The Recurrences of De Wet
[Sidenote: Map, p. 292.]
In October, 1900, De Wet, with 1,000 men, again crossed into the
Transvaal at Schoeman's Drift. His movement, which was preceded by
constant raids on the railway throughout September, was not altogether
voluntary, but was rather a withdrawal from columns pressing on him in
the Free State.[52] Barton, who with the Fusilier Brigade had been sent
down by Lord Roberts to meet him, took up a position at Fredrikstad,
where he was surrounded by De Wet and Liebenberg on October 24. The
situation was now so serious that Lord Roberts ordered a brigade under
Knox to come up to Barton's assistance from the Free State, but it was
not required, as the arrival of a column from the north broke the
cordon, and De Wet returned to the Free State.
The new De Wet hunt was soon in cry. When Knox was set on the trail, he
was in the Free State and De Wet was in the Transvaal. Two days later
the positions were reversed, for they had crossed the river in opposite
directions. The situation now developed itself favourably for De Wet's
methods. For a purely military operation he had never shown much
aptitude. He had failed against Barton at Fredrikstad, but he was not
discouraged by the repulse, which he unjustly attributed to want of
co-operation on the part of Liebenberg. He had put the Vaal between
himself and Knox, who was on the right bank blindly nosing the drifts.
He knew from recent experience that his pursuers, with their imperfect
methods of acquiring information, would hunt by sight and not by scent,
and he had the mobility of a hare as well as the instinct of a fox. He
lay _perdu_ for some days near the left bank of the Vaal, while a net
with spacious meshes was being cast to ensnare him. Again he crossed and
re-crossed the river in order to bring Steyn away from Ventersdorp, whom
two months previously he had conducted into the Transvaal, and who had
in the meantime worked round the British Army to Machadodorp and back;
and who after conferences with Kruger and L. Botha, now returned with
him unscathed into their own land with schemes for the future.
[Sidenote: Map, p. 260.]
Pom-pom batteries and mounted infantry, the latest fashions of war, were
sent after him by Knox. On November 6 he was surprised in laager near
Bothaville, but escaped with Steyn and the greater portion of his
command on the first alarm. The gallant Le Gallais was killed and the
laager itself captured after a stout resistance some hours later, and
with it all De Wet's field guns, wagons, a considerable quantity of
ammunition and horse equipment, and more than 100 prisoners of war.
Most men would have succumbed to the disaster, but it only spurred De
Wet. He had signally failed in his late attempt on the Transvaal, and he
had just lost almost everything at Bothaville, but he resolved to make a
raid in the opposite direction on the northern districts of Cape Colony.
To reach his new objective, he must traverse the whole length of the
Free State, which, having been in the occupation of the British Army for
several months, should have offered the line of greatest resistance to
his movement.
The Brandwater Basin disaster of July 30 had, however, by no means
crushed Free State Boerdom, which, after having been heavily hurled to
the ground, where it lay for a time apparently unconscious, began to
show signs of returning animation, and in a few weeks was again on its
legs; thanks to the restoratives freely administered by De Wet on his
return from his first incursion into the Transvaal. Into each district
he sent irreconcilable men after his own heart to stimulate the wavering
and animate the discouraged; and barely a month elapsed before the
burghers were besieging Ladybrand, which, however, they failed to take,
and were hacking at the railway into the Transvaal. In October every
village in the S.W. district of the Orange River Colony in the
possession of a British garrison was attacked, all but one of them
without success.
Lord Roberts had already taken measures to curb the new activities. His
plan was to occupy certain places strongly as bases from which mobile
columns could constantly move to and fro, eating up the intervening
country and rendering it incapable of supporting the enemy. Its
operation was mainly confined to the northern districts of the Free
State, in which lay the centre of disturbance, and the troops engaged
could not be readily employed outside them. It was so far successful, in
that it drove De Wet into the Transvaal in October, but it failed to
restrain his subsequent movements. It probably was the best that could
have been devised for dealing with local _guerilla_, but its action
being centrifugal and not circumferential, it was powerless to deal with
a meteoric raid of well-mounted men. Although the British troops greatly
outnumbered the Boers, yet in practice only the mounted details, which
included no regular cavalry and were relatively weak, were directly
effective against the enemy, and the movements of the divagating columns
were sluggish.
