Lessons of the War | Page 8

the courage to assert that
there was no haphazard, that his chief knew quite well what he was
doing, and that "the policy which the Government adopted was
deliberately adopted with the fullest knowledge of possible
consequences." If these words in Mr. Wyndham's speech of October
20th mean anything, they mean that Lord Lansdowne and Mr.
Wyndham intended Sir George White to be left for a month to fight
against double his number of Boers; that they looked calmly forward to
the terrible losses and all the risks inseparable from such conditions.
That being the case, it seems to me that it is Mr. Wyndham's duty, and
if he fails, Lord Lansdowne's duty, to tell the country plainly whether in
that deliberate resolve Lord Wolseley was a partner or an overruled
protester. Ministers have a higher duty than that to their party. The
Nation has as much confidence in Lord Rosebery as in Lord Salisbury
and the difference in principle between the two men is a vanishing
quantity. A change of ministry would be an inconvenience, but no more.
But if the public comes to believe, what I am sure is untrue, that the
military department at the War Office has blundered, the consequences
will be so grave that I hardly care to use the word which would
describe them.
I accept the maxim that it is no use crying over spilt milk or even over
spilt blood, but the maxim does not hold when the men whose decision
seems inexplicable are in a position to repeat it on a grander scale. The

temper of the Boers as early as June left no doubt in any South African
mind that if equality of rights and British supremacy were to be secured
it would have to be by the sword. The Government alone among those
who cared for the Empire failed to realise this in time. That has been
admitted. The excess of hope for peace has been condoned and is being
atoned for on the battlefields of Natal. But to-day the temper of Europe
leaves no room for doubt that, in case of a serious reverse in Natal,
Europe if it can will interfere. Have Mr. Goschen and Lord Lansdowne
worked out that problem, or is there to be a repetition in the case of the
continental Powers--an adversary very different from the Boers--of
patience, postponement, and haphazard? It is not the situation in South
Africa that gives its gravity to the present aspect of things, but the
situation in Europe. Upon the next fortnight's fighting in Natal may turn
the fate not merely of Natal and of South Africa, but of the British
Empire. That this must be the case was plain enough at Christmas, and
has been said over and over again. Yet this was the crisis which was
met by sending to the decisive point a reinforcement of ten thousand
men to do the best they could along with the six thousand already there
during a five weeks' campaign.
After reconnaissance on Friday and Saturday (October 27th-8th) Sir
George White, finding a large Boer force in front of him at Ladysmith,
determined to hit out on Monday. Suppose Ladysmith to be the centre
of a compass card, the Boers were spread across the radii from N. to E.
Sir George meaning to clear the Boers from a position near N.E.
prepared to move forward towards N.E. and towards E., sending in
each direction about a brigade of infantry and a brigade division of
field artillery. He sent two battalions and a mounted battery towards N.
The party sent to N. started after dark on Sunday; the other parties,
making ready in the night, set forward at dawn. There was no enemy in
position at N.E. The force sent towards E. pushed back a Boer force,
which retreated only to enable a second Boer force to take the British E.
column in flank--apparently its left flank. The N.E. column had to be
brought up to cover the retirement of the E. column. When these two
columns returned to Ladysmith the N. column was still out. Long after
dark Sir George White learned that the N. column, which had lost its
battery and its reserve rifle ammunition by a stampede of the mules,
had been surrounded by a far stronger Boer force, had held its ground

until the last cartridge was gone, and that then the survivors had
accepted quarter and surrendered.
Sir George White manfully takes upon himself the blame for this
misfortune. His portentous blunders were in sending out the party to a
distance and in taking no steps to keep in communication with it or to
support it. The detachment of a small party to a distant point is a habit
of Indian warfare. It is out of