THE " TIMES " HISTORY OF THE WAR IN SOUTH
AFRICA.*
THE real significance of Mr. Amery's third volume lies not only in its value as a tactical and strategical study of what, after all, will never be reckoned as one of the great campaigns of history. As a military historian, indeed, Mr. Amery need have no cause to regret his decision to allow himself and his collaborators sufficient time for collecting and sifting the mass of often, conflicting evidence, both on incidents which are of supreme interest to all Englishmen in themselves, and also on the intentions and motives of the various responsible officers. It is impossible to deny that the quality of the third volume, which deals with the period from after the "black week" to Lord Roberts's entry into Bloemfontein, profits immensely, as compared with the second, by the * The "Tunes" History of the War in South Africa, 1899.1902. Edited by L. S. Amery, formerly Fellow of All Souls. Vol. LLL London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. [218.]
additional evidence which has become available, notably since the Report of the Elgin Commission. Thanks to this, and to the scrupulous care that has been taken with the verification of every detail, Mr. Amery has probably said the last word on many questions which two years ago were controversial and uncertain in the extreme.
But like Momuisen and Treitschke, Mr. Atnety, is not content with being a mere historian: the salient point about his weighty volume is the moral that he preaches. From the contemplation of this war of the blind against the purblind, as it now appears when compared with the Titanic struggle in Manchuria, he leads us on to consider one of the most momentous and pressing questions of the day. Plainly stated, that question is whether a nation which, like ohr own, has become of recent years "absolutely uuwarlike" can ever hope to find that military efficiency in its generals and its states- men, and that reserve of military strength in its civil popula- tion as a whole, without which we can never survive in the far greater struggles which the future may have in store for us. Mr. Amery expresses his conviction that "the lessons of the South African War and the intensely dramatic events of the struggle cannot possibly have ceased to be of the very highest interest and. importance to the Nation." That they are of vital and urgent importance we at least have always maintained in these columns, and during the worst crisis of the war we all—or, according to Mr. Amery, all except the politicians—realised the fact to some degree. But we only wish we could share his conviction that the real lessons of the war are of interest to others than a limited number of soldiers and writers. The subscribers who, as we are told in the preface, complain that the publication of this volume should have been delayed until the whole subject " has largely lost its interest" seem, we must despairingly admit, to express the general opinion of the nation.
Of course it may be argued that the story of the Boer War can never redound to our credit. The mistakes committed by our numerous generals were so many, the recurrence of " regret- table incidents " for which there could be no shadow of excuse so frequent, that it might he argued that the less said about it all the better ; and that when a nation persists in muddling through all its military operations, a chronicle of the muddling is of little interest and no value as an addition to military literature. This would he well enough if there were any sign that we had already profited from our disasters, and had made a beginning, at least, by attempting to reawaken the military spirit which we have sufficient confidence in our race to believe is not dead but only dormant in England. But unfortunately we are as far as ever from realising what war is, and the first chapter of this volume, which describes the absolute lack in England in 1895 of any preparation for a war on a grand scale, might, in fact, serve equally well as a chronicle of 1905. We are told of " a nation profoundly ignorant of all military affairs," and accustomed only to the cheap glories of minor expeditions; of the preSence at home " of 100,000 regular soldiers who, owing to extreme youth or deficient physique, were altogether unfit for foreign service"; of " deadening routine " and " make-believe manoeuvres, tending only to weaken the character and the intellect, and to suppress all warlike instincts." As for the Auxiliary Forces, though large additional drafts were urgently required, " a contemptuous disbelief " in their military value, and an attitude of " passive obstruction" on the part of the authori- ties, prevented our despatching to South Africa more than quite an insignificant proportion of their strength. (The footnote on p. 22 is, however, misleading. It is there stated that of the Militia and Yeomanry one man in five, of the Volunteers one in fifteen, "came forward." No doubt what Mr. Amery means is that this was the proportion which went, and_ then only at the first crisis. of the war.) The great bulk of the nation had, we are told, " abso- lutely no military experience at all, the most elementary proficiency in the use of firearms was practically limited to members of the Volunteer Forces, and the number of men who could march, skirmish, and shoot in Switzer- land was larger than in England." As for the statesmen, even in December, 1899, when disaater had practically furnished them with an opportunity, which will probably never recur until London itself' is sacked, for really arming the nation, and establiShing, at least in principle,. the obliga- tion of universal service, Mr. Amery cannot remind us of " complacent " speeches, a Ministry which devoted itself entirely to proving that it was not its fault, and an Opposition " wobbling flabbily hither and thither under Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman in the faint hope of making political capital out of the war."
