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The
Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. Secretary of State for the Colonies, July, 1896 |
Preface and Introduction.
The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1900-1909.
PREFACE.
VOLUME II.
".… It is in the realisation of those more deeply rooted causes of our past failures, quite as much as in the indiscriminate adoption of methods found useful on the South African veld, that lie the best hopes of the reforms required to insure the safety and the full development of that which is already in part a great living reality, but in part still remains a precious ideal-the British Empire."…. There has been little attempt in this volume to rival the picturesque imaginativeness of style of Dr. Conan Doyle, or the vivid and convincing impressionism of "Linesman." It will be enough for me if the simple endeavour to present the reader with a clear story of what actually happened, and why and how it happened, succeeds in attracting his curiosity and holding his attention to the end of the book. The tone adopted has been frankly critical throughout. It may perhaps seem to some that the criticism tends to err on the side of severity, possibly even of captiousness. That certainly has not been my intention. It is true that in the criticism of particular operations I have confined myself principally to the discussion of the proximate causes. It would be wearisome on each occasion to rehearse at length the difficulties which British generals had to face owing to the character of the country, the absence of information, the mobility of the Boers, the lack of initiative of their subordinates, or their own defective training. But no one who has read the chapters dealing with the military antecedents of the war will fail to bear in mind the difficulties under which those generals laboured, or to make allowance for them. Nor is the object of these criticisms to blame or praise this general or that, or to presume to pass arm-chair judgments upon men who did their best in the perplexing moment of action, but to try and help towards the solution of our present and future needs by the study of our past mistakes. And that object can only be attained by the frankest discussion of those mistakes. If, in my desire to tell the truth without palliation or concealment, I have anywhere overstepped the bounds of fair criticism, I must frankly ask for forgiveness. But I trust that the reader will attribute my fault in such cases to error of judgment or lack of information, and not to any partiality or prejudice….
"…. If it was difficult formerly to get a true account of a battle, it has become even more so now with the enormous extension of the firing-line, with smokeless powder, lying down tactics, and khaki uniforms. The general often neither sees the enemy nor even his own firing-line; the firing-line have little to tell but that they were under a rain of bullets, more or less heavy, from this or that direction. A battle is thus more than ever an elaborate puzzle to which a number of persons can give partial answers of varying degrees of correctness or incorrectness. Under no circumstances, perhaps, is the personal equation of error in evidence so great as in the crisis of a battle, and the historian is compelled to treat the private soldier's letter and the general's despatch with equal suspicion. It is only after the most careful and most skeptical analysis of the available evidence that something resembling the true objective event can be reconstructed. It is this laborious task of reconstruction that I must fain plead as justification for the very considerable delay between the appearance of the first and second volumes, a delay that I fear has proved disappointing to many subscribers.
Even so it would have been impossible to have done nearly as much in the time but for the great measure of help which I have received. My thanks are due first of all to the Army collectively. To all its members, from its official heads down to the privates in the ranks, I owe a great debt of gratitude for the kindness and willingness to help which they have invariably shown me. In writing of a war still, unfortunately, continuing, and on questions of so highly contentious a character as many which the incidents of that war have provoked, it would hardly be advisable to give the names of those who have sent me their diaries, written for me accounts of the events with which they have been connected, corrected proofs or answered the innumerable questions with which I have persecuted them. It is thus alike impossible for me to fortify the statements contained in this narrative by the authority of my informants, or to express my gratitude to them otherwise than anonymously and collectively. Equally anonymous must be my acknowledgment of thanks to those friends of mine who have taken part in the war as burghers of the Boer Republics, by whose help I have been enabled to give some account, however inadequate, of that little known side of the operations. I trust that they will be satisfied that I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to let no tinge of political or patriotic prejudice colour my narrative or distort my facts. The same restriction of anonymity does not apply to those members of The Times staff of war correspondents who have assisted me in the work, and who have taken so large a share in it that they may well claim to be considered co-authors of it.
".... The errors of fact and judgment—many I fear contained in this work are mine."
L. S. AMERY.
LONDON, April 11, 1902.
INTRODUCTION.
VOLUME I. CHAPTER I.Political importance of the war.
