THE FALL OF THE REPUBLICS
With the presentation of the Boer ultimatum the first and most
difficult part of Lord Milner's task was accomplished. The actual
pretensions of President Krueger and his republican confederates in the
Free State and the Cape Colony were declared in a manner that could
not fail to make them understood by the British people at home. The
nationalists were unmasked. To what assurance of victory their
military preparations had led them may be seen from the story of Mr.
Amery's meeting with Mr. Reitz, two days before October 2nd, the
Monday originally fixed for the delivery of the ultimatum. On the
afternoon of this day, September 30th, Mr. Amery was walking with the
State Secretary in Pretoria. Mr. Reitz, he tells us,[182] "suddenly
turned round and said, 'Have you read _Treasure Island_? 'Yes.' 'Then
you may remember the passage where they "tip the black spot" to Long
John Silver?' 'Yes.' 'Well, I expect it will fall to my lot on Monday
to "tip the black spot" to Long John Greene.' And hereupon the State
Secretary cheerily detailed to his astounded listener the terms of the
ultimatum, compliance with which might yet save the British Empire
from war."
[Footnote 182: _Times History of the War in South Africa_,
vol. i., p. 360. It must be remembered that in the Transvaal
all telegrams had been strictly censored from the end of
August.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the ultimatum.]
Very different was the position at Capetown. Here there was no room
either for levity or the insolence of anticipated triumph. Knowing
what Lord Milner did--what he, of all men, had most cause to
know--both of our unreadiness, and of the preparedness and confidence
of the enemy, he could scarcely have looked forward to the future
without the very gravest apprehension. None the less the ultimatum
brought with it a certain sense of relief. The negotiations, which had
degenerated long since into a diplomatic farce, were terminated. The
situation had become once more clear. It has been the duty of few men
to bear so heavy and so prolonged a burden of responsibility as that
from which Lord Milner was thus set free. The danger that the Home
Government, in its earnest desire for peace, might accept a settlement
that would leave undecided the central issue of Boer or British
supremacy in South Africa had never been wholly absent from his mind
during the harassing negotiations that succeeded the Conference. Up to
the very end there had been a haunting dread lest, in spite of his
ceaseless vigilance and unstinted toil, a manifestation of British
loyalty that would never be repeated should be coldly discouraged, and
the nationalist movement allowed to proceed unchecked, until every
colonist of British blood had surrendered the hope of remaining a
citizen of the Empire for the degrading necessity of securing for
himself and his children a tolerable position in the United States of
South Africa by a timely alliance with the more progressive Dutch.
From the presence of this danger Lord Milner was now relieved, since,
as he instantly foresaw, the whip-lash of this frank appeal to force
brought conviction where marshalled arguments were powerless to move.
He had done what the religious enthusiasm of Livingstone, the
political sagacity of Grey, the splendid devotion and prescience of
Frere, and the Elizabethan statecraft of Rhodes, had failed to do. _He
had made the Boer speak out._
England was far from knowing all that these Boer aspirations meant, or
the progress already achieved in the direction of their realisation.
But this ignorance made the demands of the ultimatum seem the more
insolent. To Mr. Balfour it was as though President Krueger had gone
mad. But madness or insolence, the effect was the same. With the mass
of the nation all hesitation, all balancing of arguments, were at an
end. The one thing that was perceived was that any further attempt to
treat with a people so minded would be an admission to the world that
British supremacy had disappeared from South Africa. On this point,
outside the narrow influence of a few professional partisans and
peace-makers, there had never been any doubt: the only question was
whether British supremacy was, or was not, in danger. The Boer
challenge having resolved this question, the mind of the nation was
made up. The army, as the instrument of its will, was called upon to
give effect to its decision.
[Sidenote: An anxious situation.]
Two years and eight months elapsed between the expiration of the two
days' grace allowed by the ultimatum and the surrender of Vereeniging.
During the first twelve months of this period Lord Milner's
initiative, though his position remained arduous, anxious, and
responsible, and his activity unceasing, was necessarily subordinated
to that of the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in South
Africa. But during the second period of the war--that is to say, from
November 29th, 1900, when Lord Kitchener succeeded Lord Roberts--the
constructive statesmanship of the High Commissioner was called forth
in an increasing degree as the area secured for peaceable occupation
became widened, and the problems involved in the settlement and future
administration of the new colonies emerged into increasing prominence
and importance. But even during the first period, when the task of the
army was the comparatively simple one of overcoming the organised
resistance of the Republics and subduing the rebellion in the Cape
Colony, Lord Milner's unshaken confidence and perfect mastery of South
African conditions proved of inestimable value.
[Sidenote: Results and unpreparedness.]
Five years later he described himself as an "incorrigible optimist."
Optimist or not, at this time he harboured no illusions. He knew that
the postponement or neglect of military preparations had left
thousands of loyal subjects of the Crown in a position of entire
defencelessness, and made rebellion easy for thousands of the
disaffected Dutch. The first days of war, like the last days of peace,
were punctuated by appeals for the troops that should have been in
South Africa, but were in England; or for guns, rifles, and ammunition
which Mr. Schreiner had kept idle in the colonial armouries until it
was too late. On Friday, October 13th, he held a long and anxious
consultation over the wires with Colonel Kekewich at Kimberley. A
thousand rifles were wanted, and wanted instantly. The Cape Artillery
15-pounders, reluctantly conceded at the last moment by Mr. Schreiner,
had not come. They never came, for the next day Kimberley was cut off,
and by Sunday morning Capetown had lost count of the border districts
from Kimberley southward to Orange River. On this Friday the first
definite piece of bad news reached the High Commissioner. An armoured
train, trying to run back to Mafeking, had been captured by the Boers.
