The Boer War, again, constituted the greatest humiliation which this
country had endured since the American War of Inde- pendence. A. few brave men, such as David Lloyd George, faced the central problem and denounced the war openly as something predatory and "wrong ; they suffered much for their courage. Others endured in silence, gnashing their teeth in rage at ,seeing their country exposed to the obloquy and ridicule of half the world. But the mass of the population sought escape from these glum verities by sliding along two different tangents. The first was jingoism and the second was abuse of the War Office. Our jingoism took two forms, a mass-form and a personal form. The bands played "The Soldiers of the Queen " or " The Absent- minded Beggar " ; the C.I.V. paraded amid much shouting through the streets of London ; we were deeply moved by the skill with which the naval guns were adapted for land warfare ; we lay awake thinking of the heroic garrison at Ladysmith ; and When Mafeking was relieved a wave of shameful hysteria swept • the country. Apart from this mass-emotion there was a form of personal identification which was not repeated in later wars. I was at my private school at the time, and we each of us, from the first day of the war, identified ourselves with a personal hero. Mine was Sir Redvers Buller. I adopted this particular hem, since my cousin had once known his niece. I bore his portrait proudly .in a small glazed button attached to the lapel of my coat. And when he lost his guns at Colenso I retired to the lavatory and shed hot tears of shame. I must even then have had a passion for lost causes, since I wore my Buller button defiantly even after Colenso, even after that unfortunate general had returned home upon indefinite leave. Yet in my heart I envied my more prescient school-fellows whose button-holes were graced by the more triumphant images of Baden-Powell, Methuen or Sir George White. And by the end of term the glaze upon my Buller button became chipped in the defence of my hero and a large section of-the general's face showed brown cardboard underneath.
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