is beginning to be visible that the British generals have been from the
beginning paralysed not, as anxious observers are always prone to
conclude, by any want of knowledge or energy, but by the nature of the
implement in their hands. They have to fight an enemy of unprecedented
mobility. The Boers are all horsemen and can ride from point to point
more than twice as fast as the British infantry can march; they live in
British territory by requisitions or loot, and therefore can limit their
transport train. But the British forces are restricted to a little more
than two miles an hour and to twelve or fifteen miles a day according to
the ground. There is everywhere a deficiency if not a complete lack of
transport, said to be due to the action of the Treasury during the
summer, and therefore every column is dependent for its food and
ammunition upon a line of railway, which a handful of Boers may at any
moment and at any point in its hundreds of miles temporarily interrupt.
These considerations should be kept in view not merely in reviewing the
conduct of the campaign and the work of the British generals, but above
all in the preparations now being pushed forward throughout the Empire.
The project of a Corps of Imperial Yeomanry is a step in the right
direction. If it is to contribute to success due importance must be
given in the selection of the men to straight shooting, without which
good riding can be of little use. Equally important, too, is the
selection of leaders. The home-trained officer, however good, must not
be exclusively relied upon. Every local war we have had, beginning with
the campaigns against the French in America which led to the Seven
Years' War, has proved the necessity of giving full scope to local
experience and local instincts. Old and new instances abound of the way
in which the neglect of the feelings of colonists and of their special
qualifications for special work rankles in breasts of a colonial
population. If, then, the new Yeomanry are to be of real service in
South Africa and to deserve the name Imperial a proportion of their
officers of all grades should be men of colonial birth and colonial
experience. The South African troops now at the front have done fine
service, and some of their officers might be promoted and transferred to
the new Yeomanry, their places being filled by promotions in the corps
which they leave. The preparation of transport ought not to lag behind
the despatch of reinforcements. At the earliest possible moment the
attempt should be made to send into the enemy's territory a great raid
of horsemen, on the model of the raids of the American Civil War. A body
of several thousand mounted men should march right through a part of the
Free State, living upon the country, consuming every scrap of food, and
clearing out every farm of all its provisions. If that operation can be
repeated two or three times a belt of country will be left across which
the Boers without transport will not be able to move, while the British,
properly equipped, will not be delayed by its exhaustion.
The plan adopted by the authorities for raising a volunteer contingent
is more significant for the future of the National defences than has yet
been realised. Each volunteer battalion is to supply a company to its
line battalion in the field and to keep a second company ready at home
in reserve. Thus the volunteer force is to be used by being absorbed
into the Army. That leads inevitably to the amalgamation of the
volunteers with the regular Army, and is a death-blow to the specific
character of each of them. It means that henceforth the British Army,
like other armies, will be homogeneous, containing no other categories
than men with the colours and men in reserves, classified according to
the immediacy of their liability to be called up. The volunteer
commanding officer disappears, and with him the volunteer officer as
such. For now that it is known that the Government will employ
non-professional officers only as company officers under professional
field officers, no one will take a volunteer commission with the idea of
serving for many years from subaltern to commanding officer. What has
hitherto been the volunteer force will therefore become a force
administered by professional paid officers. It will cost more, and it
will become a branch of the Army. In short, the Government has
unwittingly taken a step of which the inevitable consequence is
conscription.
But from this follows another change, equally unsuspected by the
Ministry. The day that the Nation discovers, as it is now beginning to
discover, that war makes its claims on every man and on every household,
there will be no more toleration of the unskilled management that is
inseparable from the practice of choosing a. Secretary of State for War
for his ignorance of the subject. The British Nation is at length
opening its eyes to the truth that war is a serious matter, and that the
neglect of it in peace is costly in blood and perilous to the body
politic. When its eyes are wide open it will insist on putting knowledge
in power over the Army and the Navy. Thus is coming about, to the
infinite benefit of the community, the overthrow of that noxious sham,
the party politician.
Late in the day, when the position has become what it is, the
Government has thought of the elementary principle that if you want to
carry on a war you should begin by finding a commander in whom you have
confidence. Accordingly at the eleventh hour Ministers have remembered
that the Nation trusts Lord Roberts. This is proof positive that the
Government was not in earnest before the late reverses, for had they
been serious they would have appointed Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener
at the outset. The precedent is useful by what it suggests; for, if
during a war you can strengthen the military direction by giving the
authority to the man recognised as the most competent, you may also
strengthen the political direction by a similar procedure. The Cabinet
has thus, perhaps without suspicion of what it was doing, set before the
Nation the true problem: "Wanted, a Ministry competent in the management
of war."
