrecked on her one
+journey up from the coast, and that the wrecking was as usual of a
+fatal type though fortunately not for her. Like one of the ironies of
+fate seemed the fact, of which she further informed me, that she had
+brought with her from England some hundreds of pounds' worth of bodily
+comforts, and yet more abounding spiritual consolations for free
+distribution among the wives and children of the very men who thus in
+one single journey had twice placed her life in deadly peril.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>(p. 252)</span> Among the Bush Veldt Carabineers at Pietersburg I found an
+engine-driver who in the course of a few months had thus been shot at
+and shattered by Boer drivers till he grew so sick of it that he threw
+up a situation worth £30 a month and joined the Fighting Scouts by way
+of finding some less perilous vocation. On the Sunday I spent there I
+worshipped with the Gordons who had survived the siege of Ladysmith;
+the day following as I returned to Pretoria, the train I travelled by
+was thrice ineffectually sniped; but soon after the turn of these same
+Gordons came to escort a train on that same line when nearly every man
+among them was killed or wounded, including their officer, and a
+sergeant with whom during that visit I had bowed in private prayer;
+but the driver, stoker and guard were deliberately led aside and shot
+after capture in cold blood. So my friend in the Carabineers had not
+long to wait for the justifying of his strange choice. Not until
+Norman William had planted stout Norman castles at every commanding
+point could he complete the conquest of our Motherland; and not until
+sturdy little block-houses sprang up thick and fast beside 5000 miles
+of rail and road was travelling in the Transvaal robbed of its worst
+peril, and the subjugation of the country made complete.</p>
+
+<p>The worst of all our railway smashes, however, occurred close to
+Pretoria, and was caused by what seemed a bit of criminal
+carelessness, which resulted in a terrific collision. A Presbyterian
+chaplain who was in the damaged train showed me his battered and
+broken travelling trunk; but close beside the wreckage I saw <span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>(p. 253)</span>
+the more terribly broken bodies of nine brave men awaiting burial. It
+was a tragedy too exquisitely distressing to be here described.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Refugee Camps.</span>
+
+<p>When the two Republics were formally annexed to the British Crown all
+the women and children scattered far and wide over the interminable
+veldt, were made British subjects by the very act; and from that hour
+for their support and safety the British Government became
+responsible. Yet all ordinary traffic by road or rail had long been
+stopped. All country stores were speedily cleared and closed. All farm
+stock or produce was gathered up and carried off, first by one set of
+hungry belligerents, then by the others; physic was still more scarce
+than food, and prowling bands of blacks or whites intensified the
+peril. The creation of huge concentration camps, all within easy reach
+of some railway, thus became an urgent necessity. No such prodigious
+enterprise could be carried through its initial stages without
+hardships having to be endured by such vast hosts of refugees,
+hardships only less severe than those the troops themselves sustained.</p>
+
+<p>What I saw of these camps at Hiedelburg, Barberton, and elsewhere made
+me wonder that so much had been done, and so well done; but a gentle
+lady sent from England to look for faults and flaws, and who was
+lovingly doing her best to find them, complained to me that all the
+tents were not quite sound, which I can quite believe. Canvas that is
+in constant use won't last for ever, and it is quite conceivable that
+at the end of a two <span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>(p. 254)</span> years' campaign some of the tents in use
+were visibly the worse for wear. Thousands of our soldiers, however,
+went for a while without tents of any sort, while the families of
+their foes were being thus carefully sheltered in such tents as could
+then be procured. It is, moreover, in some measure reassuring to
+remember that the winter weather here is almost perfect, not a
+solitary shower falling for weeks together, and that within these
+tents were army blankets both thick and plentiful.</p>
+
+<p>Complaint was also made in my presence that mutton, and yet again
+mutton, and only mutton, was supplied to the refugee camps by way of
+fresh meat rations, and that, moreover, a whole carcase, being mostly
+skin and bone, sometimes weighed only about twelve pounds. It is quite
+true that the scraggy Transvaal sheep would be looked down on and
+despised by their fat and far-famed English cousins, especially at
+that season of the year when the veldt is as bare and barren as the
+Sahara; but it surely is no fault of the British Government that not a
+green blade can anywhere be seen during these long rainless months,
+and that consequently all the flocks look famished. South African
+mutton is, at the best of times, a by no means dainty dish to set
+before a king, much less before the wife of a belligerent Boer; but
+British officers and men had to feed upon it and be content.</p>
+
+<p>That no fresh beef, however, was by any chance supplied sounded to me
+quite a new charge, and set me enquiring as to its accuracy. I
+therefore wrote to one of the meat contractors, whom I personally knew
+as a man of specially good repute, and in reply was informed that
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>(p. 255)</span> for seven months he had regularly supplied the refugee camp
+in his neighbourhood with fresh beef as well as mutton, neither being
+always prime, he said, but the best that in war time the veldt could
+be made to yield! Those who hunt for grievances at a time like this
+can always find them, though when weighed in the balances they may
+perchance prove even lighter than Transvaal sheep.</p>
+
+<p>It is undeniable that the child mortality in these refugee camps has
+been high compared with the average that prevails in a healthy English
+town. But the South African average, especially during the fever
+season, usually reaches quite another figure. A Hollander predikant,
+whom I found among our prisoners, told me that he, his wife, and his
+three children were all down with fever, but were without physic, and
+almost without food, when the English found them in the low country
+beyond Pietersburg, and brought them into camp. Nearly all their
+neighbours were in the same sad plight, and several died before they
+could be moved. In that and similar cases the camp mortality was bound
+to be high, but it takes a free-tongued Britisher to assert that it
+was the fault of the ever brutal British. In some camps there was an
+epidemic of measles, which occasionally occurs even in the happy
+homeland; but in the least sanitary refugee camp the mortality was
+never so high as in some of our own military fever camps, where the
+epidemic raged like a plague, and for many a weary week refused to be
+stayed. It should be remembered also that all the healthy manhood of
+the country was either still out on <span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>(p. 256)</span> commando or in the
+oversea camps provided for our prisoners of war. The men brought in as
+refugees were only those who had no fight left in them&mdash;the halt, the
+maimed, the blind, the sick of every sort, the bent by extreme old
+age, the dying. I was startled by the specimens I saw. Here were
+gathered all the frailnesses and infirmities of two Republics; and to
+test an improvised camp of such a class by the standards which we
+rightly apply to an average English town is as misleading as it is
+mischievous.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Grit of the Guards.</span>
+
+<p>When voyaging on <span class="italic">The Nubia</span> with the Scots Guards they often
+laughingly assured me it was the merest "walk over" that awaited us,
+and so in due time we discovered it to be. But it was a walk over well
+nigh the whole of South Africa, especially for these Scots. While
+during the second year of the war the Grenadiers were doing excellent
+work, chiefly in the northern part of Cape Colony, and the Coldstreams
+were similarly employed mainly along the lines of communication in the
+Orange River Colony, the Scots Guards trekked north, south, east and
+west. As a mere matter of mileage but much more as a matter of
+endurance they broke all previous records.</p>
+
+<p>I have more than once written so warmly in praise of the daring and
+endurance of these men as to make me fear my words might for that very
+reason be heavily discounted. I was therefore delighted to find in
+Julian Ralph's "At Pretoria" a kindred eulogy: "When I passed through
+the camps of the Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstream Guards the other
+day, I thought I never saw <span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>(p. 257)</span> men more wretchedly and pitifully
+circumstanced. The officers are the drawing-room pets of London
+society, which in large measure they rule.... Well, there they were on
+the veldt looking like a lot of half drowned rats, as indeed they had
+been ever since the cold season and the rains had set in. You would
+not like to see a vagabond dog fare as they were doing. They had no
+tents. They could get no dry wood to make fires with. They were soaked
+to the bone night and day, and they stood about in mud toe-deep.
+Titled and untitled alike all were in the same scrape, and all were
+stoutly insisting that it didn't matter; it was all in the game."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Irregulars.</span>
+
+<p>During this second period of the war the staying powers of the
+Irregulars was no less severely tested. Here and there there was a
+momentary failure, but as a whole the men did superbly. Multitudes of
+the Colonials, who on completing their first term of service, returned
+to Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, actually re-enlisted for a
+second term, and in several cases paid their own passage to the Cape
+in order to rejoin. The Colonials are incomparably keener Imperialists
+than we ourselves claim to be. Some of the officers of these Irregular
+troops were themselves of a most irregular type, and in the case of
+town, or mine, or cattle, Guards were occasionally chosen, not with
+reference to any martial fitness they might possess, but because of
+their knowledge of and influence over the men they now commanded, and
+previously in civilian life had probably employed. One of these called
+his men to "fall in&mdash;<span class="italic">two thick</span>!" and another, when he wanted to halt
+his Guards, is reported <span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>(p. 258)</span> to have thrown up his arms and said,
+"Whoa! Stop!" None need wonder if troops so handled sometimes found
+themselves in a tight corner. Yet of these newly recruited Irregulars,
+as of the most staid Reservists, there was good reason to be proud;
+and as concerning his own Irregulars in the Peninsular War Wellington
+said that with them he could go anywhere or do anything, so were these
+also as a whole entitled to similar confidence and to a similar
+tribute.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The Testimony of the Cemetery.</span>
+
+<p>How fully these citizen soldiers hazarded their lives for the empire
+every cemetery in South Africa bears sad and silent witness, including
+the one I know so well in Pretoria. Indeed that particular
+burial-place is to me the most pathetic spot on earth, and enshrines
+in striking fashion the whole history of the Transvaal, whereof only
+one or two illustrations can here be given. In a tiny walled
+enclosure&mdash;a cemetery within a cemetery&mdash;filled with the soldier
+victims of our earlier wars, I found a slab whereon was this
+inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">
+<span class="add1em">"To the</span> memory of Corporal Henry Watson,<br>
+  Who died at Pretoria 17th May 1877; aged 25 years.<br>
+<span class="add1em">He was</span> the first British Soldier to give up his<br>
+<span class="add1em">life in</span> the service of his Country, <span class="italic">on the annexation</span><br>
+<span class="add1em">of the</span> Transvaal Republic!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Near by on another slab I read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">
+<span class="add25em">"In loving memory of John Mitchell Elliott</span><br>
+  Aged 37. Captain and Paymaster of the 94th Regiment,<br>
+<span class="add3em">Who was killed for Queen and Country</span><br>
+<span class="add2em">while crossing the Vaal River on the night of</span><br>
+<span class="add8em">Dec. 29th, 1880."</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">There, too, I found one other slab which recorded in this <span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>(p. 259)</span>
+strange style the closing of a most ignoble chapter in our imperial
+history:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     "This Cemetery was planted, and the graves left in good repair by
+     the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, <span class="italic">prior to the evacuation</span>
+     of Pretoria, 1881."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Two brief decades rush away, and once again that same cemetery opens
+wide its gates to welcome new battalions of British soldiers, each of
+whom like his forerunner of 1877 "gave up his life in the service of
+his country"; but these late-comers represent every province and
+almost every hamlet of a far-reaching empire, as well as every branch
+of the service; while over all and applicable to all alike is the
+epitaph on the tomb of the Hampshire Volunteers, "We answered duty's
+call!"</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Death and Life in Pretoria.</span>
+
+<p>The Dutch section of that cemetery also witnessed some sensational
+scenes during the period now referred to.</p>
+
+<p>On July 20th Mrs Kruger, the ex-President's wife, died, and as one of
+a prodigious crowd I attended her homely funeral. She was herself
+well-nigh the homeliest woman in Pretoria, and one of the most
+illiterate; but precisely because she was content to be her simple
+God-fearing self, put on no airs, and intermeddled not in matters
+beyond her ken, she was universally respected and regretted.</p>
+
+<p>During this second period of the war the troops in Pretoria continued
+to justify Lord Roberts' description of them as "the best-behaved army
+in the world." The Sunday evening services in Wesley Church were
+always <span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>(p. 260)</span> crowded with them, and the nightly meetings held in
+the S.A.G.M. marquees were not only wonderfully well attended but were
+also marked by much spiritual power. Pretoria, after we took
+possession of it, witnessed many a tear, and occasional tragedies; but
+it was in Pretoria I heard a young Canadian soldier sing the following
+song, which aptly illustrates the type of life to which many a trooper
+has more or less fully attained during this South African campaign:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem30">
+<p>I'm walking close to Jesus' side,<br>
+<span class="add1em">So close that I can hear</span><br>
+  The softest whispers of His love<br>
+<span class="add1em">In fellowship so dear,</span><br>
+  <span class="italic">And feel His great Almighty hand<br>
+  Protects me in this hostile land</span>.<br>
+<span class="add35em">Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,</span><br>
+<span class="add35em">I've Jesus with me all the time!</span></p>
+
+<p>I'm leaning on His loving breast<br>
+<span class="add1em">Along life's weary way;</span><br>
+  My path illumined by His smiles<br>
+<span class="add1em">Grows brighter day by day;</span><br>
+  <span class="italic">No foes, no woes, my heart can fear<br>
+  With my Almighty Friend so near</span>.<br>
+<span class="add35em">Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,</span><br>
+<span class="add35em">I've Jesus with me all the time!</span><a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>(p. 261)</span> CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+<p class="chapter">PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY</p>
+
+
+<p>During the next few months many events occurred in Pretoria of vital
+interest to the whole empire, and especially to the various members of
+the Royal Family. To these this seems the fittest place to refer,
+though most of them took place during my various return visits to
+Pretoria, and are therefore not precisely ranged in due chronologic
+order.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty</span>
+
+<p>It was an ever memorable scene I witnessed in the Kirk Square when the
+Union Jack was once more formally hoisted in the midst of armed men, a
+miscellaneous crowd of cheering civilians, and an important group of
+Basuto chiefs who had been specially invited to witness the
+ceremonious annexation of the conquered territory and to hear
+proclaimed the Royal pleasure that the erstwhile "South African
+Republic" should henceforth be known by the new, yet older, title of
+"The Transvaal."</p>
+
+<p>So came to an end the Queen's Suzerainty;&mdash;an ill-omened term, which
+had proved fruitful in all conceivable kinds of misinterpretation, and
+made possible the misunderstandings and controversies that culminated
+in this cruel and wasteful war. So was resumed the Queen's
+Sovereignty, which as subsequent events proved, ought <span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>(p. 262)</span> never
+to have been renounced; and so too was made plain the way for that
+ultimate federation of all South Africa, under one glorious flag, for
+which Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere long years before had
+laboured apparently in vain. This fresh unfurling of that flag was a
+pledge of equal liberties alike for Boer and Briton, as well as of
+fair play to the natives. It was a guarantee that the Pax Britannica
+would henceforth be maintained from the Zambesi to the Cape, and that
+in this vast area, well nigh as large as all Europe, there would be
+nursed into matureness and majestic strength, a new Anglo-Saxon
+nation, essentially Christian, essentially liberty-loving, and
+rivalling in wealth, in enterprise and prowess, the ripest promise of
+united Canada, and newly federated Australia.</p>
+
+<p>In this Imperial conflict the heroic fashion in which both those
+Commonwealths rallied for the defence of our Imperial flag is one of
+the most hopeful facts in modern history. "Waterloo," said Wellington,
+"did more than any other battle I know of toward the true object of
+all battles&mdash;the peace of the world." A similar comment both by
+victors and vanquished may possibly hereafter be made concerning this
+deplorable Boer war. But that can come to pass only provided we as a
+united people strive to cherish more fully the spirit embodied in
+Kipling's Diamond Jubilee Recessional:</p>
+
+<div class="poem20">
+<p>God of our fathers, known of old,&mdash;<br>
+<span class="add1em">Lord of our far-flung battle-line,&mdash;</span><br>
+  Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold<br>
+<span class="add1em">Dominion over palm and pine,&mdash;</span><br>
+  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>(p. 263)</span> Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br>
+  Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!</p>
+
+<p class="spaced1"><strong>...........</strong></p>
+
+<p>For heathen heart that puts her trust<br>
+<span class="add1em">In reeking tube and iron shard&mdash;</span><br>
+  All valiant dust that builds on dust,<br>
+<span class="add1em">And guarding calls not Thee to guard,&mdash;</span><br>
+  For frantic boast and foolish word,<br>
+  Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!&mdash;<span class="smcap">Amen.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Prince Christian Victor.</span>
+
+<p>To Dr Macgregor the Queen is reported to have said at Balmoral in
+November 1900, "My heart bleeds for these terrible losses. The war
+lies heavy on my heart." And Lord Wantage assures us that her
+Majesty's very last words, spoken only a few weeks later, were "Oh
+that peace may come!" Both assertions may well find credence; so
+characteristic are they of her whom all men revered and loved. As the
+head and representative of the whole empire, every bereavement caused
+by the war had in it for her a kind of personal element. But her
+sympathies and sufferings were destined to become more than merely
+vicarious. As in connection with one of our petty West African wars
+she was compelled to mourn the death of Prince Henry of Battenberg, so
+in the course of this South African war death again invaded her own
+immediate circle. The griefs that hastened her end were strongly
+personal as well as representative, and so made her all the more the
+true representative of those she ruled.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the early days of that dull November, tidings reached her
+and us of the dangerous illness of Prince Christian Victor. Not alone
+in name was he Christian; and not alone in name was he Victor. On the
+voyage out, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>(p. 264)</span> in the <span class="italic">Braemar Castle</span>, through the absence of
+a chaplain, the prince conducted divine worship with the troops. One
+of our best appointed hospital trains was "The Princess Christian
+Victor," so called presumably because provided by the bounty of his
+and her princely hands and hearts. He was what Sir Ascelin declared
+"The last of the English" to be&mdash;"A very perfect knight, beloved and
+honoured of all men."</p>
+
+<p>It therefore alarmed both town and camp to learn that enteric, the
+deadliest of all a soldier's foes, had claimed him, like so many a
+lowlier man, for its prey, and that his life was in mortal peril. At
+that time he was a patient in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital which
+consisted of Mr T. W. Beckett's beautiful mansion, and a formidable
+array of tents that almost covered the whole of the extensive grounds.
+Here prince and private alike reaped the fruit of the lavish
+beneficence which provided and maintained this magnificent hospital.
+All that wealth could procure was there of skill and tenderness, and
+such appliances as the healing art requires. All was there, except the
+power to command success. With what seemed startling suddenness the
+prince's vital powers collapsed, and the half masting of flags, far
+and wide, told to friend and foe the tidings of the Queen's
+irreparable loss.</p>
+
+<a id="img009" name="img009"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img009.jpg" width="500" height="291" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Jones</p>
+<p>Part of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's
+Mansion at Pretoria.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A Royal Funeral.</span>
+
+<p>It was at first proposed that the body of the prince should be taken
+to England for interment, and certain companies of the Grenadiers, to
+which battalion I was still attached, were detailed for escort duty,
+but finally it was decided all <span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>(p. 265)</span> fittingly that he should be
+laid to rest in the city where he fell, and among the comrades who
+like him had laid down life in defence of Queen and duty. So Pretoria
+witnessed a stately funeral, the like of which South Africa had never
+seen before, as the Queen's own kinsman was borne, by the martial
+representatives of the whole empire, to the quiet cemetery which this
+war had so enlarged and so enriched.</p>
+
+<p>Disease and fatal woundings combined cost us in this strangely
+protracted conflict, scarcely more lives than the one great fight at
+Waterloo, where on the English side alone 15,000 fell,&mdash;for the most
+part to rise no more. In this South African war, up to January 31st,
+1901, about 7700 of our men had died of disease; 700 by accidents; and
+4300 of wounds. But this Pretoria cemetery like that at Bloemfontein,
+where 1500 interments took place in less than fifteen months, affords
+striking testimony to the common loyalty of all classes throughout the
+empire. Volunteers belonging to the Imperial Light Horse, raised
+exclusively in South Africa here lie, side by side, with volunteers
+belonging to the Imperial Yeomanry, raised exclusively in England.
+Sons of the empire, from Canadian Vancouver and Australian Victoria,
+here find a common sepulchre. The soldier prince whose dwelling was in
+king's palaces here becomes, as in the conflict of the battlefield so
+in the quiet of a hero's grave, a comrade of the private soldier whose
+dwelling was a cottage; and be it noted, the death of the lowliest may
+involve quite as much of heartbreak as the lordliest.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">A touching story.</span>
+
+<p>At the close of a simple military funeral in this same <span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>(p. 266)</span>
+cemetery, the orderly in charge came to me and said, "I never felt so
+much over any case. This grave means four orphans left to the care of
+an invalid mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming
+what to do for his family when he got back: but <span class="italic">this</span> is the end of
+it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own
+particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party.
+No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post."
+No tear was shed. It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among
+thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in
+humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the less
+terrible on that account; and if half the truth were known and
+realised concerning the horrors and heartbreak caused by war, all
+Christendom would clamour for its speedy superseding by honest Courts
+of Arbitration.</p>
+
+<a id="img010" name="img010"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img010.jpg" width="500" height="368" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small p0_t italic">From a photograph by Mr Jones</p>
+<p>Wesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The death of the Queen.</span>
+
+<p>I was still in Pretoria when tidings arrived concerning the illness
+and death of the Queen; and was present in that same Kirk Square when
+King Edward VII. was proclaimed "Overlord of the Transvaal." In
+connection with the former event a memorial service, at which the
+military were largely represented, was held in Wesley Church on
+Sunday, January 27th. The Rev. Geo. Weavind, as well as Rev. H. W.
+Goodwin, took part in the proceedings, and I was privileged to deliver
+the following address which may serve to illustrate, once for all, the
+type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="center p0_b"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>(p. 267)</span> <strong>"I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."</strong>
+<p class="left60 p0_t">&mdash;Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender
+as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no
+mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's
+grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite
+exactness our common attitude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any
+other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We
+behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and
+almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over
+the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus
+feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.</p>
+
+<p>I. <span class="italic">It is the death of the representative</span> <span class="smcap">Mother</span> <span class="italic">of our race and age
+that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us.</span> For any record of
+such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history.
+She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any
+potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy
+memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen
+Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of
+Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in
+her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as
+capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old
+age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not
+by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of
+statesmanship will she be longest and most lovingly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>(p. 268)</span>
+remembered. Put it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own
+person she honoured family life and kept it pure, when for generations
+such pureness had seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most
+popular portraits represent her as the centre of a group of her own
+children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren&mdash;a chain of living
+royalties reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in
+Israel before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by
+potent blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The
+Queen retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last
+she lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore
+even imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than
+that by which the new King conveyed to the Lord Mayor of London,
+tidings of the great Queen's death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+     "My beloved Mother passed peacefully away, at 6.30, <span class="italic">surrounded
+     by her children and grandchildren</span>."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">In the midst of her children she lived; and all fittingly in the midst
+of her children she died!</p>
+
+<p>As her most signal virtues were of the domestic type, so also her
+acutest sorrows were domestic. A father's strongly tender love, or
+wisely-watchful care, she never knew. In one sad year there was taken
+from her her long-widowed mother, and her almost idolized husband,
+Albert the Good.</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Who reverenced his conscience as his king;<br>
+   Whose glory was redeeming human wrong;<br>
+   Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;<br>
+   ... thro' all the tract of years,<br>
+   Wearing the white flower of a blameless life."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>(p. 269)</span> Concerning that great sorrow, the Queen was wont in homely
+phrase to say that it made so large a hole in her heart, all other
+sorrows dropped lightly through. Nevertheless of other sorrows too she
+was called to bear no common share. As you are all well aware, two of
+the daughters of our widowed Queen have themselves long been widows.
+Two of her sons perished in their ripening prime. Her favourite
+daughter, the Princess Alice, and her favourite grandson, the
+heir-presumptive to her throne, drooped beside her like flowers
+untimely touched by frost; and within the last few weeks we ourselves
+have seen yet another of her grandsons laid beneath the sod in this
+very city of Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we
+call to mind that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name
+he died in the service of his queen&mdash;and ours; and perchance the Queen
+herself rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus
+called in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own
+people, whom recent events have made so desolate.</p>
+
+<p>Reverentially we may venture to say that in all afflictions she was
+afflicted, and thus endeared herself to those she ruled as no other
+monarch ever did. Because she was Queen of Sorrows she became also
+Queen of Hearts.</p>
+
+<p>That of which we have just spoken was indeed her last sore
+bereavement; and now that to her who shed such countless tears there
+has come the end of all grief, we have therewith witnessed the full
+and final prevailings of her Laureate's familiar prayer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>(p. 270)</span> <span class="add8em">May all love</span><br>
+  His love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee;<br>
+  The love of all thy sons encompass thee,<br>
+  The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,<br>
+  The love of all thy people comfort thee:<br>
+  <span class="italic">Till God's love set thee at his side again</span>."</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a nobler bridal
+day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!</p>
+
+<p>II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle
+of her own household. <span class="italic">She was emphatically the mother of her
+people</span>&mdash;a people multitudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One
+fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her
+gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere
+satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and
+to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow
+beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and
+church of every class and creed, men render thanks for one "who
+wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their God that</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "A thousand claims to reverence closed<br>
+  In her, as mother, wife, and queen."</p>
+
+<p>Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations
+became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have
+become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She
+rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of
+the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating
+hurricane in the West, called <span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>(p. 271)</span> forth from her an instant
+telegram of queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every
+effort for the betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest.
+The east end of London, only less well than the west, was known to
+her. From Windsor to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that
+with her own hand she might distribute flowers among her wounded
+soldiers, and with her own lips speak to them words of solace. At that
+same inclement season she crossed the Irish Channel to show her
+vulnerable face once more among her Irish people, and I should not
+marvel if for such a queen some would even dare to die!</p>
+
+<p>It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than
+with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among
+us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to
+find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence
+crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked
+immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a
+majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love
+and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best
+informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!</p>
+
+<p>III. <span class="italic">Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely
+due to the unexampled length of her reign.</span></p>
+
+<p>That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found
+in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the
+first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three
+elder sons all <span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>(p. 272)</span> died childless, and that her own father died
+within a few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly
+a special gift of God to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest
+of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to
+last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a
+regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months
+longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity
+upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There
+was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious
+illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to
+cease at once to work and live.</p>
+
+<p>So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser,
+the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall
+soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent
+intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became
+increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her
+life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side
+amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new
+acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us
+are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.</p>
+
+<p>Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes
+in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the
+result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a
+dastardly assassin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield
+and exceeding great reward deigned to compass our <span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>(p. 273)</span> Queen with
+songs of deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and
+that she may long reign over us is a petition that in special measure
+has prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and
+two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the
+inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our
+streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!</p>
+
+<p>IV. <span class="italic">The Queen's whole reign was frankly based on the fear of God</span>;
+and to find such in English history I fear we shall have to travel
+back a full thousand years to the days of Alfred the Great, who was
+also Alfred the Good, and whose favourite saying was</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Come what may come,<br>
+  God's will be welcome!"</p>
+
+<p>When Victoria was still a girl of fifteen she was solemnly confirmed
+in the Chapel Royal, and in her case that impressive service
+manifestly meant&mdash;what alas, it does not always imply&mdash;a life
+henceforth wholly given to God.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock in the morning of June 21st, 1837, she was roused from
+her slumbers in old Kensington Palace, and hastily flinging a shawl
+over her nightdress, she presently stood in the presence of the Lord
+Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to learn from their lips
+that her royal uncle had given up the ghost, and that she, a trembling
+maid of just eighteen, was Queen. Thereupon, so we are told, her eyes
+filled with tears, her lips quivered, and turning to the Archbishop
+she said, "Pray for me!" So that instant all three lowly bowed
+imploring heaven's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>(p. 274)</span> help. The Queen began her reign upon her
+knees. Her first act of conscious royalty was thus to render heartfelt
+homage to "The Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence came it to
+pass</p>
+
+<p class="poem center">
+  "Her court was pure, her life sincere."</p>
+
+<p>Her favourite recreations were consequently not those provided by the
+ballroom, the card-table, the racecourse, or even the theatre. Music,
+the simple charms of country life, and, manifold ministries of mercy,
+were the pastimes that became her best; and she never appeared in the
+eyes of her people more truly royal than when seen sitting by the
+bedside of a Highland cottager, reading to the sick out of God's own
+Gospel the wonderful words of life.</p>
+
+<p>We are here at liberty to use a scriptural phrase and to add that she
+"married in the Lord." Royal etiquette required that the Queen should
+herself select the lover destined to share the pleasures and
+responsibilities of her high position, and her choice fell not on one
+renowned for gaiety, for wealth or wit, but on one in whom she
+recognised the double gift of abounding good sense and the grace of
+our Lord Jesus Christ. For a choice so supremely wise, and for a
+marriage so supremely happy, all thoughtful Englishmen still render
+thanks to God.</p>
+
+<p>Her piety was as broad as it was deep and practical. The head of the
+Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only;
+but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the
+Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her
+warm appreciation of the work done for God and man by "The people
+called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerance <span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>(p. 275)</span> in
+things pertaining to godliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that
+all creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. For
+that reason among others the Queen required that historic service
+should be held in the open air, on the steps, it is true, of our
+stateliest cathedral; but none the less under God's own arching sky,
+which makes the whole earth a temple. We owe not a little of our
+religious liberty to the personal influence and example of our much
+lamented Queen; and we, therefore, show ourselves worthy to have been
+her subjects, only when we shun utterly all indifference concerning
+things divine, yet give no place to bigotry; when we seek out not the
+worst, but the best, in every man, and honestly strive to make the
+best of that best.</p>
+
+<p>V. <span class="italic">With the new century we suddenly find ourselves subjects of a new
+Sovereign</span>, and with equal sincerity, if not with equal fervour, we
+say, "God save the King." May his reign also like that of his
+predecessor bring blessing to many lands! We crave not for him, and
+seek not in him, unexampled greatness. We desire chiefly that he may
+"love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with his God." His rich legacy
+of newly-created loyalty he will thus assuredly retain and augment.</p>
+
+<p>It is commonly said that this new century, like the last, has begun
+with a notable lack of notable men, but, nevertheless, never yet have
+we been left without trusty leaders in the hour of national necessity;
+and as it has been so will it be!</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "We thank Thee, Lord, when Thou hast need,<br>
+  The man aye ripens for the deed!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>(p. 276)</span> Yet the new century clamours importunately, not so much for
+great men, as for good men. All greatness perishes that is not broad
+based on godliness. The best gift for this new era that God Himself
+can bestow upon our people, is the grace of deep-toned repentance, an
+impassioned love of righteousness, a never flinching resolve to walk
+in newness of life; for then will the brightness of even the Victorian
+era be splendidly outshone, and heaven itself will hasten to make all
+things new. We who believe in Christ have learned to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem30">
+  "Oh Thou bleeding Lamb<br>
+  The true morality is love of Thee!"</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Along that same path of love divine lies also the truest patriotism
+and the speediest perfecting of our national life. I pray you,
+therefore, let the God of your late Queen be yet more completely your
+God; her Saviour your Saviour; and make this Memorial Service doubly
+memorable by bowing this moment at His feet,</p>
+
+<p class="poem center">
+  "In full and glad surrender."</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">The King's Coronation.</span>
+
+<p>On Saturday, March 22nd, 1902, Schalk Burger, late State-Secretary
+Reitz, and General Lucas Meyer are reported to have appeared in
+Pretoria, presumably with a view to the submission of those they
+represent to the sovereign authority of our new King, whose
+approaching Coronation, Pretoria, even while I write, is preparing to
+celebrate with unexampled splendour. It is intended to break all
+previous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>(p. 277)</span> festival records, and some of the Guards may only
+too probably still be there to share therein. But that is quite
+another story, and must find for itself quite another historian.
+Meanwhile&mdash;<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+  "<strong>God send His people peace!</strong>"</p>
+
+
+<p class="p4"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 1:</strong> "God be with you till we meet again."&mdash;<span class="italic">Sacred Songs and
+Solos</span>, No. 494.<a href="#footnotetag1"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 25135-h.txt or 25135-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br>
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/1/3/25135</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img001.jpg b/25135-h/images/img001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31af417
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img001.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img002.jpg b/25135-h/images/img002.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4f011f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img002.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img003.jpg b/25135-h/images/img003.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5767524
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img003.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img004.jpg b/25135-h/images/img004.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55aeaa3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img004.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img005.jpg b/25135-h/images/img005.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd67415
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img005.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img006.jpg b/25135-h/images/img006.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e057729
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img006.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img007.jpg b/25135-h/images/img007.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53f5703
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img007.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img008.jpg b/25135-h/images/img008.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56c77d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img008.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img009.jpg b/25135-h/images/img009.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b71ab80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img009.jpg
diff --git a/25135-h/images/img010.jpg b/25135-h/images/img010.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c38f8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-h/images/img010.jpg
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f001.png b/25135-page-images/f001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6df31d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f001.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f002.png b/25135-page-images/f002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a239fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f002.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f003.png b/25135-page-images/f003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18459f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f003.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f004.png b/25135-page-images/f004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fd26b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f004.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f005.png b/25135-page-images/f005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d165d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f005.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f006.png b/25135-page-images/f006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f98ff7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f006.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f007.png b/25135-page-images/f007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d164b95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f007.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f008.png b/25135-page-images/f008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ccf004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f008.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/f009.png b/25135-page-images/f009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbbc481
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/f009.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p001.png b/25135-page-images/p001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4346b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p001.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p002.png b/25135-page-images/p002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..502490d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p002.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p003.png b/25135-page-images/p003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a47c55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p003.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p004.png b/25135-page-images/p004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abf02d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p004.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p005.png b/25135-page-images/p005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b342420
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p005.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p006.png b/25135-page-images/p006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..991b6de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p006.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p007.png b/25135-page-images/p007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d5cac7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p007.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p008.png b/25135-page-images/p008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0056c5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p008.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p009.png b/25135-page-images/p009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8e5be1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p009.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p010.png b/25135-page-images/p010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9712e59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p010.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p011.png b/25135-page-images/p011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d42572f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p011.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p012.png b/25135-page-images/p012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17eb7bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p012.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p013.png b/25135-page-images/p013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5898d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p013.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p014-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p014-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21f73b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p014-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p014.png b/25135-page-images/p014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaf6c89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p014.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p015.png b/25135-page-images/p015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5af039
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p015.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p016.png b/25135-page-images/p016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4468422
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p016.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p017.png b/25135-page-images/p017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da0f888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p017.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p018.png b/25135-page-images/p018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7004598
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p018.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p019.png b/25135-page-images/p019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d2e46e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p019.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p020.png b/25135-page-images/p020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..475a0d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p020.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p021.png b/25135-page-images/p021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38204e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p021.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p022.png b/25135-page-images/p022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27a1b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p022.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p023.png b/25135-page-images/p023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13f899a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p023.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p024.png b/25135-page-images/p024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e60e53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p024.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p025.png b/25135-page-images/p025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9819a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p025.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p026.png b/25135-page-images/p026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a14c8ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p026.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p027.png b/25135-page-images/p027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b92a03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p027.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p028.png b/25135-page-images/p028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4492be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p028.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p029.png b/25135-page-images/p029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..962e11e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p029.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p030.png b/25135-page-images/p030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7782b11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p030.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p031.png b/25135-page-images/p031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc0049
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p031.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p032.png b/25135-page-images/p032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9c76cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p032.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p033.png b/25135-page-images/p033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8216df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p033.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p034.png b/25135-page-images/p034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2bc4ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p034.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p035.png b/25135-page-images/p035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47abdb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p035.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p036.png b/25135-page-images/p036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16aac89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p036.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p037.png b/25135-page-images/p037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0476863
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p037.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p038.png b/25135-page-images/p038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc9ddd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p038.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p039.png b/25135-page-images/p039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e499ed6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p039.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p040-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p040-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1805849
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p040-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p040.png b/25135-page-images/p040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..844689f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p040.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p041.png b/25135-page-images/p041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd89ff1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p041.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p042.png b/25135-page-images/p042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cce243
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p042.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p043.png b/25135-page-images/p043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4044585
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p043.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p044.png b/25135-page-images/p044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22aac1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p044.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p045.png b/25135-page-images/p045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3371bdf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p045.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p046.png b/25135-page-images/p046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..144192e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p046.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p047.png b/25135-page-images/p047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a895f1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p047.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p048.png b/25135-page-images/p048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc4444
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p048.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p049.png b/25135-page-images/p049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..943e66c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p049.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p050.png b/25135-page-images/p050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4754eaa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p050.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p051.png b/25135-page-images/p051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71d6570
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p051.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p052.png b/25135-page-images/p052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f2df08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p052.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p053.png b/25135-page-images/p053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62cf2db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p053.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p054.png b/25135-page-images/p054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7934d7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p054.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p055.png b/25135-page-images/p055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b15a76a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p055.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p056.png b/25135-page-images/p056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5a21f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p056.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p057.png b/25135-page-images/p057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3573a46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p057.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p058.png b/25135-page-images/p058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71d1891
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p058.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p059.png b/25135-page-images/p059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..650e6d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p059.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p060.png b/25135-page-images/p060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6560fb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p060.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p061.png b/25135-page-images/p061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..094659a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p061.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p062.png b/25135-page-images/p062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f634ba2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p062.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p063.png b/25135-page-images/p063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dfbb37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p063.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p064.png b/25135-page-images/p064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e30554f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p064.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p065.png b/25135-page-images/p065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b06c16d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p065.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p066.png b/25135-page-images/p066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61494f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p066.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p067.png b/25135-page-images/p067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cac7a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p067.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p068.png b/25135-page-images/p068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a5e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p068.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p069.png b/25135-page-images/p069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a61d4ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p069.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p070.png b/25135-page-images/p070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b919032
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p070.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p071.png b/25135-page-images/p071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f28404
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p071.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p072-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p072-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89f5359
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p072-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p072.png b/25135-page-images/p072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35d6543
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p072.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p073.png b/25135-page-images/p073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc070d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p073.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p074-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p074-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5a280b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p074-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p074.png b/25135-page-images/p074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50602fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p074.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p075.png b/25135-page-images/p075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4dc6df0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p075.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p076.png b/25135-page-images/p076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ca44c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p076.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p077.png b/25135-page-images/p077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b05dcd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p077.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p078.png b/25135-page-images/p078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edbe424
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p078.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p079.png b/25135-page-images/p079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..853f151
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p079.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p080.png b/25135-page-images/p080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..581a0f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p080.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p081.png b/25135-page-images/p081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b52464
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p081.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p082.png b/25135-page-images/p082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ceed51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p082.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p083.png b/25135-page-images/p083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..229ef1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p083.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p084.png b/25135-page-images/p084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..880f0a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p084.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p085.png b/25135-page-images/p085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d56a842
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p085.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p086.png b/25135-page-images/p086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..502e141
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p086.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p087.png b/25135-page-images/p087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f270e94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p087.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p088.png b/25135-page-images/p088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d998dbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p088.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p089.png b/25135-page-images/p089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ab3a77
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p089.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p090.png b/25135-page-images/p090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b651ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p090.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p091.png b/25135-page-images/p091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7555ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p091.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p092.png b/25135-page-images/p092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cfeb5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p092.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p093.png b/25135-page-images/p093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebaa342
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p093.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p094.png b/25135-page-images/p094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83aa369
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p094.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p095.png b/25135-page-images/p095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..172de84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p095.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p096.png b/25135-page-images/p096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da1dc68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p096.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p097.png b/25135-page-images/p097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4723ffd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p097.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p098.png b/25135-page-images/p098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dda8158
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p098.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p099.png b/25135-page-images/p099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d275dca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p099.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p100.png b/25135-page-images/p100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4c6bd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p100.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p101.png b/25135-page-images/p101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e725074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p101.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p102.png b/25135-page-images/p102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ef1334
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p102.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p103.png b/25135-page-images/p103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..738f597
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p103.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p104.png b/25135-page-images/p104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fab433a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p104.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p105.png b/25135-page-images/p105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e00d7bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p105.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p106.png b/25135-page-images/p106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a553dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p106.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p107.png b/25135-page-images/p107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682bcc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p107.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p108.png b/25135-page-images/p108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99cbfc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p108.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p109.png b/25135-page-images/p109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f419a2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p109.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p110.png b/25135-page-images/p110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cdd3eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p110.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p111.png b/25135-page-images/p111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5dd9f68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p111.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p112.png b/25135-page-images/p112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b90c3a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p112.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p113.png b/25135-page-images/p113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4e1461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p113.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p114.png b/25135-page-images/p114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20364dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p114.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p115.png b/25135-page-images/p115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..339a644
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p115.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p116.png b/25135-page-images/p116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c3cac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p116.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p117.png b/25135-page-images/p117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad64ac8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p117.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p118.png b/25135-page-images/p118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d064859
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p118.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p119.png b/25135-page-images/p119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d87c0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p119.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p120.png b/25135-page-images/p120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19e8ddf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p120.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p121.png b/25135-page-images/p121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d680f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p121.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p122.png b/25135-page-images/p122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb770e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p122.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p123.png b/25135-page-images/p123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799cf68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p123.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p124.png b/25135-page-images/p124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f77f5bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p124.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p125.png b/25135-page-images/p125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03f07bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p125.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p126.png b/25135-page-images/p126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e0c7a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p126.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p127.png b/25135-page-images/p127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb7b4cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p127.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p128.png b/25135-page-images/p128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..142a375
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p128.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p129.png b/25135-page-images/p129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c957edd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p129.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p130.png b/25135-page-images/p130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69ffabd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p130.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p131.png b/25135-page-images/p131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4670467
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p131.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p132.png b/25135-page-images/p132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2f9983
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p132.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p133.png b/25135-page-images/p133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f561e10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p133.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p134-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p134-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8278cad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p134-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p134.png b/25135-page-images/p134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fd9dca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p134.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p135.png b/25135-page-images/p135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb324d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p135.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p136.png b/25135-page-images/p136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11042e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p136.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p137.png b/25135-page-images/p137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4292a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p137.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p138.png b/25135-page-images/p138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b19e39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p138.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p139.png b/25135-page-images/p139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0145a86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p139.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p140.png b/25135-page-images/p140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a5fc31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p140.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p141.png b/25135-page-images/p141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11c1513
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p141.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p142.png b/25135-page-images/p142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4993a59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p142.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p143.png b/25135-page-images/p143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c2953f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p143.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p144.png b/25135-page-images/p144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a6de51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p144.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p145.png b/25135-page-images/p145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a94b087
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p145.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p146.png b/25135-page-images/p146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26e2236
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p146.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p147.png b/25135-page-images/p147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c49cad6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p147.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p148.png b/25135-page-images/p148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f360b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p148.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p149.png b/25135-page-images/p149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24ac8da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p149.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p150.png b/25135-page-images/p150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f560599
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p150.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p151.png b/25135-page-images/p151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6da7559
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p151.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p152.png b/25135-page-images/p152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6bf171
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p152.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p153.png b/25135-page-images/p153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..944dca8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p153.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p154-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p154-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc08e6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p154-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p154.png b/25135-page-images/p154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbd44f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p154.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p155.png b/25135-page-images/p155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..794a423
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p155.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p156.png b/25135-page-images/p156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4878ce2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p156.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p157.png b/25135-page-images/p157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66dd1b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p157.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p158.png b/25135-page-images/p158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61ee5e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p158.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p159.png b/25135-page-images/p159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e77b4d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p159.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p160.png b/25135-page-images/p160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab8e6d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p160.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p161.png b/25135-page-images/p161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..883a247
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p161.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p162.png b/25135-page-images/p162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b39106
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p162.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p163.png b/25135-page-images/p163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9963694
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p163.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p164.png b/25135-page-images/p164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..239c0b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p164.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p165.png b/25135-page-images/p165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a53fb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p165.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p166.png b/25135-page-images/p166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1f9ead
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p166.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p167.png b/25135-page-images/p167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c8a8ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p167.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p168.png b/25135-page-images/p168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ab7216
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p168.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p169.png b/25135-page-images/p169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7556a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p169.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p170.png b/25135-page-images/p170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..211e1a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p170.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p171.png b/25135-page-images/p171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fd35c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p171.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p172.png b/25135-page-images/p172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4341b24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p172.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p173.png b/25135-page-images/p173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e794b97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p173.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p174.png b/25135-page-images/p174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1a94e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p174.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p175.png b/25135-page-images/p175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a88f265
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p175.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p176.png b/25135-page-images/p176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebb70c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p176.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p177.png b/25135-page-images/p177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3598667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p177.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p178.png b/25135-page-images/p178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56b2918
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p178.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p179.png b/25135-page-images/p179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3278297
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p179.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p180.png b/25135-page-images/p180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77e2186
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p180.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p181.png b/25135-page-images/p181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55c0e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p181.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p182.png b/25135-page-images/p182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f9ea40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p182.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p183.png b/25135-page-images/p183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..721df09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p183.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p184.png b/25135-page-images/p184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a014c5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p184.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p185.png b/25135-page-images/p185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3220737
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p185.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p186.png b/25135-page-images/p186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..500c948
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p186.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p187.png b/25135-page-images/p187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..101a972
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p187.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p188.png b/25135-page-images/p188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3393b3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p188.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p189.png b/25135-page-images/p189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b69e21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p189.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p190.png b/25135-page-images/p190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0bff0c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p190.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p191.png b/25135-page-images/p191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cd8c08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p191.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p192.png b/25135-page-images/p192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a7e660
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p192.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p193.png b/25135-page-images/p193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee7e918
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p193.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p194.png b/25135-page-images/p194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..192b5b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p194.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p195.png b/25135-page-images/p195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f99be1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p195.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p196.png b/25135-page-images/p196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78c1443
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p196.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p197.png b/25135-page-images/p197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04a4e9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p197.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p198.png b/25135-page-images/p198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f7849e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p198.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p199.png b/25135-page-images/p199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13f4da8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p199.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p200.png b/25135-page-images/p200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..560d36f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p200.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p201.png b/25135-page-images/p201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8ca3cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p201.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p202.png b/25135-page-images/p202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e61ad01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p202.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p203.png b/25135-page-images/p203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de0729e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p203.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p204.png b/25135-page-images/p204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a43e49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p204.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p205.png b/25135-page-images/p205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..febf7b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p205.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p206.png b/25135-page-images/p206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..120040f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p206.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p207.png b/25135-page-images/p207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6afd194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p207.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p208.png b/25135-page-images/p208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6595d95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p208.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p209.png b/25135-page-images/p209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1e4a09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p209.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p210.png b/25135-page-images/p210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54ba329
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p210.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p211.png b/25135-page-images/p211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..329b849
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p211.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p212.png b/25135-page-images/p212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b289bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p212.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p213.png b/25135-page-images/p213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df293e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p213.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p214.png b/25135-page-images/p214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60ee0e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p214.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p215.png b/25135-page-images/p215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f39ca0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p215.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p216.png b/25135-page-images/p216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1de3e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p216.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p217.png b/25135-page-images/p217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7d0e0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p217.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p218.png b/25135-page-images/p218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bb00bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p218.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p219.png b/25135-page-images/p219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a1f509
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p219.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p220.png b/25135-page-images/p220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6515f8a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p220.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p221.png b/25135-page-images/p221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bc41fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p221.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p222.png b/25135-page-images/p222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b48bc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p222.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p223.png b/25135-page-images/p223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64eb6b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p223.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p224.png b/25135-page-images/p224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd60c95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p224.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p225.png b/25135-page-images/p225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..452f39c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p225.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p226.png b/25135-page-images/p226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43424e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p226.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p227.png b/25135-page-images/p227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f98792
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p227.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p228.png b/25135-page-images/p228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c964f3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p228.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p229.png b/25135-page-images/p229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8bd675
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p229.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p230.png b/25135-page-images/p230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f56bb5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p230.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p231.png b/25135-page-images/p231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a04e88f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p231.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p232.png b/25135-page-images/p232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83c23b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p232.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p233.png b/25135-page-images/p233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cad6e05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p233.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p234.png b/25135-page-images/p234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0fd6b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p234.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p235.png b/25135-page-images/p235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc3bbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p235.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p236.png b/25135-page-images/p236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b65dccb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p236.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p237.png b/25135-page-images/p237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20fd3c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p237.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p238-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p238-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..337817e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p238-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p238.png b/25135-page-images/p238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1c032
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p238.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p239.png b/25135-page-images/p239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..087a333
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p239.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p240.png b/25135-page-images/p240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..154f79a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p240.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p241.png b/25135-page-images/p241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75aebb2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p241.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p242.png b/25135-page-images/p242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0944f56
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p242.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p243.png b/25135-page-images/p243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d12ebcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p243.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p244.png b/25135-page-images/p244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38d42fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p244.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p245.png b/25135-page-images/p245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f19084
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p245.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p246.png b/25135-page-images/p246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af78673
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p246.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p247.png b/25135-page-images/p247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36f694b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p247.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p248.png b/25135-page-images/p248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..559cff8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p248.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p249.png b/25135-page-images/p249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f1c6d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p249.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p250.png b/25135-page-images/p250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13419ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p250.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p251.png b/25135-page-images/p251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc26c35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p251.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p252.png b/25135-page-images/p252.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7d4a3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p252.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p253.png b/25135-page-images/p253.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f300ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p253.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p254.png b/25135-page-images/p254.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8101110
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p254.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p255.png b/25135-page-images/p255.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1047b8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p255.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p256.png b/25135-page-images/p256.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d2d79f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p256.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p257.png b/25135-page-images/p257.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3afb8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p257.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p258.png b/25135-page-images/p258.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a0c12e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p258.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p259.png b/25135-page-images/p259.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24dc1c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p259.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p260.png b/25135-page-images/p260.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac2055e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p260.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p261.png b/25135-page-images/p261.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f35c97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p261.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p262.png b/25135-page-images/p262.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74f1703
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p262.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p263.png b/25135-page-images/p263.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03c0a31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p263.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p264-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p264-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebe2bdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p264-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p264.png b/25135-page-images/p264.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af65d59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p264.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p265.png b/25135-page-images/p265.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c67b9d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p265.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p266-insert.png b/25135-page-images/p266-insert.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a0933d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p266-insert.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p266.png b/25135-page-images/p266.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e873f29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p266.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p267.png b/25135-page-images/p267.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12fafb5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p267.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p268.png b/25135-page-images/p268.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bccce7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p268.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p269.png b/25135-page-images/p269.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e43d7ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p269.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p270.png b/25135-page-images/p270.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9029374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p270.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p271.png b/25135-page-images/p271.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9684448
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p271.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p272.png b/25135-page-images/p272.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..615f6b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p272.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p273.png b/25135-page-images/p273.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d558ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p273.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p274.png b/25135-page-images/p274.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b1bc1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p274.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p275.png b/25135-page-images/p275.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33cb3aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p275.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p276.png b/25135-page-images/p276.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fdb5c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p276.png
diff --git a/25135-page-images/p277.png b/25135-page-images/p277.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b336ed5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135-page-images/p277.png
diff --git a/25135.txt b/25135.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f49ee5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8466 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to
+Koomati Poort and Back, by Edward P. Lowry
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back
+
+
+Author: Edward P. Lowry
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2008  [eBook #25135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM
+BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25135-h.htm or 25135-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135/25135-h/25135-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135/25135-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Obvious printer's errors have been corrected; all other
+      inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
+      has been maintained.
