hurricane from their Mausers. In addition to this they built long castellated trenches, perfect underground avenues, to allow of the invisible massing of troops at any given point. They were also provided with ingenious gun-trenches, quite hidden, along which their Nordenfeldt gun, that pumped five shells in rapid succession, could be removed swiftly from one spot to another, and thereby defeat the efforts of the British gunners to locate it. Thus it will be seen a new complexion was put upon Boer affairs. Novel and trying conditions were imposed on those who already had to cope with the problem of how to match in mobility a rival who brought to his support six legs, while the British only brought two. Whole armies consisting merely of mounted infantry and artillery had never before come into action, and it began to be understood that a war against bushwhackers, guerillas, and sharpshooters, plus the most expensive guns modernity could provide, was a matter more serious than any with which the nineteenth century had hitherto had to deal. We had to learn that sheer pluck, endurance, and brute force were unavailing, and that strategy of the hard and fast kind--the red-tape strategy of the Staff College--was about as unpractical as a knowledge of the classics to one who goes a-marketing. There is no finality in the art of war, and nations, be they ever so old and wise and important, must go on learning. One of the newer questions was, how far personal intelligence might be distributed among a body of men? The General as a head, the Staff Officers as nerves that convey volition to the different members, we had accepted, but how far individual acumen was needed to insure success now began to be argued. Certain it was that in this campaign we had opportunities for studying the comparative value of individual discretion _versus_ "fighting to order." The Boers, every one of them, were working for themselves, absolutely for hearth and home, though perhaps under a general plan which certainly served to harass and annoy and keep the British army in a dilemma; while we laboured on a consolidated system which, if not obsolete, was certainly inappropriate. However, as there was no use in bemoaning our reverses, we began to congratulate ourselves on having discovered the cause of them. It was decided that first there must be more troops sent out to meet the extended nature of our operations, and that these troops must be accompanied by a sufficient number of horses to insure the necessary mobility, without which even the brute force of our numbers would be useless. Of the successful issue of future proceedings none had a doubt. All knew that the finest strategy in the world must be useless when tools were wanting, and all felt certain that the admirable abilities of our Generals, when once the means of playing their war game came to hand, were bound to rise to the prodigious task still in store.