Faced, however, with the fact that such travesties are extant, a writer on the arme blanche is compelled to take at least a passing account of moral factors. I need not spend any more words in proving that there was, in fact, on our side a general mildness of effort. Nearly all critics have agreed upon the fact. What were the causes?
1. About the deepest of all there is no dispute. Long years of peace and civil prosperity had softened the national fibre. We were not only unprepared for war, but forgetful of the grim meaning of war. In a general reluctance to incur heavy losses the commanders only reflected the national and social sentiment behind them.
2. Unfamiliar with wars in general, we were blind, above all, to the meaning of this particular war, whose object was not only to defeat, but to conquer, annex, and absorb a free white race. Since we became a nation, we had never before attempted to achieve such an object, and we did not realize its inherent difficulties. Signs of weakness in the enemy encouraged the delusion that the war was an ordinary war, whose events were to be estimated by ordinary standards. Signs of strength were undervalued and misinterpreted. Lord Roberts, the soul of generosity and humanity, after the fall of Bloemfontein, initiates an exceedingly indulgent civil policy which defeats its own end. He is compelled as time goes on to pass from the extreme of indulgence to the extreme of severity. But in spite of this disagreeable necessity he is always inclined to believe—and the whole army shares the feeling—that a collapse is imminent, and that no absolutely supreme and sustained efforts are required to hasten the end and seal the definitive triumph.
And what sort of triumph? The philosophic historian will discern that momentous problem already formulating itself, not merely in the minds of statesmen, but, dimly and inarticulately, in the minds of the army, which embodied in an extraordinarily representative manner the civic instincts of the British race. Did we really in our hearts desire such crushing victories as would shatter the spirit of our opponents and lay the foundation for a racial ascendancy, as opposed to a racial fusion, in South Africa? The question becomes of absorbing practical interest in later phases of the war, when the antagonistic schools of thought find expression in two equally able and determined men. For the present it is only a matter of conjecture how far a latent instinct of fraternity with our foes and future fellow-citizens, now that Majuba was at last avenged by Paardeberg and Pieter’s Hill, reacted on the vigour with which hostilities were pressed.
3. A more simple and prosaic motive for caution was the very well-founded respect entertained for the military capacity of the Boers. The sense of some absolutely overwhelming necessity for decisive blows would, doubtless, have gone far to neutralize caution, but this conviction was not present. The reverses of the early months had left an impression both on the popular mind and on the leaders in the field which subsequent successes could not wholly obliterate. Fresh reverses, on a smaller scale, were soon to mar the onward progress of success. From this time forward every action, however feebly or strongly contested, shows the Boers still highly formidable. Until the actual débâcle on the Portuguese frontier, there are no panics. Retreats are orderly, transport and guns are preserved almost intact. However dispirited the majority, there invariably reappears that manful minority of stalwarts upon whose conduct, at one or another point, the difference between repulse and defeat hangs. Numbers, indeed, almost cease to count; quality is everything.
This resisting power, with its offensive counterpart, was derived, on its military side, solely from skill and audacity in practice of the mounted rifleman’s art. And here we return again to the solid ground of our inquiry. Giving their due weight and proportion to the broader moral factors which affected both sets of belligerents and, in our own army, all branches of the service alike, we can see our technical issue sharply and vividly defined in every phase and detail of hostilities.
Against a mounted enemy, even if his strategical mobility is conditioned by heavy transport, in the last resort it is always to vigorous mounted action that we must look both for the power to give effect to the attacks of Infantry and Artillery and for retaliation against those stinging little raids and counter-strokes which so often at critical times turned the scale in the higher Boer counsels. Foot-riflemen will never develop their full aggressive power against mounted riflemen unless they are conscious that their efforts will lead to a decisive issue through the correspondingly indispensable agency of mounted riflemen.
II.—The Halt at Bloemfontein.
There was a pause of seven weeks in the British advance after the capture of Bloemfontein. Reinforcements of all arms, remounts, transport, supplies, were collected in great volume. The supply system and hospital system were reformed, communications strengthened, garrisons organized. During a large part of this period the mounted troops in the central theatre were at little more than half their effective strength from lack of horses.
One small forward movement only was made: that to Karee Siding, twenty-seven miles north of Bloemfontein, a movement deemed necessary for the purpose of safe-guarding the passage over the Modder at Glen. Three thousand five hundred or 4,000 Boers with 8 guns held a line of low hills astride of the railway, with a level plain behind them. French and Tucker, who seem to have held a joint command, attacked with 9,000 men and 32 guns. Of the mounted troops present, 650 were regular Cavalry, 880 regular Mounted Infantry and Colonials, numbers which should have been sufficient to turn and hold the enemy effectually enough to give the Infantry their full chance. In principle the Poplar Grove tactics were employed, with variations of detail. The mounted troops, riding well in advance, were to turn both hostile flanks, and, when the Infantry attacks had been driven home, cut in upon the retreat. The engagement was a dull example of the now too common type. Both flanks were duly turned without opposition, and in good time (10 a.m.), by the mounted troops, but then a sort of paralysis set in. The Cavalry brigade, which was now somewhat behind the Boer right flank and within eight miles of the railway, was inactive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., though still unopposed, while the Mounted Infantry on the Boer left were held up by a small outlying detachment. Meanwhile the Infantry attacks, spirited enough, though not very well directed, ran their course, the Boers making a fairly steady stand, and yielding only between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to threats of the bayonet. But there was nothing to intercept or hamper their retreat. Both mounted corps had eventually begun to move on, but were checked by slight flank guards. Our casualties were 189, almost entirely in the Infantry; those of the enemy 34.