+
+      Text enclosed by equal signs was in bold face (=bold=).
+
+      Text enclosed by asterisks was in an old font (*old font*).
+
+      Page 122: "After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been
+      secured off Cadiz by the _Actaean_ and the _Favorite_" should
+      probably be "After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been
+      secured off Cadiz by the _Active_ and the _Favorite_".
+
+
+
+
+WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE
+
+FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK
+
+by THE
+
+REV. E. P. LOWRY
+
+Senior Wesleyan Chaplain with the South African Field Force
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Horace Marshall & Son
+Temple House, Temple Avenue, E.C.
+1902
+
+
+
+
+                           TO
+                      THE OFFICERS,
+             NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN
+                  OF THE GUARDS' BRIGADE
+    THIS IMPERFECT RECORD OF THEIR HEROIC DARING, AND OF
+             THEIR YET MORE HEROIC ENDURANCE IS
+                  RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
+     IN TOKEN OF SINCEREST ADMIRATION, AND IN GRATEFUL
+      APPRECIATION OF NUMBERLESS COURTESIES RECEIVED
+          BY ONE OF THEIR FELLOW TRAVELLERS AND
+              CHAPLAINS THROUGHOUT THE BOER
+                   WAR OF 1899-1902
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The story of my long tramp with the Guards' Brigade was in part told
+through a series of letters that appeared in _The Methodist Recorder_,
+_The Methodist Times_, and other papers. The first portion of that
+series was republished in "Chaplains in Khaki," as also extensive
+selections in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." In this volume, therefore,
+to avoid needless repetition, the story begins with our triumphal
+occupation of Bloemfontein, and is continued till after the time of
+the breaking-up of the Guards' Brigade.
+
+No one will expect from a chaplain a technical and critical account of
+the complicated military operations he witnessed at the seat of war.
+For that he has no qualifications. Nor, on the other hand, would it be
+quite satisfactory if he wrote only of what the chaplains and other
+Christian workers were themselves privileged to do in connection with
+the war. That would necessitate great sameness, if not great tameness.
+These pages are rather intended to set forth the many-sided life of
+our soldiers on active service, their privations and perils, their
+failings and their heroisms, their rare endurance, and in some cases
+their unfeigned piety; that all may see what manner of men they were
+who in so many instances laid down their lives in the defence of the
+empire; and amid what stupendous difficulties they endeavoured to do
+their duty.
+
+We owe it to the fact that these men have volunteered in such numbers
+for military service that Britain alone of all European nations has
+thus far escaped the curse of the conscription. In that sense,
+therefore, they are the saviours and substitutes of the entire manhood
+of our nation. If they had not consented of their own accord to step
+into the breach, every able Englishman now at his desk, behind his
+counter, or toiling at his bench, must have run the risk of having had
+so to do. We owe to these men more than we have ever realised. It is
+but right, therefore, that more than ever they should henceforth live
+in an atmosphere of grateful kindliness, of Christian sympathy and
+effort.
+
+          "God bless you, Tommy Atkins,
+          _Here's your country's love to you!_"
+
+My authorities for the statements made in the introductory chapter are
+Fitzpatrick's "Pretoria from Within," and Martineau's "Life of Sir
+Bartle Frere." For the verifying or correcting of my own facts and
+figures, given later on, I have consulted Conan Doyle's "The Great
+Boer War," Stott's "The Invasion of Natal," and almost all other
+available literature relating to the subject.
+
+                                        EDWARD P. LOWRY.
+
+PRETORIA, _March 1902_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+  THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT                                   1
+
+Two Notable Dreamers--A Bankrupt Republic--The Man who
+Schemed as well as Dreamed--The Gold Plague--Hated Johannesburg
+--Boer preparations for War--Coming events cast their shadows
+before--The Ultimatum--The Rallying of the Clans--The
+Rousing of the Colonies.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT!                            14
+
+A capital little Capital--Famished Men and Famine Prices--
+Republican Commandeering--A Touching Story--The Price of
+Milk.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  A LONG HALT                                                       24
+
+Refits--Remounts--Regimental Pets--Civilian Hospitality and
+Soldiers' Homes--Soldiers' Christian Association Work--
+Rudyard Kipling's Mistake--All Fools' Day--Eastertide in
+Bloemfontein--The Epidemic and the Hospitals--All hands and
+houses to the rescue--A sad sample of Enteric--Church of
+England Chaplains at work.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN                    45
+
+A Pleasure Jaunt--Onwards, but Whither!--That Pom-Pom again
+--A Problem not quite solved--A Touching Sight--Rifle Firing
+and Firing Farms--Boer Treachery and the White Flag--The Pet
+Lamb still lives and learns--Right about face--From Worlds
+Unknown--The Bushmen and their Australian Chaplains.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL                                      57
+
+A Comedy--A Tragedy--A Wide Front and a Resistless Force--
+Brandfort--"Stop the War" Slanders--A Prisoner who tried to
+be a Poet--Militant Dutch Reformed Predikants--Our Australian
+Chaplain's pastoral experiences--The Welsh Chaplain.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL                                  70
+
+The Sand River Convention--Railway Wrecking and Repairing--
+The Tale, and Tails, of a Singed Overcoat--Lord Roberts as
+Hospital Visitor--President Steyn's Sjambok--A Sunday at last
+that was also a Sabbath--Military Police on the March--A
+General's glowing eulogy of the Guards--Good News by the way--
+Over the Vaal at last.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS                                         88
+
+A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front--Pathetic Scenes
+in Hospital--A Battlefield Scene no less Pathetic--Look on
+this Picture, and on that--A third-class Chaplain who proved a
+first-rate Chaplain--Running in the Wrong Man--A Wainman who
+proved a real Waggoner--Three bedfellows in a barn--A
+fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain--A
+Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers--Caring for the
+Wounded--How the Chaplain's own Tent was bullet-riddled--A
+Sample Set of Sunday Services.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY                       103
+
+At Cape Town and Wynberg--Saved from Drowning to sink in
+Hospital--A Pleasant Surprise--The Soldiers' Reception
+Committee--The other way about--Our near kinship to the Boers
+--More good Work on our right Flank.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY                                       113
+
+An elaborate night toilet--Capturing Clapham Junction--Dear
+diet and dangerous--No Wages but the Sjambok--The Gold Mines
+--The Soldiers' Share--The Golden City--Astonishing the
+Natives.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  PRETORIA--THE CITY OF ROSES                                    127
+
+Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday--"Light after Dark"--Why the
+Surrender?--Taking Possession--"Resurgam"--A Striking
+Incident--No Canteens and no Crime.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS                              142
+
+The State's Model School--Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer--The
+Waterfall Prisoners--A Soldier's Hymn--A big Supper Party--
+The Soldiers' Home--Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe--A Letter from
+Lord Kitchener--Also from Lord Roberts--A Song in praise of
+De Wet--Cordua and his Conspiracy--Hospital Work in Pretoria
+--The Wear and Tear of War--The Nursing Sisters--A Surprise
+Packet--Soldierly Gratitude--_The Ladysmith Lyre_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST                                         169
+
+The Boer way of saying "Bosh"--News from a far Country
+--Further fighting--Touch not, taste not, handle not--More
+Treachery and still more--The root of the matter--A Tight Fit
+--Obstructives on the Rail--Middleburg and the Doppers--
+August Bank Holiday--Blowing up Trains--A peculiar Mothers'
+Meeting--Aggressive Ladies--A Dutch Deacon's Testimony--A
+German Officer's Testimony.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+  THROUGH HELVETIA                                                 190
+
+The Fighting near Belfast--Feeding under Fire--A German
+Doctor's Confession--Friends in need are Friends indeed--The
+Invisible Sniper's Triumph--"He sets the mournful Prisoners
+free"--More Boer Slimness--A Boer Hospital--Foreign
+Mercenaries--A wounded Australian--Hotel Life on the Trek--
+A Sheep-pen of a Prison--Pretty Scenery and Superb.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  WAR'S WANTON WASTE                                               210
+
+A Surrendered Boer General--Two Unworthy Predikants--Two
+Notable Advocates of Clemency--Mines without Men, and Men
+without Meat--Much Fat in the Fire--More Fat and Mightier
+Flames--A Welcome Lift by the Way--"Rags and Tatters, get ye
+gone!"--Destruction and still more Destruction--At Koomati
+Poort--Two Notable Fugitives--The Propaganda of the Africander
+Bond--Ex-President Steyn--Paul Botha's opinion of this
+Ex-President.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA                               231
+
+Staggering Humanity--Food for Flames--A Crocodile in the
+Koomati--A Hippopotamus in the Koomati--A Via Dolorosa--
+Over the Line--Westward Ho!--Ruined Farms and Ruined Firms--
+Farewell to the Guards' Brigade!
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES                                     245
+
+Exhaustlessness of Boer resources--The Peculiarity of Boer
+Tactics--The Surprisers Surprised--Train Wrecking--The
+Refugee Camps--The Grit of the Guards--The Irregulars--The
+Testimony of the Cemetery--Death and Life in Pretoria.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+  PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY                                    261
+
+Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty--Prince Christian Victor--A
+Royal Funeral--A Touching Story--The Death of the Queen--
+The King's Coronation.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
+
+THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT
+
+
+When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the
+Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found
+wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found
+itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers
+boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as
+they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the
+average Boer understood the real purpose for which he was called to
+arms seems doubtful; but his leaders made no secret of their intention
+to drive the hated "Roineks" into the sea, and to claim, as the
+notorious "Bond" frankly put it, "all South Africa for the
+Africanders." The Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer of the Dutch Reformed Church
+freely admits that the watchword of the Western Boers was "Tafelburg
+toc," that is, "To Table Mountain"; and that their commandant said to
+him, "We will not rest till our flag floats there."
+
+Similarly on the eastern side it was their confident boast that
+presently they would be "eating fish and drinking coffee at sea-side
+Durban." There would thus be one flag floating over all South Africa;
+and that flag not the Union Jack but its supplanter.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Dreamers._]
+
+Now the Dutch have undoubtedly as absolute a right to dream dreams of
+wide dominion as we ourselves have; and this particular dream had no
+less undeniably been the chief delight of some among them for more
+than a decade twice told.
+
+Even PRESIDENT BRAND, of the Orange Free State, referring to Lord
+Carnarvon's pet idea of a federated South Africa, said: "His great
+scheme is a united South Africa _under the British Flag_. He dreams of
+it and so do I; but _under the flag of South Africa_." Much in the
+same strain PRESIDENT BURGERS, of the Transvaal Republic, when
+addressing a meeting of his countrymen in Holland, said: "In that
+far-off country the inhabitants dream of a future in which the people
+of Holland will recover their former greatness." He was convinced that
+within half a century there would be in South Africa a population of
+eight millions; all speaking the Dutch language; a _second_ Holland,
+as energetic and liberty-loving as the first; but greater in extent,
+and greater in power.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Bankrupt Republic._]
+
+Nevertheless, in this far-seeing President's day, the Transvaal, after
+fourteen years of doubtful independence, reached in 1877 its lowest
+depths of financial and political impotency. Its valiant burghers were
+vanquished in one serious conflict with the natives; and, emboldened
+thereby, the Zulus were audaciously threatening to eat them up, when
+Shepstone appeared upon the scene. "I thank my father Shepstone for
+his restraining message," said Cetewayo. "The Dutch have tired me out;
+and I intended to fight with them once, _only once_, and to drive them
+over the Vaal." The jails were thrown open because food was no longer
+obtainable for the prisoners. The State officials, including the
+President, knew not where to secure their stipends, and were
+hopelessly at variance among themselves. The Transvaal one-pound notes
+were selling for a single shilling, and the State treasury contained
+only twelve shillings and sixpence wherewith to pay the interest on a
+comparatively heavy State debt, besides almost innumerable other
+claims.
+
+No wonder, therefore, that Burgers, in disgust, declared he would
+sooner be a policeman under a strong government. "Matters are as bad
+as they ever can be," said he; "they cannot be worse!" Hence its
+annexation, in 1877, by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, without the
+assistance of a solitary soldier, but with the eager assent of
+thousands of the burghers, bade fair to prove the salvation of the
+Transvaal, and probably would have done, had the easily-to-be-obtained
+consent of the Volksraad been at once sought, and Lord Carnarvon's
+promise of speedy South African Federation, together with a generous
+measure of local self-government, been promptly redeemed. But European
+complications, with serious troubles on the Indian frontier, caused
+interminable delay in the maturing of this scheme; and as the
+disappointed Boers grew restive, a "Hold your Jaw" Act was passed,
+making it a penal offence for any Transvaaler even to discuss such
+questions. In our simplicity we sit upon the safety valve and then
+wonder why the boiler bursts. To the "Hold your Jaw" policy the Boer
+reply was an appeal to arms; and at Majuba in the spring of 1881 their
+rifles said what their jaws were forbidden to say. Majuba was indeed a
+mere skirmish, an affair of outposts; but Magersfontein and Spion Kop
+are the legitimate sons of Majuba.
+
+[Sidenote: _The man who Schemed as well as Dreamed._]
+
+Napoleon, with possibly a veiled reference to himself, once said to
+the French people, "You have the men, but where is _The Man_?" The
+Boers in the day of their uprising against British rule found "The
+Man" in PAUL STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of
+Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as
+their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness
+no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British
+subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of
+the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a
+consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a
+tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The great Trek"
+which in 1837 sought on the dangerous and dreary veldt beyond the Vaal
+a refuge from British rule. He it was who, surviving the terrors of
+those tragic times and trained in that stern school, became like Brand
+and Burgers a dreamer of dreams. He lived to baffle by his superior
+shrewdness, or slimness, all the arts of English diplomacy. In his
+later years this President manifestly deemed himself chosen of Heaven
+to make an end of British rule from the Zambesi to the sea. "The
+Transvaal shall never be shut up in a kraal," said he. A Sovereign
+International State he declared it was, or should be, with free access
+to the ocean; and how astonishingly near he came to the accomplishment
+of these bold aims we now know to our exceeding cost. Nevertheless, to
+this persistent dreamer of dreams the two South African Republics owe
+their extinction; while the British Empire owes to him more than to
+any other living man its fast approaching Federation.
+
+With surprising secrecy and success the Transvaal officials prepared
+for the inevitable conflict which the attempted fulfilment of such
+bold dreams involved, and in that preparation were rendered essential
+aid, first by the discovery, not far from Pretoria, of the richest
+goldfield in the whole world, which soon provided them with the
+necessary means; and next by the Jameson Raid, which provided them
+with the necessary excuse.
+
+To Steevens, the lamented correspondent of _The Daily Mail_, a Dopper
+editor and predikant said, "I do not think the Transvaal Government
+has been wise, and I told them they made a great mistake when they let
+people come in to the mines. _This gold will ruin you; to remain
+independent you must remain poor_"! Perhaps so! but the modern world
+is not built that way. No trekkers nowadays may take possession of
+half a continent, forbid all others to come in, and right round the
+frontier post up notices "Trespassers will be prosecuted." Even
+Robinson Crusoe had not long landed on his desolate isle when he was
+startled by the sight of a strange footprint on the seashore sand.
+Welcome or unwelcome, somebody else had come! Crusoe and his man
+Friday might set up no exclusive rights in a heritage that for a brief
+while seemed all their own. The Boer with his Kaffir bondsman has been
+compelled to learn the same distasteful lesson. The wealth of the
+Witwaters Rand was for those who could win it; and for that stupendous
+task the Boer had neither the necessary aptitude nor the necessary
+capital. It was not, therefore, for him to echo the cry of Edie
+Ochiltree when he found hid treasure amid the ruins of St Roth's
+Abbey--"Nae halvers and quarters,--hale o' mine ain and nane o' my
+neighbours." The bankrupt Boer had to let his enterprising neighbour
+in to do the digging, or get no gold at all.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hated Johannesberg._]
+
+Nevertheless, the upspringing as by magic of the great city of
+Johannesberg in the midst of the dreary veldt filled Kruger's soul
+with loathing. When once asked to permit prospecting for minerals
+around Pretoria, he replied, "Look at Johannesberg! We have enough
+gold and gold seekers in the country already!" The presence of this
+ever-growing multitude was felt to be a perpetual menace to Dutch, and
+more especially to Dopper supremacy. So, in his frankly confessed
+detestation of them, their Dopper President for five years at a
+stretch never once came near them, and when at last he ventured to
+halt within twenty miles of their great city it was thus he commenced
+his address to the crowd at Krugersdorp:--"Burghers, friends,
+_thieves_, _murderers_, _newcomers_, and others." The reek of the Rand
+was evidently even then in his nostrils; and the mediaeval saint that
+could smell a heretic nine miles off was clearly akin to Kruger.
+Unfortunately for him the "newcomers" outnumbered the old by five to
+one, and were a bewilderingly mixed assortment, representing almost
+every nationality under the whole heaven. In what had suddenly become
+the chief city of the Transvaal, with a white population of over
+50,000, only seven per cent. were Dutch, and sixty-five per cent. were
+British. These aliens from many lands paid nearly nine-tenths of the
+taxes, yet were persistently denied all voice alike in national and
+municipal affairs. "Rights!" exclaimed the angry President when
+appealed to for redress, "Rights! They shall win them only over my
+dead body!" At whatever cost he was stubbornly resolved that as long
+as he lived the tail should still wag the dog instead of the dog the
+tail; and that a continually dwindling minority of simple farmer folk
+should rule an ever-growing majority of enterprising city men. Though
+the political equality of all white inhabitants was the underlying
+condition on which self-government was restored to the Transvaal, what
+the Doppers had won by bullets they would run no risk of losing
+through the ballot box, and so one measure of exclusion after another
+rapidly became law. When reminded that in other countries Outlanders
+were welcomed and soon given the franchise, the shrewd old President
+replied, "Yes! but in other countries the newcomers do not _outswamp_
+the old burghers." The whole grievance of the Boers is neatly summed
+up in that single sentence; and so far it proves them well entitled to
+our respectful pity.
+
+It was, however, mere fatalism resisting fate when to a deputation of
+complaining Outlanders Kruger said "Cease holding public meetings! Go
+back and tell your people I will never give them anything!" Similarly
+when in 1894 35,000 adult male Outlanders humbly petitioned that they
+might be granted some small representation in the councils of the
+Republic, which would have made loyal burghers of them all, the
+short-sighted President contended that he might just as well haul down
+the Transvaal flag at once. There was a strong Dopper conviction that
+to grant the franchise on any terms to this alien crowd would speedily
+degrade the Transvaal into a mere Johannesberg Republic; and they
+would sooner face any fate than that; so the Raad, with shouts of
+derision, rejected the Outlanders' petition as a saucy request to
+commit political suicide. They felt no inclining that way!
+Nevertheless one of their number ventured to say, "Now our country is
+gone. Nothing can settle this but fighting!" And that man was a
+prophet.
+
+[Sidenote: _Boer preparations for War._]
+
+For that fighting the President and his Hollander advisers began to
+prepare with a timeliness and thoroughness we can but admire, however
+much in due time we were made to smart thereby. Through the suicide of
+a certain State official it became known that in 1894--long therefore
+before the Raid--no less than L500,000 of Transvaal money had been
+sent to Europe for secret uses. Those secret uses, however, revealed
+themselves to us in due time at Magersfontein and Colenso. The
+Portuguese customs entries at Delagoa Bay will certify that from 1896
+to 1898 at least 200,000 rifles passed through that port to the
+Transvaal. It was an unexampled reserve for states so small. The
+artillery, too, these peace-loving Boers laid up in store against the
+time to come, not only exceeded in quantity, but also _outranged_, all
+that British South Africa at that time possessed. Their theology might
+be slightly out-of-date, but in these more material things the Boers
+were distinctly up-to-date. For many a week after the war began both
+the largest and the smallest shells that went curving across our
+battlefields were theirs; while many of our guns were mere popguns
+firing smoky powder, and almost as useless as catapults. It was not a
+new Raid these costly weapons were purchased to repel; neither men nor
+nations employ sledge-hammers to drive home tinned-tacks. It was a
+mighty Empire they were intended to assail; and a mighty Republic they
+were intended to create.
+
+When the fateful hour arrived for the hurling of the Ultimatum, in
+very deed "not a gaiter button" was found wanting on their side; and
+every fighting man was well within reach of his appointed post.
+Fierce-looking farmers from the remotest veldt, and sleek urban
+Hollanders, German artillerists, French generals, Irish-Americans,
+Colonial rebels, all were ready. The horse and his rider, prodigious
+supplies of food stuffs, and every conceivable variety of warlike
+stores, were planted at sundry strategic points along the Natal and
+Cape Colony frontiers. War then waited on a word and that word was
+soon spoken!
+
+[Sidenote: _Coming events cast their shadows before._]
+
+As early as September 18th, 1899, the Transvaal sent an unbending and
+defiant message to the British Government. On September 21st the
+Orange Free State, after forty years of closest friendship with
+England, officially resolved to cast in her lot with the Transvaal
+against England. On September 29th through railway communication
+between Natal and the Transvaal was stopped by order of the Transvaal
+Government. On September 30th twenty-six military trains left Pretoria
+and Johannesberg for the Natal border; and that same day saw 16,000
+Boers thus early massed near Majuba Hill. Yet at that very time the
+British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate
+not merely for defiance but even for defence. On October 3rd, a full
+week before the delivery of the Ultimatum, the Transvaal mail train to
+the Cape was stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold
+it carried, valued at L500,000, was seized by the Transvaal
+Government. Whether that capture be regarded merely as a premature act
+of war or as highway robbery, it leaves no room for doubt as to which
+side in this quarrel is the aggressor; and when at last the challenge
+came, even chaplains could with a clear conscience, though by no means
+with a light heart, set out for the seat of war.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Ultimatum._]
+
+Surely never since the world began was such an Ultimatum presented to
+one of the greatest Powers on earth by what were supposed to be two of
+the weakest. At the very time that armed and eager burghers were thus
+massing threateningly on our frontiers, the Queen it will be
+remembered was haughtily commanded to withdraw from those frontiers
+the pitifully few troops then guarding them; to recall, in the sight
+of all Europe, every soldier that in the course of the previous
+twelvemonth had been sent to our South African Colonies; and solemnly
+to pledge herself, at Boer bidding, that those then on the sea should
+not be suffered to set foot on African soil. Moreover, so urgent was
+this audacious demand that Pretoria allowed London only forty-eight
+hours in which to decide what should be its irrevocable doom, to lay
+aside the pride of empire, or pay the price of it in blood.
+
+Superb in its audacity was that demand: and, if war was indeed fated
+to come, this daring challenge was for England as serviceable a deed
+as unwitting foemen ever wrought.
+
+[Sidenote: _The rallying of the Clans._]
+
+It put a sudden end for a season to all controversy. It rallied in
+defence of our Imperial heritage almost every class, and every creed.
+It thrilled us all, like the blast of the warrior horn of Roderick
+Dhu, which transformed the very heather of the Highlands into fighting
+men. As the soldiers' laureate puts it "Duke's son and cook's son,"
+with rival haste responded to the martial call. To serve their
+assailed and sorrowing Queen, royal court and rural cottage gave
+freely of their best. It intensified the patriotism of us all; and
+probably never, since the days of the Armada, had the United Kingdom
+of Great Britain and Ireland found itself so essentially united.
+
+[Sidenote: _The rousing of the Colonies._]
+
+The effect of the Ultimatum throughout the length and breadth of
+Greater Britain was no less remarkable than its first results at home.
+Not only the two Colonies that, alas, were soon to be overrun by
+hostile hordes, and mercilessly looted, but also those farthest
+removed from the fray, instantly took fire, and burned with
+imperialistic zeal that stinted neither men nor means.
+
+          "A varied host, from kindred realms they come,
+           Brethren in arms, but rivals in renown."
+
+The declaration of war united the ends of the earth in a common
+enthusiasm, and sent a strange throb of brotherhood right round the
+globe. The whole empire at last awoke to a sense of its essential
+oneness. Australians and Canadians, men from Burma, from India and
+Ceylon, speedily joined hands on the far distant veldt in defence of
+what they proudly felt to be their heritage as well as ours. Their
+presence in the very forefront of the fray betokened the advent of a
+new era. Nobler looking men, or men of a nobler spirit, were never
+brought together at the unfurling of any banner. They were the outcome
+of competitions strangely keen and close. Sydney for instance called
+for five hundred volunteers; but within a few days _three thousand_
+five hundred valiant men were clamouring for acceptance. So was it in
+Montreal. So it was everywhere. Often too at no slight financial
+sacrifice was the post of peril sought. As a type of many more, I was
+told of an Australian doctor who paid a substitute L300 to carry on
+his practice, while he as a private joined the fighting ranks and
+faced cheerily the manifold privations of the hungry veldt. Rich is
+the empire that owns such sons; and myriads of them in the hour of
+impending conflict were ready to say--
+
+  "War? We would rather peace! But, MOTHER, if fight we must,
+  There are none of your sons on whom you can lean with a surer trust.
+  Bone of your bone are we; and in death would be dust of your dust!"
+
+It was the Ultimatum that thus linked to each other and to us those
+loyal hearts that longed to keep the empire whole; and thus President
+Kruger in his blindness became Greater Britain's boundless benefactor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT
+
+
+       "For old times' sake
+               Don't let enmity live;
+       For old times' sake
+               Say you will forget and forgive.
+       Life is too short for quarrel;
+               Hearts are too precious to break;
+       Shake hands and let us be friends
+               For old times' sake!"
+
+So gaily sang the Scots Guards as, in hope of speedy triumph and
+return, we left Southampton for Kruger's Land on the afternoon of
+October 21st, 1899.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+A Magersfontein Boer Trench.]
+
+Our last evening in England brought us the welcome tidings that on
+that day, the Boers who had thus early invaded Natal with a view to
+annexing it, had been badly beaten at Talana Hill. That seemed a good
+beginning; and it sent us to sea with lightsome hearts; nor was it
+till long after we landed in South Africa that we learned what had
+really taken place during our cheerful voyage;--that on the very day
+we embarked, the battle of Elandslaagte had been won by our
+hard-pressed comrades, but at a cost of 260 casualties; and that the
+very next day--The _Nubia's_ first Sunday at sea--Dundee with all its
+stores had perforce been abandoned by 4000 of our retreating troops,
+for whose relief, two days later, Tinta Inyoni was fought by General
+French; that on Oct. 29th while we were spending a tranquil Sunday
+in St Vincent's harbour there commenced the struggle that culminated
+in the Nicholson's Nek disaster; and that on Nov. 13th, while we were
+awaiting orders in Table Bay, the capture of our armoured train at
+Chieveley took place. Clearly it was blissful ignorance that begat our
+hopes of brief absence from home, and of the easy vanquishing of our
+hardy foes!
+
+Two days later I reached the Orange River; and, on the courteous
+suggestion of Lord Methuen, was attached to the mess of the 3rd
+Grenadier Guards, as was also my "guide, philosopher and friend" the
+Rev. T. F. Falkner our Anglican chaplain. Here I left my invaluable
+helper, Army Scripture Reader Pearce; while, with the Guards' Brigade
+now made complete by the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, I pushed forward to be present at the four battles which
+followed in startlingly swift succession, and which I have already
+with sufficient fulness described in "Chaplains in Khaki," viz.
+Belmont on Nov. 23rd, Graspan on Nov. 25th, Modder River on Nov. 28th,
+and the Magersfontein defeat on Dec. 11th, for which, however, the
+next Amajuba Day--Feb. 27th, 1900--brought us ample compensation in
+the surrender of Cronje and his 4000 veterans, with the ever memorable
+sequel to that surrender, the occupation of Bloemfontein by the
+British forces.
+
+[Sidenote: _A capital little Capital._]
+
+It would probably be difficult to find anywhere under the sun a more
+prosperous and promising little city, or one better governed than
+Bloemfontein, which the Guards entered on the afternoon of Tuesday,
+March 13th, 1900. There is not a scrap of cultivated land anywhere
+around it. It is very literally a child of the veldt; and still clings
+strangely to its nursing mother. Indeed the veldt is not only round
+about it on every side, but even asserts its presence in many an
+unfinished street. You are still on the veldt in the midst of the
+city; and the characteristic kopje is in full view here, there, and
+everywhere. On one side of the city is the old fort built by the
+British more than fifty years ago, and soon after vacated by them, but
+it is erected of course on a kopje, on one slope of which, part of the
+city now stands. On the opposite side of the town is a new fort; but
+that also crowns a kopje. This metropolis of what was then the Orange
+Free State, thus intensely African in its situation and surroundings,
+was nevertheless an every way worthy centre of a worthy State.
+
+Many of its public buildings are notably fine, as for instance the
+Government Offices over which it was my memorable privilege to see the
+Union Jack unceremoniously hoisted; and the Parliament Hall, on the
+opposite side of the same road, erected some twelve years ago at a
+cost of L80,000. The Grey College, which accommodates a hundred boy
+boarders, is an edifice of which almost any city would be proud; and
+"The Volk's Hospital," that is "The People's Hospital," is also an
+altogether admirable institution. From the commencement of the war
+this was used for the exclusive benefit of sick or wounded Boers and
+of captured Britishers who were in the same sore plight. Among these I
+found many English officers, who all bore witness to the kind and
+skilful treatment they had uniformly received from the hospital
+authorities; but when the Boer forces hurried away from Bloemfontein
+they were compelled to leave their sick and wounded behind; with the
+result that as at Jacobsdal, the English patients at once ceased to be
+prisoners, while the Boer patients at once became prisoners. So do the
+wheels of war and fortune go whirling round!
+
+With a white population of under ten thousand all told, a large
+proportion is of British descent; and presently a positively
+surprising number of Union Jacks sprang forth from their hiding-places
+and fluttered merrily all over the town. Everybody was thankful that
+no bombardment had taken place; but many even of the British residents
+regarded with sincere regret the final extinction of the independence
+of this once self-governed and well-governed Republic.
+
+[Sidenote: _Famished men and famine prices._]
+
+The story has now everywhere been told of the soldier lad who, when he
+caught sight of his first swarm of locusts, wonderingly exclaimed as
+he noted their peculiar colour, "I'm blest if the butterflies out here
+haven't put on khaki." Bloemfontein very soon did the same. Khaki of
+various shades and various degrees of dirtiness saluted me at every
+point. Khaki men upon khaki men swarmed everywhere. Brigade followed
+brigade in apparently endless succession; but all clad in the same
+irrepressible colour, till it became quite depressing. No wonder the
+townspeople soon took to calling the soldiers "locusts," not merely
+out of compliment to the gay colour of their costume, but also as
+aptly descriptive of their apparent countlessness. They seemed like
+the sands by the seashore, innumerable. They bade fair to swallow up
+the place.
+
+That last expression, however, suggests yet another point of
+resemblance. For longer than these men seemed able to remember, the
+order of the day had been "long marches and short rations." When,
+therefore, they reached this welcome halting-place they were simply
+famished; insatiably hungry, they eagerly spent their last coin in
+buying up whatever provisions had fortunately escaped the
+commandeering of the Boers. There was no looting, no lawlessness of
+any kind; and many a civilian gave his last loaf to a starving
+trooper. There was soon a famine in the place and no train to bring us
+fresh supplies. All the bakeries of the town were commandeered by the
+new government for the benefit of the troops; but like the five loaves
+of the gospel story, "What were they among so many?" I saw the men,
+like swarms of bees, clustering around the doors and clambering on to
+the window-sills of these establishments, enjoying apparently the
+smell of the baking bread, and cherishing the vain hope of being able
+to purchase a loaf when at last the ovens were emptied.
+
+So too at the grocers' shops, a "tail" was daily formed outside the
+door, which at intervals was cautiously opened to let in a few at a
+time of these clamorous customers, who presently retired by the back
+door, laden more or less with such articles as happened to be still in
+store; but muttering as they came out "this is like Klondyke," with
+evident reference not to Klondyke gold, but to Klondyke prices. It was
+not the traders that needed protection as against the troopers, but
+the troopers that needed protection as against some of the traders.
+Even proclamation prices were alarmingly high, as for instance, a
+shilling for a pound of sugar. Sixpence was the popular price for a
+cup of tea, often without milk or sugar. The quartermaster whose tent
+I shared was charged four shillings for a single "whisky and soda,"
+and was informed that if he wanted a bottle of whisky the price would
+be thirty-five shillings. On such terms tradesmen who, before the war,
+had laid in large and semi-secret stores now reaped a magnificent
+harvest. One provision merchant was reported to have thus sold L700
+worth of goods before breakfast on a certain Saturday morning, in
+which case he would perhaps reckon that on that particular date his
+breakfast had been well earned. It probably meant in part a wholesale
+army order; but even in that case it would be for cash, and not a case
+of commandeering after the fashion of the Boers.
+
+A crippled Scandinavian tailor told me that his constant charge,
+whether to Colonels or Kaffirs, was two shillings an hour; and that he
+thought his needle served him badly if it did not bring him in L6 a
+week. About the same time a single-handed but nimble-fingered barber
+claimed to have made L100 in one week out of the invading British; but
+his victims declared that his price was a shilling for a shave and two
+shillings for a clip. At those figures the seemingly impossible comes
+to pass--if only customers are plentiful enough. Oh for a business in
+Bloemfontein!
+
+[Sidenote: _Republican Commandeering._]
+
+The Republicans of South Africa have always been credited with an
+ingrained objection to paying rates and taxes even in war time; but
+they frankly recognise the reasonableness of governmental
+commandeering, and apparently submit to it without a murmur;
+especially when it hits most heavily the stranger within their gates.
+Accordingly, the war-law of the Orange Free State authorises the
+commandeering without payment of every available man, and of all
+available material of whatsoever kind within thirty days of war being
+declared. During those thirty days, therefore, the war-broom sweeps
+with a most commendable thoroughness; and all the more so, because
+after that date everything must be paid for at market values. Why pay,
+if being a little "previous" will serve the same purpose?
+
+A gentleman farmer whom it was my privilege to visit, some fifteen
+miles out from Bloemfontein, told me he had been thus commandeered to
+the extent of about L3100; the value of waggons, oxen, and produce, he
+was compelled gratuitously to supply to his non-taxing government. A
+specially prosperous store-keeper in the town was said to have had
+L600 worth of goods taken from him in the same way; but then, of
+course, he had the compensating comfort of feeling that he was not
+being taxed! Even Republics cannot make war quite without cost; and by
+this time some are beginning to discover that it is the most ruinously
+expensive of all pursuits.
+
+The Republican conscription was equally wide reaching; for every
+capable man between the ages of sixteen and sixty was required to
+place himself and his rifle at the service of the State. Even sons of
+British parentage, being burghers, were not allowed to cross the
+border and so escape this, in many a case, hateful obligation. Their
+life was forfeit, if they sought to evade the dread duties of the
+fighting line, and refused to level reluctant rifles against men
+speaking the same mother tongue. Some few, however, secured the rare
+privilege of acting simply as despatch riders, or as members of the
+Boer ambulance corps.
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching story._]
+
+One of the sons of my Methodist farmer friend had been thus employed
+at Magersfontein, but had now seized the first opportunity of taking
+the oath and returning to his home. With his own lips he told me that
+on that fatal field he had found the body of an English officer, in
+whose cold hand lay an open locket, and in the locket two portraits;
+one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still
+fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the
+blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's
+last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost
+that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price of
+that one locket?
+
+Yet, appositely enough, as, that same evening, I was being driven back
+to town in a buggy and four, a little maiden--perchance like the
+maiden of the locket--wonderingly exclaimed as she watched the sun
+sink in radiance behind a neighbouring hill: "Why! just look! The sky
+is English!" "How so?" asked her father. "Can't you see?" said the
+child; "it is all red, white, and blue!" which indeed it was!
+
+[Sidenote: _The price of milk._]
+
+But our title to this newly-conquered territory was by no means quite
+so unchallenged as such a complacent and complimentary sky might have
+led one to suppose. The heavens above us were for the moment English,
+but scarcely the earth beneath us; and certainly not the land beyond
+us. Great even thus far had been the price of conquest; but the full
+sum was not yet ready for the reckoning. No new Magersfontein awaited
+us, and no new Paardeberg; but the incessant risking of precious life,
+and much loss thereof in other fashions than those of the battlefield.
+
+Possibly one of the most distressing cases of that kind occurred only
+two days after near Karee, a few miles beyond Bloemfontein. The
+officers of the Guards had become famous for their care of their men,
+and for their constant endeavour to keep them well served with
+supplementary supplies of food. They foraged right and left, and
+bargained with the farmers for all available milk and butter and
+cheese and bread. Men on the march cannot always live on rations only,
+and good leadership looks after the larder as well as after the lives
+of the men. On this gracious errand there rode forth from the camp as
+fine a group of regimental officers as could possibly be found; to
+wit, the colonel of the Grenadiers, his adjutant and transport officer
+who, beyond most, were choice young men and goodly; also the colonel
+of one of the Coldstream battalions, and one orderly. Hiding near a
+neighbouring kopje was a small body of Zarps watching for a chance of
+sniping or capturing a seceding Boer. Of them our officers caught
+sight, and with characteristic British pluck sought to capture them.
+But on the kopje the Boers found effectual cover, plied their rifles
+vigorously and presently captured all their would-be captors. As at
+Belmont, and on the same day of the month, the colonel of the
+Grenadiers was wounded in two places; the transport officer, the son
+of one of our well-known generals, lost his right arm; the adjutant, a
+younger brother of a noted earl, was shot through the heart, and the
+life of the other colonel was for a while despaired of. It was in some
+senses the saddest disaster that had yet befallen the Guards' Brigade;
+and it was the outcome not of some decisive battle, but of a kindly
+quest for milk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A LONG HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Refits._]
+
+Before we could resume our march every commissariat store needed to be
+replenished, and every man required a new outfit from top to toe. If
+the march of the infantry had been much further prolonged we should
+have degenerated into a literally bootless expedition, for some of the
+men reached Bloemfontein with bare if not actually bleeding feet,
+while their nether garments were in a condition that beggared and
+baffled all description. Once smart Guardsmen had patched their
+trousers with odd bits of sacking, and in one case the words "Lime
+Juice Cordial" were still plainly visible on the sacking. So came that
+"cordial" and its victorious wearer into the vanquished capital.
+Others despairingly gave up all further attempts at patching, having
+repeatedly proved, as the Scriptures say, that the rent is thereby
+made worse. So they were perforce content to go about in such a
+condition of deplorable dilapidation as anywhere else would inevitably
+result in their being "run in" for flagrant disregard of public
+decorum.
+
+The Canadians took rank from the first as among the very finest troops
+in all the field, and adopted as their own the following singular
+marching song:--
+
+         "We will follow ROBERTS,
+          Follow, follow, follow;
+          Anywhere, everywhere,
+          We will follow him!"
+
+Brave fellows that they were, they meant it absolutely, utterly, even
+unto death. But thus without boots and other yet more essential
+belongings, how could they?
+
+[Sidenote: _Remounts._]
+
+The cavalry was in equally serious plight. It is said that Sir George
+White took with him into Ladysmith over 10,000 mules and horses, but
+brought away at the close of the siege less than 1100. Many of the
+rest had meanwhile been transformed into beefsteak and sausages. We
+also, during the month that brought us to Bloemfontein had used up a
+similar number. A cavalryman told me that out of 540 horses belonging
+to his regiment only 50 were left; and in that case the sausage-making
+machine was in no degree responsible for the diminished numbers. Yet a
+cavalryman without a horse is as helpless as a cripple without a
+crutch. It was therefore quite clear that most of our cavalry
+regiments would have to remain rooted to the spot till their remounts
+arrived.
+
+Not until May 1st was another forward move found possible; and during
+one of those weeks of waiting there happened the Sanna's Post
+disaster, a grievous surrender of some of our men at Reddersburg, a
+serious little fight at Karee, and a satisfactory skirmish at Boshof,
+which made an end of General de Villebois-Mareuil and his commando of
+foreign supporters of the Boers; but in none of these affairs were
+the Guards involved.
+
+[Sidenote: _Regimental Pets._]
+
+Meanwhile the men during their few leisure hours found it no easy
+matter to amuse themselves. In the rush for Bloemfontein, footballs
+and cricket bats were all left behind. There were no canteens and no
+open-air concerts. The only pets the men had left were pet animals,
+and of them they made the most. The Welsh, of course, had their goat
+to go before them, and were prouder of it than ever. The Canadians at
+Belmont bought a chimpanzee which still grinned at them from the top
+of its pole in front of their lines, and with patient perseverance,
+still did all the mischief its limited resources would permit; whereat
+the men were mightily pleased. The adjoining battalion boasted of
+possessing a yet more charming specimen of the monkey tribe; a mite of
+a monkey, and for a monkey almost a beauty; but as full of mischief as
+his bigger brother.
+
+Strange to tell, the Grenadiers' pet was, of all things in the world,
+a pet lamb; and of all persons in the world, the cook of the officers'
+mess was its kindly custodian. "Mary had a little lamb," says the
+nursery rhyme. So had we!
+
+         "Its fleece was white as snow;
+          And everywhere that Mary went
+          That lamb was sure to go!"
+
+So was it with ours! Walking amid camp-kettles, and dwelling among
+sometimes cruelly hungry men that lamb was jokingly called our
+"Emergency Rations," but it would have had to be a very serious
+emergency, indeed, to cut short that pet's career. Yet a lamb thus
+playing with soldiers, and marching with them from one camping ground
+to another, was well-nigh as odd a sight as I have ever yet seen.
+
+[Sidenote: _Civilian Hospitality and Soldiers' Homes._]
+
+During our six weeks of waiting I was for the most part the guest of
+the Rev. Stuart and Mrs Franklin, whose kindness to me was great with
+an exceeding greatness. Ever to be remembered also was the hospitality
+of the senior steward of the Wesleyan Church, who happened, like
+myself, to be a Cornishman; and from whose table there smiled upon me
+quite familiarly a bowl of real Cornish cream. Whole volumes would not
+suffice to express the emotions aroused in my Cornish breast by that
+sight of sights in a strange land.
+
+Through the kindness of these true friends we were enabled to open the
+Wesleyan Sunday School as a Soldiers' Home where the men were welcome
+to sing and play, read, and write letters to their hearts' content.
+Here also every afternoon from 200 to 700 soldiers were supplied with
+an excellent cup of tea and some bread and butter for threepence each.
+A threepenny piece is there called "a tickey," and till the troops
+arrived that was the lowest coin in use. An Orange Free Stater scorned
+to look at a penny; but a British soldier's pay is constructed on
+other lines; and what he thought of our "tickey" tea, the following
+unsolicited testimonial laughingly proves. It is an unfinished letter
+picked up in the street, and was probably dropped as the result of a
+specially hurried departure, when some passing officer looked in and
+shouted "Lights out!"
+
+                                        BLOEMFONTEIN, O.F.S.
+
+     DEAR MOTHER,--I can't say I care much for this place. Nothing to
+     see but kopjes all round; and if you want to buy anything, by
+     Jove, you have to pay a pretty price. For instance, cup of tea,
+     6d.; bottle of ginger beer, 6d.; cigarettes, 1s. a packet. But at
+     the Soldiers' Home a cup of tea is only 3d. Thanks to those in
+     authority, the S.H. is what I call our "haven of rest." I shan't
+     be sorry when I come home to _our own_ haven of rest, as it is
+     impossible to buy any luxuries on our little pay. Just fancy, a
+     small tin of jam, 2s. It's simply scandalous; and the inhabitants
+     seem to think Tommy has a mint of money.
+
+[Sidenote: _S.C.A. Work._]
+
+After a while similar Homes were opened in various parts of the town;
+but this long pause in our progress was a veritable harvest-time for
+all Christian workers; and especially for those of the S.C.A., who
+planted two magnificent marquees in the very midst of the men, and had
+the supreme satisfaction of seeing them crowded night after night and
+almost all day long. Every Sunday morning I was privileged to conduct
+one of my Parade Services under their sheltering canvas; and many a
+time in the course of each succeeding week took part in their
+enthusiastic religious gatherings.
+
+Here, as at Modder River, secular song was nowhere, while sacred song
+became all and in all. I am told that sometimes on the march,
+sometimes amid actual battle scenes, our lads caught up and encouraged
+themselves by chanting some more or less appropriate music-hall ditty.
+One battalion when sending a specially large consignment of whizzing
+bullets across into the Boer lines did so to the accompanying tune of
+
+         "You have to have 'em
+          Whether you want 'em or no!"
