To-day we expect to welcome here in our camp the great poet and writer, who has contributed more than any one perhaps towards the consolidation of the British Empire. His visit is singularly appropriate. He will find encamped round the town not only his friend Tommy Atkins, but the Australian, the Canadian, the New Zealander, the Tasmanian, the volunteer from Ceylon, from Argentine, and from every quarter of the globe. He will see the man of the soil--the South African Britisher--side by side with his fellow colonist from over the seas. In fact, Bloemfontein will present to him the actual physical fulfilment of what must be one of his dearest hopes--the close union of the various parts of the greatest Empire in the world. His visit, therefore, will have in it something of the triumph of a conqueror--a conqueror who, with the force of genius, has swept away barriers of distance and boundary, and made a fifth of the globe British, not only in title, but in real sentiment. We, belonging to that portion of the Press to which is assigned the duty of witnessing and chronicling the deeds which make history, extend to the illustrious writer a welcome, sincere and whole-hearted. We feel, all of us, that his brush alone can do complete justice to the wonderful pictures of war which we have been privileged to see. We, who have been with Tommy Atkins on many a hard campaign, have long ago come to love him for his quiet, unostentatious courage and his patient endurance of hardships; but we feel that Mr. Kipling alone can translate to the world the true inwardness of Tommy's character. We feel sure that the Mulvaneys, the Learoyds, and the Ortherises will welcome him as heartily as we do, and we are hopeful that this fresh meeting of Tommy Atkins and perhaps the only man who rightly understands him, will be productive of fresh pictures of the British soldier. * * * * * THE SOBEREST ARMY IN THE WORLD. BY H. A. GWYNNE. The force which, under the command of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, left Enslin and occupied Bloemfontein will undoubtedly be known in history as the "Sober Army." Never before in the history of campaigning has there been known such an absence of excess in the way of drinking--and eating too, as far as that is concerned. Some people have dared to cast aspersions on the British army by insinuating that drunkenness is not unknown among its members. They have even gone further and declared that officers and men are very fond of their "tot" or their "pint" or their whisky and soda. I only wish some of these calumniators could have accompanied Lord Roberts' force. They would have recanted on the spot, and returned home convinced that the British army was not only the finest but the soberest in the world.