It was Sunday noon when Lieut.-Commander Winfield S. Schley ordered the charge upon the enemy's works.

Across the ravine, at the top of the slope was the position of the enemy, swarming with troops, apparently eager for the coming attack, while overhead floated their yellow banners, seeming to bid defiance to the sturdy Americans below. But nothing daunted by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy the battalion dashed boldly to the attack, and unchecked by the storm of missiles from the enemy above, the Americans, gallantly led by Schley and Casey, dashed on toward the parapet; while the open order of the attack rendered the fire of the enemy very ineffective.

Nothing could resist the onward sweep of that advance, and when the Americans gained the crest and poured over the parapet to assault the enemy it was Winfield Scott Schley who still led the charge. But now the fight became terrific. The enemy's first line was composed of several tiers of spearmen, behind and above which stood the infantry; but when the Americans charged bayonet and immediately after poured in a terrible volley from the breech-loading rifles, the enemy began to waver; and as they were assailed from all sides, the contest was not long, until they broke and fled for shelter. Some sought refuge in the quarters, but they soon caught fire and the refugees. were many of them burned to death; some found safety in the side of the cliff; others sprang into the river some hundred feet below; while the main body sought to escape by the road leading up the river; but Casey's artillery and infantry opened upon them with such terrible effect that they were mowed down in terrible slaughter. Seeing their retreat thus cut off and only surrender or annihilation staring them in the face, most of them took refuge in the river and many were drowned in the water while trying to escape.

It is a remarkable fact that notwithstanding every effort of the Americans to induce them to surrender, they preferred death to the uncertainties of capture by an enemy entirely unknown to them. The rout was complete. The smoke soon after lifting disclosed dead and wounded everywhere. In the citadel alone 243 were found dead, while in front of Wheeler's and Casey's positions the dead were in heaps. Our own loss was trifling, being three dead, three wounded. dangerously and seven slightly.

The citadel taken, our forces were concentrated there and preparation made to pass the night there. Kimberley soon had all necessary dispositions for safety, and the army rested in peace after its hard. day's work. No attempt at assault, no noise of tom-toms, disturbed the peaceful quiet of that night; and on the following morning the

little army embarked with the wounded and prisoners, and returned to the fleet at the mouth of the Salee River.

Thus ended one of the most brilliant campaigns in the history of modern warfare. While we must give due credit to the Koreans for their unusual bravery; and while with better arms they might have shown greater power of resistance, the steadiness and determined valor of our own forces were almost irresistible, and led on by the bravest of leaders they won triumphantly. It was a new chapter in the history of our naval prowess; it was another illustration of American daring and American success.

R. M. G. BROWN,

Lieutenant-Commander, U.S.N. (Retired).

MILITARY CRIME AND ITS TREATMENT.

From London Fortnightly Review.

AMONG the many grave military questions that must come up for discussion at the end of the war, a prominent place must be given to the methods by which discipline is to be maintained, especially in the field. It is a subject on which scant information is at present forthcoming, for no very definite or specific facts have been made public as to the conduct and demeanor of our troops in South Africa, nor do we know very accurately what amount of coercion has been applied whether to punish or deter. A general impression prevails that there was very little crime of a serious kind; that offenses were for the most part against the military code, and although lapses and derelictions of duty cannot be overlooked if an army is not to degenerate into a rabble, the word "crime" must be taken in a particular, not a general, sense. It is pretty certain that there was little or no civil crime; despite the allegations of the malevolent who have sought to put the blackest interpretation upon necessary acts, nothing serious has been proved against our troops, who have invariably shown commendable self-restraint. That outrages and atrocities were freely committed may be unhesitatingly denied; rapine and marauding were unknown, the debauchery and disgraceful excesses that have stained our military achievements in the past were altogether absent. On this point we have the unimpeachable testimony of Lord Roberts and other commanders entitled to implicit credence. At the same time it is not to be supposed that in a vast force numbering 250,000, mostly young men, there would be no misconduct. The circumstances of the warfare in progress were often of the most irksome and trying kind. Hardship and privations do not improve the temper, and insubordination easly supervenes, while the temptation of drink, if it is to be had, is too often irresistible to weak but wellmeaning men long deprived of such dissipation. Another fruitful source of transgression which, if we are to trust vague reports, became at times epidemic, was the almost natural surrender to physical exhaustion. To sleep on sentry is one of the most serious of military

crimes; it is inexcusable from the military point of view, for the safety of thousands may hang upon the vigilance of one man, yet the strain of some wearisome, long-protracted march or fatiguing operations will sometimes explain what cannot be defended. Nor can we shut our eyes to possible guilt of a more contemptible, if not more flagrant, kind. Misbehavior before the enemy, cowardice, in plain English, is not absolutely unknown in our or any other army; it is wiser, perhaps, to draw a veil over its exhibition and the punishment that must follow, yet we cannot shut our eyes to the certainty of its occasional occurrence.

