The account of Mr. Winston Churehill's escape from Pretoria would form a splendid episode in a boy's book of adventure. Asa matter of fact (according to M. A. P.) the gentleman himself a very similar experience during his Harrow days, as we read that when for some delinguency he was confined in his room under lock and key he, in the dusk of the evening, made his way into the town by means of the window, and after enjoying what the Yankees call ta good time," returned to durance vile in the same manner. On the present occasion he seems to have climbed the walls of the States School Prison whilst the sentries' backs we returned and walked undisguised through the streets and past the pickets of the town guard, until he found himself at the Delagoa Bay railroad. He hid until a goods train came by; with great difficulty he managed to board it and hide himself under some coal sacks. This was in the night; at dawn he had to leave and spent a day in a small wood in company with a vulture "who displayed a lively interest in me." By night he walked along the line and through the day he hid, as he heard he had been missed and was being searched for in all directions. This went on for four or five days, during which time his only food was chocolate, of which he seems to have but a poor opinion food for a hungry man. On the sixth day he managed to board a train at Middle-bury, and although the Boers searched it they did not find him—not looking *'deop enough" as he lay under a heap of sacks. Eventually ho arrived at Delagoa Bay, "very weak, but free."
The message which he has since sent to the Morning Post should, I think, prove of great use to the Government if they will only act upon it. He says it is foolish not to recognise that we are fighting a formidable and terrible adversary. The high qualities of the burghers increase efficiency. The Government, though vilely corrupt, devotes its whole energy to military operations. The individual Boer mounted, in suitable country, is worth from three to five regular soldiers. The only way of treating them is either to get men equal in character and intelligence as riflemen or, failing the individual, huge masses of troops.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.