There is one quality of the South Africans which deserves especial mention—I mean their curious modesty. A less boastful body of men never appeared in arms. They had a horror of any kind of advertisement. No war correspondent attended them to chronicle their doings; no picturesque articles in the press enlightened the public at home. That may have been bad for the Allied cause; but assuredly it was what they wished themselves. They had in a high degree the traditional British love of understatement, and no old regular was ever a greater adept at pitching things in a low key. To talk to them after a hard-fought action was to hear a tale of quite ordinary and prosaic deeds, in which little credit was sought for themselves but much given to others. They had that gentle and inflexible pride which is too proud to make claims, and leaves the bare fact to be its trumpeter. I believe that to be a quality of South Africa. She is so ancient a land that she does not need to brag and hustle like newer peoples, but comports herself with the quiet good-breeding of long descent. She has been through so many furnaces that she has won dignity and simplicity. These were most notably the traits of her forces on the Western front. They feared very little on earth except the reputation of heroes; and if in this book I have done violence to that fine tradition, I can only make them my apology and plead the debt of the historian to truth. The story which I have endeavoured to tell is to be regarded in the first place as the achievement of a people—that South African people in which the union of two race-stocks is in process of consummation. The war record of South Africa, from whatever angle it is regarded, is one to be proud of. To the different fronts she contributed over 136,000 white troops—nearly 10 per cent. of her total white population, and some 20 per cent. of her male white population. But, great as was her work in other battle-grounds, to my mind her chief glory is her achievement in France. The campaigns in German East and South-West Africa might be regarded as frontier wars, fought for the immediate defence of her borders and her local interests. But to come into line in the main struggle far away in Europe meant an understanding of the deeper issues of the Great War. Her sons in France did not fight in the narrow sense for Britain; they fought for that liberal civilization of which the British Commonwealth is the humble guardian; they fought for that South African nation which could not hope to live till Germany’s challenge to liberty was answered. There were many in the Brigade who had still quick in their hearts an affection for the northern islands from which they had sprung; but there were many to whom Britain was only a faint memory, and many in whom her name woke no enthusiasm. There were men of Dutch blood who had fought stoutly against us in the old South African War, and now fought like