+
+Another fighting group, when specially hard pressed, began to sing
+"Let 'em all come!" But in the Bloemfontein camps I seldom heard any
+except songs of quite another type; and on one occasion was greatly
+touched by listening to a Colonial singing a sweet but unfamiliar
+melody about
+
+         "The pages that I love
+          In the Bible my mother gave to me."
+
+Even among men on active service, many of whom are nearing mid-life,
+and have long been married, mother's influence is still a supremely
+potent thing!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rudyard Kipling's Mistake._]
+
+Partly as the result of influences such as these, and partly as the
+result of prohibitory liquor laws, we became the most absolutely sober
+army Europe ever put into the field. Prior to our coming, no liquor
+might at any price be sold to a native; and there were in the whole
+country no beer shops, but only hotels bound to supply bed and board
+when required, and not liquor only, with the result that this fair
+land has long been almost as sober as it is sunny.
+
+The sale of intoxicants to the troops was equally restricted, and no
+liquor could be obtained by them except as a special favour on special
+terms. Absolutely the only concert or public meeting held in
+Bloemfontein while the Guards were in the neighbourhood was in
+connection with the Army Temperance Association, Lord Roberts himself
+presiding; and concerning him the soldiers playfully said, "He has
+water on the brain." Through all this weary time of waiting our troops
+were as temperate as Turks, and much more chaste; so that the
+soldiers' own pet laureate is reported to have declared, whether
+delightedly or disgustedly he alone knows, that this outing of our
+army in South Africa was none other than a huge Sunday School treat;
+so incomprehensibly proper was even the humblest private and so
+inconceivably unlike the Tommy Atkins described in his "Barrack-room
+Ballads," Kipling discovered in South Africa quite a new type of Tommy
+Atkins, and, as I think, of a pattern much more satisfactory.
+Nevertheless, in one small detail the laureate's simile seems gravely
+at fault. In the homeland no Sunday School treat was ever yet seen at
+which the girls did not greatly outnumber the boys; but on the African
+veldt the only girl of whom we ever seemed to gain even an occasional
+glimpse was--"The girl I left behind me."
+
+[Sidenote: _All Fools' Day._]
+
+During our stay in Bloemfontein a part of the Guard's Brigade was sent
+to protect the drift and broken railway bridge across the Modder River
+at "The Glen"; which was the first really pretty pleasure resort we
+had found in South Africa since Table Mountain and Table Bay had
+vanished from our view. Here the Grenadier officers had requisitioned
+for mess purposes a little railway schoolhouse, cool and shady, in the
+midst of the nearest approach to a real wood in all the regions round
+about; and here I purposed conducting my usual Sunday parade, but
+with my usual Sunday ill-fortune. On arrival I found the whole
+division that had been encamped just beyond the river had suddenly
+moved further on, quite out of reach; so the service arranged for them
+inevitably fell through.
+
+But on Saturday afternoon a set of ambulance waggons arrived, bringing
+in the first instalment of about 170 wounded men belonging to that
+same division. It was rumoured that the K.O.S.B.'s, in a sort of
+outpost affair, had landed in a Boer trap, planted of course near a
+convenient kopje; with the result that our ambulances were, as usual,
+speedily required. In the course of the campaign some of our troops
+developed a decided proficiency in finding such traps--by falling into
+them!
+
+Nevertheless, two battalions of Guards remained in camp, and they, at
+any rate, might be confidently relied on for a parade next morning.
+Indeed, one of the majors in charge, a devout Christian worker, told
+me he had purposed to himself conduct a service for my men if I had
+not arrived; and for that I thanked him heartily. Moreover, the men
+just then were busy gathering fuel and piling it for a camp-fire
+concert, to commence soon after dark that evening. Clearly, then, the
+Guards were anchored for some time to come, though their comrades
+beyond the river had vanished.
+
+I had yet to learn that the coming Sunday was "All Fools' Day," and
+that for those who had been busy thus scheming it was fittingly so
+called. At the mess that very evening our usual "orders" informed us
+that the men would parade for worship at 6.45 next morning; but
+within a few minutes a telegram arrived requiring the Coldstream
+battalion and half the Grenadiers to entrain for Bloemfontein at once,
+thence to proceed to some unnamed destination; and every man to take
+with him as much ammunition as he could carry. So, instead of a big
+bonfire and their blankets, the men at a moment's notice had to face a
+long night journey in open trucks, with the inspiring prospect of a
+severe fight at that journey's end. Nothing daunted, every man
+instantly got ready to obey the call; and just before midnight forty
+truck-loads of fighting men set out, they knew not whither, to meet
+they knew not what; but cheerily singing, as the train began to move,
+"The anchor's weighed." It was indeed!
+
+"What does it all mean?" asked one lad of another; but though vague
+rumours of disaster were rife,--(it proved to be the day of the
+Sanna's Post mishap),--nothing definite was known; and on the eve of
+"All Fools' Day" it seemed doubly wise to be wholesomely incredulous.
+So I retired to my shelter, made of biscuit boxes covered with a rug;
+and slept soundly till morning light appeared. Then the sun, which at
+its setting had smiled on two thousand men and their blanket shelters,
+at its rising looked in vain for men or blankets; all were gone, save
+a few Grenadiers left for outpost duty. I had come from Bloemfontein
+for nought. Just behind my shelter stood the pile of firewood neatly
+heaped in readiness for the previous night's camp fire, but never
+lighted; and close beside my shelter was spread on the ground fresh
+beef and mutton, enough to feed fifteen hundred men; but those fifteen
+hundred were now far away, nobody knew where; and of that fresh meat
+the main part was destined to speedy burial. Truly enough that Sunday
+was indeed "All Fools' Day"; though the fooling was on our part of a
+quite involuntary order!
+
+Yet in face of oft recurring disappointment and disaster the favourite
+motto of the Orange Free State amply justified itself, and will do to
+the end. It says _Alles zal recht komen_; which means, being
+interpreted, "All will come right." While God remains upon the throne
+that needs must be!
+
+[Sidenote: _Eastertide in Bloemfontein._]
+
+_Good Friday_ for many of us largely justified its name. It was a
+graciously good day. My first parade in a S.C.A. marquee was not only
+well attended but was also marked by much of hallowed influence. Then
+followed a second parade service in the Wesleyan church which was
+still more largely attended; and attended by men many of whose faces
+were delightfully familiar. It was an Aldershot parade service held in
+the heart of South Africa, and in what is supposed to be the hostile
+capital of a hostile state.
+
+In the course of the afternoon over five hundred paid a visit to our
+temporary Soldiers' Home for letter writing and the purchase of such
+light refreshments as we found it possible to provide in that famine
+haunted city. The evening we gave up to Christian song in that same
+Soldiers' Home; and when listening to so many familiar voices singing
+the old familiar hymns, some of us seemed for the moment almost to
+forget we were not in the hallowed "Glory Room" of the Aldershot Home.
+
+On _Easter Sunday_ at the two parade services in the Town Church the
+most notable thing was the visible eagerness with which men listened
+to the old, old story of Eastertide, and the overwhelming heartiness
+with which they sang our triumphant Easter hymns. There is a capital
+Wesleyan choir in Bloemfontein; but they told me they might as well
+whistle to drown the roaring of a whirlwind as attempt "to lead" the
+singing of the soldiers.
+
+At these Sunday morning parades the church was usually packed with
+khaki in every part. The gallery was filled to overflowing; chairs
+were placed in all the aisles on the ground floor; the choir squeezed
+themselves within the communion rail; and the choir seats were
+occupied by men in khaki, for the most part deplorably travel-stained
+and tattered. Soldiers sat on the pulpit stairs; and into the very
+pulpit khaki intruded, for I was there and of course in uniform. It
+was a most impressive sight, this coming together into the House of
+God of comrades in arms fresh from many a hard fought conflict and
+toilsome march.
+
+At one of these services a sergeant of the 12th Lancers was present;
+and his was just a typical case. It was at the battle of Magersfontein
+we had last met. On that memorable morning he and his troop rode past
+me to the fight; we grasped hands, whispered one to the other
+"494"[1]; and then parted to meet months after, unharmed amid all
+peril, in our Father's House in Bloemfontein. The thrill of such a
+meeting, which represents cases of that kind by the score, no one can
+fully understand till it becomes inwoven in his own experience. So we
+met, and remembering the way our God had led us, we sang as few men
+could
+
+         "Praise ye the Lord! 'tis good to raise
+          Your hearts and voices in His praise!"
+
+How good, supremely good, I have no words to tell!
+
+[Footnote 1: "God be with you till we meet again."--_Sacred Songs and
+Solos_, No. 494.]
+
+On that Easter afternoon there came a sudden summons to conduct
+another soldier's funeral. For a full hour and a half I watched and
+waited beyond the appointed time, while the digging of a shallow grave
+in difficult ground was being laboriously completed; and then in the
+name of Him who is the "Resurrection and the Life," we laid our
+soldier-brother in his lowly resting place, enwrapped only in his
+soldier-blanket. Meanwhile, in accordance with a touching Anglican
+custom, there came into the cemetery a long procession of choir boys
+and children singing Easter hymns, joining in Easter liturgies, and
+then proceeding to lay on the new made graves an offering of Easter
+flowers.
+
+At the Easter evening service I was surprised to see in the Wesleyan
+church another dense mass of khaki. Every man had been required to
+procure a separate personal "pass" in order to be present, and the
+evening was full of threatenings, threatenings that in due time
+justified themselves by a terrific thunderstorm, which resulted in
+nearly every tunic being drenched before it could reach its sheltering
+tent. Yet in spite of such forbiddings the men came in from the
+outlying camps, literally by hundreds, to attend that Easter evening
+service; and I deemed their presence there a notable tribute to the
+spiritual efficiency of spiritual work among our troops the wide world
+over.
+
+_Easter Monday_, as in England so in Bloemfontein, is a Bank holiday,
+and usually devoted to picnicking in The Glen, till the war put its
+foot thereon, as well as on much else that was pleasurable. My most
+urgent duty that day was the conducting of another military funeral;
+and thereupon in the cemetery I saw a triple sight significant of
+much.
+
+At the gate were some soldiers in charge of a mule waggon on which lay
+the body of a negro, awaiting burial. In the service of our common
+Queen that representative of the black-skinned race had just laid down
+his life. Inside the gates two graves were being dug; one by a group
+of Englishmen for an English comrade, and one by a group of Canadians
+for a comrade lent to us for kindred service by "Our Lady of the
+Snows." So now are lying side by side in South African soil these two
+typical representatives of the principal sections of the Anglo-Saxon
+race; their lives freely given, like that of their black brother, in
+the service and defence of one common heritage--that Christian empire
+which surely God himself has builded. Camp and cemetery alike teach
+one common lesson, and by the lips of the living and the dead enforce
+attention to the same vast victorious fact! Next day it was an
+Australian officer I saw laid in that same treasure-house of dead
+heroes. He that hath eyes to see let him see! This deplorable war,
+which thus brought together from afar the builders and binders of the
+empire, in an altogether amazing measure made them thereby of one
+mind and heart. It is life arising out of death; and surely every
+devout-minded Englishman will learn at last to say "This is the Lord's
+doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes!"
+
+[Sidenote: _The Epidemic and the Hospitals._]
+
+The first military funeral since the reoccupation of Bloemfontein by
+the British it fell to my lot to conduct two days after our arrival. A
+fine young guardsman who had taken part in each of our four famous
+battles, and in our recent march, just saw this goal of all our hopes
+and died. The fatal symptoms were evidently of a specially alarming
+type, for he was hastily buried with all his belongings, his slippers,
+his iron mug, his boots, his haversack, and the very stretcher on
+which he lay; then over all was poured some potent disinfectant. It
+was a gruesome sight! So to-day he lies in the self-same cemetery
+where rests many a British soldier who fell not far away in the fights
+of fifty years ago. It was British soil in those distant days, and is
+British soil again, but at how great cost we were now about to learn.
+
+That guardsman was the first fruits of a vast ingathering. In the
+course of the next few weeks over 6000 cases of enteric sprang up in
+the immediate neighbourhood of that one little town; and 1300 of its
+victims were presently laid in that same cemetery, which now holds so
+much of the empire's best, and towards which so many a mother-heart
+turns tearfully from almost every part of the Anglo-Saxon world. It
+was the after-math of Paardeberg, which claimed more lives long after,
+than in all its hours of slowly intensifying agony! Boers and
+Britons, both together, there were vastly fewer who sighed their last
+beside the Modder River banks than the sequent fever claimed at
+Bloemfontein; and all through the campaign the loss of life caused by
+sickness has been so much larger than through wounds as to justify the
+soldiers' favourite dictum respecting it: "Better three hits than one
+enteric."
+
+Such an epidemic, laying hold as it did in the course of a few weeks
+of one in five of all the troops within reach of Bloemfontein, is
+quite unexampled in the history of recent wars; and the Royal Army
+Medical Corps can scarcely be censured for being unable to adequately
+cope with it. They were 900 miles from their base, with only a broken
+railway by which to bring up supplies. The little town, already so
+severely commandeered by the Boers, could furnish next to nothing in
+the way of medical comforts or necessities. Every available bed, or
+blanket, or bit of sheeting, was bought up by the authorities; but if
+every private bedroom in the place had been ransacked, the
+requirements of the case even then could scarcely have been met.
+Possibly that ought to have been done, but all through this campaign
+our army rulers have been excessively tender-handed in such matters;
+forgetting that clemency to the vanquished is often cruelty to the
+victors. So in Bloemfontein healthy civilians, whether foes or
+friends, slept on feather beds, while suffering and delirious soldiers
+were stretched on an earthen floor that was sodden with almost
+incessant rain. Neither for that rain can the army doctors be held
+responsible, though it almost drove them to despair. Nor was it their
+fault that the Boers were allowed at this very time to capture the
+Bloemfontein waterworks, and shatter them. Bad water at Paardeberg
+caused the epidemic. Bad water at Bloemfontein brought it to a climax.
+In this little city of the sick the medical men had at one time a
+constant average of 1800 sufferers on their hands; mostly cases of
+enteric which, as truly as shot and shell, shows no respect of
+persons. Not only our fighting-men--soldiers of high degree and low
+degree alike--but non-combatants, chaplains, army scripture readers,
+war correspondents, doctors, and army nurses, it remorselessly claimed
+and victimised. In such a campaign the fighting line is not the chief
+point of peril, nor the fighting soldiers the only sufferers. Hospital
+work has its heroes, though not its trumpeters, and many a man of the
+Royal Army Medical Corps has as faithfully won his medal as any that
+handled rifle.
+
+[Sidenote: _All hands and houses to the rescue._]
+
+Our "Kopje-Book Maxims" told us that "two horses are enough to shift a
+camp--provided they are dead enough." Either the camp or the horses
+must be quickly shifted if pestilence is to be kept at bay; yet in
+spite of all shiftings, of all sanitary searchings and strivings, the
+fever refused to shift; the field hospitals were from the first
+hopelessly crowded out; and the city of death would quickly have
+become the city of despair, but for the timely arrival of sundry
+irregular helpers and organisations that had been lavishly equipped
+and sent out by private beneficence. Such was the huge Portman
+Hospital. In the Ramblers' Club and Grounds, the Longman Hospital was
+housed; and here I found Conan Doyle practising the healing art with
+presumably a skill rivalling that with which he penned his superb
+detective tales. In the forsaken barracks of the Orange Free State
+soldiery, the Sydney doctors established their house of healing,
+assisted by ambulance men and ambulance appliances unsurpassed by
+anything of the kind employed in any other part of Africa. Australia,
+like her sister colonies, sent to us her best; and bravely they bore
+themselves beside our best.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken at Pretoria, June 1900_
+
+Rev. T. F. Falkner, M.A. Chaplain to the Forces.
+
+Chaplain to the First Division and to the Guards' Brigade, South
+African Field Force, 1899-1900]
+
+To relieve the pressure thus created almost every public building in
+the town was requisitioned for hospital purposes; schools and clubs
+and colleges, the nunnery, the lunatic asylum, and even the stately
+Parliament Hall with its marble entrance and sumptuous fittings. The
+presidential chair, behind the presidential desk, still retained its
+original place on the presidential platform; but,--"how are the mighty
+fallen!" I saw it occupied by an obscure hospital orderly who was busy
+filling up a still more obscure hospital schedule. The whole floor of
+the building was so crowded with beds that all the senatorial chairs
+and desks had perforce been removed. The Orange Free State senators
+sitting on those aforesaid chairs had resolved in secret session, only
+a few eventful months before, to hurl in England's face an Ultimatum
+that made war inevitable, and brought our batteries and battalions to
+their very doors. But now they were fugitives every one from the city
+of their pride, which they had surrendered without striking a solitary
+blow for its defence; while the actual building in which their lunacy
+took final shape, and launched itself on an astonished Christendom,
+I beheld full to overflowing with the deadly fruit of their doing. In
+the very presence of the president's chair of state, here a Boer,
+there a Briton, it may be of New Zealand birth or Canadian born,
+moaned out his life, and so made his last mute protest against the
+outrage which rallied a whole empire in passionate self-defence.
+
+Among the more than thousand victims the Bloemfontein fever epidemic
+claimed, few were more lamented than a sergeant of the 3rd Grenadier
+Guards, who, according to the _Household Brigade Magazine_, had a
+specially curious experience in the assault on Grenadier Hill at the
+battle of Belmont, for "he was hit by no less than nine separate
+bullets, besides having his bayonet carried away, off his rifle, by
+another shot, making a total of ten hits. He continued till the end of
+the action with his company in the front of the attack, where on
+inspection it was found he had only actually five wounds; but besides
+some damage to his clothing had both pouches hit and all his
+cartridges exploded. He did not go to hospital till the next day, when
+he felt a little bruised and stiff." It really seemed hard to succumb
+to enteric after such a miraculous escape from the enemies' murderous
+fire.
+
+[Sidenote: _Church of England Chaplains at work._]
+
+The following letter by the Rev. T. F. Falkner refers to this period,
+and was sent originally to the Chaplain-General; but is here
+published, slightly abridged, as an excellent illustration of the
+spirit and work of the many chaplains of the Church of England who
+have taken part in this campaign:--
+
+     "I was particularly anxious that you should know the luxury in
+     which we are living in the matter of Church privileges, and the
+     keen appreciation which our people show of that which is so
+     freely offered. Nothing can exceed the kindness of the dean and
+     his clergy. They allow us to have the use of the cathedral on
+     Sunday mornings at nine o'clock for a parade service for the
+     Guards, and at 5.30 on Sunday evenings we have a special evensong
+     for the convenience of officers and men to enable them to get
+     back to barrack or camp in good time; in addition to this, we
+     have permission to hold a special mission service for soldiers on
+     Friday evenings at 6.30. There is a daily celebration as well as
+     Morning and Evening Prayer and Litany, while on Sundays there are
+     three celebrations of Holy Communion. These are luxuries to us
+     wayfarers on the veldt. Now for the appreciation of them. On the
+     Sunday after we came in, the cathedral choir volunteered their
+     help at our nine o'clock (Guards') parade, and the service was
+     home-like and hearty. The drums were there and rolled at the
+     Glorias, and 'God Save the Queen,' which was sung because it was
+     a parade service. I spoke to the men on the blessings of a
+     restful hour of worship in an English church after our
+     journeyings, and of the mercies which had been granted to us,
+     basing what I had to say on 'It is good for us to be here.' At
+     the morning service at 10.30 there was a large number of the
+     headquarter staff present, many of whom, Lord Roberts included,
+     stayed to the celebration.... At 7.30, the ordinary hour for
+     evensong, long before the service began the church was literally
+     _packed_ with officers and men, one vast mass of khaki; all
+     available chairs and forms were got in, and officers were put up
+     into the long chancel wherever room could be found for them. The
+     heartiness of that service, the reverence and devoutness of the
+     men, the uplifting of heart and voice in the familiar chants and
+     hymns, the clear manly enunciation of the Articles of our Faith,
+     and the ready responses, all combined to make the service a grand
+     evidence of the religious side of our men and a striking
+     testimony to their desire to worship their God in the beauty of
+     holiness. Many of us will remember that Sunday night with
+     thankfulness. Coney preached us a very excellent sermon. The few
+     civilians who were able to get in were much struck by the evident
+     sincerity and devout behaviour of the men who surrounded them.
+     And yet the Boers say 'the English _must_ lose because they have
+     no God.' One of the clergy told me a day or two after we got here
+     that he met one of our men outside the cathedral as he was
+     walking along, and the soldier accosted him. 'Beg pardon, sir,
+     is that an English church?' 'Yes,' said the clergyman. 'Might I
+     go in, sir?' 'Why, of course,' was the reply, 'it is open all
+     day.' 'Thank you, sir; I should just like to go in and say a
+     prayer for the wife and children;' and in he went.
+
+     "I felt after our first experience that it was hardly fair to
+     oust so many of the regular worshippers from their own place of
+     worship, and so we arranged for the extra service at 5.30. It was
+     to be purely a soldiers' service. But a word or two about the
+     Friday evening special Lenten service. Familiar hymns, a metrical
+     litany, and part of the Commination Service were gladly joined in
+     by a large number of men, the cathedral being more than half
+     full, and the archdeacon gave us a very helpful address. After
+     that service a good number of men stayed behind, at our
+     invitation, to practise psalms and hymns for the soldiers'
+     evening service on the following Sunday, a precaution which
+     served its purpose well. At that service the church was _filled_;
+     Lord Roberts came to it, and it was an ideal soldiers' service.
+     Coney and I took the service, Norman Lee and Southwell read the
+     lessons, Blackbourne was at the organ, and the dean preached. One
+     of the staff officers said afterwards that he had never enjoyed a
+     service so much, and I think many others had similar feelings.
+     But the flow of khaki-clad worshippers had not ceased, for no
+     sooner had our 5.30 service ended than men and officers began
+     coming in for the 7.30 ordinary service, and at that the chancel
+     and more than half the body of the church was again filled with
+     our troops. It _was_ cheering to see and comforting to share in.
+
+     "The morning of this Sunday I spent at Bishop's Glen, about
+     fourteen miles up the line, close to the bridge over the Modder
+     River which was blown up directly we got here, where two
+     battalions of the Guards were afterwards sent. I had to go up in
+     great haste on the Saturday to bury the adjutant of the 3rd
+     Grenadiers, who was killed the day before; a very sad task for
+     me, for having been with the battalion all along, I had got to
+     know him well and to appreciate him highly, as every one did who
+     knew him. I got to camp about 5.30 on Saturday evening, after
+     three and a half hours' heavy travelling along a muddy track over
+     the veldt, through dongas and drifts, and we laid him to rest on
+     a little knoll overlooking the well-wooded banks of what is
+     _there_ a pretty river, a short distance only from the broken
+     bridge, which stood out against a background of shrubs and trees
+     on the river side, and struck me as a fitting emblem of a strong
+     and useful life smitten down suddenly by an unseen hand. I
+     stayed the night at Glen, where Grenadiers and Coldstreams took
+     care of me, and on Sunday morning at seven we had our parade
+     service, followed by a celebration at the railway station, at
+     which we had a nice number of communicants.
+
+     "We find the hospital work here very heavy. There are no less
+     than ten public buildings in use as hospitals in the town: in
+     addition, of course, to our field hospitals, which are _full_.
+     For a short time last week I was left to do all this with two
+     chaplains besides myself. The chaplains here are splendid, so
+     keen and self-denying, nothing seems too much trouble; all going
+     strong and working hard. It is a pleasure to be with such men. We
+     are all distressed at our inability to do more, and conscious of
+     our failure to do what we would wish; but we do what we can. The
+     S.C.A. has two tents and are working on good lines, and the men
+     appreciate them. Lowry and I have walked the whole way so far,
+     save that I had a lift from Jacobsdal to Klip Drift, and I am
+     thankful to be able to say I have not been other than fit all
+     through. All the others have had horses to ride: they are welcome
+     to them. I am a bit proud of having had a share in that march
+     from Klip Drift to Bloemfontein, and am thankful for the strength
+     that was given me to do it. I am jealous for the honour of the
+     department, and all I want at the end of the campaign is that the
+     generals should say, the Church of England chaplains have done
+     their duty well. One said to me the other day, 'I _should_ like
+     to be mentioned in despatches.' I replied, 'I have no such wish.
+     To do that you must go where you have no business to be.' Our
+     chaplains are brave men; there's not one who would flinch if told
+     to go into the firing line; but the generals _all_ say that our
+     place is at the field hospital; moving quietly amongst the sick
+     and wounded when they are brought in, and burying the dead when
+     they are carried out. There's not one of our chaplains out here
+     who has not earned, so far as I can gather, kind words from those
+     with whom he serves, and I think you will find your selection has
+     been more than justified.
+
+     "We had an excellent meeting in connection with the A.T.A. in the
+     Bloemfontein Town Hall last night, with Lord Roberts in the
+     chair. He spoke admirably; and though most of the troops were out
+     of the city the hall was full."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN
+
+
+[Sidenote: _A pleasure jaunt._]
+
+During this six weeks of tarrying at Bloemfontein I found myself able
+to visit a most interesting Methodist family residing some twenty
+miles south of the town. For my sole benefit the express to the Cape
+was stopped at a certain platelayer's hut, and then a walk of about a
+mile across the veldt brought me to the pleasant country house of a
+venerable widow lady. Her belongings had of course been freely
+commandeered by the Boers on the outbreak of war; nor had the sons,
+being burghers, though loyal-hearted Britishers, been able to elude
+their liability to bear arms against their own kin. The two youngest,
+schoolboys still, though of conscript age, had been sent down south
+betimes; and so were well out of harm's way, but the two elder were
+not suffered to thus escape. One as a despatch rider, and one as a
+commissariat officer, they were compelled to serve a cause that did
+violence to their deepest convictions. On the first appearance
+therefore of the British, both brothers following the bidding of
+strongest blood bonds, transferred their allegiance, if not their
+service, to the other side. Thereupon they were so incessantly
+threatened with a volley of avenging Boer bullets they felt compelled
+to take a holiday trip to the Cape. Thus was their gentle mother with
+war still raging round her gates bereft of the presence, protection,
+and sorely needed aid of all her sons.
+
+We arranged for the holding in her home of an Easter Sunday evening
+service; and then returning to the railway were cheered by the speedy
+sight of a goods train bound for Bloemfontein. Whereupon I scrambled
+on to the top of a heavily loaded truck, and there, being a
+first-class passenger provided with a first-class ticket, travelled in
+first-class style, sitting awkwardly astride of nobody knows what. On
+the same truck rode a Colonial, an English cavalryman, and a Hindu who
+courteously threw over me a handsome rug when the chilly eve closed in
+upon us. A decidedly representative group were we atop that truck-load
+of miscellaneous munitions of war. And on into the darkness, and
+through the darkness, we thus rode till late at night we reached the
+lights of Bloemfontein.
+
+[Sidenote: _Onwards but whither?_]
+
+On Saturday, April 22nd, the colonel of my battalion informed his
+quartermaster that the next day his men would leave Kaffir River,
+proceed to Springfield, and thence to "worlds unknown!" That is
+precisely where we soon found ourselves. Early on Sunday morning I
+said "Good-bye" to Bloemfontein, expecting to see its face no more,
+for surely this must be the long looked for start towards golden
+Krugerland! At Kaffir River I found the Guards were some hours ahead
+of me, but was just in time to catch the tail of a long train of
+transport waggons belonging to them, so that fortunately there was no
+fear of my being left alone, and lost a second time upon the veldt.
+Thus commenced a long Sunday march, as we all supposed, to
+Springfield. Later on we learned it certainly was not Springfield we
+were slowly approaching; but that possibly night-fall would land us
+somewhere near the Waterworks recently shattered, and still held, by
+the Boers. Yet "not there, not there, my child," were our weary feet
+wending. We began to wonder whether they were wending anywhere; and to
+this hour nobody seems to know the name of the place where we that
+night rested. Perhaps it had no name! Soldiers on active service
+seldom walk by sight. It is theirs always "to _trust_ and obey." Even
+regimental officers seldom know precisely where their next
+stopping-place will be, or what presently they will be called upon to
+do. They often resemble the pieces on a chess board, which cannot see
+the hand that moves them and cannot tell why this piece instead of
+that is taken. To keep our adversaries if possible in the dark, we
+have ourselves to dwell in darkness; but it is a source of sore
+distress all the same. The troops hunger for information and seldom
+get it; so, to supply the lack they invent it; and then scornfully
+laugh at their own inventings. They would sooner travel anywhere than
+"through worlds unknown"; and yet somehow that becomes for them the
+commonest of all treks!
+
+[Sidenote: _That Pom-Pom again!_]
+
+While the afternoon was still new we heard on our near left the sound
+of heavy shell firing; of which, however, the men took no more notice
+than if they had been manoeuvring on Salisbury Plain. They marched on
+as stolidly and cheerily as ever, chatting and laughing as they
+marched. But presently there broke upon our ears the familiar sound of
+the pom-pom, which months ago at the Modder had so shaken everybody's
+nerves. Instantly there burst from the whole brigade a cry of
+recognition, and every man instinctively perceived that some grim
+business had begun. Another Sunday battle was raging just over the
+ridge, and the rest of that day's march had for its accompaniment the
+music of pom-poms, the rattle of rifle fire, and the thud of shells.
+But at the close of the day an officer somewhat discontentedly
+reported that "if" our artillery had only reached a certain place by a
+certain time, something splendid would have happened. Many of our
+rat-traps proved thus weak in the spring, and snapped too slowly,
+specially on Sundays. Some such disastrous "if" seemed to spring up in
+connection with most of our Sunday fights, though we still seem to
+cling fondly to the belief that for fighting the Lord's battles the
+Lord's day is of all days incomparably the best. It was on Sunday,
+December 10th, the disastrous attack on Stormberg was delivered; and
+on the evening of that same fatal Sunday the Highland Brigade marched
+out of the Modder River Camp to meet their doom on Magersfontein.
+Similarly on the night of Sunday, January 22nd, our men set out to
+win, and lose, Spion Kop. The Paardeberg calamity, the costliest of
+all our contests, was also a Sunday fight; and though in the face of
+such facts no man may dogmatise, such coincidences, all happening in
+the course of a few weeks, in the conduct of the same war, make one
+wonder whether Sunday is really a lucky day for purposes so dread, and
+whether the Boers are not justified in their supposed refusal to
+fight on Sundays excepting in self-defence. In that respect, I at any
+rate, am with the Boers as against the Britons.
+
+[Sidenote: _A problem not quite solved._]
+
+When night at last arrived, we had neither tents nor shelters of any
+sort provided for us, though the cold was searching, and everything
+around us was wet with heavy dew. Men and officers alike spread their
+waterproof sheets on the bare ground, and then made the best they
+could of one or two blankets in which to wrap themselves. Through the
+kindness, however, of my quartermaster friend, since dead, I was
+privileged to push my head and shoulders under a transport waggon
+which effectually sheltered me from wind and wet; and there, in the
+midst of mules and men, mostly darkies, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.
+
+Brief rest, however, of a more delicious kind I had already found in
+the course of that toilsome afternoon tramp described above. During a
+short halt by the way I lay upon my back watching a huge cloud of
+locusts flying far overhead, and thinking tenderly of those just then
+assembling at our Aldershot Sunday afternoon service of song, not
+forgetting the gentle lady who usually presides at the piano there.
+Then I took out my pocket Testament, and read Romans xii.: "If thine
+enemy hunger, feed him." But about that precise moment the adjoining
+kopje, with a shaking emphasis, said to me, "pom-pom," and again
+"pom-pom." But how to feed one's enemy while thus he speaks with
+defiant throat of brass, is a problem that still awaits a
+satisfactory solution!
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching sight._]
+
+In the course of the day I was greatly touched by the sight of an
+artillery horse that had fallen from uttermost fatigue, so that it had
+to be left to its fate on the pitiless veldt. It was now separated
+from its team, and all its harness had been removed; but when it found
+itself being deserted by its old companions in distress and strife, it
+cast after them a most piteous look, struggled, and struggled again to
+get on to its feet, and finally stood like a drunken man striving to
+steady himself, but absolutely unable to go a single step further. Ah,
+the bitterness alike for men and horses of such involuntary and
+irrecoverable falling out from the battle-line of life! Not actual
+dying, but this type of death is what some most dread!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rifle firing and firing farms._]
+
+When on Monday we resumed our march, it was still to the sound of the
+same iron-mouthed music; but now at last we could not only hear, but
+see some of the shell fire, and watch a few of the men that were
+taking part in the fight. Far away we noticed what looked like a line
+of beetles, each a good space from his fellow beetles, creeping
+towards the top of a ridge. These were some of our mounted men. Lower
+down the slope, but moving in the same direction, was a similar line
+of what looked like bees. These were some of our infantry, on whom the
+altogether invisible Boers were evidently directing their fire. As you
+must first catch your hare before you can cook it, so you must first
+sight a Boer before you can shift him; and the former task is
+frequently the more difficult of the two. In more senses than one
+short-sighted soldiers have had their day; and in all ranks those who
+cannot look far ahead must give place to those who can. Henceforth the
+most powerful field-glasses that can possibly be made, and the most
+perfect telescopes, must be supplied to all our officers; or on a
+still more disastrous scale than in this war the bees will drop their
+bullets among the beetles, and Britons will be killed by Britons.
+
+Later in the day, to my sincere grief, a beautiful Boer house was set
+on fire by our men, after careful inquiry into the facts by the
+provost-marshal, because the farmer occupying it had run up the white
+flag over his house, and then from under that flag our scouts had been
+shot at. Such acts of treachery became lamentably common, and had at
+all cost to be restricted by the only arguments a Voortrekker seemed
+able to understand; but the Boers in Natal had long before this proved
+adepts at kindling similar bonfires, though without any such
+provocation, and cannot therefore pose as martyrs over the burning of
+their own farms, however deplorable that burning be.
+
+[Sidenote: _Boer treachery and the white flag._]
+
+At Belmont a young officer of the Guards named Blundell was killed by
+a shot from a wounded Boer to whom he was offering a drink of water;
+and about the same time another Boer hoisted a white flag, which our
+men naturally mistook for a signal of surrender, but on rising to
+receive it, received instead a murderous volley of rifle fire, as the
+result of which the correspondent of _The Morning Post_ had his right
+arm hopelessly shattered.
+
+At Talana Hill, our first battle in Natal, the beaten Boers raised a
+white flag on a bamboo pole, but when our gunners thereupon ceased
+firing, "the brother" instead of surrendering bolted! At Colenso, a
+company of burghers with rifles flung over their backs, and waving a
+white flag, approached within a short distance of the foremost British
+trenches, but when our troops raised their heads to welcome these
+surrendering foes, they were instantly stormed at by shot and shell.
+At length General Buller found it necessary in face of such frequent
+treachery, officially to warn his whole army to be on their guard
+against the white flag, a flag which to his personal knowledge was
+already through such misuse stained with the blood of two gallant
+British officers, besides many men.
+
+It is said that when Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such
+a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father
+somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got
+into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things."
+Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:--"Well
+the devil may have taught me to scratch and bite, but the spitting is
+my own idea!" With equal justice the Boers may claim that though the
+ordinary horrors and agonies of war are of the devil, this persistent
+abuse of the white flag is their own idea. Of that practice they
+possess among civilized nations an absolute monopoly, and the red
+cross flag has often fared no better at their hands.
+
+But then it would be absurd and most unfair to blame the two
+Republics as a whole for this. No people on earth would approve such
+practices, and doubtless they were as great a pain to many an
+honourable Boer as they were to us. But upland farmers who have spent
+their lives in fighting savage beasts, and still more savage men, are
+slow to distinguish between lawful tricking and unlawful treachery,
+and are apt to account all things fair that help to win the game.
+
+[Sidenote: _The pet lamb still lives and learns!_]
+
+During this long trek through worlds unknown, our pet lamb, perchance
+taking encouragement from the example of the two chaplains, followed
+us all the way on foot, and became quite soldierly in its tastes and
+tendencies. It scorned even to look at its brother sheep on the veldt
+modestly feeding on coarse veldt grass; but on sardines and bacon-fat
+it seemed to thrive astonishingly; and both my bread and sugar it
+coolly commandeered. So rapid and complete is camp-life education,
+even when a pet lamb is the pupil!
+
+[Sidenote: _Right about face._]
+
+On the morning of our fifth day in "worlds unknown" we breakfasted
+soon after four, by starlight; and before sunrise were again trekking
+hard. About ten miles brought our almost interminable string of
+waggons to two ugly river drifts, across which, with much toil and
+shouting they were at last safely dragged. Then we suddenly halted and
+to our amazement were ordered to return whence we came. So across
+those two ugly drifts the waggons were again dragged; four o'clock in
+the afternoon found us on the precise spot where four o'clock in the
+morning had watched us breakfasting; and by the afternoon of the
+following Sunday we were back in Bloemfontein from which on the
+previous Sunday we had made so bold a dash for fame and fortune. In
+the course of those eight excessively toilsome days the Guards had
+captured three wounded Boers; but what else they had accomplished no
+one could ever guess. Somebody said, however, that something wonderful
+had been done by somebody somewhere in connection with that week of
+wonders; which was of course consoling; but it was only long after we
+learned that De Wet after laying siege to Wepener for seventeen days
+had made a sudden rush to reach his sure retreat in the north-east
+corner of the Free State; that we with other columns had been sent out
+to intercept him; and had as by a hair's breadth just managed to miss
+him. Such are the fortunes and misfortunes of war. As an attacking
+force, De Wet in the course of the war made some bold and brilliant
+moves, though always on a comparatively small scale; but in the art of
+running away and escaping capture, no matter by whom pursued, he has
+given himself more practice than probably any other general that ever
+lived. "Oh my God make him like a wheel!" We were a lumbering waggon
+chasing a light-winged wheel; and the wheel was winner!
+
+[Sidenote: _From worlds unknown._]
+
+While on this long trek I lighted on a newly-arrived contingent of
+Canadian mounted infantry which had come to our aid from worlds
+unknown. They proved to be a splendid body of men, and worthy
+compatriots of the earlier arrived Canadians who had rendered such
+heroic service at Paardeberg. Their Methodist chaplain, the Rev. Mr
+Lane, of Nova Scotia, seemed incontestably built on the same lines; a
+conspicuously strong man was he, and delightfully level-headed. I
+therefore all the more deeply deplored the early and heavy failure of
+his health, as the result of the severe hardships that hang round
+every campaigner's path, and his consequent return, invalided home.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Bushmen._.]
+
+About this same time another equally remarkable body, the Australian
+Bushmen, who, like the Canadians, had come from worlds unknown, were
+in the far north making their way _through_ worlds unknown to the
+relief of Mafeking. Their advance, says Conan Doyle, was one of the
+finest performances of the war. Assembled at their port of embarkation
+by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean
+to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand to Beira, transferred
+by a narrow gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, thence by a broader gauge
+to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of miles to Bulawayo,
+again transferred by trains for another four or five hundred miles to
+Ootsi, and then facing a further march of a hundred miles, they
+reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of the arrival of
+Plumer's relieving columns; and before that week was over the whole
+Empire was thrilled, almost to the point of delirium, by learning that
+at last the long-drawn siege of Mafeking was raised; and a defence of
+almost unexampled heroism was thus brought to a triumphant end.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Australian Chaplains._]
+
+From start to finish the Bushmen were accompanied by an earnest
+Methodist chaplain, whom I met only in Pretoria, the Rev. James Green,
+who, most fortunately, throughout the whole campaign, was not laid
+aside for a single day by wounds or sickness; and who, after returning
+home with this time-expired first contingent of Australian troops,
+came back in March 1902 with what, we hope, the speedy ending of the
+war will make their last contingent.
+
+Between Mr Green's two terms of service I was, however, ably assisted
+by yet another Australian Wesleyan chaplain, the Rev. R. G. Foreman,
+though he, like so many others, was early invalided home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL
+
+
+It was with feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May
+Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards
+Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a
+single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and
+waving flags and lavish hospitality; but none the less that charming
+little capital had made us pay dearly for its conquest, and for our
+six weeks of so-called rest on the sodden veldt around it. Its traders
+had levied heavy toll on the soldiers' slender pay; and no fabled
+monster of ancient times ever claimed so sore a tribute of human
+lives. It was not on the veldt but under it that hundreds of our lads
+found rest; and hundreds more were soon to share their fate. The
+victors had become victims, and the vanquished were avenged. Seldom
+have troops taken possession of any city with such unmixed
+satisfaction, or departed from it with such unfeigned eagerness.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Comedy._]
+
+My quartermaster friend and myself, unable to start with the Brigade,
+set out a few hours later, and tarried for the night at a Hollander
+platelayer's hut. The man spoke little English, and we less Dutch;
+but he welcomed us to the hospitality of his two-roomed home with a
+warmth that was overwhelming. His wife, when the war began, was sent
+away for safety's sake; and married men thus flung back upon their
+bachelorhood make poor cooks and caterers unless they happen to be
+soldiers on the trek; but this man, in his excitement at having such
+guests to entertain, expectorated violently all over the floor on
+which presently we expected to sleep; fire was soon kindled and coffee
+made; the quartermaster produced some tinned meat; I produced some
+tinned fruit; the ganger produced some tinned biscuits--in this
+campaign we have been saved by tin--and so by this joint-stock
+arrangement there was provided a feast that hungry royalty need not
+have disdained. Next our entertainer undertook to amuse his guests,
+and did it in a fashion never to be forgotten. He produced a box
+fitted up as a theatre stage--all made out of his own head, he
+said--and mostly wooden; there were two puppets on the stage, which
+were made to dance most vigorously by means of cords attached secretly
+to the ganger's foot, whilst his hands were no less vigorously
+employed on the concertina which provided the accompanying dance
+music. This delighted old man was the oddest figure of the three, as
+the perspiration poured down his grimy face. To light on such a comedy
+when on the war path would have been enough to make Momus laugh; and
+when the laugh was spent we swept the floor, for reasons already
+hinted at, sought refuge in our blankets; and long before breakfast
+time next morning landed in Karee Camp.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Tragedy._]
+
+To reach Karee we passed through "The Glen" lying beside the Upper
+Modder, where a deplorable tragedy had occurred not long before. A
+remarkably fine-looking sergeant of the Guards went to bathe in what
+he supposed were the deep waters of the Modder, and dived gleefully
+into deeps that alas were not deep. Striking the bottom with his head,
+instantly his neck was dislocated, and when I saw him a few hours
+after, though he was perfectly conscious and anxiously hopeful, he was
+paralysed from his shoulders downwards. A married man, his heart, too,
+was broken over such an undreamed of disaster, and in three weeks he
+died. The mauser is not the only reaping-machine the great harvester
+employs in war time. There have been over five hundred "accidental"
+deaths in the course of this campaign. At the Lower Modder we once
+arranged to hold a Sunday morning service for the swarms of native
+drivers in our camp, but in that case also were compelled to prove it
+is the unexpected that happens. One of the "boys" went to bathe that
+morning in the suddenly swollen river; he sank; and though search
+parties were at once sent out, the body was never recovered. So
+instead of a service we had this sad sensation.
+
+About that same time, and in that same camp, one of my most intimate
+companions, the quartermaster of the Scots Guards, was one moment
+laughing and chatting with me in his tent; but the next moment,
+without the slightest warning, he dropped back on his couch, and that
+same evening was laid by his sorrowing battalion in a garden-grave.
+The other quartermaster, who shared with me the ganger's hospitality
+and laughter, when the campaign was near its close, was found lying on
+the floor of his tent. He had fallen when no friendly hand was near to
+help, and had been dead for hours when discovered. My first campaign,
+and last, has stored my mind with tragic memories; it has filled my
+heart with tendernesses unfelt before; and perchance has taught me to
+interpret more truly that "life of lives" foreshadowed in Isaiah's
+saying: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."
+
+[Sidenote: _A wide front and a resistless force._]
+
+When, on the 3rd of May, we started from Karee Camp the Guards'
+Brigade consisted, as from the outset, of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream
+battalions, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and the 1st Scots Guards, all
+under the command of General Inigo Jones, from whom I received
+unfailing courtesy. With them was linked General Stephenson's Brigade,
+consisting of the Welsh, the Warwicks, the Essex, and the Yorks, these
+two Brigades forming the Eleventh Division under General Pole Carew.
+On our left was General Hutton with a strange medley of mounted
+infantry to which almost every part of the empire had contributed some
+of its noblest sons. On our right was General Tucker's Division, the
+Seventh; and beyond that again other Divisions, covering a front of
+about forty miles, which gradually narrowed down to twenty as we
+neared Kroonstad. Reserves were left at Bloemfontein under General
+Kelly Kenny; and Lord Methuen was on our remote left flank not far
+from Mafeking; while on our remote right was Rundle's Division, the
+Eighth. There thus set out for the conquest of the Transvaal a central
+force nearly 50,000 strong--the finest army by far that England had
+ever yet put into the field, and led by the ablest general she has
+produced since Wellington. Yet it perhaps would be more correct to
+speak of it as the first army _Greater_ Britain had ever fashioned;
+and in my presence Lord Roberts openly gloried in being the first
+general the empire had entrusted with the command of a really Imperial
+host. In this epoch-making conflict neither the commander nor the
+commanded had any cause to be ashamed one of the other.
+
+Yet from this point onward there was astonishingly little fighting.
+Before the campaign was over some of the guardsmen wore out several
+pairs of boots, but scarcely fired another bullet. The Boers were so
+out-manoeuvred that their mausers and machine-guns availed them
+little. They fought scarcely any but rear-guard actions, and their
+retreat was so rapid as to be almost a rout. Within about a month of
+leaving Bloemfontein the Guards' Brigade was in Pretoria; which,
+considering all they had to carry, and the constant repairing of the
+railway line required from day to day, would be considered good
+marching even if there had been no pom-poms planted to oppose
+progress.
+
+[Sidenote: _Brandfort._]
+
+When we left Karee it was confidently predicted that the Boers would
+make a stiff stand amid the kopjes which guard the prettily placed and
+prettily planted little town of Brandfort. So the next day and the
+day after we walked warily, while cannon to right of us and cannon to
+left of us volleyed and thundered. Little harm was however done; and
+as the second afternoon hastened to its sunset hour, we were gleefully
+informed that "the brother" had once more "staggered humanity" by a
+precipitate retreat from positions of apparently impregnable strength.
+So Brandfort passed into our hands for all that it was worth, which
+did not seem to be much; but what little there was, no man looted. All
+was bought and paid for as in Piccadilly; but at more than Piccadilly
+prices. Whatever else however could be purchased, no liquor was on
+sale; no intemperance was seen; no molestation of woman or child took
+place. So was it with rare exceptions from the very first; so was it
+with very rare exceptions to the very last.
+
+[Sidenote: _"Stop the War" slanders._]
+
+In this respect my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. W. Burgess, assures me
+that his experience tallies with mine, and he told me this tale as
+illustrative of it. At Hoekfontein he called at a farmhouse close to
+our camp, and in it he found an old woman of seventy and her husband,
+of whom she spoke as nearly ninety. "Do you believe in God?" she asked
+the chaplain, and added, "so do I, but I believe in hell as well; and
+would fling De Wet into it if I could." Then she proceeded to explain
+that her first husband was killed in the last war; that of her three
+sons commandeered in this war one was already slain, and that when the
+other two returned from the fighting line De Wet at once sent to fetch
+them back.
+
+"But look at the broken panel of that door," said the old lady. "Your
+men did that when I would not answer to their knocks, and they stole
+my fowls." "Very well," replied Burgess, "where yonder red flag is
+flying you will find General Ian Hamilton; go and tell him your
+story." As the result, a staff officer sent to inspect the premises
+asked the Dutch dame whether food or money should be given her by way
+of compensation, and whether L15 would fully cover all her loss? She
+seemed overwhelmingly pleased at such an offer in payment for a broken
+panel and a few fowls. "Very good," added the staff officer.
