A. T. Mahan

“ Duly to appreciate the merits and the results of these two successive days of fighting, at Talana and at Elandslaagte, it must be remembered that the British in a general sense, and at Dundee locally as well, were upon the defensive, and that the Boer movements were each a part of one general plan directed, and most properly, to overwhelm and destroy the detachments—Dundee and Ladysmith—in detail; they together being rightly considered one fraction of the enemy's whole force, present or hurrying over sea. ”

“ A strong British army advancing towards Bloemfontein, and turning neither to the left nor to the right, would have attracted the attention of all the available (p. 213) Boer forces, and would indirectly, but none the less speedily, have relieved the pressure on Ladysmith and Kimberley.... War is a hard trade, and must be waged independently of minor considerations and of many human sympathies." [25] Would it not be juster to say, war must be waged in the spirit of fortitude, that endures the strain of even a very great risk, incurred by persisting in a course of action demonstrably correct? ”

“ In his temperament, as shown by his action, Joubert reflected the fighting characteristics of his people, of whom he has been the most conspicuous military representative, honoured by friend and foe alike for his fearlessness, his intelligence, and his humanity. Courage of the highest proof as regards personal danger, but not the courage that throws away the scabbard, much less that which burns its ships. The hunter, meeting superior strength with superior cunning, without even the very least willingness to lose his life in order to carry his end, may be brave even to recklessness ”

“ However honourable to generosity, it is certainly carrying self-abnegation to an indefensible extreme to leave the decision of attack or withdrawal, of movement by direct attack or by flanking—"by the left"—to a junior, when one's self is on the spot, in actual conversation.
The action of Colonel Thorneycroft in withdrawing raises also the mooted question of when and how the assumption of responsibility in disobeying orders—express or implied, general or particular—is to be justified; a matter on which much unenlightened nonsense has lately been spoken and written in the United States. ”

“ The number and varied distribution, in place and in climate, of the colonial or foreign posts occupied by the British army at the present time, and the extensive character of its operations abroad, during war and peace, for two centuries have occasioned a gradual elaboration of regulation in the transport system, to which, by the necessity of frequent changes of troops, are added an extent and a continuity of practical experience that has no parallel in other nations. These have vastly facilitated the unprecedented development demanded by the present war. ”

“ Communications are ever on the defensive, the most embarrassing of military attitudes. To the scattered units of such a system, all that can be provided is power to hold out until succoured. Moreover, there must be not merely a steady stream of supply from some far distant source, but the establishment of intermediate reservoirs—secondary depots—well stored with the manifold requirements of (p. 308) an army in campaign; advanced bases, capable by themselves of supporting for an appreciable time the existence and activity of forces dependent upon them alone. ”

“ Speed in a country without resources, and especially when opposed to an enemy notoriously mobile, means not only hard legging and much privation, but very high organisation of transport, to insure even a bare sufficiency of support.
By virtue of the interior line, notwithstanding the rapidity with which Roberts' men and horses moved, Cronje got past the decisive points; but for French he might have escaped. His success in this changed instantly the whole direction of the British operation. ”

“ The disaster which befell the Highland Brigade was one of those incidents which ought not to have occurred, but determination of blame must await more precise information than is now accessible. To retain the cover of darkness for an approach made within effective, though long, range of the enemy's fire—to deploy as near as possible to him, but still too distant to be seen—to keep 3,000 men in black darkness in touch, yet not compacted—these are conditions desirable of attainment but difficult to combine, and, like all combinations, liable to fail in some element. ”

“ Divided as the total British force already was by the isolation of the latter, the great resolve would have been, "Let it fall, if it ultimately must, if only by endurance it prolongs to the latest moment the dissemination of the enemy's armies." One is forcibly reminded of the charge of the Archduke Charles to his subordinate at the critical moment of 1796, which Jomini singles out for conspicuous eulogium: "It matters not if Moreau gets to Vienna, provided you keep him occupied till I am done with Jourdan." ”

“ The principle is that every defensive disposition should look to offensive action—or at the least to offensive effect. Mere defence is ultimate ruin. "In the long run," said Napoleon, "no position whatever can be defended if it does not threaten the enemy." ”

“ Alike in breadth of view and in force of sentiment, nothing exceeds the power of such an ideal to lift men above narrow self-interest to the strenuous self-devotion demanded by great emergencies. Should this be so in the present case, and increase, Imperial Federation and the expansion of the United States are facts, which, whether taken singly or in correlation, are secondary in importance to nothing contemporaneous. ”

“ The naval battle of Manila Bay will to the future appear one of the decisive events of history, for there the visions of the few, which had quickened unconsciously the conceptions of the many, materialised as suddenly as unexpectedly into an actuality that could be neither obviated nor undone. ”

“ The determining natural military features in South Africa are the seaports, upon possession of which depends Great Britain's landing her forces, and the mountain ranges, the passes of which, as in all such regions, are of the utmost strategic value. It has been said that the Boers' original plan of campaign was to force the British out of Natal, thus closing access by Durban from the sea, and at the same time to seize the pass back of Cape Town known as Hex River. ”

“ But these are, after all, only instances of embarrassments common (p. 263) to life, which increase in degree and in number as one mounts the ladder. Whatever may be said in favour of the fullest discretion to a subordinate out of signal distance—and very much indeed must be said for this—nothing can relieve a commander-in-chief only four miles distant of the responsibility, not for his own reputation—a small matter—but for his country's interests, in directing according to his own judgment the great operations of a campaign. ”

“ Reluctant, therefore, though the Boers as a race have shown themselves to offensive tactics and to assault, the necessities of the case compelled them. In their plan, and in its execution, they showed all the courage, all the tenacity, heretofore displayed in their defensive operations, as well as the peculiar, stealthy rockcraft of a nation of hunters, which has equally characterised them. ”

