hich enables them to cover for six consecutive days thirty
miles a-day with 20 stone on their backs, has added pence to the
present burden of the income-tax. The taxpayer is naturally upset. He
has cause. He seeks mental relief in philippics against the cavalry
officer,--the man to whom he owes so much. He damns his intelligence
and damns his breeding, and then, having railed sufficiently, pays
cheerfully, with heavy self-satisfaction that some one has at least
been put in his proper place, and that a lesson so necessary has not
really been so dearly purchased at the price. Poor innocent fools! the
British taxpayer brings to mind that dear fat smiling millionaire,
denizen of a West End club, to whom every day impecunious
fellow-members would propose a game of _picquet_ or _ecarte_, well
knowing that it was the quickest way in London to earn a certain L200.
Your Commissions may sit upon the educational standard of your
officers, upon the sequel to your own folly in remount purchase: but
will your inquiry ever reach the foundations of this edifice that you
have condemned? I think not. One or two scapegoats will satisfy the
British public upon those few occasions when it rises up in a thirst
for blood. Willingness to pay rather than interfere will do the rest.
And the spirit of apathy which is characteristic of the nation, in
spite of the occasional outbursts of interested indignation, will
prevent a true disclosure of the horrid facts as long as the war is
unfinished. Once a peace is ratified the national interest in both the
present, past, and future state of its army will be as abruptly and
effectually severed as the magazine charge in the Lee-Enfield rifle
when the cut-off is snapped home, forgetful of the fact that our next
enemy may not be as merciful as the Boer; that he will not stand by
and reap no benefit from our failures; that in a few brief hours a
situation may arise in which no wealth of bullion can save us. It
will take just one disaster such as this--a disaster which will carry
annihilation with it--to cause the British nation too late to take
just stock of its limitations. Then in grief it will remember that he
whom it treated as a mad _fakir_ was indeed a true prophet.

The state of the New Cavalry Brigade, as it wedged itself in between
the two ghosts of mounted columns, was in itself an object-lesson.
Those who have followed the interests of this little command through
the foregoing chapters will have