practically equal. The Boers were strongly entrenched and concealed, and
could not be out-flanked. That they were driven back at all is as proud
a record for our troops as any army could desire, for the attacking
force ought to have been destroyed. The engagement may well have been
"one of the hardest and most trying in the annals of the British Army,"
and if the victory is a glory to the soldiers, the resolve to attack in
such conditions reveals in Lord Methuen the strength of character which
is the finest quality of a commander.

If it is well that we at home should appreciate the splendid results of
many years of good teaching given to the officers and men of the Army,
results to be attributed in great part, though not exclusively, to the
efforts of Lord Wolseley and his school, it is no less our duty to face
squarely the fact that the Nation has not done its duty by this Army.
The Nation in this sense means the people acting through the Government.
To see how the Government has treated the Army we have only to survey
the situation in South Africa. Fifty thousand men were ordered out on
October 7th,--an Army Corps, a cavalry division and troops for the line
of communications. The design was that, with the communications covered
by the special troops sent for that duty, the Army Corps and the cavalry
division, making together a body of forty thousand men, should cross the
Orange River and sweep through the Free State towards Pretoria, while
Natal was protected by a special force there posted.

But long before the Army Corps was complete this plan had been torn to
pieces by the Boers. Sir George White's force, being hardly more than a
third the strength of the army with which the Boers invaded Natal, could
not stop the invasion, though it could hold out when surrounded and
invested.