Soon after the issue of the new four ounce edict a learned doctor delivered a public lecture and eloquently assured us that we ate too much meat!  He urged us to eat less of it, for our health’s sake.  Now, the doctors of the Diamond City were hard worked during the Siege; so much so that they were still allowed (by special arrangement) the half-pound ration.  This was right and proper.  But there was none the less a piquant irony in the principles of a propagandist who was eating twice as much beef as anyone else and could stand up to utter precepts so strikingly at variance with his practice!  The good doctor no doubt knew that new-laid missiles were too costly, and too fresh, to be thrown away; but he deserved them; the audience did not say so; but their eyes blazed kindly.

On Wednesday sports were held at Beaconsfield to cheer up the children of the township.  Sweets, ginger-beer, and tea (neat) were served out, and were relished by the little ones who were too young to be particular.  It may be said that cricket, football, and smoking concerts went on as usual, though how the players and the comic songsters managed to spare wind (on the diet) for such strenuous recreation is a mystery.  Football on four ounces of fat was a strain.  No doubt our open air life did some of us a world of good, and in many instances it was not easy to recognise in a bronzed civilian soldier the erstwhile sallow clerk or shop-assistant.

It was at this stage of our travail that the Basuto Chief (Lerothodi) followed up the fashion of the day by launching a proclamation of his own which commanded all his people to return at once to Basutoland.  Now, we had shut up with us in Kimberley some thousands of this worthy tribe.  They received their Chief’s command and set about preparing for instant departure, with the Colonel’s blessing.  We white folk were not at all sure that the Boers would be so gracious with their blessing.  The process of starving us into submission was in full swing (and succeeding, alas! but too well).  It was thus obvious that a reduction so substantial in the gross total of stomachs to be catered for would not tend to starve us the sooner.  But the enemy did not deem it politic to attempt the task of driving Basutos and Britons to the sea together.  The sympathies of the powerful Basuto chief were not on their side, and it would have been unwise to have risked offending him.  So it was that the natives were permitted to pass unmolested to the kraals of their childhood.  The enemy did not like it—­any more than did King John when he signed the Great Charter—­but it had to be.

In the meantime some news had come in to which the Colonel was pleased to give publicity.  It was astonishing all the trifling tit-bits we did hear; and they occasionally excited interest—­until discovered to be of home manufacture—­the distinctive work of local genius.  On this occasion, however, the tit-bit was “Official,” and to the effect that the rebels at Douglas had been routed by the Canadian volunteers.  This was gratifying; we blamed the rebels for our own beleagured state, and the moral lesson of the rout at Douglas might hasten the discomfiture of the gentlemen who surrounded us.  I have yet to learn that it did in any shape or form.