A GENEROUS FOE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4598, 1 May 1886, Page 6 (Supplement)

A GENEROUS FOE.

More than one family claymore that had served generations of Highland families was lost at the ' dishonest victory' of Majuba, South Africa. Some wcro taken from wounded officers of the Ninety-second. Sir Herbert Stewart probably lost his own in his singular retreat through tho enemy's lines to camp. That sword M. Joubert, the Commandant General of the South African Republic, has now returned, with a letter written in the best taste. M. Joubert himself bound up the wound of another officer who was taken on that field, and sent him back into our camp. Sir Herbert Stewart's claymore was given toM. Joubert as a trophy, but now he returns it in token of his esteem for the gallant officer whose wound by a chance bullet during the halt before the fight for the Nile probably lost us Gordon and Khartoum. Sir Herbert Stewart was daring, even, perhaps, to rashness, and if he had survived it is possible Gordon might have been rescued. His letter to Lord Wolseley, after his last fight, was * an apology for having got wounded.' He died, as all remember, during that terrible retreat from Gubat, which filled England with such anxiety a year ago. The old claymore, which went through the Peninsular war, has now, thanks to M. Joubert's courtesy, been returned to Lady Stewart. Perhaps it may see the face of war ag&in—never, let us hope, in such a forlorn aud shameful field as that of Majuba. Mr W. H. Smith has appropriately acknowledged a gift made in a spirit so generous and so becoming in a worthy "and gallant enemy.—Daily New,". j