When De Wet left Bothaville on November 6, his arm was, metaphorically
speaking, in a sling, and he was footsore; but ten days later he had
brought together in the Doornberg a force of 1,500 men, with whom he
proposed to cut his way into the Cape Colony. His movement south may be
compared to that of a small swift steamer endeavouring to escape from a
blockaded seaport. Ahead of him and on each beam were the slow-moving
vessels of the blockading squadron, most of them hull down and with
banked fires.
He made at once for the scene of his April successes, the country lying
between Bloemfontein and the Basuto border. The chief obstacles in his
way were a line of posts running eastwards from Bloemfontein, and the
town of Dewetsdorp, which was held by 500 British troops. The latter he
might have avoided had he chosen to do so, but he seems to have been
attracted to it because it was the home of his childhood, which it was
incumbent upon him to redeem from bondage.
The phenomenon of a Boer column marching through the heart of a country
supposed to be effectively in the possession of the British Army was
again witnessed. To borrow another metaphor, this time from Astronomy,
De Wet throughout the greater part of his career was a telescopic star,
invisible to the naked eye. General Officers and column commanders
helplessly watched his course through the telescopes of the Intelligence
Staff, and seemed to have as little power of influencing it as an
observer at Greenwich has of changing the orbit of a planet. The
astronomer can at least forecast with certainty the path which it will
follow in the heavens, but there were no observations available from
which the course of De Wet could be predicted for more than a few hours.
He seemed to defy the laws of gravitation.
On November 16, he easily rushed the Bloemfontein-Thabanchu line of
posts at Springhaan's Nek, and three days later invested Dewetsdorp.
Meanwhile the alarm had been given. Knox's force, which had been sent
after him into the Transvaal, was now sent after him to Bloemfontein,
and mobile columns were detailed. Dewetsdorp was doomed from the first
unless assistance arrived from outside. The position could not be held
effectively by a small force, One by one the scattered posts fell into
the hands of De Wet, but the defence was maintained until the 23rd, when
the white flag was hoisted. On the previous day two relieving columns
had started from Edenburg, but they were checked near Dewetsdorp on the
24th by De Wet, who shook himself free of them and was soon on his way
to the south with 500 prisoners of war; and Knox with a third relieving
column was marching from Edenburg.
Thus almost within sight of Sannah's Post and Mostert's Hoek and after
six months of apparently successful activity by the British Army, De Wet
snatched away another garrison. After a repulse at Fredrikstad, soon
followed by a severe mauling at Bothaville, from which he broke out as a
fugitive, he placidly and confidently trekked southwards unopposed for
150 miles, magnetically attracting to himself a force sufficient to blot
out Dewetsdorp in the presence of a bewildered enemy, who, though in
overwhelming numbers, was feebly strung out in lengths without breadth.
The British Army had still to learn, not only in the Free State, but
also elsewhere, the elemental fact in geometry that neither one straight
line nor two, nor under certain conditions even three, can enclose an
area.
It was evident that De Wet was making for the Cape Colony, the
disaffected northern districts of which were again giving cause for
anxiety, and which at all hazards he must be prevented from entering.
