Judging from this casual intercourse, he represents a type very common among colonial volunteers, but not encouraged by our own military system—­I mean that of the independent, intelligent, resourceful unit.  If there are many like him in his corps, it accounts amply for the splendid work they have done.  He told me that not one of them had been taken prisoner, which, looking at the history of the war, and at the kind of work such a corps has to do, speaks volumes for the standard of ability in all ranks.  But what I don’t like, and can’t altogether understand, is the intense and implacable bitterness against the Boers, which all South Africans such as him show.  Nothing is too bad for the Boers.  “Boiling oil” is far too good.  Deportation to Ceylon is pitiful leniency.  Any suggestion that the civilized customs of war should be kept up with such an enemy, is scouted.  Making all allowances for the natural resentment of those who have known what it is to be an Uitlander, allowing too for “white flag” episodes and so on, I yet fail to understand this excess of animosity, which goes out of its way even to deny any ability to Boer statesmen and soldiers, regardless of the slur such a denial casts on British arms and statesmanship.  After all, we have lost ten thousand or more prisoners to the Boers, and, for my part, the fact that I have never heard a complaint of bad treatment (unnecessarily bad, I mean) from an ex-prisoner, tells more strongly than anything with me in forming a friendly impression of the enemy we are fighting.  Many a hot argument have we had about Boer and Briton; and I’m afraid he thinks me but a knock-kneed imperialist.

September 10.—­Monday.—­To my great delight, Henry turned up as an inmate here, the commanding officer at the convalescent camp having most kindly managed his transference, with some difficulty.  The state of his foot didn’t enter into the question at all, but official “etiquette” was in danger of being outraged.  The commanding officer was a very good chap, though, and Henry seems to have escaped somehow in the tumult, unpursued.  He had to walk over here.

A wounded man from Warm Baths came in to-day, and said they had had two days’ fighting there; camp heavily shelled by Grobelaar.

September 13.—­Thursday.—­Foot nearly well, but am not allowed to walk, and very jealous of Henry, who has been given a crutch, and makes rapid kangaroo-like progress with it.  There are a good many in his case, and we think of getting up a cripples’ race, which Henry would certainly win.

Letters from Williams and Ramsey at the front.  It seems Warm Baths is evacuated, and the Brigade has returned to Waterval.  Why?  However, it’s nearer here, and will give me a chance of rejoining earlier.

A splendid parcel arrived from home.  A Jaeger coat, chocolate, ginger, plums, cigarettes.  Old Daddy opposite revels in the ginger; he is the father of the ward, being forty-seven, a pathetic, time-worn, veldt-worn old reservist, utterly done up by the fatigues of the campaign.  He has had a bad operation, and suffers a lot, but he is always “first-rate, couldn’t be more comfortable,” when the Sisters or doctors ask him; “as long as I never cross that there veldt no more,” he adds.