If he gets his opportunity, England will hear more of this officer. I have
been intensely struck by the class of officers by whom General Gatacre is
surrounded. They all look like soldiers. I have not seen a single dude, not
one of those wretched fops of whom I have seen only too many in South
Africa. They speak like soldiers too. No idiotic drawl, no effeminate lisp,
no bullying, ill-bred, coarseness of tongue; they are neither drawing-room
dandies nor camp swashbucklers, but officers and gentlemen--and, I can
assure you, the terms are not always synonymous, even under the Queen's
cloth. I have seen mere lads in this country leading men into action who in
point of brains were not fit to lead a mule to water, and others who, in
regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule. But, thank God,
the Boers have taught our nation this, if they have taught us nought
else--that it needs something more than an eye-glass, a lisp, a pair of kid
gloves, and an insolent, overbearing manner to make a successful soldier.

But let me get amongst the Boers. I was only a prisoner in their hands for
about a month, yet every moment of that time was so fraught with interest
that I fancy I picked up more of the real nature of the Boers than I should
have done under ordinary circumstances in a couple of years. I was moved
from laager to laager along their fighting line, saw them at work with
their rifles, saw them come in from more than one tough skirmish, bringing
their dead and wounded with them, saw them when they had triumphed, and saw
them when they had been whipped; saw them going to their farms, to be
welcomed by wife and children; saw them leaving home with a wife's sobs in
their ears, and children's loving kisses on their lips. I saw some of these
old greyheads shattered by our shells, dying grimly, with knitted brows and
fiercely clenched jaws; saw some of their beardless boys sobbing their
souls out as the life blood dyed the African heath. I saw some passing over
the border line which divides life and death, with a ring of stern-browed
comrades round them, leaning upon their rifles, whilst a brother or a