THE South African War has been the greatest political event in the history of the British Empire since the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. Such a description may at first sight appear exaggerated when applied to the suppression by a great Empire of two small Republics in a remote part of the world. But it is justified by the importance of the political principles involved, by the magnitude and extent of the military operations, and by the profound effect the war has created throughout the whole British Empire, and even among foreign nations. It is no less justified by the far-reaching results that the war is destined to have in the future upon the organisation of the British army, the political and economical development of South Africa, the relations between the various self-governing parts of the British Empire, and the position of that Empire among the nations of the world.Comparison with the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.
The two most important wars fought by Englishmen since Waterloo have been the Russian War and the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. The war in the Crimea was, it is true, fought against a great European Power. But its object was only to maintain a certain balance of power in Eastern Europe, which at that time was looked upon as a security for our position in India; the force sent out was, comparatively speaking, a small one; and even so the effort involved was wholly disproportionate to the insignificant results attained. In the Indian Mutiny the issue we fought for was one of unquestionable, even of vital, importance. The struggle for the preservation of our Indian Empire was fierce and long before the flames of mutiny were finally stamped out. Our position in Asia, to some extent our position in the world at large, was made secure by our victory then. In South Africa the principle at issue has been even more important, the stake higher, and the effort greater.The White Man's Birthright.
The struggle has been not to uphold the rule of Englishmen over Asiatics, but to secure political equality for Englishmen in a country where the English composed more than one half of the whole white population. We have fought, not to maintain the white man's burden but to vindicate the white man's birthright—the right of all white men that come into a new country, and join in the work of developing and making it, to claim their share of its political privileges. Our endeavour has been not to preserve our hold over an alien dependency, but to prevent a vast region inhabited by men of English blood or of that stubborn Low German stock that is so nearly akin to our own-a region susceptible of indefinite development, and destined some day to play an important part in the world-from being lost to the community of liberty-loving and progressive nations that make up Greater Britain.Magnitude of the military operations.
As regards the military operations themselves, neither the Russian War nor the Sepoy War can bear comparison with the Boer War. An army of over 200,000 men, the largest army of Englishmen ever brought into the field, has been fighting many thousand miles from its base in a vast, almost barren, country, against an enemy aided by every advantage that is given by an intimate knowledge of the natural features of the country, by the friendship of the bulk of the population in the districts which have been the scene of operations, by long preparation, by the possession of the most modern weapons, by the highest confidence in their own prowess, and by the most desperate determination not to be subdued. Small though the Republics were, they represented, in proportion to their citizen population, the most formidable military power the world has ever known. For several months their forces occupied British territory, invested British towns and inflicted one defeat after another upon British generals, before Lord Roberts turned the tide and began his advance on Pretoria. There was a time when Boer agents in Europe confidently boasted of the terms the Republics intended granting to England as soon as England should recognise the hopelessness of continuing the struggle, and when even the most sanguine felt a passing doubt of our power and our will to bring the war to its only possible conclusion.Close political analogy with the American Civil War.
There is one great struggle of this century to which the South African War bears a striking resemblance-the American Civil War. The analogy, like any other historical analogy, must not be pressed too far, but there is a most remarkable parallelism in the general character of the political issues, in the course of the negotiations preceding war, and in the actual conduct of the campaigns, a parallelism which sometimes comes out in the most insignificant details. It is true that in some respects the more correct historical parallel to the American Civil War and to the events leading up to it is to be found not so much in the present South African War and the immediate issues from which it sprang, as in the whole history of the relations between the British Government and the Boers. The South African Civil War is separated by more than sixty years from the Great Trek, the South African counterpart of the Secession. But even taking into comparison the situation in South Africa only for the years immediately preceding the war, it is not difficult to trace a most interesting analogy with the situation in America before 1861. In both cases the issue was a double one, or rather presented itself in two different aspects. The question of the black man's right to personal liberty in the Southern States, or of the white man's right to political power in the Transvaal, was in each case inextricably interwoven with the wider question of the maintenance of Federal or Imperial supremacy-the words stand for the same political idea—against the assertion of State rights or Republican independence….Comparison of the military operations.
The resemblance between the course of military operations in America and in South Africa is no less close than the resemblance between the political situations. The North, like England, began with a wholly unwarranted contempt of its opponents; and, like England, the North found that it had to put forth exertions never dreamt of before in order to see the war through. The blunders of British generals before abler men came to the front, the initial defeats, the superior mobility of the Boers, their good shooting, their skill in taking cover, all find their parallels in the American war. Even the notorious "unmounted men preferred," sent to the colonies, was anticipated by the refusal of Mr. Cameron, the Secretary of War, to accept the offer of a corps of volunteer cavalry, as too troublesome and expensive, at a time when the Federal army was grievously deficient in mounted men. The defence conducted by the Boers against overwhelming odds has been as desperate and skilful as the defence of the South. In Africa, as in America, the war was practically a civil war, and, once war was declared, there could be no terms of peace for the smaller combatant short of absolute and unconditional surrender.Revelation of England's military inefficiency.
