ir ability to fight when it is necessary, it is
doubtful whether twenty per cent of the Boer burghers in the commandos
would be accepted for service in any continental or American army. The
rigid physical examinations of many of the armies would debar thousands
from becoming regular soldiers. There were men in the Boer forces who had
only one arm, some with only one leg, others with only one eye; some were
almost totally blind, while others would have felt happy if they could
have heard the reports of their rifles. Men who were suffering from
various kinds of illnesses, and who should have been in a physician's
care, were to be seen in every laager. Men who wore spectacles were
numerous, while those who suffered from diseases which debar a man from a
regular army were without number. The high percentage of men unfit for
military duty was not due to the Boer's unhealthfulness, for he is as
healthy as farmers are in other parts of the earth. Take the entire male
population of any district in Europe and America and compare the
individuals with the standard required by army rules, and the result will
not differ greatly from the result of the Boer examination. If all the
youths and old men, the sick and maimed, could have been eliminated from
the Boer forces, eighty per cent, would probably have been found to be a
low estimate of the number thus subtracted from the total force. It would
have been heartrending to many a continental or American general to see
the unmilitary appearance of the Boer burgher, and in what manner an army
of children, great-grandfathers, invalids, and blind men, with a handful
of good men to leaven it, could be of any service whatever would have been
quite beyond his conception. It was such a mixed force that a Russian
officer, who at the outset of the war entered the Transvaal to fight,
became disgusted with its unmilitary appearance and returned to his own
country.

The accoutrement of the Boer burgher was none the less incongruous than
the physical appearance of the majority of them, although no expensive
uniform and trappings could have been of more practical value. The men of
the Pretoria and Johannesburg commandos had the unique honor of going to
the war in uniforms specially made for the purpose, but there was no
regulation or law which compelled them to wear certain kinds of clothing.
When these commandos went to the frontier several days before the actual
warfare had begun they were clothed i