A striking account of the new defences of Pretoria appears
in Monday's Times. The much-talked-of fortifications erected by the Boers resolved themselves, on close inspection ten months ago, into four "toy forts," which could have offered no effective resistance to the heavy siege artillery brought up with great labour by Lord Roberts's troops. tinder the British occupation, however, all this has been changed. "Heavily armed blockhouses have been erected on an inner circle and in such positions that every inch of spare ground between the forts and redoubts can be swept by gun and rifle fire. All except the four main roads leading to the town are closed and commanded by the defence, and each line of forti- fication is guarded by an encircling labyrinth of barbed wire." The wire entanglements are further charged with electricity, so that a stray goat cannot blunder against them without set- ting a bell ringing in the fortification itself, when an indicator at once points out the precise spot whence the alarm has come. Furthermore, most of the detachments actually sleep in the gun emplacements fully dressed and with their small-arms at band. The Times correspondent sums up by saying that Pretoria is absolutely safe, but he adds that the confidence induced by the knowledge of this fact is not of the kind likely to beget carelessness on the part of those responsible for the defence of the capital. It has never been Lord Kitchener's way to trust to improvisation in emergencies.
