This army is like a sponge for taking what entertainment the sweating editors of THE FRIEND will give it. It is like a barnacle for fastening itself upon us and fattening its dead weight upon this little literary bark. It is like a horse behind our waggon, which was built, like most vehicles, to have its horses in front. It is like the veldt around us in its capacity to swallow any amount of refreshing rain and yet appear as dry in four hours afterwards as if it were the pavement of that place which can only be referred to by the use of one particular anecdote, which is as follows:-- "If I owned Satandom and South Africa," said a Canadian Tommy at Modder River, "I would rent out South Africa and live in Satandom." But we nearly digressed--a sin unpardonable in an article so important as this, written hot upon the impulse of suffering and keen feeling. The committee of war correspondents with Lord Roberts' army, who undertook to conduct, for the first time in history, a full-fledged complete daily newspaper published in an enemy's capital two days after the conquest thereof, are all busy men in their own line of industry. They have constant daily work to do, they are trusted by their own newspapers to devote their whole talents and energies to the interests of the public at home. Nevertheless they have turned aside to conduct this newspaper, they are doing so, and will continue to do so to the day the army pushes on and away. But in undertaking this task their idea was that they merely had to start the paper and give it a momentum, after which the army would turn to and flood the editorial sanctum with tales of humour, wit, and prowess writ upon sheets numberless as the leaves of Vallambrosa. The reader will gather that this has not yet taken place. He will infer that the war correspondents are, like the last rose of summer, left blooming to ourselves. True, two or three generous and gifted souls in the army have come nobly into the breach with contributions; but the breach is nine columns wide--nine columns that persist in emptying themselves as fast as we fill them; in fact, nine columns which become fifty-four columns between each Monday and the succeeding Saturday. It is on this account that when the two or three generous and talented army men flung themselves in the breach, the breach was not aware of the fact--and we have not had the heart to wake it up and notify it that it was being filled, not caring to tell a falsehood even to a silly breach.