The last verse of this sensational song had reference to yet another celebrity, but of a far more unsatisfactory type. All the earlier part of that Thursday I had spent in the second Raadsaal, attending a court-martial on one of our prisoners of war, Lieutenant Hans Cordua, late of the Transvaal State Artillery, who, having surrendered, was suffered to be at large on parole. In my presence he pleaded guilty, first to having broken his parole in violation of his solemn oath; secondly, to having attempted to break through the British lines disguised in British khaki, in order to communicate treasonably with Botha; and thirdly, to having conspired with sundry others to set fire to a certain portion of Pretoria with a view to facilitating a simultaneous attempt to kidnap Lord Roberts and all his staff. Cordua was with difficulty persuaded to withdraw the plea of guilty, so that he might have the benefit of any possible flaw his counsel could detect in the evidence; but in the end the death sentence was pronounced, confirmed, and duly executed in the garden of Pretoria Gaol on August 24th. It was from that court-martial I came to the Soldiers' Home Concert, sat close behind Lord Roberts, and listened to this song:-- Though the Boer some say is a practised thief, Yet it certainly beggars all belief, That he slimly should try _to steal our Chief_. But no Hollander mobs Shall kidnap our Bobs Long as the world goes round! [Sidenote: _Hospital Work in Pretoria._] Historians tell us that the hospital arrangements in some of our former wars were by no means free from fault. Hence Steevens in his "Crimean Campaign" asserts that while the camp hospitals absolutely lacked not only candles, but medicines, wooden legs were supplied to them from England so freely that there were finally four such legs for every man in hospital. Clearly those wooden legs were consigned by wooden heads. Even in this much better managed war the fever epidemic at Bloemfontein, combined with a month of almost incessant rain, overtaxed for a while, as we have seen, the resources and strength and organizing skill of a most willing and fairly competent medical staff.