with healing in his wings! As one sits in the dimly-lit wards while the
train tears through the darkness, and nothing breaks the silence save
the groan of a wounded man or the cries of some poor fellow racked with
rheumatic fever--at times like these one thinks of many things, past,
present and future. An ever-deepening gloom of military disaster seemed
to be spreading itself around us--Magersfontein, Stormberg and the
latest repulse on the Tugela, a veritable [Greek: trikumia kakôn]! Of
course, in the long run, we _shall_ and _must_ win. But what afterwards?
Will the vanquished Dutch submit and live in peace and amity with their
conquerors, or will they preserve the memory of their dead from
generation to generation, and cherish that unspeakable bitterness which
they at present feel for England and her people? Verily all these things
lie on the knees of the gods!



ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.



FOOTNOTES:

[A] Since these lines were written Lord Roberts has personally testified
to the misuse of the white flag in the Paardeberg fighting.

[B] Cf. _The River War_, by Winston Spencer Churchill, vol. ii., p. 394.
"It is the habit of the boa-constrictor to besmear the body of its
victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people
in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate
military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole