150 SOUTH AFRICA. 



within the limits of speech, or at the utmost of 

 negligible action. As a mere matter of fact, the 

 passive weight of the British Colonial population 

 was more than sufficient to neutralise any of the 

 possible antagonistic dangers arising from the 

 causes named, and every man of British origin or 

 relationship in South Africa would have risen in 

 support of just and patriotic action on the part of 

 the Imperial Government. But peace at any 

 price was the order of the day. 



The Transvaal war was a warning as exemplify- 

 ing the utter absurdity of the laborious and 

 disheartening system of the prescriptive military 

 training we so servilely copy from foreigners. 

 Our regiments or at least those I then saw were 

 composed of good-looking, serviceable young men, 

 faultless in "get-up," "military bearing," and so 

 forth; good marchers, too, but, as it turned out, 

 utterly ignorant of the art of rifle-shooting, although 

 adepts at the "manual exercise." Both men and 

 officers were brave to an excess which astonished 

 the Boers, less in the way of admiration than as 

 indicative of a deficiency in common-sense. 

 Indeed, in every combat they stood their ground 

 till absolute slaughter, amounting once or twice 