+"To-morrow I will send you L20, but," quoth he to Burgess, "we'll make
+the scouts that broke the panel pay the twenty!"
+
+In spite of all the real and the imaginary horrors recorded in "War
+against War," this has been the most humanely conducted struggle the
+world has ever seen; but would to God it were well over.
+
+[Sidenote: _A prisoner who tried to be a poet._]
+
+In the yard of the little town jail I saw nine prisoners of war, only
+two of whom were genuine Boers. Some were Scotch, some were English,
+some were Hollanders; and one a fiery Irishman, who expressed so
+fervent a wish to be free, to revel in further fightings against us,
+that it was deemed desirable to adorn his wrists with a pair of
+handcuffs. In one of the cells, it was clear some of our British
+soldiers had at an earlier date been incarcerated, and were fairly
+well satisfied with the treatment meted out to them. Written on the
+wall I found this interesting legend: No. 28696, I. M'Donald, 4th Reg.
+M. Inf., Warwick's Camp; taken prisoner 7-3-1900; arrived here
+11-3-1900. Also this, by a would-be poet called Wynn, a scout
+belonging to Roberts' Horse:--
+
+         "To all who may read:
+          I have been well treated
+          By all who have had me in charge
+          Since I've been a prisoner here."
+
+The poetry is not much; but the peace of mind which could pencil such
+lines in prison is a great deal!
+
+[Sidenote: _Militant Dutch reformed predikants._]
+
+The two best buildings in Brandfort appeared to be the church and
+manse belonging to the Dutch Reformed Community. The church seats 600,
+though the town contains only 300 whites. But then the worshippers
+come from near and far. Hence I found here, as at Bloemfontein that
+the farmers have their "church houses"--whole rows of them in the
+latter town--where with their families they reside from Saturday to
+Monday, especially on festival occasions, that they may be present at
+all the services of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. A typical Dutchman
+is nothing if he is not devout; though unfortunately his devoutness
+does not prevent his being exceeding "slim," which seems to some the
+crown of all excellencies.
+
+The young and intelligent pastor of this important country
+congregation on whom I called, was evidently an ardent patriot, like
+almost all his cloth. He had unfortunately firmly persuaded himself
+that the British fist had been thrust menacingly near the Orange Free
+State nose; and that therefore the owner of that aforesaid nose was
+perfectly justified in being the first to strike a deadly blow. He
+told me he had been for a month at Magersfontein, and that he was out
+on the Brandfort hills the day before I called watching our troops
+fighting their way towards the town. I understood him to say he had
+been shooting buck. What kind of buck is quite another question.
+Whether as a pastor his patriotism had confined itself to the use of
+Bunyan's favourite weapon, "all-prayer," on our approach; or whether
+as a burgher he had deemed it a part of his duty to employ smokeless
+powder to emphasise his patriotism, I was too polite to ask. But he
+pointed out to me on his verandah two old and useless sporting guns,
+which the day before he had handed to some of our officers, by whom
+they had been snapped in two and left lying on the floor. There they
+were pointed out to me by their late owner as part of the ravages of
+war. They were the only weapons he had in the house, he said, when he
+surrendered them.
+
+It was a very common trick on the part of surrendered burghers who
+took the oath of neutrality and gave up their arms, to hand in weapons
+that were thus worthless and to hide for future use what were of any
+value. We did not even attempt to take possession of any such a
+burgher's horse. We found him a soldier, and when he surrendered we
+left him a soldier, well horsed, well armed, and often deadlier as a
+pretended friend than as a professed foe. Because of that exquisite
+folly, which we misnamed "clemency," we have had to traverse the whole
+ground twice over, and found a guerilla war treading close on the
+heels of the great war.
+
+This young predikant with more of prudence, and perchance more of
+honour, recollected next morning that though, as he had truly said, he
+had no more weapons in the house, he had a beautiful mauser carbine
+hidden in his garden. There it got on his nerves and perhaps on his
+conscience; so calling in a passing officer of the Grenadier Guards he
+requested him to take possession of it, together with a hundred rounds
+of ammunition belonging to it. When with a sad smile he pointed out to
+me "the ravages of war" on his verandah floor my politeness again came
+to the rescue, and I said nothing about that lovely little mauser of
+his, which an hour before I had been curiously examining at our mess
+breakfast table. Too much frankness on that point would perhaps have
+spoiled our pleasant chat.
+
+[Sidenote: _Our Australian Chaplain's pastoral experiences._]
+
+In the course of that chat he candidly confessed himself to be
+thoroughly anti-British; and for his candour this young predikant is
+to be honoured; but some few of his ministerial brethren proved near
+akin to the ever-famous Vicar of Bray, whom an ancient song represents
+as saying:
+
+         "That this is law I will maintain
+            Unto my dying day, Sir;
+          That whatsoever king may reign,
+            I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir."
+
+So were there Dutch predikants who were decidedly anti-British while
+the British were over the hills and far away; but who fell in love
+with the Union Jack the moment it arrived; even if they did not set it
+fluttering from their own chimney-top. One such our chaplain with
+the Australian Bushmen met at Zeerust. When the Bushmen arrived this
+predikant was one of the first to welcome them, and helped to hoist
+the British flag. Then "the Roineks," that is the "red neck" English,
+retired for a while, and De La Rey arrived; whereupon the resident
+Boers went wild with joy, and whistled and shouted one of their
+favourite songs, "Vat jougoed entrek," which means "Pack your traps
+and trek." That was a broad hint to all pro-Britishers. So this
+interesting predikant hauled down the Union Jack, which his sons
+instantly tore to tatters, ran up the Boer flag, and drove De La Rey
+hither and thither in his own private carriage. Though to our
+Australian chaplain he expressed, still later on, his deep regret that
+"the Hollanders had forced the President into making war on England,"
+when Lord Methuen, in the strange whirligig of war, next drove out De
+La Rey from this same Zeerust, our versatile predikant's turn soon
+came to "Pack his traps and trek." Even in South Africa "Ye cannot
+serve two masters."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Welsh Chaplain._]
+
+After one day's rest at Brandfort the Guards resumed their march, and
+aided by some fighting, in which the Australians took a conspicuous
+part, we reached the Vet River, and encamped near its southern banks
+for the night. Here the newly-appointed Wesleyan Welsh chaplain, Rev.
+Frank Edwards, overtook me; and until it could be decided where he was
+to go or what he was to do, he was invited to become my brother-guest
+at the Grenadiers' mess.
+
+The next day being Sunday Mr Edwards had a speedy opportunity of
+learning how little the best intentioned chaplain can accomplish when
+at the front in actual war time. It was the sixth Sunday in succession
+I was doomed to spend, not in doing the work of a preacher but of a
+pedestrian. All other chaplains were often in the same sad but
+inevitable plight; and though Mr Edwards had come from far of set
+purpose to preach Christ in the Welsh tongue to Welshmen, had all the
+camp been Welsh he would that day have found himself absolutely
+helpless. We were all on the march; and the only type of Christian
+work then attemptable takes the form of a brief greeting in the name
+of Christ to the men who tramp beside us, though they are often too
+tired even to talk, and we are compelled to trudge on in stolid
+silence.
+
+The drift we had to cross that Sunday at the Vet was by far the worst
+we had yet reached in South Africa, and till all the waggons were
+safely over, the whole column was compelled to linger hard by. I
+therefore took advantage of that long pause to hurry on to Smaldeel
+Junction, where the headquarter staff was staying for the day. Here I
+was privileged to introduce Mr Edwards to the Field-Marshal, and was
+so fortunate as to secure his immediate appointment as Wesleyan
+chaplain to the whole of General Tucker's Division, with special
+attachment to the South Wales Borderers. This important and
+appropriate task successfully accomplished, I retired to rest under
+the broken fans of a shattered windmill.
+
+Mr Edwards' association with the Guards' Brigade was thus of very
+short duration; but some interesting glimpses of his after work are
+given, from his own pen, in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." I must,
+therefore, only add that he was early struck by a small fragment of a
+shell, and was at the same time fever-stricken, so that for ten weeks
+he remained on the sick list. Still more unluckily he had only just
+resumed work, when there developed a further attack of dysentery,
+fever and jaundice, which ended in his being invalided home. Thus,
+like many another chaplain, he found his South African career became
+one of suffering rather than of service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL
+
+
+After resting for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for
+Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some
+parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet
+one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of
+sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing
+the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about
+noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or
+rather heard, two artillery duels; the Boers half-heartedly opposing
+our passage, first at the Vet River just before we reached Smaldeel,
+and then at the Sand River, long since made famous by the Convention
+bearing that name.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Sand River Convention._]
+
+Though Great Britain is supposed to suffer from insatiable land hunger
+it is a notable truth that she has voluntarily surrendered more
+oversea territory than some important kingdoms ever possessed; but not
+one of these many surrenders proved half so disastrous to all
+concerned as that on which the Sand River Convention set its seal in
+1852. At that time our colonial possessions were accounted by many
+overtaxed statesmen to be all plague and no profit, involving the
+motherland in incessant native wars out of which she won for herself
+neither credit nor cash. That had proved specially true in South
+Africa. When, therefore, the Crimean war hove in sight with its
+manifold risks and its drain on our national resources, it was
+resolved to lessen our liabilities in that then unattractive quarter
+of the globe. The Transvaal was at that time a barren land, given over
+to wild beasts, and to Boers who seemed equally uncontrollable. An
+Ishmael life was theirs, their hand against every man's and every
+man's hand against them. Every little township was a law unto itself
+and almost every homestead; so the British Government threw up the
+thankless task of governing the ungovernable, as soon as a life and
+death struggle with Russia appeared inevitable. The Sand River
+Convention gave to the Transvaal absolute independence save only in
+what related to the treatment of the natives. There was to be no
+slavery in the Transvaal; but no Convention ever yet framed could
+apparently bind a Boer when his financial interests bade him break it.
+So set he his face to evade the conditions both of the Pretoria and
+the London Conventions of later date; and the one requirement of this
+first Convention he set at nought. During several following years he
+still hunted for slaves whom he took captive in native wars; sjamboked
+them into serving him without pay; bought them, sold them, but never
+called them slaves. They were "apprentices," which was a fine word for
+a foul thing. So was the Convention kept in the letter of it and
+broken in the spirit of it. For five-and-twenty years of widening and
+deepening anarchy that Convention remained in force, the Transvaal
+fighting with the Orange Free State, and Boer bidding defiance to Boer
+with bullets for his arguments. When little Lydenberg claimed the
+right to set up as an independent republic, Kruger himself reasoned
+with it at the muzzle of his rifle, as we have since been compelled to
+reason with him. So at last Shepstone appeared upon the scene to
+evolve order out of chaos; and though he knew it not, he was the true
+herald of the Guards' Brigade, and sundry others, that after many days
+crossed the Sand River to make an end for ever of all that the Sand
+River Convention involved.
+
+The year following that in which the Convention was signed, another
+step was taken in the same direction and independence was forced on
+the Orange Free State. The people protested, and pleaded for
+permission to still live under the protection of the British flag; but
+their prayers were as unavailing as "the groans of the Britons,"
+which, as recorded in the early pages of our own island story,
+followed the retiring swords of Rome. Now, after nearly forty years of
+uttermost neighbourliness, the Orange Free State, with machine gun and
+mauser hurls back the gift once so reluctantly accepted, and forces us
+to recall what now they still more reluctantly surrender. How
+bewildering are the ways of Fate!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+Broken Bridge at Modder River.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Railway wrecking and repairing._]
+
+The crossing of the drifts at the two rivers was almost as difficult a
+task as the overtaking of our ever retreating foes. The railway
+bridges over both these streams had been blown up by dynamite: some
+of the stone piers were shattered, and some of the iron girders hurled
+all atwist into the watery depths beneath; here and there culverts had
+similarly been destroyed, and at many a point the very rails had been
+torn by explosives till they looked like a pair of upturned arms
+imploring help from heaven. We noticed, however, when we got into the
+Transvaal that the Transvaalers took pity on their own portion of the
+line, and studiously refrained from shattering it. Some of them were
+probably shareholders. The less serious damages the Railway Pioneers
+and the Royal Engineers repaired with a speed that amazed us; and our
+supply trains never seemed to linger long in the rear of us, except
+when a massive river bridge was broken. Then a deviation line and a
+low level trestle bridge had to be constructed. At that fatigue work I
+have seen whole companies of once smart-looking Guardsmen toiling with
+spade and pick like Kaffirs, whilst some of their aristocratic
+officers, bearing lordly titles, played the part of gangers over these
+soldier-navvies. It was a new version and a more useful one of Ruskin
+and his collegiate road-makers.
+
+[Sidenote: _The tale, and tails, of a singed overcoat._]
+
+Bridge or no bridge, many a mile of transport waggons, of ammunition
+carts, of provision carts, with sundry naval guns, each drawn by a
+team of thirty-two oxen, had somehow to be got down the dangerous
+slope on one side of the drift, then across the stream, and up the
+still more difficult slope on the other side. It was a herculean
+task at which men and mules and horses toiled on far into the night.
+Meanwhile, when the troops reached their camping ground some miles
+beyond the river, they found they would have to wait for hours before
+they could get a scrap of beef or biscuit, and that it would probably
+be still longer before their overcoats or blankets arrived. For the
+hungry and shivering men this seemed an almost interminable interval,
+and for their officers it was scarcely less trying. A devoted
+Methodist non-commissioned officer perceiving my sorry plight most
+seasonably procured for me the loan of a capital military greatcoat. I
+also fortunately found a warm anthill, which the Boers earlier in the
+day had hollowed out and turned into an excellent stove or
+cooking-place. I stirred up the hot ashes inside with my
+walking-stick, but could find no trace of actual fire, so lay down
+beside the mound for the sake of its gentle warmth and instantly fell
+fast asleep. In my sleep I must have leaned hard against the anthill,
+for presently a burning sensation at my back awoke me, to discover
+that already a big hole had been charred in the coat I wore; and
+"alas! master, it was borrowed." Boer rifle fire never harmed a hair
+of my head, but this Boer fire did mischief nobody bargained for.
+Clearly our pursuit was much too hot for my personal comfort!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+The Deviation Bridge at Modder River.]
+
+A little earlier in the evening another glowing anthill had been found
+by one of our officers, and the thought of possible soup at once
+suggested itself. A three-legged crock was borrowed from a native and
+a fire of green mimosa shrub was laboriously coaxed into vigour by a
+young aspirant to a seat in the House of Lords. Into the crockful
+of water one of us cast a few meat lozenges reserved for just such a
+day of dire need; another found in his haversack a further slender
+store, which instantly shared the same fate. Somebody else cast into
+the pot the contents of a tiny tin of condensed beef tea; and with
+sundry other contributions of the same kind there was presently
+produced a delightful cup of soup for all concerned. To mend matters
+still further and to improve the no longer shining hours, an officer
+caught sight of a stray pig upon the veldt and shot it, just as though
+it had been a sniping "brother." A short time after a portion of that
+porker took its place among the lozenges and condensed beef tea in
+that simmering crock. So in an hour or two there followed another cup
+of glorious broth, with a dainty morsel of boiled pork for those who
+desired it:--
+
+         "Oh ye gods, what a glorious feast!"
+
+Soon after, our Cape cart with its load of iron mugs and tinned
+provisions reached that same crock side; while waggon loads of
+blankets, beef and biscuits, made possible a satisfactory night's
+rest, even on the frosty veldt, for all our well-wearied men.
+
+Kroonstad, the but recently proclaimed second capital of the Orange
+Free State, is a very inferior edition of Bloemfontein. There is not a
+single stately building, public or private, in the whole place--the
+Dutch Reformed Church, afterwards taken for hospital purposes, being
+the best, as it is meet and right God's House should always be.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lord Roberts as Hospital Visitor._]
+
+It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course
+without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing
+that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of
+pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of
+the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type. _Lord
+Roberts_ not only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance
+work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen
+took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet
+never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted.
+They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because
+of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of
+that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier
+appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers'
+Home:--
+
+     "Lord Roberts! Well, he's just _a father_. Often goes round
+     hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you
+     to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never
+     forgets to _see_ the man has what he asks for. Goes to the
+     hospital train--'Are you comfortable? Are you _sure_ you're
+     comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it.
+     But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?'
+     I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye
+     near,--tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a
+     clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he
+     will pray with him. He _is_ a lord!"
+
+Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly
+imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom
+his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by
+such a head!
+
+[Sidenote: _President Steyn's Sjambok._]
+
+On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn
+stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking
+to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted
+trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs
+Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and
+the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of
+despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free
+State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and
+for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for
+his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the
+penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. =Steyn's
+ambition awoke it!=
+
+Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself
+face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over
+the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station
+belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of L5000, and
+filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with
+paraffin by the =Boer Irish Brigade=, and given to the flames; while
+five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate.
+No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade
+was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a
+hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.
+
+It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs
+to the flames, and strove continually to tear up the rails along
+which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us
+to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of
+the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well
+that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants
+would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger,
+though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our
+tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left
+the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no
+voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were
+famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to
+our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully
+cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed
+thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not
+unfelt.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath._]
+
+To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found
+myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the
+Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9 A.M., and for the men of
+General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid
+a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it
+about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building,
+which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already
+of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began.
+I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women
+sitting on one side, the men on the other. There were three
+interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch;
+an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he
+speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had
+finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the
+collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as
+worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet
+this was a congregation of Kaffirs!
+
+At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the
+Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were
+both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate
+withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to
+whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for
+me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the
+favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still
+Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."
+
+[Sidenote: _Military Police on the march._]
+
+This memorable march from the Valsch to the Vaal was, in consequence
+of the transport difficulties already described, one of the hungriest
+in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was
+added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to
+procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly
+watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses
+that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry
+face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in
+utter disgust, if not despair.
+
+Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of Military
+Police whose one business it was to see that these famished men looted
+nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at protecting
+it was made. Such a house of course never contained food, and our men
+sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some cases almost
+demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few small sticks,
+or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.
+
+But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was
+instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling
+fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on
+payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:--
+
+         "Straight down the crooked lane
+          And right round the square,"
+
+where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you
+please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was
+precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but
+as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have
+with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of
+unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat
+poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed.
+Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando,
+his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might
+wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers
+could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at
+liberty to hunt for their lives but would not allow them to lay a
+finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose
+that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was
+never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police
+control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted
+hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in
+what market they had made their purchases or what price they had paid
+for their poultry.
+
+It would require a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and
+substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough
+trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved
+possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with
+that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me
+not unfrequently of the sons of the prophets, who, in a day of dearth
+went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and
+gathered thereof wild gourds and shred them into the pot and they
+could not eat thereof. Violent attacks of dysentery and kindred
+complaints only too plainly proved that occasionally in this case
+also, as in that ancient instance, there was apparently ample
+justification for the cry, "Oh thou man of God, there is death in the
+pot." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the lynx-eyed vigilance of the
+police, the smell from the pot was sometimes astonishingly like unto
+the smell of chicken-broth; which clearly shows what good cooking can
+accomplish even on the barren veldt.
+
+[Sidenote: _A General's glowing eulogy of the Guards._]
+
+This amazing ability of the Guards to face long marches with short
+rations was triumphantly maintained, not for a few months merely but
+to the very end of the campaign. In the February of 1901 it fell to
+the lot of the Scots Guards, for instance, to accompany General
+French's cavalry to the Swaziland border. They took with them no tents
+and the least possible amount of impedimenta of any kind. But for
+three weeks they had to face almost incessant rain, and as they had no
+shelter except a blanket full of holes, they were scarcely ever dry
+for half a dozen hours at a time. The streams were so swollen that
+they became impassable torrents, and the transport waggons were thus
+left far behind, with all food supplies. For eight or ten days at a
+stretch men and officers alike had no salt, no sugar, no tea, no
+coffee, no jam, no flour, bread or biscuits; no vegetables of any
+kind; but only one cupful of mealies or mealie meal per day, and as
+much fresh killed meat as their rebellious stomachs could digest
+without the aid of salt or mustard. Yet the only deaths were two by
+drowning; and at the close of the operations the general addressed
+them as follows:--
+
+General French's farewell speech to the 1st Brigade, Scots Guards at
+Vryheid, on April 1st, 1901:--
+
+     Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards.
+     The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close,
+     and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and
+     Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in
+     the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the
+     pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs
+     to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under
+     the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the
+     ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short
+     rations and for sometime none at all, you had to exist on the
+     meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At one
+     time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of the
+     weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but the
+     cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did a
+     great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most forcibly
+     was your extraordinary power of marching. I have frequently
+     noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry were engaged
+     (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have been
+     surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion close
+     behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and have
+     wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish to
+     remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion
+     performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news
+     has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated
+     attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way
+     in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the
+     sentries the attack was never developed.
+
+     Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the
+     battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his
+     qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had
+     hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand
+     unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the
+     campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great
+     assistance given to me during these operations. Should your
+     services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be
+     endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you
+     all good-bye.
+
+[Sidenote: _Good news by the way._]
+
+Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same
+boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of
+conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the
+news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely
+disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting
+event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months
+brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a
+superbly satisfactory send-off on our next perilous march to learn
+that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had at last
+actually taken place just four days before. It filled the whole camp
+with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided soldiers on
+the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the business as the
+multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the empire seem to
+have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a tiny garrison of
+for the most part untrained men; and therefore in itself of scant
+importance; but we also know that for many a critical week it had held
+back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong rush towards the
+Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one hand the staying
+power of British blood, and on the other the timidity and impotence of
+the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or stronghold to
+which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing; the very last
+of the series was safe at last, and after all that had been said about
+British blunderings, this event surely called for something more than
+commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was wont to say, "We
+are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we want: it is brains";
+but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over bullets. A new Wake had
+arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found a permanent place among
+the many names of renown in the long annals of our island story.
+
+It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that
+same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable
+Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally
+annexed to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its
+gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest
+responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and
+constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of
+righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It is a
+superb stewardship entrusted to us of God; and "it is required in
+stewards that they be found faithful."
+
+[Sidenote: _Over the Vaal at last._]
+
+All that week the Guards continued in hot pursuit of the Boers without
+so much as once catching sight of them. Repeatedly, however, we
+scrambled through huge patches of Indian or Kaffir corn, enough, so to
+say, to feed an army, but all left to rot and perish uncut. It was one
+of the few evidences which just then greeted us that war was really
+abroad in the land, and that they were no mere autumn manoeuvres in
+which we then were taking part. Some of the rightful owners of that
+corn were probably among our prisoners of war at St Helena, spending
+their mourning days in vainly wondering how long its hateful
+unfamiliar waves would keep them captive. Others had, perchance,
+themselves been garnered by the great Harvester, who ever gathers his
+fattest sheaves hard by the paths of war.
+
+Occasionally we came, in the course of our march, on a
+recently-deserted Boer camp, with empty tins strewn all about the
+place and the embers of camp fires still glowing, but never so much as
+a penny worth of loot lying on the ground. Either they had little to
+leave, or else they so utilised the railway in assisting to get their
+belongings away that in that respect they had the laugh of us
+continually. This final service rendered, the Boers made haste to
+prevent the rail being used by us; and so far as time or timidity
+would permit, they blew up every bridge, every culvert, as soon as
+their last train had crossed it. Fortunately of the long and beautiful
+bridge across the Vaal we found only one broad span broken.
+
+About nine o'clock on Sunday morning the troops reached Val Joen's
+Drift, the terminal station on the Orange Free State Railway. This
+drift it was that President Kruger had once resolved to close against
+all traffic in order the more effectually to strangle British trade in
+the Transvaal. Another mile or two through prodigiously deep sand,
+brought us to the Vaal River coal mines, with their great heaps of
+burning cinders or other refuse, which brought vividly to many a north
+countryman's remembrances kindred scenes in the neighbourhood of busy
+Bradford and prosperous Sunderland.
+
+Then came the great event to which the laborious travel of the last
+seven months had steadily led up, the crossing of the Vaal, and the
+planting of our victorious feet on Transvaal soil. Here we were
+assured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the
+natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities
+of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet
+to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could
+see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in
+position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauser bullets
+were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our foemen fled. Once in a
+Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an "English Reader," which
+strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar lines:--
+
+         "There is a land of every land the pride;
+          Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.
+          Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
+
+          Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!
+          Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
+          That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"
+
+Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but
+fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so
+dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade
+stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be
+conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the
+scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for
+hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were
+peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I
+leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful
+hallelujah in my heart!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS
+
+
+Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served
+as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one
+chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with
+whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close
+official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches
+whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I
+can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each,
+what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of
+Jehovah:--"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."
+
+Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among
+the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to
+place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them--the
+Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian--reference has already been
+made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the
+Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at
+the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was
+unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story
+however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There
+remain three whom I repeatedly saw, and who reported to me from time
+to time the progress of their work--viz. the Revs. M. F. Crewdson, T.
+H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words it will now
+be my privilege to introduce.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front._]
+
+Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at
+the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and
+became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one
+of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities
+and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him
+unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the
+troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of
+the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely
+duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve
+months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when,
+lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted
+not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape
+Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals
+and supply depots became the scene of very active operations indeed,
+in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a
+prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are
+healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being
+intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pathetic scenes in Hospital._]
+
+Few chaplains in the course of this campaign have had so extensive an
+experience in hospital work as Mr Crewdson, and in the course of his
+correspondence he relates many pathetic incidents that came under his
+own personal observation. At De-Aar he found a lance-corporal with a
+fractured jaw and some twenty other slight or serious wounds, all
+caused by fragments of a single shell. "I was one of seven," he said,
+"entrenched in a little sangar on a hill. Hundreds of Boers and Blacks
+came up against us. One of the seven disappeared, four others were
+killed; so to my one surviving comrade I said, 'Look here, corporal,
+we'll stick this out till one of us is wounded then the other must
+look after him.'" Presently that unlucky shell made a victim of this
+plucky fellow; but a hero it could not make him. He was that already.
+
+A company of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong
+had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The
+lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital
+in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was
+his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot
+through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be
+removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder,
+with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's nothing, sir. I'll be
+at it again in a week." Some of them would say that, brave fellows, if
+their heads were blown off--or would try to!
+
+Writing from Colesberg at a somewhat later date Mr Crewdson informed
+me that going the round of hospitals,--where he met representatives
+from Ceylon, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and
+the United Kingdom,--had filled much of his time during the previous
+fortnight. "I cannot tell the sweet brave things I have heard from
+tongues that had almost lost their power to speak. One was a Canadian
+lad, who had passed through his course as a student for the ministry,
+and being refused as a chaplain had volunteered as a trooper, and when
+the chaplain tenderly asked, 'How are you, old man?' he received in a
+kind of gasp this reply: 'Trusting Jesus!' Another, now nearly
+convalescent, said, 'I have been a Christian for twenty years, but the
+weeks spent in hospital have taught me more of God, and of the wonders
+of His grace, than years of health.' His eyes glistened and then
+dimmed as with faltering voice he added, 'I want to say, that it was
+good for me that I was afflicted.'"
+
+[Sidenote: _A battlefield scene no less pathetic._]
+
+In the course of these incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an
+Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who
+told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two
+rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young
+well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect English accent
+said, "Are you much hurt, old fellow?" The Australian, suspecting
+treachery, turned white and trembled in spite of the stranger's kindly
+tone.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid of me, you are hurt enough already. Shall I get
+you some water?" was the instant Boer rejoinder to the Australian's
+signs of suspicion. The water was soon produced; and next there came
+forth from the pocket of that young Boer a couple of peaches, which
+were offered to the sufferer, and thankfully accepted.
+
+"You must be faint with this fierce sun beating on you," said this
+strange foeman; and thereupon he sat upon a rock for over an hour in
+such a position that his shadow sheltered the wounded man, and surely,
+as in Peter's story, that shadow must have had grace and healing in
+it. Ultimately an ambulance arrived, and this chivalrous Transvaaler
+crowned the helpfulness of that eventful hour by tenderly lifting the
+crippled Australian on to a stretcher, with an expression of hope that
+he would soon be well again.
+
+At the close of this unnatural conflict it is our best consolation to
+be divinely assured that the brotherliness which thus presented
+peaches to a wounded foe will ultimately triumph over the bitterness
+which winged the explosive bullet that well-nigh killed him.
+
+[Sidenote: _Look on this picture--and on that._]
+
+While it is undeniable that cases of chivalrous courtesy such as this
+occurred repeatedly in the course of the campaign, it is equally
+undeniable that the Boers sometimes deliberately set aside all the
+usages of civilized war. Mr Crewdson, for instance, says that after
+the Slingersfontein fight he met at least a dozen men who declared
+that the Boers drove up the hill in front of them hundreds of armed
+Kaffirs, and then themselves crept up on hands and knees under cover
+of this living moving wall. Such strategy is exceedingly slim; but
+they who make use of semi-savages must themselves for the time being
+be accounted near akin to them. One word from the Queen would have
+sufficed to let loose on the Boers the slaughterous fury of almost all
+native South Africa, but had that word been spoken there could have
+been found no forgiveness for it in this life or in the life to come.
+Yet Slingersfontein was not the only sad instance of this sort, for
+Sir Redvers Buller in his official report concerning Vaalkrantz
+solemnly declares that then also there were armed Kaffirs with the
+Boer forces, and that there also the Red flag was abominably abused,
+for he himself and his Staff saw portions of artillery conveyed by the
+Boers to a given position in an ambulance flying the Geneva flag. The
+loss of honour is ever out of all proportion to the help such
+treachery affords.
+
+[Sidenote: _A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain._]
+
+It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev.
+T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had
+proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the
+Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted
+himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once
+turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him
+they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received
+the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from
+Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his
+family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where
+a singular incident befell him.
+
+[Sidenote: _Running in the wrong man._]
+
+A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a
+Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all
+concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to
+speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the
+published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because
+after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was
+just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to
+be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he
+approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right
+password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a
+prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe
+keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new
+chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by
+the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a
+prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more
+painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did
+ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached
+to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own
+sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel
+in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Wainman who was a real waggoner._]
+
+Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully
+used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most
+popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the
+transport waggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift, and no
+amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One waggon
+thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is, therefore, a
+most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become an old
+colonist without learning a few things characteristic of colonial
+life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore volunteered
+to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padre's offer was,
+however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this small thing
+was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way, then next
+he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those staggering oxen
+English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones soothing and
+familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had appeared
+upon the scene that understood them, or that they could understand.
+Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether, and lo as
+by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon was out of the drift!
+"Brave padre," everybody cried. His name means "waggoner," and a right
+good waggoner he that day proved to be. This skilful compliance with
+one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws helped him immensely in the
+preaching of the Gospel. He became all the more powerful as a minister
+because so popular as a man. In many ways his mature local knowledge
+enabled him to become so exceptionally useful that he received
+promotion from a fourth to a third class acting chaplaincy, and the
+very officers who at first deemed his presence an infliction combined
+to present him with a handsome cigarette case in token of uttermost
+goodwill. You can't tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you
+give him a chance.
+
+[Sidenote: _Three bedfellows in a barn._]
+
+When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were
+being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he
+climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search
+for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal
+mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous
+hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on
+one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other--a delightful
+forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the
+kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a
+little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this
+campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.
+
+While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete
+remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving
+force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where
+I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of
+the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in
+Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the
+troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire
+his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an
+easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his
+generation well according to the will of God.
+
+[Sidenote: _A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate
+Chaplain._]
+
+The Rev. W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the
+Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service
+among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the
+lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and
+found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the
+battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column.
+Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no
+less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, and some were newly-won
+converts. Hence, at the close of Mr Burgess's very first voluntary
+service, one khaki man said to him, "I gave my heart to the Lord last
+Sunday on the line of march before we met the enemy"; while many more,
+though not perhaps walking in the clear shining of the light of God's
+countenance, yet spoke freely of their religious upbringing and
+relationships. It was possibly one such who, at the close of a little
+week-night service, where nearly all the men were drenched with recent
+rain, suggested the singing of "Love divine, all loves excelling." The
+character of that man's upbringing it is not difficult to divine.
+Another said, "I have a wife and four children who are praying for
+me"; while yet another added, "For me an aged mother prays." It would
+be strange indeed if such confessors were not themselves praying men.
+They were to be found by hundreds, probably by thousands, among the
+troops sent to South Africa. Never was an army so prayed for since the
+world began; and seldom, if ever, has an army contained so many who
+themselves were praying men.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers._]
+
+Nearly four months after the Stormberg tragedy, but only four days
+after that at Sanna's Post, Mr Burgess found himself, with three
+companies of the Irish Rifles and two of the Northumberland Fusiliers,
+cooped up on a kopje about three miles long not far from Reddersburg.
+With no water within reach, with no guns, and an almost exhausted
+store of rifle ammunition, this small detachment found itself indeed
+in evil plight when De Wet's commando of 3200 men put a girdle of
+rifle barrels around it, and then began a merciless cannonade with
+five guns. That cannonade indeed was merciless far beyond what the
+rules of modern war permit, for it seemed to be directed, if not
+mainly, certainly most effectually, on the ambulances and hospital
+tents, over which the Red Cross flag floated in vain. In the vivid
+description of the fight which Mr Burgess sent to me, he says that
+several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it
+was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of
+their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red
+Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer
+prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw
+up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the
+diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off,
+and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck
+till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thus
+turning himself into a navvy is probably no breach of the Geneva
+Convention, but all the same it is by no means an everyday occurrence;
+and those Boer prisoners would think none the worse of that Wesleyan
+predikant's prayers after watching the work, on their behalf, of that
+predikant's pick.
+
+The defence of Reddersburg was one of the least heroic in the whole
+record of the campaign, and the troops early next morning surrendered,
+not to resistless skill or rifle fire on the part of the Boers, but to
+the cravings of overmastering thirst. A relieving force was close at
+hand when they ran up the horrid white flag, and had they been aware
+of that fact we may be sure no surrender would have taken place. It
+requires scant genius to be wise after the event, and still scantier
+courage to denounce as lacking in courage this surrender of 500 to a
+force six times as large. That was on April 4th, and among those taken
+captive by De Wet was the Wesleyan chaplain. His horse, his kit, and
+all his belongings at the same time changed hands, and though he was
+solemnly assured all would be restored to him, that promise still
+awaits redemption.
+
+[Sidenote: _Caring for the Wounded._]
+
+Mr Burgess, though stripped of all he possessed, except what he wore,
+received De Wet's permission to search for the wounded as well as to
+bury the dead; and in one of his letters to me he tells of one
+mortally wounded whom he thus found, and who, in reply to the query,
+"Do you know Jesus?" replied, "I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour"; then
+recognising Mr Burgess as his chaplain, he added, "Pray for me!" so,
+amid onlooking stretcher-bearers and mounted Boers, the dying lad was
+commended to the eternal keeping of his Saviour. It is this element
+which has introduced itself into modern warfare which will presently
+make war impossible, except between wild beasts or wilder savages.
+Prayer on the battlefield, and the use on the same spot of explosive
+bullets, is too incongruous to have in it the element of perpetuity.
+
+The number of soldiers that thus die praying, or being prayed for, may
+be comparatively small; but even the unsaintly soldier, when wounded,
+often displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian
+endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had
+horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to
+his comrades--"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you
+like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one
+of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my
+cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer
+some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place of the tin
+whistle and cricket; but even here is evidence of the grit that has
+helped to make England great, and it by no means follows that saving
+grace also is not there. The most vigorous piety is not always the
+most vocal.
+
+After nearly four and twenty hours of terrific pelting by shot and
+shell, Mr Burgess tells me our total loss was only ten killed and
+thirty-five wounded. Not one in ten was hit; and so again was
+illustrated the comparative harmlessness of either Mauser or
+machine-gun fire against men fairly well sheltered. This war thus
+witnessed a strange anomaly. It used the deadliest of all weapons,
+and produced with them a percentage of deaths unexampled in its
+smallness.
+
+[Sidenote: _How the Chaplain's own tent was bullet-riddled._]
+
+Late on in the campaign Mr Burgess was moved, not to his own delight,
+from near Belfast to Germiston, but was speedily reconciled to the
+change by the receipt of the following letter from an officer of the
+Royal Berks:--
+
+     "Truly you are a lucky man to have left Wonderfontein on Monday;
+     and it may be that it saved your life, for the same night we were
+     attacked. It was a very misty night; but we all went to bed as
+     usual, and at midnight I was awakened by heavy rifle fire. Almost
+     immediately the bugle sounded the alarm, and everybody ran for
+     their posts like hares. From where I was it sounded as if the
+     Boers had really got into camp; but after two hours of very heavy
+     firing they retired. Yesterday morning, when I went over the
+     ground, _the first thing I saw was six or eight bullet holes
+     through your tent_; and one end of our mess had twenty-three
+     bullet marks in it. Nooitgedacht, Pan and Dalmanutha were all
+     attacked the same night at exactly the same hour, causing us a
+     few casualties at each place."
+
+It may perchance be for our good we are sometimes sent away from
+places where we fain would tarry.
+
+[Sidenote: _A sample set of Sunday Services._]
+
+The following typical extract is taken from Mr Burgess's Diary:--
+
+     "_Sunday, January 20th._--Rode out to Fort Dublin for church
+     parade at 9 A.M. Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out
+     to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully
+     a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town
+     church at 3.30 P.M., and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two
+     hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town
+     just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which
+     was well attended."
+
+         "Oh, day of _rest_ and gladness!"
+
+As the war was nearing its close, I sent Mr Burgess to labour along
+the blockhouse lines of communication, which have Bloemfontein for
+their centre. Here the authorities granted to him the use of a church
+railway van, in which he travelled almost ceaselessly between
+Brandfort and Norval's Pont, or beyond; and thus he too for a while
+became chaplain to part of the Guards' Brigade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY
+
+
+In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous
+chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed
+"Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as
+circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were
+formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in
+the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy
+were similarly employed, and supplemented the labours of the
+commissioned and acting Anglican chaplains sent out from England.
+Their local influence and local knowledge enabled them to render
+invaluable service, and great was their zeal in so doing. While the
+regular chaplains who came with the troops as a rule went with the
+troops, these fixtures in the great King's service were able not only
+to make arrangements for religious worship, but for almost every
+imaginable kind of ministry for the welfare of the men. They were
+often the Army Chaplain's right hand and in some cases his left hand
+too. It would be a grievous wrong, therefore to make no reference to
+what they attempted for God and the Empire, though it is impossible
+here to do more than hurriedly refer to a few typical cases that in
+due course were officially reported to me.
+
+[Sidenote: _At Cape Town and Wynberg._]
+
+The very day the Guards landed at Cape Town I was introduced to the
+Rev. B. E. Elderkin, who in conjunction with the Congregationalists at
+Seapoint made generous provision for the social enjoyment and
+spiritual profiting of the troops. I was also that same day taken to
+the Wynberg Hospital by the Rev. R. Jenkin, who, on alternate Sundays
+with the Presbyterian chaplain, conducted religious services there for
+the convalescents, and ministered in many ways to the sick and
+wounded, of whom there were sometimes as many as 2000 in actual
+residence. Among them Mr Jenkin could not fail to discover many cases
+of peculiar interest; and concerning one, a private of the Essex, he
+has supplied the following particulars:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Saved from drowning to sink in hospital._]
+
+This lad was badly wounded in the thigh on Sunday, March 11th,
+somewhere not far from Paardeberg, but he seems to have got so far
+into the Boer lines that our own shells fell around him and our own
+stretcher-bearers never reached him; so he lay all night, his wound
+undressed, and without one drink of water. Next day a mounted Boer
+caught sight of him, got off his horse, gave him a drink, and then
+passed on. On Wednesday, in sheer desperation, he wriggled to the
+river to get a drink, but in his feebleness fell in; was caught by the
+branch of a tree, and for more hours than seem credible thus hung,
+half in the water, half out, before he rallied sufficient strength to
+crawl out and up the bank. For five days he thus remained without
+food, and his festering wound unbandaged. On the Friday, when Lord
+Roberts offered to exchange six wounded prisoners, the Boers espied
+at last this useful hostage, took him to their laager, put a rough
+bandage round his thigh, and sent him into the British camp. He was
+still alive, full of hope, when Wynberg Hospital was reached, and
+responsive to all Mr Jenkin said concerning the mercy of God in
+Christ; but the long delay in dealing with his case rendered an
+operation necessary. There was no strength left with which to rally--a
+sudden collapse, and he was gone to meet his God. Fifteen days after
+he fell he was laid to rest, with full military honours, in the
+Wesleyan Cemetery at Wynberg. It is well that all fatal cases are not
+of that fearful type!
+
+Whilst the Guards were making their way to the Transvaal, the Rev. W.
+Meara, a refugee Wesleyan minister from Barberton, was doing
+altogether excellent work among the troops at East London; and has
+since gone back to Barberton as officiating clergyman to the troops
+there, where later on in 1902 I had the opportunity of personally
+noting what his zeal hath accomplished for our men.
+
+[Sidenote: _A pleasant surprise._]
+
+Concerning his army work while away from Barberton, Mr Meara sent me
+the following satisfactory report:--
+
+     "During the early part of my chaplaincy there were large numbers
+     of men in camp, and we held open-air services with blessed
+     results. The services were largely attended and much appreciated.
+     We then established a temporary Soldiers' Home; and after a
+     fortnight the Scripture Reader of the Northumberland Fusiliers
+     handed me over the responsibility, as he was proceeding with his
+     regiment to the front. The Home was on the camp ground, and so
+     was within easy reach of the men, who availed themselves fully of
+     its advantages. We provided mineral waters at cost prices, and
+     eatables, tobacco, etc., and for some weeks when there was a
+     great rush of men in camp upwards of L120 a week was taken. We
+     supplied ink, pens, notepaper, etc., free, and we had all kinds
+     of papers in the Reading Room. We agreed that any profits should
+     be sent to the Soldiers' Widows and Orphans Fund, and so before I
+     left East London we sent the sum of L43 to Sir A. Milner for the
+     fund above referred to. Besides the Soldiers' Home, we started a
+     Soldiers' 'Social Evening' on Wednesdays in Wesley Hall, which
+     was largely patronised by the men. I have found the officers
+     without a single exception ready to further my work in every way.
+     I had also a good deal of hospital work, which to me was full of
+     pathetic interest. I have had the joy of harvest in some
+     instances, for some of the men have been led to Christ. When I
+     purposed leaving, the circuit officials generously took the Town
+     Hall for two nights at a cost of L14 for my Farewell Service on
+     Sunday night, and the Farewell Social on Tuesday. The hall was
+     packed with about 1500 people on the Sunday. We had a grand
+     number of soldiers. Then on the Tuesday in the same hall there
+     were about 1000 people who sat down to tea, including from 400 to
+     500 soldiers. When tea was over I was to my surprise presented
+     with a purse of sovereigns from the circuit, and to my still
+     greater astonishment Col. Long of the Somerset Light Infantry
+     came on the platform, and spoke most appreciatively of my work
+     amongst the men, and their great regret at my departure. When he
+     had finished he called upon Sergt.-Master-Tailor Syer to make a
+     presentation to me on behalf of the men. It was a beautiful
+     walking-stick with a massive silver ferrule suitably inscribed,
+     and a very fine case of razors. Then every soldier in the hall
+     rose to his feet and gave the departing chaplain three cheers. It
+     was really one of the proudest moments in my life."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' Reception Committee._]
+
+Of the Durban Soldiers' Reception Committee the chairman was the Rev.
+G. Lowe, also a Transvaal refugee Wesleyan minister; and in a letter
+from him now lying on my table he states that he was sometimes on the
+landing jetty for fifteen hours at a stretch. He adds that he was the
+first to begin this work of welcoming the troops on landing at
+Durban, and obtained the permits to take in a few friends within the
+barriers for the distribution of fruit, tobacco and bread to the
+soldiers, on the purchase of which nearly L300 was expended.
+Twenty-five thousand troops were thus met; over L2000 sent home to the
+friends of the soldiers; more than 8000 letters announcing the safe
+arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being
+written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was
+most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the
+3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands L208, 18s. belonging to the
+men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only
+a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his
+personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own
+and other battalions.
+
+[Sidenote: _The other way about._]
+
+About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on
+the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here
+the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to
+welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily
+with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs
+Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging
+to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the
+Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place,
+while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers
+in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp,
+so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for a crowded military
+concert, which cleared L35 for the destitute poor of the town, mostly
+Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the fray, and on
+their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided an open-air
+concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the very
+neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very act of
+conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most of all
+this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish supplies
+of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with
+proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the
+other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes
+alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and _patriotic_
+songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as
+the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one
+such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free
+State:--
+
+  POPULAR PROMENADE CONCERT
+  TO BE HELD ON
+  _SATURDAY, 22nd DECEMBER 1900, at 4.45_ P.M.
+
+By the kind permission of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. A. E. DALZELL
+and the Officers of the 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry.
+
+PROGRAMME.
+
+  1. GRAND MARCH--"Princess Victoria"    _O'Keefe_   BAND.
+  2. SONG                                            Serg. COX,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  3. COON SONG                                       Trooper GREENWOOD,
+                                                       I.Y.
+  4. OVERTURE--"Norma"                   _Bellini_   BAND.
+  5. SENTIMENTAL SONG                                Corp. ASHLY,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  6. RECITATION                                      Corp. SAMPSON,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  7. CORNET SOLO--"My Pretty Jane"       _Bishop_    Band-Serg. BROOME.
+  8. SONG                                            Mr J. ILSLEY.
+  9. DESCRIPTIVE SONG                                Corporal COOKE,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  10. SELECTION--"The Belle of New York" _Kerker_    BAND.
+  11. SONG                                           Gunner HIGGINBOTHAM,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  12. SONG                                           Gunner M'GINTZ,
+                                                       R.G.A.
+  13. VALSE--"Mia Cara"                  _Bucalossi_ BAND.
+  14. PATRIOTIC SONG                                 Serg. GEAR,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  15. COMIC SONG                                     Corporal CROWLY,
+                                                       1st O.L.I.
+  16. GALOP--"En Route"                  _Clarke_    BAND.
+
+"_GOD SAVE THE QUEEN._"
+
+Admission to Ground--ONE SHILLING. Refreshments at reasonable prices.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: _Our near Kinship to the Boers._]
+
+Of another important fact which grew upon us later on, we gained our
+first glimpse during these early days. The Boers we found were in many
+respects startlingly near akin to us. They sprang originally from the
+same liberty-loving stock as ourselves. Hosts of them spoke correct
+and fluent English, while not a few of them were actually of English
+parentage. Moreover, the Hollanders and the English have so freely
+intermarried in South Africa that at one time it was fondly hoped the
+cradle rather than the rifle would finally settle our racial
+controversies. They are haunted by the same insatiable earth hunger as
+ourselves, and hence unceasingly persisted in violating the
+Conventions which forbade all further extension of Transvaal
+territory. As a people they are more narrowly Protestant than even we
+have ever been. The Doppers, of whom the President was chief, are
+Ultra-Puritans; and they would suffer none but members of a Protestant
+Church to have any vote or voice in their municipal or national
+affairs. Jews and Roman Catholics as such were absolutely
+disfranchised by them; and their singing, which later on we often
+heard, by its droning heaviness would have delighted the hearts of
+those Highland crofters who, at Aldershot, said they could not away
+with the jingling songs of Sankey. "Gie us the Psalms of David," they
+cried. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of
+Scotland are nearer akin than cousins; and when after Magersfontein
+our Presbyterian chaplain crossed over into the Boer lines to seek out
+and bury the dead, he was heartily hailed as a _Reformed_ minister,
+was treated with as much courtesy as though he had been one of their
+own predikants, and as the result was so favourably impressed that an
+imaginative mind might easily fancy him saying to Cronje, "Almost thou
+persuadest me to become a Boer!"