In proportion as Lord Milner had urged the need of preparation for
war, so now he was the first to realise how grave would be the results
of unpreparedness. Fortunately, his comments upon the events of these
first three months of the war have been preserved; and the record of
what was passing in his mind from day to day reveals a burden of
anxiety that contrasts sharply with the easy tolerance with which the
first bad news was received in England. On Wednesday, the 18th, a week
after the ultimatum had expired, he wrote of Natal: "We are being
slowly surrounded, and our force unwisely split up." He was gravely
concerned for the safety of Kimberley, and he "doubted the ability of
Mafeking to hold out." On November 1st, the day after General Buller
had landed at Capetown, he wrote: "Things are going from bad to worse
to-day. In Natal the Orange Free State Boers are making a move on
Colenso, while in the Colony they have crossed in force at Bethulie;
and there is also some suspicion of an attack on the line between
Orange River bridge and De Aar." On November 9th, the arrival of the
_Rosslyn Castle_, the first of the Army Corps transports, brought a
gleam of brightness. She was a little late, as she had been warned to
go out of her course after leaving Las Palmas, to avoid a suspicious
vessel. But Methuen's first engagements seemed to him to be Pyrrhic
victories. It was "the old story of charging positions from which the
enemy simply clears, after having shot a lot of our men." On December
5th "alarming rumours came pouring in from all over the Colony," and
two days later Lord Milner telegraphed to warn the Secretary of State
that the war was now aggravated by rebellion. On Saturday, December
16th, the day after Colenso, he wrote: "This has been a week of
disasters, to-day being the worst of all. News was received this
morning that Buller had been severely defeated yesterday in attempting
to force the passage of the Tugela."
It was a time when he was receiving the panic outcry for the immediate
relief of Kimberley, in which Rhodes vented his rage at the military
impotence to which for the moment England had allowed herself to be
reduced in South Africa; when his councils with his ministers were
"gloomy functions," and his Prime Minister's arguments against the
measures which he deemed necessary for the defence of the Colony and
the protection of the native territories had become not merely
wearisome but embittered. His main resource lay in his intense
activity. It was his custom, during this critical period, to begin the
day by seeing Mr. Eliot and Mr. Price, the heads of the railways, and
Mr. French, the Postmaster-General. In this way he received
information of every movement of any significance that had occurred
within the range of the railway and post-office systems during the
preceding twenty-four hours--information which was of the highest
utility both to him and to the military authorities. Then followed an
endless succession of visitors, from the Prime Minister to the most
recent newspaper correspondent out from home, and a long afternoon
and evening of concentrated and unbroken labour upon despatches,
proclamations, minutes, and other official documents. A short ride or
walk was sometimes interpolated, but his days were a dead round of
continuous occupation. "One day is so like another--crowded with work;
all hateful, but with no very special feature," he wrote. But of
another he says: "Worked very hard all day; the usual interviews. It
was very difficult to take one's mind off the absorbing subject of the
ill success of our military operations."
Mr. Balfour called the insolence of the ultimatum "madness." But Lord
Milner knew that it was no madness, but an assured belief in victory;
a confidence founded upon long years of earnest preparation for war;
upon the blood-ties of the most tenacious of European peoples; upon a
Nature that spread her wings over the rough children of the veld and
menaced their enemies with the heat and glamour of her sun, with
famine and drought and weariness, with all the hidden dangers that
lurked in her glittering plains and rock-strewn uplands.
[Sidenote: Aspects of the war.]
It is not proposed to give any detailed account of the military
operations which led, first, to the annexation of the Boer Republics,
and then to the actual disarmament of the entire Dutch population of
South Africa. The most that the plan of this work permits of is to
present the broad outlines of the war in such a manner that the
several phases of the military conflict may be seen in true
perspective, and the relationship between them and the administrative
efforts of Lord Milner be correctly indicated. But it will not be
found inconsistent with this restricted treatment to refer to certain
conspicuous features of the war upon which contemporary discussion has
chiefly centred, and in respect of which opinions have been pronounced
that do not seem likely to harmonise in all cases with the results of
a more mature judgment and a less interested inquiry.
The test by which the success or failure of any given military effort
is to be measured is, of course, the test of results. But the
application of this test must not be embarrassed by the assumption,
which seems to have vitiated so much otherwise admirable criticism on
the conduct of the war in South Africa, that every action in which a
properly equipped and wisely directed force is engaged must
necessarily be successful: or that, if it be not successful, it
follows, as a matter of course, that the officer in command, or one of
his subordinates, must have committed some open and ascertainable
violation of the principles of military science. So far is this from
being the case, that military history is full of examples in which the
highest merit and resolution of a commander have been nullified or
cheated by the wanton interferences of physical nature, or by acts on
the part of subordinates admittedly beyond the control of any human
skill or foresight.[183]
[Footnote 183: This chapter was in type some weeks before
Vol. I. of the Official History of the War was published.
Where, however, the Official History amends or supplements
figures, documents, etc., given in earlier official
publications, the fact is mentioned in a foot-note.]
[Sidenote: Delay of operations.]
Any just appreciation of the events of the first year of the war must
be based upon a clear understanding of the degree in which the
military action of the Salisbury Cabinet fell short of the advice
given by Lord Milner, and, in an equal degree by Lord Wolseley, the
Commander-in-Chief. We have noticed already[184] the grave inadequacy
of the measures of preparation for war carried out in South Africa
between the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference and the recall of
General Butler. On June 1st the South African garrison consisted of
4,462 men in Cape Colony, and 5,827 men in Natal; or 10,289 men with
24 field-guns in all.[185] On August 2nd the Government decided to
send 2,000 additional troops to Natal, and the Indian Government was
warned, a little later, that certain troops might be required for
service in South Africa. In spite of Lord Milner's urgent
representations of the danger of leaving the colonies unprotected, no
considerable body of troops, as we have seen, was ordered out, until
the diplomatic situation had become seriously aggravated by the
definite failure of the negotiations initiated by Sir William Greene
through Mr. Smuts.
[Footnote 184: See p. 191.]
[Footnote 185: Cd. 1,789 (War Commission). The Official
_History of the War in South Africa_ gives the total on
August 2nd as "not exceeding 9,940 men."]
Of the 10,000 men despatched after the Cabinet meeting of September
8th, more than half were requisitioned from the Indian Army, while the
remainder were drawn mainly from the Mediterranean garrisons.
Thus, by the beginning of the second week in October there were 22,104
British troops in South Africa, of whom 7,400 were at the Cape and
14,704 in Natal, and 60 field-guns.[186] But the Army Corps, the
"striking force," was still in England. In pursuance of its
determination to postpone to the last moment any action that could be
represented as an attempt to force a war upon the Boers, the British
Government had refrained from giving orders for the mobilisation of
the offensive force until October 7th, or a fortnight after the
Cabinet meeting of September 22nd, when its determination to
"formulate its own proposals" was communicated to the Transvaal
Government.[187] It was then calculated that three months must elapse
before this force could be equipped, transported, and placed in the
field in South Africa.
