Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1900 — Side Lights on. the Boer War. [ARTICLE]

Side Lights on. the Boer War.

Mrs. Joubert, the widow of the late Boer general, has from the days of her earliest childhood been need to war's alarms. She can load and fire off a gun, and on many occasions has shown the greatest courage. She has an extensive knowledge of Kaffir warfare and her advice has often been acted upon by her husband, plans of campaign being freely ;discusaed over her dinner table. During jthe Magatoland campaign she, notwithstanding the heat—over 100 degrees in the shade —and the fever, joined the general a week or two after his arrival, accompanied by only two or three little Kaffir maids. Finding Qen. Joubert in anything but a comfortable tens, she routed him out, erected a tent of her own and Installed him amid all the comforts of home. What was more, she reconstructed the general’s mess arrangements snd cooked his meals with her own hands. If the printed pictures of British officers in South Africa are true to life they reveal the secret of the great mortality among them. The large per cent of killed and wounded officers has been attributed -generally to the superior marksmanship of the Boers. The latter undoubtedly shoot well, but it does not require a high order of marksmanship to top over men clad in knickers with bosoms built on the balloon order. The central feature of the uniforms look as though the “bishop sleeves’* worn oy women a few years ago had been converted into abbreviated trousers for the warriors at the front, and the underpinning is so long drawn out as to present the appearance of golf sticks in boots. The veriest amateur could scarcely miss such irresistible targets. They would provoke an unloaded gun to action. Gen. Lord Kitchener’s reputation has been seriously compromised not only by his strategic blunder at Taardeburg, which coat 1,500 men In a single day's fighting, but also by the complete failure of Lord Roberts’ transport service, which Gen. Kitchener organised. Kitchener's expedition through northern Cape Colony to quell the rebellion also proved an utter fiasco, and his officers, among whom his stern, overbearing methods make him highly unpopular, write most disparagingly concerning him. . —:• Gen. Gatacre's return to England is accepted as being in the nature of a recall, though no reason is given for it, and it will be associated In the public mind with his lack of success. Lord Roberts criticised his management of the. Stormberg attack, and possibly Gatacre's having arrived an hour hud a half too lste to rescue the Redersbnrg force may hare decided his return. National offices of the W. O. T. U. have been moved from Ch'cago to Evanston, hl