Boers fall back on Rooilaagte—De la Rey assumes real command—Boers repulse charge of naval Brigade—Contrast between British and Boer treatment of prisoners—Cronje joins De la Rey—Sketch of General Cronje—Boer position at Modder River—Repulse of British Guardsmen—Ineffectiveness of British artillery—Prinsloo's retreat causes loss of battle—de la Rey's report—British bayonet wounded Boers—Report of Dr. Lever on British abuse of Red Cross service—London "Globe's" comparison of British looting with Boer discipline.
After the engagement at Belmont on Thursday the Federals fell back eight miles along the Kimberley line. The physical features of the country at Rooilaagte resemble those around the theater of the fight on the 23rd; a dry sandy veldt or plain, broken at intervals by kopjes, stretching in detached positions from west to east; the railway seeking the easiest gradient round such hills as are met on its pathway towards the Diamond City. The kopjes slope upward in a graduated rise from the veldt, and while offering good positions for defensive purposes they were easily accessible, in the structure of their formation, to any large force advancing upon them under the protection of a sufficient artillery support.
General Prinsloo was still nominally in command, but De la Rey assumed control of the allied burghers, and took up position at Rooilaagte, north of Graspan, between two kopjes which commanded the railway. The hill to the east, or left, of his position was the better ground for meeting the assault of the enemy, and he placed his Transvaalers there with a Krupp and pom-pom. Further east, near Bamdam, a body of 500 burghers, including the Jacobsdal commando, under Commandant Lubbe, were to await the development of a probable movement by the enemy in that direction. Away to the right, beyond the railway, the remaining Free State burghers, under Prinsloo, were placed in detached bodies on the line of kopjes stretching west and south in the direction of Graspan. They were the same men who had fought at Belmont.
At Rooilaagte, De la Rey anticipated Methuen's Belmont plan,and ably compelled the English general to deliver his main attack upon the hill held by the Transvaalers. The enemy advanced early on Saturday morning (the 25th), and began the battle by guns from an armored train, and by batteries which deluged the kopje in possession of the Transvaalers with shrapnel and lyddite. The hill was literally swept by the enemy's guns on the south side, but this had been fully expected, and it was the rocks and not the Boers that suffered from the hail of shells. The burghers had made good use of their time during Friday, and were well protected behind their strong stone sangars from the shells which English war correspondents were laboriously endowing with a killing or wounding power of some twenty Boers per shell. The rate was not too liberal if the Boers had only carelessly lent themselves as targets for the purposes of the calculation. They chose not to do so, however, and I am only stating what has been the universal testimony of Boer officers who fought Methuen's forces from Belmont to Magersfontein, that not fifty of the Federals who were killed and wounded in the four battles which ended in the crushing defeat of the advancing British, owed their disablement to the work of the English artillery. During the play of Methuen's batteries upon a kopje held by the Transvaal men, a strong mounted force had been sent round to the east to menace the Boer left at Ramdam. De la Rey, however, had fully expected this, and Lubbe and Ventner had already commenced a counter turning movement with their 500 burghers, which was to shield the Boer center in this way. These men were splendidly mounted, and acted as if their objective was to work round Methuen's right in a counter attack upon his camp at Belmont. The maneuver produced its intended effect, as the English column made no further effort to reach Ramdam.
Meanwhile a similar movement had been made by Methuen against Prinsloo at the extreme west position. Here the two forces confronted each other, and maintained during the battle a rifle and artillery contest, neither side gaining any appreciable advantage.
The chief encounter of the day took place at the position held by De la Rey and his Transvaalers. The English general had made his most determined artillery onslaught there, and, persuaded that no force subjected to such a tremendous fire could retain their morale sufficiently to meet a frontal infantry attack, he ordered his naval brigade to face and carry the hill.
The Guards, who had made a similar frontal attack at Belmont, and paid for the reckless encounter in 150 of their men, were kept in the rear at Enslin. The work of carrying De la Rey's position was given to the Naval Brigade. These seamen were most stupidly led. They were actually sent forward in more or less close formation to charge an unknown number of men entrenched on a hill! There can be no denying the bravery shown by these marines in thus attempting to storm the kopje. They were, however, received with a withering volley from the Transvaal men, who had reserved their fire until the advancing marines almost reached the foot of the hill. Over 100 of them were shot down, and the assault was arrested.
