less desert under a burning sun, had fought two actions successfully and avoided a third, all with comparatively slight loss. Mobility had changed hands that which the Boers were wont to boast of had the bottom knocked out of it by the endurance and marching powers of British infantry; the brigade of Guards covered thirty-eight miles in twentyeight hours, and at the end marched with their heads up into Bloemfontein. Not only was the original conception of the move sound, but every blow was followed up; blow succeeded blow with regularity and pertinacity; once hit, the enemy was given no time to recover; no matter how exhausted the striking of the blow left them, the men pulled themselves together and were ready to deal a second. Once get the enemy on the run, and that you cannot keep him going too fast, is sound common-sense tactics. miles across an almost water- less desert, is what Lord Roberts asked of the Army Service Corps; and he was not disappointed. Nor were the men disappointed: it is the soldiers who know all about these quiet, business-like men who carry them and their baggage, who feed them with such regularity that of the 200,000 men in Africa how few have gone without their breakfast. Whatever faults exist in our army organisation, the Army Service Corps stands out a marvel of of hard work. So little preparation to supply the troops had been made, that every ship-load which touched the coast during October and November had to be bought up, provided that it contained anything eatable by man or horse; yet so well did the Army Service Corps manage, that troops at the front have had fresh Once fresh bread every day, there being hardly an instance where they had to eat biscuit. These things are better done now than they were. I remember when we marched up - country for Zululand the train turned us out on the veldt, with only a railwayman's shelter and a gang of naked Kaffirs in sight, and a nine-mile trudge in the dust, and latterly in the dark, to camp. We were hung round with many objects which the outfitters had told us were necessary in a campaign, were tired, and very hungry; so we pitched our tents and lay down in them. Then an orderly came round with the dinners, and he put them down outside: it was only a tin plate of flour, a junk of quivering beef, and a penny But it was not the troops alone to whom credit is due for this historic march. There are other soldiers of whom we hear very little but who do a great deal, on whose shoulders depends the very life of the men who march and of the horses who scatter abroad. Whatever faults have been found, none have been heard about the Army Service Corps. To feed an army of perhaps 40,000 men and 5000 horses, and to carry the belongings of these combatants along 600 miles of a single line of rails, with 100 more to follow across an almost track worth of sticks. When we had looked at them a man of the company came up, and he held out his plate of flour as if I should smell it: then he went away, for I could not answer his question and tell him what to do with it. The company went hungry to bed that night: we heard of a store three miles off, and dined upon sardines. The arrival of a "Winkler's" waggon in those days was a joy; for he sold jam, which was a change from trek-ox and biscuit, though it had to be paid for at veldt prices. Now jam is part of a soldier's ration, and frozen meat has taken the place of herds of cattle and all the unwholesome process of slaughtering them. Without the railways the Army Service Corps could not have done what was done: transport did not exist or shape itself into practical form till Lord Kitchener arrived and took it in hand, and without cordial co-operation the railways could not have been counted on. Both the Cape and Natal lines are single and very narrow, with steep gradients, watering - stations scarce, and all the coal to be carried up from the coast some hundreds of miles away. Yet, until lately, troops and supplies have depended upon them. Soldiers arriving from all parts of the world marched out of the ship into trains standing on the other side of the quay, and were run up to the front before they could realise that they had landed in South Africa. Cavalry were sent to the "rest camp" before they entrained, to allow the horses three or four days to recover from the effects of the voyage, and it was all done so secretly-invaluable in a land swarming with spies. People at Cape Town only heard of the arrival of a regiment when they saw its name mentioned in some engagement at the front: it had vanished in the unknown country beyond De Aar, to reappear unexpectedly at the farther end of the colony. The Cape Government railway is manned almost entirely by Englishmen, and no praises can be too high for the work done by them, or for the patriotism and zeal of the whole staff. Everywhere along the line the stationmasters stuck to their posts when every one else had fled before the Boers; while the guarding and patrolling of the line required a very large staff of white and native patrols. The possession of Bloemfontein is both a military and a political advantage. In the first case, it gave Lord Roberts a secondary base from which to start afresh, in direct railway communication with his primary base on the coast at Port Elizabeth or East London, 520 or 400 miles respectively distant. From Bloemfontein to Pretoria is only 250 miles, with a direct line of railway, which crosses a level country, free from mountain-ranges, the only obstacle being the Vaal river, crossed by the railway-bridge and many drifts. An advance northwards will threaten the communications of the Boer army in Natal, which would be forced to retreat, the Natal Field Force in rear hurrying hands means nothing, unless the exchange extends laws to reach the boundaries of their farms, when they will say they wish Kruger was back. The Boers, except those under its direct influence, owe nothing to Pretoria, which exists only for the Dopper and his corruption. They know nothing about Pretoria, but they do know a great deal about the field-cornet: abolish him, and they will think something of us. up its retreat, only to meet Lord Roberts at the one drift across the Vaal for forty miles. The buildings and neighbourhood of Bloemfontein lend themselves to the accommodation of troops and to the storage and forwarding of supplies: Harrismith, 190 miles north-east, is in direct railway communication with Durban. From a political point its occupation must go far to reconcile the Free Staters to our rule. They are more intelligent than the Boers, and have throughout retained contact with outside civilisation; and their capital has become an educational and social centre, for which it is largely indebted to the late President Brand, the esteemed head of a patriarchal Government, almost classical in its simplicity. So the Free State farmer recognises Bloemfontein as the home of much that is good, and is proud of it in consequence. The transfer of the Government of this ideal centre to another which would hold the reins justly, in accordance with his instincts and traditions, would