Typhoid in the vast majority of cases is waterborne, and hence the greatest care should be taken to avoid any dubious pan or pool. The only real preventative of this disease is to boil all water used, and although this may be impracticable on service, surely discipline will prevent the drinking of doubtful water. No medical observer can help wondering why more men were not inoculated on their way out from home. The inoculation does no harm, its pain is a small matter, and its utility in modifying the severity of the disease is now well established. Take a case in point: two officers in the same regiment, one aged 31 and the other 24, contracted the disease on the same day from the same source. On the usual lines, the younger man should have had the worst attack, and yet, although physically the weaker, he recovered and his senior died. The younger man had been inoculated but the other had not! Some will say that it was the senior's kismet, but let that pass. The campaign is now well begun, and it is not too late even now to furnish supplies of lymph to Medical Officers for use with their units. The disease now so rife is marked by an absence of abdominal symptoms and may, in its early stage, be overlooked. It is during this period of uncertainty that harm may be done by a solid diet, and it is safer by far for any one suspecting himself to be suffering from influenza or other vague disease to restrict himself for a few days to a milk diet. Then if the febrile condition passes off, no harm is done, but it is to be feared that few will take this amount of trouble over themselves. CHAPTER XIX FOOLED BY THE BOERS _British Leniency and Credulity abused Past Endurance._ For several days THE FRIEND had been publishing this short but imperative announcement:-- NOTICE. From to-day (inclusive) all civilians must be in their homes after 8 p.m., unless provided with a SPECIAL PASS allowing them to be out. The Police have orders to arrest all persons breaking this rule. N.B.--This does not refer to civilians who are in the employ of the British Government, who will have a pass to this effect. By order, B. BURNETT-HITCHCOCK, Lieutenant, Asst. Provost Marshal to Military Governor. Government Buildings, April 1st, 1900. This notice was but one of many of the signs we gave forth that we were being fooled by the tricky Boers, and that at last we were compelled to admit it. Far back at De Aar I had seen how constitutionally unsuspicious was the average army officer, how certain he felt that, because he would not himself stoop to deception and treachery, no one else could miss the ennobling contagion of his example; how set he was upon carrying leniency and magnanimity to unheard of lengths, even with an enemy which neither practiced nor appreciated such treatment.