“ The objects that meet the eye on all sides speak of War; the railway vehicles marked with the number of men and horses conveyable, the noble war memorials, the {28} officers constantly in uniform, the crowds of soldiers in the streets, the military bearing and precision of even the civilian servants of the State; while upon the ears falls the sound, which is in most cases a lingering echo of the roar of war, of alien tongues spoken within the frontier, or of the tongue of the Fatherland spoken in exile without it. ”

“ Who can say that in the not distant future, which all the signs of the times seem to show will be marked by turbulence and disorder in India, a De Wet may not come forth out of the thousands of Sikhs, Ghoorkas, Pathans and Rajputs who have learnt the Art of War in the Native Army? The arena of the struggle, with its long lines of communication, all its chief towns held by British troops and its vast plains inhabited by a disaffected population, would be strikingly similar to that on which the Boer War was fought. ”

“ The reserve forces of human nature are inexhaustible and inextinguishable.
It is probable that few of the Boers had ever heard of Oliver Cromwell, or that his life and times had ever been studied in the South African Republics, and had influenced the Boer action; yet the affinity of the South African burghers of the XIXth century with the Puritans and the Roundheads of the XVIIth is striking. It was not so much a parallelism of aims and hopes, for the struggle in England was political and not national as in South Africa, as of temperament, character, and method. ”

“ The march from Ramdam to Bloemfontein restored the British Army in the eyes of the nation. It was no longer a machine which constantly broke down whenever stress was laid upon it, but was working quietly and on the whole successfully. It had acquired confidence in itself, and the infantry especially had done well during the month's advance. Notwithstanding long marches, which in the end were equally fatiguing whether made by day or by night, on restricted rations in a trying climate, the proportion of men who fell out was small. ”

“ An existing or prospective War always keeps the recruiting sergeant busy, but the object of a War is a matter of indifference to the recruit. Most of our wars have been waged for political reasons which he cannot understand. Apart from the difficulties of language and of unaccustomed environments, he would as readily serve in any other Army in which the pay was as liberal and the restraint of discipline not more irksome. How is it, then, that lacking the stimulus of Patriotism through no fault of his own and being, in fact, a mercenary, he becomes an excellent soldier ”

“ The little force of progressives came under the fire of the British guns which opened upon the ridge at daybreak, but a remnant under Wilson drove a keen-edged but slender wedge into the curve of the Boer position, and was favourably placed to storm the ridge. ”

“ None of the Romance of War that falls to the lot of the British soldier—the service among strange Easterns in Asia, the building up of a new imperial province in South Africa, the constant change of scene along the posts which form a girdle round the world from Hongkong to Jamaica—falls also to the lot of the continental conscript, for whom there is only the dull waiting for the critical moment. ”

“ Working up on difficult ground to the sound of the Regimental calls, and then almost brought to a standstill by the barbed wire fences of the railway, which became a trap of death, they rushed the slope, pushing the enemy's outposts before them, and won the crest: and then in the failing light which compelled the supporting artillery to discontinue the bombardment and relieve the enemy from the pressure of shrapnel, they saw the Boer positions still above them. The crest was false.
It was a cruel disappointment to brave men who had struggled so well, but they did not flinch. ”

“ In November, Buller was prepared, if Ladysmith should fall, to abandon the whole of Natal except Durban. He had private information that, if the Boers reached the coast, a certain European power would intervene. There was also the fear that another reverse would call out the disaffected Dutch in the Cape Colony, and the danger lest the British nation, treacherously harassed by the cries of the disaffected at home, who sympathize with the misfortunes of every nation but their own, would again write off South Africa as a bad debt, and offer peace on ignominious terms. ”

“ Pretoria was in the hands of the British Army, Kruger was in flight, the war was over said the experts. Without having fought a single action that could be termed a battle, and at a cost of less than 500 casualties, of which but sixty-one men were killed, Lord Roberts had passed from Bloemfontein and had seized the perverse city in which most of the South African troubles of the past twenty-five years had been brewed. The Free State, though kicking, was apparently helpless. ”

“ The red tunic of the soldier, like the red rays of the spectrum which cannot be brought into focus with the other colours, fails to make a sharp impression upon the British retina, but projects an ill-defined image seen through a medium of doubt and indifference.
The nation looks upon the Army much as the individual looks upon the Policeman, as a necessary institution, but one rather to be avoided and kept in its place when its services are not actually in requisition. ”

“ The cult of Sport and Athletics sets up false ideals and lowers the intellectual standard. Thousands of loafers, idlers, and work skirkers live upon the anticipations or recollections of out-door sports when not actually present at them, and are ready to spend their last shilling at the turnstile of the ground on which a handful of football gladiators are at play: and are more exasperated by the defeat of the team which they patronise in a Cup Tie match than they would be by the loss of a battle by the British Army. ”

“ In so far as Athletics and Sport tend to manliness, self-reliance, good comradeship, endurance of bodily hardship, and contempt of danger, they are no doubt an excellent preparatory school for War. But there is one quality without the possession of which no man is held to be a good sportsman, and that is the acceptance of defeat or non-success with equanimity and good-humour as "part of the game." Without this quality Athletics and Sport would, in fact, become impossible. ”

