Leader writers, unbending, referred to it decorously.

The funny men on newspaper staffs made jests about it, and the "Oldest Evening Paper" enshrined it in verse:-- Four long, long hours they pounded hard, Whizz! went the screaming shell-- Of reeking tube and iron shard There was an awful smell.
On us they wasted all their lead, On us who stood at bay, And with our guns (forgive it, Stead!) Popped quietly away.
They could not make the city burn, However hard they tried.
Not one of us is dead, but learn A dog it was that died.
The reaction was extraordinary.

The almost unknown Colonel Baden-Powell instantly became "B.-P." to the general public, and in the twinkling of an eye his photograph appeared in the shop-windows beside those of Sir Redvers Buller, Sir George White, and Lord Methuen.

Everybody was cracking jokes about the war, and the Boers seemed to be already under the heel of the conqueror.

When men opened their newspapers in the railway carriage it was with the remark, "How's old B.-P.