[Footnote 186: Cd. 1,789. But the Official History gives the
British total at the outbreak of war as 27,054 men (as
against over 50,000 burghers); of whom 15,811 (including
2,781 local troops) were in Natal, 5,221 regulars and 4,574
local troops were in the Cape Colony, and 1,448 men, raised
locally by Col. Baden-Powell, were in Mafeking and Southern
Rhodesia.]
[Footnote 187: But the Admiralty were given details of the
offensive force on September 20th. (_Official History._)]
[Sidenote: No political gain.]
Before recording the disastrous effects of the postponement of
effective military preparations, from June to September, it remains to
consider whether any political gains, sufficient to compensate for the
loss of military strength, were secured. The policy of relying upon
Afrikander advice failed; since, as we have seen, the admonitions of
Sir Henry de Villiers and Mr. Hofmeyr came too late to turn President
Krueger from an obduracy founded upon long years of military
preparation. The over-sea British had made up their minds in June; and
nothing occurred in the subsequent negotiations to deepen their
conviction of the essential justice of the British cause. India was
unmoved; indeed, the Hindu masses were slightly sympathetic, while the
feudatory princes came forward with offers of men and treasure to the
Government of the Queen-Empress. The attitude of the respective
governments of France, Germany, and Russia was correct. But what
secured this result was not any perception of the moderation of the
British demands, or any recognition of the genuine reluctance of the
British Government to make war, but the sight of the British Navy
everywhere holding the seas, the rapidity and ease with which large
bodies of troops were transported from every quarter of the British
world, and the manner in which each reverse was met by a display of
new and unexpected reserves of military strength.
If the British Government thought that it would win the peoples of
Continental Europe to its side by a show of hesitation to make war
upon a weak state, the sequel proved that it had gravely misunderstood
the conditions under which international respect is produced. Hatred
of England rose in inverse ratio to the evidence of the justness of
her cause. When the Boers were victorious, or seemed to be most
capable of defying the efforts of the largest fighting force that
Great Britain had ever put into the field; when, that is to say, it
was most clearly demonstrated that British supremacy in South Africa
could only have been maintained by force of arms against the
formidable rival which had risen against it, then the wave of popular
hatred surged highest. When the British arms prospered, the clamour
sank; but only to rise again until it was finally allayed by the
knowledge that the Boer resistance was at an end, and that the British
Empire had emerged from the conflict a stronger and more united power.
[Sidenote: Attitude of the United States.]
The case of the United States was somewhat different. Here was an
industrial nation like our own; and one, moreover, whose people were
qualified alike by constitutional and legal tradition, habits of
thought, and identity of language, to have discerned the reality of
the reluctance displayed by the British Government to employ force
until every resource of diplomacy and every device of statecraft had
been exhausted, and to have drawn the conclusion that the power which
drove the Government into war was a sense of duty, and not greed of
territory. Moreover, there was at this time, at any rate among the
more cultivated classes, a feeling of gratitude for the action of
Great Britain in preventing European intervention during the
Spanish-American war, and a genuine desire, on that ground alone, to
show sympathy with the English people in the conflict in which they
had become involved. In these circumstances it is somewhat strange
that public opinion in the United States was unmistakably inclined to
favour the Boers during almost the entire period of the war. It is
perfectly true that the United States Government was consistently
friendly; but this did not alter the fact that the dominant note in
nearly all public expressions of the sentiment of the United States'
people was one of sympathy with the Boer, and of hostility to the
British cause. It might have been thought that, just as most
Englishmen, in the case of the conflict between the United States and
Spain, were prepared to assume that a nation imbued with the
traditions and principles of the Anglo-Saxon race would not have
undertaken to enforce its will upon a weak Power without having
convinced itself first of the justice of its cause, so the Americans
would have entertained an equally favourable presumption in respect of
the people of Great Britain. That this was not done is due to a cause
which is as significant as it is well ascertained. Making all
allowance for the prejudice against England inevitably aroused in the
minds of the less thoughtful members of a great democratic community,
by the fact that her opponent was both a weak state and a republic,
this very general refusal to accept the political morality of the
English people as a guarantee of the justice of their action in South
Africa suggests the presence of another and more specific influence.
The explanation given by Americans is that the English nation was
itself divided upon the question of the morality of the South African
War--or, at any rate, that the public utterances that reached the
United States were such as to convey this impression. That being so,
they ask, Can you blame us for hesitating to adopt what was at the
most, as we understood it, the opinion of a majority? In support of
this view they point to the public utterances, before and after the
war had broken out, of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. John Morley,
and Mr. Bryce. Of these, the former was the official head of the
Liberal Party, while the two latter were men whose literary
achievements had made their names and personalities both familiar and
respected in the United States. If the opinions of these public men
were on this occasion wholly unrepresentative, why, they ask, were
their speeches and articles unrefuted; or, at any rate, allowed to go
forth to the world uncondemned by any clear and authoritative
manifestation of the dissent and displeasure of their countrymen?
[Sidenote: Injurious declarations.]
That declarations such as these did in fact produce injurious effects
directly calculable in human lives, in money, and in the waste and
devastation of war, is a fact which will claim the attention of the
reader on a subsequent occasion. They came not merely from the mouths of
the Irish Nationalists, and of advanced Radicals such as Mr.
Lloyd-George and Mr. John Burns, but from men of wider repute. That
public opinion should have allowed responsible Englishmen in time of war
to "speak and write as though they belonged to the enemy,"--whether due
to an exaggerated regard for our traditional freedom of speech, or to a
failure to recognise that the altered conditions produced by the
extension and perfection of telegraphic communication, and the
development of the Press throughout the civilised world, gave such
utterances a value in international relations altogether different from
that possessed (say) by similar utterances on the part of the
anti-nationalists during the Napoleonic wars--is a circumstance that
merits the most serious consideration. No one will deny that this
unpatriotic form of opposition, so long as it exists, constitutes an
ever-recurring danger to the most vital interests of the community. The
ultimate remedy lies in the creation of a representative council of the
Empire, and the consequent separation of questions of inter-imperial and
foreign policy from the local and irrelevant issues of party politics.
