troubles. He may have felt that war with England would have brought our one friend, Japan, into the field with consequences not altogether pleasant for Russia, but none the less we may honour him for his chivalrous attitude. [Sidenote: Her prestige in danger.] And the most grievous feature of our defeats was that they were inflicted by a people numerically weak, without an army in the true sense;--by a number of peasants and farmers, upon the very flower of the British Army. The strongest, the best appointed, and, it was hoped, the best led force that had ever left our shores, equipped with all the contrivances of modern war, with field telegraphs, war balloons, howitzers, naval guns, and lyddite shells, had failed. It had failed completely--almost beyond repair--and it could place to its credit not a single great success. One or two battles in which we had gained the day, with heavy loss and without inflicting proportionate damage upon the enemy, had, indeed, been paraded as glorious victories, but their very insignificance, in relation to the task to be accomplished, was a sad commentary upon the depths to which we had fallen. It was not that the British soldier had failed in courage. That "last validity of noble veins" he still retained. Upon every field of the war his demeanour had compelled the enemy's admiration. Our military annals, splendid though these are, contain nothing finer than the advance of the Dublin Fusiliers at Colenso, of the Guards at Belmont, and of the Marines at Enslin, or the conduct of General Pole-Carew and his devoted band in the anxious hours when the Modder River fight swayed to and fro and the balance inclined against us. And yet, though hundreds of brave men now lay festering in the sun or in their shallow graves on the far-off veldt, and hundreds more filled those homes of silent agony, the hospitals, nothing had been accomplished. The fame of the Army, the prestige of the nation, the very existence of the Empire, were in grievous peril. [Illustration: _F. J. Waugh._] WHY THE BOERS WERE ABLE TO HOLD US IN CHECK. It is clear now that the earlier victories of the Boers were largely due to their prudent habit of keeping out of sight.] [Sidenote: [DEC. 1899.]