Lessons of the War | Page 9

place against an enemy of European race,
for the detachment is sure to be destroyed if the enemy has a capable
commander. Every man in the Ladysmith force will have felt on
Tuesday that the commander had make mistakes which he ought not to
have made. The question is what effect this consciousness will have
upon the spirits of the force.
Sir George White was reinforced before and during the action, a
battalion of rifles having arrived in the morning and a party of
bluejackets with heavy quick-firers coming up during the day. Further
reinforcements were sent towards him from the squadron after the
action, so that his force is still about sixteen thousand. If he does not
elect to retreat, a course which might demoralise the troops, he may
well be able to defend Ladysmith until relieved; but the first business of
the troops now on their way out will be to relieve him, and until that
has been arranged for, it is to be feared that Mafeking and Kimberley
must wait.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: Thirteen weeks, as we now (March) know from the
official correspondence.]
[Footnote B: I should have said December.]

HOW WEAK POLICY LEADS TO BAD STRATEGY
_November 8th_, 1899
The war is doing us good. It is giving us the beginnings of political
education in a department that has been utterly neglected. It may be
worth while to review the whole situation of to-day, and to ask how the
man in the street can lend a helping hand.
The British Government, primarily representing the people of Great
Britain, has for many years been an affair of party; the dominant idea of
the party leaders has been when out of office to get in, and when in to
stay. The way to manage this was to cajole the man in the street, and as

he was a busy man getting his living and not much concerned about
watching the whole globe, the party leaders made bids for his support;
votes to be distributed on the principle that one man was as good as
another; taxation to be made light for him, and, consequently, as the
money had to be found, heavy for some one else. Each party offered
what it sincerely believed to be for the general good; but the kind of
general good thought of was the personal improvement or comfort of
each individual or of a mass of individuals. While this was going on in
British towns and counties, something was happening on the neglected
globe. There was a large part of the British Nation living on other
continents without votes in any British town or county, yet looking to
the British Government to champion something they loved, which has
come to be called the Empire. There were also great nations emulating
the British in the notion that the world was their inheritance, and that
they would take possession of a fair share of it. Their quarrels had
driven them to perfect their armies and to build navies. Each of them
was annoyed to find that in the scramble for the heritage some one had
been before them. On the best plots the British flag was flying, yet
Great Britain had not much Army and was very careless about her
Navy. The strong powers began to elbow her a little. The British
Government was not disturbed by these hints from the globe. A
Government made by a Parliament in which every member represented
a town or a county or a scrap of a town or county, and in which no one
represented the Nation, no one the Empire, and no one the Globe, felt
bound to keep its eye upon towns and counties, the Opposition benches,
and the next election. Why should it stand up for the British outside,
and why concern itself about other Powers looking round the globe for
claims to peg out? The colonists who looked to the British Government
for championship were snubbed; the foreign Powers working for
elbow-room were politely made way for, or if they brushed against the
British coat-sleeve and caused an exclamation received a meek apology.
This was the normal frame of mind of British party leaders and
ministers, from which they have never quite emerged. They were
asleep, dreaming of a parochial millennium.
But outside of cabinets there were a few men who used their eyes. Sir
Charles Dilke took a turn round the globe, and when he came back said
"Greater Britain." That was an idea, and ideas are like the plague--they

are catching. Sir John Seeley took a tour through the history of the last
three centuries, and said "Expansion of England"; that meant continuity
in the Nation's life not merely in space but in time. Whatever the cause,
a few years ago there