Until this is done, it remains to establish a mutual understanding
under which such questions would be recognised as being outside the
sphere of party recrimination; and for this purpose it is necessary to
create a force of public opinion strong enough to compel the observance
of this understanding; or, failing this, to visit its non-observance
with political penalties commensurate to the injury inflicted.
[Sidenote: The Army Corps absorbed.]
The conflict which followed the expiration of the forty-eight hours
allowed by the Boer ultimatum is in more than one respect the most
extraordinary in the annals of war. The existence of the cable and
telegraph made instant and continuous communication possible between
the army in the field and the nation at home. Public opinion, informed
by the daily records furnished by the Press, became a factor in
determining the conduct of the war. Nor is it strange that a civilian
population, separated by 6,000 miles from the theatre of operations,
should have proved an injurious counsellor. The army was ordered to
conquer a people, but forbidden to employ the methods by which alone
it has been hitherto held that conquest is attainable. But no
influence exercised upon the course of the war by false
humanitarianism or political partisanship produced any results
comparable to the original injury inflicted upon the British Army by
the ignorance and irresolution displayed by the nation. The
postponement of effective military preparations by the Home Government
until the necessity for these preparations had become so plain that
no effort of the Opposition could embarrass its action, was the _fons
et origo_ of all subsequent disaster. The failure to mobilise the Army
Corps in June had placed the Army in a position of disadvantage at the
outbreak of the war, from which it never wholly recovered. The
original striking force--the Army Corps--was not employed in its
proper function, but absorbed, upon its arrival in South Africa, in
the task of supporting the defensive forces. Twenty-two thousand men,
with an Army Corps advancing upon Bloemfontein or Pretoria, would have
sufficed to repel attacks upon the colonial frontiers, and to check
rebellion in the Cape Colony. But twenty-two thousand men defending
one thousand miles of frontier from a mobile force nearly twice as
numerous with the Army Corps six thousand miles away in England, was a
very different thing. Yet this was the situation in which the nation,
by withholding from the Government the support necessary to enable it
to give effect to the advice of Lord Wolseley, had elected to place
the British Army. The plan of mobilisation, long prepared and complete
in all particulars, worked with perfect success. Twenty Companies of
the Army Service Corps sailed on October 6th, a day before the actual
mobilisation order was issued. The rest of the offensive force--one
Cavalry Division, one Army Corps, and eight battalions of lines of
communication troops--began to be embarked on October 20th, and by
November 17th the long succession of transports, bearing the whole of
the men, horses, and guns of which it was composed (with the exception
of one cavalry regiment detained by horse sickness), had sailed for
South Africa. This was Lord Wolseley's task, and it was promptly and
efficiently performed. The War Office was not inefficient; but the
refusal to mobilise in June had thrown the whole scheme of the
offensive and defensive campaign out of gear.
[Sidenote: General Buller.]
With the evidence of the War Commission before us, it is impossible to
divest General Buller of a share of responsibility for the disastrous
conditions under which the war was commenced. He was nominated to the
South African command in June, and he was consulted upon the strength
and composition of the force which was to be employed. On July 7th
Lord Wolseley asked the Government, apart from the immediate
mobilisation of the Army Corps which he still urged, to "consider
whether we should not at a very early date send one Infantry Division
and one Cavalry Brigade--say 10,000 men--to South Africa," adding that
he had "no doubt as to the present necessity of strengthening our
military position." But ten days later the despatch of this
reinforcement of 10,000 men was "not considered urgent." Since,
according to Lord Wolseley's minute of the proceedings of the meeting
held at the War Office on July 18th, 1899, General Buller used the
weight of his authority to support General Butler's opposition to Lord
Milner's urgent request for immediate reinforcements. In reply to a
question as to the desirability of strengthening the South African
garrisons, he said on this occasion, that--
"he had complete confidence in Butler's ability and forethought,
and that as long as clever men like Butler and Symons on the spot
did not say there was danger, he saw no necessity for sending out
any troops in advance of the Army Corps to strengthen our
position against any possible attack by the Boers on our
frontiers."
This memorandum, Lord Wolseley added, contained not the "exact words,"
but the "exact meaning" of what he said.[188] It was the precise
opposite of the view which Lord Milner had laid before the Home
Government.[189] Indeed the degree in which General Buller had
misconceived the entire military situation in South Africa became at
once apparent when he reached Capetown. He had come out to South
Africa with the not unnatural idea that he was to command a definite
British army, which was to engage a definite Boer army. When he had
learnt from Lord Milner and others what the situation actually was, he
is said to have gathered up his new impressions in the remark: "It
seems to me that I have got to conquer the whole of South Africa."
General Buller even appears to have shared the common belief of his
fellow-countrymen at home that the Cape was a British colony not only
in name but in fact. Nor was he prepared to abandon this belief all at
once. He suggested to the High Commissioner that it would be possible
to form local defence forces out of the Dutch farmers in the Colony.
Lord Milner said that this was totally impracticable; but he added
that he would consult Mr. Schreiner on the matter. It is needless to
say, however, that the Prime Minister deprecated the proposal in the
most emphatic terms.[190]
[Footnote 188: Cd. 1,789, pp. 15-17.]
[Footnote 189: Nor was the Intelligence Department less
urgent than Lord Milner. "In July of last year [1899],
earlier warnings being disregarded, a formal communication
was made for the consideration of the Cabinet, advising the
despatch of a large force fully equipped, estimated to be
sufficient to safeguard Natal and Cape Colony from the first
onrush of the Boers."--Sir John Ardagh, in _The Balfourian
Parliament_, 1900-1905. By Henry W. Lucy, p. 10. See also the
evidence of the War Commission, and the "Military Notes"
issued by the D. M. I. in June (1899).]
[Footnote 190: In a memorandum of November 20th (furnished to
Gen. Forestier-Walker) Gen. Buller, on the eve of starting
for Natal, gives as a first paragraph in his "appreciation of
the situation" the following remark: "1. Ever since I have
been here we have been like the man, who, with a long day's
work before him, overslept himself and so was late for
everything all day." (_Official History_, p. 209.)]