THE NATION'S BUSINESS
_December 28th_, 1899
War is the Nation's business and, when it comes, the most important part
of the Nation's business. A Nation that for many years neglects this
branch of its affairs is liable to suffer to any extent. The proverb, "a
stitch in time saves nine," gives a very fair idea of the proportion
between the amount of effort required in a properly-prepared and
well-conducted war, and the amount required when there has been previous
neglect.
There must be some way in which a national affair of such importance can
be properly managed, and just now it might be well to consider how a
nation can manage a war. Certainly not by the methods of political
decision to which recent developments of democracy have accustomed us.
You cannot fight a campaign by consulting the constituencies or even the
House of Commons before deciding whether a general shall move to his
right or his left, shall advance or retire, shall seek or shall avoid a
battle. Neither can you settle by popular vote whether you will make
guns of wire or of fluid compressed steel, what formations your infantry
shall adopt, whether the soldier is to give six hours a week to shooting
and one to drill, or six to drill and one to shooting.
Yet all these questions and many others must be settled, some during
peace and some during war, and they must be settled correctly or else
there will be defeat. In political matters the accepted test of what is
correct is the opinion of the majority as expressed by votes in a
general election, but in war the test of what is correct is the result
produced upon the enemy. If his guns out-range yours, if his troops at
the point of collision defeat yours, there has been some error in the
preparation or in the direction, unless indeed the enemy is a State so
much stronger than your own that it was folly to go to war at all, and
in that case there must have been an error of policy. The decisions upon
which successful war depends turn upon matters which have no relation
to the wishes or feelings of the majority; matters not of opinion but of
fact; matters about which eloquence is no guide, and in regard to which
the truth cannot be ascertained from the ballot box, but only by the
hard labour of prolonged study after previous training. For success in
war depends upon the troops being armed with the best weapons of the
day, upon their being trained to use them in the most appropriate
manner, upon the amount of knowledge and practice possessed by the
generals; upon a correct estimate of the enemy's forces, of their
armament and tactics, and upon a true insight into the policy of the
Powers with which quarrels are possible.
A year ago it was known to many persons in this country, and the
Government was informed by those whose, special duty it was to give the
information, that the Boer States aimed at supremacy in South Africa,
that they were heavily armed, that a large force would be required to
defeat them, and that to postpone the quarrel would make the inevitable
war still more difficult. It was well understood also that the
difficulty lay in the probability that if a small force were sent it
would be exposed to defeat, while if a large one were sent its despatch
would precipitate the war. These were the facts known more than a year
ago to those who wanted to know. Is it not clear that the Government's
management has been based upon something other than the facts; that the
Government was all the time basing its action not upon the facts but
upon speculations as to what might come out of future ballot-boxes? They
were attending to their own mission, that of keeping in office, but
neglecting the Nation's necessary business, that of dealing promptly
with the Boer assault upon British supremacy in South Africa. The
explanation is simple. Every man in the Cabinet has devoted his life
since he has been grown up to the art of getting votes for his party,
either at the polls or in Parliament. Not one of them has given his
twenty years to studying the art of managing a war.
But a war cannot possibly be well managed by anyone who is not a master
of the art. Now and then there has been success by an amateur--a person
who, without being a soldier by profession, has made himself one; such a
person, for example, as Cromwell. Apart from rare instances of that
sort, the only plan for a Government which does not include among its
members a soldier, professional or amateur, is to choose a soldier of
one class or the other and to delegate authority to him. But this plan
does not always succeed, because sometimes a Government composed of men
who know nothing of war postpones calling in the competent man until too
late. There have been in our time two instances of this plan, one
successful and the other a failure. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet
drifted against its will and to its painful surprise into the Egyptian
war. The Cabinet when it saw that war had come gave Lord Wolseley a
free hand and he was able to save them by the victory of Tel-el-Kebir. A
year or two later, being anxious to avoid a Soudan war, they drifted
slowly into it; but this time they were too late in giving Lord Wolseley
full powers, and he was unable to save Gordon and Khartoum solely
because he had not been called upon in time. The best analogy to the
course then pursued is that of a sick person whose friends attempt to
prescribe for him themselves until the disease takes a palpably virulent
form, when they send for a doctor just in time to learn that the
patient's life could have been saved by proper treatment a week earlier,
but that now there is no hope. For war requires competent management in
advance. There are many things which must be done, if they are to be
done in time, before the beginning of hostilities, and the more distant
the theatre of war the more necessary it may be to take measures
beforehand.