Lord Kitchener came down from the Transvaal to direct the operations;
the Brigade of Guards on its way to Capetown and home, was de-trained to
hold the line of the Orange; Knox's columns hurried forward. De Wet,
after a slight encounter with Knox, who was marching south, turned
adroitly to the west and did not resume the original direction of his
march until he had put a considerable distance between himself and the
columns, which were "running heel" and pursuing him almost in the
opposite direction. Near Bethulie he was reinforced by Hertzog and other
leaders, but by this time he had been headed by Knox at Bethulie and was
compelled to draw off eastwards into the angle between the Orange and
the Caledon. He left Hertzog with instructions to make his way across
the river west of Norval's Pont, intending to cross with his own force
higher up. He was, however, prevented by the forces of nature from
carrying out the raid which the British military forces would probably
have been unable to prohibit. Heavy rains had fallen in the Basuto
Mountains, and the sudden rise of the Caledon and the Orange to flood
level obliterated most of the drifts and entrapped him between them. He
made one dash for the Orange at Odendaal, but found the drift in the
possession of the enemy.
De Wet now saw that he was not destined to enter the Cape Colony on this
occasion, and that he would have much difficulty in saving himself. On
December 6 he determined to retreat by the way he came. He did not,
however, wholly abandon the scheme of a Cape Colony raid, for he
detached Kritzinger and Scheepers with instructions to hover and watch
their opportunity of breaking into it. The opportune falling of the
Caledon opened to him a postern towards the north, and on December 7 he
crossed the river and made for Helvetia, where again he was entangled.
The line of least resistance seemed to run westwards towards the
railway, and he put himself upon it, soon to find that Kitchener's
dispositions had obstructed it. He doubled back, and trailing Knox after
him in a night march, shook himself free. Knox, confident that the
Bloemfontein-Ladybrand line of posts would be an effectual barrier to De
Wet's retreat, had waited to pull his straggling columns together. De
Wet, reinforced by a commando under Michael Prinsloo, who had been with
him in his first Transvaal incursion when Steyn was put over the border,
rushed at the blockhouse line and again cut it at Springhaan's Nek, for
although it had been attended to recently, there was an aneurism in it
which yielded at the critical moment, and on December 14 De Wet passed
freely through the lesion. He arrived by way of Ficksburg at Tafelberg,
S.E. of Senekal, on December 25.
The failure of the raid was almost as disconcerting to the British plan
of campaign as its success would have been. It showed that the troops
were unable to prevent a mobile and well-led commando from traversing
the Free State from end to end; it put new spirit into the burghers, and
destroyed the hopes of peace which the operations of Lord Roberts in the
Transvaal had kindled. De Wet was still at large, and although he had
not accomplished all that he intended, he had good reason to be
satisfied, and was stimulated for fresh efforts. He could boast that he
was beaten not by columns but by two rivers in spate. His movements were
so little obstructed that after reaching the Senekal district he was
able to pay a flying visit to the railway at Roodeval, where he
recovered the Lee-Metford ammunition which he had buried in June, and
with which he hoped soon to have an opportunity of charging the rifles
captured at Dewetsdorp.
When De Wet, Hertzog, and Kritzinger parted company near the Orange
early in December, their tracks formed the letter Y inverted. De Wet
marched along the stem towards the N.E.; Kritzinger struck in the
direction of the midland districts of the Cape Colony; Hertzog made for
the west. Martial law was at last proclaimed in the Colony, the greater
part of which was, in spite of innumerable columns slipped at them,
traversed by Hertzog and Kritzinger. The former, after an adventurous
march of over 400 miles, reached Lambert's Bay on the shore of the
Atlantic, and gave to most of his men their first sight of the sea; and
to all of them a unique experience in the war, for they were shelled by
a British cruiser at anchor in the haven.[53]
While Hertzog was watching the setting of the sun upon an Atlantic
horizon, Kritzinger was at Willowmore, almost within sight of the Indian
Ocean, having in spite of all the columns pushed his way from Rouxville
down into the S.E. districts of the Cape Colony. Neither Kritzinger nor
Hertzog, however, effected much by their raids except to show in the
Colony what De Wet had already shown in the Transvaal and the Free
State, the impotence of even the best-laid schemes of pursuit, and they
returned towards the centre in February. De Wet and Hertzog had between
them in the course of a few months succeeded in ploughing, through the
heart of the country occupied by the British Army, a lonely furrow which
stretched from the northward slopes of the Magaliesberg in the Transvaal
through the Free State to a haven on the South Atlantic Ocean.