The War Office scheme was designed to provide a defensive force to
hold the colonies, and an offensive force to invade the Republics. In
the three months that elapsed before this scheme was put into effect,
the conditions upon which it was based had changed completely. On the
day that Buller reached Capetown (October 31st) White, with almost the
whole of the Natal defensive force, was shut up in Ladysmith by
Joubert. When at length the last units of the Army Corps were landed
(December 4th) in South Africa, Buller was at Maritzburg, organising a
force for the relief of White; and practically the entire offensive
force had been broken up to disengage the defensive forces, or save
them from destruction. Buller himself had 14,000 of the Army Corps in
Natal, and more were to follow; Methuen was taking 8,000 men for the
relief of Kimberley; and the balance were being pushed up to
strengthen the original defensive forces that were holding the
railways immediately South of the Orange Free State border, and
checking the rebellion in the eastern districts of the Cape Colony.
Gatacre's defeat at Stormberg (December 10th), Methuen's defeat at
Magersfontein (December 11th), and Buller's defeat at Colenso
(December 15th) together provided ample evidence of the fact that,
however desirable it might be to assume the offensive, a purely
defensive _role_ must for the time be assigned to the troops then in
South Africa; and that this state of affairs must continue until the
arrival of very considerable reinforcements.
[Sidenote: New striking force necessary.]
The perception of this fact caused the Government to appoint (December
17th) Lord Roberts, with Lord Kitchener as his Chief-of-Staff, to the
South African command, and to prepare and despatch an entirely new
striking force. It was this new force and not the original Army Corps
that "marched to Pretoria," and struck the successive blows which
enabled Lord Roberts to report to the Secretary of State for War
(November 15th, 1900) that; "with the occupation of Komati Poort, and
the dispersal of Commandant-General Louis Botha's army, the organised
resistance of the two Republics might be said to have ceased." It was
not, therefore, until Lord Roberts was able to march from Modder River
Station (February 11th, 1900), after a month spent at the Cape in
reorganising the transport and other preparations essential to the
success of an army destined to advance for many hundreds of miles
through a hostile country, that the British Army in South Africa was
in the position in which the acceptance of Lord Wolseley's advice,
given in June and July, 1899, would have put it upon the outbreak of
war. Nor was the force with which Lord Roberts then advanced, 36,000
men, more numerous than the striking force which would have been
provided, by Lord Wolseley's scheme, had it been carried out in the
manner in which he desired. For the business with which the scattered
Army Corps was occupied when Lord Roberts arrived at Capetown (January
10th, 1900)--the relief of Ladysmith and Kimberley, and the defence of
the eastern districts of the Cape Colony from the Free State commandos
and the colonial rebels--was work directly caused by the absence of
the Army Corps from South Africa when the war broke out. It is not too
much to say that the whole of the serious losses incurred by the
British forces in South Africa from the commencement of the war up to
the date of Lord Roberts's advance into the Free State territory,
would have been avoided if the state of public opinion had permitted
the Salisbury Cabinet in June to make military preparations
commensurate with the gravity of the situation as disclosed by Lord
Milner.
[Sidenote: The regular army exhausted.]
In forming an estimate of the performance of the British Army in South
Africa, from a military point of view, it is necessary to remember the
grave initial disadvantage in which it was placed; and that this
initial disadvantage was due, not to the War Office, not to the
Cabinet, but to the nation itself. The manner in which the losses thus
caused were repaired is significant and instructive. By the end of the
year (1899), the troops composing three divisions in excess of the
Army Corps were either landed in South Africa or under orders to
proceed to the seat of war. In addition to the 22,000 defensive troops
in South Africa on October 11th, the War Office had supplied, not
merely the 47,000 men of the Army Corps, but 85,000 men in all. But,
having done this, it had practically reached the limit of troops
available in the regular army for over-sea operations. By April, 1900,
all the reserves had been used up. There remained, it is true, 103,023
"effectives" of all ranks of the regular army in the United Kingdom on
April 1st; but this total was composed of 37,333 "immature" troops; of
the recruits who had joined since October 1st, 1899; of reservists
unfit for foreign service; and of sick and wounded sent home from
South Africa: that is to say, of men who, for one reason or another,
were all alike unfit for service abroad.[191] Further drafts might
have been made upon the British regulars in India; but this course was
held to be imprudent. In plain words, the exhaustion of the regular
army compelled the Government to avail itself more fully of the offers
of military aid which had reached it from the colonies, and to utilise
the militia and volunteer forces. On December 18th, 1899, the
announcement was made that the War Office would allow twelve militia
battalions to volunteer for service abroad, and that a considerable
force of yeomanry and a contingent of picked men from the volunteers
would be accepted. This appeal to the latent military resources of the
Empire met with a ready and ample response. Throughout the whole
course of the war the United Kingdom sent 45,566 militia, 19,856
volunteers, and 35,520 yeomanry, with 7,273 South African
Constabulary, and 833 Scottish Horse; the over-sea colonies (including
305 volunteers from India) provided 30,633 men;[192] while of the
small British population in South Africa no less than the astonishing
total of 46,858 took part in the war.[193] In all some 200,000
men--militia, volunteers, and irregulars--came forward to supplement
the regular army.
[Footnote 191: Cd. 1,789.]
[Footnote 192: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 193: See returns cited by Lord Roberts in House of
Lords, February 27th, 1906. The irregulars _raised_ in South
Africa were between 50,000 and 60,000, according to the _War
Commission Report_.]
[Sidenote: Auxiliary forces utilised.]
It was mainly from the auxiliary forces and the colonial contingents,
and not from the regular army, that the reinforcements were supplied
which repaired the critical losses of the defensive campaign, and
enabled the new striking force to be organised. Nor can it be said
that the British Government failed to do all that was possible to
retrieve its original error, when once the defeats inflicted by the
Boer forces had awakened it to a knowledge of the real situation in
South Africa. In his despatch of February 6th, 1900, Lord Roberts was
able to report that, on January 31st, there was an effective fighting
force of nearly 40,000 men in Natal and another of 60,000 in the Cape
Colony. Mr. Chamberlain put the case for the Government at its highest
in speaking at Birmingham on May 11th, 1900:
"Supposing that twelve months ago any man had said in public that
this country would be able to send out from its own shores and
from its own citizens an army of more than 150,000 men, fully
equipped, and that it would be joined by another force of more
than 30,000 men, voluntarily offered by our self-governing
colonies ... if he had said that this army, together numbering
200,000 men, or thereabouts, could have been provided with the
best commissariat, with the most admirable medical appliances and
stores that had ever accompanied an army--if he could have said
that at the same time there would have remained behind in this
country something like half a million of men, who although they
may not be equal man to man to the regulars and best-drilled
armies, are nevertheless capable of bearing arms to some
purpose--if he had said all this, he would have been laughed to
scorn."
