November 1st, 1899
The first week's campaign, dimly seen through scanty information, gives a
peculiar impression of the two armies. The British force seems like an
athlete in fine training but without an idea except that of
self-preservation, while the Boer army resembles a burly labourer, clumsy in
his movements, but knowing very well what he wants. The British force at
first is divided upon a front of forty miles, each of its halves looking
away from the other, so that there is little attention to the weak point of
such a front, the communication between its parts. The first event is the
cutting of this communication (on the 19th), and not until the 21st is there
an attempt to clear it, and that attempt, though it leads to a severe blow
against the interposing Boer force (Elandslaagte), is not successful, for
the communication has eventually to be sought on another route behind the
direct one. The Boer idea is, after severing the connection between the
British halves, to crush the weaker Dundee portion; but the execution is
imperfect, so that Sir Penn Symons has the opportunity, which he seizes
instantly, to defeat and drive off one of the columns before the other can
assist it. His successor, General Yule, the heir to his design, is no sooner
convinced by this move to Glencoe that his line of junction with Ladysmith
is threatened with attack by a great superiority than he sets out by the
nearest way still open to him to rejoin the main body. The Ladysmith force
covers this march by a shielding movement (Reitfontein) and the junction of
the two British halves is effected. From Dundee to Ladysmith is forty miles,
and General Joubert unopposed would have covered the distance in three days.
He was before Dundee on Saturday, the 21st, and there was no sign of him
before Ladysmith until Saturday, the 28th, or Sunday, the 29th. The original
division of the British force and the Battle of Glencoe thus produced a
delay of several days in the Boer advance: more could not have been expected
from it. This first impression ought to be supplemented by a consideration
of Sir George White's peculiarly difficult position, on which I will venture
a word or two.
The Government, by its action in the first half of September, decided that
Sir George White must defend Natal for about five weeks[A] with sixteen
thousand men against the bulk of the Boer army, which was likely to be
double his own force. It was evidently expected that he should hold his
ground near Ladysmith and thereby cover Natal to the south of the Tugela.
This double task was quite disproportionate to his force. If Ladysmith had
been a fortress, secure for a month or two against assault, and able to take
care of itself, the field force using it as a base could no doubt have
covered Natal. But in the absence of a strong place there were only two ways
by which a small force could delay the Boer invasion. The force might let
itself be invested and thereby hold a proportion of the Boer army, leaving
the balance to raid where it could, or the campaign must be conducted as a
retreat from position to position. For a general with ten thousand men and
only two hundred miles of ground behind him to carry on a retreat in the
face of a force double his own so as to make it last five, weeks and to
incur no disaster would be a creditable achievement. Sir John Moore is
thought to have shown judgment and character by his decision to retreat
before a greatly superior force, commanded it is true by Napoleon himself.
Moore when he decided to retreat was about as far from Corunna as Dundee is
from Durban, and Moore's retreat took nineteen days. He had the sympathy if
not the effective help of the population, and was thought to have been
clever to get out of the trap laid for him. Sir George White seems to have
been expected as a matter of course to resist the Boer army, to prevent the
overrunning of Natal by the Boers, and to preserve his own force from the
beginning of October to the middle of November.[B] The Government expected
the Boers to attack as soon as they should hear of the calling out of the
Reserves, that being the reason why the Reserves were not called out
earlier. Therefore Sir George White's campaign was timed to last from
October 9th to November 15th (December 15th). I conclude that the force to
be given to Sir George White was fixed by Lord Lansdowne at haphazard, and
that the calculations of the military department were put on one side, this
unbusinesslike way of playing with National affairs and with soldier's lives
being veiled from the Secretary of State's mind by the phrase, "political
reasons." But the "political reason" for exposing a Nation's troops to
unreasonable risks and to needless loss must be bad reason and bad policy.