In the meantime the reenforcements which De la Rey had expected from Jacobsdal had not arrived, and, as Methuen was ordering up his reserves to support the attack on the hill, the Boer general fell back, taking his few guns with him, being allowed to retire by the enemy without any attempt at pursuit. As at Talana Hill, the force which had been shot back in its attempt to take the Transvaalers' position found no Boers on the kopje after having paid so dear a price for the fruitless glory of its capture.
Methuen's loss in this battle was about 210 killed, wounded, and missing.
I have been unable to obtain the Boer returns of their casualties at this fight. It was believed, however, that the loss was not even as heavy as at Belmont. The two forces in this fight were in the following relative strength: Methuen had 10,000 men and three batteries of artillery; De la Rey's and Prinsloo's united commandoes numbered some 2,500 burghers, with four guns only.
Lord Methuen repeated after the fight at Enslin the same slanders upon his plucky foes which he embodied in his report of the battle of Belmont. To use such expressions as " dastardly conduct" towards an enemy on the battle-field, without due inquiry into the facts on which the charge is made to rest, is thoroughly English in its ignorance of the canons of elementary justice, and typical of what Englishmen call their sense of fair play. It is absolutely untrue that any fire was opened upon the British ambulance at Enslin. Such charges were repeated at subsequent battles only to be refuted by the evidence of true facts, and they are as untrue in their allegations against the burghers who fought Methuen as against the Boers who campaigned against Buller on the Tugela. In all their larger engagements the English were in the habit of bringing their ambulance wagons near the zone of fire, and it was not possible for men of the Boer artillery, 4,000 or 5,000 yards away, to distinguish the Bed Cross ensign on vehicles, and to differentiate between them and the enemy's ammunition or other wagons, at such a distance. The fault in the instance where the ambulance may have been under fire was that of those who brought (such wagons where they ought not to be, and not that of the Boers, who never intruded their ambulance carts upon any section of the battle-field until after an engagement.
In this, as in so many more instances in this war, an English charge against the Boers was a counter allegation to an undeniable fact which reflected the utmost disgrace, not upon Lord Methuen, but on those in charge of his transport arrangements, and upon English colonists from De Aar to Cape Town. Twenty of Prinsloo's wounded and about as many prisoners fell into the hands of the British at Belmont, and were forwarded to Cape Town along with wounded Guardsmen. They traveled in the same train, but, while the English had the protection of covered carriages during the journey under a burning Karoo sun by day and the peculiar cold of the early South African summer by night, the Boer prisoners, including the wounded, were placed in open trucks, and without any covering of any kind! The men made no complaint. They took off their coats and made pillows of them, and for two days and nights traveled in this manner, and on the coarsest food, to their destination. This, however, was not the most reprehensible part of the conduct of their enemies. At all the railway stations, including Cape Town, the Cape Kaffirs and the no less unmanly British crowded to the trucks containing the Boer wounded and prisoners, and jeered and hooted as only people dead to every sense of chivalry could behave. Probably no lower species of civilized humanity could be found in the wide domain of the British Empire than in Cape Town during the war; the refugees from Johannesburg being added to the ordinary scum of the city, and the task of insulting the men whom they dare not meet in the open field was appropriately performed by this cowardly canaille. It is a testimony to the honor of the Boers at Pretoria willingly borne by British prisoners, that neither by act nor word was any insult of any kind given to the thousands of English prisoners who were forwarded to the Transvaal capital from October to May. The conduct of President Kruger, in standing bareheaded while British prisoners were being marched to their location past his residence, was typical of the spirit and the manner in which the Boer people treated their captured foes.