Moreover, the army was successful. The work which it was required to
do was done. In order to realise the merit of its success two
circumstances must be borne in mind: first, the enormous area of South
Africa, and, second, the fact that practically the whole of this area,
if we except the few considerable towns, was not only ill-provided
with means of communication and food supplies, but inhabited by a
population which was openly hostile, or, what was worse, secretly
disaffected. Lord Roberts, in the course of his despatches,
endeavoured to bring home both of these circumstances to the public in
England.
Of the area he wrote:[194]
[Footnote 194: November 15th, 1900. Johannesburg.]
"The magnitude of the task which Her Majesty's Imperial troops
have been called upon to perform will perhaps be better realised
if I give the actual number of miles of the several lines of
communication, each one of which has had to be carefully guarded,
and compare with the well-known countries of Europe the enormous
extent of the theatre of war, from one end of which to the other
troops have had to be frequently moved.
[Sidenote: Vastness of South Africa.]
"The areas included in the theatre of war are as follows:
Square Miles.
Cape Colony 277,151
Orange River Colony 48,326
Transvaal 113,640
Natal 18,913
--------
Total 458,030
--------
Rhodesia 750,000
"And the distances troops have had to travel are:
By Land Miles.
Capetown to Pretoria 1,040
Pretoria to Komati Poort 260
Capetown to Kimberley 647
Kimberley to Mafeking 223
Mafeking to Pretoria 160
Mafeking to Beira 1,135
Durban to Pretoria 511
"From these tables it will be seen that, after having been
brought by sea 6,000 miles and more from their base in the United
Kingdom, the army in South Africa had to be distributed over an
area of greater extent than France (204,146 square miles) and
Germany (211,168 square miles) put together, and, if we include
that part of Rhodesia with which we had to do, larger than the
combined areas of France, Germany, and Austria (261,649 square
miles)."
Of the nature of the country and its inhabitants he wrote:[195]
[Footnote 195: November 15th, 1900. Johannesburg.]
"And it should be remembered that over these great distances we
were dependent on single lines of railway for the food supply,
guns, ammunition, horses, transport animals, and hospital
equipment, in fact, all the requirements of an army in the
field, and that, along these lines, bridges and culverts had
been destroyed in many places, and rails were being constantly
torn up."
And of the Cape Colony he wrote:[196]
[Footnote 196: February 6th, 1900. Capetown.]
"The difficulties of carrying on war in South Africa do not
appear to be sufficiently appreciated by the British public. In
an enemy's country we should know exactly how we stood; but out
here we have not only to defeat the enemy on the northern
frontier, but to maintain law and order within the colonial
limits. Ostensibly, the Dependency is loyal, and no doubt a large
number of its inhabitants are sincerely attached to the British
rule and strongly opposed to Boer domination. On the other hand,
a considerable section would prefer a republican form of
government, and, influenced by ties of blood and association,
side with the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Even the
public service at the Cape is not free from men whose sympathies
with the enemy may lead them to divulge secrets and give valuable
assistance to the Boer leaders in other ways."
[Sidenote: The offensive campaign.]
Bearing in mind that the offensive campaign dates, not from the expiry
of the Boer ultimatum on October 11th, 1899, but from Lord Roberts's
advance from Modder River Station on February 11th, 1900, the mere
record of dates and events is sufficiently impressive. On February
12th the Free State border was crossed; on the 15th Kimberley was
relieved, on the 27th Cronje's force surrendered at Paardeberg, on the
28th Ladysmith was relieved, and on March 13th Bloemfontein, the
capital of the Free State, was occupied. The army again advanced
early in May; Kroonstad was entered on the 12th; on May 24th, the
Queen's birthday, the Free State was annexed; the Vaal was crossed on
the 27th, Johannesburg was occupied on the 31st, and on June 5th the
British flag was hoisted on the Raadzaal at Pretoria. In the meantime
Mafeking had been relieved with absolute punctuality on May 17th.[197]
On June 11th the Boers evacuated Laing's Nek and Majuba, and the Natal
Field Force, under Buller, entered the Transvaal from the south-east.
The next day Roberts defeated the Boers under Louis Botha at Diamond
Hill. On July 30th Prinsloo and 4,000 burghers surrendered to Hunter;
on August 27th the main Transvaal army, under Louis Botha, was again
defeated at Dalmanutha, and on September 1st the Transvaal was
annexed. On the 11th President Krueger fled the Transvaal; Komati
Poort, the eastern frontier town on the railway line to Delagoa Bay,
was entered on the 24th, and two days later railway communication was
re-opened between Delagoa Bay and Pretoria.
[Footnote 197: Lord Roberts had asked Col. Baden-Powell how
long he could hold out at Mafeking, and then promised that
the relief of the town should be effected within the required
period.]
In spite of the vast area and harassing conditions of the war, in
spite of its own military unpreparedness, and the unexpected strength
of the Boer attack, the Power which created the Republics had
destroyed them within less than a twelvemonth from the day on which
they had defied it.
At this point it will be convenient to place on record certain general
conclusions which arise out of the events and circumstances of the
South African War, and to consider certain military criticisms which
have been offered upon the conduct of the British Army in the field.
We have seen that the initial losses of the campaign were due, not to
any defects in the Army as a fighting force, but to the position in
which the Army was placed by the irresolution of the nation. We have
seen also that within less than a year of the ultimatum the capitals
of the two Republics were occupied, and their power of "organised
resistance" was destroyed. During this stage of the war the regular
Army, small as it was, supplemented by selected reinforcements from
the auxiliary services, and by the colonial contingents, sufficed to
do the work required of it. In the second stage, when the work to be
accomplished was nothing less than the disarmament of the entire Dutch
population of South Africa, the character of the reinforcements
supplied had greatly depreciated,[198] and the prolongation of the war
was in part to be attributed to this circumstance. For the present,
however, it will be sufficient to confine our observations to the
period of "organised resistance."
