nel
Moore, of the famous Connaught Rangers, now (1914) commandant and
chief military organizer of the Irish National Volunteers; and,
finally, Lord Roberts, who took over the chief command and saved the
situation after the early disasters. Lord Kitchener, who acted as
Roberts's chief-of-staff, succeeded him in the command, and brought
the war to an end by an honorable treaty with the Boer leaders, is a
native of Ireland, but of English descent, and he passed most of his
boyhood in Ireland, in Co. Kerry, where his father had bought a small
property. I used to know an Irish Franciscan lay brother who told me
he had taught the future soldier "many games" when he was quite a
little fellow.

Of the regiments which took part in the war none won a higher fame
than the Munster and the Dublin Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers.
It was in recognition of their splendid valor that the new regiment
of Irish Guards was added to the British Army.

But the majority of Irishmen sympathized with the Boer republics, and
many of them fought under the Boer flag, of these were legally
British subjects, but many were naturalized burghers of the
Transvaal, and many more were United States citizens, Irish-Americans
from the Rand gold mines. There were two small Irish brigades under
the Boer flag, those of McBride and Lynch (the latter now a member of
the British House of Commons), and an engineer corps commanded by
Colonel Blake, an American. At the first battle before Ladysmith it
was one of the Irish brigades that kept the Boer guns in action,
bringing up ammunition under a rain of shellfire. During the Boer
retreat and Roberts's advance on Pretoria, Blake's engineers were
always with the Boer rearguard and successfully destroyed every mile
of the railway as they went back. Blake had served in the United
States cavalry, had learned mining while on duty in Nevada, and had
then gone to seek his fortune at Johannesburg. The great leader of
the Boer armies, now the Prime Minister of the new South Africa which
has happily arisen out of the storm of war, has Irish connections.
Louis Botha lived before the war in the southeast Transvaal, not far
from Laings Nek, and near neighbors of his were a family of Irish
settlers bearing the honored name of Emmet. The Emmets and the Bothas
were united by ties of friendship and intermarriage, and one of the
Emmets served with Louis Botha during the war.

The Irish colonists of South Africa keep their love