[42]. See “With French in South Africa,” pp. 420–423, and 426, 427.
[43]. Two Australian detachments were included in one of the brigades.
[44]. Hamilton had begun his fighting on April 30, at Houtnek, where he dislodged Philip Botha from a strong position, though without inflicting any appreciable loss.
[45]. I am reckoning French’s three brigades at the figure of 3,600 given in the Appendix to the “Official History.” In the text they are said to have numbered 4,500 “sabres,” plus Artillery. This would make the total nearly 14,000.
[46]. “Official History,” vol. iii., p. 72.
[47]. Bernhardi utters a wholesome warning on this subject in his “Cavalry in Future Wars” (p. 54), and advocates direct fire-action. “Cavalry Training,” if it could reach the point of regarding mounted riflemen as “Cavalry,” would, of course, do the same, and thereby refute the theory of the inevitable “shock duel” between opposing Cavalries.
[48]. No complete figures exist. The “Official History” ignores the subject. I take these figures from the Times historian, who quotes from calculations made by one of Roberts’s staff (see vol. iv., p. 162).
[49]. I have no space for details, but I ask the reader to study either the Times or the Official narratives; and I suggest that it was not worth while to make so great a circuit in order to turn out 500 Boers from distant flank posts. If French, leaving a small containing force, had advanced direct upon Lakenvlei by the road the Infantry took, he would have been in a position to act upon the Boer rear at an early hour.
[50]. “Official History,” vol. iii., pp. 485–488; Times History, vol. v., pp. 15–20.
[51]. I am not theorizing. This was the experience both of the Japanese and the Russians, as in South Africa and in the American Civil War. See “Reports of Military Observers (United States) attached to the Armies in Manchuria” (Part V.). Also Chapter XIV., infra.