In all these delinquencies the South African army has had its share; whether large or small as compared with other campaigns, it is impossible at present to say. This much we know: that crime was most prevalent in the earlier phases of the war, and presumably in consequence of the leniency with which it was treated. Offenders who were tried by court-martial and sentenced to terms of penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labor escaped the penalty which was, as a general rule, commuted to "field imprisonment," a curious and most ineffective penal process especially devised for campaigning. There was no doubt good reason for the commutation of a sentence that meant removal from the seat of war and the loss of an ablebodied man's services. It was not inconceivable, moreover, that the ill-disposed, the poltroon of weak moral fibre would be capable of committing himself on purpose to escape the vicissitudes and perils of his situation in presence of the enemy. But field imprisonment, as we may infer from the vague accounts given of it, was little better than a farce so far as the culprit was concerned, and a positive. injustice to his comrades who had done no wrong. The prisoner was practically at large, yet he was spared the more irksome obligations and duties, such as guards and outposts, which fell with increased frequency upon the well-conducted soldier. After a time the alternative has been faced, and military offenders have been transferred from South Africa to convict and other prisons at home. The practice is clearly paradoxical, and in many ways to be deprecated. A punishment inflicted at a great distance must lose much of its effect as a deterrent, and to deter is rather the aim of all authority, military as well as civil, than to retaliate, while the actual removal might easily be appreciated as a boon by men lost to honorable feeling and sick to death of soldiering under distasteful conditions.

We have, in fact, reached a point at which the whole subject must be attentively reconsidered and something evolved that will replace the admittedly imperfect and illogical processes that obtain. The day may yet arise when moral suasion may suffice to keep soldiers

straight, when the reprobation attending immediate dismissal will be the only safeguard required against misconduct. It is too remote, however, and until it dawns, discipline must be backed by the strong arm. Praise, the hope of prospective reward, may go far towards encouraging men to do well, but, for the present, there must be always a leaven of evil in any large body of people gathered together as in an army, and this must be kept in check even if it cannot be entirely extirpated by the fear of reprisals. Pains and penalties must be decreed both as the justifiable retribution for the flagrant violation of essential regulations and as salutary warning to possible offenders. It is with the nature of these punishments, their feasibility and their adequacy to deter, that we have now to do. They are narrowed down practically to one, imprisonment, the universal panacea for crime, and this it is difficult to impose in a mobile army. The paraphernalia of bolts and bars and boundary walls, cannot be improvised or carried to and fro, while the modifications of it, and the bastard imitations of it as put in force, cannot but be generally inefficacious.

We have to thank the growth of humane ideas that the old practices so bloodthirsty and cruel have, for the most part, disappeared. The qualifications necessary for these are some indications of a revival of the lesser kinds of secondary punishment. We have heard of unauthorized methods tried and practiced, nevertheless, which are rather retrograde in their character. There is, for instance, the "spread-eagle," by which men are "picketed out," fastened down to the ground and kept there, with limbs extended at full length for hours until the agony becomes excruciating; the "log," the old custom of attaching a heavy weight to the offender's leg, which becomes his unfailing companion on all occasions, is not unknown; nor the use of irons, hand-cuffs before or behind the back, shackles, body-belts and leg chains. It has been a frequent practice to tie a culprit to the tail of a baggage wagon or gunlimber, and so force him to keep pace with comrades on the line of march. Expedients, these, depending one and all upon the infliction of physical suffering, clumsy makeshifts at best, adopted for want of anything better at hand, and showing a poverty of invention inseparable, perhaps, from the situation. In the matter of capital punishment-the extreme penalty of the law, that is to say-there has been a not unnatural reluctance to have recourse to it. There were not wanting officers, however, of high rank and experience in South Africa, who would have willingly accepted the imposition of the death sentences in aggravated cases of military misconduct and strongly urged this view upon the authorities. It was their opinion