Meanwhile De Wet was waiting until the moment should come for him to
take part in the wide-reaching plan of campaign which had been devised
by the Boer Governments. They saw the uselessness of attempting to
withstand the British forces in the Republics, and they determined to
bring the war back into the Cape Colony and Natal. The general idea was
that L. Botha should march on Pietermaritzburg from the Eastern
Transvaal, while De Wet followed Hertzog and Kritzinger across the
Orange, and then, having effected a junction with them, should advance
on Capetown. The scheme was not so extravagant and quixotic as it might
appear to be, as recent events had shown the difficulty of restraining
the movements of a Boer leader of dash and enterprise; and there was no
reason why De Wet should not be as successful in eluding pursuit in the
future as he had been in the past.
Again the Doornberg, although within sight of the railway between
Bloemfontein and Kroonstad, was available as a meeting place. Here on
November 16, 1900, he had assembled his burghers for his first attempt
on the Cape Colony; and here on January 25, 1901, he brought them
together for his second. Steyn was with him, and all the available Free
State commandants with more than 2,000 men mustered on the mountain
unmolested. His intentions were not unknown to the British Intelligence
Staff, and when he quitted the rendezvous he had a column under B.
Hamilton on his right rear and a column under C. Knox on his left front.
The situation was not novel, and he dealt with it with his customary
good luck and success. He passed across Knox's front, who fortunately
for him had been ordered not to act before Hamilton came up, and reached
the Tabaksberg, between Winburg and Brandfort, next day. On the
following morning he shook off an attack made by a portion of Knox's
column, and went for the Bloemfontein Thabanchu line of posts, which he
had already twice cut. Hamilton, distanced in the chase, had been put on
the railway and sent to Bloemfontein to strengthen the line, but he
arrived too late to prevent De Wet crossing it on January 30 at Israel's
Poort. The sorely-tried pale had again failed.[54]
De Wet, having shaken off the columns which had been pursuing him from
the Doornberg, had now a free course of 100 miles to the next obstacle,
the Orange. It was evident that the speed of the columns must be
increased and Knox was put upon the railway for the first time and
Hamilton for the second and dispatched to Bethulie. The energy of a
considerable portion of the British Army was devoted to an attempt to
make the barrier of the Orange impassable.
North of the river was De Wet; south of it Hertzog and Kritzinger were
waiting for him. There was every reason to fear that should he succeed
in joining either of them, the smouldering embers of rebellion would
again break out in the Cape Colony. Troops were hurried by train from
the Transvaal, from Kimberley, and from Capetown. Lyttelton was brought
down from the Delagoa Bay line to Naauwpoort to take general charge of
the operations, and to build as rapidly as possible a wall that could
not be scaled or breached.
For some reason which is not apparent De Wet, although he had an open
country in front of him in which not a single British column was
operating, moved slowly, and thereby gave more time for the carrying out
of Lyttelton's arrangements. Possibly he may have been delayed by
trouble with his Free State commandos, some of which a few days later
refused to cross with him into the Colony. On January 31 he passed
through Dewetsdorp, gratified no doubt to find that since his capture of
it in November his enemies had not ventured to set foot again in it. At
that time he had not made up his mind whether to cross the Orange east
or west of Norval's Pont. If the former, he would soon be able to join
Kritzinger, who after the Willowmore raid had returned to the Zuurberg,
between Stormberg and Naauwpoort; if the latter, he would be able to
call up Hertzog, who had returned from the shores of the Atlantic and
was hovering in the Carnarvon district west of De Aar.
De Wet had from time to time to time been in communication with
Kritzinger and Hertzog during their raids. His advanced patrols soon
discovered that the section of the Orange lying eastward of Norval's
Pont was very strongly held. The dispositions of Lyttelton's troops seem
to have been made on the assumption that De Wet would endeavour to join
Kritzinger, who was little more than one day's march from the left bank,
rather than Hertzog, who was 150 miles away. The river section westward
of Norval's Pont was therefore held lightly by a line of outposts at the
drifts, thrown out from the main barrier based on Naauwpoort, nearly
forty miles south of the river. Of this De Wet was at the time unaware.
