In the meanwhile three powerful Boer guns upon the ridge had opened fire with great accuracy, but fortunately with defective shells.  Had the enemy’s contractors been as trustworthy as their gunners in this campaign, our losses would have been very much heavier, and it is possible that here we catch a glimpse of some consequences of that corruption which was one of the curses of the country.  The guns were moved with great smartness along the ridge, and opened fire again and again, but never with great result.  Our own batteries, the 74th and 77th, with our handful of mounted men, worked hard in covering the retreat and holding back the enemy’s pursuit.

It is a sad subject to discuss, but it is the one instance in a campaign containing many reverses which amounts to demoralisation among the troops engaged.  The Guards marching with the steadiness of Hyde Park off the field of Magersfontein, or the men of Nicholson’s Nek chafing because they were not led in a last hopeless charge, are, even in defeat, object lessons of military virtue.  But here fatigue and sleeplessness had taken all fire and spirit out of the men.  They dropped asleep by the roadside and had to be prodded up by their exhausted officers.  Many were taken prisoners in their slumber by the enemy who gleaned behind them.  Units broke into small straggling bodies, and it was a sorry and bedraggled force which about ten o’clock came wandering into Molteno.  The place of honour in the rear was kept throughout by the Irish Rifles, who preserved some military formation to the end.  Our losses in killed and wounded were not severe—­military honour would have been less sore had they been more so.  Twenty-six killed, sixty-eight wounded—­that is all.  But between the men on the hillside and the somnambulists of the column, six hundred, about equally divided between the Irish Rifles and the Northumberland Fusiliers, had been left as prisoners.  Two guns, too, had been lost in the hurried retreat.

It is not for the historian—­especially for a civilian historian—­to say a word unnecessarily to aggravate the pain of that brave man who, having done all that personal courage could do, was seen afterwards sobbing on the table of the waiting-room at Molteno, and bewailing his ‘poor men.’  He had a disaster, but Nelson had one at Teneriffe and Napoleon at Acre, and built their great reputations in spite of it.  But the one good thing of a disaster is that by examining it we may learn to do better in the future, and so it would indeed be a perilous thing if we agreed that our reverses were not a fit subject for open and frank discussion.

It is not to the detriment of an enterprise that it should be daring and call for considerable physical effort on the part of those who are engaged in it.  On the contrary, the conception of such plans is one of the signs of a great military mind.  But in the arranging of the details the same military mind should assiduously occupy itself in foreseeing and preventing every unnecessary thing which may make the execution of such a plan more difficult.  The idea of a swift sudden attack upon Stormberg was excellent—­the details of the operation are continually open to criticism.