_Engineer Operations._--These seem to have been very complete. Lieut.-Colonel Wood and his Staff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel Sim and his Staff Officer, and the 17th Company of Royal Engineers were engaged about Spion Kop all the time, and the 37th Company, sent from Potgieter’s, arrived at midnight of 24th January. During the 24th the whole of the picks, shovels, and sandbags in possession of the force were carried up to the summit of Spion Kop, and were there ready to be made use of at sundown. Colonel Hill knew where they were deposited; Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft apparently did not. The 17th Company R.E. made the mule path and the gun slides, which were ready the one at noon, the others in the afternoon. This company and others were employed in developing the springs on the sides of Spion Kop, and also made a dam. In the afternoon a message was sent to the half of the 17th Company R.E. on the top of Spion Kop directing the officer in command to be ready to make entrenchments there at nightfall, and Colonel Sim was ordered to go up with a working party of the Somersetshire Regiment. It is not too much, then, to say that so far as Sir Charles Warren was concerned everything was ready, and action would have been taken during the night in regard to all the points mentioned by Sir Redvers Buller had not the retirement prevented it. Sir Redvers Buller was therefore mistaken when he wrote, ‘No arrangements were made.’ Arrangements _were_ made, as stated in Sir Charles Warren’s despatch and corroborated from so many sources. It _was_ known on the top of Spion Kop that the guns were to go up, but quite possibly Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft did not know it, as he did not place himself in a position to know anything but what was going on in the firing line, and at sundown, when everything should have been done and could have been done, he ordered the withdrawal. And yet this is the one act which Sir Redvers Buller singles out for special commendation. Colonel Thorneycroft, he says, ‘saved the situation’ and ‘exercised a wise discretion.’ Now, no one will withhold from this officer the praise due to his gallantry, but his determination to retire from Spion Kop, in spite of the ‘No surrender’ order sent to Colonel Crofton, in spite of the protests of Colonel Hill, in spite of the remonstrances of other officers, and in spite of the explicit orders of Sir Charles Warren conveyed to him on the way down by Colonel Sim, was not so much an error of judgment as an assumption of responsibility which, had it been a determination to advance in spite of orders, might perhaps have been justified by success, but as a determination to retire was perfectly unjustifiable and led to the abrupt termination of an enterprise which had been boldly commenced by the seizure of the key of the position, and which, in the opinion of Lord Roberts, ought to have succeeded.