He drove off with the bandages, I am told by the gentleman who footed the bill, but how the supplies were smuggled in I have never heard. I suspect that the rule against receiving supplies from civilians got a great many wrenches and fractures. But for civilians such as at least one Red Cross Commissioner of my acquaintance, Heaven only knows what these hospitals, that consisted of little else than a corps of men, would have been able to do. I asked my friend how it could be possible that an arm of the Government of Great Britain could find itself in such helpless and pitiable plights, and he replied that red tape was the root of the evil. Nobody dared to buy a measuring glass or a pillow-case or a cot for fear that his enterprise might bring him a reprimand and his bill might be repudiated. The hospitals had made demands outmeasuring the supplies, or the supplies had not come up from the Cape, or to the Cape from London. If private generosity was not appealed to circumlocution must be resorted to by means of requisitions which would be slowly forwarded to London and there passed upon. By this means the supplies would reach the front within three months after the patients were dead--provided that all should go smoothly with the circumlocution machinery. Mind, I know how extraordinary, excessive, and sudden were the demands made upon the Medical Corps after such a shocking affair as the Sunday fight at Paardeberg and during the enteric epidemic at Bloemfontein. I am in no position to say that any one was blameable or that better and ampler means of caring for the disabled could have been arranged. But let us not deny the facts or try to deceive any one with regard to them. That is no way for an earnest and ambitious and healthy people to meet an unpleasant situation. On the contrary, that is the very way to make certain of a worse "breakdown" of the hospital service in the next war. * * * * * THE FRIEND. (_Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force._) No. 14.] BLOEMFONTEIN, MONDAY, APRIL 2, 1900. [Price One Penny. A SONG OF THE WHITE MEN.[15] [Footnote 15: The poem by Rudyard Kipling which we publish in this issue was written some time ago to be read at a dinner in Canada and then published in the _Toronto Globe_. It has never been read in public, and it has never before been published. Like all his poems and writings, it is for all time--as good next year as to-day and always excellent in all seasons. It is copyrighted in England and America, and used here by Mr. Kipling's permission.] BY RUDYARD KIPLING. Now, this is the cup the White Men drink When they go to right a wrong, And that is the cup of the old world's hate-- Cruel and strained and strong. We have drunk that cup--and a bitter, bitter cup-- And tossed the dregs away, But well for the world when the White Men drink To the dawn of the White Men's day.