The second contest with Methuen ended in his possession of the battle-field as at Belmont, and in the retreat of the Boer commandoes. Progress was being made towards Kimberley, but a terrible toll was being exacted at each contested stage of the journey, and the further the English general advanced the weaker became his power to successfully fight his way through. Reenforeements were constantly arriving, and the distance to Methuen's objective was decreasing, it is true; but on that Saturday afternoon, when De la Rey retired slowly and sullenly from Rooilaagte towards the Modder River, a cloud of dust was seen on the horizon to the northeast, in the direction of Jacobsdal, and news soon spread through the British lines that General Cronje had joined hands with the forces which had made so gallant a stand for nine hours that day against great odds in men and guns. It was the advance patrol of his little column only, but the old Lion of Potchefstroom was close behind, and, tho he was too late for Belmont and Enslin, he would be in good time for Modder River and Magersfontein.
A man five feet eight in height, vigorously built, dressed in a dark brown suit and hard bowler hat—such as a skilled mechanic might wear—with a dark, bronzed face of stern character, having a slight beard and full mustache, grayish with years, under a fine nose and dark, penetrating eyes; a slight stoop in the rounded brawny shoulders, and the head thrown forward, at the age of sixty-three, with a virile figure which might pass for that of a man of fifty years—a strong, fiercely-earnest, stubborn man, with absolute confidence in himself, and a relentless tenacity of purpose stamped upon every line of form and feature—this was the general who, covered with dust and riding with 500 burghers, reached the north bank of the Modder River the Monday following the battle of Enslin, and placed himself at the head of the Boer forces which had fallen back before Methuen's army after two sanguinary fights.
General Piet Cronje had traveled almost continuously from Mafeking since being summoned by the Federal Governments to take charge of the operations against Methuen's advance. He had " looked in " at the siege of Kimberley en route, and had compelled a more vigorous investment of the town, a circumstance which prevented his reaching De la Rey on Saturday, as had been expected.
GENERAL CRONJE
General Cronje was born at Potchefstroom, the old capital of the Transvaal Republic. He was descended, like De la Rey, from French ancestors, and possessed, like him, a strong trace of his racial origin in an easy, natural courtesy of manner in ordinary conversation. There could not well be in one individual a greater contrast than between the Cronje in the relations of social intercourse and the Cronje of the laager and kriegsraad. One was gentle, polite, and agreeable, considerate of another's views and prejudices; well-informed, pleasant,and obliging. In the camp, however, this polite and genial French Boer disappeared, and his place was taken by a silent, taciturn, determined man, who would listen without a word to the debate in the Council of War, or to the expression of individual opinion on the part of officer or friend, and, without deigning to consider a single argument or reason put forward by others, would deliver his view in sharp, arbitrary tones, and end the discussion. Any contradiction or opposition, no matter by whom, would extort the remark, with a proud, peremptory glance, " Am I the General, or you? " and the opposition became dumb. When commanding in battle his voice was loud and harsh as he thundered out his orders in sharp, imperative tones, and rode from one position to another in restless, watchful energy, directing everything and everybody, utterly regardless of bursting shrapnel or flying bullets, as if possessed of a charmed life, immune against danger or disaster. Cronje, unlike other Boer generals, had studied military works, and was an educated soldier, in addition to being an extensive farmer and, in later years, Native Commissioner under the Transvaal Republic. Like President Kruger and Christian De Wet, he had no faith in English promises, conventions, pledges, or character. He knew the race thoroughly, and was, of course, conversant with all the crookedness which had marked the relations, political, diplomatic, and military, of England with South Africa from the jugglery with which the Cape was made a British Colony down to the knavery of the Jameson Raid. He had always been convinced, since the mines of the Rand were discovered and British capital began to entrench itself there, that the old predatory disposition of the English nation, which had deliberately violated the Sand River Treaty, and the Aliwal North Treaty over the diamond mines of Kimberley, would act in the same spirit towards the London Convention in order to annex the country of the Witwatersrand gold mines. The war was therefore no surprise to him.