That we did win after all *ill certainly prove a greater misfortune than surrender to the l3oer demands might have been, unthinkable though such a calamity would seem, if the people of this country rest satisfied with things as they are, and insist on regarding the possibility of a fight for our very existence as a nightmare to be forgotten. Fifty years ago last Sunday the Sebastopol Inquiry Committee declared that the Administration which ordered the expedition to the Crimea had no adequate information as to the strength of their enemy, and were unacquainted with the resources of the country to be invaded. They hoped and expected the expedition to be immediately successful, and as they did not foresee the probability 15f a protracted struggle, they made no provision for it. Can it be true that the lessons of the South African as of the Crimean War are already forgotten or ignored P Mr. Amery, at least, is not afraid to tell us what these lessons are.
We cannot attempt even a cursory examination of the profoundly interesting tactical appreciations with which this volume teems, still less give any adequate idea of the vigorous narrative which lifts the struggle on Wagon Hill into the atmosphere of Homeric combat, and perhaps reaches its culmination in the pitiful story of Spion Kop. Nor are we able to do more than call attention to the brilliant manner in which the contrast is drawn between the living strategy of Lord Itoberts and the " paralytical stupor" of the operations in Natal. Each separate chapter demands, and we trust will receive, at least from every student of war, a far closer examination and more thoughtful consideration than can possibly be contained within the limits of a mere review. With one of the most salient points in the volume generally we have already dealt,—the deplorable lack of military spirit in us all, which prompts Mr. Amery to the just though sombre reflection that " Spion Kop was lost, not by Buller or Warren or Thorneycroft, but by Aldershot and Pall Mall, by the House of Commons and the Nation."
Another aspect of the campaign may be said to centre in Lord Kitchener's decision to order Colonel Hannay's ride to certain death at Paardeberg, and the marked effect which the fall of that gallant officer undoubtedly had upon the psychological attitude of all ranks towards the war during the remainder of the long struggle. Mr. Amery expresses himself too brutally when he praises Lord Kitchener's alleged " instinct to destroy " and " indifference to life," and criticises Lord Roberts for being " a consummate player of the great game of war, rather than a methodical organiser of man- slaughter." He will pardon us for holding that such phrases do honour neither to Lord Kitchener nor to himself. But with the general sense of the arguments upon which he bases his defence, not of the tactical combination on February 18th, for the tactics were those of a petulant child, but of the broad policy of Lord Kitchener's attempt to storm the laager, we are in entire agreement. When he tells us that Lord Roberts was " too ready to believe that his enemy was crushed when he was only dispersed," and forgot that " the great objects of strategy can rarely be secured without freely sacrificing the lives of one's own men," be has placed his finger upon the real cause for the undue prolongation of the war, and the extravagant cost in men and money at which the exhaustion of the Boer levies was finally obtained. No doubt the smallness of our available forces, and the knowledge that there was no second army to replace the first, 'nay have had much to do with the dread of heavy losses, and there was • also a natural disinclination to deal too harshly with an ununiformed white enemy. But the general consternation produced by what seemed to too many the useless slaughter of Paardeberg, and the wish which prompted Roberts almost as much as Buller to wage war without losing life, and even amounted to a deep-rooted sentiment' with the nation at home no less than with the senior officers at the front, forms a striking contrast to the astounding devotion of the Japanese armies and to the dogged heroism of our own Peninsular veterans, and inspires
men :- us with a grave fear lest the English should really be found to have lost their fighting instincts. "Lack of will-power, general feebleness, half-heartedness, a fear of bold decisions and wholesale commitments, indifference to the value of Moe or even an eagerness to find pretexts for wasting it, reluct- ance to exercise responsibility,"—such are the outstanding characteristics of the British South African army, not only in Natal, but also during the two long years that followed Paardeberg. Had Lord Kitchener succeeded in storming the laager, we agree that the verdict we are compelled to pass upon ourselves might have been very different.
