From some points of view this may be regarded as the most important phase of the whole campaign; it taught the Boers how to harass our forces with the greatest effect while exposing themselves to comparatively little danger. First of all, however, they set themselves to the task of showing that there was life and power for mischief in them yet, their object evidently being to effect surprises that might create panic among our troops and so render raids less difficult of accomplishment. In the development of that idea we recognise the peculiar craft of Christian De Wet, who at that time had less respect for the courage of ‘rooineks’ than he began to entertain soon afterwards. Sanna’s Post was a lesson to him not less than to us. With the exaggeration which characterised a great deal that was written in those days some critics at home described this affair as a ‘black disaster,’ thereby meaning apparently that it was something rather disgraceful and a stain on our military reputation. A disaster it was in the literal sense, for the stars in their courses seemed to be turned against us; but they were certainly not blotted out, and they never shone on soldiers whose deeds could better bear the light. The story of Sanna’s Post or Koorn Spruit is worth telling again, not only because it marks emphatically the revival of Boer hopes, after Ladysmith and Paardeberg and Kimberley had done much to shatter their self-confidence, but because it furnishes a splendid example of British valour, defiant in the moment of defeat, and all the brighter by contrast with the gloom through which it shines. In details the following version of what happened may not be more accurate than others, and it lacks the completeness that subsequent access to official documents might have given; but at least it has the merit of having been written at the time, and of showing what was the impression conveyed to the minds of people who were in the midst of those stirring events and could gauge their significance without exaggeration. This description by the Editor, who, as War Correspondent of ‘The Daily News,’ was then at Bloemfontein, may be given almost in its original form.