action, and told the men that if all the
officers had instituted similar methods more success might have attended
the army's operations.

With the exception of the instances cited, every man was a disciplinary
law unto himself, and when he transgressed that law no one would punish
him but his conscience. There were laws on the subject of obedience in the
army, and each had penalties attached to it, but it was extremely rare
that a burgher was punished. When he endured discipline he did it because
he cared to do so, and not because he feared those who had authority over
him. He was deeply religious, and he felt that in being obedient he was
finding favour in the eyes of the Providence that favoured his cause. It
was as much his religion as his ability to aim unerringly that made the
Boer a good soldier. If the Boer army had been composed of an irreligious,
undisciplined body of men, instead of the psalm-singing farmers, it would
have been conquered by itself. The religion of the Boers was their
discipline.

CHAPTER V

THE BOER MILITARY SYSTEM

The disparity between the British and Boer armies seemed to be so great at
the time the war was begun that the patriotic Englishman could hardly be
blamed for asserting that the struggle would be of only a month's
duration. On the one side was an army every branch of which was highly
developed and specialised and kept in constant practice by many wars waged
under widely different conditions. Back of it was a great nation, with
millions of men and unlimited resources to draw upon. At the head of the
army were men who had the theory and practice of warfare as few leaders of
other armies had had the opportunities of securing them. Opposed to this
army was practically an aggregation of farmers, hastily summoned together
and utterly without discipline or training. They were unable to replace
with another a single fallen burgher and prevented from adding by
importation to their stock of ammunition a single rifle or a single pound
of powder. At the head were farmers who, perhaps, did not know that there
existed a theory of warfare and much less knew how recent wars were fought
and won. The means by which thirty thousand farmers of no military
training were enabled to withstand the opposition of several hundred
thousand well-trained soldiers for the greater part of a year must be
attributed to the military system which gave such a marvellous advantage.
Such success as attended