November 29th, 1899
Two factors in the present war were impressed upon my mind at the beginning:
first, that the British Army was never in better condition as regards the
zeal and skill of its officers, the training and discipline of the men, and
the organisation of the field services; secondly, that the Government had
deliberately handicapped that Army by giving the Boers many weeks' clear
start in which to try with their whole forces to overwhelm the small British
parties sent out at haphazard to delay them. The whole course of events up
to now has been underlining these two judgments. The British troops gave
proof of their qualities at Talana Hill, at Elandslaagte, and on the trying
retreat from Dundee. There is no more difficult task in war than a frontal
attack upon a position defended by the repeating rifle. Good judges have
over and over again pronounced it impossible. But the British troops have
done it again and again. General Hildyard's attack on Beacon Hill, an
arduous action for a definite purpose which was effected--the re-opening of
the railway from Estcourt towards the south--was a creditable achievement on
the Natal side. On the Cape side Lord Methuen's advance from Orange River is
an example of the greatest determination and energy coupled with caution on
the part of the general, and of the most brilliant courage on the part of
the troops. I thought it probable that so skilful a tactician as Lord
Methuen would combine flank with frontal attacks. It seems that the
conditions gave him little or no opportunity to do that, and he has had
three times to assault and drive back a well-posted enemy. At Belmont, on
the 23rd, and at Enslin, on the 25th, Lord Methuen had a numerical
superiority large enough to justify an attack in which heavy loss was to be
expected. The losses were not exceptionally great, and this fact proves that
the British troops are of very much higher quality than their adversaries.
At Modder River, on the 28th, the numbers were practically equal. The Boers
were strongly entrenched and concealed, and could not be out-flanked. That
they were driven back at all is as proud a record for our troops as any army
could desire, for the attacking force ought to have been destroyed. The
engagement may well have been "one of the hardest and most trying in the
annals of the British Army," and if the victory is a glory to the soldiers,
the resolve to attack in such conditions reveals in Lord Methuen the
strength of character which is the finest quality of a commander.
If
it is well that we at home should appreciate the splendid results of many
years of good teaching given to the officers and men of the Army, results to
be attributed in great part, though not exclusively, to the efforts of Lord
Wolseley and his school, it is no less our duty to face squarely the fact
that the Nation has not done its duty by this Army. The Nation in this sense
means the people acting through the Government. To see how the Government
has treated the Army we have only to survey the situation in South Africa.
Fifty thousand men were ordered out on October 7th,--an Army Corps, a
cavalry division and troops for the line of communications. The design was
that, with the communications covered by the special troops sent for that
duty, the Army Corps and the cavalry division, making together a body of
forty thousand men, should cross the Orange River and sweep through the Free
State towards Pretoria, while Natal was protected by a special force there
posted.
But long before the Army Corps was complete this plan had been torn to
pieces by the Boers. Sir George White's force, being hardly more than a
third the strength of the army with which the Boers invaded Natal, could not
stop the invasion, though it could hold out when surrounded and invested.
Accordingly the first task of Sir Redvers Buller was to stem the flood of
Boer invasion in. Natal and to relieve Sir George White. For this purpose he
is none too strong with three out of the six infantry brigades that make up
the Army Corps. The remaining three brigades could not carry out the
original programme of sweeping through the Free State, and meantime the
Boers have overrun the great district between Colesberg and Barkly East,
between the Orange River and the Stormberg range. General Gatacre with a
weak brigade at Queenstown is watching this invasion which as yet he seems
hardly strong enough to repel. The rest of the troops are required in the
protection of the railways, of the depot of stores at De Aar, and the bridge
at Orange River. But Kimberley was invested and Mafeking in danger, and the
effect of the fall of either of them upon the Cape Dutch might be serious.
Something must be done. Accordingly Lord Methuen with two brigades set out
towards Kimberley. His task is both difficult and dangerous; he has not
merely to break the Boer resistance by sheer hard fighting, but to run the
risk that Boer forces from other quarters, perhaps from the army invading
Cape Colony, may be brought up in his rear, and that he may in this way be
turned, enveloped, and invested. The scattering of forces is due to the
initial error of sending too small a force to Natal, and of making no
provision for its reinforcement until after a six weeks' interval. The
consequence is that instead of our generals being able to attack the Boers
with the advantage of superior numbers, with the concomitant power of
combining flank and frontal attacks, and with the possibility of thus making
their victories decisive by enveloping tactics or by effective pursuit, the
British Army has to make attack after attack against prepared fronts, which
though they prove its valour can lead to no decisive results, except at the
cost of quite disproportionate losses.
It
is possible, and indeed we all hope that the Boer forces, at first
under-estimated, may now be over-estimated, and that Sir Kedvers Buller,
whose advance is probably now beginning, will not have to deal with superior
numbers. In that case his blows will shatter the Boer army in Natal, so that
by the time he has joined hands with Sir George White the enemy will feel
himself overmastered, will lose the initiative, and begin to shrink from the
British attacks. That state of things in Natal would lighten Lord Methuen's
work. But it would be rash to assume such favourable conditions. We must be
prepared for the spectacle of hard and prolonged fighting in Natal, and for
the heavy losses that accompany it. The better our troops come out of their
trials the more are we bound to ask ourselves how it came about that they
were set to fight under difficulties, usually against superior numbers,
though the British force devoted to the war was larger than the whole Boer
army? The cause of this is that a small force was sent out on September 8th,
and nothing more ordered until October 7th, and the cause of that
arrangement was that the Government, as Mr. Balfour has naively told us,
never believed that there would be a war, or that the Free State would join
the Transvaal, until the forces of both States were on the move. Our
statesmen negotiated through June, July, and August, talked in July of
"putting their hands to the plough," and yet took no step to meet the
possibility that the Boers would prove in earnest and attack the British
colonies until the Boer riflemen were assembling at Standerton and
patrolling into Natal. Does not this argue a defect in the training of our
public men, a defect which may be described as ignorance of the nature of
war and of the way in which it should be provided for? Mr. Balfour admits
that his eyes have been opened, but does not that imply that they had been
shut when they ought to have been open? If the members of the Government
failed to take the situation seriously in June, what is to be thought of the
members of the Opposition, some of whom even now cannot see that the choice
was between abandoning Empire and coercing the Boers? The moral is that we
should, if possible, strengthen the Government by sending to Parliament
representatives of the younger school, which is National and Imperialist
rather than Conservative or Liberal.