[Footnote 198: One fighting British general stated that one
of the first stage force was equal to five of the men
supplied after the reserves had been used up in April,
1900.]
[Sidenote: General conclusions.]
The first of these conclusions is the fact that the real evil revealed
by the South African War is not the inefficiency, or unpreparedness of
the War Office, but the ignorance,[199] and therefore unpreparedness,
of the country. From this unreadiness for war on the part of the
nation as a whole there sprang two results: (1) the refusal of the
Salisbury Cabinet to allow the War Office to make adequate military
preparations in June, and the disregard of the advice alike of Lord
Milner and Lord Wolseley; (2) the insufficient supply of reserves for
the forces in the field, arising ultimately from the small percentage
of men in the nation trained to the use of arms.
[Footnote 199: For the direct part played by the Liberal
leaders in the production of this ignorance, see p. 256.]
The second conclusion to which we are led is that the specific result
of the absence of effective preparations for War in June was to throw
the War Office scheme of a fighting force out of gear. Twenty-two
thousand defensive troops, with a striking force of fifty thousand in
South Africa, would have proved sufficient to attain the ends of
British policy. As it was, the Army Corps being in England when
hostilities commenced, and not arriving in its entirety until December
4th, the fifty thousand offensive force was absorbed in the work of
extricating the twenty-two thousand defensive force. In other words,
the British Army was not put in the position contemplated by Lord
Wolseley's scheme until an entirely new fighting force had been
organised and advanced from Modder River in the beginning of February,
1900. This new striking force was identical in numbers with the
original striking force, the Army Corps,[200] provided by Lord
Wolseley's scheme.
[Sidenote: Criticisms examined.]
Among criticisms on the British Army in the field there are two that
claim attention. The first of these is the allegation that military
efficiency was sacrificed to a desire to spare life. In so far as this
criticism is concerned with the handling of their troops by British
commanders, it is strenuously denied that either Lord Roberts, or any
of his subordinates, allowed a desire to spare the lives of the troops
under their command to interfere with the successful execution of any
military operation. The specific example of the alleged interference
of this motive, usually cited, is the conduct of the attack upon the
Boer position at Paardeberg. In respect of these operations the actual
facts, as they presented themselves to the mind of Lord Roberts, are
these. On reaching the Paardeberg position from Jacobsdal the
Commander-in-Chief found that in the operations of the preceding day
Lord Kitchener had lost a thousand men without gaining a single
advantage. The position held by the Boers, although it was commanded
by rising ground on all sides, was one which afforded admirable cover
in repelling an attacking force. In these circumstances Lord Roberts
decided, as an application of the principles of military science, to
"sap up" to the Boer positions. The correctness of this decision was
proved by the result. The moment that the Boers realised that they
were to be given no further opportunity--such as a repetition of a
direct attack upon their position would have afforded--of inflicting
heavy loss on the British troops, whilst their eventual surrender was
no less inevitable, the white flag was hoisted.
[Footnote 200: _I.e._, _less_ troops for lines of
communication. Lord Roberts's force was 36,000, the Army
Corps was 47,000.]
It is denied with equal definiteness that any general feeling of the
kind alleged existed among subordinate officers or the rank and file
of the British troops. Where, however, the allegation of "a desire to
spare life" has regard to the enemy and not to the British troops, the
answer is to be found in the fact that any humanity inconsistent with
military efficiency was apparent and not real. The comparative
immunity enjoyed by the enemy on occasions when he was defeated is due
to physical conditions wholly favourable to the Boers, to the
knowledge of the country possessed by the burghers individually and
collectively, and to the circumstance that the inhabitants of the
country districts were, in almost all cases, ready to give them every
possible assistance in escaping from the British. There is one
particular statement in connection with this criticism which admits of
absolute denial. It has been said that Lord Roberts, the
Commander-in-Chief, received instructions from the Home Government
directing him to spare the enemy as much as possible. This statement,
in spite of its _prima facie_ improbability, has met with very general
acceptance. None the less it is entirely baseless. The only
limitations imposed by the Home Government upon Lord Roberts's
complete freedom of action in the conduct of the military operations
which he directed were such as arose from the difficulty experienced
in supplying him upon all occasions with troops of the precise number
and character required.
[Sidenote: The German general staff.]
The second criticism is one put forward by the German General Staff,
forming, as it does, the only valid complaint against the professional
merits of Lord Roberts advanced by that body. The British
Commander-in-Chief, say these German critics, made it his object to
"manoeuvre" the Boers out of positions instead of inflicting severe
losses upon them. The answer to this criticism, in its general form,
is to be found in the physical conditions of the country. On the
occasions to which reference is made the burgher forces were found to
be posted on high ground, behind rocks or in intrenchments, with fine
open ground in front of them. Obviously in these circumstances what
military science required of the commander directing the attacking
force was to find a means of placing his own troops on equal terms
with the enemy; and this was what Lord Roberts did. The criticism,
however, as more precisely stated and applied to the battle of Diamond
Hill in particular, and to the engagements fought in the course of
Lord Roberts's advance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria, takes the form
of the allegation that, while the enveloping movement on both flanks
was executed successfully, the full result of this initial success was
not obtained because the attack upon the Boer centre was not pressed
home. In other words, the enemy's centre was never caught and
destroyed by the envelopment of his flanks. This is historically true,
and yet the German critics cannot be said to have established their
case, for they omit to take the tactics of the Boers into
consideration. Stated briefly, these were to hold on to a position and
inflict such losses as they could upon the attacking troops, until the
final assault became imminent; and then to mount their ponies and
gallop away. Against such tactics as these, it would have been of no
avail to push in a frontal attack with the certainty of incurring
heavy loss, and without the chance of securing a decisive success. It
would have been merely playing into the hands of the Boers.
