In the Proclamations of the wise and great Field-Marshal, and the Notices, Ordinances, and Camp Orders of his Lieutenants set to rule Bloemfontein after its capture by us, are to be found an account of the Methods by which a Triumphant Army establishes its own new rule in a Conquered City and Territory. This peculiar and most interesting history runs, like a steel thread, through the book from beginning to end. I do not know where else it is told, or even hinted at, in what has thus far been written of the War.

It was because each of the chief elements that make up this book of The Friend is equally fresh and impossible to obtain elsewhere, that I undertook the labour of compiling this work.

It was my first intention to reproduce all the Reading Matter which appeared in The Friend during the period in which we managed it (March 16th to April 16, 1900) but this would have formed a ponderous book of 270,000 words—without including the Military Proclamations. Such a work could not be produced for a price at the command of the general reader, and, furthermore, the general reader would have found it too tiresome to work his way through the many Technical Articles and others which time has rendered stale or of little interest. Therefore, not without regret, I felt obliged to select, as my best judgment prompted, the matter of the Most Peculiar character, or of Widest Interest for reproduction here.

As the former Editors of The Friend have now formed themselves into an Order to which none is eligible except he or she who tells the truth without fear of consequences, the reader may as well prepare himself to meet with that rare quality in some of the pages that follow.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS