A HANDBOOK OF THE BOER WAR
With General Map of South Africa
and 18 Sketch Maps
and Plans
GALE AND POLDEN LIMITED
LONDON AND ALDERSHOT
1910
BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PROLEGOMENA 1
I The Roundheads of South Africa 1
II Patriotism, Duty and Discipline 19
III War considered as a Branch of Sport 26
II THE NATAL WEDGE 36
III DEUS EX MACHINA NO. I 51
IV KIMBERLEY AND THE SIEGE OF RHODES 82
V A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS 96
VI MORE TUGELA TROUBLES 116
VII LADYSMITH AT BAY 138
VIII DEUS EX MACHINA NO. 2 156
IX ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS 193
X BADEN-POWELL AND THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING 212
XI BLOEMFONTEIN TO PRETORIA 229
XII THE NEW COLONY 247
XIII NEC CELER NEC AUDAX 262
XIV THE TAMING OF THE TRANSVAAL 273
XV THE RECURRENCES OF DE WET 294
XVI LORD KITCHENER AT WORK 311
XVII THE MECHANICAL PHASE 345
I Orange River Colony 345
II Eastern Transvaal 354
III Western Transvaal 357
IV Cape Colony 363
XVIII THE END 365
COMMANDERS OF DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES 368
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES 369
SKETCH MAPS AND PLANS[1]
PAGE
Northern Natal 50
Modder River and Magersfontein 59
Stormberg 65
Colenso 70
Spion Kop and Vaalkrantz 98
Spion Kop 104
Final Advance on Ladysmith 128
Siege of Ladysmith 139
Riet and Modder Drifts 161
Paardeberg 172
Poplar Grove and Driefontein 185
Sannah's Post 199
Magaliesberg District 240
Diamond Hill 243
Brandwater Basin 257
Orange Free State 260
Southern Transvaal 292
Noitgedacht Nek 319
General Map of South Africa--at the beginning.
[Footnote 1: The thanks of the Author are due to the Army Council for
permission to copy the maps and plans in the Official History of the
War, and to L.S. Amery, Esq., for permission to copy the plans in the
fifth volume of the _Times_ History of the War.]
PREFATORY NOTE
The author has endeavoured in this Handbook to compile, for the use of
students and others, a general account of the various phases of the Boer
War of 1899-1902, in which he served for twenty-six months.
With some exceptions, every statement of fact relating to the military
operations may be verified in one or more of the following
publications--
The "Times" History of the War;
The War Office Official History of the War;
The Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission of
Inquiry into the War.
To the two Histories, which have been but recently completed, the Author
is much indebted. Other authorities have, however, been consulted.
The Sketch Maps and Plans of certain areas and battlefields are only
intended to give, by means of a few hachures, contours, and form-lines,
a general impression of topographical features.
The Author has from time to time in the course of the narrative
indicated what he believes to have been the chief causes of the
prolongation of the War:--
The inefficacy of modern Tactics as a means of dealing with
partisan warfare;
The moral reinforcement derived from a confident belief in the
justice of a cause, by which the enemy was continually
encouraged to persevere;
The reluctance of the British leaders to fight costly battles;
The constitutional inability of the British Officer to take War
seriously;
The waste of British horses due to inexpert Horsemastership.
May, 1910.
CHAPTER I
Prolegomena
I. THE ROUNDHEADS OF SOUTH AFRICA
History often reproduces without reference to nationality some
particular human type or class which becomes active and predominant for
a time, and fades away when its task is finished. It is, however, not
utterly lost, for the germ of it lies dormant yet ready to re-appear
when the exigencies of the moment recall it. The reserve forces of human
nature are inexhaustible and inextinguishable.
It is probable that few of the Boers had ever heard of Oliver Cromwell,
or that his life and times had ever been studied in the South African
Republics, and had influenced the Boer action; yet the affinity of the
South African burghers of the XIXth century with the Puritans and the
Roundheads of the XVIIth is striking. It was not so much a parallelism
of aims and hopes, for the struggle in England was political and not
national as in South Africa, as of temperament, character, and method.
There was hardly an individuity in the Boers of the War which might not
have been found in the followers of Cromwell. Like these they were
fanatically but sincerely religious, and their unabashed and fearless
adherence to their beliefs and their open observance of the outward
forms of religion exposed them to the same cruel and baseless charge of
hypocrisy. Just as the aristocratic followers of Charles I had jeered at
the Roundheads, so did every thoughtless officer and newspaper
correspondent jeer at the psalm-singing and the prayer meetings in the
laagers. The Boers had the courage of their religious opinions, and were
not ashamed to proclaim them in the face of man. The Bible was the only
book they knew, and they guided themselves according to their lights by
its precepts. In opposing the English they believed that they were
resisting the enemies of the Almighty. Like the Puritans they honestly
thought that certain passages in the Holy Scriptures applied to them as
the Chosen People, and that they were assured of Divine Protection; and
if they erred in their exegesis their delusion at least deserves
respect. Yet all the while the Old Testament was the volume they chiefly
studied, and if they quoted the New Testament they sometimes modified
the context to their own advantage.
Each Puritan movement has derived its strength not so much from its
abstract merit as from the intense personal conviction felt by each unit
engaged in it, that the righteousness of the cause was unassailable. The
Puritan never wavered in philosophic doubt. No misgivings disturbed his
soul, and he pursued his object with all the strength of his body.
The Puritan stir in the reign of Charles I was a revival, almost a
continuation, of the half political, half religious activity which in
the previous century had effected the Reformation. The Boer movement in
South Africa, which sprang up after a germination lasting three
generations, was brought about by a recrudescence of the spirit which
made the Boers of the Netherlands rise against Alva and the Spanish
domination in the XVIth century.
In the XVIIth century the Boers of the Netherlands, made a voluntary
settlement in South Africa, and there under the Southern Cross they were
joined by French Puritans, who had fought under Condé and who left their
country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and also by some
persecuted sectaries from Piedmont. The two stocks, although one was of
Teutonic and the other of Celtic origin, easily came together, and under
the pressure of common interests and common dangers were consolidated
and vulcanized: and if in the previous generation the English Pilgrim
Fathers of the _Mayflower_ had directed their course to the south
instead of to the west, and had cast anchor off the shore of that
distant region of Good Hope, it is probable that a mighty nation would
have been founded in South Africa.
Cromwell as the military leader of the Commonwealth Boers is, at least
in England where the military art has not been scientifically studied,
one of the suppressed characters of history. His political achievements,
as is perhaps natural in a community which courts the voter and despises
the soldier, have put out of sight the means by which he mainly won
them; namely his genius as a cavalry and partisan commander. An
ungainly, narrow-minded, bigoted, bucolic squireen of Huntingdon,
lacking in every quality which we are accustomed to associate with a
cavalry officer, inaugurated an era in the history of Mounted Troops.