One of the first effects of the war was to show up the weakness and inefficiency existing in many departments of our costly military organisation, the paucity of capable senior officers, the serious lack of training of both officers and men for the conditions of active service, the failure of those responsible for the general direction of the army to anticipate the profound change in the whole character of warfare brought about by the improvements in modern fire-arms. But the course of the struggle brought into no less striking relief the unflinching personal bravery and dogged resolution of the British soldier, from highest to lowest, and the vast reserve of power latent in the patriotism of the free nations which compose the British Empire. To the outside world, too, the war has afforded a signal manifestation not only of the unity and of the resources of the British Empire, but of the unquestioned supremacy of British sea power. With an army of 200,000 men locked up at the uttermost ends of the earth, the British Empire has remained as invulnerable and as secure from the possibility of hostile European aggression as if those men had never been moved from their homes.England's good fortune.
England's proverbial good fortune would seem to have stood her in as good stead in the present war in South Africa as elsewhere. The defects of our military system have been brought to the test, not in a life and death struggle for the defence of our Empire against a great combination of European Powers, where failure might have meant irretrievable national disaster, but in a conflict where the ultimate issue ought never to have been seriously in doubt. At the same time the importance of the issues at stake and the severity of the checks received have been sufficient to impress the need for reform and reorganisation deeply on the public mind. Our good fortune has been no less marked in the actual course of the war. It is impossible to tell what might have been the result if the Boers had, from the very first, left Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley alone, and struck right into the heart of the Cape Colony-practically undefended and dangerously disaffected—with an army of 20,000 men. That army would have been trebled or quadrupled in a few weeks. The railway system of Cape Colony, which has proved so invaluable to us, would have fallen into the enemy's hands. General Buller, on landing, would have found himself face to face with the almost impossible task of reconquering the whole of South Africa from the coast. Our very blunders may possibly have been fortunate. In December our generals met with a series of checks, severe enough to create the profoundest anxiety at home and in the colonies, and to arouse the strongest determination to increase the force in South Africa to any figure necessary for the purpose of carrying through the war. But none of those checks was of the nature of a hopeless defeat which would have left a whole region open to invasion. Nor were our enemies, for all their bravery and skill, the men to make prompt and immediate use of their opportunities. After each of their successes, they remained on the defensive as before, wasting the precious weeks while reinforcements kept steadily pouring in. It is not impossible that, if the campaign had begun more successfully, we might have met with far more serious failure at a later stage. Supposing that Sir George White had been able to hold his own in Natal, that Sir Redvers Buller had crossed the Orange River, had invaded the Free State, as he originally intended, and succeeded in reaching Bloemfontein. Judging by the experience Lord Roberts, with a far larger army, comprising over 20,000 mounted men, afterwards had of the skill and mobility of the scattered remnants of the Boer commandos on his eastern flank, is it inconceivable that General Buller, with barely 40,000 men, with hopelessly inadequate cavalry and mounted infantry, with the unbroken forces of the Republics hovering round him on every side, might have been cut off and destroyed, or compelled to make a disastrous retreat to the Orange river or even to the coast? Such a blow would have found England unprepared. While a new army was being got ready and sent across the sea in frantic haste, rebellion would have spread like wildfire over almost the whole of Cape Colony. The reconquest of South Africa might well, in such a case, have proved a matter of years and involved efforts which would have permanently crippled the resources of the British Empire elsewhere.The Nation's Recessional.
But the war has not only shaken our military organisation. It has profoundly affected the whole nation in many ways. The Mournful Monday of Nicholson's Nek, the Black Week of Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, the alternate hope and disappointment of six weeks' fighting on the banks of the Tugela, the long anxiety for the fate of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, have taught lessons that nothing else could have taught so well. The war has brought out many of the nation's best qualities, its patriotism, its fortitude, its steadfastness. The war has been the nation's Recessional after all the pomp and show of the year of Jubilee. It has transmuted the complacent arrogance and contempt of other nations begotten by long years of peace and prosperity to a truer consciousness both of our strength and of our defects, and has awakened an earnest desire to make those defects good. It has set on foot a movement for administrative reform which, one may confidently hope, will not be confined to the War Office alone, but extend to every other department of the national life, and not least to the constitutional framework of the Empire.Has War no good in it?
