Unsympathetic critics may discover a lack of due proportion in the space that has been devoted to this affair at Ospruit, seeing that it was but an episode in a long chain of operations, the whole of which are dealt with in a single paragraph of the Commander-in-Chief’s despatches. But the same argument might be urged against any enlargement in monograph on the official version of Brigadier-General Mahon’s brilliant march for relieving Mafeking, to which no writer has done full justice yet, though there is evidence that the Boers regarded it as the first ‘slim thing’ achieved by a British commander, and as a stroke of daring leadership by which they were completely outwitted. Many similar examples, not so conspicuous perhaps, but all material in their bearing on the greater issues of a campaign, and therefore worthy of elaborate treatment in detail, might be quoted. The Editor can at any rate plead that this is a history of Lumsden’s Horse, and not an essay in perspective. For that reason he has chosen to reproduce impressions of the different incidents, not as they might have presented themselves to the mind of a divisional general or an unemotional spectator, but as they burnt themselves in upon the brains of men actually fighting for their lives, and to use as nearly as possible each writer’s own words. It may seem strange that through all these narratives, from the Colonel’s purposely restrained and undemonstrative summary to the details that are told with most convincing force, we can trace no signs of depression resulting from the fact that Lumsden’s Horse in their first fight were forced to retire instead of taking part in a victorious advance. This is a touch happily characteristic of British soldiers. Conscious of having done their duty manfully, they were content to let the issue be what it might, so long as they had not lost confidence in themselves or in their leaders. There was nothing of the beaten soldier about them; no demoralisation, no sullen discontent, no sham heroics covering a sense of discomfiture. Whether they had to come back from their sacrifices because the enemy was in superior force, or simply because the object of a reconnaissance ‘had been achieved,’ mattered little to them. As Tommy would have phrased it in his expressive way, ‘it was all in the day’s work.’ Victory is sweet, no doubt, and men from whose lips that cup has been dashed cannot but feel a little bitterness in their hearts, but it is only the bitterness of a wholesome tonic. For soldiers who have suffered so there is always consolation in the knowledge that their sacrifices were not borne in vain. And Lumsden’s Horse may take satisfaction from the thought that their first fight, with all its sad and glorious consequence, was not brought about by any useless demonstration without plan or purpose. Though none of them could know it at the time, they had been engaged with De la Rey’s force, by which