le litter of broken and shattered bodies can be
seen, and the groans of the stricken rise in one long droning chorus to
the ear, then it is an iron mind indeed which can resist such evidence
of disaster. In a harder age Wellington was able to survey four thousand
bodies piled in the narrow compass of the breach of Badajos, but his
resolution was sustained by the knowledge that the military end for
which they fell had been accomplished. Had his task been unfinished it
is doubtful whether even his steadfast soul would not have flinched from
its completion. Thorneycroft saw the frightful havoc of one day, and he
shrank from the thought of such another. 'Better six battalions safely
down the hill than a mop up in the morning,' said he, and he gave the
word to retire. One who had met the troops as they staggered down
has told me how far they were from being routed. In mixed array, but
steadily and in order, the long thin line trudged through the darkness.
Their parched lips would not articulate, but they whispered 'Water!
Where is water?' as they toiled upon their way. At the bottom of the
hill they formed into regiments once more, and marched back to the camp.
In the morning the blood-spattered hill-top, with its piles of dead and
of wounded, were in the hands of Botha and his men, whose valour and
perseverance deserved the victory which they had won. There is no doubt
now that at 3 A.M. of that morning Botha, knowing that the Rifles had
carried Burger's position, regarded the affair as hopeless, and that
no one was more astonished than he when he found, on the report of two
scouts, that it was a victory and not a defeat which had come to him.

How shall we sum up such an action save that it was a gallant attempt,
gallantly carried out, and as gallantly met? On both sides the results
of artillery fire during the war have been disappointing, but at Spion
Kop beyond all question it was the Boer guns which won the action for
them. So keen was the disappointment at home that there was a tendency
to criticise the battle with some harshness, but it is difficult now,
with the evidence at our command, to say what was left undone which
could have altered the result. Had Thorneycroft known all that we know,
he would have kept his grip upon the hill. On the face of it one finds
it difficult to understand why so momentous a decision, upon which
the whole operations depended, should have been left entirely to the
judgment of one who in t