In the centre of the town there is a wide square decorated or disfigured by a bare pedestal upon which a statue of the President was to have been placed.  Hard by is the bleak barnlike church in which he preached, and on either side are the Government offices and the Law Courts, buildings which would grace any European capital.  Here, at two o’clock on the afternoon of June 5th, Lord Roberts sat his horse and saw pass in front of him the men who had followed him so far and so faithfully—­the Guards, the Essex, the Welsh, the Yorks, the Warwicks, the guns, the mounted infantry, the dashing irregulars, the Gordons, the Canadians, the Shropshires, the Cornwalls, the Camerons, the Derbys, the Sussex, and the London Volunteers.  For over two hours the khaki waves with their crests of steel went sweeping by.  High above their heads from the summit of the Raad-saal the broad Union Jack streamed for the first time.  Through months of darkness we had struggled onwards to the light.  Now at last the strange drama seemed to be drawing to its close.  The God of battles had given the long-withheld verdict.  But of all the hearts which throbbed high at that supreme moment there were few who felt one touch of bitterness towards the brave men who had been overborne.  They had fought and died for their ideal.  We had fought and died for ours.  The hope for the future of South Africa is that they or their descendants may learn that that banner which has come to wave above Pretoria means no racial intolerance, no greed for gold, no paltering with injustice or corruption, but that it means one law for all and one freedom for all, as it does in every other continent in the whole broad earth.  When that is learned it may happen that even they will come to date a happier life and a wider liberty from that 5th of June which saw the symbol of their nation pass for ever from among the ensigns of the world.

CHAPTER 26.

Diamond hill—­Rundle’s operations.

The military situation at the time of the occupation of Pretoria was roughly as follows.  Lord Roberts with some thirty thousand men was in possession of the capital, but had left his long line of communications very imperfectly guarded behind him.  On the flank of this line of communications, in the eastern and north-eastern corner of the Free State, was an energetic force of unconquered Freestaters who had rallied round President Steyn.  They were some eight or ten thousand in number, well horsed, with a fair number of guns, under the able leadership of De Wet, Prinsloo, and Olivier.  Above all, they had a splendid position, mountainous and broken, from which, as from a fortress, they could make excursions to the south or west.  This army included the commandos of Ficksburg, Senekal, and Harrismith, with all the broken and desperate men from other districts who had left their farms and fled to the mountains.  It was held in check as