There is just one other aspect of the campaign as seen through Mr. Amery's glasses to which, in view of the open discouragement of the Auxiliary Forces which is just now the mot d'ordre in high quarters, it seems most desirable that especial prominence should be given. The fact most firmly impressed on the mind of the reader as he lays this volume down is that the ever-recurring record of blunder and disaster with which the book teems is a record which might be ex- pected of an army of imperfectly trained troops led by amateur generals, and not of a standing army of professional
" The army was in rio sense organized for serious war. Neither the training that it gave nor the atmosphere in which it lived were such as to fit its members for the task of conducting real military operations. Generalship was neither .theoretically studied, nor tested in practice the lack of strategical or tactical insight, the indifference to organization and to the securing of information, the slowness, the irresolution, the absence of all real fighting instinct, the fear of bold far-reaching decisions, the dread of losses were the defects which, in varying degrees, showed themselves in almost every senior officer who took the field."
Yet we are told to-day that the civilian soldier cannot stand up against the highly trained Regular, and, above all, that the Auxiliary officer, however well read in theory he may be, is of no account beside the Regular officer who has been submitted to the magnetism of the Aldershot sham-fight or the barrack-square. It is surely arguable that no Volunteer army led by Volunteer generals could have made a greater display of ignorant incompetence than the Army of Natal. The men themselves, and the regimental officers of the Regular Army, were in no way to blame; " weary, sulky, and disgusted " by the incapacity of the generals who com- manded them, they were for all that " the heroes of the campaign, and, when their chance came at Pieter's Hill, they went into battle as if the last two and half months of almost unbroken defeats had never been." But the
Irregular troops were hardly inferior to them in the hour of crisis, as is testified by the behaviour of the New Zealanders and of Rimington's Guides in front of Colesberg ; the selection of Royston's Volunteers at Ladysmith for the sortie upon Gun Hill ; the heroism of Trooper Albrecht and the rest of the Imperial Light Horse on Wagon Hill, and of Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry on Spion Kop, to take a few instances at random from this volume alone. We can find absolutely no justification in the South African Cam- paign for the present prevalent theory at Pall Mall that the Auxiliary Forces are a source of weakness and embarrass- ment rather than of strength to the nation.
In conclusion, we make no apology for a tardy review. The question which is of most vital import to us all, and to which we feel sure 'that Mr. A.mery most desires an answer, is whether this outspoken story.of a most discreditable cam- paign will succeed, where all else has failed, in rousing the nation to a real sense of its own peril. It is a significant fact that this powerful volume should have been the' work of ex: elusively civilian brains. But what is more significant and more hopeful still is that daring the time which has elapsed since its publication its sternly uncompromising criticisms and ruthless dissections of facts and motives, which ten years ago would probably have resulted in sending its authors to Coventry, should have been received by military and non- military reviewers alike with an almost unanimous chorus of agreement and approval. For it is certain that unless the bulk of the population realise to the full the tine import of this writing on the wall—that, as the late Colonel Henderson put it, "adequate military knowledge should be part of the intellectual equipment of every educated man," and, above all, that our Army and our Army system are what the nation choose to make them—nothing can save us from irretrievable disaster and ruin.
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