Taking him altogether, then, your general impression of the Tommy is one of solid good temper and strength.  Of his faults and failings, when you get to know him, you cannot help making light; for his faults are faults of conduct only, while his strength is strength of character.  As an individual, I daresay you could criticise him, but in the mass, for the strength of breed he shows and the confidence he gives you in your race, you will have nothing but admiration.

I have told you what I could about him, because he is a man you have never seen, and will probably never have a chance of seeing.  For no one who has not seen Tommy in the field has seen him at all.  If you love England, you must love the army.  If you are a patriot, not merely a Jingo, the sight of these ragged battalions passing will give you such a thrill as only very fine and splendid things do give; and very proud you will feel if ever you have had a hand in sharing their work and been admitted to some sort of fellowship with them.

These are the lads who in their packed thousands tramped yesterday through Pretoria.  Past old Kruger’s house, a cottage you might almost call it, with its lions in front and several old burghers in black crying in the verandah, we went at a foot’s pace, choking in the cloud of red dust, with the strains of “God Save the Queen” in our ears.  We emerge into the square.  The Volksraad is on our right; then the Grand Hotel, with all its windows full of English people, or sympathisers with England, many of them women, all waving handkerchiefs and raising a cracked cheer as we pass.  I was staring at all this, whilst a big band on the right broke merrily out with the “Washington Post,” and did not see till I almost brushed his horse’s nose, our Commander-in-Chief standing like an amiable little statue at the head of all his generals and their staffs, with finger raised to helmet.  It is quite a moment to remember, and I do really feel for an instant, what all the morning I have been trying to feel, that we are what literary people call “making history.”

As for Pretoria itself, it is a pretty and well-wooded little place, with pink and white oleander trees in blossom, fir-trees, gums, and weeping-willows along the streams and round the little bungalow houses.  The shady gardens and cool verandahs give these houses a very inviting air in this land of blazing sun.  They have a comfortable, and at the same time sociable, look, the houses being near by each other, but each with a pretty garden and trees overhanging.  Like all the works of these very practical people, the place is designed for convenience and comfort and not a bit for beauty.  But the first two give it the last to some extent, give it a sort of simple and homely beauty of its own which is pleasing as far as it goes.