he house in question was occupied
as an outpost by thirty-six Boers, who fired upon some companies of
British troops. About a dozen of our men, chiefly Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders with a lieutenant of the Fifth Fusiliers--for an
extraordinary intermingling of various units took place in this
engagement--rushed the house. Two of the Highlanders were shot down but
the rest took a speedy revenge. The thirty-six Boers clubbed their
rifles and fought pluckily, but they were crowded together and could do
little against our bayonets. Every man of the thirty-six perished. "I
didn't like to see it, sir," said one of the Highlanders to me. This is,
of course, a very different story from the disgraceful tale alluded to
above. None of the Boers in the house were wounded before our men
appeared on the scene, and it is clear that the Boer corpses in the
river, with stones tied to their ankles, were put there by their own
comrades.

Fair-minded and thoughtful men who have followed the events of the
present campaign must long ago have come to the conclusion that
non-official news must frequently be received with great caution. Before
the war began misrepresentation was rife on both sides, and it has
continued ever since. Mr. Winston Churchill may well call South Africa a
"land of lies". Various slanders against ourselves have emanated to some
extent from the Dutch papers in Cape Colony and the Transvaal, but in a
much fuller and more substantial form from the Continental papers,
notably the Parisian Press. On the other hand, our own journalists have
not been altogether free from this taint. Let us take one or two
concrete instances, _e.g._, violation of the white flag, firing on
ambulances, the use of "explosive" bullets, looting. Just after the
first reverse at the Tugela, a correspondent wired home that the Boers
were "shooting horses and violating all the usages of civilised
warfare". A man who would write such tomfoolery about horses ought to be
kept in Fleet Street, and not sent out as a war correspondent; and as
to his sweeping accusations in general, it is worth noticing that he was
publicly and severely rebuked by Sir Redvers Buller, who denied his
statements, and said that it was dishonourable to malign our brave
opponents in this fashion.

As to the _vexata quaestio_ of the white flag, it seems clear that in
some instances the Boers have used this symbol of surrender in an
absolutely unjustifiable way. Such a misusage