He had gained considerable military experience in the service of the Transvaal. He organized the burghers of his native district in 1880, and fought a determined struggle with the British garrison at Potchefstroom, vigorously pushing the siege, and not permitting an armistice agreed upon at Pretoria to stand between his burghers and the surrender of their foes. He fought his adversaries into submission, and in so doing earned the long-memoried hatred of the British. He it was, too, who at Doornkop had disposed of Jameson and his force so effectively and with such small loss on the Boer side, and retrieved, in the leniency of his terms to the surrendered Raiders, the arbitrariness of his treatment of the garrison of Potchefstroom.
In religion Cronje is a strong Calvinist, and might be truly called a convinced Fatalist in the intensity of his belief in the preordained destinies of men. He had a deep, sincere, religious conviction that he owed his many remarkable escapes from death when hunting and on many a battle-field to the special protective care of Providence, and was in the habit of sauing that no English bullet would ever end his career. Standing one day in the graveyard of Potchefstroom, in 1880, during a contest with the British forces, a shell burst at his feet, killing the horse which he held by the bridle and that of a burgher named Labuscagne, who stood by his side; both men escaping without a scratch. Labuscagne became Cronje's mascot companion afterwards, and was by his side in every emergency, fighting or hunting, from that time until both surrendered to Lord Roberts at Paardeberg.
During the whole of his campaign, from the commencement of the siege of Mafeking to the date of his surrender, a religious service was conducted every day in his laager; and in case the predicant was absent the general himself offered up prayers.
Such was the man who looked across the Modder River on Monday, November 27, at the foe whom he was destined to send reeling back from the most disastrous field of battle from which a British army had been driven in modern times.
A uniform English criticism of Boer fighting has been that their stand was always made on fortified hills, and never on level ground, while even when successful in holding such positions they never, or seldom ever, pursued their foes after a battle. These are statements containing a little of what is true, so as to make them more plausible than if they were groundless allegations. It was the English, both in Natal and on the west border line, who invariably selected the ground of battle in their plans of operations, and both sides made the best possible use of the advantages offered by the natural formation of the area of combat. The implied charge of want of fighting qualities in not following up a British force after a "mishap," purposely omits mention of the fact that, except at Modderspruit and Dundee, the Boers were always in the proportion of at least one to three or four of their assailants, with guns in similar ratio. Now, 3,000 men, as a fighting unit, may achieve a creditable record in beating back 10,000 opponents, but when one man attempts to pursue three of his enemies he acts as no soldier is reasonably expected to do.
On the Modder River battle-field there were no hills or kopjes. The country north to the river from Rooilaagte is almost a level plain. The veldt south and north slopes gradually down to the sprawling stream, which overflows its ordinary channel in the winter, but is shallow in the summer time. As the English war correspondents could not utilize " semi-impregnable kopjes" in their description of this battle, where they did not exist, they discovered instead " elaborate entrenchments, most cunningly contrived," etc., etc., while they freely gave to General Cronje a force in men and guns almost equal to the English.
The real facts as to the Boer positions and men at the Modder River fight are these: De la Rey, and not Cronje, selected the positions. He had fallen back from Rooilaagte on Saturday evening, after a whole day's fighting. He began his entrenchments on Sunday, and he was attacked at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning. Not a single trench or sangar had been built previously to the Sunday before the fight, and with such tools as the Boers possessed it would be impossible to construct the kind of trenches described by the correspondents within the period between the two engagements.
De la Rey's plans and dispositions were so well conceived that General Cronje made no alteration on his arrival. Prinsloo, being a Free State general, was still in nominal chief command, but he allowed his Transvaal confreres to determine the order of defensive battle and the disposal of the guns. De la Rey placed his Transvaalers in two sections; half opposite the drift across the Modder River in what was destined to become the center of the battle-field, and half eastward of this position, on towards where the Modder falls into the Riet River in its course eastward. Around the hotel and west to the railway bridge (which De la Rey had blown up), the 500 men whom Cronje had brought with him from near Kimberley held the village and the north bank of the river; while extending further west to a bridle drift, about three miles away, the Free Staters, some 1,200 strong, were posted in various groups. The entire Federal forces numbered 3,000, with three Krupps and two automatic Nordenfelts. Major Albrecht had charge of the Krupps in Prinsloo's command, while De la Rey and Cronje had the service of the machine guns, near the railway bridge in the center, which were worked by men of the Transvaal Staats Artillery.
