Of all these actions there was not one which was more than a skirmish, and had they been followed by a final British victory they would now be hardly remembered.

It is the fact that they were skirmishes which succeeded in their object which has given them an importance which is exaggerated.

At the same time they may mark the beginning of a new military era, for they drove home the fact--only too badly learned by us--that it is the rifle and not the drill which makes the soldier.

It is bewildering that after such an experience the British military authorities continued to serve out only three hundred cartridges a year for rifle practice, and that they still encouraged that mechanical volley firing which destroys all individual aim.

With the experience of the first Boer war behind them, little was done, either in tactics or in musketry, to prepare the soldier for the second.
The value of the mounted rifleman, the shooting with accuracy at unknown ranges, the art of taking cover--all were equally neglected.
The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous or the most magnanimous in recent history.