to them the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Royal Lancasters
had been the hardest hit. It speaks well for Buller's power of winning
and holding the confidence of his men that in the face of repulse after
repulse the soldiers still went into battle as steadily as ever under
his command.

On March 3rd Buller's force entered Ladysmith in state between the lines
of the defenders. For their heroism the Dublin Fusiliers were put in the
van of the procession, and it is told how, as the soldiers who lined
the streets saw the five officers and small clump of men, the remains of
what had been a strong battalion, realising, for the first time perhaps,
what their relief had cost, many sobbed like children. With cheer after
cheer the stream of brave men flowed for hours between banks formed by
men as brave. But for the purposes of war the garrison was useless. A
month of rest and food would be necessary before they could be ready to
take the field once more.

So the riddle of the Tugela had at last been solved. Even now, with all
the light which has been shed upon the matter, it is hard to apportion
praise and blame. To the cheerful optimism of Symons must be laid some
of the blame of the original entanglement; but man is mortal, and he
laid down his life for his mistake. White, who had been but a week
in the country, could not, if he would, alter the main facts of the
military situation. He did his best, committed one or two errors, did
brilliantly on one or two points, and finally conducted the defence
with a tenacity and a gallantry which are above all praise. It did not,
fortunately, develop into an absolutely desperate affair, like Massena's
defence of Genoa, but a few more weeks would have made it a military
tragedy. He was fortunate in the troops whom he commanded--half of
them old soldiers from India--[Footnote: An officer in high command in
Ladysmith has told me, as an illustration of the nerve and discipline of
the troops, that though false alarms in the Boer trenches were matters
of continual occurrence from the beginning to the end of the siege,
there was not one single occasion when the British outposts made a
mistake.]--and exceedingly fortunate in his officers, French (in the
operations before the siege), Archibald Hunter, Ian Hamilton, Hedworth
Lambton, Dick-Cunyngham, Knox, De Courcy Hamilton, and all the other
good men and true who stood (as long as they could stand) by his side.
Above all, he was fortunate in his c