At two-points on the south bank of the river, a little to the west of the bridge and to the east of the drift, rifle-pits were dug among the brushwood as part of De la Rev's plan of defense, and in these some of the best shots among the Transvaalers were placed. Sharpshooters also took up position in the trees on the north bank of the stream until the enemy's artillery rendered these posts too hot for the elevated marksmen.
The extreme left of the Boer lines was well protected by the Riet River, which flows up from the south almost at right angles to its sister stream, and thus gave De la Rey a secure position from which to protect the left flank of his center force.
Lord Methuen had been reenforced since the battle of Enslin by two additional Highland regiments, thus raising his effective strength in men to 12,000. His artillery had also been increased by an extra battery, so that the battle at the river began on that early Tuesday morning between two armies, one of which had, in men, fully four to one, and in guns about the same proportion.
The English moved from their camp at Enslin at daybreak, and shortly before seven came in touch with the Free State outposts. These retired on the river, and the battle had begun. The enemy's plans were soon apparent. His artillery opened upon the Boer center at about 5,000 yards, while an entire brigade of troops under General Pole-Carew was sent westward to where Prinsloo's burghers guarded the bridle drift. A body of Guardsmen were wheeled to the right to turn or menace the position which was held by the Transvaal men. Long before these attacking columns had come within range of the Mausers behind the river bank, the artillery of both forces had commenced a furious encounter. The fight over the whole line of four miles was soon in full swing, Mauser and Maxim, Lee-Metford and Krupp, every arm on each side spitting fire and death along the banks of the sluggish river. On the left, where De la Rey and his Transvaalers were posted, the English Guards were held back from the river by a terrific fire which nothing could withstand. They had advanced under cover of the scrub and bushes to within 1,000 yards of the stream, with a battery of guns only another 1,000 yards behind, and so overwhelming was the Boer fire which rained upon the Britishers that they could neither advance nor retire. The Guards' battery was completely silenced by the automatic Boer gun, and its service was shot down in a few seconds. The Guards were compelled to throw themselves on the ground, and to lie there for hours behind stumps of trees and ant-hills or anything which offered a shelter from the merciless hail of bullets which came like a blizzard of lead from where De la Rey coolly directed the action of his men. From eight to eleven o'clock this state of things continued. The English were driven back along the whole line; the Free Staters on the right sweeping the veldt in front of their positions as completely as the Transvaalers were doing at the center and other extreme. The enemy had suffered terribly in the encounter so far, while very few had been hit on the Boer side—the smokeless powder of the Mauser offering no indication of where the Boer marksmen lay, while Albrecht, Niekerk, Stuckenberg, and the other burgher artillerists had the advantage of protected positions for the few guns which were matched against Methuen's naval and other batteries. The English fire in musketry and guns was wild and mostly ineffective, directed now at one point, now at another, in a chance aim at a supposed location of a gun or a pit of Mauser riflemen. The aiming on the Boer side was at visible objects, and was deliberate and deadly, and by noon on that burning hot day, with the sun scorching the prostrate Guards in front of De la Rey's men, over 300 of the enemy were already hors de combat along the south bank of the Modder.
Methuen's sole reliance now was on his artillery, as his efforts to carry any part of the river front held by Cronje or De la Rey by an infantry advance was as futile as would be an attempt to row a boat up Niagara Falls. His naval guns were brought so near the zone of Mauser fire that gunner after gunner was shot down at the service of these weapons, but the enemy persevered despite this loss, and the incessant play of fully twenty field pieces on the positions held by the Boer artillery silenced their guns about two in the afternoon. This, however, in no way checked the burgher riflemen, who continued to pour their steady, ceaseless fire over the Briver, rendering all attempts at a crossing impossible.
