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Show V3 The Dutchman Fooled Them. .L THE WORLD is laughing, except ex-cept John Bull, over that comical event along Klip river, south of Johannesburg, oo the 12th. The spectacle spec-tacle of ir0 mounted British troopers scampering after one lone Boer, is enough to excite humor in a wooden image. According to a Pretoria dispatch, dis-patch, this large British force u'as engaged en-gaged in running down Boers hiding in farm houses. A house was surrounded surround-ed and ;i single burgher broke away and made for a kopje, the British hot in the chase. Up the kopje climbed the Boer and up the kopje followed the British, and then . Lord Kitchener "regrets" to announce an-nounce the loss of two officers and ten men killed and several officers and forty for-ty men wounded before the British force was able to fall back under cover of a block house. The cunning old Dutchman led his pursuers into a trap. Anticipating the derisive smile on the lips of the civilized world, the Pretoria Pre-toria dispatch apologetically announces that "the mounted Infantry trapped were all fresh from home and unused to Boer tactics." That explanation is also fresh fresh enough for Kipling to take it up anil add another verse to "the llanneled fools at the wicket or the muddled oafs at the goals." Did these llanneled fools imagine they were chasing chas-ing a jack rabbit up that kopje? Except the fabled story of the capture of ancient Troy through a wooden horse, there is nothing so exquisitely funny in history as the spectacle of 150 troopers chasing a lonesome Boer, and then getting what Paddy gave the I drum. |