at
we have now in our hands 42,000 males of the Boer nations. They assert,
and we cannot deny, that their losses in killed have been
extraordinarily light during two years of warfare. How are these
admitted and certain facts compatible with any general refusal of
quarter? To anyone who, like myself, has seen the British soldiers
jesting and smoking cigarettes with their captives within five minutes
of their being taken, such a charge is ludicrous, but surely even to the
most biassed mind the fact stated above must be conclusive.

In some ways I fear that the Conventions of The Hague will prove, when
tested on a large scale, to be a counsel of perfection. It will
certainly be the extreme test of self-restraint and discipline--a test
successfully endured by the British troops at Elandslaagte, Bergendal,
and many other places--to carry a position by assault and then to give
quarter to those defenders who only surrender at the last instant. It
seems almost too much to ask. The assailants have been terribly
punished: they have lost their friends and their officers, in the frenzy
of battle they storm the position, and then at the last instant the men
who have done all the mischief stand up unscathed from behind their
rocks and claim their own personal safety. Only at that moment has the
soldier seen his antagonist or been on equal terms with him. He must
give quarter, but it must be confessed that this is trying human nature
rather high.

But if this holds good of an organised force defending a position, how
about the solitary sniper? The position of such a man has never been
defined by the Conventions of The Hague, and no rules are laid down for
his treatment. It is not wonderful if the troops who have been annoyed
by him should on occasion take the law into their own hands and treat
him in a summary fashion.

The very first article of the Conventions of The Hague states that a
belligerent must (1) Be commanded by some responsible person; (2) Have a
distinctive emblem visible at a distance; (3) Carry arms openly. Now it
is evident that the Boer sniper who draws his Mauser from its
hiding-place in order to have a shot at the Rooineks from a safe kopje
does not comply with any one of these conditions. In the letter of the
law, then, he is undoubtedly outside the rules of warfare.

In the spirit he is even more so. Prowling among the rocks and shooting
those who cannot tell whence the bullet comes, there is no wide gap
bet