Counting the Boers on the right and left sides of the kop who also took part in the fight, the total number of them engaged was about 600, but the actual number on the kop, who alone fought the big English force, was about 250 men. The Boers and the English were within easy point-blank range of each other, and at some points no more than fifty yards separated them. Here was the time, the place and the opportunity for the British to display that bold courage, that dash and fighting quality of which they have been boasting for centuries, for, with their overwhelming numbers, they would have easily swept that little handful of Boers off the kop. But they positively declined to take advantage of such conditions to display British pluck and courage, and, in the end, were themselves swept off. In their wars with the blacks, it had been their rule to hoist the Union Jack, boldly advance as at Khartoum, and when they discovered a horde of unarmed and defenceless negroes, make a mad rush, fall upon them and shoot them down; then apply the cold steel, and when they have murdered the last one and see him lying at their feet, with blood gurgling from his mouth, give three cheers for the Union Jack, and everyone at once apply for a Victoria Cross. But on Spion Kop it was different, for no Union Jack was hoisted, no Union Jack brought to the battlefield, no rush was made, because a Boer was there, with a mauser in his hand--and that was a horse of another color.--So the British halted and trembled, and then threw up the sponge and retreated as fast as their legs would take them, each hoping that he might escape the fatal bullet and receive his well deserved Victoria Cross. I may here add that when you find any one so decorated with the Victoria Cross, you may generally put him down as a worthless son of a lord, or as a puny specimen of a puny, dissolute, diseased nobility, or the son of some moneyed, unscrupulous politician to whom the English Government must bow in obeisance. One in a thousand who has been decorated may deserve it, but I even have my doubts about that. Nearly all the officers and men of the British army who have been given the Victoria Cross you will find in an English company's cigarette packages, and that is just where they belong.