e British prisoners, and a small party
headed by the Duke of Marlborough rode to their rescue. Let it be said
once for all that their treatment by the Boers was excellent and that
their appearance would alone have proved it. One hundred and twenty-nine
officers and thirty-nine soldiers were found in the Model Schools, which
had been converted into a prison. A day later our cavalry arrived at
Waterval, which is fourteen miles to the north of Pretoria. Here were
confined three thousand soldiers, whose fare had certainly been of
the scantiest, though in other respects they appear to have been well
treated. [Footnote: Further information unfortunately shows that in the
case of the sick and of the Colonial prisoners the treatment was by
no means good.] Nine hundred of their comrades had been removed by the
Boers, but Porter's cavalry was in time to release the others, under
a brisk shell fire from a Boer gun upon the ridge. Many pieces of good
luck we had in the campaign, but this recovery of our prisoners, which
left the enemy without a dangerous lever for exacting conditions of
peace, was the most fortunate of all.

In the centre of the town there is a wide square decorated or disfigured
by a bare pedestal upon which a statue of the President was to have been
placed. Hard by is the bleak barnlike church in which he preached, and
on either side are the Government offices and the Law Courts, buildings
which would grace any European capital. Here, at two o'clock on the
afternoon of June 5th, Lord Roberts sat his horse and saw pass in
front of him the men who had followed him so far and so faithfully--the
Guards, the Essex, the Welsh, the Yorks, the Warwicks, the guns, the
mounted infantry, the dashing irregulars, the Gordons, the Canadians,
the Shropshires, the Cornwalls, the Camerons, the Derbys, the Sussex,
and the London Volunteers. For over two hours the khaki waves with their
crests of steel went sweeping by. High above their heads from the summit
of the Raad-saal the broad Union Jack streamed for the first time.
Through months of darkness we had struggled onwards to the light. Now
at last the strange drama seemed to be drawing to its close. The God of
battles had given the long-withheld verdict. But of all the hearts which
throbbed high at that supreme moment there were few who felt one touch
of bitterness towards the brave men who had been overborne. They had
fought and died for their ideal. We had fought and died for o