Under such conditions all that was possible was to demonstrate against
the Boer centre in the hope of holding them in their position, until
the flanking columns should have nullified their mobility by cutting
in on their line of retreat. The Boers, however, took every precaution
against such an eventuality; and the result was generally, as stated
by the German critics, that the Boers were "manoeuvred" out of their
positions. But this does not prove that the course adopted by Lord
Roberts was wrong; it merely proves the extreme difficulty of
inflicting a severe defeat upon an enemy who declines to risk a
decisive action, and whose mobility gives him the power to do so. The
course advocated by the critics would have been equally barren of
result, while the cost in lives would have been far greater.
[Sidenote: The Boers not in uniform.]
It remains to notice certain definite circumstances which caused the
British Army in South Africa to be confronted by difficulties which no
other army has been required to face. The Boers were accorded all the
privileges of a civilised army, although at the same time they
violated the most essential of the conditions upon the observance of
which these privileges are based. This condition is the wearing, by
the forces of a belligerent, of such a uniform and distinctive dress
as will be sufficient to enable the other belligerent to discriminate
with facility between the combatant and non-combatant population of
his enemy. The fact that the burgher forces were not in uniform and
were yet accorded the privileges claimed by civilised troops, was in
itself a circumstance that increased both the efforts required, and
the losses incurred, by the British Army to an extent which has not as
yet been fully realised. In the operations which Lord Roberts had
conducted in Afghanistan it was not the organised army but the
tribesmen that had proved difficult to overcome. The Afghan army
retreated, or, if it stood its ground, was defeated. But the
tribesmen who "sniped" the British troops from the mountain slopes and
from behind stones and rocks, who assembled from all sides as rapidly
as they melted away, constituted the real difficulty of the campaign.
In South Africa the burgher forces were army and tribesmen alike.
Owing to the absence of any distinctive uniform the combatant Boers
mingled freely with the British soldiers, and went to and fro among
the non-combatant Boer population in the towns and districts occupied
by the British. On one day they were in the British camp as
ox-drivers, or provision-sellers, or what not, and on the next they
were in the burgher fighting line. A single instance will serve to
convey an impression of the complete immunity with which not merely
the rank and file, but commandants and generals, entered and left the
British lines. It is believed that on one night General Louis Botha
slept in Johannesburg close to Lord Roberts, the British
Commander-in-Chief. The next morning he left the town in company with
some of the British troops. And in the Natal campaign it is notorious
that the camps of the Ladysmith relieving force were swarming with
Boer spies whom it was impossible to detect and punish. Even in the
besieged town itself the utmost secrecy at headquarters did not always
avail to prevent a timely intimation of a contemplated attack from
reaching the enemy's lines. Add to this the fact that every Boer
farmhouse throughout South Africa was an Intelligence Depot for the
enemy, and it is easy to understand the facility displayed by the
mobile and ununiformed Boer forces in evading the British columns.
Whether the humanity displayed by the British Government in thus
recognising the burghers as regular belligerents, and in other
respects, did not tend to bring about the very evil sought to be
avoided is another question. It is quite possible to maintain that the
comparative immunity from punishment and the disproportionate military
success which the Boers enjoyed did in fact, by contributing to the
prolongation of the war, ultimately produce a greater loss of life,
and a greater amount of material suffering, than would have been
incurred by the South African Dutch if the war had been waged with
greater severity on the part of Great Britain. That it increased the
cost of the war both in lives and in treasure to the British nation is
obvious. But this is a consideration which does not affect any
estimate of the merit or demerit displayed by the British Army in the
field that may be formed either by British or foreign critics. In
order to prove competency it is not necessary to show that no single
mistake was made or that nothing that was done might not have been
done better. No war department, no army ever has been or ever will be
created that could come scatheless from the application of such a test
of absolute efficiency. What we require to know is whether the same
standard of efficiency was shown to have been attained in the War
Office and in the Army as is required and obtained in any other branch
of the public service, or in any successful or progressive undertaking
conducted by private enterprise. The circumstances of the war were
abnormal. From one point of view it was a civil war; from another it
was a rebellion, and from a third it was a war between two rival
military powers, each of whom desired to become supreme in South
Africa. What the military critic has to consider is not so much how
these circumstances arose, or whether they could have been changed or
avoided by any political action on the part of Great Britain, but the
degree in which the conditions imposed by them upon the British Army
must be taken into account in applying the ordinary tests of military
efficiency to the work which it accomplished in this particular
campaign.
[Sidenote: Difficulties of the campaign.]
The nature of the difficulties presented by the vast extent of the
theatre of war, the deficiency of means of communication, the
imperfect cultivation of the land, the sparseness of the population
and their hostility to the British, and the physical and climatic
aspects of South Africa in general, have been broadly indicated in the
passages taken from Lord Roberts's despatches. To pursue the inquiry
further would be to travel beyond the scope of this work. That,
however, there is nothing unusual in the fact that civilian forces,
inspired by love of country and aided by physical conditions
exceptionally favourable to themselves, should be able to offer a
successful resistance to professional soldiers may be seen by a
reference to one of the little wars of the seventeenth century. In the
year 1690 twenty-two thousand French and Savoyard troops were sent by
Louis XIV. to storm the Balsille--a rocky eminence _mutatis mutandis_
the equivalent of a South African kopje--held by 350 Piedmontese
Vaudois. Even so the besieged patriots made good their escape, and,
owing to the sudden change in the politics of Europe brought about by
the accession of William of Orange to the crown of England, actually
concluded an honourable peace with their sovereign, Victor Amadeus of
Savoy, a few days after they had been driven from the Balsille.
Assuming that the British troops employed from first to last in the
South African War were five times as numerous as the forces placed in
the field by the Dutch nationalists--say 450,000 as against 90,000--we
have here a numerical superiority which dwindles into insignificance
beside the magnificent disproportion of the professional troops
required to deal with a civilian force in this seventeenth-century
struggle.[201]
[Footnote 201: Any reader desiring to learn the particulars
of this struggle is referred to the pages of the writer's
_The Valley of Light: Studies with Pen and Pencil in the
Vaudois Valleys of Piedmont_. (Macmillan, 1899). It may be
added that Napoleon manifested a keen interest in the
military details of the engagements between the French and
Savoyard troops and the Vaudois. As regards the number of
combatants on the Boer side. Lord Kitchener puts the total
(from first to last) at 95,000 (Cd. 1790, p. 13). The
_Official History_, however, gives, as the result of an
elaborate calculation, 87,365 (Vol. I. App. 4).]