Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.

There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer there who thought that this white flag was the national flag of England.  He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing’s Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight.

The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett’s estimate of Jameson’s total loss in killed and wounded for the two days: 

“When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants.  There were 76 casualties.  There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons.  There were 27 killed on the spot or mortally wounded.”

Total, 133, out of the original 530.  It is just 25 per cent.—­[However, I judge that the total was really 150; for the number of wounded carried to Krugersdorp hospital was 53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it.  The lady whose guest I was in Krugerdorp gave me the figures.  She was head nurse from the beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the professional nurses arrived, Jan. 8th.  Of the 53, “Three or four were Boers”; I quote her words.]—­This is a large improvement upon the precedents established at Bronkhorst, Laing’s Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to indicate that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was in those days.  But there is one detail in which the Raid-episode exactly repeats history.  By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole British force disappeared from the theater of war; this was the case with Jameson’s force.

In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with sufficient fidelity.  In the 4 battles named above, the Boer loss, so far as known, was an average of 6 men per battle, to the British average loss of 175.  In Jameson’s battles, as per Boer official report, the Boer loss in killed was 4.  Two of these were killed by the Boers themselves, by accident, the other by Jameson’s army—­one of them intentionally, the other by a pathetic mischance.  “A young Boer named Jacobz was moving forward to give a drink to one of the wounded troopers (Jameson’s) after the first charge, when another wounded man, mistaking his intention; shot him.”  There were three or four wounded Boers in the Krugersdorp hospital, and apparently no others have been reported.  Mr. Garrett, “on a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and thanks Heaven the killed was not larger.”

As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me to be military errors in the conduct of the campaign which we have just been considering.  I have seen active service in the field, and it was in the actualities of war that I acquired my training and my right to speak.  I served two weeks in the beginning of our Civil War, and during all that tune commanded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men.  General Grant knew the history of my campaign, for I told it him.  I also told him the principle