ld suggest that the Intelligence Department
were aware that the leaders desired some strong excuse for coming
in--such an excuse as the Proclamation would afford. The result proved
that nothing of the kind was needed, and the whole proceeding must
appear to be injudicious and high-handed. In honourable war you conquer
your adversary by superior courage, strength, or wit, but you do not
terrorise him by particular penalties aimed at individuals. The burghers
of the Transvaal and of the late Orange Free State were legitimate
belligerents, and to be treated as such--a statement which does not, of
course, extend to the Afrikander rebels who were their allies.

The tendency of the British had been to treat their antagonists as a
broken and disorganised banditti, but with the breaking of the spring
they were sharply reminded that the burghers were still capable of a
formidable and coherent effort. The very date which put them beyond the
pale as belligerents was that which they seem to have chosen in order
to prove what active and valiant soldiers they still remained. A quick
succession of encounters occurred at various parts of the seat of war,
the general tendency of which was not entirely in favour of the British
arms, though the weekly export of prisoners reassured all who noted it
as to the sapping and decay of the Boer strength. These incidents must
now be set down in the order of their occurrence, with their relation to
each other so far as it is possible to trace it.

General Louis Botha, with the double intention of making an offensive
move and of distracting the wavering burghers from a close examination
of Lord Kitchener's proclamation, assembled his forces in the second
week of September in the Ermelo district. Thence he moved them rapidly
towards Natal, with the result that the volunteers of that colony had
once more to grasp their rifles and hasten to the frontier. The whole
situation bore for an instant an absurd resemblance to that of two years
before--Botha playing the part of Joubert, and Lyttelton, who commanded
on the frontier, that of White. It only remained, to make the parallel
complete, that some one should represent Penn Symons, and this perilous
role fell to a gallant officer, Major Gough, commanding a detached force
which thought itself strong enough to hold its own, and only learned by
actual experiment that it was not.

This officer, with a small force consisting of three companies of
Mounted Inf