A correspondence between Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., and the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, published on 21st February last, contains some observations by the latter very much to the point on the want of any narrative of the Spion Kop operations in Sir Redvers Buller’s despatches. Mr. Balfour points out, as was done two years before in the parliamentary debates, that the General in command, ‘in accordance with the Queen’s Regulations, with the best precedents, and with public convenience,’ should have furnished a simple narrative, unencumbered by controversy, of the operations which took place. To this Sir Redvers Buller objected, in a letter published on the 26th March last, that he was not in command, that he was not present, and that therefore it was not his duty to write such a narrative. The reply of Mr. Balfour, from which an extract is appended, will be found to be fully borne out in the pages of this book. Extract from a letter from Mr. A. J. Balfour to Sir Redvers Buller dated 10th March 1902. * * * * * ‘You say that, not being in chief command, you were not the proper person to write an account of what took place. But can this be sustained? I find that on 15th January you ordered Sir Charles Warren to cross the Tugela to the west of Spion Kop; on the 21st and 22nd you gave him personal instructions as to the disposal of his artillery; on the latter day you agreed with him, after discussion, that Spion Kop would have to be taken; on the 23rd you definitely decided upon the attack; you selected the officer who was to lead it, detailing one of your Staff to accompany him; it was by your orders that on the 24th Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft assumed command on the summit of Spion Kop after General Woodgate was wounded, and all heliographic messages between the officers in the fighting line and Sir Charles Warren passed through your camp, and were seen by you before they reached their destination. As you were thus in constant touch with the troops actually engaged on the top of the hill, so also you kept general control over the movements of the co-operative forces under General Lyttelton, with whom you were in communication during both the morning and the afternoon of the 24th. It is, of course, true that you were not present at the actual Spion Kop engagement. But if this was a reason for not writing an account of it, it was a reason equally applicable to Sir Charles Warren, whose headquarters, as I am informed, were very little nearer to the scene of action than were your own. It was on these grounds that I did not draw any distinction between your position during the days of Spion Kop and that of any other general conducting operations over an extended field, at every part of which he could not, from the nature of the case, be present. You were responsible for the general plan of