His methods are studied on the Continent, and the German Staff has
recently discovered that he was the first leader to use cavalry as a
screen to hide the movements of the main body. Yet there is no evidence
that he ever studied the military art, and he did not become a soldier
until he had reached his fourth decade. In the Royalist Army opposed to
him were soldiers by profession and experience; officers and men who had
been under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War; for in the XVIIth
century the services of aliens were in request on the Continent, and at
one time no less than eighty-seven senior officers of British
nationality were serving in the Swedish Army, then the most renowned in
Europe. Yet Cromwell with his "Eastern Association," his Ironsides, his
yeomen and raw levies, beat the Royalist Army, officered from the same
class which is still believed to possess the monopoly of the aptitude
for leading men in war, by exercising the homely qualities of energy,
self-control, endurance, and practical common sense applied instantly to
the occasion of the moment.
The lessons to be learnt from Cromwell's campaigns have been thus
epitomized by General Baden-Powell:--"There is one thing that ought not
to escape the attention of students, namely the success that attended
Cromwell's method of rallying his troops whenever they got dispersed.
When things looked bad, as they did on one or two occasions, when some
of his cavalry were defeated and the rest scattered, he never lost heart
and his men never lost heart; they knew they had to rally again and
attack somewhere else. Very often the enemy were deceived by that,
thinking that the Roundheads were scattered and broken up, and took no
further notice of him until they suddenly found him attacking from quite
a new direction. That was the secret of his success on many occasions,
and one that has its lesson to-day, just as it had in those days--that
when all seems pretty bad and you are scattered and broken, keep up a
good heart and get together again and have another go." With scarcely
the change of a word these remarks will account for the prolongation of
the war for two years after the occupation of the Boer capitals.
The Boer leaders, like their great prototype Cromwell, owed much of
their success to their novel and skilful use of mounted troops. The
European conception of the functions of mounted troops had been
stereotyped for some time; Cavalry screens an advancing army, prevents
the enemy observing its dispositions, acts as its eyes and ears; and so
forth. It is true that Great Britain had already for at least a
generation employed Mounted Infantry in colonial wars; but the
innovation had never been approved of on the Continent, where it was
regarded as a cheap and inefficient British substitute for Cavalry.
Yet the famous postscript "unmounted men preferred,"[2] which was
affixed to the acceptance of the help proffered by the Australian
Colonies, shows that at first the power of mounted troops acting not as
the eyes and ears of an army, but as a mobile and supple "mailed fist,"
was not understood. In ten weeks, however, the tune changed, and it was
"preference given to mounted contingents."
When the grand operations were over, the enemy's chief towns occupied,
and the lines of communication fairly secure, the necessity for mounted
troops became still more apparent. The Boers saw that it was useless for
them to campaign at large. They took to _guerilla_, and restricted
themselves generally to independent horse raids against which foot
troops were powerless. Gradually the proportion of horses to men in the
British columns rose, until practically all the combatants were mounted,
and at last the Cromwellian principle that the best military weapon is a
man on a horse was fully accepted.
The military qualities of the Boers, like those of Cromwell's men, were
useful but not showy. They came by instinct and not by acquisition, and
they cannot be sufficiently accounted for as the outcome of experience
in the pursuit of game on the veld. They were neutralized partially by
characteristics the reverse of military. The Boers were not remarkable
for personal courage. If there had been in the Boer Army a decoration
corresponding to the Victoria Cross it would have been rarely won or at
least rarely earned. There is scarcely an instance of an individual feat
of arms or act of devotion performed by a Burgher. On the few occasions
when the Boers were charged by cavalry they became paralysed with
terror. They were incapable of submitting themselves to discipline, and
difficult to command in large numbers. They could not be made to
understand that prompt action, which possibly might not be the best
under the circumstances, was preferable to wasting time in discussing a
better with the field cornets. They were subject to panics and, for the
time, easily disheartened: and their sense of duty was not conspicuous.
The principles of strategy were unknown to them, their tactics were
crude, and with the exception of a very few who had fought in 1881, they
were without experience of the realities of war.[3]
If in the month of September, 1899, an impartial military critic in a
foreign Ministry of War had been directed to draw up an appreciation of
the situation and to forecast the course of the impending struggle, he
would probably have expressed himself somewhat as follows:--
"An Army of 100,000 men is the utmost that Great Britain will be able to
place in the field in South Africa, for the Indian and Colonial drafts
must be provided for, and the Militia and other Auxiliary Forces, which
are not of much account, are tethered to the country; but it will be
sufficient for the purpose. Although the military system of Great
Britain is hopelessly behind the times, she has always done wonders with
her boomerangs, bows and arrows, and flint instruments. That Army will
be fairly well furnished with modern weapons and equipment, and the
excellent personality of the soldier will compensate to a great extent
for incapacity in the Staff and superior officers. With this Army she
will have to meet a brave but undisciplined opponent whose numbers
cannot be estimated. Even if the Free Staters are included it is
improbable that more than 100,000 men can be put into the field. These
have had no military training, their leaders will be unprofessional
officers who will be unable to make good use of the munitions of War
which the two Republics have been strangely allowed to import through
British ports and to accumulate in large quantities. If the burghers of
the Orange Free State throw in their lot with the Transvaalers, which is
improbable as they have no quarrel with Great Britain, the numbers
opposed to her will certainly be augmented, but the task before her will
be greatly simplified. Instead of having to send one portion of her Army
by way of Natal to effect a junction in the Transvaal, with the other
portion working northwards through Kimberley and Mafeking, a campaign
which would involve two long and vulnerable lines of communication, she
will be able to strike at once through the heart of the Free State and
will advance without much difficulty to Johannesburg and Pretoria. The
hardest part of her task will be the passage of the Vaal, where a great
battle will be fought, and the capture of Pretoria, which is reported to
be well fortified. With Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria and the
railways in the possession of Great Britain, the opposition will
collapse in a very few weeks, for no nation has ever been able to carry
on a struggle when its chief towns and means of communication are in the
enemy's possession."
This hypothetical appreciation probably represents the general opinion
current both at home and abroad during the period immediately preceding
the outbreak of the War; but it proved to be mistaken from the first.
The Free Staters joined the Transvaalers and the allied forces assumed
the offensive over a wide area without delay. Kimberley and Mafeking
were threatened on the west, and on the east the Boers poured into
Natal, upon which they had for sixty years looked with the aggrieved and
greedy eyes of a dog from whom a bone, to which he believes he is
entitled, has been recovered.
To Natal, in 1824, had come a handful of British pioneers. From Chaka,
the King of the Zulus, they obtained a grant of land upon the coast, and
after eleven years they endeavoured without success to induce the
British Government to recognize the settlement, which in course of time
became the City of Durban, as a Colony to which, in honour of the
Princess heiress presumptive to the Throne of Great Britain, they
proposed to give the name Victoria; and they were thus the first to
associate her with the Empire, which, in spite of reluctant politicians
who did their best to restrict it, was destined to expand marvellously
during her reign.
