one of the enemy's obvious moves. Anything would have been better than
the inaction, which simply allowed the Boers to mature their own plans
and put them into execution without risk of interference from us. That
might almost have been foreseen when General Joubert on 31st October hit
upon a characteristic plan for finding out what was the exact state of
affairs in Ladysmith, and we, with a delightful naïveté, suspecting no
guile, seem to have played into his hands. It will be remembered that
the most painful incident of "Black" or "Mournful Monday" was the
surrender of all but a company or two of the Gloucesters and Royal Irish
Fusiliers, which with a mountain battery had been detached to turn the
enemy's flanks, with consequences so humiliating and disastrous to us.
Under pretence of treating the wounded from this column with great
consideration, Joubert sent them into camp here, taking their parole as
a guarantee that they would not carry arms again during this campaign.
With the ambulance waggon was an escort of twenty Boers, all wearing the
Red Cross badge of neutrality. Their instructions were to demand an
exchange of wounded, and on the plea of being responsible for the proper
care of their own men, they claimed to be admitted within our lines.
Such a preposterous request would not have been listened to for a moment
by some generals, but Sir George White, being anxious apparently to
propitiate an enemy whose guns commanded the town, full as it was of
helpless women and children, yielded that point, and so the ambulance
with its swaggering Boer escort came into town neither blindfolded nor
under any military restrictions whatever. Among this mounted escort
Ladysmith people recognised several well-known burghers, who were
certainly not doctors or otherwise specially qualified for attendance on
wounded men. They were free to move about the town, to talk with Boer
prisoners, and to drink at public bars with suspected Boer
sympathisers--all this while they probably picked up many interesting
items as to the number of troops in Ladysmith, the position of ordnance