THE BOER GENERALS.
WE do not agree that the enthusiastic scenes at Southampton and Waterloo last Saturday were altogether unworthy of us as a nation. It is true that the memory of the crowd is short, and that a British crowd will cheer almost anything from a donkey-cart to a Parsee's hat, but the popular interest in De Wet and the admiration for his fighting qualities are perfectly genuine, and though the records of Botha and Delarey are less vivid, the welcome accorded to the three defeated generals last week strikes in some respects as true a note as that which greeted Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener on their return as conquerors. Though there has probably never been a war which has been so well understood, or so heartily approved, or so keenly followed by the nation at large, we are able to forget the bitterness of the long struggle, and to do honour, if in somewhat noisy fashion, to the representatives of a small people who have stood up bravely to a big one. That they have been our own most formidable foes does not blind us to the astonishing character of their military achievements. The English love a first-class fighting-man wherever they find him.
When we come to examine these achievements, and to estimate the value of their services to their country, we are obliged at the outset to admit, what is generally agreed, that, owing to the want of good generalship in the earlier stages of • the war, the Boers lost a great opportunity. Until the advent of Lord Roberts in January, 1900, neither side had employed a general of first-class ability. This was all the more discredit- able to us, as we had a number of generals with experience of war ; but it was only to be expected in the untrained levies of our enemy. Only two of the protagonists of the war of 1880 survived to renew the struggle with England, and both of these were in their declining years. We should have had generals ready-made ; the Boers had to create theirs. But by the time that the right men had been found and given plenary powers, Lord Roberts had struck home, and the eventual issue of the struggle was assured. It is true that Louis Botha succeeded on the death of Joubert to the Commandant-Generalship of the Transvaal Forces, and that he was in command at the battle of Colenso. But that battle and the subsequent victories of the Natal Campaign were won more owing to our own deficiencies than to any active strategical policy on Botha's part. He had yet to learn the true strength of the forces under his command, to assert his present authority in the Councils of the Krygsrad (a body whose powers of inter- ference and dissent were as paralysing as the liberum veto); above all, to introduce into the Boer forces a discipline and a combination which alone can make a victorious army. The refusal to risk a second assault upon Ladysmith after the fight on Wagon Hill, the confusion of the eventual retreat from his positions m front of that town, the half-heartedness of the defence of Botha's Pass in May, 1901, compel us to deny real generalship to Louis Botha until after the capture of Pretoria.. Similarly, though Delarey was present before Kimberley and succeeded Cronje after Paardeberg, the greater part of the Western Transvaal was overrun and pacified by General Hunter in the early summer of 1900, and the Boer general was unable to do anything effective until the inauguration of the guerilla war.
The only individual whose achievements stand out against Lord Roberts's victorious advance is Christian De Wet, and they are remarkable indeed. Despatched from Natal as an obscure field cornet with the force which was all but in time to relieve Cronje, his first exploit is the capture of the great convoy at Riet River. This seriously hampered the advance to Bloem- fontein and was the direct cause of the exhaustion and sickness which retained Lord Roberts for close upon two months at Bloemfontein. The daring offensive campaign which covered the northward retreat of Olivier's army from the Colony, and resulted in the notable disasters of Sanna's Post and Reddersburg, and the investment of the Colonial division in Wepener, were the products of his resourceful brain, and had they been his only suc- cesses would alone have secured for him a place among the cavalry leaders of history. But they were followed by nine mouths of warfare during which he bade defiance to the united forces of a victorious army, infused fresh vigour into the flagging patriotism of the Free State, and forced his enemy to a vastly increased expenditure of blood and treasure if she meant to retain her hold upon South Africa. It will be remembered that immediately after De Wet's masterly retreats from Wepener and Dewetsdorp in the face of a combination of over thirty thousand men under Generals French and Rundle, Lord. Roberts determined to commence his advance upon Pretoria. This advance was made with great rapidity, and Rundle's division on the extreme rightflank found itself confronted by the Free State Army under Prinsloo and De Wet at Senekal. Hitherto the opposition made had been slight, and every mile traversed by the advancing host had brought in hundreds of sur- renders. The rot appeared to have set in, and when we arrived at Pretoria the end of the Boer resistance seemed near. We believe that to De Wet alone belongs the credit, from his point of view, of having prolonged the war. General Rundle met resistance for the first time at Senekal, and was unable to advance for two months. Not only so, but tempted by Lord Roberts's bold neglect of the unbroken force on his right flank, De Wet tried to strike in upon his rear,—and succeeded. Hitherto, and more especially since Paarde- berg, the Boers had shown a wholesome fear of being out- flanked, even at wide distances,—they had retreated all along their extended front of some hundreds of miles when- ever any British force was north of them. But from the day when De Wet overwhelmed the Irish Yeomanry at Lindley, and following this up by the capture of eight hundred men at Roodeval, threw himself astride of Lord Roberts's line of communication, the Boers abandoned their respect for strategic lines, and the long era of tactical battles, guerilla warfare, and raids upon the rail- way set in. The resistance of the Free State, as organised by De Wet and encouraged