The Natal settlement was frowned on by the Imperial Government, who even
confiscated a little ship which the pioneers had toilfully fitted out
and which was bringing envoys from the King of the Zulus to the King of
England, on the plea that it was unregistered and that it came from a
foreign port. In 1828 Chaka, who was not unfavourably disposed towards
the Durban pioneers, was murdered by his brother Dingaan, who succeeded
him as King of the Zulus. It is said that his last words to Dingaan
were, "You think that you will rule the land when I am gone, but I see
the white men coming, and they will be your masters."
His words were prophetically true, but there were two races of white men
hovering over Natal; and the Great King of the Zulus, a tribe held in
little account before his time, but which had under his leadership
absorbed or exterminated almost every other tribe from Pondoland to
Delagoa Bay, was no longer with them to choose between the rivals to his
own ends and advantage; and Dingaan inherited the cruelty without the
ability or the statecraft of his brother, the Napoleon of South Africa.
Of all the races of Europe the Low Germans of Holland seemed the least
likely to contract the migratory habit. The Hollander of the present
day, popularly but incorrectly called a Dutchman, is home-staying and
home-loving. The compact, well-cared-for, well-ordered homestead,
village, and town communities of the Netherlands are inconsistent with a
roving disposition, and yet the Hollanders of South Africa furnished the
most conspicuous example of Nomadism in modern times.
It may have been that the ordeal of Alva and the subsequent disturbance
of the Thirty Years' War had constitutionally unsettled the Hollanders
to such a degree that their descendants, emancipated from European
ideas, became prone to restlessness, for in a generation or two they
began to trek; or perhaps the magic of the spacious veld, with its clear
sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the
horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the
air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were
hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily
against the dykes and threw its spray angrily down on to the reclaimed
pastures which had been stolen from it.
The original Dutch settlement at the Cape was made by a Company of
Amsterdam merchants for the refreshment and refitting of their ships
engaged in trade with the East. The Company was a harsh and extortionate
master, who paid little attention to the needs and the welfare of the
settlement, which was regarded merely as a place of call. The
discontented colonists began to leave the seacoast and trekked inwards,
where the heavy hands of the cordially detested representatives of the
Company could not reach them. Its rule came to an end in 1795, when, at
the request of Holland, Great Britain took over the Colony in order to
prevent it falling into the hands of France. It was restored at the
Peace of Amiens, but in a few years again came into the possession of
Great Britain.
The Colonies of the Empire were at that time administered by a Branch of
the War Office which regarded the Cape settlement much in the same light
as it had been regarded by the Dutch Company, as a necessary but
troublesome depôt on the way to the East; and had the Overland Route and
the Suez Canal been available a generation earlier it would probably
have been abandoned.
The Boers hoped that their new masters, who at least were not an
association of Amsterdam merchants absorbed in their ledgers, would
treat them with more sympathy and consideration. But the only serious
colonial problem with which British politicians had up to that time been
called upon to deal was in North America, and they had disastrously
failed in their attempt to solve it. They were without experience in the
management of white plantations, they shirked the future and looked only
to the "ignorant present," and their policy in South Africa was based
upon two principles: that on no account must the boundaries of the
Empire be enlarged and new responsibilities incurred, and that in all
quarrels between white man and black man the presumption was that the
white man was in the wrong.
The Great Trek of 1836-7 was brought about by the emancipation of the
slaves and by the refusal or inability of the Government to protect the
farmers against the raids of the "Kaffir"[4] tribes on the border. There
is no doubt that enslaved Hottentots, Bushmen, and even Malays who had
been with the knowledge of the authorities imported from Madagascar and
Malacca, were often ill-treated by individual slave-owners; but the
Boers resented the charge of wholesale cruelty which was made against
them, and the favour and patronage bestowed upon native tribes.
Moreover, although the slave-owners were entitled to compensation for
the loss of their helots, the fund was administered in London, with the
result that a considerable proportion of the already inadequate sum was
retained in the hands of agents.
The object of the Great Trek was deliverance from the harsh and hostile
jurisdiction of the British Government, and the setting up of a new and
independent Boer community in Natal, which was reported to be a promised
land flowing with milk and honey. The Boers proposed to shake themselves
free from the Egyptian and to occupy Canaan.
The _voortrekkers_, among whom was the boy Paul Kruger, slowly passed
away towards the north and crossed the Orange River. Moshesh, the chief
of the Basutos, watched curiously from his mountains the trains of
wagons strung out on the veld, but refrained from molesting the
emigrants. Not so Moselekatse,[5] a chief who had formerly broken away
from Chaka and had set himself up beyond the Vaal, and who subsequently
founded the Matabele Kingdom in which he was succeeded by his son
Lobengula. He swooped down upon the advanced parties, who defended
themselves with success and afterwards chastised him in his own country,
in which, hidden from his eyes, lay the gold-bearing reefs of
Johannesburg.
Meanwhile the British Government had forged a useless and clumsy weapon
for the coercion of its "erring and misguided" subjects. It was held by
the lawyers that the trekkers could not at will and by the simple
process of migration throw off their allegiance to the Crown of England,
and a declaratory Act was passed under which all British subjects south
of Latitude 25, whether within or without the colony, could be arrested
and punished.
The Boer scouts discovered passes over the Drakensberg which gave them a
readier access than they had expected into Natal. It had not recovered
from the devastations of Chaka and was thinly inhabited. Settlements
were made near the banks of the Tugela, while Piet Retief, after a brief
visit to Durban, went on to negotiate with Dingaan at the royal kraal of
Umgungundhlovu in Zululand. He was received with some cordiality, but
accused of participating in a recent cattle raid. Retief, to show his
good faith, offered to catch the robber, a chief named Sikunyela, whose
kraal was a hundred miles away. He found Sikunyela, who greatly admired
the glistening rings of a pair of handcuffs shown him by the slim
Dutchman, and who was even persuaded that they would be a becoming
ornament to a native chief. He tried them on, but a more intimate
acquaintance with the use of handcuffs induced him to surrender the
cattle he had stolen from Dingaan, the King of the Zulus.
Again Retief with a hundred followers waited upon Dingaan at
Umgungundhlovu, and after military displays on each side received from
him a grant of the same land which Chaka had already given to the
British pioneers of Durban. Next day the Boers were received in farewell
audience by Dingaan, by whose orders they were treacherously surrounded
and led out to the place of execution, a hill of mimosas outside the
royal kraal, where they were put to death.
There remained the defenceless plantations on the Tugela. Before the
news of the massacre could reach them, and while they were hourly
expecting the return of Retief, Dingaan's impis swooped down upon them
from Zululand. At the cost of the lives of 600 men, women, and children,
the tribes were driven back, and the little town of Weenen, the "place
of weeping," remains to mark the spot.
Soon other parties of emigrants came in from beyond the Drakensberg, and
in 1838 an expedition under Potgieter failed to punish Dingaan for his
treachery. Nor did an attempt to help the emigrants made by the British
settlers at Durban meet with success. A small force of Natal natives
under an Englishman named Biggar was greatly out-numbered at the mouth
of the Tugela and perished almost to a man. Dingaan retaliated by
sending an impi to Durban, which he held for a few days; the settlers
taking refuge on board a ship in the Bay.
