Something very similar to this appears to have happened at Dundee. A body of Boers standing together raised a white flag when our men approached and were duly taken prisoners, but the rest of their commando were, according to Boer accounts, already engaged in retreating with their guns, and, being either unaware of this unauthorised surrender or completely ignoring it, continued their flight. I have already spoken of the risks incurred by stretcher-bearers and ambulance waggons which approach close to the firing line. Wounded men have told me again and again that the Boers at Magersfontein did not fire wilfully on our ambulance waggons, except when our troops got behind them in their retreat. Moreover, excitable people in England, who greedily swallow any story about such alleged occurrences, have probably the vaguest idea of what a modern battle-field looks like, and of the enormous area now covered by military operations. It may be extremely difficult to see a small white or Red Cross flag a long way off. At Ladysmith, _e.g._, one of our guns put a shell clean through a Boer ambulance, and Sir George White, of course, at once sent an apology for the mistake. If mistakes occur on one side they may occur on the other. Reuter's agent at Frere Camp reports on 4th December:-- "After the evacuation of Dundee the Boers shelled the hospital and the ambulance until the white flag was hoisted, when their firing ceased. Captain Milner rode with one orderly into the Boer camp with a flag of truce, and was told that the Boers could not see the Red Cross flag. This statement he verified by personal observation." As to the use of "explosive" bullets, which makes the "man in the street" so indignant, it is worth mentioning that, as far as I am aware, not a single instance of the employment of such a missile came under the notice of our medical staff with Lord Methuen's column. I do not for one instant deny that occasionally such bullets may have been fired at our troops, but it is clear that the utmost confusion prevails about the nature of these projectiles. The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of explosive bullets, _i.e._, hollow bullets charged with an explosive which is fired by a detonating cap on coming in contact with a resisting surface. Now it is almost impossible to render a Mauser bullet "explosive," owing to its extreme slenderness, so that any explosive bullets which may have been used by the enemy must have come from sporting rifles, which are--as all evidence goes to show--extremely rare in their commandos. Expansive bullets are made by cutting off the rounded tip of the bullet, scooping out its point, constructing its "nose" of some softer metal, or simply making transverse cuts across the end. These missiles are not prohibited by the Geneva Convention: nevertheless their employment against white men is altogether unnecessary and reprehensible.