Probably the unkindest cut of all, though no doubt the result of thoughtlessness, was Sir Redvers Buller’s telegram of 25th January: ‘Warren’s garrison, I am sorry to say, I find this morning had in the night abandoned Spion Kop.’ He might have said ‘Thorneycroft’s garrison,’ and he could well have afforded to say ‘my garrison,’ but this would have been to abandon the _rôle_ of the irresponsible critic. So also he declined to hold any investigation into the circumstances of the withdrawal as proposed by Sir Charles Warren. He says in his despatch: ‘I have not thought it necessary to order any investigation. If at sundown the defence of the summit had been taken regularly in hand, intrenchments laid out, gun emplacements prepared, the dead removed, the wounded collected, and, in fact, the whole place brought under regular military command, and careful arrangements made for the supply of water and food to the scattered fighting line, the hills would have been held, I am sure. ‘But no arrangements were made. General Coke appears to have been ordered away just as he would have been useful, and no one succeeded him; those on the top were ignorant of the fact that guns were coming up, and generally there was a want of organisation and system that acted most unfavourably upon the defence.’ Such a string of inconsistencies and erroneous statements only shows that not only did Sir Redvers Buller not think it necessary to order an official investigation, but that he did not even think it necessary before writing his despatch to take the trouble to ascertain the facts for himself. _At sundown_, before any defence could be taken regularly in hand, the abandonment had not only been decided upon by Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, but the preparations for retirement were actually commenced. This he might have gathered from Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft’s report, in which he says: ‘When night began to close in I determined to take some steps,’ &c., and there must have been other reports, which have not been published, before him from which he could have known the precise time when the retirement was arranged. After categorically enumerating the various arrangements that should have been made at nightfall in order to hold the position on the following day, Sir Redvers Buller writes: ‘But no arrangements were made.’ He does not say who should have made them, or who should have carried them out, but the inference from what he says is that as ‘General Coke appears to have been ordered away just as he would have been useful,’ he considers that Major-General Coke should have made them. But Major-General Coke did not receive the order to go and see Sir Charles Warren until 9.30 P.M., some three hours after nightfall, and after the order for withdrawal had been given.