War, cruel and wasteful though it be, still has its use, so long as it has the power to stir, as nothing else can, the emotions of a whole nation to its inmost depths; to appeal to the sentiments of unity, of devotion to a common cause, of self-sacrifice; to convert the complacent acknowledgment of the existence of abuses into an earnest desire to sweep those abuses away. An era may come when a decline in the year's export trade, an increase in the national drink bill, or the spread of some preventable disease, will strike at the heart of a whole nation with as profound and startling an effect as the news of a disastrous defeat, when traders and workmen will sacrifice their individual interests for the common good as unhesitatingly as the soldier sacrifices his life on the field of battle. But that day is still far off in the development of our civilisation, and, till it comes, the need for war survives. War still remains the supreme test of a nation's efficiency and the sternest school of a nation's character. To war England owes not only the possession of her colonies, but the adventurous roving spirit that has made the English a nation of colonisers and traders. In that sense at least trade has always followed the flag. It would be, hard to decide how much of England's commercial supremacy in the present century has been due to the presence of abundant mineral deposits and an intelligent free trade policy, and how much has been due to the spirit of self-reliance, of enterprise and vigour that England won from the trials and efforts of twenty years of war, ending in complete success. Has the great national effort of 1870 had nothing to do with the marvellous material development of modern Germany, or did the great struggle for liberty and political unity in America leave no trace upon the American character? There can be no evil greater than a purposeless war, a war that mends no wrong, that settles no conflict of irreconcilable ambitions, that clears no ground for fresh development, that only exhausts without achieving any result. The Crimean War was such. Has the Transvaal War been such also? The future alone can decide; but if, as we believe, what it has done has been to destroy a political system based on racial ascendancy, to sweep away a dishonest and inefficient government, to crush a narrow and unprogressive racial ambition, hostile to the very existence of the British power in South Africa, and for ever menacing South Africa with civil war, and to clear the ground for future progress—if it has done that, the money and the blood spent upon it will not have been spent in vain.Union of the Empire.
But the war has done more than that. It has brought every part of the British Empire closer together. The sentiment of unity between the mother country and the self-governing colonies had been growing stronger for many years. The importance of the young nations that were springing up in the colonies was already recognised. The appointment, in July 1895, of one of the ablest of English politicians, Mr. Chamberlain, to the Colonial Office, was a mark of that recognition, and during his tenure of office Mr. Chamberlain has done much to promote mutual understanding between England and the colonies, and a common sentiment of patriotism to an Empire in which the colonies are not possessions, but joint possessors with the mother country of an Imperial inheritance. It required the touch stone of a great war to make the Empire feel its unity. The moment the war became probable the colonies offered their services, and the tidings of initial reverses made them only the more eager to press their help. The loyalty of India and other dependencies was no less strikingly shown, though it was held inadvisable to make use of any but white soldiers in a war fought between white men in a country where the black man presents so difficult a problem. The presence of the colonial volunteers has made the whole character of the war an Imperial one. The Englishman, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Welshman, the Canadian, the South African, the Australian, the New Zealander, the planter from India or Ceylon, have fought side by side, and exchanged their impressions and political ideas. Every thrill of hope or fear that has been felt in South Africa or in England has been felt no less in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand. Every drop of colonial blood shed in South Africa has cemented more closely the bond of kinship between the parts of the British Empire.
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L. S. Amery, The
Times History of the War in South Africa (1900-1909). Volume II, Chapter VII. The Break Up of the Army Corps. Background of the Siege of Mafeking. |
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L. S. Amery, The
Times History of the War in South Africa (1900-1909). The Times Map of South Africa. |
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Arthur Conan
Doyle, The Great Boer War (1902) Preface and Table of Contents |
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"Events at Mafeking" is the final chapter of Howard Hensman's A History of Rhodesia. Hensman writes: "The book was mainly conceived and written before the out break of the war, but with the object of making the volume as complete as possible chapters dealing with the sieges of Kimberly and Mafeking and Colonel Plumer's Rhodesian force have been added." | |
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Perspectives
on the South African War. A collection of links to primary and contemporary resources on the war in South Africa. |
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