Unfortunately Prinsloo commanded on the extreme right of the Boer lines. His men had fought magnificently during the whole day, easily holding the river against the 9th Brigade of British, commanded by General Pole-Carew. There was nothing wanting in the steadiness and courage which they maintained during a ten hours' superb combat, and no blame for what occurred can rightly be placed upon such gallant fighters as the Fauresmith, Jacobsdal, and other commandoes, who had stood so well against big odds all the previous week. It was once more the result of nerveless leadership.
A portion of Pole-Carew's column had wandered down the river bank away from the brunt of the encounter which had gone on all day between the 9th Brigade and the Free Staters. This body of troops succeeded in turning the Boer right by crossing the stream in face of opposition from a few burghers, and in making a lodgment in and around three or four houses on the north bank. So little did the English generals think of such a simple but obvious movement westward of the Boer right in the earlier part of the day, that the knowledge of this most vital turning action was only obtained by Methuen late in the afternoon, when the battle was almost over. In fact, Pole-Carew's artillery in the rear of the main portion of his own brigade fired upon those troops who had crossed the river, mistaking them for Boers. Prinsloo sent forward about 100 of his men from a position lower down the river to oppose the troops who had crossed. They succeeded in forcing them back to the banks, and held them there for a time with their Mauser fire, but on more troops coming up to the support of those who had gained the north bank, the Free Staters fell back, and Prinsloo retired with them from the field. When Cronje's right had been thus turned, the numerical weakness of his force had to cede to the overwhelming number of his assailants. Prinsloo had again given way, and this movement communicated itself to the whole burgher lines, when a retreat became inevitable. It was an agonizing instance of another battle, actually won by valor and sound generalship, being lost, at the last moment, through the ineptitude of an incompetent officer. Cronje and De la Rey followed in the wake of Prinsloo's Free Staters, there being no pursuit of the slowly retiring commandoes, as they fell back once more with their guns to another position.
General De la Rey's eldest boy, a bright and brave lad of eighteen, was killed by his father's side during the day. The general's report of his own part in the battle was brevity itself. It reads:
" We had a very heavy engagement yesterday, lasting twelve hours.
" I had only about 800 men with me, and there were also approximately 1,000 Free Staters with us.
" We estimated the force of the enemy at, at least, 10,000, and between one and two o'clock in the afternoon they were driven back by the Transvaalers, whom they primarily attacked.
" The English then retired to the west side of the battle-field, where the Free Staters were positioned, and here they were also repulsed several times.
" My dead and wounded number 18, including my eldest son, who expired this morning.
" When darkness fell, we were compelled gradually to retreat, as the Free State side had been weakened to such an extent that it was impossible for the rest of the Free Staters to hold their ground, so much so that Major Albrecht, who had fought so bravely, asked me to protect his artillery.
" The Free State loss is unknown to me."
The total losses of the enemy, in what Lord Methuen claimed to be "one of the most fiercely-contested battles in the annals of the British army," amounted to close on 500 men. Giving Prinsloo's and Cronje's divisions each a loss equal to De la Rey's, and counting the twenty wounded who were alleged to have been killed by the Guards after the battle, the total Federal losses would be under 100. The artillery lost eight of its men, including a young German officer, Lieutenant Stuckenberg.
Lord Methuen's contention that he had been opposed by 8,000 burghers at Modder River was on a par with his boastful comparison between his own and such secondary achievements as Wellington's at Waterloo. The combined Federal commandoes by which he was fought numbered no more than 3,000 men.
The behavior of some of Methuen's officers and men after the battle of Modder River was an outrage upon almost every code of civilized warfare. It was worthy of the Lancers at Elandslaagte. In one of the houses in the rear of the little village some twenty Boers were lying wounded. This house was near the center of Cronje's position, and was therefore within the zone of fire during the day. These wounded men were all ruthlessly bayoneted by a body of Guardsmen, after the fight had ceased, on the pretence that the house where the disabled burghers lay must have been fired from while the Guards were being badly cut up in the heat of the morning's encounter. Not a single shot had been fired from the building after the wounded had been placed inside it, and the killing of the men found within it in the evening was simply an act of revengeful fury.
