THE TRANSVAAL

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1 May 1900, Page 644

THE TRANSVAAL

The past month has not been pregnant with war news. As far as we can judge from the limited cable news at our command, it has been spent principally in making deliberate and careful preparations for more decisive and effectual action in the near future, and in censuring those commanders whose illjudged actions have led to the most serious reverses in the past. Mafeking still remains unrelieved. They have apparently to rely upon an Australian and New Zealand column for their relief, and we can only trust that it will be a speedy one. Lord Roberts will doubtless render a good account of himself and the 70,000 men he has with him as soon as his preparations are in a sufficiently advanced state to allow of his making his contemplated move. He has, if possible, raised himself in the estimation of the public by distributing censure with no sparing hand wherever he thought it was deserved. No man-could possibly have acted with more unsparing impartiality. President Steyn is keeping up the pugnacious spirits of his men by every device in his power. His ability in this respect lies not only in his versatile imagination, which would make the fortune of a writer of historical fiction, but a marvellous faculty of so colouring his fiction that his followers take it unhesitatingly for fact. Foreign intervention and the invasion of India by the vast armies of Russia, dressed up in different ways, form admirable plots for his purpose, and can be used again and again with fnjqiu-iicy and facility.