The Boers were disheartened and many of them trekked back to the veld
beyond the Drakensberg passes, which is now the Orange River Colony.
Their position in face of Dingaan seemed hopeless; but in November,
1838, there came out of the Cape Colony one Pretorius. He had heard of
their distress, and he organized a force of 500 men, with whom, on
December 16, he successfully encountered Dingaan's army and slew 3,000
of his warriors at the Blood River, an affluent of the Buffalo. Dingaan
fled and the column marched on to Umgungundhlovu, where Retief's
mouldering body was found on the hill of mimosas, and on it the deed of
grant of land at Durban. Pretorius was ambushed by Zulus disguised as
cattle, crawling on all fours and wearing ox hides; but he escaped with
slight loss, and returned to the Tugela. "Dingaan's Day," December 16,
is kept by the Boers as a festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing.
Soon a new complication beset the harassed emigrants. In December, 1838,
the British Government, anxious to stop the wars between the Boers and
the natives and to exclude the former from the sea, sent one hundred
soldiers to Durban and issued a proclamation in which the Boers were
declared to be British subjects who had unlawfully occupied Natal, and
who were morally responsible for all the blood that had been shed. They
protested against the imputation and against the military occupation of
Durban, but took no active steps to resent the affront.
When twelve months had passed without hostilities between Boer and
native, the British Government withdrew its hundred warriors from Durban
and tacitly handed over Natal to the emigrant Boers. Hardly had the
little transport _Vectis_ catted her anchor when the Republic of Natalia
was proclaimed and its flag run up on the staff of the forsaken British
Camp on Durban Bay.
But the dog-in-the-manger policy of neither incorporating Natal in the
British Empire nor frankly allowing the Boers to occupy it could not be
indefinitely maintained. Each present difficulty wriggled out of made
the future more embarrassing. Soon, as might have been anticipated, the
Boers were again in trouble with the natives. Panda, the father of
Cetchwayo, whose impis forty years after washed their spears in the
blood of 800 British soldiers at Isandhlwana, broke away from his
brother Dingaan, taking with him into Natal many thousand Zulus who were
awaiting an opportunity of shaking themselves free from the tyranny and
cruelty of Dingaan. Panda made overtures to the Boers and was gladly
received as an ally, and with his help Dingaan was finally crushed and
driven into Swaziland, where, in the hands of a hostile tribe, he
perished miserably by torture.
The emigrants were now favourably situated in Natal. They had
established an equitable if not a legal claim to it; Dingaan was out of
the way; and the British Government seemed indisposed to inter-meddle.
But the fatal and grotesque alliance with Panda, which culminated in his
installation as King of the Zulus by Pretorius in 1840, and which was
entirely inconsistent with the attitude hitherto assumed towards the
natives, was the undoing of the trekkers of 1836.
Panda's men as native auxiliaries eager to avenge themselves on the
common enemy Dingaan were all very well in their way. Most of them,
however, belonged to Natal and joined him in the hope of recovering the
tribal lands from which they had been evicted by Chaka and to which they
had a better right than the trekkers.
The Boers now began to reap the harvest of the Panda alliance. They
regarded the new arrivals as intruders, refused to acknowledge their
claims, and finally in August, 1841, decreed their expulsion from Natal.
The location chosen for their settlement was a district in Pondoland in
the possession of a chief under British protection, who already had had
occasion to lodge at Capetown a complaint against the Boers.
The British Government now found it necessary to intervene again in
Natal. A military occupation was announced by proclamation in December,
1841, and 240 men, under the command of an infantry captain named Smith,
were sent up to Durban to give effect to it.
When Smith, after a difficult march along the coast, reached his
destination on May 4, 1842, he pitched his camp on the flat which forms
the base of one of the promontories enclosing the Bay. He at once
lowered the Republican flag flying over the block-house at the Point,
and soon found that 1,500 Boers were occupying Congella on the shore of
the Bay. An attempt to surprise them by night failed disastrously;
Smith's force was reduced to half its strength, and the block-house was
captured by Pretorius.
Smith was now besieged in his camp, and the nearest help that could come
to him was at Grahamstown, five hundred miles away. Thither a gallant
civilian named King, who was one of the pioneers, rode in ten days; and
on June 25, when the little garrison was in extremity, it was relieved
by sea. Pretorius withdrew into the interior, and the Volksraad at
Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the Republic of Natalia, voted the
submission of the Boers. Pending a final settlement it was allowed to
remain in authority over the settlers, but the district around Durban
Bay was at once taken over as British territory. In May, 1843, a year
after the landing of Smith, the Republic of Natalia passed away and
Natal was proclaimed a British Colony.
The final settlement did not come for some time. The Volksraad was
abolished, but the claims of the Boers to the lands upon which they had
squatted were liberally considered. They were, however, dissatisfied
because the rights of Panda's men were also regarded, and many trekked
away across the Drakensberg. Those who remained protested that their
lives and property were insecure in the presence of the natives, and
Pretorius was deputed to go and lay their grievances before the British
Governor at the Cape.
The ill success of his mission provoked him to reprisals, and he
proceeded to stir up trouble in the Orange River Sovereignty, which had
recently been formally proclaimed British Territory. If not actively
loyal it was peaceably disposed until the arrival of Pretorius, who soon
drove out the British Resident and the little garrison of Bloemfontein
and set them on the run as far as Colesberg in the Cape Colony. He was
defeated at Boomplatz in August, 1848, by Sir Harry Smith, a veteran of
the Peninsular War, and British authority was for a time reestablished
over the Sovereignty. The Colonial Office soon however tired of the new
possession and gladly scuttled out in 1854 in order to avoid the task of
reaping the harvest of a clumsy and grotesque policy, which it had
formulated a few years before, of hemming in the _voortrekkers_, who had
settled north of the Orange River, with a barrier of native states set
up for the purpose on the east and west; and which now threatened to
involve it in a quarrel which naturally arose between Moshesh, the
Basuto chief, and the emigrants whom he had been appointed to restrain.
Pretorius retired across the Vaal where he joined Potgieter, who, after
the failure of his attack on Dingaan in 1838, had gone into
Moselekatse's country and had driven him beyond the Limpopo. A Republic
was set up beyond the Vaal which the British Government recognized as
independent in the Zand River Convention of 1852.
Such is in brief the story of the Boers' claim to Natal. They considered
it to be their lawful heritage out of which they had been jockeyed, and
in October, 1899, they seemed to have a chance of recovering it. They
boasted that they would not only win back Pietermaritzburg, which was
named after two leaders of the Great Trek, Pieter Retief and Gert
Maritz, but that they would establish themselves on the shores of the
Indian Ocean. It was not the vainglorious gasconade of a swashbuckler.
Four months after October 11, 1899, when the Boer ultimatum expired, the
British Army was still engaged in endeavouring to drive out the Boers
from British territory, and hardly a rifle had been discharged in the
enemy's country.
