their
long range guns. In offensive warfare the visible contends with the
invisible, and it is good generalship that conquers it. At Albuera
Soult asserted there was no beating British troops in spite of their
generals. But Lord Roberts' generalship seems never to have been at
fault, however remote the foe, and thanks thereto Belfast proved to be
about the last big fight of the whole campaign.

[Sidenote: _Feeding under fire._]

Early next morning we were vigorously shelled by the still defiant
Boers, but from the, for them, fairly safe distance of nearly five
miles. Just as the Grenadier officers had finished their breakfast and
retired a few yards further afield to get just beyond the reach of
those impressive salutations, a shell plumped down precisely where we
had been sitting. It made its mark, though fortunately only on the
bare bosom of mother earth; but later on in the same day, while we
were finishing lunch, another shrapnel burst, almost over our heads,
so badly injured a doctor's horse tethered close by that it had to be
killed, and compelled another somewhat rapid retirement on our part to
the far side of a neighbouring bog. In war time all our feasts are
movable!

[Sidenote: _A German Doctor's Confession._]

Before leaving Belfast I called on a German doctor who had been in
charge of a Boer military hospital planted in that hamlet, and who
told me that for twelve months he had been in the compulsory employ of
the Transvaal Government. Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had
accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly
sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received
no payment for his services except in promissory notes--which were
worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been
landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet;
as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had
seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering instead
the bandolier and rifle. Thus were fighting men and mercenaries
smuggled through Portuguese territory to the Boer fighting lines; and
in this as in many other ways was that red cross abused. He wastes his
time who tries to teach the Boers some new trick. In this war they
have amply proved that in that matter they have nought to learn,
except the unwisdom of it all, and the sureness of the retribution it
involves. Even in battle and battle times clean hands a