One more word on a kindred topic and we will leave criticism alone! The tone adopted by some sections of the Colonial and even British Press with respect to the religious feeling of the Boers is very painful. Some correspondents have described with evident glee how Boer prayer-meetings have been broken up by Lyddite shells. I feel sure that no British General would think for a moment of deliberately shelling any body of the enemy assembled for prayer, and the vulgarity and wickedness of such paragraphs would certainly not commend itself to the best sentiment of the British army. Again and again the Boers are described in the Press as "canting hypocrites" or their thanksgivings to God as "sanctimonious". What right have we as Christians to bring such wholesale charges against our Christian enemies? Several thousand burghers advanced from Jacobsdal to reinforce Cronje, and as it marched the entire force sang the Old Hundredth in unison. There is something splendid and majestic in such a spectacle as this. Let us as Englishmen fight our best against these men and defeat them thoroughly, but do not let us sneer at their religious enthusiasm! On December 10th, as we were standing on a siding at De Aar, a telegram, arrived ordering us to leave for Modder River in the morning. We were delighted at the prospect of getting rid of our enforced inaction at De Aar. The air was full of rumours about an impending attack on Cronje's position, and we fully expected to be in time for the fight and probably to be employed as stretcher-bearers during the battle. Alas! our hopes were all in vain. Next day, some miles below Modder River, our engine with its tender suddenly left the metals. The stoker jumped off, but the engine fortunately kept on the top of the embankment and nobody was hurt. We none of us knew how or why the accident had occurred, but one of the officials suspected very strongly that the rails had been tampered with.