It is easy to ascribe our defeats in the early part of the war, as some have ascribed them, to the "stupidity" of the British officers and generals. At bottom, however, it would seem that much of this unsuccess was due to the new conditions of war, coupled with the Boer's inherited capacity for taking cover and his absolute knowledge of the country. Again and again our men came suddenly and almost without notice under a deluge of bullets from perfectly invisible rifles. When once engaged in this manner it was difficult for them to go forward and dangerous to retreat. There was no means of guessing the strength of the foe. No dense clouds of smoke revealed at once his location and the exact volume of his fire. It was uncertain whether we had to deal with 500 men using magazine fire, or with 5,000 firing in a leisurely manner. There may have been a neglect of reconnaissance, yet against troops thus concealed personal reconnaissance repeatedly failed. On their side the Boers had no such difficulty to face in fighting us. All through our earlier battles we disdained the use of cover and often advanced to the attack in comparatively close formations--a splendid target. The same invisibility which marked the Boer riflemen marked also their artillery, which was not massed, but scattered gun by gun, wide apart and artfully concealed. As one result of this disposition, we seldom succeeded in silencing the Boer weapons; but, on the other hand, except at Spion Kop, they inflicted trivial loss upon us. The enemy's most effective gun was the "Pom-Pom," which, though it caused infinitesimal loss of life, was especially dreaded by our soldiers for the great rapidity of its discharge. The frequent flashes from its muzzle, however, rendered it comparatively easy to locate and to put out of action. It has been often debated whether as science progresses war grows more bloody. A learned Russian, M. Bloch, had argued, before this struggle began, that the deadliness of modern weapons rendered mutual annihilation of the two combatants probable. It need scarcely be said that this forecast has been disproved by events. There has been nothing in the present war in the least comparable with the hideous butchery of Borodino, when, in 1812, with the old flint-lock smooth-bore musket and smooth-bore cannon, over 30,000 French were killed or wounded out of 125,000, and over 40,000 Russians out of 110,000.