The rest of the Mount Nelson's and one squadron of the 21st King's Dragoons were at Hanover Road. One squadron of the 20th Dragoon Guards was at Richmond Road; two squadrons were in the train on the way up from Cape Town. The guns at least had arrived. Yet we were about the value of a "castle" on the chess-board designed to mate De Wet. * * * * * "Now we shall have to take our coats off." The brigadier was right. It was no mean affair to arrive at sundown at a miserable siding in the Karoo, called by courtesy a station, to find its two parallels of rails blocked with the trucks containing the nucleus of a cavalry brigade, and to get that nucleus on the road by daybreak. The supply column was all out, the battery half out--these were old soldiers; but the two squadrons of 20th Dragoon Guards had not yet awakened to the situation. The brigadier looked up and down the platform, gazed a moment at the long tiers of laden trucks, and then made the above remark. And we had to take our coats off. The 20th were new but they were willing; and it is difficult to say which hampers you most, an over-willing novice or an unwilling expert. You who sit at home and rail at the conduct of the campaign, rail at the wretched officer, regimental or staff, little know what is expected of him. You have your type in your mind's eye--an eyeglass, spotless habiliments, and a waving sword; you pay him and expect him to succeed. Your one argument is unanswerable. You place the greatest man that you can select to guide and cherish him, therefore if he does not succeed it must be through his own shortcomings. In your impatience you opine that he has not succeeded. Therefore he must be ignorant, indifferent, and incompetent. Little do you realise the injustice of your opinion. You sweat, during a war, an intelligent class--the same class, be it said, from which the best that your universities can produce is drawn,--you sweat it as no other educated class would allow itself to be sweated in the whole civilised world, and yet, though men drop in harness for you by dozens every month, you turn upon them and revile them. Can you not appreciate the fact that it is not always the medium, through which the Great Head you have selected works, that is in error,--that the pilot's hand may be at fault, and not the steering-gear? Take us that night at Richmond Road. New troops, new staff, little or no information, and an order to be in position at a point 50 miles distant in 36 hours. If bricks have to be made, has not the workman a right to expect to be supplied with the ingredients? Is the blame altogether his if, when exposed to the heat of a tropical sun, his hurriedly constructed clay crumbles to pieces for want of the straw with which his taskmaster failed to supply him? We think not. But that night at Richmond Road we had no time to ruminate upon our difficulties. We had to surmount them, and with our brigadier we took