ng ground from which to
assail them at every point. Behind flowed the Tugela, a deep, rapid,
only occasionally fordable river, eighty-five yards broad, with
precipitous banks. We all prepared ourselves for a bloody and even
disastrous rearguard action. But now, I repeat, when things had come to
this pass, Buller took personal command. He arrived on the field calm,
cheerful, inscrutable as ever, rode hither and thither with a weary
staff and a huge notebook, gripped the whole business in his strong
hands, and so shook it into shape that we crossed the river in safety,
comfort, and good order, with most remarkable mechanical precision, and
without the loss of a single man or a pound of stores.

The fighting troops stood fast for two days, while the train of waggons
streamed back over the bridges and parked in huge black squares on the
southern bank. Then, on the night of the 26th, the retreat began. It was
pitch dark, and a driving rain veiled all lights. The ground was
broken. The enemy near. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more
difficult operation. But it was performed with amazing ease.
Buller himself--not Buller by proxy or Buller at the end of a
heliograph--Buller himself managed it. He was the man who gave orders,
the man whom the soldiers looked to. He had already transported his
train. At dusk he passed the Royals over the ford. By ten o'clock all
his cavalry and guns were across the pontoon bridges. At ten he began
disengaging his infantry, and by daylight the army stood in order on the
southern bank. While the sappers began to take the pontoon bridges to
pieces the Boers, who must have been astonished by the unusual rapidity
of the movement, fired their first shell at the crossing. We were over
the river none too soon.

A successful retreat is a poor thing for a relieving army to boast of
when their gallant friends are hard pressed and worn out. But this
withdrawal showed that this force possesses both a leader and machinery
of organisation, and it is this, and this alone, that has preserved our
confidence. We believe that Buller gauged the capacity of one
subordinate at Colenso, of another at Spion Kop, and that now he will do
things himself, as he was meant to do. I know not why he has waited so
long. Probably some pedantic principle of military etiquette:
'Commander-in-Chief should occupy a central position; turning movements
should be directed by subordinates.' But the army believes that this is
all o