t of food. For the first time they were called upon to face modern
rifle fire and modern machine guns in the open. The result tends to
prove that those who hold that it will from now onwards be impossible
ever to make such frontal attacks as those which the English made at
the Alma or the French at Waterloo, are justified in their belief. It
is beyond human hardihood to face the pitiless beat of bullet and shell
which comes from modern quick-firing weapons. Had our flank not made a
lodgment across the river, it is impossible that we could have carried
the position. Once more, too, it was demonstrated how powerless the best
artillery is to disperse resolute and well-placed riflemen. Of the minor
points of interest there will always remain the record of the forced
march of the 62nd Battery, and artillerymen will note the use of
gun-pits by the Boers, which ensured that the range of their positions
should never be permanently obtained.

The honours of the day upon the side of the British rested with the
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Yorkshire Light Infantry, the 2nd
Coldstreams, and the artillery. Out of a total casualty list of about
450, no fewer than 112 came from the gallant Argylls and 69 from the
Coldstreams. The loss of the Boers is exceedingly difficult to gauge, as
they throughout the war took the utmost pains to conceal it. The number
of desperate and long-drawn actions which have ended, according to the
official Pretorian account, in a loss of one wounded burgher may in some
way be better policy, but does not imply a higher standard of public
virtue, than those long lists which have saddened our hearts in the
halls of the War Office. What is certain is that the loss at Modder
River could not have been far inferior to our own, and that it arose
almost entirely from artillery fire, since at no time of the action
were any large number of their riflemen visible. So it ended, this long
pelting match, Cronje sullenly withdrawing under the cover of darkness
with his resolute heart filled with fierce determination for the future,
while the British soldiers threw themselves down on the ground which
they occupied and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

CHAPTER 9. BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN.

Lord Methuen's force had now fought three actions in the space of a
single week, losing in killed and wounded about a thousand men, or
rather more than one-tenth of its total numbers. Had there been evidence
that the enemy wer