The Morning Post of Wednesday contained a characteristic telegram from
their correspondent, Mr. Winston Churchill, describing his escape from Pretoria. Mr. Churchill, who had been taken prisoner after showing great gallantry in the armoured train action near Chieveley on November 15th, was confined at Pretoria, and despairing of his applica- tion for release—on the disputable ground of his having been a non-combatant—being granted, he scaled the wall of the State Schools Prison on the night of the 12th, made his way through the pickets of the Town Guard, and managed to board a goods train outside the first station on the Delagoa Bay Railway, hiding himself under some coal sacks in a truck. Jumping from the train before dawn, he spent the day in a small wood "in company with a huge vulture, who displayed a lively interest in me," resuming his walk along the railway at dusk. This mode of progress he maintained for five days, making wide detours to avoid all stations, bridges, and huts, subsisting mainly on chocolate, and on the sixth day contrived to board a train beyond Middleburg, whence there was direct communication with Delagoa Bay. There he arrived after "sixty hours of misery," "very weak, but free," and declares that he will avail himself of every opportunity from this moment "to urge with earnestness an unflinching and uncompromising prosecution of the war." We congratulate Mr. Churchill on his courage and perseverance as well as his good fortune.
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