With both armies in South Africa

15 December 1899

Battle of Colenso

CHAPTER I

'*T TC 7ERE you the station-master here be- V V fore this ? " I asked the man in the straw hat, at Colenso. " I mean before this war?"

CHAPTER I

** What ! I ? No fear ! " snorted the station- master, scornfully. *' Why, we didn't know Colenso was on the line until Duller came and fought a battle here — that's how it is with all these way-stations now. Everybody's talking about them. We never took no notice to them."

WITH BOTH ARMIES

The Battle of Colenso could be heard across the hills beyond Ladysmith, and promised that relief was imminent. For was not Buller coming at last, and were not those his guns forcing back the Boers ? Throughout the long hot day of December 3d the imprisoned peo- ple listened with awe and hope to the rolling thunder of the great cannon. They surely proclaimed the end. In a week, in a day, Buller would be across the Tugela, the Boers

WITH BOTH ARMIES

Those Americans who see danger in a ''stand- ing army " of 60,000 men in a country of 70,- 000,000 and who would have us depend upon our citizen soldiery, should consider this ques- tion. I have seen undisciplined citizens of Greece throw the regiments of regulars into confusion by stampeding through their ranks to the rear, and the citizen soldiery of my own country as represented by the Seventy-first New York Volunteers funking the fight and refusing to join the regulars in the charge up San Juan Hill, and I have seen the citizen soldiery of the Boer republic refuse battles which might have turned into second Colensos, through their not having acquired the habit of obeying orders. At the Battle of Colenso the burghers wanted to fight, at the Sand and Vaal rivers they did not. Discipline would have