It is difficult to defend the action of the Boers in laying upon Mafeking the burden of these siege guns. We have heard no little from Commandant Cronje upon the rules of warfare, as set out by the Geneva Convention, by time-honoured practices, and by that sense of custom and courtesy which at the present day still brings back some slight echo of the chivalry which distinguished the wars in dead centuries. Nevertheless, there is a grim and ill-savoured travesty in the Boer bombardment of this town. We do not complain, and we must be forgiven if we find some ironical and melancholy interest attaching itself to our situation. Three times has Colonel Baden-Powell pointed out to Commandant Cronje the buildings which enjoy the immunity of the Red Cross flag, yet these buildings are still deliberately made the objective of the Boer artillery; twice have we received flags of truce from the Boers, ignoring altogether the fact that they were but the clumsy subterfuge by which an unprincipled enemy secured to itself some new and advantageous position for its guns; then, as a crowning act of mercy, we have this Boer Commander, so blatant a gentleman that he is by sheer force of his aggressive impudence worthy of our attentions, training upon a defenceless town a 64lb. howitzer and a 94lb. breech-loading siege gun, pieces whose action is relegated by these self-same observances of civilised warfare to towns who possess, in the first place, strong fortifications; in the second, masonry and concrete in their construction.