“ Ian Hamilton had not been made to understand that the actual closing of Olifant's Nek was an urgent matter; and he, in fact, informed Lord Roberts that he did not propose to do so except indirectly by a movement which would command the approach to it.
In this, the first of the De Wet hunts, nearly 30,000 British troops were directly or indirectly engaged in heading or pursuing over an area of 7,000 square miles. Nine columns blindly zigzagged and divagated to false scents and imperfect information in chase of one man encumbered with a civil government on the run and several hundred wagons. ”

“ Only an Army of which the backbone was the stolid, unimaginative Englishman of the lower classes, and which believed that its leader was doing his best, could have remained undemoralized by the campaign on the Tugela.
Buller possessed one quality which to a great extent outweighed his shortcomings as a military commander: namely the power of inspiring confidence. His men believed in him, and would do anything for him. They liked him for his bluff, John-Bullish, and rampant manner. The enlisted man is a curious differentiation from the class to which he belongs. ”

“ It is at least doubtful whether Lord Roberts did not take De Wet too seriously. Was the capture of a guerilla leader worth the withdrawal of so many British troops from the main operations, and would not the sounder strategy have been to ignore him? If he had been severely let alone, he would hardly have done more than that which he did with the strength of an Army Corps against him, and his prestige with his own people would not have been so surely set up. ”

“ The possibility of invasion is the dominant anxiety of the land-frontier nations.11 Across the frontier they can see the conscripts drilling who almost at a moment's notice may be marching in to attack them. Their armies are not sent on interesting little expeditions to restrain a too-militant tribe of hill-men or to patrol the distant marches of a magnificent Empire, but must stand at attention generation after generation, year after year, maintaining the featureless routine of military life. ”

“ In the tactics of the assault on the laager, it was not a position of much importance, but in the Paardeberg drama it was a striking scene. The detachment of infantry which Kelly-Kenny sent early in the day to occupy it had been withdrawn without his knowledge by some wandering staff officer, who thought he had found a better use for the little garrison, and replaced by a few mounted men. These, while watching the progress of the fight, and perhaps regretting that they were not taking a more active part in it, were suddenly called upon to defend themselves. ”

“ But the German Army certainly had not been accustomed to look upon War as a branch of Sport or Athletics.
Owing in all probability to the happy fact in History that England has not been invaded and over-run by a foreign army since the time of William the Conqueror—an episode which had in the end an excellent influence on the national life—she has never taken the military art seriously. She alone, thanks to the protection of Providence, has never been compelled to fight on her own fields for her existence as a nation ”

“ But no one can say what De Wet could not do. At home it is probable that a disastrous reaction would have followed the news of the railway broken, of Lord Roberts insolated in the Transvaal, and of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum a prisoner of war and possibly a hostage. It is very doubtful whether the nation, entangled by fresh difficulties and deafened by pro-Boer yells growing shriller and shriller every hour, would have remained firm of purpose. ”

“ Now Militarism is not in itself a desirable thing, and the developments and accidents of it upon the Continent of Europe are often not only irksome and absurd but also irreconcilable with the existence of a healthy feeling of self-respect in the non-military sections of the community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human nature ”

“ No systematic effort is made to interest the children of the operative classes in Greater Britain. India and the Colonies are facts in geography troublesome to learn and easy to forget. The history of the British Empire is sterilized before it is imparted to them. They are not taught to realize that the happiness and prosperity of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the world are dependent upon the moods of the population of a small group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and that in the ballot-boxes of Great Britain are cast the fortunes of many millions of their fellow-creatures. ”

“ The terms of peace imposed upon the British Government by the Boers after Majuba Hill resulted in an armistice of eighteen years, and he was still the soldier to whom the nation instinctively turned when it was again in trouble in South Africa.
With one unimportant exception all his war experience had been gained in India or near its frontiers; but India is a spacious arena where spacious ideas can be freely developed. ”

“ They are practically unanimous in the opinion that all branches of the mounted troops were inefficient, except the artillery, whose work so far as horses are concerned is akin to that of the skilful but unsporting farm teamster or wagoner.
A nation greatly addicted to Sport, Games, and Athletics is a nation lacking in that earnestness of moral purpose which should be its chief strength for War. ”

“ The leaders complained that they had been deserted by Kruger, who had slunk away with the civil government and all the money he could lay his hands on, and the general opinion was in favour of abandoning the struggle. A meeting between Lord Roberts and Botha was even arranged, when suddenly De Wet intervened. The news of his successful raids on the line of communication in the Free State relaxed the tension of the minds of the despondent commandants. Easily disheartened and easily reassured, they leapt in an instant from one psychological pole to the other. ”

“ We saw for some months a gallant and well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500 miles from Ladysmith in Northern Natal through Stormberg and Colesberg to Kimberley and Mafeking; and at each extremity of the arc was a besieged city. Was the military art as taught in Europe founded upon error, or had the British Army been negligently instructed in it? ”

“ When the advance of a British Division at a critical period in the operations is frivolously termed a "drive," and when the men extended at ten paces' interval over a wide front are called "beaters," it is natural that the leaders should look upon their work as analogous to the duties of a gamekeeper; and when an artillery officer is instructed to "pitch his shells well up," he is encouraged to regard failure as no worse than the loss of a cricket-match. ”

“ If the Siege of Kimberley brought out the weak side of his character, his egotism and impatience, his lack of power to adapt himself even temporarily to unaccustomed conditions, it will be remembered that these defects were inherent and that his marvellous success in life had accentuated them. The acts of a public man are so variously regarded by his opponents and his admirers, are seen by them in such different lights, that there can rarely be any general agreement on the question of the ratio between his merits and his failings ”