ed, remains
subconscious, perhaps, but ineradicable. The man knows, or rather
feels, that if he gets to the end he will find his comrades there; and
that if he goes back he will not find them, but his own self-contempt.
Such is unanimity, the oneness of will that comes of a common training
and of common ideals, bred-in, if not inborn. So this mass of men,
independent each, and yet members, each, one of the other, struggled
forward, through failing {p.055} light and drenching rain--for the
storm had burst as the ascent began--till half the way was won. Then
the bugle sounded "Charge," and the reply came cheerily up from below.
The men, in the valley and on the hill, moved forward with the
bayonet, still not neglecting cover, but looking now more to speed.
Again, as usual, save a few of the more stubborn who were killed at
their guns, the defenders did not await the shock but fled down the
hills, where the cavalry that had accompanied the flank attack got
among them and completed their discomfiture.

The battle at Elandslaagte was distinctly creditable to both sides,
but upon the whole gave sounder cause for self-congratulation to the
British than to their opponents. The former were numerically superior
to the defenders, but not to an extent which countervailed even the
natural advantages of the ground, further improved by measures for
which time allowed.

Regarded apart from its connection with the campaign as a whole,
simply as a combat unrelated to other incidents, the conception and
the {p.056} execution of the attack were admirable; while in the
matter of military dynamic energy, to whatever source that shown on
the one side or the other may be attributed, the potentiality of the
attacking force was demonstrated to be greater than that of the
opponent.

Still more was the action at Elandslaagte commendable, when viewed in
relation to the general respective conditions of the Boers and the
British in Natal at that time.

Duly to appreciate the merits and the results of these two successive
days of fighting, at Talana and at Elandslaagte, it must be remembered
that the British in a general sense, and at Dundee locally as well,
were upon the defensive, and that the Boer movements were each a part
of one general plan directed, and most properly, to overwhelm and
destroy the detachments--Dundee and Ladysmith--in detail; they
together being rightly considered one fraction of the enemy's whole
force, present or hurryin