The day after the fight we made a triumphal procession through Pretoria, and marched past Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals and their staffs, assembled in the big square facing the Parliament House.  We came along a long, straight street, with verandahed houses standing back in gardens, and trees partly shading the road, a ceaseless, slow, living river of khaki; solid blocks of infantry, with measured, even tread, the rifle barrels lightly rising and falling with the elastic, easy motion that sways them altogether as the men keep time; cavalry, regular and irregular, and, two by two, the rumbling guns.  Mile after mile of this steady, deliberate, muddy tide that has crept so far, creeps on now through the Dutch capital.  Look at the men!  Through long exposure and the weeding out of the weak ones, they are now all picked men.  The campaign has sorted them out, and every battalion is so much solid gristle and sinew.  They show their condition in their lean, darkly-tanned faces; in the sinewy, blackened hands that grasp the rifle butts; in the way they carry themselves, with shoulders well back and heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous swing of their step.

I should like, while I am about it, to speak to you rather more at length about the British soldier.  I should think my time spent on service, especially the five months in the ranks, time well spent, if only for the acquaintanceship it has brought with soldiers.  In the field, on the march, in bivouac, I have met and associated and talked with them on equal terms.  Under fire and in action I have watched them, have sat with them, long afternoons by rivers and under trees, and yarned with them on tramps in the blazing sun.  Their language, habits, and character have to some extent grown familiar to me.

They are not, to begin with, a bit like the description I sometimes read of them in newspapers.  In one of Kipling’s books there is a description of a painting of a soldier in action; realistic and true to life; dirty and grimed and foul, with an assegai wound across the ankle, and the terror of death in his face.  The dealer who took the picture made the artist alter it; had the uniform cleaned and the straps pipe-clayed, and the face smoothed and composed, and the ferocity and despair toned down to a plump and well-fed complacency, and made, in fact, all those alterations which were supposed to suit it to the public taste.

The newspapers describe the British soldier, I suppose, to suit the public too, much on the same lines.  He is the most simpering, mild-mannered, and perfect gentleman.  If you asked him to loot a farm, he would stare at you in shocked amazement.  He is, of course, “as brave as a lion,” his courage being always at that dead level of perfect heroism which makes the term quite meaningless.  Except, however, when they are shining with the light of battle, his eyes regard all people, friends and foes alike, with an expression of kindness and brotherly love.  He never uses a strong word, and under all circumstances the gentleness and sweet decorum of his manner is such as you would never expect to meet outside the Y.M.C.A.