As to looting, we must not forget that all commandeering of goods on the part of the enemy has been so described.  But, of course, it is perfectly legitimate according to the usage of modern warfare to seize any property necessary for an army provided receipts are duly handed over to the persons from whom the goods are obtained.  The Germans invariably acted in this way during the Franco-Prussian war, and no historian has ever described them as “savages” for this reason.  Of course the wanton destruction of property which appears to have been perpetrated by the Boers in Natal is absolutely indefensible.

If any one on reading the above thinks the writer “unpatriotic” he can only say that many British soldiers serving their Queen and country are “unpatriotic” in the same way.  I hold no brief for the Boers, and I feel sure that here and there one may find an unmitigated scoundrel in their ranks who would fire on white flags, loot houses and use explosive bullets.  On the other hand wounded and captured soldiers have repeatedly testified to the great kindness shown them by the enemy.  In short, I have invariably found soldiers more generous and fair towards the enemy, and less disposed to blackguard them recklessly and unjustly, than newspaper writers and readers.  Men who have faced the Boers have learnt to respect their courage and devotion, and I feel sure that British officers and soldiers deprecate much of the atrocity talk anent foemen so worthy of their steel, and however little they may sympathise with some portions of Dean Kitchin’s sermon, they would at any rate desire to support his wish that the “quarrel should be raised to the level of a gentlemen’s quarrel".[B] Quite recently Lord Methuen spoke like an honourable and chivalrous British soldier when he declared that he “never wished to meet a braver general than Cronje and had never served in a war where less vindictive feelings existed between the two opposing armies than in this.”

One more word on a kindred topic and we will leave criticism alone!  The tone adopted by some sections of the Colonial and even British Press with respect to the religious feeling of the Boers is very painful.  Some correspondents have described with evident glee how Boer prayer-meetings have been broken up by Lyddite shells.  I feel sure that no British General would think for a moment of deliberately shelling any body of the enemy assembled for prayer, and the vulgarity and wickedness of such paragraphs would certainly not commend itself to the best sentiment of the British army.  Again and again the Boers are described in the Press as “canting hypocrites” or their thanksgivings to God as “sanctimonious”.  What right have we as Christians to bring such wholesale charges against our Christian enemies?  Several thousand burghers advanced from Jacobsdal to reinforce Cronje, and as it marched the entire force sang the Old Hundredth in unison.  There is something splendid and majestic in such a spectacle as this.  Let us as Englishmen fight our best against these men and defeat them thoroughly, but do not let us sneer at their religious enthusiasm!