His information was that the eastward section was impassable. The
westward section might possibly not be so, and he determined to make for
it.
He spread a report that he intended to cross the river at Odendaalstroom
or Aliwal North, and paused to allow it time to reach the ears of Knox,
who seems to have given some credence to it. A column was sent out to
reconnoitre in the direction of Smithfield. When half-way between that
town and Dewetsdorp, De Wet suddenly changed direction and made for
Phillipolis, detaching a portion of his force under Froeneman, who on
February 5 captured and burnt a train a few miles south of Edenburg and
crossed the railway. On the following night, De Wet crossed it with the
main body near Springfontein, while Knox was hunting for him near
Bethulie.
It was now evident that De Wet's objective was the Zand Drift on the
Orange west of Phillipolis. He had had a long start, and the nearest
troops available for the pursuit of him were the columns of Knox and
Hamilton at Bethulie. Here the river bends round to the south, forming
an arc through Norval's Pont towards Zand Drift; and the columns
therefore crossed to the right bank and marched eighty miles along the
chord, only to find when they reached the Drift on February 12 that De
Wet had two days previously crossed by it into the Cape Colony.
The operations of the next sixteen days were confined to a comparatively
small rectangle of about 6,000 square miles lying on the left bank of
the Orange, which bounded it from Norval's Pont to Douglas and thence to
near Prieska. The S.E. side and half the S.W. side, namely from Norval's
Pont to Naauwpoort and thence to De Aar, were formed by the railways,
the remaining portion of the S.W. side being the river Brak, which flows
into the Orange a few miles above Prieska.
Owing to a sudden flood, which delayed Knox for two days, he was unable
to follow De Wet across Zand Drift, but Plumer started from Naauwpoort
with two columns, and on February 12 came in touch with De Wet and
compelled him to change his course. Two days later De Wet crossed the
railway between De Aar and Hopetown, after a rearguard action with
Plumer, into whose hands fell next morning the transport which De Wet
had been compelled by bad weather to leave behind him.
De Wet now proposed to fetch a compass towards Prieska, where he hoped
to effect a junction with Hertzog, but the driving power of the raid was
slowly exhausting itself. The motive energy was stored up in
accumulators, and when these were discharged in succession, there was no
means of re-charging them. Hertzog and Kritzinger, who had been relied
on for this purpose, were not at hand; more than a third of the force
with which De Wet had originally left the Doornberg had declined to
leave the Free State; and the transport had been lost.
Plumer also was exhausted and unable to continue the pursuit, but
fortunately Knox was close behind him. He doubled back towards Hopetown
for supplies, leaving Knox to follow the trail. De Wet was now driven
into the western corner of the rectangle where the Brak falls into the
Orange, and where he found himself in a dilemma similar to that which in
his first raid had cornered him between the Orange and the Caledon. The
Brak was in spate, and he could not cross it to Prieska. All hope of
joining Hertzog and of a successful raid into the Cape Colony was at an
end; there was nothing to be done but make the best of his way back to
the Free State. He reversed his course and made for the confluence of
the Orange and the Vaal. His change of direction was not known to Knox,
who, assuming that De Wet must have crossed the Brak, which fell as
suddenly as it had risen, threw his columns across it and trekked for
twenty miles towards the S.W. Hertzog was reported to be a day's march
higher up the Brak.