+
+Of all wars, civil wars are the most inexpressibly saddening; and this
+terrible struggle was largely of that type. Neighbours who had known
+each other intimately for years, members of the same church, and even
+of the same family, found themselves ranged on opposite sides in this
+awful fray. When Boer and Briton came to blows it was a _brother-bond_
+that was broken, in sight of the awestruck natives. It was once again
+even as in the days of old when Ephraim envied Judah and Judah vexed
+Ephraim! Nevertheless, times without number, a concert in the midst of
+strife, such as that described above, sufficed to draw together all
+classes in friendliest possible intercourse, and seemed a tuneful
+prophecy of the better days that are destined yet to dawn.
+
+[Sidenote: _More good work on our right flank._]
+
+We can only linger to take one more glance at this type of service by
+this type of worker before we proceed with our story of the Guards'
+advance. Winburg, like Heilbron, lay on our right flank, and was
+occupied by the troops about the same time as we entered Kroonstad.
+The Wesleyan clergyman was the only representative of the Churches
+left in the place; and the story of his devotion is outlined in the
+following memorandum to the D.A.A.G. with the official reply
+thereto:--
+
+                                        WINBURG, O. R. C.
+                                       _Dec. 21, 1900._
+
+     To MAJOR GOUGH, D.A.A.G.,
+
+     Kindly allow me to state a few facts in order to show the
+     exceptional character of my position and work, both before and
+     since the time of my appointment.
+
+     1. Previous to the occupation of Winburg by the British troops, I
+     was employed in attending to the sick and wounded English
+     soldiers who were brought here as prisoners of war by the Dutch
+     Forces.
+
+     2. During a period of at least five months--as no other chaplain
+     or clergyman was living within a distance of about fifty miles--I
+     was the only one available for religious services, either parade
+     or voluntary, for hospital visitation and burial duties, which
+     were then so urgently and frequently needed. We had six
+     hospitals, and occasionally as many as three funerals on the same
+     day.
+
+     3. From the date of the British occupation, May 5th, my knowledge
+     of the country and people--acquired during twenty-five years'
+     residence in various parts of the O. R. C.--has been at the
+     disposal of the military authorities. I have often acted as
+     interpreter and translator, and as such accompanied the
+     Commandant of Winburg when, a few weeks ago, he went to meet the
+     leader of the Boer forces near their laager in this district.
+
+     4. As almost all the English population left the town before the
+     war, our nearly empty church was then, and still remains,
+     available for the garrison troops. About nine-tenths of both my
+     Sunday and week-day congregations are soldiers, for whom all the
+     seats are free.
+
+     5. Immediately after the arrival of the British forces, our
+     church was utilised for an entirely undenominational Soldiers'
+     Home, and books for the emergency were supplied from my library.
+     Colonel Napier, who was then C.O. of Winburg, expressed his
+     appreciation of this part of our garrison work, and assisted in
+     its development. By his direction, the Home was removed to the
+     premises it now occupies. It consists of separate rooms for
+     reading, writing and refreshments; also rooms and kitchen for the
+     manageress. It is still under my superintendence.--Yours, C. HARMON.
+
+
+     (_Copy._) _Colonel Napier's Recommendation._
+
+     To STAFF OFFICER, Bloemfontein.
+
+     I strongly recommend that the Rev. C. Harmon be retained as an
+     acting chaplain to the troops. I can fully endorse all the
+     reverend gentleman has stated in the above memorandum. He has
+     been most useful to the Garrison and Military Authorities at
+     Winburg, and his thorough knowledge of the Dutch language makes
+     his services among the refugees and natives indispensable.
+
+                                        JOHN SCOTT NAPIER, Col.
+
+     WINBURG, _Jan. 3, 1901_.
+
+It is a supreme satisfaction to know that our men were thus in so many
+ways well served by the local clergy of South Africa, to whom our
+warmest thanks are due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY
+
+
+So utter, and for the time being so ludicrously complete, was the
+collapse of our adversaries' defence, that on that first night within
+the Transvaal border we lay down to rest on the open veldt without any
+slightest shelter, but also without any slightest fear, save only the
+fear of catching cold; and slept as undisturbed as though we had been
+slumbering amid hoar-frost and heather on the famous Fox Hills near
+Aldershot. On that particular Sunday night our tentless camp was
+visited by ten or twelve degrees of frost, so that when the morning
+dawned my wraps were as hoary as the hair of their owner is ever
+likely to become.
+
+[Sidenote: _An elaborate night toilet._]
+
+But then as the night, so must the nightdress be; and my personal
+toilet was arranged in the following tasteful fashion. Every garment
+worn during the heat of the day was of course worn throughout the
+chilly night, including boots; for at that season of the year we
+regularly went to bed with our boots on. Indeed the often footsore men
+were expressly forbidden to take them off at night, lest a possible
+night attack should find them in that important respect unready. Over
+the tunic was put a sweater, and over that a greatcoat, with a hideous
+woollen helmet as a crown of glory for the head, and a regulation
+blanket wrapped round the waist and legs. Then on the least rugged bit
+of ground within reach a waterproof sheet was spread, and on that was
+planted the "bag blanket," into which I carefully crept, having first
+thrown over it an old mackintosh as some small protection from the
+heavy evening dew and the early morning frost. So whether the ground
+proved rough as a nutmeg-grater or ribbed like a gridiron, I soon said
+good-night to the blushing stars above me and to the acres of
+slumbering soldiers all around. After that, few of us were in fit
+condition to judge whether there were ten degrees of frost or twelve
+till five o'clock next morning, when we sat on the whitened ground to
+breakfast by starlight. At that unkindly hour the least acute observer
+of Nature's varying moods could not fail to note that a midwinter dawn
+five thousand feet above the sea-level can even in South Africa be
+bitingly severe.
+
+[Sidenote: _Capturing Clapham Junction._]
+
+After two more days of heavy marching we found abundant and beautiful
+spar stones springing up out of the barren veldt, as in my native
+Cornwall; and we needed no seer to assure us that the vast and
+invaluable mining area of Johannesburg was close at hand. Presently we
+passed one big set of mining machinery after another, each with its
+huge heap of mine refuse. If only some clotted cream had been
+purchasable at one of the wayside houses, or a dainty pasty had
+anywhere appeared in sight, I could almost have fancied myself close
+to Camborne.
+
+Instead, however, of marching straight towards Johannesburg, we
+suddenly pounced on Elandsfontein, the most supremely important
+railway junction in all South Africa--its Clapham Junction--and
+following swiftly in the footsteps of Henry's mounted infantry took
+its defenders delightfully by surprise. The Gordons on our far left
+had about a hundred casualties, and the C.I.V.'s on our right,
+fighting valiantly, were also hard hit, but the Guards escaped
+unscathed. Shots enough, however, were fired to lead us to expect a
+serious fight, and to necessitate a further exhausting march of five
+or six miles, out and back, amid the mine heaps lying just beyond the
+junction. Fortunately, the fight proved no fight, but only a further
+flight; though the end of a specially heavy day's task brought with
+it, none the less, an abounding recompense. Whilst most of the Boers
+precipitately vanished, those unable to get away gave themselves up as
+prisoners of war, and thus without further effort we secured a
+position of vast strategic importance, including the terminus of the
+railway line leading to Natal; but it was also the terminus of the
+long line from Johannesburg and the regions beyond; so that there was
+now no way of escape for any of the rolling stock thereon. It might
+peradventure be destroyed before the troops could rescue it, but got
+away for the further service of the Boers it could not be. Among other
+acquisitions we captured at Elandsfontein a capitally equipped
+hospital train, hundreds of railway trucks laden more or less with
+valuable stores, and half a dozen locomotives with full head of steam
+on; so that had we arrived a little less suddenly, locomotives, trains
+and empty trucks would all have eluded our grasp and got safely to
+Pretoria. It was indeed an invaluable haul, especially for haulage
+purposes, and we had tramped 130 miles in the course of a single week
+to secure it!
+
+[Sidenote: _Dear diet and dangerous._]
+
+Long after dark, weary and footsore and famished, we stumbled back
+three miles to our chosen camping ground. Since the previous evening
+some of the Scots Guards had managed to secure only a hasty drink of
+coffee, so they told me, as their sole rations for the four-and-twenty
+hours; but they seemed as happy as they were hungry, like men proudly
+conscious that they had done a good day's work that brought them, so
+they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an
+undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over
+some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to
+traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire;
+scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at
+last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness
+proceeded as best they could to cook their dinners.
+
+Greatly to our surprise the people, who seemed mostly Dutch or of
+Dutch relationship, received us like those in the Orange Free State
+towns, with demonstrative kindness; and in many a case brought out
+their last loaf as a most welcome gift to the just then almost
+ravenous soldiery. Every scrap of available provisions was eagerly
+bought up, and here as elsewhere honestly paid for, often at prices
+that seemed far from honest. Months after at this very place I learned
+that eggs were being sold at from ten to fifteen shillings a dozen,
+and fowls at seven shillings a-piece!
+
+An Australian correspondent of the _London Times_ declares that as it
+was with us, so was it with the troops that he accompanied. About the
+very time we reached this Germiston Junction, his men, he says, were
+practically starving; and any other army in the world would have
+commandeered whatever food came in its way. He was with Rundle's
+Brigade, "the starving Eighth" as they were well called, seeing that
+for a while they were rationed on one and a half biscuits a day. Yet
+they gave Mr Stead's "ill-treated women" two shillings a loaf for
+bread that sixpence would have well paid for, and no one was allowed
+to bring foodstuffs away from any farmhouse without getting a written
+receipt from the vendor. If the military police caught a ragged
+Leinster packing a chicken down his trouser leg through a big hole in
+the seat, and he could not show a receipt for the bird, away went the
+man's purchase to the nearest Field Hospital. To this same
+representative of the Press the wife of a farmer still out fighting
+our troops naively said, "For goodness sake do keep those wicked
+Colonials away; I am terrified of them" (he was himself a
+Colonial)--"but I am so glad when the English come; they pay me so
+well." That was the experience of almost all who had anything to sell,
+alike in town and country; and this particular Frau confessed to
+having made a profit of ten clear pounds in a single week out of the
+bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some
+cases when they asked for bread our men got a bullet. Around many a
+farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of being
+fleeced.
+
+[Sidenote: _No wages but the Sjambok._]
+
+At Elandsfontein an almost frantic welcome was awarded us by the
+crowds of Kaffirs that eagerly watched our coming. As we marched
+through their Location almost the only darkie I spoke to happened to
+be a well-dressed intelligent Wesleyan, who said to me, "Good Boss, we
+are truly glad that you have come; for the last seven months the Boers
+have made us work without any wages except the sjambok across our
+backs." It is only fair to add that the burghers on commando during
+those same seven months were supposed to receive no wages; and the
+Kaffirs, who were commandeered for various kinds of service in
+connection with the war, could scarcely expect the Boer Government to
+deal more generously with them. From the very beginning, however, the
+Kaffirs in the Transvaal were often made to feel that their condition
+was near akin to that of slaves. The clauses in the Sand River
+Convention which were intended to be the Magna Charta of their
+liberties proved a delusion and a snare. Recent years, however, have
+effected immense improvements in their relative position and
+importance. Since the mines were opened their labour has been keenly
+competed for, and a more considerate feeling concerning them pervades
+all classes; but they are still regarded by many of their masters as
+having no actual rights either in Church or State. So when a
+victorious English army appeared upon the scene they fondly thought
+the day of their full emancipation had dawned, and in wildly excited
+accents they shouted as we passed, "=_Vic_toria! _Vic_toria!="
+Whereupon our scarcely less excited lads in responsive shouts replied,
+"=_Pre_toria! _Pre_toria!="
+
+Surely never was the inner meaning and significance of a great
+historic event more aptly voiced. The natives beheld in the advent of
+English rule the promise of ampler liberty and enlightenment under
+Victoria the Good; but the hearts of the soldiers were set on the
+speedy capture of Pretoria, as the crowning outcome of all their toil,
+and their probable turning-point towards home. Well said both!
+Pretoria! Victoria!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Gold Mines._]
+
+Lord Roberts' rapid march rescued from impending destruction the
+costly machinery and shafting of the Witwaterrand gold mines, in which
+capital to the extent of many millions had been sunk, and out of which
+many hundreds of millions are likely to be dug. By some strange freak
+of nature this lofty ridge, lying about 6000 feet above the sea level,
+and forming a narrow gold-bearing bed over a hundred miles long, is by
+universal confession the richest treasure-house the ransackers of the
+whole earth have yet brought to light. "The wealth of Ormuz or of
+Ind," immortalised by Milton's most majestic epic, the wealth of the
+Rand completely eclipses, and nothing imagined in the glowing pages of
+the "Arabian Nights" rivals in solid worth the sober realities now
+being unearthed along this uninviting ridge. It fortunately was not in
+the power of the Boer Government to carry off this as yet ungarnered
+treasure, or it would certainly have shared the fate of the cart-loads
+of gold in bar and coin with which President Kruger decamped from
+Pretoria; but it is beyond all controversy that many of that
+Government's officials favoured the proposal to wreck, as far as
+dynamite could, both the machinery and mines in mere wanton revenge on
+the hated Outlanders that mainly owned them. That policy was thwarted
+by the swiftfootedness of the troops, and by the tactfulness of
+Commandant Krause, through whose arranging Johannesburg was peacefully
+surrendered; but who now, by some strange irony of fate, lies a felon
+in an English jail!
+
+Nevertheless, later on enough mischief of this type was done to
+demonstrate how deadly a blow a few desperate men might have dealt at
+the chief industry of South Africa; and concerning it Sir Alfred
+Milner wrote as follows:--
+
+     Fortunately the damage done to the mines has not been large
+     relatively to the vast total amount of the fixed capital sunk in
+     them. The mining area is excessively difficult to guard against
+     purely predatory attacks having no military purpose, because it
+     is, so to speak, "all length and no breadth," one long thin line
+     stretching across the country from east to west for many miles.
+     Still, garrisoned as Johannesburg now is, it is only possible
+     successfully to attack a few points in it. Of the raids hitherto
+     made, and they have been fairly numerous, only one resulted in
+     any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the
+     single mine attacked amounted to L200,000, and it is estimated
+     that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is
+     only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the
+     most important. These facts may afford some indication of the
+     ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal
+     and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that
+     general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just
+     before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out.
+     However serious in some respects may have been the military
+     consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa
+     owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash put
+     forward by which the vast mining apparatus, the foundation of
+     all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening it.
+
+That this wonderful discovery of wealth was indirectly the main cause
+of the war is undeniable. But for the gold the children of "Oden the
+Goer," whose ever restless spirit has sent them round the globe, would
+never have found their way in any large numbers to the Transvaal.
+There would have been no overmastering Outlander element, no incurable
+race competitions and quarrels, no unendurable wrongs to redress; the
+Boer Republic might again have become bankrupt, or broken up into
+rival chieftaincies as of old, but it could not have become a menace
+to Great Britain, and would never have rallied the whole Empire to
+repel its assault on the Empire. It is too usually with blood that
+gold is bought!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' share._]
+
+The war was practically the purchase price of this prodigious wealth,
+but it effected no transfer in the ownership. It may have in part to
+provide for the expenses of the war, but it is not claimed by the
+British Government as part of the spoils of war; and when Local
+Government is granted it will still be included in local assets. The
+capitalists, colonists and Kaffirs who live and thrive through the
+mines will thrive yet more as the result of juster laws, ample
+security, and a more honest administration; but the soldiers whose
+heroism brought to pass the change profit nothing by it. The niggers
+driving our carts were paid L4 a month, while the khaki men who did
+the actual fighting were required to content themselves with anything
+over about fifteen pence a day.
+
+When Cortez, with his accompanying Spaniards, discovered Mexico, he
+sent word to its ruler, Montezuma, that his men were suffering from a
+peculiar form of heart disease which only gold could cure; so he
+desired him of his royal bounty to send them gold and still more gold.
+In the end those Spanish leeches drained the country dry; though when
+convoying their treasure across the sea no small portion of it was
+seized by English warships, and shared as loot among the captors.
+After the treasure ship _Hermione_ had thus been secured off Cadiz by
+the _Actaean_ and the _Favorite_, each captain received L65,000 as
+prize-money (so Fitchett tells us); each lieutenant, L13,000; each
+petty officer, L2000; and each seaman, L500. Our fighting men and
+officers found in the Transvaal vastly ampler wealth, but no such luck
+and no such loot. Well would it be, however, if these mining
+Directorates when about to declare their next dividends should bethink
+them generously of the widows and orphans of those whose valour and
+strong-footedness rescued their mines from imminent plunder and
+destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Golden City._]
+
+Johannesburg, which we entered unopposed on May 31st, though it covers
+an enormous area and contains several fine buildings, is only fourteen
+years old, and consequently is still very largely in the corrugated
+iron stage of development which is always unlovely, and in this case
+proved specially so. Many of the houses were deserted, most of the
+stores were roughly barricaded, and there were signs not a few of
+recent violence and wholesale theft, at which none need wonder. Long
+before the war broke out there was presented to President Kruger and
+his Raad a petition for redress of grievances signed, as already
+stated, by adult male Outlanders that are said to have outnumbered the
+total Boer male population at that time of the whole Transvaal. Most
+of those who signed were resident on the Rand; and as soon as war hove
+in sight these "undesirables" were hurried across the border, leaving
+behind them in many cases well-furnished houses and well-stocked
+shops. More than ten thousand of them took up arms in defence of the
+Empire, and what befell their property is best told by the one
+Wesleyan minister who was privileged to remain all the time in the
+town, was the first to greet me when with the Guards I marched into
+the Market Square, and soon after established our first Wesleyan
+Soldiers' Home in the Transvaal. He, the Rev. S. L. Morris, on that
+point writes as follows:--
+
+     President Kruger proclaimed Sunday, May 27th, and the two
+     following days, as days of humiliation and prayer. Notices to
+     this effect were sent to officials and ministers, and doubtless
+     there were many who devoutly followed the directions. The conduct
+     of one large section of the Dutch people of Johannesburg was,
+     however, very strange. In Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last
+     ten years have seen the development of special locations where
+     the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these
+     are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived
+     as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots.
+     Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the
+     Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle
+     in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given
+     them, and there they built rough shanties, and formed communities
+     which were a South African counterpart to the submerged tenth of
+     England. There was this difference, that these _bywoners_ became
+     a great strength to the Kruger party. The males of sixteen years
+     of age and upwards had all the privileges which were denied to
+     the most influential of the _Uitlanders_. It was the votes of
+     Vrededorp, the poor Dutch quarter, that decided the
+     representation of Johannesburg in the Volksraad. On the days of
+     humiliation and prayer, when the army under Lord Roberts was
+     within twenty miles of Johannesburg, the families of these poor
+     burghers broke into the commissariat stores of their own
+     Government, into the food depots from which doles had been
+     distributed, and into private stores; taking away to their homes,
+     goods, clothing and provisions of all sorts. Those who witnessed
+     the invasion of the great goods sheds where the Republican
+     commissariat had its headquarters say that the people defied the
+     officials, daring them to shoot them. I met many of these people
+     returning to their homes laden with spoils. Sometimes there was a
+     wheelbarrow heaped up with sacks of flour, or tins of biscuits,
+     or preserved meat. Men, women, children and Kaffir "boys" trudged
+     along with similar articles, or with bundles of boots and
+     clothing. Dr Krause, the commandant, did his best to secure order
+     and to repress looting, but he lacked the reliable agents who
+     alone could have controlled the people. This sort of thing was
+     going on on Monday and Tuesday, May 28th and 29th. But for the
+     astonishing marches by which Lord Roberts paralysed opposition,
+     and which enabled him to summon the town to surrender on the
+     Wednesday morning, it is hard to say what limit could have been
+     put to the disorder. In all probability the dangerous section of
+     the large Continental element in the population would have broken
+     out into crime. Looting had hitherto been confined to the
+     property which was left unprotected, and few unoccupied houses
+     had not been ransacked; but had the British occupation been
+     delayed a few days the consequences would have been disastrous.
+
+[Sidenote: _Astonishing the Natives._]
+
+As on that Thursday morning we tramped steadily from Germiston to
+Johannesburg we were greatly surprised to find near each successive
+mine crowds of natives all with apparently well oiled faces that
+literally shone in the sunlight; but natives of every conceivable
+shade of sableness, and in some cases of almost every permissible
+approach to nudity. They were for the most part what are called "raw
+Kaffirs"; and as we were astonished at their numbers after so many
+months of war and consequent stoppage of work, so were they also
+astonished at our numbers, and confided to our native minister their
+wonder at finding there were so many Englishmen in all the world as
+they that day saw upon the Rand. It was a vitally important object
+lesson that by this time has made its beneficent influence felt among
+all the tribes of the South African sub-continent.
+
+About noon, so Mr Morris told me, a company of Lancers came into the
+open space in front of the Court-house, and formed a hollow square
+around the flagstaff. Not long after Lord Roberts with his Staff, and
+Commandant Krause, rode into the square; then the Vierkleur slid down
+the staff, and instantly after up went Lady Roberts' little silken
+Union Jack. The British flag floated at last over this essentially
+British town, the sure pledge as we hope of honest government and of
+equal rights alike for Briton and for Boer. It was two o'clock before
+the Guards' Brigade reached this saluting point, but till nearly
+midnight one continuous stream of men and horses, of guns and
+ambulances, passed through the streets to their respective camping
+grounds. These well fagged troops by their fitness, even more than by
+their numbers, astonished many an onlooker who was by no means a "raw
+Kaffir"; and one old Dutchman expressed the thought of many minds when
+he said, "You seem able to turn out soldiers by machinery, _all of the
+same age_!"
+
+My excellent host of that red-letter day adds: "It is intensely
+gratifying to be able, after the lapse of more than nine months, to
+give our soldiers the same good name that was so well deserved then.
+To deny that there had been any offences would be ridiculous; but the
+absence of serious crime, and more particularly of gross offences,
+must be acknowledged to confer upon our South African army a unique
+distinction." That witness is true!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PRETORIA THE CITY OF ROSES
+
+
+War and worship live only on barest speaking terms, and to the latter
+the former makes few concessions; so it came to pass that Whitsunday,
+like so many another Sunday spent in South Africa, found us again upon
+the march, with the inevitable result that no parade service could
+possibly be held. Everybody, however, seemed full of confident
+expectation that the next day we should reach Pretoria, and perhaps
+take possession of it.
+
+[Sidenote: _Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday._]
+
+"If we take Pretoria on Whit-Monday," said one of the Guardsmen, "they
+will get the news in England next day, and then that will be Wet
+Tuesday"; which was a prophecy that seemed not in the least unlikely
+to be fulfilled, inasmuch as an Englishman's favourite way of showing
+his supreme delight is by accepting an extra drink, or offering one.
+Others were of opinion that, with a ring of forts around Pretoria on
+which hundreds of thousands of pounds had been expended, the Boer
+commanders would make a desperate stand in defence of their much loved
+capital, and so keep us at bay for many a day. But nothing daunted by
+such uncertainties as to what might be awaiting them, our men were on
+the march towards those famous forts early on Monday morning, and we
+soon found a lively Bank Holiday was in store for us. Shortly after
+noon, General French's cavalry having worked round to the north of the
+town, General Pole Carew prepared to attack on the south and our
+bombardment of the forts began, but drew from them no reply. All the
+Boer guns were elsewhere; and a little way behind our own busy naval
+guns, though hidden by the crest of the hill, lay the Grenadier Guards
+awaiting orders to take their place and part in the fray.
+
+Presently a sharp succession of Boer shells, intended for the
+aforesaid naval guns, came flying over our heads, and dropping among
+our men. One hit a horse, which no man will ride again; one struck an
+ambulance waggon, and scared its solitary fever patient almost out of
+his senses; one dropped close to where a group of generals had just
+before met in consultation; but only one of these Boer Whitsuntide
+presents burst, and even that, strange to tell, caused no casualties,
+though it drove a few kilted heroes to run for refuge into a deepish
+pit, near which I sat upon the ground, and watching, wondered where
+the next shell would burst. When a little later the Guards moved
+further to the right to take up a position still nearer to the town,
+Boer bullets came flying over that same ridge and planted themselves
+among our left flank men; but when we tried to pick up some of these
+leaden treasures to keep as curios, so deeply imbedded were they in
+the soil they could not be removed. Yet they were playfully spoken of
+as _spent_ bullets.
+
+[Sidenote: "_Light after dark._"]
+
+This grim music of gun and rifle was maintained almost till sunset,
+and then died away, leaving us in doubt whether the next day would
+witness a renewal of the fight, or whether, as on so many former
+occasions, the Boers under cover of the darkness would execute yet
+another strategic movement to the rear. That night we slept once more
+on the open veldt, made black by the vast sweep of recent grass fires;
+and next morning, after a starlight breakfast, I as usual retired to
+kneel in humble prayer, imploring the Divine guardianship and guidance
+for all in the midst of whom I dwelt. Presently I was startled by an
+outburst of wildest cheering from one group; and a moment after from a
+second; so springing to my feet I found our lads hurling their helmets
+in the air, and shouting like men demented. Not for the chaplains only
+that glad hour turned prayer to praise, and thrilled all hearts with
+patriotic if not pious pride.
+
+An officer was riding post-haste from point to point where our men
+were massed, bearing the delicious tidings that Pretoria too had
+unconditionally surrendered. The news swiftly sped from battalion to
+battery, and from battery to battalion. First here, then there, then
+far away yonder, the cheering rang out clear and loud as a trumpet
+call. Comrade congratulated comrade, while Christian men, with
+tear-filled eyes, reverently looked up and rendered thanks to Him of
+whom it is written, "Thine is the victory."
+
+[Sidenote: _Why the surrender?_]
+
+Remembering how feeble Mafeking was held for months by the merest
+handful of men pitted against a host, it is not easy to understand
+why this city of roses, so pretty, and of which the Boers were all so
+proud, was opened to its captors after only the merest pretence at
+opposition. Lord Roberts is reported to have said that in his opinion
+it occupied the strongest position he had yet seen in all South
+Africa; and to my non-professional mind it instantly brought to
+remembrance the familiar lines which tell how round about Jerusalem
+the hilly bulwarks rise. The surrender of such a centre of their
+national life must have been to the burghers like the plucking out of
+a right eye, or the cutting off of a right hand. How came it to pass,
+without an effort to hinder it?
+
+The German expert, Count Sternberg, who accompanied the Boers
+throughout the war, declared that though considered from the
+continental standpoint they are bad soldiers; in their own country, in
+ambushes or stratagems, which constitute their favourite type of
+warfare, "they are simply superb." He adds they would have achieved
+much greater success if they had not abandoned all idea of taking the
+offensive. "For that they lack courage; and to that lack of courage
+they owe their destruction."
+
+But their flight, like their long after continuance in guerilla types
+of warfare, points to quite another cause than this lack of courage.
+The Boer is proverbially a lover of his own; and so, though with
+liberal hand he laid waste bridge and culvert and plant, as he
+retreated along the railway line through the Orange River Colony,
+which was not his own, he became quite miserly in his use of dynamite
+when the Transvaal was reached, which was his own, and which would
+infallibly be restored to him, so he reckoned, when the war was over.
+So was it to be with Pretoria too! To the very last the fighting Boer
+believed that whatever his fate in the field of battle, if he were
+only dogged enough, and in any fashion prolonged the strife
+sufficiently, British patience would tire, as it had tired before;
+British plans and purposes and pledges would all be abandoned as
+aforetime they had been abandoned, and he would thus secure, even in
+the face of defeat, the fruits of victory. The importunate widow is
+the one New Testament character "the brother" implicitly believes in
+and imitates. Her tactics were his before the war, in the matter of
+the Conventions; and the wasteful prolonging of the war was a part of
+the same policy. Great Britain was to be forced by sheer weariness to
+give back to the Transvaal in some form its coveted independence, and
+with it, of course, Pretoria also. So he would on no account consent
+to let the city be bombarded. Our peaceful occupation was the best
+possible protection for property that would presently be again his
+own; and while he still went on with his desultory fighting we were
+quite welcome, at our own expense, to feed every Boer family we could
+find.
+
+Thus, like our own hunted Pretender, he held that however long
+delayed, the end was bound to restore to him his own; and he had not
+far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as
+one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton
+formally assured the Boers that the Vaal would flow backward through
+the Drakenberg Hills before the British would withdraw from the
+Transvaal. Three successive Secretaries of State, three successive
+High Commissioners, and two successive Houses of Commons deliberately
+endorsed that official assurance; yet though the Vaal turned not back
+Great Britain did; and to that magnanimous forgetting of the nation's
+oft-repeated pledge was due in part this new war and its intolerable
+prolonging. It does not pay thus to say and then unsay. Thereby all
+confidence, all sense of finality, is killed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Taking possession._]
+
+"Take your Grenadiers and open the ball," said Sir John Moore, as he
+appointed to his men their various positions in the famous fight at
+Corunna; and on this memorable 5th of June when the British finally
+took possession of Pretoria the Guards as at Belmont were again
+privileged to "open the ball." But whilst they were busy seizing the
+railway station and stock, with other points of strategic importance,
+I took my first hasty stroll through the city; and among the earliest
+objects of interest I came upon was the pedestal of a monument, with
+the scaffolding still around it, but quite complete, except that the
+actual statue which was to crown and constitute the summit was not
+there.
+
+"Whose monument is that?" I meekly asked. "Paul Kruger's," was the
+prompt reply; "but the statue, made in Rome, has not yet arrived,
+being detained at Delagoa Bay."
+
+That statue now probably never will arrive, and possibly enough some
+other figure,--perchance that of Victoria the Good,--will ultimately
+be placed on that expectant pedestal, so making the monument complete.
+"Which thing," as St Paul would say, "is an allegory!" That monument
+in its present form is a precise epitome of the man it was meant to
+honour. It is most complete by reason of its very incompleteness. The
+chief feature in this essentially strong man's career, as also in his
+monument, has reference to the foundation work he wrought. It was the
+finish that was a failure, and in much more important matters than
+this pile of chiselled granite, the work the late President commenced
+in the Transvaal its new rulers must make it their business to carry
+on, and, in worthier fashion, complete. We cannot begin _de novo_. For
+better for worse, on foundations laid by Boers, Britons must be
+content to build.
+
+Close by, forming the main feature on one side of the city Square,
+stood a remarkably fine building, intended to serve as a palace of
+justice, but, like the monument in front of it, it was still
+unfinished. In the Transvaal there was as yet no counterpart to that
+most important clause in our own Magna Charta, which says "We will not
+sell justice to any man." Corruption and coercion were familiar forces
+alike in the making and the administration of its laws. In more senses
+than one the Transvaal Government had not yet opened its courts of
+justice. They mutely awaited the coming of the new _regime_.
+
+In one of the main streets leading out of the Square stood the
+President's private residence; a gift-house, so it is said, accepted
+by him as a recompense for favours received. Compared with the
+Residency at Bloemfontein it is a singularly unpretentious dwelling
+and was in keeping rather with the economic habits, than with the
+private wealth, or official status, of its chief occupant. British
+sentinels had already been posted all about the place, and on the
+verandah sat a British officer with a long row of mausers lying at his
+feet. There too, one on each side of the main entrance, crouched
+Kruger's famous marble lions, silently watching that day's novel
+proceedings. Not even the presence of those men in khaki, nor that sad
+array of surrendered rifles, sufficed to draw from those stony
+guardians of their master's home so much as a muffled growl. They are
+believed to be of British origin, and I suspect that, so far as their
+nature permits, they cherish British sympathies; for they certainly
+showed no signs of lamenting over the ignoble departure of their lord.
+All regardless of the griefs of his deserted lady, they still placidly
+licked their paws; and as I cast on them a parting glance they gave to
+me, or seemed to, a knowing wink!
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria_
+
+Dopper Church Opposite President Kruger's House Built by the Late
+President.]
+
+Precisely opposite the Residency is the handsome Dopper Church,
+wherein the President regularly worshipped, and not infrequently
+himself ministered in holy things. The church is nearly new, and like
+much else in Pretoria is still unfinished. The four dials have indeed
+been duly placed on the four faces of the clock tower; but in that
+tower there is as yet no clock; and round those clock dials there move
+no clock hands. No wonder Pretoria with its dominant Dopper Church,
+and its still more decidedly dominant Dopper President, mistook the
+true hour of its destiny, and madly made war precisely when peace
+was easiest of attainment. Kruger, dim-eyed and old, lived face to
+face continually with clock dials that betokened no progress, but,
+merely mocked the enquiring gaze. Which thing, the Chelsea Sage would
+say, was symbolical and significant of much!
+
+[Sidenote: "_Resurgam._"]
+
+In the centre of the before-mentioned Square is the large and usually
+crowded Dutch Reformed Church, doomed long ago, we were told, to be
+removed because of its exceeding unsightliness. Throughout the
+Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the
+central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent
+influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master
+in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited
+to witness one of the most interesting events of the century--the
+proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it,
+as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately
+"march past" of the British troops.
+
+Facing me, on the side of the Square opposite to that occupied by the
+Palace of Justice, were the creditably designed Government Buildings,
+including the Raadsaal, which was surmounted by a golden figure of
+Liberty bearing in her hand a battle-axe and flag. On the forefront of
+the building in bold lettering there was graven the favourite
+Transvaal watchword,
+
+          EENDRACT MAAKT MAGT,
+
+which, being interpreted means, "Right makes Might"; and that motto,
+as every Britisher could see, precisely explained our presence there
+that day. Inside there still remained, in its accustomed place, the
+state chair of the departed President, in which, later on, I ventured
+to sit; and all around were ranged the, to me, eloquent seats of his
+departed senators. In that very hall, just nine months before, those
+senators, in secret session, had resolved to hurl defiance at the
+might of Britain; and so precipitated a war by which two sister
+Republics were, as such, hurried out of existence. Now the very
+corridors by which I approached that hall were crowded with Boers
+wearied with the fruitless fight, and eager to hand in their weapons.
+
+In the waiting crowd outside I found a friend who courteously supplied
+me with a copy of a quite unique photograph--the only photograph taken
+of the solemn burial, a few hundred yards from where I stood, of a
+Union Jack, when that flag was hauled down in the Transvaal, and the
+British troops ingloriously retired. As shown in the photograph, over
+the grave was erected a slab, and on that slab was this most notable
+inscription:--
+
+                IN MEMORY
+                    OF
+             THE BRITISH FLAG
+  in the Transvaal; which departed this life
+             August 2nd, 1881.
+               Aged 4 years.
+
+       In other lands none knew thee
+             But to love thee.
+
+                 RESURGAM.
+
+No such burial had the world seen before, and few bolder prophecies
+than that "_I shall rise again_," can be found in the history of any
+land; but a few minutes it became my memorable privilege to witness
+the actual fulfilment of that patriotic prediction. As in
+Johannesburg, so here, it was Lady Roberts' pocket edition of the
+Union Jack that was used; and we looked on excitedly; but the Statue
+of Liberty looked down benignly, while that tiny flag crept up nearer
+and nearer to its golden feet. Liberty has never anything to fear from
+the approach of that flag!
+
+While in Pretoria the following story was told me by the soldier to
+whom it chiefly refers:--
+
+[Sidenote: _A Striking Incident._]
+
+At the Orange River a corporal of the Yorkshire Light Infantry
+received a pocket copy of the New Testament from a Christian worker,
+and placed it in his tunic by the side of his "field dressing." A
+godless man, who had been driven into the army by heavy drinking, he
+merely glanced at a verse or two, and then forgot its very presence in
+his pocket till he reached the battlefield of Graspan a few days later
+on. Then a Boer bullet passed right through the Testament and the
+dressing that lay beside it, was thereby deflected from its otherwise
+fatal course, and finally made a long surface wound on his right
+thigh. That wound he at once bound up with one of his putties, but for
+two hours was unable to stir from the place where he fell.
+
+Then he managed to limp back to his battalion, and piteously begged
+his adjutant not to let his name be put down on the casualty list,
+for, said he, "my mother is in feeble health, and if she saw my name
+in the papers among the wounded she would worry herself almost to
+death, as years ago when she heard of my being hit in Tirah." That
+brave request was granted, and he remained in the ranks marching as
+one unwounded.
+
+Yet neither this Providential deliverance nor the terrors that soon
+followed at Modder River sufficed to lure to either prayer or praise
+this godless, but surely not graceless, corporal. On the 27th of
+August, however, which happened to be his thirtieth birthday, a devout
+sergeant had the joy of winning him to Christian decision; and that
+day, as he told me in Pretoria, he resolved to find out for himself
+whether after thirty years of misery the mercy of the Lord could
+provide for him thirty years of happiness.
+
+[Sidenote: _No canteens and no crime._]
+
+On board the _Nubia_, amid piles of literature put on board for the
+amusement of the troops during the voyage, I discovered a quantity of
+pamphlets entitled "Beer Cellars and Beer Sellers," the purpose of
+which was to prove that the beer sellers were England's most
+indispensable patriots; that the beer cellars were England's best
+citadels; and that the beer trade in general was the very backbone of
+England's stability. It was horribly tantalising to the men in face of
+such teaching to find that there had been placed on board for them not
+so much as a solitary barrel of this much belauded beverage. Through
+all the voyage every man remained perforce a total abstainer. Yet
+there was not a single death among those sixteen hundred, nor a
+solitary instance of serious sickness. What does Burton say to that?
+
+As at sea, so on land, the authorities seemed more afraid of the
+beloved beer barrel than of the bullets of the Boers; and for the most
+part no countersign sufficed to secure for it admittance to our camps.
+An occasional tot of rum was distributed among the men; but even that
+seemed to be rather to satisfy a sentiment than to serve any really
+useful purpose. At any rate, some of the men, like myself, tramped all
+the way to Koomati Poort, often in the worst of weather, without
+taking a single tot, and were none the worse for so refraining, but
+rather so much the better.
+
+The effect on the character of the men was still more remarkable; and
+while in Pretoria I was repeatedly assured that some who had been a
+perpetual worry to their officers in beer-ridden England, on the
+beerless veldt, or in the liquorless towns of the Transvaal, speedily
+took rank among the most reliable men in all their regiment. To my
+colleague, the Rev. W. Burgess, a major of the Yorkshires, said
+"Nineteen-twentieths of the crime in the British army is due to drink.
+As a proof I have been at this outpost with 150 men for six weeks,
+where we have absolutely no drink, and there have been only two minor
+cases brought before me. There is no insubordination whatever, and if
+you do away with drink you have in the British army an ideal army.
+Whether or not men can be made sober by Act of Parliament, clearly
+they can by martial law!"
+
+With the men so sober, with a field-marshal so God-fearing, the
+constant outrages ascribed to them by slander-loving Englishmen at
+home, become a moral impossibility; and to that fact, after we had
+been long in possession of Pretoria, the principal minister of the
+Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal bore ready witness in the
+following letter sent by him to the Military Governor of Pretoria:--
+
+     Not a single instance of criminal assault or rape by
+     non-commissioned officers or men of the British army on Boer
+     women has come to my knowledge. I have asked several gentlemen
+     and their testimony is the same.... The discipline and general
+     moral conduct of His Majesty's troops in Pretoria is, under the
+     circumstances, better than I ever expected it would or could be.
+     There have certainly been cases of immoral conduct, but in no
+     single instance, so far as I know, has force been used. They only
+     go where they are invited and where they are welcome.
+
+                                   (Signed) H. S. BOSMAN.
+
+When such is the testimony of our adversaries, we need not hesitate to
+accept the similar tribute paid by Sir Redvers Buller to his army of
+abstainers in Natal:--"I am filled with admiration for the British
+soldiers," said he; "really the manner in which they have worked,
+fought, and endured during the last fortnight has been something more
+than human. Broiled in a burning sun by day, drenched in rain by
+night, lying but three hundred yards off an enemy, who shoots you if
+you show so much as a finger, they could hardly eat or drink by day;
+and as they were usually attacked by night, they got but little sleep;
+yet through it all they were as cheery and as willing as could be."
+
+Men so devoted when on duty, don't transform themselves, the drink
+being absent, into incarnate demons when off duty; and no dominion,
+therefore, has more cause to be proud of its defenders than our own!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS
+
+
+Pretoria is manifestly a city in process of being made, and has
+probably in store a magnificent future, though at present the shanty
+and the palace stand "cheek by jowl." Even the main roads leading into
+the town seemed atrociously bad as judged by English standards, and
+the paving of the principal streets was of a correspondingly perilous
+type. Yet the public buildings already referred to were not the only
+ones that claimed our commendation as signs of a progressive spirit.
+The Government Printing Works are remarkably handsome and complete;
+and while for educational purposes there is in Pretoria nothing quite
+comparable to Grey College at Bloemfontein, the secondary education of
+the late Republic's metropolis was well housed.
+
+[Sidenote: _The State's Model School._]
+
+There is, however, one building provided for that purpose which has
+acquired an enduring interest of quite another kind, and which I
+visited, when it became a hospital, with very mingled emotions. The
+State's Model School, during the early stages of the war, was utilised
+as a prison for the British officers captured by the Boers. How keenly
+these brave men felt and secretly resented their ill-fortune they were
+too proud to tell, but one of the noblest of them had become,
+through the terrors of a disastrous fight, so piteously demented for a
+while that he actually wore hanging from his neck a piece of cardboard
+announcing that it was he who lost the guns at Colenso. Some of them
+would rather have lost their lives than in such fashion have lost
+their liberty, and the story which tells how three of them regained
+that liberty by escaping from this very prison is one of the most
+thrilling among all the records of the war. Most noted of the three is
+Winston Churchill, whose own graphic pen has told how he eluded the
+most vigilant search and finally reached the sea. But the adventures
+of Captain Haldane and his non-commissioned companion reveal yet more
+of daring and endurance. Captured at the same time as Churchill, and
+through the same cause--the disaster on November 13th to the armoured
+train at Chieveley--these two effected their escape long after the hue
+and cry on the heels of Churchill had died away. Within what was
+supposed to be a day or two of the removal of all the officers to a
+more secure "birdcage" outside the town, those two gentlemen vanished
+under the floor of their room, through a kind of tiny trap-door that I
+have often seen, but which was then partly concealed by a bed, and was
+apparently never noticed by their Boer custodians. In this prison
+beneath a prison, damp and dark and dismal beyond all describing, and
+where there was no room to stand erect, these two officers found
+themselves doomed to dwell, not for days merely, but for weeks. They
+were of course hunted for high and low, and sought in every
+conceivable place except the right place. Food was guardedly passed
+down to them by two or three brother officers who shared their secret,
+and at last, more dead than alive, they emerged from their dungeon the
+moment they discovered the building was deserted, and then daringly
+faced the almost hopeless, yet successful, endeavour to smuggle
+themselves to far-distant Delagoa Bay. Evidently the element of
+romance has not yet died out of this prosaic age!
+
+[Sidenote: _Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer._]
+
+Strangely sharing the fate of these British prisoners in this Model
+School was a godly and gifted minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. A
+Boer among Boers. He was never told why he was arrested by his brother
+Boers, and though kept under lock and key for months, he was never
+introduced to judge or jury. An advocate of peace, he was suspected of
+British leanings, and so almost before the war commenced rough hands
+were laid upon him. There was in the Transvaal a reign of terror.
+Secret service men were everywhere, and no one's reputation was safe,
+no one's position secure. In this land of newly-discovered gold men
+were driven to discover that the most golden thing of all was discreet
+silence on the part of those who differed from "the powers that be."
+So he who simply sought to avert war was suspected of British
+sympathies, and to his unutterable surprise presently found himself
+the fellow prisoner of many a still more unfortunate British officer.
+
+Of those officers, their character and intellectual attainments, he
+speaks in terms of highest praise. Their enforced leisure they
+devoted to various artistic and intellectual pursuits, and I have
+myself seen an admirably elaborate and accurate map of the Republics,
+covering the whole of a large classroom wall, drawn presumably from
+joint memory by these officers, who by its aid were able to trace the
+progress of the war as tidings filtered through to them by an
+ingenious system of signalling practised by sympathetic friends
+outside.
+
+By those same officers this Dutchman was invited to become their
+unofficial chaplain, and he writes of the devotional services
+consequently arranged as among the chief delights of his life, the
+favourite hymn he says being the following:--
+
+          Holy Father, in Thy mercy
+          Hear our anxious prayer.
+          Keep our loved ones, now far absent,
+                  'Neath Thy care.
+
+          Jesus, Saviour, let Thy presence
+          Be their light and pride.
+          Keep, Oh keep them, in their weakness,
+                  Near Thy side.
+
+          Holy Spirit, let Thy teaching
+          Sanctify their life.
+          Send Thy grace that they may conquer
+                  In all strife.
+
+It was to this much respected and much reviled predikant a Pretorian
+high official said: "We were determined to let it drift to a rupture
+with England, for then our dream would be realised of a Republic
+reaching to Table Mountain"; but surely such a song and such a scene
+in the State's Model School was a thing of which no man dreamed!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Waterfall prisoners._]
+
+The private soldiers who like these, their officers, had become
+prisoners of war, were for greater security removed from their
+racecourse camp to a huge prison-pen at the Waterfall, some ten or
+twelve miles up the Pietersburg line. They numbered in all about three
+thousand eight hundred, and for a while fared badly at their captors'
+hands. But ultimately a small committee was formed in Pretoria and
+L5000 subscribed, to be spent in mitigating their lot and ministering
+in many ways to their comfort. In these ministrations of mercy the
+Wesleyan minister, whose grateful guest I for a while became, as
+afterwards of the genial host and hostess at the Silverton Mission
+Parsonage, took a prominent and much appreciated part as the following
+letter abundantly proves:--
+
+  To the Rev. F. W. MACDONALD,
+  President, Wesleyan Church, London.
+
+                                        PRETORIA, _4th July 1900_.
+
+     SIR,--As chairman of a committee formed in January last for the
+     purpose of assisting the British prisoners of war, I have been
+     requested to bring officially to your notice the splendid work
+     done by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin. From my position I have been
+     thrown into intimate relationship with Mr Goodwin, and it is a
+     great pleasure to me to testify to his invaluable services. I am
+     not a member of your church, nor are my colleagues, but there is
+     a unanimous desire among the British subjects that were permitted
+     to remain in Pretoria, and who are therefore cognisant of Mr
+     Goodwin's work, to place his record before you. It is our united
+     hope that Mr Goodwin will receive some substantial mark of
+     appreciation from the Church of which he is so fine a
+     representative. I know of none finer in the highest sense in the
+     Church which knows no distinction of forms or creeds.--I have the
+     honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
+
+                                        (Sd.)  J. LEIGH WOOD.
+
+On my arrival in Pretoria Mr Goodwin was at my request at once
+appointed as Acting Army Chaplain, and shortly after received the
+following most gratifying communication:--
+
+                                        BRITISH AGENCY,
+                                        PRETORIA, _9th June 1900_.
+
+     DEAR SIR,--If you could kindly call on Lord Roberts some time
+     to-day or to-morrow, it would give him great pleasure to meet one
+     who has done so much for our prisoners of war.--Yours faithfully,
+
+                                        (Sd.)  H. V. CONAN,
+               The Rev. Goodwin.       _Lt.-Col., Mil. Sec._
+
+When Mr Goodwin accordingly called nothing could well exceed the
+warmth of the welcome and of the thanks the field-marshal graciously
+accorded him.
+
+Among the prisoners at the Waterfall was a well-known Wesleyan
+sergeant of the 18th Hussars, who rallied around him all such as were
+of a devout spirit and became the recognised leader of the religious
+life of the prison camp. I therefore requested him to supply me with a
+brief statement of what in this respect had been done by the prisoners
+for the prisoners. He accordingly sent me the following letter:--
+
+                                        PRETORIA, _7th July 1900_.
