Mr. Garrett—­not very carefully concealing a smile—­excuses the presence of the Maxims by saying that they were of very substantial use because their sputtering disordered the aim of the Boers, and in that way saved lives.

Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result which emphasized a fact which had already been established—­that the British system of standing out in the open to fight Boers who are behind rocks is not wise, not excusable, and ought to be abandoned for something more efficacious.  For the purpose of war is to kill, not merely to waste ammunition.

If I could get the management of one of those campaigns, I would know what to do, for I have studied the Boer.  He values the Bible above every other thing.  The most delicious edible in South Africa is “biltong.”  You will have seen it mentioned in Olive Schreiner’s books.  It is what our plainsmen call “jerked beef.”  It is the Boer’s main standby.  He has a passion for it, and he is right.

If I had the command of the campaign I would go with rifles only, no cumbersome Maxims and cannon to spoil good rocks with.  I would move surreptitiously by night to a point about a quarter of a mile from the Boer camp, and there I would build up a pyramid of biltong and Bibles fifty feet high, and then conceal my men all about.  In the morning the Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with a rush.  I would surround them, and they would have to fight my men on equal terms, in the open.  There wouldn’t be any Amajuba results.

—­[Just as I am finishing this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up between Dr. Jameson and his officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes on the other, concerning the wording of a note which Colonel Rhodes sent from Johannesburg by a cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began on the memorable New Year’s Day.  Some of the fragments of this note were found on the battlefield after the fight, and these have been pieced together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking fragments contained.  Jameson says the note promised him a reinforcement of 300 men from Johannesburg.  Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he merely promised to send out “some” men “to meet you.”]

[It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a thing.  If the 300 had been sent, what good would it have done?  In 21 hours of industrious fighting, Jameson’s 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3 cannon, and 145,000 rounds of ammunition, killed an aggregate of 1.  Boer.  These statistics show that a reinforcement of 300 Johannesburgers, armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside, only a little over a half of another Boer.  This would not have saved the day.  It would not even have seriously affected the general result.  The figures show clearly, and with mathematical violence, that the only way to save Jameson, or even give him a fair and equal chance with the enemy, was for Johannesburg to send him 240 Maxims, 90 cannon, 600 carloads of ammunition, and 240,000 men.  Johannesburg was not in a position to do this.  Johannesburg has been called very hard names for not reinforcing Jameson.  But in every instance this has been done by two classes of persons—­people who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do not understand what it means, after they have read it.]