Of the war news from South Africa the most that
can be said is that the process of attrition goes steadily on. On Monday Lord Kitchener telegraphed that General French, whose column has been sweeping the country to the east of Vryheid, had captured a 15-pounder and two pom-poms on the Lower Pongola. Boer laagers have been surprised at Sand Drift, where three hundred horses were captured; and at Boschberg, where Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry cap- tured sixty prisoners in a night attack. On the other hand, the train-wreckers have been busy on the Delagoa line near
Belfast—their object being to obtain supplies—and in Cape Colony in the neighbourhood of Naanwpoort, where the night. service has been suspended. The main body of the roving com- mandos still in the Colony has its headquarters in the fast. nesses of the Zuurberg, but the Republicans are moving north in small bodies, while in the Transvaal there are signs of a general northward movement into the bush-veldt as winter draws on. From Johannesburg the Times correspondent announces con- tinual reports of the maltreatment and shooting of black women and children by the Boers, and the Bloemfontein Post contains a letter from Mr. de Kock, of Jagersfonteiu, stating that his brother, Meyer de Kock, a member of the Burgher Peace Commission, had been tried for high treason,. and shot on February 12th. The best piece of news of the week is the statement attributed to General Baden-Powell that no fewer than a thousand Free State Boers had enlisted in his Constabulary.
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