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3IO A British Officer Headquarters Staff. The general public at home was, moreover, by this time becoming bored with the war and indifferent to the extraordinary difficulties of devising means for overcoming guerrilla tactics and capturing the guerrilla bands which were scattered throughout an area stretching from the Limpopo to the Cape Peninsula and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. Fortunately in official documents may be found more complete and reliable records of both the earlier and jthe later phases of the war. These records, so far as yet published, consist of telegrams and despatches, the evidence given before the royal commission assembled to inquire into the South African War, and regimental histories. Official telegrams vary greatly in value. Some have been written for public consumption at times when it was of im- portance to conceal the real truth from the enemy. Others are of extraordinary historical value, but are often too confidential for publication at the time, and unless unearthed by Parliament for some special purpose are relegated to departmental pigeonholes, accessible only to the official historian. Despatches stand on a different foot- ing. They are generally regarded with undue reverence as con- taining the full, accurate, and final report made by the commander- in-chief in the field to the government at home. Theoretically, no doubt, this is the case, but the resentment felt both by Parliament and by the public at the suppression or pruning of any portion of a general's despatches has long resulted in the adoption of other means for the unfolding of his mind to the Secretary of State for War. Nearly a hundred years ago Lord Liverpool instructed the Duke of Wellington to send home from the Peninsula two sets of de- spatches, one for public information, the other for the confidential perusal of the Cabinet. It is moreover a pleasing fallacy to imagine that all despatches are the ipsissiiua verba of the officer who signs them. This tradition dates from the days of Wellington, who had a special aptitude for the task, but in modern war a despatch, although written under a general's direction, is frequently drafted by one of his staff. In the British army this duty as a rule devolves on the military secretary. In other armies it falls on the Great General Staff. Nevertheless the general in command is resjionsible for the despatch as a whole, and often impresses upon it the stamp of his individuality. Subject to these limitations, the South African despatches are full of interest and are of considerable historical importance, varying, however, with the idiosyncrasies of each commander, and the restraint imposed upon him by the situation at the moment of writing. Lord