Napoleon was in the habit of impressing upon his officers the necessity
of studying past campaigns, both modern and ancient; but those who
anticipated confidently that the Boer War would soon be brought to a
successful close by the British Army were led into their error by the
history of past campaigns. There was, however, one campaign, the War of
Independence in North America, which the discerning might have
recognized as an analogous struggle; but it was overlooked, and the
history of the great European conflicts was established as the leading
authority. The occupation of the populous places and the control of the
means of access to them, which seemed to present few difficulties, meant
the end of the war and the subsequent negotiations as to the amount of
the indemnity or other penalty to be paid by the defeated.
But not only were the necessary preliminary successes deferred far
beyond the expected time of their accomplishment--Bloemfontein was not
occupied until five months, nor Pretoria until eight months had rolled
by since that October dawn when the Boers crossed the frontier into
Natal--but the prospect of the end of the War soon began to recede into
the perspective of infinity: and even now, after an interval of some
years since the peace of Vereeniging, when, like the proportions of some
huge edifice which can be truly comprehended only by the observer who
views it from a distance, the various incidents and phases of the War
begin to assume their relative importance, the difficulty of discovering
some guiding principle which shall reconcile the Great Boer War with
other wars is as great as ever.
Sometimes a cause can be found _a posteriori_ by groping in the dim and
deceptive light cast by an effect: or a process of exhaustion and
elimination may be set up in which the qualities common to each side are
cancelled and the result attributed to the credit balance which will
appear under one of the accounts. We saw for some months a gallant and
well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently
endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an
aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc
drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500
miles from Ladysmith in Northern Natal through Stormberg and Colesberg
to Kimberley and Mafeking; and at each extremity of the arc was a
besieged city. Was the military art as taught in Europe founded upon
error, or had the British Army been negligently instructed in it?
Yet no European troops had had so much recent experience of active
service. We had lately fought in the Soudan, in East and West Africa, in
Burmah and on the North-West frontier of India; there was in fact hardly
a year in the preceding decade in which the portals of the temple of a
British Janus would have been closed. Moreover, our fighting had not
been against trained soldiers, but against enemies who like the Boers
were undisciplined, collectively if not individually brave men
patriotically defending their own country. We therefore entered the
arena with experience which no other European Army possessed.
II. PATRIOTISM, DUTY, AND DISCIPLINE.
Many hard things have been said of Patriotism.[6] Dr. Johnson's
definition is well known, and more recently it has been styled the
sublimest form of Selfishness. These, however, are not definitions but
rather criticisms of certain phases of Patriotism, which is closely
allied to Family Affection and, like that sentiment, originates in the
helplessness and the egotism of the Individual.
The weak infant clings to his mother for sustenance, comfort and
protection, and the tender care which is bestowed upon him while his
body and his mind are developing fosters the notion of the subjective
importance of the human unit. Human nature is so constituted that the
Individual is disposed to over-estimate his own consequence and to
regard his own surroundings as superior to the surroundings of all other
persons, and therefore more worthy of recognition, encouragement, and
admiration. As the Child grows in years this sentiment is gradually and
unconsciously modified, but it is never wholly eradicated. The inward
emotion aroused in his heart by parental solicitude becomes partially
altruistic and outward and is transmuted into Gratitude and Love.
The Child emerges into Youth and thence into Manhood, and the area of
his immediate environment is enlarged. He needs further succour and
assistance, and the Family Community to which he belongs and which
nurtured and watched over his early years can no longer supply his
requirements. He is in want of new fellowships and must strengthen
himself by joining various bodies and associations. With these he
incorporates himself more or less and his friendly attitude towards them
for his own good is a development of the primitive Family Affection. In
the case of a class, a social, or professional community the sentiment
is termed _Esprit de Corps_;[7] in view of recognized civil institutions
by which he perceives that he benefits, it is Loyalty; while with
respect to the Fatherland it is Patriotism, which denotes the adherence
of the helpless individual Ego to the Supreme Community. Patriotism,
like Family Affection, is a growth and culture of the idea of Self. It
is the expression of the Individual's thanks for the support,
countenance, protection, and other moral and material advantages claimed
by him from the Supreme Community, to which in return he readily attorns
with respect and admiration. He is, however, patriotic because with
unconscious egotism he regards his Country as part of himself rather
than himself as part of his Country. Even the act of a man who
sacrifices his life for the good of his country may not be wholly
unselfish, for some natures are so constituted that they can discount
the future and be gratified by the prospective award of posthumous
honour. There can, however, be no doubt that Patriotism, though possibly
of not very noble origin, is a sentiment beneficial both to the
community and the individual, and is therefore worthy of encouragement.
Happily, those cold heights of philosophy on which every man is loved as
a brother and every nationality held in equal honour and esteem are
unattainable by human nature; for without the stimulus of Patriotism
National Life would be impracticable.[8] It's chief defect is that like
most of the emotions it is sometimes hasty and unreasoning.
Such, it is believed, is briefly the history of Patriotism, and the
theory is supported by the fact that the British soldier is not
patriotic by nature. It is not his fault. The class from which he is
usually drawn has unhappily less reason for respecting and admiring the
Supreme Community than any other class, for it participates fully in the
distresses and meagerly in the successes and good fortune of the Nation,
from which, though not actually unpatriotic, it stands sullenly aloof.
It can hardly be denied that the power and prosperity of Great Britain
have favourably affected the position of the upper and middle classes to
a greater degree than they have ameliorated the condition of the lower
classes, and it is therefore not surprising that the latter seem to take
little or no pride in their nationality, and sometimes even act
perversely in opposition to its interests.
The private soldier has never been taught to think about his country.
The education which he may have received at the Board School is not
calculated to arouse in him a feeling of national pride which is
non-existent in his home life. The display of the National Flag, which
flutters over so many distant lands, is discouraged in the primary
schools of Great Britain as tending to "flag-worship." In the United
States, on the other hand, the Stars and Stripes are hoisted in every
school yard. No systematic effort is made to interest the children of
the operative classes in Greater Britain. India and the Colonies are
facts in geography troublesome to learn and easy to forget. The history
of the British Empire is sterilized before it is imparted to them. They
are not taught to realize that the happiness and prosperity of a large
proportion of the inhabitants of the world are dependent upon the moods
of the population of a small group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and
that in the ballot-boxes of Great Britain are cast the fortunes of many
millions of their fellow-creatures.
Foreigners have remarked that the minstrelsy of Great Britain is
singularly devoid of patriotic songs. The British soldier has no
"Star-Spangled Banner" or "Wacht am Rhein" to sing on the line of march
or in the bivouac, but only the last comic or sentimental ditty which he
may have heard at the Garrison Music Hall before embarking on active
service. The National Anthem is not a patriotic song but a prayer for
Divine Protection for the Sovereign, to which have been appended some
inappropriate stanzas now rarely heard; while "Rule, Britannia!" might
have been composed for the gasconading swashbuckler of an extravaganza.
