a Progressive, also received the support of the Conservatives, so that two years later he might not be a candidate for the Presidency against Paul Kruger.  In the same manner the commandants of the districts and the field-cornets of the wards were chosen, and in the majority of the cases no thought was taken of their military ability at the time of the election.  The voters of a ward, the lowest political division in the country, elected their field-cornet more with a view of having him administer the laws in times of peace than with the idea of having him lead them into a battle, and in like manner the election of a commandant for a district, which generally consisted of five wards, was more of a victory for his popularity in peace than for his presumed bravery in war.  The Boer system of electing military leaders by vote of the people may have had certain advantages, but it had the negative advantage of effacing all traces of authority between officers and men.  The burgher who had assisted in electing his field-cornet felt that that official owed him a certain amount of gratitude for having voted for him, and obeyed his orders or disobeyed them whenever he chose to do so.  The field-cornet represented authority over his men, but of real authority there was none.  The commandants were presumed to have authority over the field-cornets and the generals over the commandants, but whether the authority was of any value could not be ascertained until after the will of those in lower rank was discovered.  By this extraordinary process it happened that every burgher was a general and that no general was greater than a burgher.

[Illustration:  ELECTING A FIELD-CORNET]

The military officers of the Boers, with the exception of the Commandant-General, were the same men who ruled the country in times of peace.  War suddenly transformed pruning-hooks into swords, and conservators of peace into leaders of armies.  The head of the army was the Commandant-General, who was invested with full power to direct operations and lead men.

Directly under his authority were the Assistant Commandant-Generals, five of whom were appointed by the Volksraad a short time before the beginning of hostilities.  Then in rank were those who were called Vecht-Generals, or fighting generals, in order to distinguish them from the Assistant-Generals.  Then followed the Commandants, the leaders of the field-cornets of one district, whose rank was about that of colonels.  The field-cornets, who were in command of the men of a ward, were under the authority of a commandant, and ranked on a par with majors.  The burghers of every ward were subdivided into squads of about twenty-five men under the authority of a corporal, whose rank was equal to that of a lieutenant.  There were no corps, brigades, regiments, and companies to call for hundreds of officers; it was merely a commando, whether it had ten men or ten thousand, and neither the subdivision nor the augmentation of a force affected the list of officers in any way.  Nor would such a multiplication of officers weaken the fighting strength of a force, for every officer, from Commandant-General to corporal, carried and used a rifle in every battle.