And, perhaps, the best news of all comes from Arundel, near Colesberg, where Generals French and Brabazon with the cavalry column—­for it is nearly all mounted—­are gradually sidling and coaxing the Boers back out of the Colony.  They are a powerful combination:  French’s distinguished military talents, and Brabazon’s long and deep experience of war.  So, with this column there are no frontal attacks—­perhaps they are luckier than we in respect of ground—­no glorious victories (which the enemy call victories, too); very few people hurt and a steady advance, as we hear on the first day of the year, right up to Colesberg.

Perhaps the tide of war has really begun to turn.  Perhaps 1900 is to mark the beginning of a century of good luck and good sense in British policy in Africa.  When I was a prisoner at Pretoria the Boers showed me a large green pamphlet Mr. Reitz had written.  It was intended to be an account of the Dutch grounds of quarrel with the English, and was called ‘A Century of Wrong.’  Much was distortion and exaggeration, but a considerable part dealt with acknowledged facts.  Wrong in plenty there has been on both sides, but latterly more on theirs than on ours; and the result is war—­bitter, bloody war tearing the land in twain; dividing brother from brother, friend from friend, and opening a terrible chasm between the two white races who must live side by side as long as South Africa stands above the ocean, and by whose friendly co-operation alone it can enjoy the fullest measure of prosperity.  ’A century of wrong!’ British ignorance of South Africa, Boer ignorance of civilisation, British intolerance, Boer brutality, British interference, Boer independence, clash, clash, clash, all along the line! and then fanatical, truth-scorning missionaries, experimental philanthropists, high-handed jingo administrators, colonial ministers who disliked all colonies on the glorious principles of theoretic liberalism, bad generals thinking of their own reputations, not of their country’s success, and a series of miserable events recalled sufficiently well by their names—­Slagter’s Nek, Kimberley, Moshesh, Majuba, Jameson, all these arousing first resentment, then loathing, then contempt, and, finally, a Great Desire, crystallising into a Great Conspiracy for a United Dutch South Africa, free from the flag that has elsewhere been regarded as the flag of freedom.  And so inevitably to war—­war with peculiar sadness and horror, in which the line of cleavage springs between all sorts of well-meaning people that used to know one another in friendship; but war which, whatever its fortunes, certainly sweeps the past into obscurity.  We have done with ‘a century of wrong.’  God send us now ‘a century of right.’

CHAPTER XIV

A MILITARY DEMONSTRATION AND SOME GOOD NEWS

Chieveley:  January 8, 1900.

BOOM.  Thud, thud.  Boom.  Boom.  Thud—­thud thud—­thud thud thud thud—­boom.  A long succession of queer moaning vibrations broke the stillness of the sleeping camp.  I became suddenly awake.  It was two o’clock on the morning of January 6.  The full significance of the sounds came with consciousness.  We had all heard them before—­heavy cannonading at Ladysmith.  They were at it again.  How much longer would the heroic garrison be persecuted?