One day about this time the Editor was present at a little scene which may be interesting as an example of the many strange meetings that characterised a campaign in which men from all parts of the world came together. His son, a lieutenant in the Army Service Corps, had just been transferred from an Irregular Cavalry regiment, and they were celebrating the first occasion of being together since the relief of Ladysmith. At another table Colonel Lumsden and some of his officers were dining. Introductions followed, when suddenly Captain Holmes and the young lieutenant greeted each other by familiar nicknames which neither had heard for some years. As students they had served together in the Artists’ Volunteers, of which Lord Leighton was then Honorary Colonel. They had been fighting through the campaign, one from Natal, the other from Bloemfontein. Their paths had crossed several times without either knowing it, and here at the end they met in Pretoria for the first time since boyhood. Such incidents occurred frequently until they ceased to be strange, and they illustrate the all-prevailing power of a sentiment that drew men from every quarter of the globe to South Africa, where the Empire’s interests centred. All were then beginning to think that there might be still a long spell of campaigning before them, and, in spite of a little natural grumbling, they took the prospect philosophically enough, as we may see by the following extract from a trooper’s letter: At Pretoria we were joined by Captain Noblett and Captain Stevenson, who had been away on two months’ sick leave visiting Natal battlefields, and Lieutenant Neville, who had left us sick in June, been to England, and come back, and little expected to find any of us still there. We were overjoyed to hear we were to have ten days’ rest in tents, the first we had seen for many months. We were now living on the fat of the land, with—luxury of luxuries—a dry canteen where you could buy at half price those necessaries of life which had lately been considered luxuries, the balance being paid out of the funds provided by our kind friends in India. Here we waxed fat. Colonel Lumsden, in his absence from the corps, had not been idle, and had been putting before the highest authorities the real urgency in many cases to men for whom prolonged absence from India would mean absolute ruin. To such purpose did he work that a week after arrival we received the welcome news that seventy of the most urgent cases were permitted to go. We saw them off on November 15 under Major Chamney, and then returned to camp in full anticipation of another year of it. A week after this came the joyful news that the whole corps was also to return at once, and on the 22nd we entrained for Cape Town. Despite various alarms, railway accidents, and breaking up of the line in front of us, we arrived in Cape Town without mishap.