Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same
boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of
conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the
news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely
disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting
event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months
brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a
superbly satisfactory send-off on our next perilous march to learn
that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had at last
actually taken place just four days before. It filled the whole camp
with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided soldiers on
the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the business as the
multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the empire seem to
have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a tiny garrison of
for the most part untrained men; and therefore in itself of scant
importance; but we also know that for many a critical week it had held
back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong rush towards the
Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one hand the staying
power of British blood, and on the other the timidity and impotence of
the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or stronghold to
which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing; the very last
of the series was safe at last, and after all that had been said about
British blunderings, this event surely called for something more than
commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was wont to say, "We
are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we want: it is brains";
but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over bullets. A new Wake had
arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found a permanent place among
the many names of renown in the long annals of our island story.

It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that
same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable
Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally
annexed to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its
gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest
responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and
constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of
righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race.