It would therefore be surprising if the recruit joined the Army with a
highly pitched conception of the work he has undertaken. Destitution; or
trouble about a woman, or with his own people, or with the police; or
the mysterious magnetism of an adventurous life rather than the desire
to serve his country, has induced him to enlist. An existing or
prospective War always keeps the recruiting sergeant busy, but the
object of a War is a matter of indifference to the recruit. Most of our
wars have been waged for political reasons which he cannot understand.
Apart from the difficulties of language and of unaccustomed
environments, he would as readily serve in any other Army in which the
pay was as liberal and the restraint of discipline not more irksome. How
is it, then, that lacking the stimulus of Patriotism through no fault of
his own and being, in fact, a mercenary, he becomes an excellent
soldier; perhaps, next to the Turk, the best in Europe?
The answer seems to be that he soon acquires a high sense of Duty. Duty
may be defined as the necessity to do something for one's own or for the
general good which is not naturally pleasurable or agreeable or
instinctively desired. In the trite proverb it is contrasted with and
takes precedence of Pleasure. As a motive for action it stands on a
higher plane than Patriotism.
The alchemic process by which the indifferent, unemotional, and
sometimes unintelligent recruit is transmuted into the precious metal of
the soldier who wins battles seems to be somewhat as follows: Of his own
volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy
will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may
arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He
offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own
way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard
the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes
a stolid dependable unit of the Army. He is not carried away by success
nor unduly depressed by failure. His instincts tell him that they are
the accidents of Duty.
It has been noticed that the word Glory and its derivatives[9] rarely
appear in the accounts of the action of the British Army on service,
except in a War Correspondent's letter or telegram. No reference is made
in reports, orders or despatches to the so-called "glorious" incidents
of a soldier's life in time of war. He is commended for his endurance,
his tenacity and his matter-of-fact acceptance of the vicissitudes of
war as "part of the day's work." The truest Glory is the conscientious
performance of Duty.
If through the incompetence or neglect of his leaders he is called upon
to sacrifice himself, he sacrifices himself without a murmur. If he is
compelled to keep himself alive on scanty rations of horseflesh and to
wet his parched lips with the trickle of a dwindled and tainted spruit,
he believes that his officers have done their best for him. He is
ordered to fall in upon the deck of a burning troopship and to stand at
attention while Death inspects the ranks. He is besieged in a hill fort
on the Indian frontier by a horde of fanatics eager to kill or to
mutilate him. He lies wounded on the field of battle from which, after
an indecisive engagement, each combatant has retired; and there,
scorched by the mid-day sun and starved by the cold of the night, and
perhaps also in danger of being burnt alive by a veld fire, he waits
without water for the armistice which shall bring up the ambulances. He
returns to his own land where he soon finds that he is not of much
account. After a great war there may be a period of evanescent
patronage; or a deed of Dargai, Rorke's Drift, or Balaklava may have
temporarily thrilled the audience into Music Hall enthusiasm; but he is
not greatly impressed, and stoically reflects that like the battle, the
starvation, and the Field Hospital it is "all in the day's work" and
will soon pass away.
There has probably never been a struggle in which the private soldier
more fully earned the gratitude of his country than in the South African
War. The most unfriendly critics in the foreign staff offices have paid
tribute to the excellence of the British soldier: sometimes, however,
sneering at him as a mercenary, whom, by a curious perversion of the
probabilities, they profess to think unlikely to be as efficient as
their own conscripts who are forced into military service; but they
never hold him responsible for the ill-success of the war. Throughout
their criticisms there lurks a feeling of pained astonishment that the
British "mercenary" proves himself to be as good or even a better
soldier than the continental conscript, coupled with a comfortable
conviction that Discipline is not well maintained in the British Army.
The final cause of Discipline is the efficient use of arms on the field
of battle. Discipline is the result of an irksome educational process by
which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a
great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his
inferior morally, mentally, and physically. It has also been cynically
defined as the art of making a man more afraid of his own officers than
of the enemy. Its function seems to be the formation of certain military
qualities which Patriotism and the Sense of Duty are by themselves
believed incapable of creating. It has always been considered an
essential part of a soldier's training; but this view, though probably
correct, is not confirmed by the South African War, in which an
undisciplined force held its own for some years against greatly superior
numbers of disciplined men.
The ideal Army, patriotic, full of the sense of Duty, and perfect in
discipline, would be invincible; but such an Army has never yet been
seen. A deficiency of one or two of these qualities may be made up for
by a fuller measure of the others. The history of each war will seem to
indicate for a time the proportions in which the qualities should be
blended, which is the essential, and whether any one of them can be
omitted; but the inferences thus drawn from one war will probably be
found misleading in the next war.
The inference to be drawn from the South African War seems to be that
the value of those military qualities which are created by Discipline
and training has been over-rated, and that a passionate bigoted belief
in the justice of a cause is a more potent factor in the making of a
soldier. Even if every allowance be made for the strategical advantages
possessed by the Boers, of fighting in their own land on interior lines
in a sparsely populated country peculiarly adopted for _guerilla_, it is
difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the
efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be
that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and
dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It
certainly was overlooked in South Africa; for the war which Lord Roberts
in October, 1900, believed was practically at an end had in fact then
run little more than one-third of its course.
III. WAR CONSIDERED AS A BRANCH OF SPORT
The astonishment, distress, chagrin and bewilderment caused by want of
success, "regrettable incidents," and disasters, sometimes found
consolation during the South African War in the foolish remark--The
Germans would have done no better. What the German Army, which had not
been actively employed for twenty-eight years, might have accomplished
under the same conditions is a matter for sterile speculation which has
little bearing on the case. But the German Army certainly had not been
accustomed to look upon War as a branch of Sport or Athletics.
Owing in all probability to the happy fact in History that England has
not been invaded and over-run by a foreign army since the time of
William the Conqueror--an episode which had in the end an excellent
influence on the national life--she has never taken the military art
seriously. She alone, thanks to the protection of Providence, has never
been compelled to fight on her own fields for her existence as a nation;
she alone knows nothing even by tradition handed down from distant
generations of the appearance of an alien soldier on her shores.[10]
Some of her wars, as for example the successful struggle by which the
Napoleonic domination was broken up, have been fought for the purpose of
safe-guarding her independence, but they were not popular with the
people at large, whose short sight did not permit them to see that a
defensive war may have to be fought beyond the seas; and they had little
or no effect in evoking a patriotic military spirit. Napoleon's gibe
that the English were a nation of shopkeepers was not unasked for, and
is still seasonable.
On the other hand there are hundreds of thousands of persons on the
Continent of Europe who have seen, or who are the near descendants of
those who have seen, their fatherland ravaged; their homes destroyed;
their relations, friends, and neighbours slaughtered in the defence; the
tree of the national life maimed; and the full cup of the horrors of war
drained to its dregs.
To them the prospect of an invasion is not a remote contingency to be
considered and provided for at leisure after academical discussion, but
a real and instant danger from which only universal service, to which
fortunately for themselves they submit without much demur, as it could
not be enforced upon a reluctant community, can preserve them.