The management of a war can never be taken out of the hands of the
Government, because the body which decides when to make preparations
is, by the fact that it has the power of making that decision, the
supreme authority. If, therefore, a Nation wishes to have reasonable
assurance against defeat it must take means to provide the supreme
authority with a military judgment. The British system for a, long time
professed to do this by giving the Secretary of State for War a military
adviser who was Commander-in-Chief. Such a plan might have worked on
condition that the Secretary of State kept the Commander-in-Chief fully
informed of the state of negotiations with other Powers, and invariably
followed his advice in all matters relating to possible wars. The
condition has never been fulfilled, and for many years, as there were no
serious wars, the mischief of the neglect was not apparent except to the
few who understood war, and who have for many years been anxious. But in
1895 the present Cabinet began its career under the inspiration of Mr.
Balfour, who knows nothing of war, by giving the Secretary of State
absolute authority over the Army and all preparations for war so far as
the Army is concerned, and by formally declaring that the Secretary of
State could please himself whether he followed the advice of the
Commander-in-Chief. Thus the Nation in its indifference allowed the fate
of its next war to be entrusted to hands not qualified to direct a war,
and allowed itself to be deprived of the means of knowing whose advice
was being followed in regard to the preparation of its defences. At the
same time a Committee of Defence was formed of members of the Cabinet, a
committee of untrained men, to settle the broad lines of the Nation's
preparations for the maintenance of the Empire. The results of these
remarkable arrangements are now manifest, and yet the cry is that there
is to be no change in the Government.
But unless there is a thorough change as soon as possible, unless steps
are taken to find a man competent in the management of war and to give
him a place in the Cabinet, where he can keep the naval and military
preparations abreast of the policy, or check, a policy for the execution
of which adequate preparation cannot be made, what guarantee can the
Nation have that it will not shortly have a second war on its hands, or
that the war now begun will be brought to a successful end?
But if war as a branch of the Nation's affairs ought to be entrusted to
a man competent in that branch, what about the tradition that any
politician of eminence in the party is fit to be the Cabinet Minister at
the head of any branch of the public service? Is it not the truth that
this tradition is bad and should be got rid of, and that every branch of
the Nation's business has suffered from the practice of giving authority
for its direction to a minister who has not been trained to understand
it? The war will have been a great benefit if it leads to the universal
recognition of the plain fact that Jack of all trades is master of
none, and that no branch of the public service can possibly be well
directed unless its director is thoroughly conversant with the business
with which he is entrusted. So soon as the Nation grasps the idea that
democracy can fulfil its mission only when the electors are resolved to
choose leaders by their qualification for the work they have to do, the
British Nation will resume the lead among the nations of the world.
WANTED, THE MAN
_January 5th_, 1900
There has been no substantial, visible change in the military situation
since the battle of Colenso on December 15th. The actions of General
French at Colesberg and of Colonel Pilcher at Sunnyside are valuable
mainly as evidence that with sound tactics the Boers are by no means
invincible, and that British troops only require intelligent leading to
be as capable of the best work as any troops in the world. General
French, however, until the hour at which I write had not finished his
wrestle with the Boers at Colesberg, and until it is over no military
action can be classed either as success or failure. Colonel Pilcher's
opponents were colonial rebels, probably not as good as Transvaal Boers,
who have had in peace more rifle practice. The losses were small,
proving that the resistance of the enemy was by no means desperate, and
as the retreating force was not pursued the defeat was not crushing.