Mr. Wyndham has had the courage to assert that there was no haphazard, that
his chief knew quite well what he was doing, and that "the policy which the
Government adopted was deliberately adopted with the fullest knowledge of
possible consequences." If these words in Mr. Wyndham's speech of October
20th mean anything, they mean that Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Wyndham intended
Sir George White to be left for a month to fight against double his number
of Boers; that they looked calmly forward to the terrible losses and all the
risks inseparable from such conditions. That being the case, it seems to me
that it is Mr. Wyndham's duty, and if he fails, Lord Lansdowne's duty, to
tell the country plainly whether in that deliberate resolve Lord Wolseley
was a partner or an overruled protester. Ministers have a higher duty than
that to their party. The Nation has as much confidence in Lord Rosebery as
in Lord Salisbury and the difference in principle between the two men is a
vanishing quantity. A change of ministry would be an inconvenience, but no
more. But if the public comes to believe, what I am sure is untrue, that the
military department at the War Office has blundered, the consequences will
be so grave that I hardly care to use the word which would describe them.
I
accept the maxim that it is no use crying over spilt milk or even over spilt
blood, but the maxim does not hold when the men whose decision seems
inexplicable are in a position to repeat it on a grander scale. The temper
of the Boers as early as June left no doubt in any South African mind that
if equality of rights and British supremacy were to be secured it would have
to be by the sword. The Government alone among those who cared for the
Empire failed to realise this in time. That has been admitted. The excess of
hope for peace has been condoned and is being atoned for on the battlefields
of Natal. But to-day the temper of Europe leaves no room for doubt that, in
case of a serious reverse in Natal, Europe if it can will interfere. Have
Mr. Goschen and Lord Lansdowne worked out that problem, or is there to be a
repetition in the case of the continental Powers--an adversary very
different from the Boers--of patience, postponement, and haphazard? It is
not the situation in South Africa that gives its gravity to the present
aspect of things, but the situation in Europe. Upon the next fortnight's
fighting in Natal may turn the fate not merely of Natal and of South Africa,
but of the British Empire. That this must be the case was plain enough at
Christmas, and has been said over and over again. Yet this was the crisis
which was met by sending to the decisive point a reinforcement of ten
thousand men to do the best they could along with the six thousand already
there during a five weeks' campaign.
After reconnaissance on Friday and Saturday (October 27th-8th) Sir George
White, finding a large Boer force in front of him at Ladysmith, determined
to hit out on Monday. Suppose Ladysmith to be the centre of a compass card,
the Boers were spread across the radii from N. to E. Sir George meaning to
clear the Boers from a position near N.E. prepared to move forward towards
N.E. and towards E., sending in each direction about a brigade of infantry
and a brigade division of field artillery. He sent two battalions and a
mounted battery towards N. The party sent to N. started after dark on
Sunday; the other parties, making ready in the night, set forward at dawn.
There was no enemy in position at N.E. The force sent towards E. pushed back
a Boer force, which retreated only to enable a second Boer force to take the
British E. column in flank--apparently its left flank. The N.E. column had
to be brought up to cover the retirement of the E. column. When these two
columns returned to Ladysmith the N. column was still out. Long after dark
Sir George White learned that the N. column, which had lost its battery and
its reserve rifle ammunition by a stampede of the mules, had been surrounded
by a far stronger Boer force, had held its ground until the last cartridge
was gone, and that then the survivors had accepted quarter and surrendered.
Sir George White manfully takes upon himself the blame for this misfortune.
His portentous blunders were in sending out the party to a distance and in
taking no steps to keep in communication with it or to support it. The
detachment of a small party to a distant point is a habit of Indian warfare.
It is out of place against an enemy of European race, for the detachment is
sure to be destroyed if the enemy has a capable commander. Every man in the
Ladysmith force will have felt on Tuesday that the commander had make
mistakes which he ought not to have made. The question is what effect this
consciousness will have upon the spirits of the force.
Sir George White was reinforced before and during the action, a battalion of
rifles having arrived in the morning and a party of bluejackets with heavy
quick-firers coming up during the day. Further reinforcements were sent
towards him from the squadron after the action, so that his force is still
about sixteen thousand. If he does not elect to retreat, a course which
might demoralise the troops, he may well be able to defend Ladysmith until
relieved; but the first business of the troops now on their way out will be
to relieve him, and until that has been arranged for, it is to be feared
that Mafeking and Kimberley must wait.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: Thirteen weeks, as we now (March) know from the official
correspondence.]
[Footnote B: I should have said December.]
