As at sea, so on land, the authorities seemed more afraid of the beloved beer barrel than of the bullets of the Boers; and for the most part no countersign sufficed to secure for it admittance to our camps. An occasional tot of rum was distributed among the men; but even that seemed to be rather to satisfy a sentiment than to serve any really useful purpose. At any rate, some of the men, like myself, tramped all the way to Koomati Poort, often in the worst of weather, without taking a single tot, and were none the worse for so refraining, but rather so much the better. The effect on the character of the men was still more remarkable; and while in Pretoria I was repeatedly assured that some who had been a perpetual worry to their officers in beer-ridden England, on the beerless veldt, or in the liquorless towns of the Transvaal, speedily took rank among the most reliable men in all their regiment. To my colleague, the Rev. W. Burgess, a major of the Yorkshires, said "Nineteen-twentieths of the crime in the British army is due to drink. As a proof I have been at this outpost with 150 men for six weeks, where we have absolutely no drink, and there have been only two minor cases brought before me. There is no insubordination whatever, and if you do away with drink you have in the British army an ideal army. Whether or not men can be made sober by Act of Parliament, clearly they can by martial law!" With the men so sober, with a field-marshal so God-fearing, the constant outrages ascribed to them by slander-loving Englishmen at home, become a moral impossibility; and to that fact, after we had been long in possession of Pretoria, the principal minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal bore ready witness in the following letter sent by him to the Military Governor of Pretoria:-- Not a single instance of criminal assault or rape by non-commissioned officers or men of the British army on Boer women has come to my knowledge. I have asked several gentlemen and their testimony is the same.... The discipline and general moral conduct of His Majesty's troops in Pretoria is, under the circumstances, better than I ever expected it would or could be. There have certainly been cases of immoral conduct, but in no single instance, so far as I know, has force been used. They only go where they are invited and where they are welcome. (Signed) H. S. BOSMAN.