[Illustration: GENERAL LORD KITCHENER. One who believes that the only way to establish permanent peace in South Africa is to destroy the Boer women and children.] I am not going into the details of this nine days' fight, but will give the main features and the result. Here was a common, ordinary farmer, without any military training or education, in command of a little more than 4,000 equally untrained farmers, and four or five old Krupp guns. With him were a great number of refugee Boer women and children, who had come to him for protection against the insults and outrages of the British soldiery. Sad to relate, this is the actual truth, yet we still hear Anglo-Americans speaking of the civilized English. Opposed to him was the very flower of the English Empire. There were Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, General Kelly-Kenny, that able commander, Hector MacDonald, General French and many other stars of the British army. Altogether they had some 50,000 men around General Cronje. These men were all tried military men, trained and educated. Besides, Lord Roberts had 120 cannon, field guns and lyddite guns. The British may tell you that there were mountains there higher than Mount Everest, but believe me, there are no mountains there whatever. General Cronje and his little band of patriots were on the banks of the Modder River, where infantry, cavalry and artillery could manoeuvre without any difficulty. It was, I think, on the 18th of February that Roberts began with all his guns to bombard Cronje. Almost continually for nine days, 120 cannon were busy trying to destroy that little band of patriots. Once Lord Kitchener thought he would play a Khartoum act. He recalled the time when he charged upon and murdered some 10,000 to 15,000 unarmed negroes at Khartoum, and saw no reason why he could not do the same thing with 4,000 Boers. He forgot that the negroes were armed only with sticks, while the Boers had mausers. He advanced boldly, had hundreds and hundreds of his men slaughtered, and then fled as rapidly as he could. After the battle had been raging for two or three days, General Cronje asked for an armistice to bury his dead. Lord Roberts positively refused. During the whole war the Boers never once denied the English an armistice for that purpose, although they knew that the English, in every instance, took advantage of it to strengthen their position. There is a wide difference between a Boer savage and a civilized Englishman. Give me the former, but deliver me from the latter!