76 A GARDEN DIARY 



JANUARY 6, 1900 



" TDULLETS The air was a sieve of them. 



-*~^ They beat upon the boulders like a 

 million hammers. They tore the turf like a 

 harrow ! " 



These three lines came out of a recent number 

 of the Daily Mail, and they describe Elands- 

 laagte. Is it, I wonder, because Literature is 

 so much more familiar to me than War that 

 I seem to require the aid of the one in order 

 to bring home to me the reality of the other ? 

 These three lines are certainly literature, litera- 

 ture of the impressionist kind, which, if not the 

 best in the abstract, is at any rate the best for 

 such a purpose. Trying to put oneself into the 

 position of such a bystander as the writer of 

 them, I am able to fancy that if the bullets came 

 thick enough they really might seem to tear the 

 turf like a harrow. In what way exactly the air 

 could be said to be a sieve of them, I am not 

 clear, yet the phrase seems to live, and therefore 



