The office department has been rather upset by the loss of Sergeant Fraser, of the Bank of Bengal, who was Paymaster and Secretary, but I have replaced him by Graves, of the same bank, who is working up arrears as quickly as possible. He is a very willing and intelligent young fellow, and will soon have things straight again when he gets a few days’ halt, but it is impossible to do much on the line of march. The troops were not all so punctilious as Lumsden’s Horse in the matter of prompt payment for things commandeered, and a good story was told of one brigade at Kroonstad, whose commander, in despair of being able to check irregularities, issued an order that loot was ‘not to be carried openly on the saddle.’ Our soldiers, however, had not then been reduced by hardships and scant fare to the necessity of providing for themselves at all costs. Some pitiful cases of unauthorised commandeering were reported in connection with later operations, when columns moving rapidly through several districts had to draw supplies from Boer farms and give receipts for them in lieu of cash payments. Detached parties driven to straits for want of food did not hesitate to adopt the means they had seen employed by responsible officers, but took care to leave no trace by which they could be identified. An officer who had to investigate these cases told me of one receipt given to a Boer widow. It ran thus: ‘Being without rations and hungry, we have taken all this poor woman had of live-stock and food. She asks for a receipt. I give it. God help her!—ALLY SLOPER.’ To the credit of British military administration, it must be said that this document, though irregular, was accepted as genuine, and duly honoured by payment in full. Lumsden’s Horse had their share of the privations that made commandeering a necessity, and even looting pardonable; and it is not to be wondered at if some among them regarded campaigning in anything but the roseate light that imagination had shed upon it before they left India. Yet, even at this time, their conduct in circumstances that tried the character of men individually and collectively won approval from such a soldier as Colonel Ward, C.B. (now Sir Edward Ward, K.C.B., Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War). Singling them out on the line of march, he asked what regiment they were, and seemed astonished to learn that they were Volunteers. In a letter to the Editor he says: ‘I was much struck with Lumsden’s Horse. They were very keen and excellent soldiers.’ After an exceptionally hard day one of them wrote: