This misconception was that Sir Redvers Buller instructed Sir Charles Warren to make his turning movement by way of Acton Homes, instead of which Warren obstinately preferred the route by Groote Hoek. It was supposed that by the first of these two routes the force might have marched a long way round, but would have got into Ladysmith with little difficulty, whereas the (hypothetical) substitution by Warren of the Groote Hoek road had necessitated the capture of Spion Kop. The publication of the instructions upsets this theory. The Acton Homes road is never mentioned. The only references to the direction of the turning movement are vague—‘to the West of Spion Kop’—‘acting as circumstances require’—‘refusing your right and throwing your left forward’—and it now appears that Sir Redvers Buller intended Warren to go by the Groote Hoek route.

In vain has the Government endeavoured to shield the military reputation of Sir Redvers Buller at the expense of others. He has been consistent in his efforts to get the despatches published in full, even to the memorandum ‘not necessarily for publication’—a severe condemnation of Sir Charles Warren’s incapacity, but a more damning one of his own—and by his attitude has compelled the Government to give way. How truly applicable is an epigram of Mr. Henry Sidgwick, quoted by Sir Henry Howarth in a recent letter to the ‘Morning Post’: ‘The darkest shadows in life are those which a man makes when he stands in his own light.’

In addition to the official documents on the subject of Spion Kop much information of a very varied character has accumulated during the last two years, and besides invaluable verbal observations and descriptions gathered from conversation with officers from the front who took part in the operations, there is a whole library of books by newspaper correspondents, officers, and others, which bear upon these operations and throw light upon much that is obscure in the official papers. Among many others may be mentioned ‘My Diocese during the War,’ by Bishop Baynes of Natal; ‘The Relief of Ladysmith,’ by Mr. J. B. Atkins; ‘The Natal Campaign,’ by Mr. Bennet Burleigh; ‘London to Ladysmith via Pretoria,’ by Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P.; ‘The History of the War in South Africa,’ by Dr. Conan Doyle; ‘The Relief of Ladysmith,’ by Captain Holmes Wilson; ‘Buller’s Campaign: With the Natal Field Force of 1900,’ by Lieutenant E. Blake Knox, Royal Army Medical Corps.

Magazine articles have also appeared from time to time, some commenting on the operations themselves, others filling up gaps in the narrative, and others again incidentally referring to facts in connection with the operations. Among these last may be mentioned: (1) A series of articles contributed by Sir Charles Warren himself to the ‘National Review’ entitled ‘Some Lessons from the South African War’; (2) Mr. Oppenheim’s defence of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft in the ‘Nineteenth Century’; (3) An instructive diary of Dr. Raymond Maxwell, who was serving with the Boers, in the ‘Contemporary Review’ for December 1901; and (4) ‘The Diary of a Boer Officer,’ by another of them, in the ‘United Service Magazine’ for February this year. Some reference should perhaps be made to one of a series of articles in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ by ‘Linesman,’ which was headed ‘Dies Iræ,’ and dealt with Spion Kop, because these articles have attracted a good deal of attention, are cleverly written, and have since been republished in book form. They do not, however, impress the military reader as very accurate descriptions, but rather as war pictures, in which the colour is laid on with no sparing hand to obtain the highest effect, the aim being to please the sensation-loving reader. The value of the account of Spion Kop given in ‘Blackwood’ is discounted by ‘Linesman’ himself, who, having told us that ‘what the writer saw of the fight on the summit of Spion Kop was little enough’; that he had learnt ‘to describe—nay, believe nothing that one has not seen with one’s own eyes’; and that, ‘if the tongue is an unruly member, much more so is the ear’; nevertheless proceeds to describe in blood-curdling language what he did not see with his own eyes, and must have heard with ‘unruly’ ears.

The general result of all the information is to make it clear that Spion Kop was the key of the position dominating the country, and that the holders of it opened the way to Ladysmith; that no one was more astonished at its unauthorised abandonment than Sir Charles Warren, except the Boers themselves, who refused to credit the evidence of their senses, and at first believed its forsaken condition to be a trap! No longer, indeed, is it possible to regard the unwarrantable surrender of this position as a fortunate accident preventing an actual and impending disaster on the morrow, or, as Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft is reported to have said, ‘a mop up in the morning.’ Rather its abandonment was the blundering relinquishment of a hardly won and well assured success, only to be compared with the fatuous withdrawal in the morning of the storming parties which made the brilliant night attack and surprised the fortress of Bergen op Zoom on 8th March 1814.


CONTENTS

CHAP.PAGE
PREFACE[v]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH[1]
I.BEGINNING OF THE WAR—WARREN CROSSES THE TUGELA[55]
II.POSITION OF AFFAIRS[75]
III.ADVANCE TO VENTER’S LAAGER AND ATTACK OF THE RANGEWORTHY HILLS[92]
IV.BOER DEMORALISATION—TACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF SPION KOP[119]
V.CAPTURE OF SPION KOP AND ITS ABANDONMENT[135]
VI.AFTER WITHDRAWAL—BOER COMMENTS[159]
VII.SOME CRITICISMS[169]
APPENDIX: EXTRACTS FROM DESPATCHES[203]