+
+     REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,--Long before you asked me to write an
+     account of the Christian work which was carried on from the 22nd
+     of October 1899 to the 6th of June 1900, among the British
+     prisoners of war at the Pretoria Racecourse, and afterwards at
+     Waterfall, it had occurred to me that for the encouragement of
+     other Christian workers particularly, and the members of the
+     Church of Christ generally, some record should be made of the
+     wonderful way in which God blessed us, and it is with the
+     greatest pleasure that I accede to your request.
+
+     I was one of the 160 who were taken prisoners after the battle of
+     Talana Hill (Dundee), and a few days after arriving at our
+     destination (Pretoria Racecourse) we heard some of our guard
+     singing psalms and we immediately decided to ask the commandant
+     for a tent for devotional purposes. It was given, and after the
+     first few nights, till we were released by our own forces seven
+     months afterwards, it was filled to overflowing nightly. On our
+     being removed to Waterfall, we enlarged our tent to three times
+     its original size, and later on we begged building material from
+     the commandant, and built a very nice hall with a platform and
+     seating accommodation for over 240. At last this became too small
+     and we went into the open air twice a week, when no less than 500
+     to 700 congregated to hear the old, old story of Jesus and His
+     love.
+
+     When we asked for the small tent we had no idea of the work
+     growing as it did. We used to meet together every night, a simple
+     gathering together of God's children, four in number, which
+     increased to one hundred, with the Lord Himself as teacher. Then
+     our comrades began to attend and we commenced to hold
+     evangelistic services, which were continued to the end.
+
+     When we got to Waterfall we started a Bible-class and a prayer
+     meeting, held alternately. The work was helped a great deal by
+     other Christian brothers, without whose services, co-operation,
+     fellowship and sympathy the work could hardly have been continued
+     for any length of time. But, after all, speaking after the manner
+     of men, our dear friend and pastor, the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, was
+     the one who really enabled us to carry on the work. As the
+     transport and commissariat are to any army, so Mr Goodwin was to
+     us.
+
+     On our application, the Boer Government consented to allow the
+     ministers of the various churches in Pretoria to visit us once a
+     month for the purpose of conducting divine service. Of course
+     such a privilege as this was greatly appreciated by the men, and
+     one cannot help wondering why such restrictions were placed upon
+     the ministers.
+
+     We had many cherished plans and bright hopes with regard to the
+     war, and when we were captured we found it hard to recognise the
+     ordering of the Lord in our new conditions and unaccustomed
+     circumstances; but we were taught some grand lessons, and we soon
+     found that even imprisonment has its compensations; and we have
+     to confess that His Presence makes the prison a palace. I have
+     heard many thank God for bringing them to Waterfall gaol.
+
+     During the months we spent together we realised that God was
+     blessing us in a most remarkable manner, and we may truly say
+     that our fellowship was with the Father and with His Son Jesus
+     Christ. Many backsliders were taught the folly of remaining away
+     from the Father, and many were turned from darkness unto light.
+     To Him be the glory.
+
+     On hearing of the near approach of our deliverers, and knowing
+     that soon we should all part, we had a farewell meeting and many
+     promised to write to me.
+
+     I received a number of letters ere we actually parted, but with
+     the injunction "not to be opened till separated," and from these
+     I intend making a few extracts which lead me like the Psalmist to
+     say "Because Thou hast been my help therefore in the shadow of
+     Thy wings will I rejoice."
+
+Of the extracts to which the sergeant refers it is impossible to give
+here more than a few brief samples; but even these may suffice to
+prove that our soldiers are by no means all, or mostly, sons of
+Belial, as their recent slanderers would have us believe.
+
+_A Bombardier_ of the 10th Mountain Battery writes--"I was brought to
+God on the 4th of February. I had often stood outside the tent and
+listened to the services, and one evening I went into the
+after-meeting and came away without Christ; but God was striving with
+me, and a few nights afterwards I realised that I was a hell-deserving
+sinner, and I cried unto God and He heard me; and that night I came
+away with Christ."
+
+_A Sergeant-major_ of Roberts' Horse says--"I am indeed grateful to
+God for the loving-kindness He has bestowed on me since my coming
+here as a prisoner of war. The meetings have been a great success and
+of the most orderly character."
+
+_A Sergeant_ of the Royal Irish Rifles adds--"Thanks be unto God, He
+opened my eyes on the night of the 21st of January 1900; and He has
+kept me ever since."
+
+_A Corporal_ of the Wilts, after telling of his capture at Rensberg,
+and his arrival at Waterfall, goes on to say--"I heard about the
+Gospel Tent from one of the Boer sentries, and I cannot express the
+happy feelings that passed through me when I saw the Christian band
+gathered together with one accord."
+
+_A Private_ of the Glosters relates the story of his own conversion,
+and then proceeds to say he shall never forget the meetings which were
+conducted by the Rev. H. W. Goodwin, especially the one in which he
+administered to them the blessed Sacrament. It was a Pentecostal time,
+and it pleased the Lord to add unto them eight souls that same night,
+and six the night following.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Soldier's Hymn._]
+
+As the day of release drew near with all its inevitable excitement and
+unrest, certain British officers, themselves prisoners, were requested
+by the Boers to reside among these men at the Waterfall to ensure to
+the very last the maintenance of discipline; and the sanction of the
+Baptist minister who once conducted their parade service was sought by
+them for the singing of the following most touchingly appropriate
+hymn:--
+
+          Lord a nation humbly kneeling
+          For her soldiers cries to Thee;
+          Strong in faith and hope, appealing
+          That triumphant they may be.
+                Waking, sleeping,
+                'Neath Thy keeping,
+          Lead our troops to victory.
+
+          Of our sins we make confession,
+          Wealth and arrogance and pride;
+          But our hosts, against oppression,
+          March with Freedom's flowing tide.
+                Father, speed them,
+                Keep them, lead them,
+          God of armies, be their guide.
+
+          Man of Sorrows! Thou hast sounded
+          Every depth of human grief.
+          By Thy wounds, Oh, heal our wounded.
+          Give the fever's fire relief.
+                Hear us crying
+                For our dying,
+          Of consolers be Thou chief.
+
+          Take the souls that die for duty
+          In Thy tender pierced hand;
+          Crown the faulty lives with beauty,
+          Offered for their Fatherland.
+                All forgiving,
+                With the living
+          May they in Thy kingdom stand.
+
+          And if Victory should crown us,
+          May we take it as from Thee
+          As Thy nation deign to own us;
+          Merciful and strong and free.
+                Endless praising
+                To Thee raising,
+          Ever Thine may England be!
+
+Say their critics what they may, soldiers who compose such songs, and
+pen such testimonies, and conduct such services among themselves,
+seem scarcely the sort to "let hell loose in South Africa!"
+
+[Sidenote: _A big supper party._]
+
+Of the prisoners of war thus long detained in durance vile nearly a
+thousand were decoyed into a special train the night before the
+Guards' Brigade reached Pretoria. These deluded captives in their
+simplicity supposed they were being taken into the town to be there
+set at liberty; but instead of that they were hurried by, and, with
+the panic-stricken Boers, away and yet away, into their remotest
+eastern fastnesses, there presumably to be retained as long as
+possible as a sort of guarantee that the vastly larger number of Boers
+we held prisoners should be still generously treated by us. They might
+also prove useful in many ways if terms of peace came to be
+negotiated. So vanished for months their visions of speedy freedom!
+
+The rest who still remained within the prison fence, and were, of
+course, still unarmed, three days later were cruelly and treacherously
+shelled by a Boer commando on a distant hill. The Boer guards detailed
+for duty at the prison had deserted their posts, and under the cover
+of the white flag, gone into Pretoria to surrender. Our men,
+therefore, who were practically free, awaiting orders, when thus
+unceremoniously shelled, at once stampeded; and late on Thursday night
+about nine hundred of them, footsore and famished, arrived at Mr
+Goodwin's house seeking shelter. He was apparently the only friend
+they knew in Pretoria, and to have a friend yet not to use him is, of
+course, absurd! So to his door they came in crowds, dragging with
+them the Boer Maxim gun, by which they had so long been overawed.
+While tea and coffee for all this host were being hurriedly prepared
+by their slightly embarrassed host, I sought permission from a staff
+officer to house the men for the night in our Wesleyan schoolrooms,
+and in the huge Caledonian Hall adjoining, which was at once
+commandeered for the purpose. I also requested that a supply of
+rations might at utmost speed be provided for them. Accordingly, not
+long before midnight a waggon arrived bringing by some fortunate
+misreading of my information, provisions, not for nine hundred hungry
+men, but for the whole three thousand prisoners whom we were supposed
+to have welcomed as our guests. It may seem incredible, but men who at
+that late hour had fallen fast asleep upon the floor, at the sound of
+that waggon's wheels suddenly awoke; and still more wonderful to tell,
+when morning came those nine hundred men, of the rations for three
+thousand, had left untouched only a few paltry boxes of biscuits. A
+hospital patient recently recovered from fever once said to me, "I
+haven't an appetite for two, sir; I have an appetite for ten!" And
+these released prisoners had evidently for that particular occasion
+borrowed the appetite of that particular patient!
+
+[Sidenote: _The Soldiers' Home._]
+
+The Caledonian Hall above referred to is a specially commodious
+building, and could not have been more admirably adapted for use as a
+Soldiers' Home if expressly erected for that purpose. It was
+accordingly commandeered by the military governor to be so used, and
+for months it was the most popular establishment in town or camp. At
+Johannesburg a Wesleyan and an Anglican Home were opened, both
+rendering excellent service; but as this was run on undenominational
+lines, it was left without a rival. It is a most powerful sign of the
+times that our military chiefs now unhesitatingly interest themselves
+in the moral and spiritual welfare of the men under their command.
+Some time before this Boer war commenced, on April 28, 1898, there was
+issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army a memorandum
+which would have done no discredit to the Religious Tract Society if
+published as one of their multitudinous leaflets. A copy was supplied
+presumably to every soldier sent to Africa; and the first few
+sentences which refer to what may happily be regarded as steadily
+diminishing evils, read as follows:--
+
+     It will be the duty of company officers to point out to the men
+     under their control, and particularly to young soldiers, the
+
+          _disastrous effect of giving way_
+
+     to habits of intemperance and immorality. The excessive use of
+     intoxicating liquors unfits the soldier for active work, blunts
+     his intelligence, and is a fruitful source of military crime. The
+     man who leads a vicious life
+
+          _enfeebles his constitution_
+
+     and exposes himself to the risk of contracting a disease of a
+     kind which has of late made terrible ravages in the British army.
+     Many men spend a great deal of the short time of their service in
+     the military hospitals, the wards of which are crowded with
+     patients, a large number of whom are permanently disfigured and
+     incapacitated from earning a livelihood in or out of the army.
+     Men tainted with this disease are
+
+          _useless while in the army_
+
+     and a burden to their friends after they have left it. Even those
+     who do not altogether break down are unfit for service in the
+     field, and would certainly be a source of weakness to their
+     regiments, and a discredit to their comrades if employed in war.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria_
+
+Soldiers' Home at Pretoria.]
+
+As one of the most effectual ways of combating these evils, and of
+providing an answer to the oft-repeated prayer, "Lead us not into
+temptation," Soldiers' Homes are now being so freely multiplied, that
+the Wesleyan Church has itself established over thirty, at a total
+cost of more than L50,000.
+
+[Sidenote: _Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe._]
+
+Some of those engaged in similar Christian work among the soldiers
+were gentlemen of ample private means who defrayed all their own
+expenses. Mr Anderson was thus attached to the Northumberland
+Fusiliers, and soon became a power for good among them. Mr and Mrs
+Osborn Howe did a really remarkable work in providing Soldiers' Homes,
+which followed the men from place to place over almost the entire
+field covered by our military operations, including Pretoria, and
+though they received quite a long list of subscriptions their own
+private resources have for years been freely placed at the Master's
+service, whether for work among soldiers or civilians.
+
+When late on in the campaign it was intimated by certain officials
+that Lord Kitchener was not in sympathy with such work and would not
+grant such facilities for its prosecution as Lord Roberts had done, Mr
+Osborn Howe received the following reply to a letter of enquiry on
+that point:--
+
+[Sidenote: _A letter from Lord Kitchener._]
+
+     I am directed by Lord Kitchener to acknowledge the receipt of
+     your letter of January 3rd. His Lordship much regrets that you
+     should have been led to imagine that his attitude towards your
+     work differs from that of Lord Roberts, and I am to inform you
+     that so far from that being the case, he is very deeply impressed
+     by the value of your work, and hopes that it may long continue
+     and increase.
+
+          Yours faithfully,
+                              (Signed)  W. H. CONGREVE, Major,
+                                        _Private Secretary_.
+
+Still more notable in this same connection is the fact that soon after
+Lord Roberts reached Cape Town to take supreme command, he caused to
+be issued the following most remarkable letter, which certainly marks
+a new departure in the usages of modern warfare, and carries us back
+in thought and spirit to the camps of Cromwell and his psalm-singing
+Ironsides, or to the times when Scotland's Covenanters were busy
+guarding for us the religious light and liberty which are to-day our
+goodliest heritage.
+
+[Sidenote: _Also from Lord Roberts._]
+
+                                        ARMY HEADQUARTERS, CAPE TOWN,
+                                             _January 23rd_.
+
+     DEAR SIR,--I am desired by Lord Roberts to ask you to be so kind
+     as to distribute to all ranks under your command the "Short
+     Prayer for the use of Soldiers in the Field," by the Primate of
+     Ireland, copies of which I now forward. His Lordship earnestly
+     hopes that it may be helpful to all of Her Majesty's soldiers who
+     are now serving in South Africa.
+
+          Yours faithfully,
+                              (Signed) NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, Colonel,
+                                        _Private Secretary_.
+
+     To the Commanding Officer.
+
+
+                         *The Prayer.*
+
+     ALMIGHTY FATHER, I have often sinned against Thee. O wash me in
+     the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Fill me with Thy Holy
+     Spirit, that I may lead a new life. Spare me to see again those
+     whom I love at home, or fit me for Thy presence in peace.
+
+     Strengthen us to quit ourselves like men in our right and just
+     cause. Keep us faithful unto death, calm in danger, patient in
+     suffering, merciful as well as brave, true to our Queen, our
+     country, and our colours.
+
+     If it be Thy will, enable us to win victory for England, and
+     above all grant us the better victory over temptation and sin,
+     over life and death, that we may be more than conquerors through
+     Him who loved us, and laid down His life for us, Jesus our
+     Saviour, the Captain of the Army of God. Amen.
+
+The general who officially invited all his troops to use such a prayer
+could not fail to prove a warm friend and patron of Soldiers' Homes;
+and to the Pretoria Home he came, not merely formally to declare it
+open, but to attend one of the many concerts given there, thus
+encouraging by his example both the workers and those for whom they
+worked. A supremely busy and burdened man, _that_ he made a part of
+his business; and surely he was wise, for one sober soldier is any day
+worth more than a dozen drunken ones.
+
+The general who thus deliberately encouraged his troops to live
+devoutly, instead of being deemed by them on that account unsoldierly
+or fanatic, secured such a place in their confidence and affection as
+few even of the most magnetic leaders among men ever managed to
+obtain. The pet name by which they always spoke of him implied no
+approach to unseemly familiarity, but betokened the same kind of
+attachment as the veteran hosts of Napoleon the Great intended to
+express when they admiringly called their dread master "The Little
+Corporal." He amply justified their confidence in him, and they amply
+justified his confidence in them; and so on resigning his command in
+South Africa he spoke of these "my comrades," as he called them, in
+terms as gratifying as they are uncommon:--
+
+     I am very proud that I am able to record, with the most absolute
+     truth, that the conduct of this army from first to last has been
+     exemplary. Not one single case of serious crime has been brought
+     to my notice--indeed, nothing that deserves the name of _crime_.
+     There has been no necessity for appeals or orders to the men to
+     behave properly. I have trusted implicitly to their own soldierly
+     feeling and good sense, and I have not trusted in vain. They bore
+     themselves like heroes on the battlefield, and like gentlemen on
+     all other occasions.
+
+[Sidenote: _A song in praise of De Wet._]
+
+Lord Lytton tells us that in the days of Edward the Confessor the rage
+for psalm singing was at its height in England so that sacred song
+excluded almost every other description of vocal music: but though in
+South Africa a similar trend revealed itself among the troops, their
+camp fire concerts, and the concerts in the Pretoria Soldiers' Home,
+were of an exclusively secular type. At one which it was my privilege
+to attend, Lady Roberts and her daughters were present as well as the
+general, who generously arranged for a cigar to be given to every man
+in the densely crowded hall when the concert closed. All the songs
+were by members of the general's staff, and were excellent; but one,
+composed presumably by the singer, was topical and sensational in a
+high degree. It was entitled: "Long as the world goes round"; and one
+verse assured us concerning "Brother Boer," with only too near an
+approach to truth,
+
+          He'll bury his mauser,
+          And break all his vows, sir,
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+Another verse reminded us of a still more melancholy fact which yet
+awakened no little mirth. It was in praise of De Wet, who in spite of
+his blue spectacles, seemed by far the most clear-sighted of all the
+Boer generals, and who, notwithstanding his illiteracy, was beyond all
+others well versed in the bewildering ways of the veldt. He apparently
+had no skill for the conducting of set battles, but for ambushing
+convoys, for capturing isolated detachments, for wrecking trains, and
+for himself eluding capture when fairly ringed round with keen
+pursuers beyond all counting, few could rival him. Like hunted
+Hereward, he seemed able to escape through a rat hole, and by his
+persistence in guerilla tactics not only seriously prolonged the war
+and enormously increased its cost, but also went far to make the
+desolation of his pet Republic complete. So there Lord Roberts sat and
+heard this sung by one of his staff:--
+
+          Of all the Boers we have come across yet,
+          None can compare with this Christian De Wet;
+          For him we seem quite unable to get--
+                  (Though Hildyard and Broadwood,
+                  And our Soudanese Lord _should_)--
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+They _should_ have got him, and they would have got him, if they
+could; but when Lord Roberts, long months after, set sail for home, he
+left De Wet still in the saddle. Then Kitchener, our Soudanese Lord,
+took up the running, and called on the Guards to aid him, but even
+they proved unequal to the hopeless task. "One pair of heels," they
+said, "can never overtake two pair of hoofs." Then our picked mounted
+men monopolised the "tally-ho" to little better purpose. De Wet's guns
+were captured, his convoys cut off, but him no man caught, and
+possibly to this very day he is still complacently humming "Tommies
+may come and Tommies may go, but I trot on for ever."
+
+[Sidenote: _Cordua and his Conspiracy._]
+
+The last verse of this sensational song had reference to yet another
+celebrity, but of a far more unsatisfactory type. All the earlier part
+of that Thursday I had spent in the second Raadsaal, attending a
+court-martial on one of our prisoners of war, Lieutenant Hans Cordua,
+late of the Transvaal State Artillery, who, having surrendered, was
+suffered to be at large on parole. In my presence he pleaded guilty,
+first to having broken his parole in violation of his solemn oath;
+secondly, to having attempted to break through the British lines
+disguised in British khaki, in order to communicate treasonably with
+Botha; and thirdly, to having conspired with sundry others to set fire
+to a certain portion of Pretoria with a view to facilitating a
+simultaneous attempt to kidnap Lord Roberts and all his staff. Cordua
+was with difficulty persuaded to withdraw the plea of guilty, so that
+he might have the benefit of any possible flaw his counsel could
+detect in the evidence; but in the end the death sentence was
+pronounced, confirmed, and duly executed in the garden of Pretoria
+Gaol on August 24th. It was from that court-martial I came to the
+Soldiers' Home Concert, sat close behind Lord Roberts, and listened to
+this song:--
+
+          Though the Boer some say is a practised thief,
+          Yet it certainly beggars all belief,
+          That he slimly should try _to steal our Chief_.
+          But no Hollander mobs
+          Shall kidnap our Bobs
+          Long as the world goes round!
+
+[Sidenote: _Hospital Work in Pretoria._]
+
+Historians tell us that the hospital arrangements in some of our
+former wars were by no means free from fault. Hence Steevens in his
+"Crimean Campaign" asserts that while the camp hospitals absolutely
+lacked not only candles, but medicines, wooden legs were supplied to
+them from England so freely that there were finally four such legs for
+every man in hospital. Clearly those wooden legs were consigned by
+wooden heads. Even in this much better managed war the fever epidemic
+at Bloemfontein, combined with a month of almost incessant rain,
+overtaxed for a while, as we have seen, the resources and strength and
+organizing skill of a most willing and fairly competent medical staff.
+
+But Pretoria was plagued with no corresponding epidemic, and possessed
+incomparably ampler supplies, which were drawn on without stint. In
+addition to the Welsh, the Yeomanry, and other canvas hospitals
+planted in the suburbs, the splendid Palace of Justice was
+requisitioned for the use of the Irish hospital, which, like several
+others, was fitted out and furnished by private munificence. The
+principal school buildings were also placed at the disposal of the
+medical authorities, and were promptly made serviceable with whatever
+requisites the town could supply. To find suitable bedding, however,
+for so vast a number of patients was a specially difficult task. All
+the rugs and tablecloths the stores of the town contained were
+requisitioned for this purpose; green baize and crimson baize, repp
+curtains and plush, anything, everything remotely suitable, was
+claimed and cut up to serve as quilts and counterpanes, with the
+result that the beds looked picturesquely, if not grotesquely, gay.
+One ward, into which I walked, was playfully called "The Menagerie" by
+the men that occupied it, for on every bed was a showy rug, and on the
+face of every rug was woven the figure of some fearsome beast, Bengal
+tigers and British lions being predominant. It was in appearance a
+veritable lion's den, where our men dwelt in peace like so many modern
+Daniels, and found not harm but health and healing there.
+
+[Sidenote: _The wear and tear of War._]
+
+In this campaign the loss of life and vigour caused by sickness was
+enormously larger than that accounted for by bullet wounds and
+bayonets. At the Orange River, just before the Guards set out on their
+long march, thirty Grenadier officers stretched their legs under their
+genial colonel's "mahogany," which consisted of rough planks supported
+on biscuit boxes. Of those only nine were still with us when we
+reached Pretoria, and of the nine several had been temporarily
+disabled by sickness or wounds. The battalion at starting was about a
+thousand strong, and afterwards received various drafts amounting to
+about four hundred more; but only eight hundred marched into Pretoria.
+The Scots Guards, however, were so singularly fortunate as not to lose
+a single officer during the whole campaign.
+
+The non-combatants in this respect were scarcely less unfortunate than
+the bulk of their fighting comrades. A band of workers in the service
+of the Soldiers' Christian Association set out together from London
+for South Africa. There were six of them, but before the campaign was
+really half over only one still remained at his post. My faithful
+friend and helper, whom I left as army scripture reader at Orange
+River, after some months of devoted work was compelled to hasten home.
+A similar fate befell my Canadian, my Welsh, and one of my Australian
+colleagues. The highly esteemed Anglican chaplain to the Guards, who
+steadily tramped with them all the way to Pretoria and well earned his
+D.S.O., was forbidden by his medical advisers to proceed any further,
+and his successor, Canon Knox Little, whose praise as a preacher is in
+all the churches, found on reaching Koomati Poort that his strength
+was being overstrained, and so at once returned to the sacred duties
+of his English Canonry. Thus to many a non-combatant the medical staff
+was called to minister, and the veldt to provide a grave.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Nursing Sisters._]
+
+The presence of skilled lady-nurses in these Hospitals was of immense
+service, not merely as an aid to healing, but also as a refining and
+restraining influence among the men. In this direction they habitually
+achieved what even the appearing of a chaplain did not invariably
+suffice to accomplish. It was the cheering experience of Florence
+Nightingale repeated on a yet wider scale. In her army days oaths were
+greatly in fashion. The expletives of one of even the Crimean
+_generals_ became the jest of the camp; and when later in his career
+he took over the Aldershot Command, it was laughingly said "he _swore_
+himself in"; which doubtless he did in a double sense. Yet men trained
+in habits so evil when they came into the Scutari Hospital ceased to
+swear and forgot to grumble. Said "The Lady with the Lamp," "Never
+came from one of them any word, or any look, which a gentleman would
+not have used, and the tears came into my eyes as I think how amid
+scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the
+innate dignity, gentleness and chivalry of the men."
+
+Now as then there are other ministries than those of the pulpit; and
+hospitals in which such influences exert themselves, may well prove,
+in more directions than one, veritable "Houses of Healing."
+
+[Sidenote: _A Surprise Packet._]
+
+As illustrating how gratefully these men appreciate any slightest
+manifestation of interest in their welfare, mention may here be made
+of what I regard as the crowning surprise of my life. At the close of
+an open air parade service in Pretoria a sergeant of the Grenadiers
+stepped forward, and in the name of the non-commissioned officers and
+men of that battalion presented to me, in token of their goodwill, a
+silver pencil case and a gold watch. I could but reply that the
+goodwill of my comrades was to me beyond all price, and that this
+golden manifestation of it, this gift coming from such a source, I
+should treasure as a victorious fighting man would treasure a V.C.
+
+[Sidenote: _Soldierly Gratitude._]
+
+The kindnesses lavished on our soldiers, as far as circumstances would
+permit, throughout the whole course of this campaign, by civilian
+friends at home, in the Colonies, and in the conquered territories,
+defy all counting and all description. In some cases, indeed, valuable
+consignments intended for their comfort seem never to have reached
+their destination, but the knowledge that they were thus thought of
+and cared for had upon the men an immeasurable influence for good.
+Later on, even the people of Delagoa Bay sent a handsome Christmas
+hamper to every blockhouse between the frontier and Barberton, while
+at the same time the King of Portugal presented a superb white buck,
+wearing a suitably inscribed silver collar, to the Cornwalls who were
+doing garrison duty at Koomati Poort. But in Pretoria, where among
+other considerations my Wesleyan friends regularly provided a Saturday
+"Pleasant Hour," the soldiers in return invited the whole congregation
+to a "social," on which they lavished many a pound, and which they
+made a brilliant success. It was a startling instance of soldierly
+gratitude; and illustrates excellently the friendly attitude of the
+military and of the local civilians towards each other.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Ladysmith Lyre._]
+
+It sometimes happened among these much enduring men that the greater
+their misery the greater their mirth. Thus our captured officers,
+close guarded in the Pretoria Model School, and carefully cut off from
+all the news of the day, amused themselves by framing parodies on the
+absurd military intelligence published in the local Boer papers;
+whereof let the following verse serve as a sample:--
+
+          Twelve thousand British were laid low;
+          One Boer was wounded in the toe.
+          Such is the news we get to know
+                                  In prison.
+
+About this time there came into my hands a sample copy of _The
+Ladysmith Lyre_; but clearly though the last word in its title was
+perfectly correct as a matter of pronunciation the spelling was
+obviously inaccurate. It was a merry invention of news during the
+siege by men who were hemmed in from all other news; and so the
+grosser the falseness the greater the fun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In my own particular copy I found the following dialogue between two
+Irish soldiers:--
+
+First Private--"The captain told me to keep away from the enemy's
+foire!"
+
+Second Private--"What did you tell the Captain?"
+
+First Private--"I told him the Boers were so busy shelling they hadn't
+made any foire!"
+
+That is scarcely a brilliant jest; but then it was begotten amid the
+agonies of the siege.
+
+One of the poems published in this same copy of _The Ladysmith Lyre_
+has in it more of melancholy than of mirth. It tells of the hope
+deferred that maketh the heart sick; and gives us a more vivid idea
+than anything else yet printed of the secret distress of the men who
+saved Natal--a distress which we also shared. It is entitled--
+
+  "AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE."
+
+  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
+  Over all the quaint and curious yarns we've heard about the war,
+  Suddenly there came a rumour--(we can always take a few more)
+  Started by some chap who knows more than--the others knew before--
+  "We shall see the reinforcements in another--month or more!"
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  But we're waiting still for Clery, waiting, waiting, sick and weary
+  Of the strange and silly rumours we have often heard before.
+  And we now begin to fancy there's a touch of necromancy,
+  Something almost too uncanny, in the unregenerate Boer--
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  Though our hopes are undiminished that the war will soon be finished,
+  We would be a little happier if we knew a little more.
+  If we had a little fuller information about Buller;
+  News about Sir Redvers Buller, and his famous Army Corps;
+  Information of the General and his fighting Army Corps.
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  And the midnight shells uncertain, whistling through the night's
+       black curtain,
+  Thrill us, fill us with a touch of horror never felt before.
+  So to still the beating of our hearts, we kept repeating
+  "Some late visitor entreating entrance at the chamber door,
+                            This it is; and nothing more!"
+
+  Oh how slow the shells come dropping, sometimes bursting, sometimes
+       stopping,
+  As though themselves were weary of this very languid war.
+  How distinctly we'll remember all the weary dull November;
+  And it seems as if December will have little else in store;
+  And our Christmas dinner will be bully beef and plain stickfast.
+                            Only this and nothing more!
+
+  Letham, Letham, tell us truly if there's any news come newly;
+  Not the old fantastic rumours we have often heard before:--
+  Desolate yet all undaunted! Is the town by Boers still haunted?
+  This is all the news that's wanted--tell us truly we implore--
+  Is there, _is there_ a relief force? Tell us, tell us, we implore!
+                            Only this and nothing more.
+
+  For we're waiting rather weary! Is there such a man as Clery?
+  Shall we ever see our wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?
+  Shall we ever see those others, who went southwards long before?
+  Shall we ever taste fresh butter? Tell us, tell us, we implore!
+                            We are answered--nevermore!
+
+When twenty months later the Scots Guards again found themselves in
+Pretoria they too began dolorously to enquire, "Shall we ever see our
+wives and mothers, or our sisters and our brothers?" But meanwhile
+much occurred of which the following chapters are a brief record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST
+
+
+On reaching Pretoria, almost unopposed, our Guardsmen jumped to the
+hasty and quite unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was
+closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us
+would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has
+burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely
+long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no
+extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of its
+flame just when our personal convenience chances to clamour for such
+quenching. Indeed, the "flare and flicker" period sometimes proves,
+where war is concerned, scarcely less prolonged, and much more
+harassing, than the period of the full-fed flame. So Norman William
+found after the battle of Hastings. So Cromwell proved when the fight
+at Worcester was over. So the Americans discovered when they had
+captured Manila. Our occupation of Bloemfontein by no means made us
+instant masters of the whole Free State, and our presence in Pretoria
+we had yet to learn was not at all the same thing as the undisputed
+possession of the entire Transvaal. Indeed, the period that actually
+interposed between the two, proved the longest "fortnight" ever
+recorded.
+
+[Sidenote: _Lord Milner's explanation._]
+
+How that came about, however, is made quite clear by the following
+extract from the High Commissioner's despatches:--
+
+     If it had been possible for us to screen those portions of the
+     conquered territory, which were fast returning to peaceful
+     pursuits, from the incursions of the enemy still in the field, a
+     great deal of what is now most deplorable in the condition of
+     South Africa would never have been experienced. The vast extent
+     of the country, the necessity of concentrating our forces for the
+     long advance, first to Pretoria and then to Koomati Poort,
+     resulted in the country already occupied being left open to
+     raids, constantly growing in audacity, and fed by small
+     successes, on the part of a few bold and skilful guerilla leaders
+     who had nailed their colours to the mast.
+
+     The reappearance of these disturbers of the peace, first in the
+     south-east of the Orange River Colony, then in the south-west of
+     the Transvaal, and finally in every portion of the conquered
+     territory, placed those of the inhabitants who wanted to settle
+     down in a position of great difficulty. Instead of being made
+     prisoners of war, they had been allowed to remain on their farms
+     on taking the oath of neutrality, and many of them were really
+     anxious to keep it. But they had not the strength of mind, nor
+     from want of education, a sufficient appreciation of the
+     sacredness of the obligation which they had undertaken, to resist
+     the pressure of their old companions in arms when these
+     reappeared among them appealing to their patriotism and to their
+     fears. In a few weeks or months the very men whom we had spared
+     and treated with exceptional leniency were up in arms again,
+     justifying their breach of faith in many cases by the
+     extraordinary argument that we had not preserved them from the
+     temptation to commit it.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Boer way of saying "Bosh"._]
+
+Early in the long halt near Pretoria, at Silverton Camp, the Guards'
+Brigade was formally assembled to hear read a telegram from H.R.H. The
+Prince of Wales, congratulating them on the practical termination of
+the war; whereupon as though by positive prearrangement the Boers
+plumped a protesting shell in startlingly close proximity to where our
+cheering ranks not long before had stood. It was the Boer way of
+saying "bosh" to our ill-timed boast that the war was over.
+
+Botha and his irreconcilables were at this time occupying a formidable
+position, with a frontage of fifteen miles, near Pienaar's Poort,
+where the Delagoa line runs through a gap in the hills, fifteen miles
+east of Pretoria; and this position Lord Roberts found it essential to
+attack with 17,000 men and seventy guns on Monday, June 11th, that is
+just a week after the neighbouring capital had surrendered. The
+fighting extended over three days; French attacking on our left,
+Hamilton on our right, and Pole Carew in the centre keenly watching
+the development of these flanking movements. In the course of this
+stubborn contest the invisible Boers did for one brief while become
+visible, as they galloped into the open in hope of capturing the Q
+Battery, which had already won for itself renown by redeeming Sanna's
+Post from complete disaster. Then it was Hamilton ordered the
+memorable cavalry charge of the 12th Lancers, which saved the guns,
+and scattered the Boers, but cost us the life of its gallant and
+God-fearing Colonel Lord Airlie, who before the war greatly helped me
+in my work at Aldershot. The death of such a man made the battle of
+Diamond Hill a mournfully memorable one; for Lord Airlie combined in
+his own martial character the hardness of the diamond with its
+lustrous pureness; and his last words just before the fatal bullet
+pierced his heart, were said to be a characteristic rebuke of an
+excited and perhaps profane sergeant: "Pray, moderate your language!"
+Wholesome advice, none too often given, and much too seldom heeded!
+
+[Sidenote: _News from a far Country._]
+
+As the inevitable result of this further fighting, the men who had
+fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered
+just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other
+than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they,
+"and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were
+wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single
+fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets
+reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by
+the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone
+hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of
+nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in
+South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that
+it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and
+the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing,
+even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute.
+
+[Sidenote: _Further fighting._]
+
+Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient
+supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance
+possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers
+Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th,
+the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however
+Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a
+strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria
+under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a
+thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and
+there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha
+himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by
+Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the 29th of
+General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the Orange
+River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a very
+formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward move.
+
+[Sidenote: _Touch not, taste not, handle not._]
+
+On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to
+Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on
+Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest
+admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands
+of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the
+occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of
+their belongings touched, except as the result of a perfectly
+voluntary sale and purchase. Indeed, the identic day we left, turkeys,
+geese, ducks, and other "small deer," were still wandering round their
+native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had
+declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained
+from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties.
+Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a
+hostile peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when maintained in
+places where unmistakable treachery had been practised as in this
+identic neighbourhood.
+
+At Wolmaran's pleasant country house, close beside our camp, the white
+flag flew, and there our general took up his abode. Some members of
+this well-known family were still out on commando, but those that
+remained at home eagerly surrendered all arms, were profuse in
+professions of friendliness, and were duly pledged to formal
+neutrality. But a recent Transvaal law had reduced the wages of all
+Kaffirs from about twenty shillings to a uniform five shillings a
+week, and Wolmaran's unpaid or ill-paid negroes revenged themselves by
+revealing their master's secrets. Partly as the result of hints thus
+obtained, we found hidden in his garden over thirty rifles, the barrel
+of a Maxim gun, and about L10,000 in gold--presumably Government
+money; also a splendid supply of provisions was discovered--presumably
+Government stores; and in the family cemetery there was dug up a
+quantity of dynamite. The gentleman who thus gave up his arms, and in
+this fashion kept his oath, at once became our prisoner, but his house
+and its contents remained untouched. And when we left, some of his
+barndoor fowls were still there to see us off!
+
+This is a notable but typical illustration of the way in which, with
+unwise leniency, surrendered burghers were allowed access to our
+camps, and recompensed our reliance on their honour by revealing our
+secrets to our foes, and, when they dared, unearthing their buried
+arms to level them once more at our too confiding troops.
+
+[Sidenote: _More treachery and still more._]
+
+A march of fifteen or eighteen miles brought us to Bronkhorst Spruit,
+the scene of a dastardly massacre in December 1880, of the men of the
+Connaught Rangers, who, ere yet there was any declaration of war, were
+marching with their wives and children from Lydenburg to Pretoria. I
+stood bareheaded beside one of the mounds that hide their bones, close
+to the roadside where they fell, and bethought me of the strange
+Providence through which, nearly twenty years after the event, there
+was now marching past those very graves a vast avenging army on its
+way to those same mountain fastnesses whence our murdered comrades of
+the long ago set out on their fatal journey. Sowing and reaping are
+often far apart; but there is no sundering them!
+
+At our mess dinner that same evening the conversation turned to the
+kindred, but still more shameful deed recently devised, though happily
+in vain, at Johannesburg. There Cordua had indeed been out-Corduad by
+a conspiracy to assassinate in cold blood all the military officers
+attending some sports about to be held under military patronage at the
+racecourse. About eighty of the conspirators were captured in the very
+act of completing their plans. Nearly three hundred more were said to
+be implicated, and being chiefly of foreign extraction were quietly
+sent out of the country. It was the biggest thing in plots, and the
+wildest, that recent years have seen outside Russia.
+
+[Sidenote: _The root of the matter._]
+
+One often wonders how it comes to pass that people so demonstratively
+religious prove in so many cases conspicuously devoid of truth and
+honour and common honesty; but various explanations, each setting
+forth some partial contributory cause, may easily be conceived.
+
+As among Britons, so among Boers, there are, as a matter of course,
+varying degrees of loyalty to the moral law, and of sincerity in
+religious profession. It is therefore manifestly unfair to condemn a
+whole people because of individual immoralities. The outrageous deeds
+just described may well have been in large part the work of "lewd
+fellows of the baser sort," a sort of which the Transvaal has
+unfortunately no monopoly, and of which the better type of Boer scorns
+to become the apologist. Moreover, Johannesburg drew to itself with a
+rush a huge number not only of honourable adventurers, but also of
+wastrels, representing every class and clime under heaven. Many of
+these were commandeered or volunteered for service on the Boer side
+when war broke out, and by their lawlessnesses proved almost as great
+a terror to their friends as to their foes. Young Cordua was of
+foreign birth, and there were few genuine Boers among the Johannesburg
+conspirators; but it was the Transvaal they blindly sought to serve;
+and so on the shoulders of the whole Transvaal community is laid, none
+too justly, the entire blame for such mistakes.
+
+Then too, however mistakenly, I cannot but think the peculiar type of
+piety cherished by the Boers is largely responsible for the moral
+obliquity of which, justly or unjustly, I heard complaints continually
+from those who professed to know them well. These sons of the
+Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting zeal
+of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock, and
+with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and
+narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not
+remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect,
+and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to take liberties
+with the law of the Lord. They deem themselves a chosen race to whom a
+new Canaan has been divinely given, and in defence of whom Jehovah
+Himself is bound to fight. At the commencement of the campaign it was
+common talk that "they had commandeered the Almighty." Their piety and
+practice are largely modelled on Old Testament lines. They used God's
+name and quoted Scripture _ad nauseam_ even in State correspondence.
+Their President was also their High Priest; yet in business
+transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings
+with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their
+own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The
+bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a
+Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me
+that proverb and practice too commonly keep company.
+
+It is a perilous thing for men or nations to deem themselves in any
+exclusive sense Heaven's favourites. Such conceptions do not minister
+to heavenly-mindedness, or beget lives of ethic beauty. The ancient
+Hebrews, blinded by this very belief, became "worse than the
+heathen," and herein lies a solemn warning alike for the beaten Boer
+and the boastful Briton! There is no true religion where there is no
+all round righteousness; and wheresoever that is wanting the wrath of
+God cannot but abide.
+
+[Sidenote: _A tight fit._]
+
+Our next day's march ended just as a heavy thunderstorm with still
+heavier rain broke upon us; so the Grenadier officers pitched their
+mess as close as they could get to the sheltering wall of a decidedly
+stenchful Kaffir cottage. There we stood in the drenching wet and ate
+our evening meal, which was lunch and dinner in one. In that
+one-roomed cottage, with a smoking fire on the floor and a heap of
+mealie corn-cobs in the corner, there slept that night two Kaffir men,
+one Kaffir woman, four Kaffir piccaninnies, four West Australian
+officers, one officer of the Guards on the corn-cobs, a quantity of
+live poultry, and a dead goat; its sleep, of course, being that from
+which there is no awaking. That they were not all stifled before
+morning is astonishing, but the fact remains that the goat alone
+failed to greet the dawn.
+
+Nearly every man in the camp was that night soaked to the skin, and
+for once the Guards made no attempt to sing at or to sing down the
+storm. As they apologetically explained at breakfast time, they were
+really "too down on their luck" to try. But with my usual good fortune
+I managed to pass the night absolutely dry, and that too without
+borrowing a corner of that horrid Kaffir cottage. The next night found
+us at Brugspruit, close to a colliery, where we stayed a considerable
+while, and managed to house ourselves in comparative comfort, that
+gradually became near akin to luxury. Here the junior officers
+courteously assisted me to shovel up an earthen shelter, with a sheet
+of corrugated iron for a roof, and thus protected I envied no
+millionaire his marble halls, though my blankets were sometimes wet
+with evening dew, and the ground white with morning frost.
+
+[Sidenote: _Obstructives on the Rail._]
+
+During the long halt of the Grenadiers at Brugspruit, the Scots Guards
+remained at Balmoral, moving thence to Middelburg, and one of the
+Coldstream battalions was detailed to guard the Oliphant River,
+station, and bridge, which I crossed when on my way to Middelburg to
+conduct a Sunday parade service there; but at the river station the
+train tarried too brief a while and the battalion was too completely
+hidden on the far side of a rough kopje to permit my gaining even a
+passing glance of their camp. In South Africa full often the so-called
+sheep and their appointed shepherd found themselves thus unwittingly
+forbidden to see each others' face.
+
+A little later on we found the line in possession, not of the Boers,
+but of a big drove of horses which seemed bent on proving that they
+could outdo even the Boers themselves in the rapidity of their retreat
+before an advancing foe. Mile after mile they galloped, but mile after
+mile they kept to the track, just in front of our engine, which
+whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger.
+Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish
+to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But
+as we slowed our pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and when
+once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer desperation
+our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of breath, while
+he pelted the nearest of the drove with stones, and sought to scare it
+with flourishes of his official cap. But that horse behaved like a
+dull-headed ass, and cared no more for the waving of official caps
+than for the wild screaming of our steam whistle. We were losing time
+horribly fast because our pace was thus made so horribly slow. Finally
+a pilot engine came down from Middelburg to ascertain what had become
+of our long belated train, and this unlooked for movement from the
+rear fortunately proved too much for the nerves of even such
+determined obstructionists. It scared them as effectually as a
+flanking movement scared the Boers. They broke in terror from the line
+and, Boerlike, vanished.
+
+[Sidenote: _Middelburg and the Doppers._]
+
+Middelburg we found to be a thriving village, which will probably grow
+into an important town when the mineral wealth of the district is in
+due time developed. At present the principal building is as usual the
+Dutch Reformed Church, the pastor of which had forsaken the female
+portion of his flock to follow the fortunes of the fighting section.
+There are also two good-sized Dopper churches, which habitually remain
+void and empty all the year round, except on one Sunday in each
+quarter, when the farmer folk come from near and far to hold a fair,
+and to celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper--"The night meal,"
+as they appropriately call it. These are the four great events of
+the Dopper year, and of this tiny city's business life.
+
+The Dopper is the ultra Boer of South Africa, the Puritan of Puritans,
+the Covenanter of Covenanters, whose religious creed and conduct are
+compacted of manifold rigidities, and who would deem it as
+unpardonable a sin to shave off his beard, as it would have been for
+an early Methodist preacher to wear one. Formerly Doppers and
+Methodists both piously combed their hair over their foreheads, and
+clipped it in a straight line just above the eyebrows. But alas! in
+this as in many other directions, Methodists and Doppers have alike
+become "subject to vanity." In these degenerate days "the fringe" has
+flitted from the masculine to the feminine brow; and now that it is
+"crinkled" no longer claims to be a badge of superior sanctity. In one
+of these Dopper churches the Rev. W. Frost long conducted Wesleyan
+services, the crowding troops having made our own church far too
+small.
+
+The other, on the occasion of my first visit, was occupied by Canon
+Knox Little, who there conducted the Anglican parade service, and
+preached with great fervour from the very pulpit whence, some months
+before, President Kruger had delivered a discourse presumably of a
+decidedly different type. But the Wesleyan church immediately
+adjoining the camping ground of the 2nd Coldstream battalion, which I
+had the privilege that day of reopening, was at a later period used
+for a brief while by the Roman Catholic chaplains. War is a strange
+revolutionist if not always a reformer.
+
+[Sidenote: _August Bank Holiday._]
+
+The next day, which was August Bank Holiday, I returned in safety to
+Brugspruit, but only to discover that in those parts even railway
+travelling had become a thing of deadly peril. I there saw two trains
+just arrived from Pretoria, the trucks filled with remount horses and
+cavalry men on their way to join General French's force. The first
+engine bore three bullet holes in its encasing water tank, holes which
+the driver had hastily plugged with wood, so preventing the loss of
+all his water and the fatal stoppage of the train. Several of the
+trucks were riddled with bullet-holes, and in one I saw a dead horse,
+shot, lying under the feet of its comrades; while in another truck,
+splashed with great clots of blood, similarly lay yet another horse
+almost dead. Several more were wounded but still remained upon their
+feet, and still had before them a journey of many miles ere their
+wounds could receive attention, or the living be severed from the
+dead. For horses this has been a specially fagging and fatal war, and
+for them there are no well-earned medals!
+
+The second engine bore kindred bullet holes in its water tank. A shot
+had smashed the glass in the window of the break-van in which some
+officers were travelling; and in one of the trucks I was shown a hole
+in the thick timber made by a bullet, which, after passing through two
+inches of wood, had pierced a lancer's breast and killed him, besides
+shattering the wrist of yet another lancer. Those trains had just been
+fired at by a mounted Boer patrol which had caught our men literally
+napping. Most of them were lying fast asleep in the bottom of the
+trucks, with their unloaded carbines beside or under them, so that
+not a solitary reply shot was fired as the trains sped past the point
+of peril.
+
+After repeated disasters of this kind had occurred, orders were issued
+forbidding men to travel in such careless and unguarded fashion; while
+all journeying that was not indispensible was peremptorily stopped! My
+own contemplated visit to Pretoria next day was consequently postponed
+till there came some more urgent call or some more convenient season.
