A GARDEN DIARY 143 
there one or two such may be discerned, but the 
bulk are purely and avowedly civilian. They 
have walked out of their shops, their farms, their 
offices, their counting-houses, their clubs, or 
wherever else they come from, precisely as we 
see them. They can shoot, or they think so; they 
can ride—more or less—but in spite of these 
accomplishments they are no more soldiers than 
is the diarist who dips this eminently civilian pen 
into this utterly unmilitary inkpot. If the German 
commanders of 1870 refused to see in the francs 
tereurs anything but unrecognisable freebooters ; 
if Napoleon declined to accord the Tyrolese 
marksmen and their heroic leader decent treat- 
ment, mainly on the grounds that the latter was 
an innkeeper, what would either of them have 
said to the bulk of those fighting upon both sides 
to-day in South Africa ? 
All this, however, is merely preliminary. Our 
invasion is no problematic peril this time, but a 
peril that has actually arrived. They have come, 
the aggressors! they are already standing upon 
our sacred shore! the question now is what 
are we to do with them? Can there be any 
doubt upon that subject? Up, arm yourselves, 
and away! high and low, young and old, brave 
and the reverse—women first, as befits their 
daring! Up, and at the villains! Let them not 
carry their purpose an inch further. Let not one 
of them return to boast of where he has been! 