An English version of this incident, given by the " Daily Chronicle " war correspondent, reads as follows:
" While the Argylls were pushing across the river they were fired upon from the house and several fell, whereupon a dozen of the Highlanders stormed the house, and, tho the enemy hoisted the white flag, no quarter was given. They were all shot. The enemy had acted most unscrupulously, shelling our field hospital, so that some of our wounded were killed, and repeatedly firing on our stretcher parties."
The Boer officer who repeated the facts to me was confident that the deed was done, not by Highlanders, but by Guards, as related. The counter allegation made by the " Chronicle " correspondent is given here in order to have both sides heard. The other charges made by the Boers have not been denied. There has not been a duly authenticated instance of an ambulance or Red Cross outrage committed by the Boer forces established, even by English testimony, throughout the whole war.
On the morning following the battle seven doctors and thirty attendants were busy dressing the wounds of some Boers in some houses east of the hotel, where the Transvaalers had held the river bank against the attacks of the Guards. The Red Cross flag was exposed, and two or three ambulance carts, also bearing the Cross, were near by. An English officer arrived with troops, and arrested all the doctors and their attendants, and claimed the wounded as prisoners. Remonstrance was of no avail. The doctors gave their names and addresses, but they were told " it would all be inquired into," and were forbidden to attend to the wounded. This treatment continued during Wednesday and Thursday. On the evening of that day all the medical staff were ordered to board the train for Cape Town as prisoners. During the journey to De Aar, one of the wounded claimed the attention of the doctors. They were not allowed to go near him; the officer to whom the request was made replied: "Let the Boer die!" They were locked up in filthy cells during a night's stay at De Aar; the prison guard being instructed by this same officer: " You kick them if they move, and shoot them if they come near the door." Dr. Charles J. Lever published an account of their subsequent treatment by the British, from which I take the following extract:
" We arrived at Cape Town, after a wearisome journey, on Monday, at noon, and were taken to the New Military Hospital, or prison, where we were detained. The Commandant expressed his opinion to the effect that a huge blunder had occurred, and we were ordered to be in readiness to leave by the 9 o'clock train that night. We were marched from the docks to the railway station and sent back to Modder River.
" I do not attempt to describe the indignities or the inconvenience to which we were subjected. Suffice it to say that traveling in cattle trucks, confinement in that most delectable jail at De Aar, gratuitous impertinence from sundry officers and minor details of heat, dirt, and general discomfort, were the main features of our journey.
" We were captured without any assigned reason, returned with the consolation that a huge blunder had been made, and it is now for the civilized world to comment and for high authorities to adjudicate upon the unwarrantable treatment accorded by the British military authorities to the members of an ambulance staff, working in the most sacred interests of humanity, under the recognized auspices of the Geneva Convention.—I am, etc.,
" Charles J. Levee.
" P.S.—I may further mention that, on our return to Modder River, restitution of our ambulance wagons, cattle, horses, etc., was refused, and we had to make our way to our own lines on foot, a distance of some nine miles.
" Jacobsdal, Orange Free State, December 10, 1899."
As a testimony to the general conduct of the Boers, in contrast with that of their foes, at and after the fight at Modder River, the following evidence, tendered by the war correspondent of the ultra-Jingo " Globe," of London, will sustain my general proposition, that in all stages and circumstances of this war the Boer has shown himself, in every respect, the moral superior of the Briton:
" We learned that the Boers are by no means the undisciplined rabble which some people would have us believe. It is not too much to say that there was more indiscriminate looting done after the Modder River fight in a few days by the British than was done by the Boers in the whole six weeks before the fight. It is certainly worthy of remark that the Boers, who are not supposed to have any discipline at all, have, in this part of the country, apparently behaved with exemplary consideration for the rights of private property. While on the subject of Boer discipline and behavior, I forgot to mention another important feature in their character and mode of life. I have seen it stated in some papers occasionally that they have been drunk in their trenches and in camps, having looted wine and spirit stores in various towns and villages. I have ascertained that this is absolutely untrue. Drunkenness is practically unknown in their camps. They do not drink wine or spirits; their only intoxicant is a mixed concoction, of which they drink very little."
