THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION
_December 12th, 1899._
The importance of the resistance which Mafeking has made to the
attacks of the Boers should be viewed in the light of its relationship
to the two Protectorates, Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, since had
this place fallen, its position as a _depot_ for the Northern trade
would have made it a comparatively easy task for the victorious Boers
to have secured the control of the intermediate areas. They would have
at once seized the rolling stock of the railway whose headquarters are
temporarily invested in Mafeking, and could, by that means, have
mobilised their forces in a fashion and with a degree of acceleration
which would have brought them in a completely equipped and efficient
condition to the borders of Rhodesia. Indeed, from what one can learn
now, it is not at all improbable that the plan of the northern
operations of the Boer forces from their base at Mafeking provided for
the seizure of Mafeking with its stores and rolling stock, with their
subsequent enlistment of this material in the work of occupying
Bechuanaland and assisting our enemy in the concentration of their
forces upon Rhodesia. With the railway in their hands small forces
would have been stationed at the important points such as are afforded
by the natural drifts, and while they maintained by this system of
custodianship an open line of communication, they would, at the same
time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united mass, all of
these scattered parties of Boers who were engaged upon marauding
expeditions between here and Middle Drift. The history of Mafeking
then would have been but the story of Vryburg, where, once its
sympathy to the Boer cause was proclaimed and the place effectually
occupied, the Boer commandant withdrew the greater portion of his men
to fresh spheres of activity. With Mafeking in the hands of the enemy,
our chief stand would have been around Buluwayo, where Colonel
Baden-Powell and Colonel Plumer would have united their commands,
thereby presenting to the enemy greater resistance than would have
been possible had the forces been engaged upon their own initiative.
In a way, therefore, Mafeking has forged an important link in the
chain of outposts, by which the safety of the Protectorates has been
guaranteed and the independence of the country still preserved to
Imperial rule. It must not be forgotten, however, that the success
which Plumer's column has enjoyed at Rhodes' Drift and at Middle Drift
gave to Southern Rhodesia a certain immunity from hostile invasion,
while in any estimate of the economy of the victories which Colonel
Plumer's men and our own here have scored against the Boers, it should
be borne in mind that had they vanquished our forces at Middle Drift
or Rhodes' Drift, further Imperial territory would have been invaded,
and the road upon which they might have marched to besiege Buluwayo
would have been open to them. Colonel Baden-Powell has, of course,
been chiefly instrumental in preventing the investment of Buluwayo,
since the determined stand which he made caused General Cronje to hold
an aggregate number of Boers, amounting to 8,000 men, and by far the
larger portion of the Western Division of the S.A.R. forces, under his
control for Mafeking; but without in any way disparaging this work, so
important in its achievements, so vital in its issues, nothing perhaps
has proved so integral a factor in the work of maintaining our
occupation and dominion over these important adjuncts of our Empire in
Africa, as the defence which Colonel Plumer so successfully and
gallantly accomplished. However we here may have assisted in the
preservation of those Protectorates as Imperial dominions, there can
be no doubt we should have lost, for the time being, all claim to
their moral and practical possession had Colonel Plumer's force
retired. With 8,000 men investing Mafeking, and various minor bodies
scattered up and down the border between here and Fort Tuli, the enemy
could have spared 6,000 men for co-operation with these subsidiary
bodies, and still have maintained the siege and bombardment of this
town. It did not need, then, its downfall to give the Boers important
belligerent rights throughout the Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia,
and although our surrender might have materially facilitated their
progress, our successful opposition did not necessarily, nor
altogether, impede it. The strategical value of the drifts made their
safe custody a matter of momentous importance, since through them, as
much as from Mafeking, might entry have been made and territorial
supremacy for the moment acquired. Indeed, it is very much to be
doubted whether the chief value of the stand by which Mafeking has
distinguished itself is not found in the lesson which it has read to
the Colony itself. Had we gone the way of Vryburg, or had we
surrendered after some slight stand, it is almost certain that our
fall would have been the signal for the general uprising of the Dutch
in the northern areas of the Colony as well as in British
Bechuanaland. How near we are to a mare's nest in Mafeking is
uncertain, but after much inquiry amongst the chief people (business)
in the town, there is no doubt that had the inhabitants of Mafeking
been able to conceive the difficulties and trials which were about to
beset them, the losses in business at the moment, and the temporary
stagnation which will follow the war, they would have preferred to
have worshipped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel Baden-Powell and
Colonel Hore remove their headquarters to some spot in the
Protectorate, while the sleek and prosperous merchants of Mafeking
were thus enabled to follow their occupation and to turn over their
money while they lived amid the baneful protection of a temporary and
purely commercial allegiance to the Transvaal Republic. It is not, it
would seem, that individually Mafeking is disloyal, but that it is
essentially a commercial centre, governed, impressed, and inherited by
commercial instinct, and reflecting, in its inhabitants, a gathering
of the peoples of the world in more or less confused proportion. There
is a small German community, there is an American colony, there are
French, and Jews of every nation. They have made money in Mafeking;
they own much property; they are even friendly to the Transvaal since
they have large trade interests among Dutch towns which are near the
border. They came here in the days when this part of Africa was
unknown to white man; they trekked from Kimberley, from the Transvaal,
even across the African desert from the coast, and if they have lived
beneath the protection of our standard, they have amassed their wealth
by trading with the flags of all nations. They care very little indeed
for the Uitlander in the Transvaal, for his wrongs or for his rights,
but they would respect him much if he came with his cattle and his
sheep, with his waggons and his chattels, and some superfluity of
money, for then they could add still further to their hoard of shekels
and trade with him for his cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that
constitutes Mafeking: disgusted with Imperial government, wishing to
have vengeance upon the Colonial Government, and boasting to Heaven at
one moment about their gallant resistance, crying out against the
ill-wind that has brought them the siege. They move with the current
of the Colony, and can be as easily disturbed to patriotism as they
can rouse themselves to a passionate criticism of the follies of the
Imperial protection under which they exist. When they are moved to
sympathy with the Dutch, it is difficult to believe that they are the
self-same loyal inhabitants of Mafeking who are now beleaguered, since
by daily contact, by union of marriage, by personal friendship, they
have consciously or unconsciously assimilated the cause of the Boer,
and reveal the profundity of their sympathies in these times of
distress.
An interesting side issue to the siege of Mafeking has been the chain
of events relating to the departure of Lady Sarah Wilson from Mafeking
upon the night of the day during which war was declared, her
temporary sojourn at Setlagoli, from where she supplied the garrison
with news, and acted as the chief medium by which Baden-Powell managed
to get his dispatches through to the Government in Cape Town; her
retirement from Setlagoli, when her work was discovered, to General
Snyman's laager before Mafeking to request from that gentleman a safe
permit into Mafeking; her eventual arrival in the town in exchange for
the prisoner Viljoen. Lady Sarah Wilson experienced no very
extraordinary adventures and was treated with that consideration which
is due to her sex by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have
made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily
taken up active participation in the siege by endeavouring to keep the
garrison supplied with news.