for more
than a year. There has been no rest, no days off to recruit, no going
into winter quarters, as in other campaigns which have extended over
a long period. For months together, in fierce heat, in biting cold, in
pouring rain, you, my comrades, have marched and fought without halt,
and bivouacked without shelter from the elements. You frequently have
had to continue marching with your clothes in rags and your boots
without soles, time being of such consequence that it was impossible
for you to remain long enough in one place to refit. When not engaged
in actual battle you have been continually shot at from behind kopjes
by invisible enemies to whom every inch of the country was familiar,
and who, from the peculiar nature of the country, were able to inflict
severe punishment while perfectly safe themselves. You have forced your
way through dense jungles, over precipitous mountains, through and over
which with infinite manual labour you have had to drag heavy guns
and ox-wagons. You have covered with almost incredible speed enormous
distances, and that often on very short supplies of food. You have
endured the sufferings inevitable in war to sick and wounded men far
from the base, without a murmur and even with cheerfulness.'

The words reflect honour both upon the troops addressed and upon the man
who addressed them. From the middle of December 1900 Lord Kitchener took
over the control of the campaign.

CHAPTER 32. THE SECOND INVASION OF CAPE COLONY.

(DECEMBER 1900 TO APRIL 1901.)

During the whole war the task of the British had been made very much
more difficult by the openly expressed sympathy with the Boers from
the political association known as the Afrikander Bond, which either
inspired or represented the views which prevailed among the great
majority of the Dutch inhabitants of Cape Colony. How strong was this
rebel impulse may be gauged by the fact that in some of the border
districts no less than ninety per cent of the voters joined the Boer
invaders upon the occasion of their first entrance into the Colony. It
is not pretended that these men suffered from any political grievances
whatever, and their action is to be ascribed partly to a natural
sympathy with their northern kinsmen, and partly to racial ambition and
to personal dislike to their British neighbours. The liberal British
policy towards the natives had especially alienated the Dutch, and had
made as well-marked a line of cleavage in S