From the diary of William Watson, Ladysmith, January 1900:
Buller was to have been here yesterday but there is no sign of him yet. — Shells coming into the town as usual. — For fifteen years, we have allowed the Boers to arm themselves to the teeth, with the very best weapons Europe and America can produce, and now we expect to overcome them without blood-shed. In this war, we need a large army, immense food supplies, the best of our warlike stores, and the most energetic, and clearest headed of our generals. — It has been said that, “Africa is the grave of military reputation.” May be so, but it seems to me, the officers who lose their reputations here, ought never to have had any reputation to lose. Red River, North, South, and West Africa, made Wolseley’s reputation. Penn-Symons, French, and Clery have also gained laurels here. Sir George Colley was a very amiable man, and efficient governor of a province in peace time, but when he aspired to command an army he proved a bungler. We don’t need theoretical soldiers and Staff College puppies, but men like Clive, Lawrence, or Sir Collin Campbell. In short we need generals who will treat barbarians as savages, and carry out the laws of war as regards traitors, for we are becoming too squeamish and mealy mouthed altogether. — If the rebels would only come out and fight in the open field, it would only be a very few days before the war was finished, but they will not come out, and England’s most culpable delay in sending troops, has given our men a very difficult job to do. The rebels have been allowed months, in which to make the positions nearly impregnable, for the whole country is covered with large, loose, blocks of stone; there’s no need to quarry materials with which to build their fortifications. These have not been neglected. Night attacks, and cold steel, are the only means of surmounting these obstacles. But our generals will never think of such a way of carrying on war. No other country in the world, would have remained passive while a petty vassal state armed itself in the manner the Transvaal has been allowed to do. No one here doubted for a moment, that all these arms were to drive England from South Africa. It is very hard on Tommy Atkins, that his own country, has made his work ten times as desperate as it need be.