The possibility of invasion is the dominant anxiety of the land-frontier
nations.[11] Across the frontier they can see the conscripts drilling
who almost at a moment's notice may be marching in to attack them. Their
armies are not sent on interesting little expeditions to restrain a
too-militant tribe of hill-men or to patrol the distant marches of a
magnificent Empire, but must stand at attention generation after
generation, year after year, maintaining the featureless routine of
military life. None of the Romance of War that falls to the lot of the
British soldier--the service among strange Easterns in Asia, the
building up of a new imperial province in South Africa, the constant
change of scene along the posts which form a girdle round the world from
Hongkong to Jamaica--falls also to the lot of the continental conscript,
for whom there is only the dull waiting for the critical moment.
The land-frontier nations alone are aware of the reality of the Terror
of War; it is a Thing overshadowing and, apart from every other thing in
their world, which must not, cannot be expelled from their thoughts. The
objects that meet the eye on all sides speak of War; the railway
vehicles marked with the number of men and horses conveyable, the noble
war memorials, the officers constantly in uniform, the crowds of
soldiers in the streets, the military bearing and precision of even the
civilian servants of the State; while upon the ears falls the sound,
which is in most cases a lingering echo of the roar of war, of alien
tongues spoken within the frontier, or of the tongue of the Fatherland
spoken in exile without it.
On the other hand, Peace is believed to be permanently settled upon the
shore of the silver streak which encloses the British Isles. The war
monuments are scanty and not a few of them are grotesque; the soldier
and his work are thrust into the background, and his uniform is so often
a hindrance to him that on certain occasions he is permitted to appear
in plain clothes, that is to disguise himself as a civilian; and this
concession is officially termed a "privilege." The red tunic of the
soldier, like the red rays of the spectrum which cannot be brought into
focus with the other colours, fails to make a sharp impression upon the
British retina, but projects an ill-defined image seen through a medium
of doubt and indifference.
The nation looks upon the Army much as the individual looks upon the
Policeman, as a necessary institution, but one rather to be avoided and
kept in its place when its services are not actually in requisition.
Little interest is taken in its difficulties, its merits, and its
opportunities. It is regarded not as an indispensable protection, but
rather as an expensive result of possessions in all parts of the world,
and when the peace of these is in danger of being broken, the cry too
often belated goes up: Send for the Soldiers. Probably nothing less than
an actual landing of foreign troops or the scare of it so tremendous as
to drive the nation into the opposite and equally dangerous extreme of
consternation and panic will be necessary to shake its belief, that the
white cliffs of Albion are immune to an invasion in force.
The nightmare of Militarism by which so many worthy persons are
fanatically obsessed obscures the dangers against which Militarism is an
insurance. Now Militarism is not in itself a desirable thing, and the
developments and accidents of it upon the Continent of Europe are often
not only irksome and absurd but also irreconcilable with the existence
of a healthy feeling of self-respect in the non-military sections of the
community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but
with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical
strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human
nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the
devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its
merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the
Labour and Socialist movements.
The shy and distant bearing of the British nation and its persistent
refusal to regard the Army as part of itself, in conjunction with the
growing national passion for Sport and Athletics, fostered the idea that
War itself must be a branch of them. From time immemorial the military
had been eyed with suspicion by the country, which professed to believe
that its liberties were in greater danger from its own soldiers than
from the soldiers of a foreign power, and which for a long time withheld
from its rulers the right of having a standing army. Gradually and with
great reluctance it was convinced of the necessity of a permanent force,
not so much for home defence as for the performance of the police duties
of an Empire. As the Empire grew year by year, these duties became more
onerous and responsible, but the Army itself was not taken seriously. It
was confessedly too weak to engage in a European campaign, and the Navy
was considered to be sufficient to protect the country against invasion.
The duties of the Army abroad were generally interesting and exciting
but they did not call for the exercise of the military art with great
precision, as the opponents which it was called upon to face were rarely
experts, and there was a comfortable belief that the bravery and
endurance of the British soldier would outweigh deficiencies in other
military qualities.[12]
The War-as-a-Sport idea was also encouraged by the opinion still stoutly
held by many persons that a good sportsman is necessarily a good
soldier, and that the qualities which ensure success in Athletics or
Sport make also for success in War: but this is true of certain of them
only. In so far as Athletics and Sport tend to manliness, self-reliance,
good comradeship, endurance of bodily hardship, and contempt of danger,
they are no doubt an excellent preparatory school for War. But there is
one quality without the possession of which no man is held to be a good
sportsman, and that is the acceptance of defeat or non-success with
equanimity and good-humour as "part of the game." Without this quality
Athletics and Sport would, in fact, become impossible.
In the soldier, however, this temperament is a dangerous gift. It led to
reverses, captures, loss of convoys and other "regrettable incidents"
being regarded with stoical composure as "part of the game"; and the
victims were condoled with on their "shocking bad luck." It would have
been difficult to discern from the bearing and demeanour of the typical
officer whether he was at the moment a prisoner of war in the Model
School at Pretoria, or had just taken part in the magnificent cavalry
charge by which Kimberley was relieved. The former plight did not
greatly depress him, nor did the latter phase of military life greatly
elate him. It is probable that the War would have been brought to a
successful close at a much earlier date if throughout the British Army
and especially among the officers hearty disgust and indignation at the
failures of the first few months had taken the place of a light-hearted
accommodation to circumstances. The companions of Ulysses may
With a frolic welcome take
The thunder and the sunshine,
but it is not War.
The British officer played at war in South Africa much in the same way
that he hunted or played cricket or polo at home. He enjoyed the sport
and the game, did his best for his own side, and rejoiced if he was
successful, but was not greatly disturbed when he lost. A dictum
attributed to the Duke of Wellington says that the Battle of Waterloo
was won upon the Playing Fields at Eton. It would not be so very far
from the truth to say that the guns at Sannah's Post were captured on
the polo-ground at Hurlingham; that Magersfontein was lost at Lord's;
that Spionkop was evacuated at Sandown; and that the war lingered on for
thirty-two months in the Quorn and Pytchley coverts.
The sporting view of War was recognized and confirmed in Army Orders and
official reports, in which the words "bag," "drive," "stop," and some
other sporting terms not infrequently appeared. No one would reasonably
object to the judicious and illuminating use of metaphor, but there are
metaphors which impair the dignity of a cause and degrade it in the eyes
of those whose duty is to maintain that cause. When the advance of a
British Division at a critical period in the operations is frivolously
termed a "drive," and when the men extended at ten paces' interval over
a wide front are called "beaters," it is natural that the leaders should
look upon their work as analogous to the duties of a gamekeeper; and
when an artillery officer is instructed to "pitch his shells well up,"
he is encouraged to regard failure as no worse than the loss of a
cricket-match.
It was at least to be expected that in the use, care, and management of
horses upon which the success of a campaign, in which mounted men formed
an unusually large proportion of the troops engaged, so much depended,
the sporting instincts of the British officer would have made him
particularly efficient; yet the evidence given by General officers
before the Royal Commission showed that it was otherwise. They are
practically unanimous in the opinion that all branches of the mounted
troops were inefficient, except the artillery, whose work so far as
horses are concerned is akin to that of the skilful but unsporting farm
teamster or wagoner.
