November 22nd, 1899
The six weeks of anxious waiting are over, and to-day the second chapter of
the war begins. On either side of the Boer States a division of Sir Redvers
Buller's force is now in touch with the enemy, and at either point there may
be a battle any day.
The small British forces sent out or organised on the spot before the
declaration of war have kept the enemy's principal forces occupied until
now, so that he has been unable to make any decisive use of the margin of
superiority which he possessed over and above what was needed to keep the
British detachments where they were. The resisting power of these
detachments is, however, not inexhaustible; they have kept at bay for a
considerable time forces much more numerous than themselves, and the first
move required of the fresh British forces is to take the pressure off them
and to combine with them. The centre of gravity is in Natal, for there is
the principal Boer army, probably two-thirds of the whole Boer power, and
there, too, a whole British division is invested. A palpable success here
for either side must go far to decide the issue of the war.
General Joubert's force in Natal is so strong that while keeping his grip
upon Ladysmith, where Sir George White has not less than ten thousand men,
he has been able to move south with a considerable force, perhaps fifteen
thousand men, to oppose Sir C.F. Clery's advance. Sir C.F. Clery has already
at least seven, and possibly nine, strong battalions, to which within a day
or two three more will be added, and perhaps as many as thirty-six guns,
with parties of bluejackets and various Natal levies. His interest is to
delay battle until all his force has come up. The advanced troops seem to be
spread along the line from Mooi River to Estcourt, and the Boer forces are
facing them on a long line to the east of the railway from a point beyond
Estcourt to a point below Mooi River. The Boers are on the flank from which
their attack would be most dangerous, and seem to aim at interposing between
the parts of Sir C.F. Clery's force, and at a convergent attack in superior
strength upon his advance guard at Estcourt.
I
should have expected the advance parties of Sir C.F. Clery's force to have
fallen back as the Boers approached. The attempt to keep up the connection
between the parts of a concentrating force by means of the railway strikes
me as very dangerous from the moment that the enemy is in the neighbourhood.
The important thing for Sir C.F. Clery is not whether his battle takes place
twenty miles nearer to Ladysmith or twenty miles farther away, but that it
should be an unmistakable victory, so that after it the Boer force engaged
should be unable to offer any further serious hindrance to his advance. To
gain an end of this kind a general should not merely bring up all the troops
from the rear, falling back for them if necessary, but should take care that
none can be cut off by the enemy in his front. A decisive victory by Sir
C.F. Clery or by Sir Redvers Duller, who may feel this action to be so
important as to justify his presence, would leave no doubt as to the issue
of the war. An indecisive battle would postpone indefinitely the relief of
Ladysmith and leave the future of the campaign in suspense. Defeat would be
disastrous, for it would probably involve the ultimate loss of Sir George
White's force. For these reasons I regard the battle shortly to be fought in
Natal as the first decisive action of the war, and am astonished that a
larger proportion of Sir Redvers Buller's force has not been sent to take
part in it.
The whole business of a commander-in-chief in war is to find out the
decisive point and to have the bulk of his forces there in time. If he can
do that on the half-dozen occasions which make the skeleton of a war he has
fulfilled his mission. He never need do anything else, for all the rest can
be done by his subordinates. Not every commander fulfils this simple task
because not every one refuses to let himself be distracted. All sorts of
calls are made upon him to which he finds it hard to be deaf; very often he
is doubtful whether one or another subordinate is competent, and then he is
tempted to do that subordinate's work for him. That is always a mistake
because it means neglect of the commander's own work, which is more
important.
The task, though it appears simple is by no means easy, as the present war
and the present situation show. While the fate of the Empire hangs in the
balance between Ladysmith and Pietermaritzburg, a good deal depends on the
course of events between Kimberley and Queenstown. In the northern part of
Cape Colony the Dutch inhabitants are naturally divided in their sympathies,
and the loyally disposed have been sorely tried by the long weeks of waiting
for some sign of Great Britain's power. None has yet been forthcoming. They
know that Kimberley is besieged and that the British Government has done
little for its defence. During the last week or two they have been
threatened by the Free State Boers, and have seen Stormberg and other places
evacuated by the British. At length the Free State Boers have come among
them, marched into their towns, proclaimed the annexation of the country,
and commandeered the citizens. If this goes on the Boer armies will soon be
swelled to great dimensions by recruits from the British colony, a process
which cannot go on much longer without shaking the faith of the whole Dutch
population in the supremacy of Great Britain. Some manifestation of British
strength, energy, and will is evidently urgently needed in this region.
