There was therefore nothing for us but to rest. Yet how heroically we had worked to make rest necessary! How well we had earned the right to enjoy rest if we had been of the temper to desire it! In one month under the great Field Marshal we had gone further and accomplished more than all the other British armies had done in nearly six months. We had won over the eagles of victory to perch upon our standards. We had freed Ladysmith and Kimberley, drawn the Boers away from the Cape Colony border, captured the best army and leading general of our foes, and were encamped around Bloemfontein with President Steyn's Residency in use as our headquarters.
The manner in which four of the war correspondents first learned that we were not to push on to the northward in an effort to seize the Transvaal capital, but were to halt at Bloemfontein, was most peculiar. It was so peculiar as to have led to the establishment of the first newspaper ever conducted by an army for an army on the field of battle. It was so unique an episode that this volume is published to commemorate and explain it; and I trust that no one who reads this will decide that it was not an episode worthy of an even more marked, substantial, and valuable memorial than I possess the talent to construct.
We entered Bloemfontein on March 13th. Two days later I was asked by Mr. F. W. Buxton, of the _Johannesburg Star_, to attend a meeting of some other correspondents and Lord Stanley in Lord Stanley's office on that day. I had caught up with the army by a dangerous journey with only two companions across the veldt from Kimberley, where an injury to my leg had laid me up. I had reported myself to Lord Stanley, the censor. I had previously carried on some correspondence with him, but our personal acquaintance had not been of more than five minutes' duration. I could not, therefore, know at that time that he was to prove himself the most competent of all the censors appointed to supervise the work of us correspondents. In saying that he was the "most competent" I mean that he ranked above all the others in every quality which goes to make up fitness for this unceasing and exacting work. He had quick intelligence, great breadth of judgment, unfailing courtesy, unbroken patience, and all the modesty of a truly able man.