forgotten; but if anyone should still suppose that these
great hysterical waves of public feeling select their victims
impartially, I would ask him to compare the battle of Magersfontein
with the fruitless attack delivered by Lord Kitchener on the Paardeberg
laager on February 18th. In one case time was working against Lord
Methuen, and threatening to exhaust the endurance of Kimberley; in the
other case time was working with Lord Kitchener, limiting the resistance
of Cronje to a calculable number of days and hours. In one case there
was a small force which, owing to the nature of its composition, could
only be used in one way; in the other case there was a large and
splendidly-assorted force, which gave opportunity for an infinite
variety of combinations. In one case the attack was turned by
circumstances which no human being could have prevented into a frontal
contact; in the other case that form of attack was deliberately chosen.
In one case the casualties were about nine hundred; in the other, about
sixteen hundred. And in one case the general officer commanding has been
insulted and attacked and defamed, while the officer responsible for the
second affair is still regarded by the masses as a consummate master of
field operations.

This is a long digression; I have made it here because the subject of
it is inseparable from my memory of the dark and stony ranges which I
saw closely for the first time through the pitiless rain of that
February day. Miserable as the journey was, its passage through the
country occupied so lately by the enemy made it interesting. The way in
which our sappers had toiled to repair the line was beyond praise. Every
telegraph post had been blasted in two pieces by dynamite; every culvert
had been blown up; nearly every insulator smashed; the wires (about
seven in number) had been cut every few hundred yards; yet within four
days from the relief of Kimberley trains had begun to go up the whole
distance and telegraphic communication had been restored. I saw the work
that had been done, and the difficulty of it, and was proud of the way
in which it was accomplished. Not that there is little to be proud of in
the work of the army. On the contrary, one is amazed to see what is
accomplished in spite of the system, amazed to find what can be done by
able men against the most determined opposition from their own side; but
the great fact that was brought out by the earlier part of this campaign
is