General French was surrounded on three sides with what he said was an overwhelming force of the enemy, _and yet he did not station any pickets or outposts even on his headquarters camp_. Captain Beech brought a wagon-train into the center of the camp, through the lines, without so much as a challenge. The bitter cold of the high veldt kept me awake that night, and about three o’clock in the morning I heard horsemen riding through the lines. They took no especial care to keep their movements secret, so I imagined them to be friends, but lay waiting for the expected challenge. None came, and the party of horse rode nearer and nearer until it came quite up to General French’s headquarters, near a little farmhouse. Dawn was just breaking, and in the gray light I recognized Captain Beech as he rode up to headquarters. Captain Beech is an old campaigner in experience if not in years, and such negligence of the most ordinary and primary needs of campaigning seemed to him outrageous. He expressed himself with highly-colored vehemence. “Why,” he exclaimed, “the Boers could ride in here and take the whole outfit, for there isn’t an outpost on the camp; and you are the only one who heard me coming on with a whole wagon-train.” It staggers an American to comprehend such a situation; and if the Boers had had a little energy that night they might easily have taken the whole command. It is an instinct of animals and birds to have their pickets. When a herd of deer is grazing on the plains, a few are always left on the outskirts to watch for danger; when a flock of birds is feeding on the ground, sentries are left in the trees; but the ordinary British officer does not seem to share that useful instinct. I asked one of General French’s staff if it was the custom of all commands to ignore the necessity of placing outposts, and he said: “Oh, what’s the use? They never attack at night.” The fact that they do not make night attacks and are not more keenly alive to such possibilities does not justify the British neglect of outposts and pickets. I have ridden in and out of Pretoria at all times of day and night without once being challenged, although it was well known at headquarters that the residents of the town were communicating with the Boer commanders every day. A little Afrikander girl of sixteen told me as a jolly joke that she had ridden out on her bicycle to see her father, who had a command in the hills within five miles of the center of Pretoria. She said that she rode part of the way with a mounted picket, with whom she chatted as they rode along. An order was issued by the military governor that every one who wished to ride a bicycle or a horse, or to drive in a carriage, must get a permit to do so; and the fair young patriot said that after this it was easier than ever, for she used the permit as a pass, and none of the Tommies ever knew the difference.