A nation greatly addicted to Sport, Games, and Athletics is a nation
lacking in that earnestness of moral purpose which should be its chief
strength for War. Amusements are regarded not as "recreation" or means
of refreshing and re-invigorating the mind and body for the duties of
life by a temporary change of occupation, but as the main objective of
existence.
A retrospect into history will show that the most efficient armies were
those in which the sporting instinct was non-existent. The armies which
in modern times have most satisfactorily performed the duties for which
armies are raised were those of Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon, Moltke, and
Oyama. Each of these was the most perfect military instrument of its
day, and their exploits have never been surpassed. Yet neither the
Swedes, the French, the Germans, nor the Japanese were addicted to
Athletics or Sport. Their manly instincts were exercised, to the great
advantage of their countries, in skill at arms and in the Military
Art.[13]
The cult of Sport and Athletics sets up false ideals and lowers the
intellectual standard. Thousands of loafers, idlers, and work skirkers
live upon the anticipations or recollections of out-door sports when not
actually present at them, and are ready to spend their last shilling at
the turnstile of the ground on which a handful of football gladiators
are at play: and are more exasperated by the defeat of the team which
they patronise in a Cup Tie match than they would be by the loss of a
battle by the British Army. There is this to be said for the working
classes, that in youth, if not longer, they in general endure a hard and
strenuous life, and at least in their school years they cannot indulge a
passion for amusement; whereas the class from which the officers of the
British Army are drawn is encouraged on the other hand to indulge it
from childhood. Owing to the prominence given in the Public Schools and
Universities to games and athletics and to the esteem in which
proficiency in these is held, youths of the upper middle and upper
classes are dumped upon the world not humbly but arrogantly ignorant of
almost everything necessary to qualify them to take their proper place
in the community. They have subsisted in a rarefied intellectual
atmosphere, and to fit themselves for any profession for which they may
have an inclination they have to be forced or "crammed" in a saturated
atmosphere by which they are congested. The result is that "young
officers now join the service with a very fair idea of cricket and
football, bridge, and even motor-driving; but with no education in
patriotism; no real acquaintance with the history or geography of their
own or other countries; unable to write English concisely, or even
grammatically;[14] unaccustomed to read general information for
themselves other than under the headings of the _Daily Mail_; unable to
talk a foreign language; and with no knowledge of the sciences which are
of military use."[15] To this may be added the fact that these young
dullards, the supply of whom is dwindling, are, on joining the service,
encouraged and accepted rather with reference to their sporting and
social qualities than to their military capacity.
England, as a sporting, athletic, and game-loving nation, has of late
years suffered many rebuffs. By the United States she has been taught
the scientific method of riding racehorses, and also of sailing yachts;
she has been defeated in polo by a Transatlantic team; her selected
representative horsemen are unsuccessful in the International Military
Tournaments; she cannot defeat Australia on the cricket field; a Belgian
crew holds its own at Henley. If these rebuffs tend to abate the mania
for watching the performances of a handsome but not particularly
intelligent quadruped, and for studying the various methods of imparting
motion to a Ball and to show the vanity of the passion for sports and
games when indulged to excess, they will have served their purpose. The
nation, disgusted at its want of success in its favourite pursuits, may
perhaps turn its manhood to the noblest pursuit of all, the defence of
the Fatherland; and then it will not be the betting and football news
that has to be blacked out of the daily papers in the free libraries,
but the bi-weekly military gazettes, the reports from the military
stations and the Special Correspondents' letters from Salisbury Plain
during the manoeuvres.
Notes:
[Footnote 2: In justice to the War Office it should be stated that this
was inserted at the instance of Sir Redvers Buller, who believed that he
would be able to raise in South Africa a sufficient force of mounted
troops.]
[Footnote 3: B. Viljoen in his "Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War"
frequently complains of the insubordination, the malingering, and the
cowardice of his followers, and of the incompetence of his superior
officers.]
[Footnote 4: "Kaffir" is an Arabic word meaning one who does not believe
in the religion of Mahomet. It was introduced into South Africa by the
Portuguese and subsequently applied to the tribes living on the N.E. of
the Cape Colony.]
[Footnote 5: Zilikat's Nek in the Magaliesberg is named after him.]
[Footnote 6: In its crudest and least admirable form Patriotism may be
expressed in the terms of an equation--
One Englishman=Two Aliens.]
[Footnote 7: _Esprit de Corps_ in the British Army is the predilection
of the individual for the unit in which he is serving. It creates a
healthy rivalry which, on the whole, makes for efficiency; but its
effects are sometimes unfortunate. A distinguished regiment was accused
of misbehaviour in one of the battles of the advance on Bloemfontein.
The charge was unfounded, but some of its hasty partisans, with the idea
of removing the reproach as far as possible from Self and forgetful that
the honour of the British Army is not contained in water-tight
compartments, endeavoured to transfer the imputation to another regiment
in the same brigade.]
[Footnote 8: The citizens of a Republic are usually more patriotic than
the subjects of a Monarchy. This may be accounted for by the fact that a
Republic is usually a new nation or a nation that has made a fresh start
and has not had time to get tired of itself.]
[Footnote 9: Lord Roberts once used the word "glorious."]
[Footnote 10: Except the French raid at Fishguard in 1797.]
[Footnote 11: The Franco-German War cost France £600,000,000 exclusive
of the loss from suspension of business and commerce.]
[Footnote 12: The attaché of a Great Power noticed in the South African
War an aversion to the tedious duties of outposts and reconnaissance,
and he remarks that "it is often openly stated by British officers that
it is better to get now and then into a really tight place by the
neglect of these duties than to have to endure the constant irksomeness
which they entail."]
[Footnote 13: Apart from the question of the relative importance of the
two services, it can hardly be denied that the British Naval Officer is
an asset more valuable to his country than his brother in the Army. The
social side of his character may be more rugged and less acceptable, but
as a rule he has had neither the time nor the inclination to fritter
away his manhood in sporting pursuits which do not make for proficiency
in his profession, and he therefore excels in it; in spite of trying
conditions which do not exist in any other calling, for with some
rhetorical exaggeration it may be said that in the lower ranks he is an
abject slave, in the higher an irresponsible despot.]
[Footnote 14: To the various courses, ranging from Balloons to
Economics, which are open to British Officers, might be added a course
in English Grammar and Composition, for the instruction of staff
officers and others who may have to formulate battle orders and despatch
important telegrams on active service. The art of composing a clear,
terse, and unambiguous order or telegraphic message is not studied in
the Army. Not a few telegrams of vital importance in the South African
War were composed by impressionist staff officers who lightly assumed
that what was present in their own minds must necessarily also be
present in the mind of the recipient. The author particularly remembers
a certain telegram from a staff officer of a column, in which it was
impossible to discover from the context whether the word "they" in the
concluding paragraph referred to British Columns or to Boer Commandos
previously mentioned.]
[Footnote 15: Major-General Baden-Powell, in _Cavalry Journal_, April.]