Up to this time the whole of the stress of the pursuit had fallen upon
Knox and Plumer. As soon as the news of De Wet's entry into the Cape
Colony reached Lord Kitchener, he hurried down from the Transvaal to De
Aar to superintend the casting of the nets. His first dispositions were
made with the object of preventing De Wet and Hertzog breaking away into
the districts lying west of the railway to Capetown, and an ingenious
and elaborate scheme of columns springing out from the line in
succession from the north, was arranged. It was not, however, put into
action, for Knox and Plumer had headed back De Wet, and for the time
being had prevented a junction between him and Hertzog. It was no longer
a case of a stern chase, but of the fencing in of a comparatively
limited area, into which more than a dozen columns were thrown, and
which by February 24 was reduced to the district bounded on three sides
by the railways and on the fourth by the Orange.
When on February 21 Plumer was able to resume the pursuit, Knox having
discovered his mistake was recrossing the Brak, and De Wet on the left
bank of the Orange was unsuccessfully searching for practicable drifts.
He succeeded, however, in transferring a few of his men to the right
bank in a boat at Makow's Drift, but was overtaken by Plumer before he
could complete the movement, and forced to hurry on towards Hopetown. In
the course of one week he had marched in the direction of almost every
point in the compass, and was now heading E.S.E.
When within fifteen miles of Hopetown he lost two guns, and on the same
day ran up against a new obstacle, a column under Paris, which had come
down from Kimberley and which had extended itself westward from
Hopetown. He succeeded in wriggling through the line without detection
during the night; while Paris, unaware of what had occurred and thinking
that De Wet was still in front of him, pushed on next morning and came
into action, not with De Wet, but with Plumer, who was pursuing De Wet
in the opposite direction. On February 24 De Wet crossed the railway
eastwards a few miles south of Orange River Station.
As soon as Hertzog in the Carnarvon district heard of the approach of De
Wet he trekked up towards the Brak to meet him, having first detached a
portion of his command under Brand to make a circuit through Britstown.
Brand was followed by B. Hamilton, who had been set on to his trail, but
regained touch with his leader on February 20, when the news came that
De Wet was in difficulties and that the raid must be abandoned.
Hertzog and Brand joined forces across the river and trekked to the
east, having thrown Plumer off the scent for a day. On February 25
Hertzog crossed the railway. Three Boer leaders were now groping for
each other in the Fog of War: De Wet, Hertzog, and Fourie, who had been
left behind to do what he could to extricate the transport which De Wet
had been compelled to abandon when he crossed the railway westwards on
February 16, and who had been lost sight of by the British columns. The
forces of gravitation are, however, irresistible, and as Hertzog and
Brand could not be long kept apart, so also De Wet, Hertzog, and Fourie
soon came together.
De Wet trekked along the left bank of the Orange for nearly sixty miles,
but found every drift impassable. On February 26 he reached Zand Drift.
A fortnight previously a sudden flood had checked his pursuers, now
another flood was checking his retreat from them at the same spot, and
he was hemmed in by a swollen river and a dozen active columns. Most men
would have yielded to the situation, but his tenacity of purpose never
faltered. Early on the morning of February 27 Hertzog, who had picked up
Fourie a few hours before, joined him.
After crossing the railway Hertzog made for Petrusville, where he heard
that De Wet had passed through the town on his way south, and followed
him. About twenty miles away on Hertzog's right flank a column under
Hickman was marching on Zand Drift, and had it not been suddenly
diverted northwards by orders from Lyttelton, it must have forestalled
him at the Drift, as it was working on interior lines. The change of
direction was made before Hertzog's presence in the vicinity became
known to Hickman, who on sighting a Boer column on February 26 again
changed direction to pursue it. A second column was soon descried, and
later in the day, about the time that De Wet reached the Drift, a
considerable Boer force was sighted. It was composed of the two columns
already seen under Hertzog and Brand, reinforced by Fourie, who had
emerged from the Fog. Hickman's pursuit failed to prevent the three
commandants joining De Wet at the Drift during the night.