“ The consequence was that in Natal occurred during ten days the severe and nearly continuous fighting already narrated, with the result of shutting up in Ladysmith, on the direct line of any further advance contemplated by the Boers, a very strong British force; incapable, doubtless, of taking the field against the vastly superior numbers confronting it, but most capable, by numbers and position, of embarrassing any onward movement of the enemy. ”

“ Control at a distant capital, exercised by an obstinate, overbearing old man, who, though unquestionably shrewd and acute, was equally unquestionably narrow with the narrowness of contracted experience and (p. 124) limited military knowledge, boded ill for the Boer cause. While Cronje at Mafeking, and Wessels at Kimberley, and Joubert at Ladysmith were waiting for a moment that never came, time was flying, the hostile reinforcements were speeding forward 300 miles a day, and the very danger of the three places was goading the British people into wide-awake activity. ”

“ When a ship is engaged for the government service wholly—but not otherwise—she is known officially as a "transport"; when passage for troops is taken, but the ship is not entirely at the government's disposal, she is a "troop freight ship." In the former capacity, to adapt her to her new employment, she passes under the charge of designated naval officers for particular fitting; the time for which, in this war's practice, has not exceeded two weeks for infantry or four for cavalry transports. ”

“ Advance along the broken, rock-strewn, and unfamiliar watercourse was necessarily slow, but was unmolested until about two hours before daybreak, when some boulders were rolled down from a neighbouring height and fell among the mules of the battery, which was in the middle of the column, preceded and followed by infantry. The terrified creatures broke from their keepers, turned, and dashed in the darkness through the rear of the division, where several shots were fired into them by the startled soldiers, unable to see the character of the rush they felt. ”

“ It was for this reason that the decision of the Orange Free State to join in the war, while it added to the numerical resistance to be encountered by the British, had for them the compensating advantage that it removed the necessity of forcing their way over the difficult mountain ranges which separate Natal from the Transvaal.
With the power of Great Britain to bring into (p. 015) the field a great superiority of numbers, it is at least open to argument that the Free State, by ceasing to be neutral, relieved the enemy of a difficulty greater than that which its hostility introduced. ”

“ Warfare is an art, not a science; it knows no unvarying laws, and possesses neither specifics nor panaceas.
Whatever the reason, the decision was reached to attempt simultaneously the relief of Kimberley and of Ladysmith. It is with the former, which also was first in order of time, that we now have immediately to do. This advance had begun, had reached its furthest limit, had been brought to a standstill, and so had failed, before the clash of arms at Colenso, on December 15, signalized the opening of the campaign for the relief of Ladysmith. ”

“ So it has come to pass that the descendants of one of the most mercantile and gregarious of races, whose artists have won some of their chiefest triumphs in depicting the joyous episodes of crowded social life, have, through calling and environment, become lovers of solitude, austere, self-dependent, disposed rather to repel than to seek their kind. ”

“ He fell honoured and beloved; man cannot die better.
It was about 10 that Symons received his wound. Obedient to his last commands, the troops broke cover and worked their way from the wood to the wall, step by step; a few feet onward, rushed and down; again a rush and again down. Below the terrace they stopped, protected by the wall but unable to advance; for did man show head or hand, down swept the deadly fire from above. Men, however, are not of iron; eyes and hands weary; the brain and the nerves feel strain; and it is of the essence of defence that it exhausts quicker than does offence. ”

“ There the railroad from Durban comes in, and, if its carrying capacity were adequate, which is doubtful, would enable the chief base of operations and main line of communications to be shifted to the nearer locality, retaining the Cape road only as secondary.
The advantage to the British of the line of invasion from Cape Town is that it crosses the mountains, which separate the coast district from the inland plateau, at such a distance from the enemy's frontier that it is impossible for the latter to offer serious resistance before the comparatively easy rolling country has been reached. ”

“ These operations were fully reported each night by telegraph." These telegrams journalise the restlessness of the skilled warrior who looks beyond his minor rôle—beyond mere partisan scurrying to and fro—to the great something to which he contributes.
Lord Roberts availed himself ably of the disquiet caused by French. As the fulness of time approached for the relief of Kimberley, the forces about Naauwport grew larger and more restless than ever. Advance in menacing force was made not only toward Colesberg, but to the eastward, along the railroad to Steynsburg and Stormberg. ”

“ The accidents of the ground, and their mutual influence from the military point of view, had been carefully studied and artificially improved, by men whose natural aptitudes for defensive warfare and choice of positions is of the highest. In nothing do they seem to have shown more skill than in the preparation of traps, (p. 296) whereby success, won with just sufficient difficulty to seem plausibly brilliant, turns at the very moment of apparent victory into hopeless disaster, entailing either destruction or retreat. ”

“ The man knows, or rather feels, that if he gets to the end he will find his comrades there; and that if he goes back he will not find them, but his own self-contempt. Such is unanimity, the oneness of will that comes of a common training and of common ideals, bred-in, if not inborn. ”

“ The carriage of animals necessary for an army of the numbers transported would in any case be a weighty and troublesome task, but it has been rendered doubly so by the scanty resources of the scenes of war, by the terrible horse-sickness, and by the length of the voyage, which enfeebles the animals in a proportion ever increasing with the passage of the days. ”

“ The ordinary shot is more apt to fire over a man's head, or strike the ground ahead of him, than to miss him to one side or the other. When, therefore, it had been found by a few experiences—Talana Hill, Elandslaagte, Belmont and Graspan, in all of which the kopje bore a principal part in the scheme of defence—that the British soldier could not be stopped by them alone, the Boers, without abandoning the kopjes, reinforced them where the ground allowed by utilising the beds of the streams, which except in time of flood are nearly waterless. ”