Since then six months had
passed, during which time the same thirty thousand men who had been
fighting then were fighting still, while the enemy was always new,
with fresh recruits and re-enforcements arriving daily.
As the English officers at Durban, who had so lately arrived from
home that they wore swords, used to say with the proud consciousness
of two hundred thousand men back of them: "It won't last much longer
now. The Boers have had their belly full of fighting. They're fed
up on it; that's what it is; they're fed up."
They forgot that the Boers, who for three months had held Buller back
at the Tugela, were the same Boers who were rushed across the Free
State to rescue Cronje from Roberts, and who were then sent to meet
the relief column at Fourteen Streams, and were then ordered back
again to harass Roberts at Sannahspost, and who, at last, worn out,
stale, heartsick, and hopeless at the unequal odds and endless
fighting, fell back at Sand River.
For three months thirty thousand men had been attempting the
impossible task of endeavoring to meet an equal number of the enemy
in three different places at the same time.
I have seen a retreat in Greece when the men, before they left the
trenches, stood up in them and raged and cursed at the advancing
Turk, cursed at their government, at their king, at each other, and
retreated with shame in their faces because they did so.