soon reconcile him to the change which would be in name only. Men have been talked into this war because they had so much spare time to think over what they heard at the last town or read in the latest newspaper. In Africa manual labour is thought derogatory to a white man: Kaffirs work, Whites look on; a Boer does not drive his own waggon, his "boy" does that; at home he slouches round to smoke his pipe and order his Kaffirs; in an up-country store the proprietor meets you at the door for a chat and a smoke; if you step inside to make a purchase he saunters in and pushes the "square-face" across the counter he may shove over the water-jug; if you want anything else he calls a Kaffir; if a troop of Kaffir girls steal in, he will hand down some packets of beads-perhaps open one trade in beads requires tact. In Australia or Canada, where the climate is more suited to white men and coloured labour is scarce, the colonists do the work themselves: they have no time for talking politics. The position of Pretoria is different: the Boers of the northern and eastern districts are of the lowest class of intelligence, ignorant of the first tenets of civilised life, who rarely stray beyond the limits of their farms. To these Pretoria is only a name, Lydenburg and Zeerust to them greater: to these men the all of Pretoria into British Buller's troops across the Tu No sooner were General gela than they found that the Boers had evacuated their positions round Ladysmith, leaving a strong rear-guard to delay the approach of the relieving column, so as to allow them to withdraw their guns and other impedimenta. The original line of advance by the railway had to be abandoned after four days' obstinate fighting, as it was still strongly held with line upon line of intrenchments, which could only be taken by frontal attack; but to the west of the railway was Pieter's Hill, which commanded the entire line of the Boer defences and formed the key to the position. General Buller determined to capture it. On the 27th inst. the Engineers succeeded in discovering a suitable passage about two miles farther down-stream, where the banks were sufficiently hidden to allow the bridge to be removed from its original position and reconstructed, when the troops making the flankattack could pass. At daylight General Barton, with three battalions, crept down the river's bank to the newly constructed bridge, and, crossing by it, climbed an almost precipitous cliff, 100 feet high, which led to the top of Pieter's Hill. This was carried by assault, the enemy not waiting for the bayonet. This turned the Boer left, and opened the way to Sir C. Warren, with the 4th and 11th brigades, to assail the Boer main position, which was magnificently carried at the point of the bayonet by the 1st South Lancashire Regiment, the Boers flying wildly in the utmost confusion, leaving everything behind them strewn about in their trenches. The road to Ladysmith was now open, and that evening the Natal Carabineers with the Composite Regiment rode through on the west, without opposition, convey the welcome news. The next day General Buller occupied Nelthorpe, riding into the town during the afternoon to meet Sir G. White and the relieved garrison. to It is not too far back to remember the suspense, the catching of the breath, when those messages came in so quickly, following each other, on that Sunday morning in January: "Attack renewed, very hard pressed;" and the dull void that fell when the sun went down and we were left to think of those hard-pressed men. The story has been already told of that desperate fight, when the Boers in the early dawn crept up, barefooted, shouting, "Don't fire, we are the town guard; when the few British on the hill flung themselves on certain death; when the higher heroism of each man stood out; when Digby Jones, the young subaltern of Engineers, as the three Boer leaders stole up Surprise Hill in the darkness after that day of fighting, shot Von Wyk, only to fall himself-the V.C., for which he was to be recommended, almost won. Six hundred dead, as many more wounded, and four months' shelling and starvation-it was a brave sight that England showed the world when her people heard the news that Ladysmith had been relieved. We saw that group constructed works. We know that all these outlying works were connected by telephone with headquarters, giving Sir G. White the power to rapidly concentrate at any threatened point. challenge the troopers, "Who fire from two or more strongly goes there?"-"Ladysmith relieving army"; the tattered, almost bootless men, out of the scrub, crowding round, cheering very feebly; all that was left of soldiers-death, disease, and falling shells had done it; but, worse than all-almost the last words of the dying correspondent, Steevens, "Beyond is the world-war and love. You are of it, but not in it-clean out of the world. To your world you are every bit as good as dead." : Is it any wonder that the men who had endured needed a rest, or that Sir G. White longed to get away? In these four months much had been done the enemy to be kept off his first care; the principal to construct works by which the number of men required to hold the circumference were reduced to a minimum; the points at which attack might be expected, as Cæsar's Camp, protected by redoubts of superior profile, the gaps between under their fire, and that from other works of lower profile, so that any advance must cover ground swept by a cross-fire. This would constitute the main line of defence, no doubt assisted by similar works in rear as an interior line, should the outer line be forced. In front of all would be the pickets and sentries, sheltered by breast works or rifle-pits: thus the enemy would have to force his way through three lines of defence, each planned to offer increased resistance, while the points which he might choose as his way in would be swept by the But there were other anxieties that told on the devoted garrison and its commander,— the entire responsibility of keeping a determined, well-armed foe at arm's length, and the strain of supporting upwards of 15,000 human beings in order and contentment. Men at a distance read of the bursting shells, the savage attack, the daily sniping, of sudden death by fire, or sword, or pestilence, of nights passed in expectation of an attack, when the rustle of a leaf may be a footstep: but these are not what try a man's nerves. There is excitement there; the din of battle is but an interlude to talk about next day, a panorama of quick-moving objects. What kills is the monotony, the dreary dulness, one day as another is there no end? nothing to think of, to laugh about, to hope for-only the dreary sameness. The constant pop! pop! of the bullets irritates-it is so senseless, so meaningless. Will they never stop? Oh! for a fight, an honest fight out there in the open-anything but to be cooped up here with those everlasting bullets. An experience of three months, under much the same circumstances, recalls this intolerable monotony-pop! pop! If they would only hit some one there would be method in the |