by his example, gave the Trans- vaal the breathing-space they required in which to find their own generals, and wage war after the same redoubtable pattern. This is undoubtedly De Wet's great claim to fame. The surrender of Prinsloo with over four thousand men in the Brandwater Basin at the end of July was without effect upon the course of the war because De Wet escaped. His first dash southward in September com- pelled the abandonment of the Free State towns for the formation of flying columns to pursue him. This inability on our part to hold the conquered country not only encou- raged the Boers in their firm belief in the eventual success of their cause, but forced the hundreds who had already sur- renderedto take up arms again at the bidding of their burgher brethren, and to continue the struggle against an invader who was powerless to protect them. In May, 1900, it is doubtful whether there were fifteen thousand Boers in the field. By November of the same year there were probably fifty thousand in arms. With doubtful wisdom we retaliated by farm-burning, and the work of conquest had to be begun de novo. His second dash south in January, 1901, ruined De Wet, though he managed to light up a formidable conflagration in the Colony, and with the exception of his capture of Colonel Firmin's camp on Christmas Day of that year, he never struck a real blow again. No doubt this was partly due to the pressing attentions of our own columns, but we hold that there were other causes for his eclipse. In the first place, he may be said to have acquired a veritable passion for evasion ; his object was less to strike often and strike hard—as he had done in the days of his greatness—than to elude his pursuers, and he frequently did this at the cost of his followers, who were continually asked to sacrifice themselves for his safety. Secondly, there is, unfortu- nately, no doubt that he grew embittered by the terrible struggle, and allowed himself to sully his great name as a leader by acts of brutality which it is impossible to condone. The shooting of Morgendaal may or may not have been justifiable, but nothing can palliate the method of his death ; and the blow given to an unarmed British officer who was a prisoner in his hands De Wet would himself have been the first to condemn a year previously. Nor was this coarse brutality confined to his enemies ; his own followers were even more the victims of his passion. Hence they fell away from him more and more, he rarely had an army to lead, and his influence over the latter stages of the war was consequently almost nil. Nevertheless, no one who remembers the wide-reaching effects of his victories in 1900; above all, no one who has ever felt the terrible vigour of his attacks, will deny to De Wet the title of a fighting general. To borrow a phrase from Lord Kitchener's despatches, his " bag " first and last was over four thousand men and nine guns, to say nothing of stores of well over a million pounds in value.
As De Wet's star declined, so did those of Louis Botha and " Koos " Delarey grow brighter. They appear to have possessed the very qualities that were wanting in the Free Stater, and in the latter stages of the war showed both generalship and organising power. Above all, they were strict disciplinarians, and succeeded in controlling their men under most difficult circumstances to a marvellous degree. We do not mean to say that no excesses were com- mitted,—Vlakfontein and Baakenlaagte are sad evidence to the contrary. But we do maintain that there has never been a guerilla warfare conducted with such humanity on the part of the guerillas, and we gladly give the Boer generals credit for this outstanding fact. If we consider the character of the warfare they were conducting, their immense power over their men is all the more remarkable. If Divisor pour vivre et concentrer pour combattre was Napoleon's motto for a European war, with guerilla tactics it becomes a necessity. Some sudden, staggering blow would be dealt at a column or a garrison ; but by the time our troops had been concentrated to punish the enemy he had vanished and dispersed. The Boer concen- tration being thus broken up by our columns, the order, " To your tents, 0 Israel ! sent the individual Boer back to his farm for weeks or months, often out of the area of war altogether. There he was to find food and rest till the opportunity for another blow came. It is one thing to fight bravely when kept at full tension and with the colours ; but even in the days of Cin- cinnatus it was considered heroic to return from the plough, and from the society of an anxious family, to some desperate attack upon a brave enemy. That influence must indeed have been great that could make men alternately agriculturists and heroes. No doubt the Boers reversed our methods of supplying an army in the field. We with- drew our veterans (because, unlike the Boers, they grew sick of fighting) and supplied their place with the rawest of recruits who could " neither ride nor shoot." They shed their more faint-hearted comrades to our columns, and ended the war with men who had so supreme a con- tempt for death that they charged knee to knee two deep against formed infantry, an operation which was declared impossible of execution by our cavalry at the very outset of the war I Nor was the conduct of the war in its later stages con- fined to the independent efforts of local leaders. Though we did all we could to cut off the various commandos,' strategical plans of the widest were laid and the different leaders in the east and west and south were always operating on a combined system. Communication appears never to have been interrupted between the rebels in the extreme south and the Administration in the north. Meetings of the chief Boer generals were frequently held in defiance of our blockhouses and our columns, and the organisation of this constant intercommunication when all the appliances for telegram or signal were gone is one of the wonders of the campaign, and of itself a proof of generalship. We shall not be surprised if, when we come to know the Boer version, the'verdict of " The Times History of the War," that their strength lay in their tactical system rather than in their generalship, will need considerable modification.
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