=War’s Terrible Harvest.=

’The incoming of the wounded to the hospital camp was the most pitiful sight my life has thus far brought me; but I scarce know which to admire most—­the patient endurance of the sufferers or the skilled devotion of the army doctors, whose outspoken hatred of war was still more intensified by the gruesome tasks assigned them.

’That night I slept on the floor of a captured Boer ambulance van, fitted up as a physic shop with shelves fitted with bottles mostly labelled poison.  It was for me, even thus sheltered, a bitterly cold night, much more for the scores of wounded who lay all night upon the field of battle.  Early next morning I buried two, the first-fruits of a large harvest, and later on learned that among the killed was the Marquis of Winchester, who a fortnight ago invited me to conduct the funeral of his friend, Colonel Stopford.  To-day I visited the two graves side by side in the same war-wasted garden, and thought of the tearful Christmas awaiting thousands in the mountains.’

=Mr. Robertson at Magersfontein.=

Add to this pathetic statement the following letter from the Rev. James Robertson, read by Principal Story to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on May 25, 1900.  The letter was dated Bloemfontein, April 12:—­

’I have already buried over 400 men, killed in action or who died of wounds or disease; and our hospitals are full of enteric cases, day by day swelling the total.  It goes without saying that—­at Magersfontein especially, all alone, no one being allowed with me—­it was terribly trying work collecting, identifying, and burying our dead, so many of whom were my own personal friends; but I experienced more than I ever did before how the hour of one’s conscious weakness may become the hour of one’s greatest strength.  Of General Wauchope I won’t write further than to say that I was beside him when he fell.  I think he wished me to keep near him, but I got knocked down, and in the dark and wild confusion I was borne away, and did not see him again in life, though I spared no effort to find him, in the hope that he might be only wounded.  As one of the correspondents wrote of him, he was a man of God, and a man among men—­a fitting epithet.  Not to mention other warm friends, in my own mess (General Wauchope’s) there were seven of us on December 18; when next we sat down there were only two.  We were a sad, a very sad, brigade, for though we tried to hide it, we took our losses to heart sorely; for “men of steel are men who feel.”  But out of evil came good.  The depth of latent religious feeling that was evoked in officers and men was a revelation to me; and were it not that confessions, and acknowledgments, and vows were too sacred for repetition, I could tell a tale that would gladden your hearts—­not that I put too much stress on what’s said or done at such an impressionable solemnising time, but after-proof of sincerity has not been wanting.’[4]

[Footnote 4:  Scotsman, May 26, 1900.]