Moreover, Kimberley is hard beset, and its fall would seem to the whole
countryside to be the visible sign of a British collapse. No wonder, then,
that Sir Redvers Duller has sent Lord Methuen as soon as he could be ready
to the relief of Kimberley. The column consists of the Brigade of Guards,
the Ninth Brigade, made up of such battalions as were at hand to replace
Hildyard's brigade (sent to Natal), of a naval detachment, a cavalry
regiment, and two or three batteries, besides local levies. Kimberley is
five or six days' march from Orange River, and at some point on the way the
Boers will no doubt try to stop the advance. I feel confident that Lord
Methuen, whom I know as an accomplished tactician, will so win his battle as
not to need to do the same work twice over.
The advance of Lord Methuen's division renders imperative the protection of
the long railway line from Cape Town to Orange River. This seems to be
entrusted to General Forestier-Walker's forces, reduced to two battalions,
and to General Wauchope's Highland brigade. One battalion only is with
General Gatacre at Queenstown, and two battalions of General Lyttelton's
brigade which have reached Cape Town are as yet unaccounted for in the
telegrams.
How, then, if all his forces are thus employed could Sir Redvers Buller, by
taking thought, have added anything to Sir C.F. Clery's force on the Mooi
River? The answer is that a commander's decision must usually be a choice of
risks. To have sent on to Natal a part of the troops now in Cape Colony
would have been to have increased the danger of the Cape Dutch going over to
the Boers. Which was the less of two possible evils--the spread of
disaffection in the Cape Colony or the loss of Sir George White's force? No
one at home can decide with confidence because the knowledge here available
of the situation in either colony is very limited. Subject to this reserve,
I should be disposed to think the danger in Natal the more serious, and the
chance of losing Colonel Kekewich's force a mere trifle in comparison with
the defeat of General Joubert, for the effect of Joubert's defeat would be
felt on the Orange River, whereas the relief of Kimberley can hardly produce
an appreciable effect on the situation in Natal.
The difficult problem of which General Buller is now giving his solution has
been created for him by the Government, which from June to October was
playing with a war which according to its own admissions it did not
seriously mean. "Mistakes in the original assembling of armies can hardly be
repaired during the whole course of the campaigns, but all arrangements of
this sort can be considered long beforehand and--if the troops are ready for
war and the transport service is organised--must lead to the result
intended." So wrote Moltke in 1874 in one of the most famous passages ever
published. If last spring the Government or even the Secretary of State for
War alone had been in earnest, had been doing what plain duty required, the
nature and conditions of the South African war would have been thought out,
and the military judgment which was to conduct it would have been set to
devise the proper opening. That would have consisted in landing
simultaneously, thirty thousand men at Durban and forty thousand at the
Cape. These forces would not have moved forward until they were complete and
ready, and though the Boers might meantime have overrun their borders, the
British advance when it came would have been continuous, irresistible, and
decisive. Instead of that the Government gave the Boers notice in June that
there might be war, so that the Boers had the whole summer to get ready.
When in September the Government began to think of action the only idea was
defending Natal. But this defence was not thought of as part of a war. The
idea never seems to have occurred to the Government that the need for
defence in Natal could not arise except in case of war, and that then to
defend Natal would be impracticable except by beating the Boer army.
Accordingly, the handful of troops in Natal were posted without regard to
the probable outlines of the war, and therefore, wrongly posted. The
consequence was that when war came they could not be concentrated except at
the cost of fighting and loss, and of a retreat which gave the enemy the
belief that he had won a victory. Even then the point held--Ladysmith--was
too far north and liable to be turned. All these mistakes, made before Sir
George White arrived, were evident to that general when he first reached
Ladysmith, but they could not then be remedied, and he had to do, and has
done, the best he could in the circumstances. The fact of Sir George White's
investment compels Sir Redvers Buller to begin his campaign with the effort
to relieve him, and the fact that Kimberley is held by a weak force compels
him to divide his force when his one desire certainly must have been to keep
it united. In the expected battle at Mooi River Sir Redvers Buller will be
trying to make up for the faulty arrangements of September. The desire to
hold as much of the railway as possible--also due to the false position of
Sir George White's force--has, perhaps, led General Hildyard to spread out
his force over too long a line. But, in spite of the difficulties created by
errors at the start, I am not without hopes that these remarks will soon be
put out of date by a decisive British victory.
