In short, I
have invariably found soldiers more generous and fair towards the enemy,
and less disposed to blackguard them recklessly and unjustly, than
newspaper writers and readers. Men who have faced the Boers have learnt
to respect their courage and devotion, and I feel sure that British
officers and soldiers deprecate much of the atrocity talk anent foemen
so worthy of their steel, and however little they may sympathise with
some portions of Dean Kitchin's sermon, they would at any rate desire to
support his wish that the "quarrel should be raised to the level of a
gentlemen's quarrel".[B] Quite recently Lord Methuen spoke like an
honourable and chivalrous British soldier when he declared that he
"never wished to meet a braver general than Cronje and had never served
in a war where less vindictive feelings existed between the two opposing
armies than in this."
One more word on a kindred topic and we will leave criticism alone! The
tone adopted by some sections of the Colonial and even British Press
with respect to the religious feeling of the Boers is very painful. Some
correspondents have described with evident glee how Boer prayer-meetings
have been broken up by Lyddite shells. I feel sure that no British
General would think for a moment of deliberately shelling any body of
the enemy assembled for prayer, and the vulgarity and wickedness of such
paragraphs would certainly not commend itself to the best sentiment of
the British army.
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