The _disjecta membra_ of the raid were now assembled, but the task of
the British columns was, apparently, greatly facilitated. Instead of
having to chase evasive and elusive commandos now in this direction and
now in that, the leaders had but to pin De Wet down to the left bank of
the Orange at Zand Drift and to leave him to gaze longingly at the
further shore. Nothing could now save him but a sudden fall of the
swollen river. Before De Wet's arrival at Zand Drift Lyttelton had put
troops in motion, some of them from considerable distances, to enclose
the area, but of the columns detailed three only had come up. Hickman
was on the spot, Crabbe from Hopetown was in touch with him, and Byng,
who had been hurried up from Victoria West, was at hand. None of the
other columns were in position, owing mainly to delays on the railway.
Thus the only effective force for the capture of De Wet was the three
columns with Hickman, who was out of communication with Lyttelton.
The troops had been disposed with the object of driving De Wet back into
the Free State rather than of capturing him, and they were unable to
concentrate themselves upon him. Norval's Pont, from which the line of
the Orange might, perhaps, have been blocked in the direction of Zand
Drift, was unoccupied. On February 27 Hickman pushed De Wet away from
the Drift. Two columns were behind the Boer leader, but in front of him
was a weak and thinly extended force under Byng, which De Wet cut
through without difficulty, and next morning reached Botha's Drift. It
was fordable, and after eighteen days' absence he re-entered his own
country. He had not succeeded in raiding very far into the Cape Colony,
but he had baffled and outwitted the most strenuous military effort of
the war.
Plumer, who had been ordered round from Orange River Station to
Colesberg, arrived there too late. He was immediately sent on to
continue the pursuit in the Free State in co-operation with a column
under Bethune, which marched directly across the veld to Fauresmith.
Bethune was soon compelled to fall out, but Plumer held on for five days
more without, however, lessening the distance between him and his
quarry. On March 11, after a trek of more than 800 miles, De Wet, having
dismissed on his way up most of the commandos to their several
districts, entered Senekal with Steyn, and returned to within a few
miles of the Doornberg place of assembly which they had quitted
forty-four days before.
The lessons to be derived from the history of the three De Wet hunts are
mainly of a moral character, and have only an indirect bearing upon the
principles which guide the conduct of military operations in general. No
such episodes could ever occur in a European War. Yet the Power which
holds Hindustan cannot afford to forget them. Who can say that in the
not distant future, which all the signs of the times seem to show will
be marked by turbulence and disorder in India, a De Wet may not come
forth out of the thousands of Sikhs, Ghoorkas, Pathans and Rajputs who
have learnt the Art of War in the Native Army? The arena of the
struggle, with its long lines of communication, all its chief towns held
by British troops and its vast plains inhabited by a disaffected
population, would be strikingly similar to that on which the Boer War
was fought.
Notes:
[Footnote 52: De Wet says that he went at the request of Liebenberg, who
was in charge of the commandos operating between the Vaal and the
Magaliesberg, and who had previously been engaged in the Bechuanaland
rebellion.]
[Footnote 53: Twenty-three centuries previously, a Greek Army, after a
march of many weeks, reached the sea. The emotion of the men at the
sight has been thus described by their leader in a well-known passage
which Hertzog might well have in substance incorporated in his reports
to De Wet: "No sooner had the men in front caught sight of the sea than
a great cry arose, and Xenophon with the rearguard, catching the sound
of it, conjectured that another set of enemies must surely be attacking
the front. But as the shout became louder and nearer, and those who from
time to time came up began racing at the top of their speed towards the
shouters and the shouting continually recommenced with yet greater
volume as the numbers increased, Xenophon settled in his mind that
something extraordinary must have happened, and mounted his horse and
taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, galloped on. And presently they
could hear the soldiers shouting and passing on the joyful word [Greek:
Thalatta, Thalatta]"--_Anabasis_, IV, 7.]
[Footnote 54: De Wet ascribes his success to a feint which he made in
the direction of Springhaan's Nek, and which he asserts threw the
columns off the scent; but it is improbable that the feint had anything
to do with it. At the time of De Wet's crossing at Israel's Poort
Hamilton had only reached Sannah's Post, nor was Knox marching on the
Nek.]