nned in sardonic silence at
conqueror and conquered, as though to remind us that we were but puppets in
a passing show. Kopjes and valleys may have looked upon many a grim page in
war's history. Savage chiefs, backed by savage hordes, have swept across
them many a time and oft. Possibly, if the rocks had tongues, they could
tell us much of ancient armies, for this land of Africa is old in blood and
warlike doings. But few more remarkable sights than this upon which my eyes
rested upon the 30th July, 1900, have ever graced even this land of many
wonders.

I looked along our lines, and saw our soldiers standing patiently waiting
for the curtain to fall. I was proud of them, and of the men who led them,
for they had won without one cruel stroke. No single human life had
wantonly been wasted, no dishonourable deed had smirched their arms, no
smoking ruins cried aloud to God for retribution, no outraged women sobbed
dry-eyed behind us, no starving children fled before the khaki wave; and in
this last hour, an hour pregnant with humiliation and pain to our enemies,
there was the steady manliness which spoke of the great dignity of a great
nation. Out from the stillness a bugle spoke from the lines of the
Leinsters; the Scottish bagpipes, far away down the hillside, took up the
note with a shrill scream of triumph, like the challenge of an eagle in its
eyrie. A rustle ran along the lines. We caught the hum of many voices, then
the tramp of horses' hoofs. A soldier slipped towards the spot where our
country's flag was furled and ready; a moment later the Union Jack spread
out and hugged the breezes. Our foemen rode towards the flag between the
lines of those whose hands had placed it there, and when they came abreast
of it they dropped their rifles and their bandoliers, and with bent heads
passed onwards.

Some were boys, so young that rifles looked unholy things in hands so
childlike; others were old men, grey and grizzled, grim old tillers of the
soil, who looked as hard as the rocky boulders against which they leant,
many were in the pride of manhood; but old or young, grey beard or no
beard, all of them seemed to realise that they were a beaten people. All
day, and for many days, they came to us and laid their arms aside, until
fully 4,000 men had owned themselves our prisoners. We gathered in the
flocks and herds which had been held by them as army stores, and then we
set to work to give the Free State peace and peaceful l