General Delarey seems uncertain what to do. While he is casting about for a plan of action, we may take a glance at our enemies, and study them a little. In this campaign the English army has collected together elements the most diverse. About one half of it consists of regular troops, the other half of volunteers, colonial troops, and contingents from every country. Their behaviour under fire varies greatly, according to their origin. Tommy Atkins the regular, cold, calm, advances under a hail of projectiles, marching steadily in time, as if on the parade-ground. Scornful of danger, his head held high, he seems to say: ’Make way! I am an Englishman!’ The colonial, on the other hand, the cowboy, the volunteer from the Cape, from Rhodesia, and from Australia, a hunter by profession, fights in the same fashion as the Boers. He has their qualities and their defects: great precision as a marksman, but a lack of cohesion and of discipline. Crouching behind a rock, taking advantage of every scrap of cover, like his adversary, he hunts rather than fights. But a good many militiamen, volunteers from various towns, and yeomen are even less brilliant, and exchange perils, privations, and fatigue for a sojourn in a Boer prison with great readiness. Some of the regular regiments, too, brought up to their fighting strength by hasty recruiting at the last moment, are not exempt from the shame of unnecessary capitulations. But such proceedings are not characteristic of Tommy. The Englishman knows very little of the art of war, but he is brave, very brave. The officers, with some few exceptions, are ignorant of everything an officer should know. The operations (?) of Sir Charles Warren, Lord Methuen, and Sir Redvers Buller seem to be a sort of competition of lunatics. General Buller appears to have some inkling of it himself; on December 28 he writes as follows from the camp of Frere: ’I suppose our officers will in time learn the value of scouting; but in spite of all one can say, up to this our men seem to blunder into the midst of the enemy, and suffer accordingly.’ These words from the pen of the General who, on January 24, was to ’authorize’ the Spion Kop fiasco are delicious! The profession of arms in England is an occupation not at all absorbing, but very fashionable, very ’sporting.’ War itself is a sport, which has its special costume, its accidents proper to the soldier, but which is not supposed to engross the man. The fact that a great many officers brought with them, in addition to their khaki uniforms and braided tunics, tennis, football, and polo costumes, dress-coats and smoking-jackets, is significant of this state of mind. The programme they had mentally drawn up was something of this sort: From 7 to 8 a.m., football, breakfast; from 9 to 10, lawn tennis; from 10 to 11, a battle; then a rest, a tub, massage, lunch!