+
+On this part of the line the troops had often to be their own stokers
+and drivers, with the result that sniping Boers were not the only
+peril a passenger had to fear. From Dalmanutha in those delightsome
+days a train was due to start as usual with one engine behind and one
+in front. The driver of the leading engine blew his whistle and opened
+his regulator. The driver of the back engine did the same, but somehow
+the train refused to move. It was supposed the breaks were on, but it
+was presently discovered that the rear engine had reversed its gear,
+and there had thus commenced a tug of war--the one engine pulling its
+hardest against the other and neither winning a prize. In those days
+railway life became rich in comedies and tragedies, especially the
+latter, whereof let one further illustration of much later date, as
+described by Mr Burgess, suffice:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Blowing up trains._]
+
+At Heidelberg on Thursday, March 7th, at ten o'clock in the morning
+there was a loud report as of a gun firing from one of the forts; but
+it was soon known that it was an explosion of dynamite on the line
+about a mile and a half from the railway station. The Boers had
+evidently placed dynamite under the metals, and it is supposed that
+while they were doing this, a number of them came down and engaged the
+outposts, and that was the firing that was heard in the town. A flat
+trolley with a European ganger and seven coolies and natives went over
+the first mine without exploding it; but on reaching the second, about
+a mile beyond, an explosion took place. The ganger after being blown
+fifty feet, escaped most miraculously with only a few bruises. Sad to
+relate three Indians were blown to pieces so as hardly to be
+recognised, and two others were seriously hurt. Immediately after this
+first explosion, a construction train left the Heidelberg railway
+station, and exploded the mine which the trolley had failed to
+explode; but fortunately very little damage was done as they had taken
+the precaution to place a truck in front of the engine. The second
+explosion occurred about a mile from the station and was plainly
+visible to those standing on the platform.
+
+[Sidenote: _A peculiar Mothers' Meeting._]
+
+On setting out a second time from Brugspruit for Middleburg to conduct
+the Sunday services there, I was astonished to find the train
+consisted of about a dozen trucks, some open, some closed, but all
+filled to overflowing with Dutch women and Dutch children of every
+sort and size. Flags were fluttering from almost every truck, no khaki
+man carrying arms was suffered to travel by that train, and when the
+Roman Catholic chaplain and myself entered the break-van we seemed to
+be taking charge of a gigantic Mothers' Meeting out for a holiday,
+babies and all, or else to be escorting a big Sunday School to "Happy
+Hampstead" for its annual treat. It was the second large consignment
+of the sort which General Botha had consented to receive, and of which
+we were anxious to be rid. They were some of the wives and offspring
+of his fighting men, and were in most cases foodless, friendless,
+dependent for their daily bread on British bounty. It was therefore
+more fitting their own folk should feed them, as they were abundantly
+able and willing to do. Moreover, among them were women who had acted
+as spies, while others had hidden arms in their homes, so that to us
+they had become a serious peril, as well as a serious expense. We were
+consequently glad to be quit of them, and sincerely regretted that the
+capture of Barberton later on made us again their custodians.
+
+[Sidenote: _Aggressive Ladies._]
+
+Our first parade service next morning was held in the Wesleyan church,
+and was followed by open-air worship in the outlying encampment of the
+Scots Guards. The evening voluntary service was delightfully hearty
+and delightfully well attended. But most of the afternoon was spent at
+the railway station waiting for and watching the arrival of yet
+another train load of women and children on their way to realms
+beyond! Seven-and-twenty truck loads presently reached Middelburg in
+most defiant mood, for they waved their home-made Transvaal flags in
+our faces; they had bedecked themselves with Transvaal ribbons and
+Transvaal rosettes almost from head to foot. They shaded their faces
+with parasols in which the four Transvaal colours were combined; and
+they sang with every possible variety of discordancy Transvaal hymns,
+especially the Transvaal national anthem. But unless these gentle
+ladies can cook and stitch vastly better than they seemed able to
+sing, their husbands and brothers are much to be pitied.
+
+Their patriotism was so pronounced and aggressive that they literally
+spat at the soldiers, and assured them that no money of theirs would
+ever suffice to purchase the paltriest flag they carried. The seeds of
+ill-will and hate for all things British had been planted in the mind
+and heart of almost every Boer child long before the war began, but
+those seeds ripened rapidly, and the reaping bids fair to be
+prolonged.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Dutch Deacon's Testimony._]
+
+Before this weary conflict came to a close, nearly every Boer family
+was gathered in from the perils and privations of the war-wasted
+veldt; and so, while nearly 30,000 burghers were detained as prisoners
+of war at various points across the sea, their wives and children, to
+the number of over 100,000, were tenderly cared for in English laagers
+all along the line of rails or close to conveniently situated towns.
+Slanderous statements have been made as to the treatment meted out to
+these unfortunates, for which my visits revealed no warrant; but of
+more value is the testimony of one of their own church officials, who
+carefully inspected the women's refuge camp at Port Elizabeth, and
+reported the result to the local Intelligence Department. This deacon
+of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr T. J. Ferreira, says:--
+
+     I came down here on hearing of the reports at Steytlerville of
+     the bad treatment the women exiles are receiving from the
+     military. I was determined to find out the truth, and publish
+     same in the Dutch and English papers. I stayed in the camp all
+     day, and dined with the exiles. The food was excellent--I had
+     roast lamb, soup, potatoes, bread, coffee, and biscuits. All was
+     well cooked and perfectly satisfactory; the soup and meat were
+     especially well cooked. The women and children are happy, have no
+     complaints, and are quite content to stay where they are until
+     they can return to their homes. I shall return to Steytlerville
+     and let everybody know how humane the treatment is. The statement
+     that the women were ragged and barefooted and had to bathe within
+     sight of the military is a shameful falsehood.
+
+[Sidenote: _A German Officer's Testimony._]
+
+On August the 24th General Pole Carew with the Guards' Brigade
+occupied Belfast, and a few days later Roberts and Buller combined to
+drive Botha from the last position along the Delagoa Line that he made
+any serious attempt to defend; and among those taken prisoners by us
+at Dalmanutha was a German officer, who in due time was sent to
+Ceylon, and there acquired enough knowledge of English to express in
+it his views concerning the Boers he served, and the British he
+opposed. He says among other things that he was wounded five times and
+received no pay for all his pains. He declares concerning the Boers
+that "they often ran away from commando and kept quiet, and said to
+the English that they would not fight any more; but when the district
+was pacified they took up arms again and looted. They don't know
+anything about word of honour or oath. They put white flags upon their
+houses, and fired in the neighbourhood of them. The English were far
+too lenient at the beginning, and therefore they are now at the
+opposite extreme.
+
+"You should have seen the flourishing Natal, how it was laid waste by
+the Boers. This looting instinct in them is far stronger than the
+fighting one. There were also lots of Boers who were praying the whole
+day instead of fighting; and their officers were perhaps the best
+prayers and preachers, but certainly the worst fighters; whereas I
+must confess that the English, although they were headed by very bad
+generals, very often behaved like good soldiers and finally defeated
+the greatest difficulties.
+
+"The English infantry is splendidly brave and rather skilful; they are
+good shots too. Tommy Atkins is a wonderful, merry, good-hearted chap,
+always full of fun and good spirits, and he behaves very kind towards
+the prisoners.
+
+"When I was captured, an English colonel who was rather haughty, asked
+me which English general I thought the best; whereupon I instantly
+answered 'Tommy Atkins!'"
+
+That clever German critic merely put an old long ago discovered truth
+in new form! "If I blundered," said Wellington, "I could always rely
+on my soldiers to pull me through." General Pole Carew when, near the
+close of the war, he was presented with a sword of honour by my native
+city, Truro, repeated the remark of a distinguished continental
+soldier attached to his division, who said after seeing British
+soldiers marching bootless and fighting foodless, he placed the
+British army "foremost among European armies." So say they all! The
+German prisoner in Ceylon spoke words of truth and soberness when he
+said our private soldier is in some respects our best general.
+
+General Tommy Atkins I salute you! You are a credit to your country!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THROUGH HELVETIA
+
+
+[Sidenote: _The fighting near Belfast._]
+
+On August 24th the tiny little town of Belfast was reached by General
+Pole Carew's division, including the Guards' Brigade; but though our
+advent was unopposed, there was heavy fighting on our right, where
+General Buller, newly arrived from Natal, had the day before
+approached the immensely strong Boer position at Bergendal. There the
+Johannesburg police, the most valorous of all the burgher forces, made
+their last heroic stand three days later, and were so completely wiped
+out, that Kruger is reported to have been moved to tears when the
+tidings reached him. It was the last stand the Boer still had nerve
+enough to make, and after Belfast their continuous retreat quickened
+into almost a rout. It was on Sunday, the 26th, the Guards moved out
+to take part in the general assault, and waited for hours behind the
+shelter of Monument Hill while General French developed his flanking
+movement on the left. Boer bullets fell freely among us while thus
+tarrying, and compelled our field hospital to retire further down the
+slope to a position of comparative safety. Late that afternoon the
+Guards marched over the brow to face what bade fair to be another
+serious Sunday battle, yet without any slightest sign of flinching.
+"How dear is life to all men," said dying Nelson. It may be so; but
+these men and their officers from first to last, when duty called,
+seemed never to count their lives dear unto them. A few casualties,
+caused by chance bullets, occurred among them before the day closed,
+but scarcely so much as a solitary Boer was seen by the clearest
+sighted of them. Once again outflanked, "the brother" once again had
+fled, and in the deepening darkness we groped our way to our next
+camping ground.
+
+In our Napoleonic wars the favourite command alike on land and sea
+was, "Engage the enemy more closely." Each fleet or army kept well in
+sight of its antagonist, and the fighting was often at such close
+quarters that musket muzzle touched musket muzzle; but at Belfast Lord
+Roberts' front was thirty miles in width, and our generals could only
+guess where their foemen hid by watching for the fire-flash of their
+long range guns. In offensive warfare the visible contends with the
+invisible, and it is good generalship that conquers it. At Albuera
+Soult asserted there was no beating British troops in spite of their
+generals. But Lord Roberts' generalship seems never to have been at
+fault, however remote the foe, and thanks thereto Belfast proved to be
+about the last big fight of the whole campaign.
+
+[Sidenote: _Feeding under fire._]
+
+Early next morning we were vigorously shelled by the still defiant
+Boers, but from the, for them, fairly safe distance of nearly five
+miles. Just as the Grenadier officers had finished their breakfast and
+retired a few yards further afield to get just beyond the reach of
+those impressive salutations, a shell plumped down precisely where we
+had been sitting. It made its mark, though fortunately only on the
+bare bosom of mother earth; but later on in the same day, while we
+were finishing lunch, another shrapnel burst, almost over our heads,
+so badly injured a doctor's horse tethered close by that it had to be
+killed, and compelled another somewhat rapid retirement on our part to
+the far side of a neighbouring bog. In war time all our feasts are
+movable!
+
+[Sidenote: _A German Doctor's Confession._]
+
+Before leaving Belfast I called on a German doctor who had been in
+charge of a Boer military hospital planted in that hamlet, and who
+told me that for twelve months he had been in the compulsory employ of
+the Transvaal Government. Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had
+accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly
+sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received
+no payment for his services except in promissory notes--which were
+worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been
+landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet;
+as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had
+seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering instead
+the bandolier and rifle. Thus were fighting men and mercenaries
+smuggled through Portuguese territory to the Boer fighting lines; and
+in this as in many other ways was that red cross abused. He wastes his
+time who tries to teach the Boers some new trick. In this war they
+have amply proved that in that matter they have nought to learn,
+except the unwisdom of it all, and the sureness of the retribution it
+involves. Even in battle and battle times clean hands are best.
+
+[Sidenote: _Friends in need are friends indeed._]
+
+On leaving the neighbourhood of Belfast we soon found ourselves
+marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region
+of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any
+foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in
+all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a
+touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with fleecy
+mist, resembled not remotely the snow-clad Alps. Indeed, during that
+whole week the toils and travels of the Guards brought to the mind of
+many the familiar story of Hannibal and his vast army crossing the
+Alps; only the Carthaginian general had no heavy guns and long lines
+of ammunition waggons to add to his already enormous difficulties; his
+men had little to carry on their broad backs compared with what a
+modern Guardsman has to shoulder; nor did Hannibal take with him a
+small army corps of newspaper correspondents to chronicle all the
+petty disasters and delays met with by the way. Few commanders-in-chief
+are lovers of correspondents, whether of the professional or of the
+private type. Tell-tale tongues and pens may perchance do more
+mischief than machine guns and mausers!
+
+At the latter end of the week our men had to climb over what seemed to
+be the backbone of that terrific region, with results almost
+disastrous to our long train of transport waggons. Botha, whose
+retreat towards Lydenberg our flanking movement had apparently
+prevented, we failed to find; so after fighting a mild rear-guard
+action, we scarce knew with whom, we encamped that night for the first
+and last time side by side with Buller's column.
+
+The major part, however, of the Grenadier battalion remained till next
+morning far away in the rear to guard our huge convoy while climbing
+up and climbing down the perilous ridge just referred to, with the
+result that some of us forming the advanced party found ourselves
+without food or shelter. Yet the soldierly courtesy which has so often
+hastened to my help during this campaign did not fail in this new hour
+of need. A sergeant-major of the bearer company most graciously lent
+me his own overcoat, the night being bitterly cold; the officers of
+the Scots Guards not only invited me to dine with them, but one of
+them supplied me with a rug, whilst another pressed on me the loan of
+his mackintosh "to keep off the dew," and thus enwrapped I lay once
+more on the bare ground, well sheltered behind a sheet of corrugated
+iron, which I fortunately found stuck on end as though put there by
+some unknown Boer benefactor for my special benefit. In fashion thus
+lordly were all my wants continually supplied. The wild wind that
+night blew away a second sheet of iron that another young officer,
+with almost filial thoughtfulness, placed over me after I had gone to
+rest, but the original sheet maintained its perpendicular position,
+and by its welcome protection supplied me with a fresh illustration of
+the familiar saying, "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east
+wind."
+
+[Sidenote: _An Invisible Sniper's Triumph._]
+
+Thus toiling we reached at last a plateau about 5000 feet above sea
+level, from which we looked down into the famous Waterfall Gorge, a
+sheer descent of 1000 feet. Down into it there drops from Waterval
+Boven the cogwheel section of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and in it there
+nestles a Swiss-like village, with hotel and hospital and railway
+workshops. As at Abraham's Kraal we captured the President's silk hat
+but let the President's head escape, so here we captured the
+President's professional cook, but the day before we arrived the
+President's private railway car,--his ever-shifting capital,--had
+eluded our pursuit, together with the President himself and the golden
+capital, in the shape of abounding coin he carried with him. The
+tidings proved to us a feast of Tantallus, so near and yet so far! How
+our men sighed for a sight of that car, and for the fingering of that
+coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of
+Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved
+distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in
+the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this day have
+never been disgorged.
+
+From even descending into that gorge the whole brigade of Guards was
+held back for four-and-twenty hours by a solitary invisible sniper,
+hidden, no one could find out where, in some secure crevice of the
+opposite cliff. One of our mounted officers riding down to take
+possession of the village was seriously wounded; and some of the
+scouts already there were compelled through the same course to keep
+under close shelter. So the naval guns, the field guns, and the
+pom-poms were each in turn called to the rescue, and gaily rained shot
+and shell for hours on every hump and hollow of that opposite cliff,
+but all in vain; for after each thunderous discharge on our side,
+there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on the
+other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited to
+fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion, till
+it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the
+gorge could possibly have failed to receive its own particular bullet;
+but
+
+         "What gave rise to no little surprise,
+          Nobody seemed one farthing the worse!"
+
+Just as the sun set the last sound we heard was the parting "ping" of
+Brother Invisible. So no man might descend into the depths that night,
+hotel or no hotel! Even at midnight we were startled out of our sleep
+by the quite unexpected boom of our big guns, which had, of course
+during daylight, been trained on a farmhouse lying far back from the
+precipice opposite to us, and were thus fired in the dead of night
+under the impression that the sniper, and perhaps his friends, were
+peacefully slumbering there. If so, the chances are he sniped no more.
+Next day at noon we began to clamber down to the level of the railway
+line, and found ourselves in undisturbed possession, after so
+prolonged and costly a bombardment called forth by a single, stubborn
+mauser.
+
+[Sidenote: _"He sets the mournful prisoners free."_]
+
+Meanwhile the eighteen hundred English prisoners who had so long been
+kept in durance vile at Nooitgedacht, the next station on the rail to
+Portuguese Africa, received their unconditional release, with the
+exception of a few officers, still retained as hostages; and all the
+afternoon, indeed far on into the night, these men came straggling,
+now in small groups and now in large, into our expectant and excited
+camp. They told us of the crowds of disconsolate Boers, some by road,
+some by rail, who had passed their prison enclosure in precipitate
+retreat, bearing waggon loads of killed or wounded with them. Among
+them were men of almost all nationalities, including a few surviving
+members of the late Johannesburg police, who declared that during that
+one week they had lost no less than one hundred and fifteen of their
+own special comrades.
+
+The prisoners also informed us that the Boer officer who dismissed
+them expressed the belief that in a few days more Boer and Briton
+would again be friends--an expectation we were slow to share, however
+eager we might be to see this miracle of miracles actually wrought. In
+the very midst of the battle of the Baltic, Nelson sent a letter to
+the Danish Prince Regent, with whom he was then fighting, and
+addressed it thus: "To the Danes, the Brothers of Englishmen." Within
+little more than half a century from that date the daughter of the
+Danish throne became heir to the Queenship of England's throne; and
+our Laureate rightly voiced the whole nation's feeling when to that
+fair bride he said:
+
+          "We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee."
+
+When Nelson penned that strange address amid the flash and fire of
+actual battle, it was with the true insight of a seer. The furious
+foes of his day are the fast friends of ours, and by the end of
+another half-century a similar transformation may be wrought in the
+present relationship between Boer and Briton, who are quite as near
+akin as Dane and Englishman. But to lightly talk of such foes becoming
+friends "in a few days" is to misread the meaning and measure of a
+controversy that is more than a century old. Between victors and
+vanquished, both of so dogged a type, it requires more than a mere
+treaty of peace to beget goodwill.
+
+[Sidenote: _More Boer Slimness._]
+
+Some of these now released prisoners were among the very first to be
+captured, and so had spent many weary weeks in the Waterval Prison
+near Pretoria, and were among those who had been decoyed away to these
+remote and seemingly unassailable mountain fastnesses. They had thus
+been in bonds altogether ten interminable months. Multiplied hardships
+had during that period necessarily been theirs, and others for which
+there was no real need or excuse; but they frankly confessed that as a
+whole their treatment by the Boers, though leaving much to be desired,
+had seldom been hard or vindictive.
+
+There were others of these prisoners, however, who were sick or
+wounded, and therefore were quite unable to climb from the open door
+of their prison to our lofty camp; so to fetch these I saw seven
+ambulance waggons made ready to set out with the usual complement of
+medical orderlies and doctors. These I seriously thought of
+accompanying on their errand of mercy, but was mercifully hindered.
+Those red cross waggons we saw no more for ever. The Boers were said
+to be short of waggons, and asserted that in some way some of our men
+had done them recent wrong which they wished to avenge. But whatever
+the supposed provocation or pretext, it was in violation of all the
+recognised usages of war that those waggons were captured and kept. It
+was no less an outrage to make prisoners of doctors and orderlies
+arriving on such an errand. No protests on their part or pleadings for
+speedy return to duty prevailed. They were compelled to accompany or
+precede the Boers in their flight to Delagoa Bay, from thence were
+shipped to Durban, and after long delay rejoined the Brigade on its
+return to Pretoria. For such high-handed proceedings the Transvaal
+Government clearly cannot be held responsible, for at that time it had
+ceased to exist, and more than ever the head of each commando had
+become a law unto himself. It would be false to say that a fine sense
+of honour did not anywhere exist in the now defunct Republic, but it
+is perfectly fair to assert that on the warpath our troops were
+compelled to tread it was not often found. Yet in every department of
+life he that contendeth for the mastery is never permanently crowned
+unless he contend lawfully.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Boer Hospital._]
+
+The prettily situated and well appointed hospital at Waterval Onder
+was originally erected for the use of men employed on the railway, but
+for months prior to the arrival of the British troops had been in
+possession of the Boer Government, and was full of sick and wounded
+burghers, with whom I had many an interesting chat and by whom I was
+assured that though we might think it strange they still had hope of
+ultimate success. Among the rest was a German baron, well trained of
+course, as all Germans are, for war, who on the outbreak of
+hostilities had consented at Johannesburg to be commandeered, burgher
+or no burgher, to fight the battles of the Boers, in the justice of
+whose cause he avowed himself a firm believer. He therefore became an
+artillery officer in the service of the Transvaal, and while so
+employed had been badly hit by the British artillery, with the result
+that his right arm was blown off, his left arm horribly shattered, and
+two shrapnel bullets planted in his breast. Yet seldom has extreme
+suffering been borne in more heroic fashion than by him, and he
+actually told me, in tones of admiration, that the British artillery
+practice was really "beautiful." On such a point he should surely be a
+competent judge seeing that he was himself a professor of the art, and
+had long stood not behind but in front of our guns, which is precisely
+where all critics ought to be planted. Their criticisms would then be
+something worth.
+
+[Sidenote: _Foreign Mercenaries._]
+
+The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the nations
+of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been encouraged to
+settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal Government long
+before the war began--on the railway, at the dynamite works, in the
+mines; and so were all ready for the rifle the moment the rifle was
+ready for them. At once they formed themselves into vigorous commandoes,
+according to their various nationalities,--Scandinavian, Hollander,
+French, and German. Even after the war began these foreign commandoes
+were largely recruited from Europe; French and German steamers landed
+parties of volunteers for the burgher forces nearly every week at
+Lorenco Marques. The French steamer _Gironde_ brought an unusually large
+contingent, a motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion
+of suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous
+of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As far
+back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish Brigade
+assisting the French to fight against the English, and with such fiery
+courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which had robbed him
+of such excellent fighting material. But at the same time there was
+about them so much of reckless folly that their departure from the
+Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight of the wild geese."
+New broods of these same wild geese found their way to the Transvaal,
+and there made for themselves a name, not as resistless fighters, but as
+irrestrainable looters. These men linked to the bywoners, or squatters,
+the penniless Dutch of South Africa, did little to help the cause they
+espoused, but many a time have caused every honest God-fearing burgher
+to blush by reason of their irrepressible lawlessness.
+
+[Sidenote: _A wounded Australian._]
+
+Among the British patients in this hospital was a magnificent young
+Australian, who it was feared had been mortally wounded in a small
+scrimmage round a farmhouse not far away, but who apparently began
+decidedly to mend from the time the general came to his bedside to say
+he should be recommended for the distinguished service medal. "That
+has done me more good than medicine," said he to me a few minutes
+after. Nevertheless, when ten days later we returned from Koomati
+Poort, he lay asleep in the little Waterval Cemetery, alas, like
+Milton's Lycidas, "dead ere his prime."
+
+These Australians being all mounted men, and of an exceptionally
+fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such
+outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide
+from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in
+that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage
+men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of
+no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts
+till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown
+himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the
+undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag
+treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been
+victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of their
+officers, Lieutenant White, was thus treacherously shot while going to
+answer the white flag displayed by the Boers. He was the pet of the
+Bushmen's Corps, and concerning him his own men said, "We all loved
+him, and will avenge him." So round his open grave his comrades
+solemnly joined hands and pledged themselves never again to recognise
+the waving of a Boer white flag. My assistant chaplain, with the
+Bushmen, himself an Australian, emphatically declared that as in the
+beginning so was it to the end; his men were killed not in fair fight
+but by murderous sniping. He was with them when Pietersburg was
+surrendered without a fight, but when they marched through to take
+possession they were resolutely shot at with explosive bullets from a
+barricaded house in the centre of the town, till the angry Bushmen
+broke open the door, and then the sniper sniped no more. On reaching
+the northern outskirts they again found themselves sniped, they knew
+not from whence. Several horses were wounded, a trooper was killed on
+the spot; so was Lieutenant Walters; and Captain Sayles was so badly
+hit he died two days afterwards. Yet no fighting was going on. The
+town was undefended, and the Boers in full retreat. This sniper was at
+last discovered hiding almost close at hand in a big patch of tall
+African grass. He turned out to be a Hollander schoolmaster, who,
+finding himself surrounded, sprang upon his knees, threw up his arms
+and laughingly cried, "All right, khakis, I surrender!" But that was
+his last laugh; and he lies asleep to-day in the same cemetery as his
+three victims.
+
+That cemetery soon after I saw; and in the adjoining camp messed with
+a group of irregular officers, some of whom ultimately yielded to this
+spirit of lawless avenging, but were, in consequence, sternly
+court-marshalled, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law. It is,
+however, the only case of the kind that has come to my knowledge
+during thirty months of provocative strife.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hotel Life on the Trek._]
+
+Close to the railway station at Waterval Onder was a comfortable
+little hotel, kept by a French proprietor, whose French cook had
+deserted him, and who would not therefore undertake to cater for the
+Grenadier officers, though he courteously placed his dining-room at
+their disposal, with all that appertained thereto; and sold to them
+almost his entire stock of drinkables, probably at fancy prices. The
+men of the Norfolk Regiment are to this day called "Holy Boys" because
+their forbears in the Peninsular War, so it is said, gave their Bibles
+for a glass of wine; but the Norfolks are not the only lovers of
+high-class liquor the army contains, though army Bibles will not now
+suffice to buy it. British officers on the trek, however, not only
+know how to appreciate exquisitely any appropriate home comforts, when
+for a brief while procurable, but also how to surrender them
+unmurmuringly at a moment's notice when duty so requires. We had been
+in possession of our well-appointed hotel table only two days when a
+sudden order sent us all trekking once again.
+
+It is worth noting that this French hotelkeeper and the German baron
+in the adjoining hospital had both fought, though of course on
+opposite sides, in the great Franco-Prussian war of thirty years ago,
+and now they found themselves overwhelmed by another great war wave
+in one of the remotest and seemingly most inaccessible fastnesses of
+South Central Africa. In this new war between Boer and Briton the
+German lost a limb, if not his life, and the Frenchman a large part of
+his fortune. So intimately are men of all nationalities now bound in
+the same bundle of life!
+
+[Sidenote: _A Sheep-pen of a Prison._]
+
+On Monday afternoon we marched to Nooitgedacht, where the prisoners
+already referred to had been confined like sheep in a pen for many a
+weary week. That pen was made by a double-barbed wire fence; the inner
+fence consisting of ten strands of wire, about eight inches apart, and
+the outer fence of five strands, with sundry added entanglements; and
+a series of powerful electric lights was specially provided to watch
+and protect the whole vast area thus enclosed. It gave me a violent
+spasm of heart sickness as I thought of English officers and men by
+hundreds being thus ignominiously hemmed in and worse sheltered than
+convicts. They had latterly been allowed to erect for themselves
+grotesquely rough hovels or hutches, many of which they set on fire
+when suddenly permitted to escape, so that as I found it the whole
+place looked indescribably dirty and desolate.
+
+Even the shelters provided for the officers, and the hospital hastily
+erected for the sick, were scarcely fit to stable horses in, and were
+by official decree doomed to be given to the flames as the surest way
+of getting rid of the vermin and other vilenesses, of which they
+contained so rich a store. Here I found huge medicine bottles, never
+made for the purpose, on which the names of sundry of our sick
+officers remained written, to wit: "Lieut. Mowbray, one tablespoonful
+four times a day. 3. VIII. 1900." In one of these bunks I found a
+packet of religious leaflets, one of which contained Hart's familiar
+hymn:--
+
+          Come ye weary, heavy laden,
+          Lost and ruined by the fall;
+          If you tarry till you are better,
+          You will never come at all.
+                Not the righteous,
+          Sinners, Jesus came to call.
+
+Although, therefore, religious services were never held in that prison
+pen, the men were not left absolutely without religious counsel and
+consolation. I was unfeignedly glad thus to find in that horrible
+place medicine for the soul as well as physic for the body, and some
+of those leaflets I brought away; but the physic I thought it safest
+not to sample.
+
+Over this unique combination of prison house and hospital there
+floated a very roughly-made and utterly tattered red cross flag, which
+now serves as a memento of one of the most humiliating sights it ever
+fell to my lot to witness, and I could not help picturing to myself
+the overpowering heartache those prisoners must have felt as hour
+after hour they were hurried farther and yet farther still through
+deep defiles and vast mountain fastnesses into a region where it must
+have seemed as though hope or help could never reach them. But "men,
+not mountains, determine the fate of nations"; and to-day, through
+the mercy of our God, that pestilential pen is no longer any
+Englishman's prison.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pretty scenery, and superb._]
+
+Our next halting place was at Godwand River, still on the Delagoa
+line, and here we found a wee bit of river scenery almost rivalling
+the beauty of the stream that has given to Lynmouth its world-wide
+fame. At this little frequented place two rivers meet, which even in
+the driest part of the dry season are still real rivers, and would
+both make superb trout streams, if once properly stocked, as many a
+river at home has been.
+
+But just a little farther on we found scenery immeasurably more grand
+than anything we had ever seen before. The Dutch name of this
+astounding place is Kaapsche Hoop, which seems reminiscent of "The
+Cape of Good Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It
+apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the
+earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is
+also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of
+Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other
+possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however,
+much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance
+to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks
+so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied
+the artistic taste, and would have yielded fresh inspiration to the
+soul of a Gustave Dore. The rocks are evidently all igneous and
+volcanic, but often stand apart in separate columns, and sometimes
+bear a striking resemblance to enormous beasts or images that might
+once have served for Oriental idols.
+
+Indeed, looked at by the bewitching but deceptive light of the moon,
+the whole place lends itself supremely well to every man's individual
+fancy, and even my unimaginative mind could easily have brought itself
+to see here a once majestic antediluvian city with its palaces and
+temples, but now wrecked and ruined by manifold upheavals of nature,
+and worn into rarest mockeries of its ancient splendours by the wild
+storms of many a millennium.
+
+What I did certainly see, however, among those rocks were sundry
+roughly constructed shelters for snipers, who were therefrom to have
+picked off our men and horses as they crossed the adjacent drift.
+Terrible havoc might have been wrought in the ranks of the Guards'
+Brigade, without apparently the loss of a single Transvaaler's life,
+but there is no citadel under the sun the Boers just then had heart
+enough to hold.
+
+Immediately adjoining this unique city of rocks is a stupendous cliff
+from which, our best travelled officers say, the finest panoramic view
+in the whole world is obtained. The cliff drops almost straight down
+twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be
+seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across
+what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was
+seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of
+many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range
+rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I visited
+twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot of the
+nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this plateau
+looked as though the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic had broken in
+at that end with overwhelming force, and then had been suddenly
+arrested and petrified while wave still battled with wave. It is such
+a view of far-reaching grandeur as I may never hope to see again, even
+were I to roam the wide world round; and could Kaapsche Hoop, with its
+absolutely fascinating attractiveness, be transplanted to, say
+Greenwich Park, any enterprising vendor of tea and shrimps who managed
+to secure a vested interest in the same, might reasonably hope to make
+such a fortune out of it as even a Rothschild need not despise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAR'S WANTON WASTE
+
+
+Day after day we steadily worked our way _down_ to Koomati Poort, even
+when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men
+toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the
+cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The
+Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday,
+though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we
+could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Surrendered Boer General._]
+
+During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General
+Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to
+Pretoria _via_ the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had
+joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been
+allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That
+oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother
+Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more
+set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes
+than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off
+Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King
+David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, but also
+in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore some not
+remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.
+
+Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path
+and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once
+more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was
+sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present
+were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns.
+Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly
+two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That
+particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago
+been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to
+the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a
+curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to
+a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the
+English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.
+
+His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely
+what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment
+the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and
+as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The
+general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was
+sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's
+funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries
+received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped
+with their lives.
+
+On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the triumphant
+Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood reverently
+beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general, who had
+proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the few
+concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good as
+his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from one
+of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards this
+whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of peace
+were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!
+
+This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all
+points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those
+who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they
+deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot
+denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel
+clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local
+complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been
+compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a
+good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much
+sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true.
+Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so
+in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered
+to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles
+that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who
+thus proved false to their plighted troth were, alas, ministers of
+the Dutch Reformed Church.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two Unworthy Predikants._]
+
+When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was
+informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants
+of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of
+his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at
+the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle
+the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our
+protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one
+of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after
+seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second
+time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When
+pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold
+perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.
+
+It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive
+clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in
+laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have
+been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this
+express promise that they should return to their farms there
+personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced
+them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far
+afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish.
+All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it
+was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served
+to pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently with
+surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the
+fault was not ours!
+
+At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day,
+and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or
+destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt
+as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still
+left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task,
+involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the
+earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously
+beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved
+many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Advocates of Clemency._]
+
+This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our
+island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread
+in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington
+during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and
+sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers,
+simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He
+recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run
+means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if
+they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is
+Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his
+diary:--"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a
+glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may
+humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British
+fleet."
+
+It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that
+Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what
+success let all the world bear witness!
+
+[Sidenote: _Mines without Men, and Men without Meat._]
+
+From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday,
+we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the
+Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven
+miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit.
+Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly
+machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the
+stern bidding of intruding war--that most potent disturber of the
+industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were
+cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house;
+and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we
+enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as
+the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river
+is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious
+Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once
+during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a
+single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now
+tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and
+fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so
+that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all
+our camp. The incessant use of one's heels seems to be the best
+preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops that
+sickness of any sort really runs riot.
+
+The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in
+consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that
+are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such
+day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced
+that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by
+train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and
+climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the
+effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully
+suggested this new version of an old-time melody--
+
+          Cheer, boys, cheer,
+          No more of idle sorrow;
+          Cheer, boys, cheer,
+          _There'll be another march to-morrow_.
+
+But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the
+sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on
+three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's
+rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to
+wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and
+putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well
+supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never
+satisfied.
+
+[Sidenote: _Much fat in the fire._]
+
+After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the
+house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another
+station on the Barberton branch; and here we found not only a fine
+railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway sheds,
+recently crammed full with government stores, mostly provisions, now
+ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely destroyed. Thousands of
+tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in all directions, and
+like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had turned the confined
+milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously ended its days by
+merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good things here,
+laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal troops, were
+consumed in quite another fashion from that intended. Even accumulated
+locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in some cases
+elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all utility, by
+the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets. The torch has
+played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food
+supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with
+a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed
+to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these innocents
+drew full British rations, when thousands of British soldiers were
+drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and Boer-beloved
+way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of an era when,
+constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,
+
+          Men will hang the trumpet in the hall,
+          And study war no more!
+
+[Sidenote: _More fat and mightier flames._]
+
+Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed
+by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm just as we were commencing
+our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge between the
+courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and thence came
+forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to renew
+acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm had
+somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be
+found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring
+conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.
+
+On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate
+push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main
+line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty
+made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four
+battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one
+battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a
+sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes
+outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they
+were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a
+ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line
+in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train.
+Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on,
+and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them.
+Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at
+that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on
+foot. We had indeed come by _rail_, but that we found was quite
+another thing from travelling by _train_; and the sequel forcefully
+reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding in a
+sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully
+removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the
+situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so"
+of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily
+beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.
+
+It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they
+stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the
+station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled,
+not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food
+stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself
+out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains
+of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which
+paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and
+there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning
+furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career
+by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and
+that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where
+it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken
+sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the
+semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so
+flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served
+out to be cooked as best it could be by the famished men some of them
+laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was not that a
+dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the station
+were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any grate,
+besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and no one
+knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the
+extreme.
+
+[Sidenote: _A welcome lift by the way._]
+
+Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we
+nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of
+certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little
+that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the
+mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such
+holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a
+forced march towards Koomati Poort.
+
+The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen
+miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of
+the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was
+I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and
+thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few
+miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so
+accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the
+Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was
+twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had
+already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of
+it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to
+because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense
+on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially
+when they happen to be his only pair.
+
+[Sidenote: "_Rags and tatters get ye gone._"]
+
+Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably
+lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at
+close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount
+that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to
+cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform
+of my regiment, and _in it I will show_, or fall this day." Barely a
+moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer
+war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War
+Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride
+and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in
+the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all
+regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately
+discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be
+seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived.
+The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and
+disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On
+this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman
+wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of
+the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the
+word OATS, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man
+in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained
+were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to Bruges.
+
+[Sidenote: _Destruction and still more destruction._]
+
+On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly
+lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our
+next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless
+wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved
+in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We
+were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that
+was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them
+a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile
+they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns
+and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence,
+and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men
+marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At
+Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at
+Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every
+kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army;
+though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had
+flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition
+waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the
+British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made
+every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty
+nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the
+14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty
+locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened to linger
+long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more than a
+king's ransom!
+
+That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and
+bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the
+arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp
+surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our
+march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best
+we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst
+of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we
+had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at
+four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find
+ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch,
+where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.
+
+[Sidenote: _At Koomati Poort._]
+
+On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to
+General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of
+leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit
+of the Transvaal--and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to
+fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War
+declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe--indeed
+the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small
+arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a
+distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes,
+and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A
+blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a
+good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these last weeks
+there were few casualties among the Boers, because they kept well out
+of casualty range. They were so frightened they even forgot to snipe.
+The valiant old President so long ago as September 11th had fled with
+his splendidly well-filled money bags across the Portuguese frontier;
+abandoning his burghers who were still in the field to whatever might
+chance to be their fate. That fate he watched, and waited for, from
+the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the
+Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at
+Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe
+still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst,
+broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic
+spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special trains
+beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men from many
+lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous example,
+seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on the 24th,
+the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more, who were
+mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay to become
+like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the Portuguese.
+
+To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for
+they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway
+bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large
+financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.
+
+Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the Crocodile
+with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw in
+midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the two
+Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a ridge
+of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and the
+Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of Portuguese
+flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim Boer had
+planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might make his
+last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our
+approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on
+their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the
+guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a
+solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat
+prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils
+were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that
+hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We
+praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of
+Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this
+result.
+
+[Sidenote: _Two notable Fugitives._]
+
+The _Household Brigade Magazine_ tells an amusing story of a Guardsman
+hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied
+with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right
+loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled
+his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless him!" Such
+a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his own
+loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he exclaimed,
+"Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for him I
+would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"
+
+The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness
+begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of
+Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has
+not been without beneficent influence on our national character and
+destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the
+consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and
+Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its
+tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so
+bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all
+the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war
+began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot
+understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to
+his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon,
+for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely
+will the Vierkleur be victorious."
+
+[Sidenote: _The propaganda of the Africander Bond._]
+
+What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made
+abundantly plain in the pages of _De Patriot_, the once official organ
+of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written:
+"The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the
+British flag. That will never happen. There is just one hindrance to
+Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away,
+and within a year the Confederation under the Free Africander flag
+would be established; but so long as the English flag remains here the
+Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The British must just have
+Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and
+give over all Africa to the Africanders."
+
+It then adds: "Let every Africander in this Colony (that is, the Cape)
+for the sake of security take care that he has a good rifle and a box
+of cartridges, and that he knows how to use them." English trade is to
+be boycotted, nor is this veiled hostility to end even there. "Sell no
+land to Englishmen! We especially say this to our Transvaal brethren.
+The Boers are the landowners, and the proud little Englishmen are
+dependent on the Boers. Now that the war against the English
+Government is over, the war against the English language must begin.
+It must be considered a disgrace to speak English. The English
+governess is a pest. Africander parents, banish this pest from your
+houses!"
+
+Now, however, that Kruger is gone, and the Africander Bond has well
+nigh given up the ghost, English governesses in South Africa will be
+given another chance, which is at least some small compensation for
+all the cost and complicated consequences of this wanton war.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ex-President Steyn_.]
+
+Martinus Theunis Steyn, late President of what was once the Orange
+Free State, is in almost all respects a marked contrast to the
+Transvaal President, whose folly he abetted and whose flight for a
+while he shared. Steyn, speaking broadly, is almost young enough to be
+Kruger's grandson, and was never, as Kruger was from his birth, a
+British subject, for he was born at Wynburg some few years after the
+Orange Free State received its independence. Whilst Kruger was never
+for a single hour under the schoolmaster's rod, and is laughingly said
+even now to be unable to read anything which he has not first
+committed to memory, Steyn is a man of considerable culture, having
+been trained in England as a barrister, and having practised at the
+bar in Bloemfontein for six years before he became President. He
+therefore could not plead ignorance as his excuse when he flung his
+ultimatum in the face of Great Britain and Ireland. Whilst Kruger was
+a man of war from his youth, a "strong, unscrupulous, grim, determined
+man," Steyn never saw a shot fired in his life except in sport till
+this war began, yet all strangely it was the fighting President who
+fled from the face of the Guards, with all their multitudinous
+comrades in arms, and never rested till the sea removed him beyond
+their reach, while the lawyerly President, the man of peace, doubled
+back on his pursuers, returned by rugged by-paths to the land he had
+ruined, and there in association with De Wet became even more a
+fugitive than ancient Cain or the men of Adullam's cave.
+
+That many of his own people hotly disapproved of the course their
+infatuated ruler took is common knowledge; but by no one has that fact
+been more powerfully emphasised than by Paul Botha in his famous book
+"From Boer to Boer." Rightly or wrongly, this is what, briefly put,
+Botha says:--
+
+[Sidenote: _Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President._]
+
+     When as a Free Stater I think of the war and realise that we have
+     lost the independence of our little state, I feel that I could
+     curse Martinus Theunis Steyn who used his country as a stepping
+     stone for the furtherance of his own private ends. He sold his
+     country to the Transvaal in the hope that Paul Kruger's mantle
+     would fall on him. The first time Kruger visited the Orange Free
+     State after Steyn's election the latter introduced him at a
+     public banquet with these words, "This is my Father!" The thought
+     occurred to me at the time, "Yes, and you are waiting for your
+     father's shoes." He hoped to succeed "his father" as President of
+     the combined republics of united South Africa. For this giddy
+     vision he ignored the real interests of our little state, and
+     dragged the country into an absolutely unnecessary and insane
+     war. I maintain there were only two courses open to England in
+     answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to fight, or to retire
+     from South Africa--and it was only possible for men suffering
+     from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were
+     suffering from, to doubt the issue.
+
+     I ask any man to tell me what quarrel we had with England? Was
+     any injury done to us? Such questions make one's hair stand on
+     end. Whether knave or fool, Steyn did not prepare himself
+     adequately for his gigantic undertaking. He commenced this war
+     with a firm trust in God and the most gross negligence. But it is
+     impossible to reason with the men now at the front. With the
+     exception of a few officials these men consist of ignorant
+     "bywoners," augmented by desperate men from the Cape who have
+     nothing to lose, and who lead a jolly rollicking life on
+     commando, stealing and looting from the farmers who have
+     surrendered, and whom they opprobriously call "handsuppers!"
+
+     These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell
+     them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken
+     prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me,
+     after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians,
+     Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily;
+     that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a
+     small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men
+     who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds
+     of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and
+     cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every
+     valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are
+     not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to
+     dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.
+
+As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim
+to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same
+reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no
+kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I
+tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was
+only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted
+what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont--"Every man
+of you deserves promotion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA
+
+
+Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards'
+Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its
+juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to
+take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the
+endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently
+been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!
+
+[Sidenote: _Staggering Humanity._]
+
+Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have
+often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this
+period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their
+purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many
+opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched
+through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one
+might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our
+last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently
+pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder
+onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us.
+A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On
+September 17th, precisely a week before we arrived at Koomati,
+special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across the
+frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity--to
+France, to Germany, to Russia--and amid the curious collection of
+things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I
+saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the
+owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain
+English, thus:--
+
+  P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.
+
+That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own
+to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though
+in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with
+men of almost every nationality under heaven.
+
+[Sidenote: _Food for Flames._]
+
+Humanity was scarcely less severely staggered by the lavish
+destruction of food stuffs and rolling stock we were that day
+compelled to witness. In the sidings of the Koomati railway station,
+as at Kaap Muiden, I found not less than half a mile of loaded trucks
+all blazing furiously. The goods shed was also in flames, and so was a
+gigantic heap of coals for locomotive use, which was still smouldering
+months afterwards. Along the Selati branch I saw what I was told
+amounted to over five miles of empty trucks that had fortunately
+escaped destruction, and later on proved to us of prodigious use.
+
+A war correspondent, who had been with the Portuguese for weeks
+awaiting our advent, assured me that the Boers were so dismayed by the
+tidings of our approach that at first they precipitately fled leaving
+everything untouched; but finding we apparently delayed for a few
+hours our coming, they ventured across the great railway bridge in a
+red cross ambulance train, on which they felt certain we should not
+fire even if our scouts were already in possession of the place; and
+so from the shelter of the red cross these firebrands stepped forth to
+perform their task of almost immeasurable destruction. It is however
+only fair to add that the great majority of these mischief-makers were
+declared to be not genuine Boers, but mercenaries,--a much-mixed
+multitude whose ignominious departure from the Transvaal will minister
+much to its future wholesomeness and honesty.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Crocodile in the Koomati._]
+
+Next morning while with several officers I was enjoying a before
+breakfast bathe, a cry of alarm was raised, and presently I saw those
+who had hurried out of the water taking careful aim at a crocodile
+clinging to a rock in midstream. Revolver shot after revolver shot was
+fired, but I quickly perceived it was the very same crocodile I had
+seen at that very same spot the day before; and as it was quite dead
+then I concluded it was probably still dead, though the officers thus
+furiously assailing it had not yet discovered the fact; so leaving
+them to continue their revolver practice I quietly returned to the
+bubbling waters and finished my bathe in peace.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Hippopotamus in the Koomati._]
+
+Later on a continuous rifle fire at the river side close to the
+Guards' camp attracted general attention, and on going to see what it
+all meant I found a group of Colonials had thus been popping for hours
+at a huge hippopotamus hiding in a deep pool close to the opposite
+bank. Every time the poor brute put its nose above the surface of the
+water half a dozen bullets splashed all around it though apparently
+without effect. The Grenadier officers pronounced such proceedings
+cruel and cowardly, but were without authority to put a stop to it.
+The crocodile is deemed lawful sport because it endangers life, but
+the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it rarely does harm, and is
+growing rarer year by year. I ventured therefore to tell these
+Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad as their marksmanship,
+and that the pleasure which springs from inflicting profitless pain
+was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached to deaf ears, and when soon
+after our camp was broken up that Hippo. was still their target.
+
+[Sidenote: _A Via Dolorosa._]
+
+On the second day of our brief stay at Koomati Poort, I crossed the
+splendid seven spanned bridge over the Koomati River, and noticed that
+the far end was guarded by triple lines of barbed wire, nor was other
+evidence lacking that the Boers purposed to give us a parting blizzard
+under the very shadow of the Portuguese frontier flags.
+
+Then came a sight not often surpassed since Napoleon's flight from
+Moscow. Right up to the Portuguese frontier the slopes of the railway
+line were strewn with every imaginable and unimaginable form of loot
+and wreckage, flung out of the trains as they flew along by the
+frightened burghers. Telegraph instruments, crutches, and rocking
+chairs, frying pans and packets of medicinal powders, wash-hand basins
+and tins of Danish butter lay there in wild profusion; likewise a
+homely wooden box that looked up at me and said "Eat Quaker Oats."
+
+At one point I found a great pile of rifles over which paraffin had
+been freely poured and then set on fire. Hundreds more, broken and
+scattered, were flung in all directions. Then, too, I saw cases of
+dynamite, live shells of every sort and size, and piles of boxes on
+which was painted
+
+                    "_Explosive_ Safety Cartridges
+          Supplied by Vickers, Maxim & Co.; for the use of
+          the Government of the South African Republic."
+
+Likewise boxes of ammunition, broken and unbroken bearing the brand of
+"Kynoch Brothers, Birmingham" were there in piles; and it was while
+some men of the Gordons were superintending the destruction of this
+ammunition that a terrific explosion occurred a few days later by
+which three of them were killed and twenty-one wounded, including the
+"Curio" of the regiment, who was stuck all over with splinters like
+pins in a cushion; and in spite of seven-and-twenty wounds had the
+daring to survive. Byron somewhere tells of an eagle pierced by an
+arrow winged with a feather from its own breast, and in this war many
+a British hero has been riddled by bullets that British hands have
+fashioned. Moreover, among these bullets that thus littered that
+railway track I found vast quantities of the soft-nosed and slit
+varieties of which I brought away some samples; and others coated with
+a something green as verdigris. It is said that in love and war all is
+fair; but we should have more readily believed in the much belauded
+piety of the Boers, if it had deigned to dispense with "soft noses"
+and "explosive safeties," which were none the less cruel or unlawful
+because of British make!