Colonel Pilcher by the temporary occupation of Douglas reaped the fruits
of his victory, but the whole small campaign is of no very great
importance, as the possession of the triangle between the railway and
the Riet and Orange Rivers depends in the ultimate issue not upon the
event of local skirmishes, but on the issue of the decisive fighting
between the British Army and the forces of the Republics. Lord Methuen's
communications appear to be now well organized and guarded, so that his
position need cause no special anxiety. A good deal depends on the
outcome of the struggle between General French and the Colesberg Boers,
for, while a Boer defeat would render the line from the Cape to Orange
River quite safe, a Boer victory would endanger not only Naauwpoort but
De Aar. General Gatacre's cue should be to risk nothing. If he waits
where he is and merely holds his own until the sixth division is ready
for use no harm will have been done; if he makes any mistakes the
consequences may be more than the sixth division can remedy. The centre
of interest still lies between Ladysmith and Frere. The tone of the
telegrams from Ladysmith, which declare that though the bombardment has
been more effective since Christmas, and through dysentary and enteric
fever are busy, "all is yet well," proves that the situation of Sir
George White's force is critical, and may at any moment become
desperate. The Boers by occupying and fortifying positions south of the
Tugela have taken the best means of making sure that Sir Redvers
Buller's advance, even if successful, shall be delayed and the time
taken over it prolonged. The Boer commander sees clearly that his
present object is to delay Sir Redvers Buller, so as to gain the time
needed to bring about the fall of Ladysmith. If that can be secured the
next question will be how to damage Sir Redvers Buller. Of the prospects
of Sir Redvers Buller's attack no estimate can be made. He is stronger
than he was by the greater part of Sir Charles Warren's division, and it
is to be hoped, by plenty of heavy artillery and by an organised
transport; but the Boers are stronger than they were by a new position,
by three weeks of fortification, and by the consciousness of their last
victory. Upon Sir Redvers Buller's fate depends more than anyone cares
to say. If he wins and relieves Ladysmith the success of Great Britain
in the war will be assured, though the operations may be prolonged for
months; but if he should again fail there is no prospect of success
except by exertions of which the Government as yet has not shown the
faintest conception. His action can hardly be completed in a single
battle or in a day; the first telegrams, therefore, need not necessarily
be taken as giving the result; more probably his operations, except in
the most unfavourable case, will be continuous for something like a
week.
For the Nation there is a question even more vital than the fate of Sir
Redvers Buller, and more practical. Nothing that was at home can do can
affect the impending battle by the Tugela. The issue of that battle, as
of the war, though it is not yet known and can be revealed only by the
event, is in reality already settled, for it depends on the proportion
of the forces of the two sides, which has been determined by British
strategy and cannot now be modified, upon the qualities, armament, and
training of the troops, which are the results of the conditions of their
enlistment, organisation, and education, and upon the judgment and will
of Sir Redvers Buller, also the outcome of his training and of the Army
system. But whatever happens on the Tugela the British Nation has its
to-morrow, a very black one in case of a defeat, and a very difficult
one even in case of victory, for all the great Powers are for ever
competitors for the possession and government of the world, and Great
Britain having shown a weakness, expected by others though unsuspected
by her own people, will in future be hard beset. The Russians have just
moved a division from the Caucasus towards the Afghan frontier, which
portends trouble for India. The Austrians, as well as the Germans are
setting out to build an extra fleet--what for? Because the Austrian
Government, like the German and Italian Governments, know, what our
recent Governments have never known, that Great Britain has for two or
three centuries been the balance weight or fly-wheel of the European
machine, by reason of the prescience with which her Navy was handled.
Those Governments now see that statesmanship has gone from us; they
divine that the great Navy we now possess cannot be used by a timid and
ignorant Government, and that no reliance can be placed upon Great
Britain to play her own true game. Accordingly, they see that they must
strengthen their own navies with a view to the possible collapse of the
British Power. In the near future the maintenance of the British Empire
depends upon the Nation's having a Government at once far-seeing and
resolute, capable of great resolves and prompt action. Of such a
Government there is, however, no immediate prospect. The present Cabinet
has given its testimonials: a challenge sent to the Boers by a
Government that did not know it was challenging anyone, that did not
know the adversary's strength, nor his determination to fight; and a war
begun in military ignorance displayed by the Cabinet, and carried on by
half measures until the popular determination compelled three-quarter
measures. Does anyone suppose that this Cabinet, that did not know its
mind till the Boers declared war, knows or will know its mind about the
conflict with Russia in Asia, or about any other of the troubles,
foreseen and unforeseen, which await us? A victory in Natal would save
the Cabinet and drown the voices of its critics; and in that case the
present leaders will infallibly go halting and irresolute into the
greater contests that are coming. A defeat in Natal would destroy the
Government at once if there were before the public a single man in whose
judgment and character there was confidence; but there is no such man,
and, as the Opposition leaders are discredited by their conduct in
regard to the quarrel with the Boers, the present set will remain at
their posts to continue the traditional policy of waiting to be driven
by public opinion. The Nation, therefore, has before it a necessary task
as urgent as that of reinforcing the Army in the field, which is to find
the man in whose judgment as to war and policy as well as in whose
character it can place confidence.