by Hughes-Hallett in the
late afternoon, no one seems to have taken the direction. 'My lieutenant
was wounded and my captain was killed,' says a private. 'The General was
dead, but we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.'
That was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of
the Boers compelled them to fall back.

The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme bloodiness
of modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under
others. Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties
seven hundred were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day of
shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three hundred.
So also at Ladysmith the British forces (White's column) were under
heavy fire from 5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was something under
three hundred. With conservative generalship the losses of the battles
of the future will be much less than those of the past, and as a
consequence the battles themselves will last much longer, and it will be
the most enduring rather than the most fiery which will win. The supply
of food and water to the combatants will become of extreme importance to
keep them up during the prolonged trials of endurance, which will last
for weeks rather than days. On the other hand, when a General's force is
badly compromised, it will be so punished that a quick surrender will be
the only alternative to annihilation.

On the subject of the quarter-column formation which proved so fatal
to us, it must be remembered that any other form of advance is hardly
possible during a night attack, though at Tel-el-Kebir the exceptional
circumstance of the march being over an open desert allowed the troops
to move for the last mile or two in a more extended formation. A line
of battalion double-company columns is most difficult to preserve in the
darkness, and any confusion may lead to disaster. The whole mistake
lay in a miscalculation of a few hundred yards in the position of the
trenches. Had the regiments deployed five minutes earlier it is probable
(though by no means certain) that the position would have been carried.

The action was not without those examples of military virtue which
soften a disaster, and hold out a brighter promise for the future. The
Guards withdrew from the field as if on parade, with the Boer shells
bursting over their ranks. Fine, too, was the restraint of G Battery
of Horse Artillery on