soon be forgotten in the annals of our Army.  A man of weaker fibre than the British leader would have been daunted by the disasters of that day, for there he lost ten guns and a large number of men.  But Buller carried in his blood all the old grit of our race, and the heavier the check the more his soul was set upon ultimate victory.  I have been over that battle ground, and have looked at the positions taken up by Louis Botha.  They were chosen with consummate skill, born of a thorough knowledge of the nature of the country and inherent generalship.

I have looked at the country Sir Redvers Buller had to pass through to get at his wise and skilful adversary.  The man who dared make the attempt that Buller made must have had nerves of steel, and a soul that would not blench if ordered to storm the very gates of Hades.  The worst fighting ground that I saw in all the Free State was but a mockery of war compared to the ground around Colenso, and I have seen some terrible places in the Free State.  But a man has to see the ground Buller fought in to realise the magnitude of the task the Empire set him at the beginning of the war.  Great as Lord Roberts is, I doubt if he would have done more than Buller did under the same circumstances.

That battle of Colenso made young Louis Botha famous, and from that hour the eyes of the burghers were turned towards him as the one man fit to lead them.  At Spion Kop, when the Boer leader, Schalk Burger, vacated the splendid position he had been ordered to take up, Louis Botha’s genius grasped the mighty import of the situation, and he at once realised that Schalk Burger had blundered terribly, and it was he who retook those positions with such disastrous consequences to our forces.  His fame spread far and near, and his name became a thing to conjure with.  When the Commandant-General of the Boer Army, General Joubert, lay dying, he was asked who was the best man to fill his place.  And he, the grey veteran, did not hesitate for a second, but with his dying breath gasped out the name of Louis Botha.  The Boer Government promptly appointed him to the position, and from that day to this he has been the paramount military power in the Boer lines.  He is not the only one of his line fighting under the Transvaal flag.  There are four other brothers in the field, one of whom, Christian Botha, is now a general, and a good fighter.  As a soldier Louis Botha has proved himself a foeman worthy the steel of any of our generals; as a man his worst enemy can say nothing derogatory concerning him, for in all his actions he has borne himself like a gentleman.  He is generous and courteous in the hour of victory, stout-hearted and self-reliant in the time of disaster—­just the type of soldier that a great nation like ours knows how to esteem, even though he is an enemy in arms against us.

WHITE FLAG TREACHERY.