On the Heels of De Wet | Page 6

and bristling with rifles, had vomited columns, detachments, and units at various points upon this line--Colesberg, Hanover Road, De Aar, Richmond Road, Victoria West, and Beaufort. Lord Kitchener himself, at a pace which had wellnigh bleached the driver's hair, had hied down to De Aar in his armoured train. Plumer had diverted the invasion west, Crabbe and Henniker and the armoured trains had kicked it over the railway-line. Kitchener was content. If De Wet followed his jackal Hertzog into the south-western areas, the columns on the line from De Aar downwards were to move west as parallel forces and tackle the invader in turn. Each would run him till exhausted, with a fresh parallel to take up the running from them as soon as they were done; while at the end, when the last parallel was played out, De Lisle as a stop stood at Carnarvon, ready to catch the ripe plum after the tree had been well shaken. Admirable plan--on paper. Admirable plan if De Wet had only done what he ought to have done--if he had only allowed himself to be kicked by each parallel in turn, churned by relays of pom-poms, until ready to be presented to De Lisle. But De Wet did not do the right thing. He was no cub to trust to winning an earth by a direct and obvious line, where pace alone would have killed him. He was an old grey fox, suspicious even of his own shadow, and he doubled and twisted: in the meanwhile Plumer ran himself "stone-cold" on his heels, and the majority of the parallel columns, played by his screen of "red herrings," countermarched themselves to a standstill. The old, old story, which needs no expansion here. Admirable plan, if only the British columns had been as complete at their rendezvous as they appeared on paper. We were the New Cavalry Brigade--the 21st King's Dragoon Guards and the 20th Dragoon Guards, just out from home; the Mount Nelson Light Horse, newly raised in Cape Town; a battery of R.H.A., and a pom-pom. But where were we. We were due to march out of Richmond Road at daybreak on the morrow. Two squadrons of the 21st King's Dragoons and one of the Mount Nelson's were with Plumer--Providence only knows where--learning the law of the veldt. The rest of the Mount Nelson's and one squadron of the 21st King's Dragoons were at Hanover Road. One squadron of the 20th Dragoon Guards was at Richmond Road; two squadrons were in the train on the way up from Cape Town. The guns at least had arrived. Yet we were about the value of a "castle" on the chess-board designed to mate De Wet.
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"Now we shall have to take our coats off."
The brigadier was right. It was no mean affair to arrive at sundown at a miserable siding in the Karoo, called by courtesy a station, to find its two parallels of rails blocked with the trucks containing the nucleus of a cavalry brigade, and to get that nucleus on the road by daybreak. The supply column was all out, the battery half out--these were old soldiers; but the two squadrons of 20th Dragoon Guards had not yet awakened to the situation. The brigadier looked up and down the platform, gazed a moment at the long tiers of laden trucks, and then made the above remark.
And we had to take our coats off. The 20th were new but they were willing; and it is difficult to say which hampers you most, an over-willing novice or an unwilling expert. You who sit at home and rail at the conduct of the campaign, rail at the wretched officer, regimental or staff, little know what is expected of him. You have your type in your mind's eye--an eyeglass, spotless habiliments, and a waving sword; you pay him and expect him to succeed. Your one argument is unanswerable. You place the greatest man that you can select to guide and cherish him, therefore if he does not succeed it must be through his own shortcomings. In your impatience you opine that he has not succeeded. Therefore he must be ignorant, indifferent, and incompetent. Little do you realise the injustice of your opinion. You sweat, during a war, an intelligent class--the same class, be it said, from which the best that your universities can produce is drawn,--you sweat it as no other educated class would allow itself to be sweated in the whole civilised world, and yet, though men drop in harness for you by dozens every month, you turn upon them and revile them. Can you not appreciate the fact that it is not always the medium, through which the Great Head you have selected works, that is in error,--that the pilot's hand