The War in South Africa, Its Cause and Conduct

and Explos

nt several million rounds of expanding bullets to South Africa, and in the North of the Transvaal and at Mafeking for the first three months of the war no other bullets were used.' Mr. Methuen, on the authority of a letter

To test Mr. Stead's assertion about Mafeking, I communicated with General Baden-Powell, the gentleman who is most qualified to speak as to what occurred there, and his answer lies before me: 'We had no expanding bullets in our supply at Mafeking, unless you call the ordinary Martini-Henry an expanding bull

d of them.' A friend of mine who was in Lobatsi during the first week of the war assures me that he never saw anything but the solid bullet. It must be remembered that the state of things was very exceptional with the Rhodesian force. Their communications to the south were cut on the second

ons were of course only binding on those who signed them, and therefore in fighting desperate savages the man-stopping bullet could still have been used. Whatever our motives in taking the view that we did, a swift retribution has come upon us, for it has prevented us from exacting any retribution, or even complain

he right to use this ammunition, every effort has been made to exclude it from the firing line. An unf

not for use in a war with white races all these cartridges were called in as soon as Kruger declared war, and the officers responsible thought they were every one returned. By some blundering in the packing at home, however, some of this Mark IV. must have got mixed up with the ordinary, or Mark II., ammunition, and was found on our men by the Boers on October 30. According

I. is also made at the dum-dum factory, and the Boers, seeing the dum-dum label on boxes con

d, Mr. Langman, who was present, saw the Boers, in some instances, filling their bandoliers from these cases on the plausible excuse that they were only using our own ammunition. Such cartridges should never have been permitted to go up. But in spite of instances of bungling, the evidence shows that every effo

Prisoners o

o attacks, both at home and abroad, which are as unfounded an

after the action, they gave no quarter-'too well substantiated and too familiar,' says one critic of this assertion. I believe, as a matter of fact, that the myth arose from a sensational picture in an illustrated paper. The charge was delivered late in the evening, in uncertain light. Under such circumstances it is always possible, amid so wild and confused a scene, that a man who would have surrendered has been cut down or ridden over. But t

errible fellow to his home-staying friends. Even if isolated instances could be corroborated, it would merely show that men of fiery temperament in the flush of battle are occasionally not to be restrained, either by the power of discipline or by the example

extraordinarily light during two years of warfare. How are these admitted and certain facts compatible with any general refusal of quarter? To anyone who, like myself, has seen the British soldiers j

y a position by assault and then to give quarter to those defenders who only surrender at the last instant. It seems almost too much to ask. The assailants have been terribly punished: they have lost their friends and their officers, in the frenzy of battle they storm the position, and then at the last i

as never been defined by the Conventions of The Hague, and no rules are laid down for his treatment. It is not wonderful if th

em visible at a distance; (3) Carry arms openly. Now it is evident that the Boer sniper who draws his Mauser from its hiding-place in order to have a shot at

ssin. His victims never see him, and in the ordinary course he incurs no personal danger. I believe such cases to have been very rare, but if the soldiers have occa

the Boers, expresses his amazement at the way in which the British troops after their losses

they opened a fruitless magazine fire, and then threw down their rifles and lifted their hands, imploring quarter from those whom they had been

t. Helena, Bermuda, Ceylon, Ahmednager, and all other camps. An outcry was raised when Ahmednager in India was chosen for a prison station, and it was asserted, with that recklessness with which so many other charges have been hurled against the authorities, that it was a hot-bed of disease.

in of. As prisoners of war we could not be better treated, and Major Dickenson' (this the

e condition of the Bermuda Camps, but a newspaper investigatio

s Musson Wainwright, and Mr. O'Rorke describes him 'as one of the influential residents in the island.' He says, 'That the Boers in Bermuda are better off than many residents in New York. They have plenty of beef, plenty of bread, plenty of everything except liberty. There

retoria, the callous neglect of the enteric patients there, and the really barbarous treatment of British Colonial prisone

cut

he shooting of one or two horse-poisoners in Natal, and the shooting of three men after the action of October 27, 1900, near Fredericstad. These men, after throwing down their arms and receiving quarter, picked them up again and fired at the soldiers from behind. No doubt there have been other cases, scattered up and down th

he British Government, recognising that pressure had been put upon them and that their position had been a difficult one, inflicted no penalty upon the rank-and-file beyond depriving them of

ually been occupied by the Boer forces, who were able to exert real pressure upon the inhabitants. In the second the invaders were merely raiding bands who travers

ritish subjects from their allegiance. The attacking of small posts and the derailing of trains, military or civilian, were their chief employment. To cover their tr

territory bands of Austrian subjects who were of German extraction began to tear up the railway lines and harass the communications. That was our situation in South Africa. W

ith fine and imprisonment. The ringleaders, and those who were convicted of capital penal offences, were put to death. I have bee

lace Dat

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1 Boers breaking

rg July 10

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dock

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hardt

a Aug. 22

rg Sept.

lburg O

elburg

g (hange

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shot) " 17 Train-wrecki

g " 29 F

ov. 11 Shoot

ghting, marauding,

rsuading surrendered b

h " 26 Cape P

Dec. 26 Shoo

" 27 Kaff

sive natives, some of them children, calls for stern justice. In this list 4 were train-wreckers (aggravated cases by rebels), 1 was a spy, 4 were murderers of nati

upon Rail

to safeguard their own troops. If all the victims of derailings and railway cuttings were added together it is not an exaggeration to say that it would furnish as many killed and w

e legitimate warfare, with many precedents to support it also. The Germans habitually did it in France, and the result justified them as the result has justified us. From the time (October 1901) that i

n out of many from the diary of the Austrian, Coun

diers. They were fine fellows, without the least sign of brutality-in fact, full of sympathy. They had every right to be angry with us, for we had spoiled their sleep after they had gone throu

the English soldiers have shown in this war that the pro