To-day, when the long conspiracy of Prussia is admitted by the most unsuspicious person, it can be recalled that, without question, the Boer Government was in touch with Germany, and that not only cases of rifles passed into Pretoria and Johannesburg, but that Krupp guns, outranging our own artillery, were shortly to create the first of many surprises in that surprising war. The sympathies of Europe were entirely with the Boers, and, doubtless, Kruger had been advised from Berlin. Many Germans took part in the campaign, and it was in certain measure to their expert knowledge that the Boer artillery was so well manned. Beyond that the Boers could fully hold their own. Botha, Joubert, and De Wet were in their several capacities brilliant strategists and resourceful leaders. The burghers were well armed, well mounted, exceedingly courageous, and inspired by the deepest hatred for the British. The British, on the other hand, were very ignorant regarding the Boer, greatly under-estimated the numbers they could put in the field, had no expert knowledge regarding the country or manner of the fighting there, and could not persuade themselves that this was anything but a kind of punitive expedition. By this time, with so many campaigns behind us, some judgment can be formed upon the British Army, not only the Highland regiments with whom we have dealt in particular, but those English Line regiments and cavalry, whose prestige and courage have won a hundred victories. Yet were these to suffer amazing disasters in South Africa. The war was indeed to prove the graveyard of many hopes and many reputations. Looking back at it now, after the interval of many years, and when the greatest war has shown that the British Army is as invincible as ever it was, we can only come to the conclusion that the generalship in South Africa had for a season fallen altogether into decay. The days of the Crimea and the Mutiny were long past; Roberts and Wolseley were old men; Kitchener, the most competent organiser of the younger generation, was still engaged with his great work in Egypt, while a kind of dry-rot seems to have come over the generation that lay between. The ultimate good of the South African War was that it cut this dry-rot clean away; but the story of the war is one of great courage and endurance struggling against the grossest incompetence.