dressed. The relief that is given by the dressing of a wound must be exquisite, for you hear next to no groans or moans after a doctor has given this first attention.

In the army of Lord Methuen the great majority of wounds were in the arms and feet; but other points and experiences in war are more remarkable. The chances of receiving a wound seem not to have greatly increased with the improvements in modern death-dealing implements. There were more than a million shots fired at Modder River, and yet only about eight hundred men were hit, while the number of bullets that hit water-bottles, haversacks, ration-tins, and coat-sleeves was astonishing. The damage to life and limb by the excessive artillery fire was next to nothing.

On a typical field of battle the armies oppose one another with orderly masses. Staff officers ride hither and thither. Batteries rumble to and fro at long intervals as they are ordered to take new positions, and in the same way the cavalry appear and reappear on the edges of the field. Stretcher-bearers bring the wounded out of the zone of danger, and ambulances roll up, get their loads, and roll away again, all day continually, as in a ceaseless train.

Brave privates bring out the wounded, and work their way back into fire again, now running forward, now dropping flat upon the veldt. Skulkers work back to the edge of the field in the same way—a few only and are gathered up and sent forward in batches by the officers who come upon them. At last the cheer of British victory is heard, and the whole force rushes forward; or darkness falls upon an unfinished fight, and we grope about the veldt seeking our camps, and the food and drink that most of us have gone without too long.

CHAPTER XXV

A HALT IN MODERN WAR METHODS

O

N January 20th Lord Methuen's force was not

not resting, but busy enough, though not

fighting.

When we all come to be judged for the work we have done in these early days of the war, it shall not be said that in the time we took to fight four battles, and in the severity of those engagements, we did not do as much as could be expected of everyday fighting men.

A fickle public may have turned aside from us, fastening its passing interest on a Buller or a French, and saying, "it is to these new favourites that we must look for our excitement." But when we were filling the stage, what a brilliant spectacle we made! What dash we showed ! What swiftness marked our progress! What

sturdy blows we dealt, and how quickly we showered them down!

We were not checked. It was the methods of modern warfare that halted.

It had not fallen to any other general's lot to meet with a foe so situated as to embody the entire strength, under fullest conditions, of the newest methods of defence.

It was easy enough for the world to cry "Halt!” in its interest in us, just as the Boers cried "Halt!" in our progress when we reached Maaghersfontein, but the Boer command to us to halt must also be considered by military scientists everywhere as an order given to all armed nations to stop and unlearn much that they have known of war for Maaghersfontein seems likely to be the end of the fighting system that was practised by the Wellingtons, Wolseleys, Von Moltkes, and Grants of bygone days.

Look at Maaghersfontein. It is a grass and bush-strewn plain, not perfectly level, but indented by a few slight ridges. Had Lord Methuen advanced upon it as quickly from the Modder River fight as he rushed from one to the other of his preceding battles, he might not have been checked, because the strength of their defence

was wrought in the time he gave the Boers in which to build fresh trenches, and to recover from their rout.

He might thus have gained another victory, but this would only have postponed that revelation of the strength of modern weapons, which must, in any event, have soon startled the world. He had fought three battles in a week. He might have fought a fourth. Then his men must have rested, and he would have met his check at Spytfontein.

Somewhere, very soon, the Boers would have shown him what they demonstrated at Maaghersfontein, proving that, given a plain field of grass, modern magazine rifles, and quick-firing small guns, the whole German army itself could not dislodge the sixty-five thousand men of the two Boer republics.

It was not that there were many Boers or many British in this battle. Of the Boers there were twelve to fifteen thousand; of the British eight or nine thousand at a full estimate. But it is certain that by a frontal attack on those grassedged trenches not fifty thousand British could have beaten the fifteen thousand Boers, except at such a sacrifice of life as no commander would require, or could be pardoned for occasioning.