TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DURATION OF THE WAR.
AS we write, with the fate of Mafeking still trembling in the balance, the chief thought in every man's mind is, Will they be able to hold out,—shall we be able to say that in no single case did the Boers take any of the towns that we defended and they attacked ? After that what people are thinking about most is the duration of the war. How long is it going to last ? Of course no man can possibly answer this question definitely, but what is possible is to consider some of the data on which the answer depends. One can say something about the factors in the problem, though one cannot solve it. The first thing to be noted is the nature of Lord Roberts's advance. During the past week Lord Roberts's strategic intention has become clear, and a very wonderful intention it is. Unless we are mistaken, the following is the idea of Lord Roberts's operations. To begin with, his first objective is not Pretoria, but Johannesburg, the great deserted city where, without pitching a tent or building a hut, forty thousand men can be housed without any previous work. Johannesburg supplies quarters and a base for a great army ready-made in a manner offered by no other place in the world, for nowhere else will you find houses in repair and all the plant of a great city, and yet no inhabitants. But once at Johannesburg the taking of Pretoria is comparatively easy. From a base so excellent Lord Roberts can at his leisure make his arrangements for investing the capital. But there is yet another reason for making Johannesburg the first objective. Look at a good map of South Africa and find Johannesburg. You will note at once that three lines of railway ray out to the South from Johannesburg like the arms of a starfish. One stretches due south, one south-east, and one south-west. But at this moment there is a British general with a. British army at a point about one hundred and twenty miles down two of these lines. Lord Roberts is at Kroonstad with the main army on the line that runs due south. General Buller is at New- castle on the south-east line with the Natal force. These facts are, of course, already patent. What will, we trust, be no less patent before long is that General Hunter has reached Klerksdorp, the terminus of the line of railway which runs south-west from Johannesburg, and forms the westernmost arm of the starfish. But if and when we have three forces ready to move up these three lines of rail which all converge • on Johannesburg, the difficulties of the Boers in the matter of opposing our entry into the Outlanders' city will be very great. It is said that they mean to hold the line of the Klip River, which runs, as it were, in front of the south face of Johannesburg. But this position, though excellent if it were only necessary to oppose Lord Roberts's advance up the main line, would leave the road open for Hunter's advance on the west, and Buller's on the east flank. At the same time it is quite possible that there may be collected at Mafeking, converted from a beleaguered city into a place of arms, a force which will be able to threaten Johannesburg from yet another side. The force relieving Mafeking numbers some three thousand men, and there are one thousand in Mafeking itself, and Colonel Plumer has vet another thousand hovering close by. The relief of Mafeking ought therefore to mean, in addition to the defeat of the investment, the presence of a force of some five thousand men on the Boer flank. Our supposition as to the triple advance by the three lines of rail that concentrate at Johannesburg may of course prove unfounded, but it may be pointed out in support of it that a line runs due west from Kroonstad in the direction of Klerksdorp, and to within some thirty miles of that place, and that there- fore intercommunication between the bases of the three columns could easily be maintained. Buller, as soon as the Drakensberg is clear of Boers, could communicate with Lord Roberts by means of the line between Harrismith and Bethlehem, and Hunter with Lord Roberts by the Vier Fontein route to the West.
But if we are right in thinking that this triple advance on Johannesburg will make it impossible for the Boers to make a stand south of Johannesburg, we ought before very long, say three weeks from the present time, to hear of our entry into Johannesburg, or, at any rate, of the town being well within our reach. But, it may be said, this does not show that the further duration of the war will be short. Suppose the Boers do not make a final stand even at Pretoria, but keep always trekking away in front of us, and so compel us to follow them into the heart of Africa ;—what are we to do then ? We admit that if the Boers had indefinite land room this prospect would be a very formidable one. They- might play the part of will-o'-the-wisp with us for ever if the North were not closed to them. But fortunately it is closed. General Carrington's very efficient mounted force is waiting to head the Boers off if they should try to trek into Rhodesia. But it may be said that there still remains the West. Not so. The force at Mafeking which we have just mentioned can close whatever part of the West is not closed by want of food and water. There remains, then, only the country to the East in which the Boers can play the game of constant retirement. But here the ground, though large, is limited, and contained on the one band by the Portuguese frontier, which the Boers dare not violate, as by doing so they would at once place Delagoa Bay at our disposal as a base for military action, and on the other by Swaziland, where the natives are too hostile and too numerous to be treated as a negligible quantity. This means, then, that the only place the Boers will have to retire into will be the Lyden. berg district, —the mountainous region through the south of which the Delagoa Bay Railway runs. Here the Boers are said to have already accumulated vast stores of food and ammunition, and here very likely they will make a stand,—their backs being, as it were, against the wall. Here, then, is the unknown -factor in calculating the duration of the war. How long will the Boers be able to hold out in the Lyden berg district ? No one can, of course, answer this positively. It is only possible to guess. Personally we should think, but of course we may be utterly wrong, that the period will not be very long. Say the Boers are driven thither by the middle of July, we very much doubt their holding out in force for more than a couple of months. When once they see that the country is settling down without them, that the mines are begin- ning to be worked again in Johannesburg, and that Pre- toria is even resuming its old life, the bulk of the trekkers will, we believe, begin to hesitate. If at that moment a pro- clamation is issued saying that men who submit within a month will be allowed to return to their farms, but that if no submission takes place their farms will be considered to have been abandoned, and will be sold by auction, we cannot doubt that the remains of the Boer army will quickly melt away. The Boer is a hard man, but he does not die in the last ditch. He " treks" into another ditch if he can, but when that is impossible he gives up.
Of course, all we have suggested may very easily be vitiated by a bad British disaster. We have written as if that would not happen, and we do not think it will, but if it did there might easily be a recrudescence of Boer enthusiasm which would bring new-fighters out of the ground and greatly delay the war. We are reckoning on the Boers constantly falling back as we advance and manceuvre them out of their positions, and also constantly losing men by desertion, death, and disease. Assuming, then, that this process goes on uninterrupted, we will hazard the guess that the war will be over by the end of October, will, in fact, have lasted one year. Possibly our calcula- tions are entirely wrong and things will go much slower, or, again, much faster, —for that is by no means impossible; but in any case no harm can be done by making the speculations we have attempted.
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