rom the head of the first row down to
where the mounds give place to gaping caverns--five or six--prepared for
the dying, whom even now the doctor is plying with physic in the
hospital. Trooper A, Private B, Colour-Sergeant C; the names vary,
indeed, but there are only three versions of the manner of death--"Died
of wounds," "Died of enteric fever," "Killed in action"--the three
epitaphs for soldiers in South Africa.

It was strange, amid the dreariness and stagnation of this place, to
think of the jubilations at home. What cheering, what toasting, what
hilarity! But here the sparkle in the wine had died, leaving the cup
that had brimmed flat and dull and only half full after all. Food was
scanty and of the plainest quality, there was no news from the outside
world, disease was still busy; and here, set forth in the hard
limestone, was the bill for all the glory and excitement. The bill, but
not the payment; that was being made at home by the people who cared for
what lies beneath the limestone.

The evils of a war are so direct and obvious that they are apt to be
discounted or accepted as Fate, and classed among the thousand
unavoidable ills beneath which we must patiently sit. But are they? In a
war, the necessity and even justice of which are doubted honestly by
many, where all share the responsibility and few the personal cost, it
is hard to see the hand of an impartial Fate.

A strange place, you may say, in which to attempt the adjustment of
mingled impressions. Yet in the midst of our crude existence at
Mafeking, where life was shorn of all the impalpable things that make it
real and reduced to a simple material level of food and sleep and noise,
it was a kind of relief to spend an hour in the place where men had gone
down into rest and silence. In normal circumstances one may avoid such
places, but after the din of arms and the shout of victory there was a
sense of companionship to be found in the place that stood for the
ending of disputes. Peaceful, yes; but how was the peace gained? It is
sweet and seemly to die for one's country; but blood and fire, grief and
anguish had filled the vestibule of this sleeping-chamber; and peaceful
though it be, the graveyard of Mafeking is a place to induce in
Englishmen some searchings of heart.

"Oh, surely not," says the music-hall patriot; "the brave fellows who
lie there have died a glorious death, and the glory is ours as their
fellow-countrymen"; and he drops a tea