The riot shocked the Canadian public and cooled many public men and cooled their ardour for this imperial adventure. Scenes like this picture began to drive home the terrible price of war. Paardeberg, for example, cost Canada thirty-one men dead ninety-two men wounded and one hundred and thirty casualties over all. News of these losses printed in local papers helped kill the romanticism which characterized the first stage of the war. Many of the men themselves sat down and "wept like children" when they learned of the death of their companions. The stench, sound and sight of the slaughter shocked them profoundly, and many felt they had "seen enough of war" and insisted on returning to Canada as soon as their contracts expired.
Courtesy: The Anglo Boer War 1899 - 1900, p. 195 McLennan Library, McGill University
