Of the Durban Soldiers' Reception Committee the chairman was the Rev. G. Lowe, also a Transvaal refugee Wesleyan minister; and in a letter from him now lying on my table he states that he was sometimes on the landing jetty for fifteen hours at a stretch. He adds that he was the first to begin this work of welcoming the troops on landing at Durban, and obtained the permits to take in a few friends within the barriers for the distribution of fruit, tobacco and bread to the soldiers, on the purchase of which nearly L300 was expended. Twenty-five thousand troops were thus met; over L2000 sent home to the friends of the soldiers; more than 8000 letters announcing the safe arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the 3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands L208, 18s. belonging to the men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own and other battalions. [Sidenote: _The other way about._] About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place, while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp, so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for a crowded military concert, which cleared L35 for the destitute poor of the town, mostly Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the fray, and on their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided an open-air concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the very neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very act of conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most of all this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish supplies of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and _patriotic_ songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free State:--