However honourable to generosity, it is certainly carrying self-abnegation to an indefensible extreme to leave the decision of attack or withdrawal, of movement by direct attack or by flanking--"by the left"-- to a junior, when one's self is on the spot, in actual conversation.
The action of Colonel Thorneycroft in withdrawing raises also the mooted question of when and how the assumption of responsibility in disobeying orders--express or implied, general or particular--is to be justified; a matter on which much unenlightened nonsense has lately been spoken and written in the United States.

No general rule, {p.264} indeed, can be laid down, but this much may surely be re-affirmed--that the justification of so serious a step must ever rest, not on the officer's _opinion_ that he was doing right, but upon the fact, demonstrated to military judgment by the existing conditions, that he _was_ right.

Colonel Thorneycroft's intentions were doubtless of the best; the writer cannot but believe that Lord Roberts's sentence will be endorsed by the professions, for the reasons he himself gives.
After the withdrawal across Trichardt's Drift, a week was allowed for repose after the seven days' fighting just undergone.

The attempt to reach Ladysmith was then renewed, taking the road by Potgieter's Drift to Brakfontein.

It was decided first to get possession of Vaal Krantz, a height three or four miles east of Spion Kop, to the right of the road.