For the African Boer there has never been this meretricious tinsel pasted over the ghastly reality of war. His training for two hundred years has been in a wholly different school. For generation after generation the Boer has gone out with his wife and child into the wilderness, and, whether he wished it or no, the possibility of death for them and for himself, by the violence of beasts or men, has been an ever present reality. Night by night, as he has gone to sleep in his solitary wagon or daub-and-wattle house, he has had his musket within reach of his hand; and his wife hearing a sound in the night has sat up anxiously, whispering, "What is that!" and together they have listened while the children slept. If the Boer went out to hunt lion or buffalo, it was accompanied with no hilarious excitement at the thought of the applause of friends at his success, of pictures in the illustrated magazines, and the newspaper paragraph over the mighty hunter. All it meant was this, that, if he killed the lion, then the cow that gave milk for his children would be safe, and his small son could now go out and herd the lambs without danger. If he brought home a load of springbok or of wildebeest, it meant simply that his wife cut it up into biltong and hung it to dry outside the house for food. If his own right arm failed him, or he kept no sufficient watch and fell by the hands of savages or the jaws of beasts, then it meant that not only he died, but possibly that wife and children died with him; and it might be years before the news of their death travelled down to their kindred if, indeed, it ever reached them. If, single-handed and however bravely, he defended himself and his against odds of the mightiest kind, there was no admiring world before which his success would be blazoned forth. Even were he a commandant, and died at the head of his little body of men ever so heroically, there was no Westminster Abbey and no requiem for him; his comrades buried him where he fell, and a little heap of rough African stones on a wide African plain, with the African wind blowing over him, was all that he had for recompense. If he led his little band to victory, there was no triumphal entry into the city with bunting flying, and bars filled with drunken men, and hoarse mobs shouting incoherently, or delirious women anxious to kiss him, or present him with weapons gilt and jewelled--simply, he went home to his house or wagon, and his old wife kissed him and said she was glad he had come back; and his comrades said, "He is a good fighter," and next time there was war he had to go in front again. If his aim were true and his hand never shook and his courage never failed, then it meant life for himself and all dear to him; if he failed, then it was death; but that was all.