+
+Whole stacks of sugar I also found, in flaming haste to turn
+themselves into rippling lakes of decidedly overdone toffee; and in
+similar fashion piled up sacks of coffee berries were roasting
+themselves not wisely but too well. Pyramids of flour were much in the
+same way baking themselves into cakes, monstrously misshapen, and much
+more badly burnt than King Alfred's ever were. "The Boers are poor
+cooks," laughingly explained our men; "they bake in bulk without
+proper mixing." Nevertheless, along that line everything seemed very
+much mixed indeed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Over the Line._]
+
+On reaching the Portuguese frontier I somewhat ceremoniously saluted
+the Portuguese flag, to the evident satisfaction of the Portuguese
+marines who mounted guard beside it. There were just then about 600 of
+them on duty at Resina Garcia, and as they were for the most part
+dressed in spotless white they looked delightsomely clean and cool.
+Indeed, the contrast between their uniforms and ours was almost
+painfully acute; but it was the contrast between men of war's men in
+holiday attire, which no war had ever touched, and weary war-men
+tattered and torn by ten months' constant contact with its roughest
+usage. A shameful looking lot we were--but ashamed we were not!
+
+As these foreigners on frontier guard knew not a word of English, and
+I unfortunately knew not a word of Portuguese, there seemed small
+chance of any very luminous conversation; but presently I pronounced
+the magic word "Padre," and pointed to the cross upon my collar, when
+lo! a look of intelligence crept into the very dullest face. They
+passed on the word in approving tones from one to another, and I was
+instantly supplied with quite a new illustration of the ancient
+legend, "In hoc signo vinces." In token of respect for my chaplain's
+badge, without passport or payment, I was at once courteously allowed
+to cross the line and set foot in Portuguese Africa. There are
+compensations in every lot, even in a parson's!
+
+The village immediately beyond the frontier is little else than a
+block or two of solidly built barracks, and a well appointed railway
+station, with its inevitable refreshment room, in which a group of
+officers representing the two nationalities were enjoying a friendly
+lunch. But great was my surprise on discovering that the vivacious
+Portuguese proprietor presiding behind the bar was a veritable
+Scotchman hailing from queenly Edinburgh; and still greater was my
+surprise on hearing a sweetly familiar accent on the lips of a
+Colonial scout hungrily waiting on the platform outside till the
+aforesaid officers' lunch was over, and he, a private, might be
+permitted to purchase an equally satisfying lunch and eat it in that
+same refreshment room. It was the accent of the far away "West
+Countree," and told me its owner was like myself a Cornishman. Yet
+what need to be surprised? Were I to take the wings of the morning and
+fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, I should probably find there
+as at Resina Garcia, thriving Scotchman in possession, and a famished
+Cornishman waiting at his gate. To these two, in this fashion, have
+been apportioned the outposts of the habitable globe!
+
+[Sidenote: _Westward Ho!_]
+
+It was to everybody's extreme surprise and delight that at noon on
+Thursday we received sudden orders to leave Koomati Poort at once, and
+to leave it not on foot but by rail. The huge baboon, therefore, which
+had become our latest regimental pet and terror, was promptly
+transferred to other custody, and our scanty kits were packed with
+utmost speed. We soon discovered, however, that it was one thing to
+reach the appointed railway station, and quite another to find the
+appointed train. Two locomotives, in apparently sound condition, had
+been selected from among a multitude of utterly wrecked and ruined
+ones, but serviceable trucks had also to be warily chosen from among
+the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these
+trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long
+before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the
+postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on
+the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was
+to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we
+attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind
+us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
+
+Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.]
+
+As all the regular railway employes had fled with the departing Boers,
+it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to
+do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times
+amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully
+handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey
+engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur
+drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take
+on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get
+it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our
+second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the
+injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a
+quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we
+were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out,
+and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long
+time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a
+journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might
+have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to
+wreck the train immediately following ours--so inflicting fatal or
+other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.
+
+Meanwhile we noted that "fever" trees, with stems of a peculiarly
+green and bilious hue, abounded on both sides the line; trees so
+called, not because they produce fever, but because their presence
+infallibly indicates an area in which fever habitually prevails.
+Hundreds of the troops that followed us into the fatal valley were
+speedily fever-stricken, and it is with a sense of devoutest gratitude
+I record the fact that the Guards' Brigade not only entered Koomati
+Port without the loss of a single life by bullets, but also left it
+without the loss of a single life by fever.
+
+At first at the foot of every incline we were compelled to pause while
+our engines, one in front and one behind, got up an ampler pressure of
+steam, but presently it was suggested that the hundreds of Guardsmen
+on board the train should tumble out of the trucks and shove, which
+accordingly they did, the Colonel himself assenting and assisting. So
+sometimes shoving, always steaming, we pursued our shining way, as we
+fondly supposed, towards Hyde Park corner and "Home, sweet Home."
+
+At Waterval Onder we stayed the night, and I was thus enabled to visit
+once again the tiny international cemetery, referred to in a former
+chapter, where I had laid to rest an unnamed, because unrecognised,
+private of the Devons. Now close beside him in that silent land lay
+the superbly-built Australian, whom I had so often visited in the
+adjoining hospital, and whom our general had promised to recommend for
+"The Distinguished Service Medal." Not yet eighteen, his life work was
+early finished; but by heroisms such as his has our vast South African
+domain been bought; and by graves such as his are the far sundered
+parts of our world-wide empire knit together.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ruined farms and ruined firms._]
+
+Throughout this whole journey I was painfully impressed not only by
+the almost total absence of all signs of present-day cultivation, even
+where such cultivation could not but prove richly remunerative, but
+also by the still sadder fact that many of the farmhouses we sighted
+were in ruins. Along this Delagoa line, as in other parts of the
+Transvaal, there had been so much sniping at trains, and so many
+cases of scouts being fired at from farmhouses over which the white
+flag floated, that this particular form of retribution and repression,
+which we none the less deplored, seemed essential to the safety of all
+under our protection; and in defence thereof I heard quoted, as
+peculiarly appropriate to the Boer temperament and tactics, the
+familiar lines:--
+
+          Softly, gently, touch a nettle,
+          And it stings you for your pains;
+          Grasp it like a man of mettle,
+          And it soft as silk remains.
+
+Amajuba led to a fatal misjudgement of the British by the Boer. In all
+leniency, the latter now recognises only an encouraging lack of grit,
+which persuades him to prolong the contest by whatever tactics suit
+him best. Its effect resembles that of the Danegeld our Saxon fathers
+paid their oversea invaders, with a view to staying all further
+strife. Their gifts were interpreted as a sign of craven fear, and
+merely taught the recipients to clamour greedily for more. Long before
+this cruel war closed it became clear as noonday that Boer hostilities
+could not be bought off by a crippling clemency, and that an
+ever-discriminating severity is, in practice, mercy of the truest and
+most effective type.
+
+How great the pressure on the military authorities became in
+consequence of these frequent breakages of the railway line, and how
+serious the inconvenience to the mercantile community, as indeed to
+the whole civil population, may be judged from the fact that only on
+the day of my return from Resina Garcia did the Pretoria merchants
+receive their first small consignments of food stuffs since the
+arrival of the British troops some four months before. Clothing,
+boots, indeed goods of any other type than food, they had still not
+the faintest hope of getting up from the coast for many a week to
+come. War is always hard alike on public stores and private cupboards;
+but seldom have the supplies of any town, not actually undergoing a
+siege, been more nearly exhausted than were those of Pretoria at the
+time now referred to. For hungry and impecunious folk the City of
+Roses was fast becoming a bed of thorns.
+
+[Sidenote: _Farewell to the Guards' Brigade._]
+
+From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our
+homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was
+broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was
+accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point,
+therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.
+
+For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely
+uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of
+camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night
+and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses
+immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect.
+Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all
+respects my warmest admiration.
+
+Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that
+they were all God-fearing men; nor did many among them claim to be
+such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was their
+traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr
+Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of
+our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never
+hear any of them swear. The colonel is very severe on those who use
+bad language, and if he hears any he says, 'I tell you I will not
+allow it. If you want to use such language go out on to the veldt and
+swear at the stones, but I will not permit you to contaminate the men
+by such language in the lines. I won't have it!'"
+
+Not all battalions in the British army are built that way, nor do all
+British officers row in the same boat with that aforesaid colonel.
+Nevertheless, I am prepared to echo the opinion expressed by Julian
+Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:--"They were
+emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud,
+polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and
+spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to
+those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had
+been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of
+them represented families of historic and world-wide renown. It was,
+therefore, somewhat of an astonishment to see such men continually
+roughing it in a fashion that navvies would scarcely consent to do at
+home; drinking water that, as our colonel said, one would not
+willingly give to a dog; and sometimes sleeping in ditches without
+even a rug to cover them.
+
+Wild assertions have been made in some ill-informed papers about these
+officers being ill-informed, and even Conan Doyle complains that he
+saw only one young officer studying an Army Text-Book in the course of
+the whole campaign; but then, when kits are cut down to a maximum
+weight of thirty-seven pounds, what room is there for books even on
+tactics? The tactics of actual battle are better teachers than any
+text-books; and a cool head, with a courageous heart, is often of more
+value in a tight corner than any amount of merely technical knowledge.
+It is true that some of our officers have blundered, but then, in most
+cases, it was their first experience of real war, especially of war
+amid conditions entirely novel. It was more personal initiative, not
+more text-book; more caution, not more courage that was most commonly
+required. To inspire his men with tranquil confidence, one officer
+after another exposed himself to needless perils, and was, as we fear,
+wastefully done to death. But be that as it may the Guards' Brigade,
+men and officers alike, I rank among the bravest of the brave; and my
+association with them for so long a season, I reckon one of the
+highest honours of a happy life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES
+
+
+What Conan Doyle rightly described as "The great _Boer_ War" came
+eventually to be called yet more correctly "The great _Bore_ War." It
+grew into a weariness that might well have worn out the patience and
+exhausted the resources of almost any nation. No one for a moment
+imagined when we reached Koomati Poort that we had come only to the
+half-way house of our toils and travels, and that there still lay
+ahead of us another twelve months' cruel task. From the very first to
+the very finish it has been a war of sharp surprises, and to most the
+sharpest surprise of all has been this its wasteful and wanton
+prolonging.
+
+[Sidenote: _Exhaustlessness of Boer resources._]
+
+We wondered early, and we wondered late, at the seeming
+exhaustlessness of the Boer resources. In their frequent flights they
+destroyed, or left for us to capture, almost fabulously large supplies
+of food and ammunition; yet at the end of two years of such incessant
+waste Kaffirs were still busy pointing out to us remote caves filled
+with food stuffs, as in Seccicuni's country, or large pits loaded to
+the brim with cases of cartridges. A specially influential Boer
+prisoner told me he himself had been present at many such burials,
+when 250 cases of mauser ammunition were thus secreted in one place,
+and then a similar quantity in another, and I have it on the most
+absolute authority possible that when the war began the Boers
+possessed not less than 70,000,000 rounds of ball cartridge, and
+200,000 rifles of various patterns, which would be tantamount to two
+for every adult Dutchman in all South Africa. Kruger, in declaring
+war, did not leap before he looked, or put the kettle on the fire
+without first procuring an ample supply of coal to keep it boiling.
+For many a month before hostilities commenced, if not for years, all
+South Africa lay in the hollow of Kruger's hand, excepting only the
+seaport towns commanded by our naval guns. At any moment he could have
+overrun our South African colonies and none could have said him nay.
+These colonies we held, though we knew it not, on Boer sufferance. At
+the end of two years of incessant fighting we barely made an end of
+the invasion of Cape Colony and Natal, and the altogether unsuspected
+difficulty of the task is the true index of the deadliness of the
+peril from which this dreadful war has delivered the whole empire.
+
+[Sidenote: _The peculiarity of the Boer tactics._]
+
+How it was the Boers did not succeed at the very outset in driving the
+British into the sea, when we had only skeleton forces to oppose them,
+was best explained to me by a son of the late State Secretary, who
+penned the ultimatum, and whom I found among our prisoners in
+Pretoria. The Boers are not farmers. Speaking broadly there is
+scarcely an acre of ploughed land in all the Transvaal. "The men are
+shepherds, their trade hath been to feed cattle." But before they
+could thus, like the Patriarchs, become herdsmen, they perforce still,
+like their much loved Hebrew prototypes, had to become hunters, and
+clear the land of savage beasts and savage men. The hunter's
+instincts, the hunter's tactics were theirs, and no hunter comes out
+into the open if he can help it. It is no branch of his business to
+make a display of his courage and to court death. His part is to kill,
+so silently, so secretly, as to avoid being killed. Traps and
+tricking, not to say treachery, and shooting from behind absolutely
+safe cover, are the essential points in a hunter's tactics. Caution to
+him is more than courage, and it is precisely along those lines the
+Boers make war. In almost every case when they ventured into the open
+it was the doing of their despised foreign auxiliaries. The kind of
+courage required for the actual conquest of the colonies the Boers had
+never cultivated or acquired. The men who in six months and six days
+could not rush little Mafeking hoped in vain to capture Cape Town,
+unless they caught it napping. But in defensive warfare, in cunningly
+setting snares like that at Sanna's Post, in skilful concealment as at
+Modder River, when all day long most of our men were quite unable to
+discover on which side of the stream the Boer entrenchments were, and
+in what they called clever trickery, but we called treachery, they are
+absolutely unsurpassable. So was it through the earlier stages of the
+campaign. So was it through the later stages.
+
+Another cause of Boer failure as explained to me by the State
+Secretary's son was the inexperience and incompetency of their
+generals, who had won what little renown was theirs in Zulu or Kaffir
+wars. Amajuba, at which only about half a battalion of our troops took
+part, was the biggest battle they had ever fought against the British,
+and it led the more illiterate among them to believe they could whip
+all England's armies as easily as they could sjambok a Kaffir. Their
+leaders of course knew better, but even they believed there was being
+played a game of bluff on both sides, with this vital difference,
+however--we bluffed, and, as they full well knew, did not prepare;
+they bluffed, and, to an extent we never knew, did prepare. Though
+therefore their generals were amateurs in the arts of modern warfare
+as so many of our own proved to be, they confidently reckoned that, if
+they could strike a staggering blow whilst we were as yet unready,
+they would inevitably win a second Amajuba. Magnanimity would again
+leave them masters of the situation, and if not, European intervention
+would presently compel us to arbitrate away our claims. But Joubert's
+softness, Schoeman's incompetency and Cronje's surrender spoiled the
+project just when success seemed in sight. One other cause of Boer
+failure which remained in force to the very last was their utter lack
+of discipline. My specially frank and intelligent informant said no
+Boer ever took part in a fight unless he felt so inclined. He claimed
+liberty to ignore the most urgent commands of his field cornet, and
+might even unreproved slap him in the face. Such decidedly independent
+fighting may serve for the defence of an almost inaccessible kopje,
+but an attack conducted on such lines is almost sure to fall to
+pieces. It was therefore seldom attempted, but many a lawless deed
+was done, like firing on ambulances and funeral parties, for which no
+leader can well be held responsible.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Surprisers Surprised._]
+
+This light formation lent itself, however, excellently well to the
+success of the guerilla type of warfare, which the Boers maintained
+for more than twelve months after all their principal towns were
+taken. Solitary snipers were thus able from safe distances to pick off
+unsuspecting man, or horse, or ox, and, if in danger of being traced,
+could hide the bandolier and pose as a peace-loving citizen seeking
+his own lost ox.
+
+In some cases small detachments of our men on convoy or outpost duty
+were cut off by these ever-watchful, ever-wandering bands of Boers,
+and an occasional gun or pom-pom was temporarily captured, a result
+for which in one case at least extra rum rations were reputed to be
+responsible. But it must be remembered that our men and officers,
+regular and irregular alike, were as inexperienced as the Boers in
+many of the novel duties this war devolved upon them; that the
+Transvaal lends itself as scarcely any other country under the sun
+could do to just such surprises, and that the ablest generals served
+by the trustiest scouts have in the most heroic periods of our history
+sometimes found themselves face to face with the unforeseen. We are
+assured, for instance, that even on the eve of Waterloo both Blucher
+and Wellington were caught off their guard by their great antagonist.
+On June 15th, at the very moment when the French columns were
+actually crossing the Belgian frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar
+explaining his intention to take the offensive about a fortnight
+hence; and Blucher only a few days before had sent word to his wife
+that the Allies would soon enter France, for if they waited where they
+were for another year, Bonaparte would never attack them. Yet the very
+next day, June 16th, at Ligny, Bonaparte hurled himself like a
+thunderbolt on Blucher, and three days after, Wellington, having
+rushed from the Brussels ballroom to the battlefield at Waterloo,
+there saved himself and Europe, "so as by fire."
+
+The occasional surprises our troops have sustained in the Transvaal
+need not stagger us, however much they ruffle our national
+complacency. They are not the first we have had to face, and may
+possibly prove by no means the last; but it is at least some sort of
+solace to know that however often we were surprised during the last
+long lingering stages of the war, our men yet more frequently
+surprised their surprisers. Whilst I was still there in July 1901,
+there were brought into Pretoria the surviving members of the
+Executive of the late Orange Free State, all notable men, all caught
+in their night-dresses--President Steyn alone escaping in shirt and
+pants; whilst his entire bodyguard, consisting of sixty burghers, were
+at the same time sent as prisoners to Bloemfontein. Laager after
+laager during those weary months was similarly surprised, and waggons
+and oxen and horses beyond all counting were captured, till apparently
+scarcely a horse or hoof or pair of heels was left on all the
+far-reaching veldt. The Boers resolutely chose ruin rather than
+surrender, and so, alas, the ruin came; for many, ruin beyond all
+remedy!
+
+[Sidenote: _Train Wrecking._]
+
+During this same period of despairing resistance the Boers imparted to
+the practice of train wrecking the finish of a fine art. At first they
+confined their attentions to troop trains, which are presumably lawful
+game; and as I was returning from Koomati Poort the troop train that
+immediately followed that on which I travelled was thus thrown off the
+rails near Pan, and about twenty of the Coldstream Guards, by whose
+side I had tramped for so many months, were killed or severely
+injured. The provision trains on which not the soldiers only, but the
+Boers' own wives and children, depended for daily food, were wrecked,
+looted or set on fire. Finally, they took to dynamiting ordinary
+passenger trains, and robbed of their personal belongings helpless
+women, including nursing sisters.
+
+In Pretoria, I had the privilege of conversing with a cultured and
+godly lady who told me that she had been twice wrecked on her one
+journey up from the coast, and that the wrecking was as usual of a
+fatal type though fortunately not for her. Like one of the ironies of
+fate seemed the fact, of which she further informed me, that she had
+brought with her from England some hundreds of pounds' worth of bodily
+comforts, and yet more abounding spiritual consolations for free
+distribution among the wives and children of the very men who thus in
+one single journey had twice placed her life in deadly peril.
+
+Among the Bush Veldt Carabineers at Pietersburg I found an
+engine-driver who in the course of a few months had thus been shot at
+and shattered by Boer drivers till he grew so sick of it that he threw
+up a situation worth L30 a month and joined the Fighting Scouts by way
+of finding some less perilous vocation. On the Sunday I spent there I
+worshipped with the Gordons who had survived the siege of Ladysmith;
+the day following as I returned to Pretoria, the train I travelled by
+was thrice ineffectually sniped; but soon after the turn of these same
+Gordons came to escort a train on that same line when nearly every man
+among them was killed or wounded, including their officer, and a
+sergeant with whom during that visit I had bowed in private prayer;
+but the driver, stoker and guard were deliberately led aside and shot
+after capture in cold blood. So my friend in the Carabineers had not
+long to wait for the justifying of his strange choice. Not until
+Norman William had planted stout Norman castles at every commanding
+point could he complete the conquest of our Motherland; and not until
+sturdy little block-houses sprang up thick and fast beside 5000 miles
+of rail and road was travelling in the Transvaal robbed of its worst
+peril, and the subjugation of the country made complete.
+
+The worst of all our railway smashes, however, occurred close to
+Pretoria, and was caused by what seemed a bit of criminal
+carelessness, which resulted in a terrific collision. A Presbyterian
+chaplain who was in the damaged train showed me his battered and
+broken travelling trunk; but close beside the wreckage I saw the
+more terribly broken bodies of nine brave men awaiting burial. It was
+a tragedy too exquisitely distressing to be here described.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Refugee Camps._]
+
+When the two Republics were formally annexed to the British Crown all
+the women and children scattered far and wide over the interminable
+veldt, were made British subjects by the very act; and from that hour
+for their support and safety the British Government became
+responsible. Yet all ordinary traffic by road or rail had long been
+stopped. All country stores were speedily cleared and closed. All farm
+stock or produce was gathered up and carried off, first by one set of
+hungry belligerents, then by the others; physic was still more scarce
+than food, and prowling bands of blacks or whites intensified the
+peril. The creation of huge concentration camps, all within easy reach
+of some railway, thus became an urgent necessity. No such prodigious
+enterprise could be carried through its initial stages without
+hardships having to be endured by such vast hosts of refugees,
+hardships only less severe than those the troops themselves sustained.
+
+What I saw of these camps at Hiedelburg, Barberton, and elsewhere made
+me wonder that so much had been done, and so well done; but a gentle
+lady sent from England to look for faults and flaws, and who was
+lovingly doing her best to find them, complained to me that all the
+tents were not quite sound, which I can quite believe. Canvas that is
+in constant use won't last for ever, and it is quite conceivable that
+at the end of a two years' campaign some of the tents in use were
+visibly the worse for wear. Thousands of our soldiers, however, went
+for a while without tents of any sort, while the families of their
+foes were being thus carefully sheltered in such tents as could then
+be procured. It is, moreover, in some measure reassuring to remember
+that the winter weather here is almost perfect, not a solitary shower
+falling for weeks together, and that within these tents were army
+blankets both thick and plentiful.
+
+Complaint was also made in my presence that mutton, and yet again
+mutton, and only mutton, was supplied to the refugee camps by way of
+fresh meat rations, and that, moreover, a whole carcase, being mostly
+skin and bone, sometimes weighed only about twelve pounds. It is quite
+true that the scraggy Transvaal sheep would be looked down on and
+despised by their fat and far-famed English cousins, especially at
+that season of the year when the veldt is as bare and barren as the
+Sahara; but it surely is no fault of the British Government that not a
+green blade can anywhere be seen during these long rainless months,
+and that consequently all the flocks look famished. South African
+mutton is, at the best of times, a by no means dainty dish to set
+before a king, much less before the wife of a belligerent Boer; but
+British officers and men had to feed upon it and be content.
+
+That no fresh beef, however, was by any chance supplied sounded to me
+quite a new charge, and set me enquiring as to its accuracy. I
+therefore wrote to one of the meat contractors, whom I personally knew
+as a man of specially good repute, and in reply was informed that for
+seven months he had regularly supplied the refugee camp in his
+neighbourhood with fresh beef as well as mutton, neither being always
+prime, he said, but the best that in war time the veldt could be made
+to yield! Those who hunt for grievances at a time like this can always
+find them, though when weighed in the balances they may perchance
+prove even lighter than Transvaal sheep.
+
+It is undeniable that the child mortality in these refugee camps has
+been high compared with the average that prevails in a healthy English
+town. But the South African average, especially during the fever
+season, usually reaches quite another figure. A Hollander predikant,
+whom I found among our prisoners, told me that he, his wife, and his
+three children were all down with fever, but were without physic, and
+almost without food, when the English found them in the low country
+beyond Pietersburg, and brought them into camp. Nearly all their
+neighbours were in the same sad plight, and several died before they
+could be moved. In that and similar cases the camp mortality was bound
+to be high, but it takes a free-tongued Britisher to assert that it
+was the fault of the ever brutal British. In some camps there was an
+epidemic of measles, which occasionally occurs even in the happy
+homeland; but in the least sanitary refugee camp the mortality was
+never so high as in some of our own military fever camps, where the
+epidemic raged like a plague, and for many a weary week refused to be
+stayed. It should be remembered also that all the healthy manhood of
+the country was either still out on commando or in the oversea camps
+provided for our prisoners of war. The men brought in as refugees were
+only those who had no fight left in them--the halt, the maimed, the
+blind, the sick of every sort, the bent by extreme old age, the dying.
+I was startled by the specimens I saw. Here were gathered all the
+frailnesses and infirmities of two Republics; and to test an
+improvised camp of such a class by the standards which we rightly
+apply to an average English town is as misleading as it is
+mischievous.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Grit of the Guards._]
+
+When voyaging on _The Nubia_ with the Scots Guards they often
+laughingly assured me it was the merest "walk over" that awaited us,
+and so in due time we discovered it to be. But it was a walk over well
+nigh the whole of South Africa, especially for these Scots. While
+during the second year of the war the Grenadiers were doing excellent
+work, chiefly in the northern part of Cape Colony, and the Coldstreams
+were similarly employed mainly along the lines of communication in the
+Orange River Colony, the Scots Guards trekked north, south, east and
+west. As a mere matter of mileage but much more as a matter of
+endurance they broke all previous records.
+
+I have more than once written so warmly in praise of the daring and
+endurance of these men as to make me fear my words might for that very
+reason be heavily discounted. I was therefore delighted to find in
+Julian Ralph's "At Pretoria" a kindred eulogy: "When I passed through
+the camps of the Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstream Guards the other
+day, I thought I never saw men more wretchedly and pitifully
+circumstanced. The officers are the drawing-room pets of London
+society, which in large measure they rule.... Well, there they were on
+the veldt looking like a lot of half drowned rats, as indeed they had
+been ever since the cold season and the rains had set in. You would
+not like to see a vagabond dog fare as they were doing. They had no
+tents. They could get no dry wood to make fires with. They were soaked
+to the bone night and day, and they stood about in mud toe-deep.
+Titled and untitled alike all were in the same scrape, and all were
+stoutly insisting that it didn't matter; it was all in the game."
+
+[Sidenote: _The Irregulars._]
+
+During this second period of the war the staying powers of the
+Irregulars was no less severely tested. Here and there there was a
+momentary failure, but as a whole the men did superbly. Multitudes of
+the Colonials, who on completing their first term of service, returned
+to Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, actually re-enlisted for a
+second term, and in several cases paid their own passage to the Cape
+in order to rejoin. The Colonials are incomparably keener Imperialists
+than we ourselves claim to be. Some of the officers of these Irregular
+troops were themselves of a most irregular type, and in the case of
+town, or mine, or cattle, Guards were occasionally chosen, not with
+reference to any martial fitness they might possess, but because of
+their knowledge of and influence over the men they now commanded, and
+previously in civilian life had probably employed. One of these called
+his men to "fall in--_two thick_!" and another, when he wanted to halt
+his Guards, is reported to have thrown up his arms and said, "Whoa!
+Stop!" None need wonder if troops so handled sometimes found
+themselves in a tight corner. Yet of these newly recruited Irregulars,
+as of the most staid Reservists, there was good reason to be proud;
+and as concerning his own Irregulars in the Peninsular War Wellington
+said that with them he could go anywhere or do anything, so were these
+also as a whole entitled to similar confidence and to a similar
+tribute.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Testimony of the Cemetery._]
+
+How fully these citizen soldiers hazarded their lives for the empire
+every cemetery in South Africa bears sad and silent witness, including
+the one I know so well in Pretoria. Indeed that particular
+burial-place is to me the most pathetic spot on earth, and enshrines
+in striking fashion the whole history of the Transvaal, whereof only
+one or two illustrations can here be given. In a tiny walled
+enclosure--a cemetery within a cemetery--filled with the soldier
+victims of our earlier wars, I found a slab whereon was this
+inscription:--
+
+              "To the memory of Corporal Henry Watson,
+            Who died at Pretoria 17th May 1877; aged 25 years.
+              He was the first British Soldier to give up his
+              life in the service of his Country, _on the annexation_
+              of the Transvaal Republic!"
+
+Near by on another slab I read:--
+
+            "In loving memory of John Mitchell Elliott
+            Aged 37. Captain and Paymaster of the 94th Regiment,
+            Who was killed for Queen and Country
+            while crossing the Vaal River on the night of
+            Dec. 29th, 1880."
+
+There, too, I found one other slab which recorded in this strange
+style the closing of a most ignoble chapter in our imperial history:--
+
+     "This Cemetery was planted, and the graves left in good repair by
+     the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, _prior to the evacuation_
+     of Pretoria, 1881."
+
+Two brief decades rush away, and once again that same cemetery opens
+wide its gates to welcome new battalions of British soldiers, each of
+whom like his forerunner of 1877 "gave up his life in the service of
+his country"; but these late-comers represent every province and
+almost every hamlet of a far-reaching empire, as well as every branch
+of the service; while over all and applicable to all alike is the
+epitaph on the tomb of the Hampshire Volunteers, "We answered duty's
+call!"
+
+[Sidenote: _Death and Life in Pretoria._]
+
+The Dutch section of that cemetery also witnessed some sensational
+scenes during the period now referred to.
+
+On July 20th Mrs Kruger, the ex-President's wife, died, and as one of
+a prodigious crowd I attended her homely funeral. She was herself
+well-nigh the homeliest woman in Pretoria, and one of the most
+illiterate; but precisely because she was content to be her simple
+God-fearing self, put on no airs, and intermeddled not in matters
+beyond her ken, she was universally respected and regretted.
+
+During this second period of the war the troops in Pretoria continued
+to justify Lord Roberts' description of them as "the best-behaved army
+in the world." The Sunday evening services in Wesley Church were
+always crowded with them, and the nightly meetings held in the
+S.A.G.M. marquees were not only wonderfully well attended but were
+also marked by much spiritual power. Pretoria, after we took
+possession of it, witnessed many a tear, and occasional tragedies; but
+it was in Pretoria I heard a young Canadian soldier sing the following
+song, which aptly illustrates the type of life to which many a trooper
+has more or less fully attained during this South African campaign:--
+
+            I'm walking close to Jesus' side,
+              So close that I can hear
+            The softest whispers of His love
+              In fellowship so dear,
+            _And feel His great Almighty hand
+            Protects me in this hostile land_.
+                    Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,
+                    I've Jesus with me all the time!
+
+            I'm leaning on His loving breast
+              Along life's weary way;
+            My path illumined by His smiles
+              Grows brighter day by day;
+            _No foes, no woes, my heart can fear
+            With my Almighty Friend so near_.
+                    Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,
+                    I've Jesus with me all the time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY
+
+
+During the next few months many events occurred in Pretoria of vital
+interest to the whole empire, and especially to the various members of
+the Royal Family. To these this seems the fittest place to refer,
+though most of them took place during my various return visits to
+Pretoria, and are therefore not precisely ranged in due chronologic
+order.
+
+[Sidenote: _Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty._]
+
+It was an ever memorable scene I witnessed in the Kirk Square when the
+Union Jack was once more formally hoisted in the midst of armed men, a
+miscellaneous crowd of cheering civilians, and an important group of
+Basuto chiefs who had been specially invited to witness the
+ceremonious annexation of the conquered territory and to hear
+proclaimed the Royal pleasure that the erstwhile "South African
+Republic" should henceforth be known by the new, yet older, title of
+"The Transvaal."
+
+So came to an end the Queen's Suzerainty;--an ill-omened term, which
+had proved fruitful in all conceivable kinds of misinterpretation, and
+made possible the misunderstandings and controversies that culminated
+in this cruel and wasteful war. So was resumed the Queen's
+Sovereignty, which as subsequent events proved, ought never to have
+been renounced; and so too was made plain the way for that ultimate
+federation of all South Africa, under one glorious flag, for which
+Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere long years before had laboured
+apparently in vain. This fresh unfurling of that flag was a pledge of
+equal liberties alike for Boer and Briton, as well as of fair play to
+the natives. It was a guarantee that the Pax Britannica would
+henceforth be maintained from the Zambesi to the Cape, and that in
+this vast area, well nigh as large as all Europe, there would be
+nursed into matureness and majestic strength, a new Anglo-Saxon
+nation, essentially Christian, essentially liberty-loving, and
+rivalling in wealth, in enterprise and prowess, the ripest promise of
+united Canada, and newly federated Australia.
+
+In this Imperial conflict the heroic fashion in which both those
+Commonwealths rallied for the defence of our Imperial flag is one of
+the most hopeful facts in modern history. "Waterloo," said Wellington,
+"did more than any other battle I know of toward the true object of
+all battles--the peace of the world." A similar comment both by
+victors and vanquished may possibly hereafter be made concerning this
+deplorable Boer war. But that can come to pass only provided we as a
+united people strive to cherish more fully the spirit embodied in
+Kipling's Diamond Jubilee Recessional:
+
+              God of our fathers, known of old,--
+                Lord of our far-flung battle-line,--
+              Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold
+                Dominion over palm and pine,--
+              Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+              Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+                     *       *       *
+
+              For heathen heart that puts her trust
+                In reeking tube and iron shard--
+              All valiant dust that builds on dust,
+                And guarding calls not Thee to guard,--
+              For frantic boast and foolish word,
+              Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!--AMEN.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Christian Victor._]
+
+To Dr Macgregor the Queen is reported to have said at Balmoral in
+November 1900, "My heart bleeds for these terrible losses. The war
+lies heavy on my heart." And Lord Wantage assures us that her
+Majesty's very last words, spoken only a few weeks later, were "Oh
+that peace may come!" Both assertions may well find credence; so
+characteristic are they of her whom all men revered and loved. As the
+head and representative of the whole empire, every bereavement caused
+by the war had in it for her a kind of personal element. But her
+sympathies and sufferings were destined to become more than merely
+vicarious. As in connection with one of our petty West African wars
+she was compelled to mourn the death of Prince Henry of Battenberg, so
+in the course of this South African war death again invaded her own
+immediate circle. The griefs that hastened her end were strongly
+personal as well as representative, and so made her all the more the
+true representative of those she ruled.
+
+It was in the early days of that dull November, tidings reached her
+and us of the dangerous illness of Prince Christian Victor. Not alone
+in name was he Christian; and not alone in name was he Victor. On the
+voyage out, in the _Braemar Castle_, through the absence of a
+chaplain, the prince conducted divine worship with the troops. One of
+our best appointed hospital trains was "The Princess Christian
+Victor," so called presumably because provided by the bounty of his
+and her princely hands and hearts. He was what Sir Ascelin declared
+"The last of the English" to be--"A very perfect knight, beloved and
+honoured of all men."
+
+It therefore alarmed both town and camp to learn that enteric, the
+deadliest of all a soldier's foes, had claimed him, like so many a
+lowlier man, for its prey, and that his life was in mortal peril. At
+that time he was a patient in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital which
+consisted of Mr T. W. Beckett's beautiful mansion, and a formidable
+array of tents that almost covered the whole of the extensive grounds.
+Here prince and private alike reaped the fruit of the lavish
+beneficence which provided and maintained this magnificent hospital.
+All that wealth could procure was there of skill and tenderness, and
+such appliances as the healing art requires. All was there, except the
+power to command success. With what seemed startling suddenness the
+prince's vital powers collapsed, and the half masting of flags, far
+and wide, told to friend and foe the tidings of the Queen's
+irreparable loss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_
+
+Part of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's
+Mansion at Pretoria.]
+
+[Sidenote: _A Royal Funeral._]
+
+It was at first proposed that the body of the prince should be taken
+to England for interment, and certain companies of the Grenadiers, to
+which battalion I was still attached, were detailed for escort duty,
+but finally it was decided all fittingly that he should be laid to
+rest in the city where he fell, and among the comrades who like him
+had laid down life in defence of Queen and duty. So Pretoria witnessed
+a stately funeral, the like of which South Africa had never seen
+before, as the Queen's own kinsman was borne, by the martial
+representatives of the whole empire, to the quiet cemetery which this
+war had so enlarged and so enriched.
+
+Disease and fatal woundings combined cost us in this strangely
+protracted conflict, scarcely more lives than the one great fight at
+Waterloo, where on the English side alone 15,000 fell,--for the most
+part to rise no more. In this South African war, up to January 31st,
+1901, about 7700 of our men had died of disease; 700 by accidents; and
+4300 of wounds. But this Pretoria cemetery like that at Bloemfontein,
+where 1500 interments took place in less than fifteen months, affords
+striking testimony to the common loyalty of all classes throughout the
+empire. Volunteers belonging to the Imperial Light Horse, raised
+exclusively in South Africa here lie, side by side, with volunteers
+belonging to the Imperial Yeomanry, raised exclusively in England.
+Sons of the empire, from Canadian Vancouver and Australian Victoria,
+here find a common sepulchre. The soldier prince whose dwelling was in
+king's palaces here becomes, as in the conflict of the battlefield so
+in the quiet of a hero's grave, a comrade of the private soldier whose
+dwelling was a cottage; and be it noted, the death of the lowliest may
+involve quite as much of heartbreak as the lordliest.
+
+[Sidenote: _A touching story._]
+
+At the close of a simple military funeral in this same cemetery, the
+orderly in charge came to me and said, "I never felt so much over any
+case. This grave means four orphans left to the care of an invalid
+mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for
+his family when he got back: but _this_ is the end of it!" That dead
+soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades
+was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung
+over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed.
+It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was
+a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a
+trumpeter; but they are none the less terrible on that account; and if
+half the truth were known and realised concerning the horrors and
+heartbreak caused by war, all Christendom would clamour for its speedy
+superseding by honest Courts of Arbitration.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_
+
+Wesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.]
+
+[Sidenote: _The death of the Queen._]
+
+I was still in Pretoria when tidings arrived concerning the illness
+and death of the Queen; and was present in that same Kirk Square when
+King Edward VII. was proclaimed "Overlord of the Transvaal." In
+connection with the former event a memorial service, at which the
+military were largely represented, was held in Wesley Church on
+Sunday, January 27th. The Rev. Geo. Weavind, as well as Rev. H. W.
+Goodwin, took part in the proceedings, and I was privileged to deliver
+the following address which may serve to illustrate, once for all, the
+type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:--
+
+  "I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."
+  --Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).
+
+As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender
+as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no
+mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's
+grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite
+exactness our common attitude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any
+other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We
+behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and
+almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over
+the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus
+feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.
+
+I. _It is the death of the representative_ MOTHER _of our race and age
+that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us._ For any record of
+such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history.
+She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any
+potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy
+memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen
+Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of
+Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in
+her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as
+capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old
+age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not
+by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of
+statesmanship will she be longest and most lovingly remembered. Put
+it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own person she honoured
+family life and kept it pure, when for generations such pureness had
+seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most popular portraits
+represent her as the centre of a group of her own children,
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren--a chain of living royalties
+reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in Israel
+before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by potent
+blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The Queen
+retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last she
+lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore even
+imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than that
+by which the new King conveyed to the Lord Mayor of London, tidings of
+the great Queen's death:--
+
+     "My beloved Mother passed peacefully away, at 6.30, _surrounded
+     by her children and grandchildren_."
+
+In the midst of her children she lived; and all fittingly in the midst
+of her children she died!
+
+As her most signal virtues were of the domestic type, so also her
+acutest sorrows were domestic. A father's strongly tender love, or
+wisely-watchful care, she never knew. In one sad year there was taken
+from her her long-widowed mother, and her almost idolized husband,
+Albert the Good.
+
+            "Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
+             Whose glory was redeeming human wrong;
+             Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;
+             ... thro' all the tract of years,
+             Wearing the white flower of a blameless life."
+
+Concerning that great sorrow, the Queen was wont in homely phrase to
+say that it made so large a hole in her heart, all other sorrows
+dropped lightly through. Nevertheless of other sorrows too she was
+called to bear no common share. As you are all well aware, two of the
+daughters of our widowed Queen have themselves long been widows. Two
+of her sons perished in their ripening prime. Her favourite daughter,
+the Princess Alice, and her favourite grandson, the heir-presumptive
+to her throne, drooped beside her like flowers untimely touched by
+frost; and within the last few weeks we ourselves have seen yet
+another of her grandsons laid beneath the sod in this very city of
+Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we call to mind
+that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in
+the service of his queen--and ours; and perchance the Queen herself
+rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called
+in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people,
+whom recent events have made so desolate.
+
+Reverentially we may venture to say that in all afflictions she was
+afflicted, and thus endeared herself to those she ruled as no other
+monarch ever did. Because she was Queen of Sorrows she became also
+Queen of Hearts.
+
+That of which we have just spoken was indeed her last sore
+bereavement; and now that to her who shed such countless tears there
+has come the end of all grief, we have therewith witnessed the full
+and final prevailings of her Laureate's familiar prayer:--
+
+                                "May all love
+            His love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee;
+            The love of all thy sons encompass thee,
+            The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,
+            The love of all thy people comfort thee:
+            _Till God's love set thee at his side again_."
+
+The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a nobler bridal
+day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!
+
+II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle
+of her own household. _She was emphatically the mother of her
+people_--a people multitudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One
+fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her
+gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere
+satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and
+to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow
+beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and
+church of every class and creed, men render thanks for one "who
+wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their God that
+
+            "A thousand claims to reverence closed
+            In her, as mother, wife, and queen."
+
+Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations
+became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have
+become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She
+rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of
+the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating
+hurricane in the West, called forth from her an instant telegram of
+queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every effort for the
+betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest. The east end of
+London, only less well than the west, was known to her. From Windsor
+to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that with her own hand she
+might distribute flowers among her wounded soldiers, and with her own
+lips speak to them words of solace. At that same inclement season she
+crossed the Irish Channel to show her vulnerable face once more among
+her Irish people, and I should not marvel if for such a queen some
+would even dare to die!
+
+It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than
+with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among
+us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to
+find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence
+crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked
+immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a
+majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love
+and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best
+informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!
+
+III. _Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely
+due to the unexampled length of her reign._
+
+That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found
+in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the
+first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three
+elder sons all died childless, and that her own father died within a
+few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly a
+special gift of God to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest
+of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to
+last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a
+regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months
+longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity
+upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There
+was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious
+illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to
+cease at once to work and live.
+
+So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser,
+the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall
+soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent
+intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became
+increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her
+life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side
+amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new
+acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us
+are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.
+
+Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes
+in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the
+result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a
+dastardly assassin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield
+and exceeding great reward deigned to compass our Queen with songs of
+deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and that she
+may long reign over us is a petition that in special measure has
+prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and
+two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the
+inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our
+streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!
+
+IV. _The Queen's whole reign was frankly based on the fear of God_;
+and to find such in English history I fear we shall have to travel
+back a full thousand years to the days of Alfred the Great, who was
+also Alfred the Good, and whose favourite saying was
+
+            "Come what may come,
+            God's will be welcome!"
+
+When Victoria was still a girl of fifteen she was solemnly confirmed
+in the Chapel Royal, and in her case that impressive service
+manifestly meant--what alas, it does not always imply--a life
+henceforth wholly given to God.
+
+At two o'clock in the morning of June 21st, 1837, she was roused from
+her slumbers in old Kensington Palace, and hastily flinging a shawl
+over her nightdress, she presently stood in the presence of the Lord
+Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to learn from their lips
+that her royal uncle had given up the ghost, and that she, a trembling
+maid of just eighteen, was Queen. Thereupon, so we are told, her eyes
+filled with tears, her lips quivered, and turning to the Archbishop
+she said, "Pray for me!" So that instant all three lowly bowed
+imploring heaven's help. The Queen began her reign upon her knees.
+Her first act of conscious royalty was thus to render heartfelt homage
+to "The Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence came it to pass
+
+            "Her court was pure, her life sincere."
+
+Her favourite recreations were consequently not those provided by the
+ballroom, the card-table, the racecourse, or even the theatre. Music,
+the simple charms of country life, and, manifold ministries of mercy,
+were the pastimes that became her best; and she never appeared in the
+eyes of her people more truly royal than when seen sitting by the
+bedside of a Highland cottager, reading to the sick out of God's own
+Gospel the wonderful words of life.
+
+We are here at liberty to use a scriptural phrase and to add that she
+"married in the Lord." Royal etiquette required that the Queen should
+herself select the lover destined to share the pleasures and
+responsibilities of her high position, and her choice fell not on one
+renowned for gaiety, for wealth or wit, but on one in whom she
+recognised the double gift of abounding good sense and the grace of
+our Lord Jesus Christ. For a choice so supremely wise, and for a
+marriage so supremely happy, all thoughtful Englishmen still render
+thanks to God.
+
+Her piety was as broad as it was deep and practical. The head of the
+Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only;
+but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the
+Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her
+warm appreciation of the work done for God and man by "The people
+called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerance in things
+pertaining to godliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that all
+creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. For
+that reason among others the Queen required that historic service
+should be held in the open air, on the steps, it is true, of our
+stateliest cathedral; but none the less under God's own arching sky,
+which makes the whole earth a temple. We owe not a little of our
+religious liberty to the personal influence and example of our much
+lamented Queen; and we, therefore, show ourselves worthy to have been
+her subjects, only when we shun utterly all indifference concerning
+things divine, yet give no place to bigotry; when we seek out not the
+worst, but the best, in every man, and honestly strive to make the
+best of that best.
+
+V. _With the new century we suddenly find ourselves subjects of a new
+Sovereign_, and with equal sincerity, if not with equal fervour, we
+say, "God save the King." May his reign also like that of his
+predecessor bring blessing to many lands! We crave not for him, and
+seek not in him, unexampled greatness. We desire chiefly that he may
+"love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with his God." His rich legacy
+of newly-created loyalty he will thus assuredly retain and augment.
+
+It is commonly said that this new century, like the last, has begun
+with a notable lack of notable men, but, nevertheless, never yet have
+we been left without trusty leaders in the hour of national necessity;
+and as it has been so will it be!
+
+            "We thank Thee, Lord, when Thou hast need,
+            The man aye ripens for the deed!"
+
+Yet the new century clamours importunately, not so much for great men,
+as for good men. All greatness perishes that is not broad based on
+godliness. The best gift for this new era that God Himself can bestow
+upon our people, is the grace of deep-toned repentance, an impassioned
+love of righteousness, a never flinching resolve to walk in newness of
+life; for then will the brightness of even the Victorian era be
+splendidly outshone, and heaven itself will hasten to make all things
+new. We who believe in Christ have learned to say:--
+
+            "Oh Thou bleeding Lamb
+            The true morality is love of Thee!"
+
+Along that same path of love divine lies also the truest patriotism
+and the speediest perfecting of our national life. I pray you,
+therefore, let the God of your late Queen be yet more completely your
+God; her Saviour your Saviour; and make this Memorial Service doubly
+memorable by bowing this moment at His feet,
+
+            "In full and glad surrender."
+
+[Sidenote: _The King's Coronation._]
+
+On Saturday, March 22nd, 1902, Schalk Burger, late State-Secretary
+Reitz, and General Lucas Meyer are reported to have appeared in
+Pretoria, presumably with a view to the submission of those they
+represent to the sovereign authority of our new King, whose
+approaching Coronation, Pretoria, even while I write, is preparing to
+celebrate with unexampled splendour. It is intended to break all
+previous festival records, and some of the Guards may only too
+probably still be there to share therein. But that is quite another
+story, and must find for itself quite another historian. Meanwhile--
+
+            "*God send His people peace!*"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE GUARDS' BRIGADE FROM
+BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25135.txt or 25135.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/3/25135
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25135.zip b/25135.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f599487
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25135.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab88e0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25135 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25135)