Great Boer War

“ It is unfair to tarnish the whole Boer nation and cause on account of a few irresponsible villains, who would be disowned by their own decent comrades. Very many—too many—British soldiers have known by experience what it is to fall into the hands of the enemy, and it must be confessed that on the whole they have been dealt with in no ungenerous spirit, while the British treatment of the Boers has been unexampled in all military history for its generosity and humanity. ”

“ It had gone into the war an efficient, hardened, "nineteenth" century machine. That sort of machine simply couldn't cope with Boer rifles, backed by the amazing Boer marksmanship. As the Cuban imbroglio put new life into the Army of the United States, the South African business rejuvenated, in every sense of the word, the British Army. The Spaniards and the Boers, therefore, at the turn of the century, played a great part in the defeat of the superb German Army of 1914-1918. ”

“ The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of those weapons. Despite the protestation of the chief and his people that not more than eight guns had been bartered for hunting, which had later proved true, a commando was sent against them under Commandant Paul Krüger, now President Krüger. Many of the natives were slain, their villages burnt, their cattle seized, and great numbers of the tribe taken captive for distribution as servants among the Boer farmers in the Transvaal. ”

“ Over hilly and uneven ground the Boer has by far the best chance to attack, while in an eventual defence he has everything in his favour, and is practically not to be got at.
The British authorities have apparently too much trust in the result of their Artillery. It is plain that they cherish the idea that it will have a demoralising effect on the Boers, and therein they have fortunately been mistaken. They did not calculate that the effect could not be so great on scattered troops, and that the result cannot be equal to the expenditure and difficulties of transport. ”

“ After the great and dramatic events which characterised the earlier phases of the struggle between the Briton and the Boer for the mastery of South Africa it is somewhat of the nature of an anticlimax to turn one's attention to those scattered operations which prolonged the resistance for a turbulent year at the expense of the lives of many brave men on either side. ”

“ Early Scenes of Bloodshed The great missionary proceeds, in detail, to describe one of the Boer methods of fighting natives. "When they reach the tribe to be attacked, friendly natives (previously captured) are ranged in front to form as they say 'a shield;' the Boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives and children to the captors." ”

“ Even when in later days the Boer expeditionary bands, reclaiming to the full from the blacks the toll of blood and cruelty which had been levied on themselves, were more often the attackers than the attacked, their aggression was always tempered by the caution of the individual Boers, who would still forego a chance of striking a blow should it contain an undue element of hazard. The republican warriors relied, indeed, less on attack than on defence. ”

“ Winston Churchill was also there, and suffered the indignity of being captured by the Boers. On the South African side, Jan Christian Smuts, with a great future ahead of him, played an active part in the Boer campaigns. The British Army came out of the war an efficient machine, hardened and stirring with ideas of twentieth century military renown. ”

“ In acting thus the Boers were in no way transgressing the customs of war. In the great Continental armies instructions are given to the best shots to aim at the officers, as by the loss of its leaders the best force in the world is speedily paralysed. Henceforward in all the British columns the officer was to carry a rifle and to dress exactly like the men. ”

“ In its international aspect the Boer War cost England temporarily the friendship of many nations, who resented the ruthlessness with which they carried on war, and ridiculed the lack of efficiency which was so noticeable during the early stages of the war. ”

“ The fugitives retired along the deep river bed, and thus their flight escaped the notice of the British column, else the attack might have been pushed, when there is every reason to think a great victory would have been obtained and the enemy's artillery captured. But the most advanced companies of the Guards' Brigade had no ammunition left and none could be sent them; moreover, as it was impossible for a mounted man to show himself within 1,500 yards from the Boer trenches, no orders could be given. ”

“ The British force, condemned to act upon the defensive, could have been masked and afterwards destroyed, while the main body of the invaders would have encountered nothing but an irregular local resistance, which would have been neutralised by the apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists. It is extraordinary that our authorities seem never to have contemplated the possibility of the Boers taking the initiative, or to have understood that in that case our belated reinforcements would certainly have had to land under the fire of the republican guns. ”

“ With two cavalry brigades in hand he did not push the pursuit of the routed Boers with their guns and endless streams of wagons. It is true that he might have lost heavily, but it is true also that a success might have ended the Boer invasion of Natal, and the lives of our troopers would be well spent in such a venture. If cavalry is not to be used in pursuing a retiring enemy encumbered with much baggage, then its day is indeed past. ”

“ The nearer they drew the hotter became the enemy's fire, till it was wonderful to observers that any human being could live in it. And still the enemy was invisible, and the British troops had nothing to fire at. Men sobbed with rage at the fact that they were so helpless. The two field batteries, far too few for the work, could produce no impression whatever upon the dimly-seen Boer trenches, within which the enemy lay in almost perfect security, and the Boer guns left them alone, as if in derision, devoting all their energy to the advancing line of soldiery. ”

“ Our Army, our generals, had become the slaves of routine, as a wise foreign officer wrote. They had failed to understand what the Boers had fully grasped—the need of high intelligence as well as brute courage in the fighting man, and the immense potentialities of modern weapons. It is not the least unsatisfactory reflection that the fighting men whom we recruited at the eleventh hour for war from the ranks of our Colonists, proved themselves as good as our professional soldiers. ”

“ At once the Boers replied. Two shells, beautifully aimed, fell right amongst the British guns, putting one ammunition waggon out of action. Our weapons were old and feeble 7-pounders, the Boer guns long-range quick-firing 14-pounders—the weapons lost in the shameful Raid, and now by strange retribution pointed against the brave men who had to pay for the deplorable mistakes of the past. Nothing but withdrawal could have saved the Natal Artillery. The guns fell back and the British force hastened out of range, while General French telegraphed instantly for reinforcements. ”

“ He has the guns and ammunition, the money lies in abundance beneath our feet, and the men he will obtain by harping on that independence for which all are sworn to lay down their lives. Once the fire is kindled, a gigantic and terrible blaze will sweep over the land, Englishmen who have married Boer wives and settled here will find themselves opposed to their own country, throughout Africa there will be treachery, the bad blood of the Dutch population will be roused, and many of Her Majesty’s subjects will go over to the Boers. ”

“ All they wanted was a free home, conducted in their own gipsy fashion—their kraals by the river, their camp fires, their flocks and herds, and immunity from the vexation of monopolies and taxes. And here at once will be seen how the seeds sprang up of a rooted antagonism between Boer and Briton that nothing can ever remove, and no diplomacy can smooth away. The Boer nature naturally inclines to a sluggish content, while the British one invariably pants for advance. The temperamental tug of war, therefore, has been one that has grown stronger and stronger with the progress of years. ”

“ The Boers desire to gain nothing but their countries’ independence; the British have naught to lose except thousands of valuable lives if they continue in their determination to erase the two nations. Unless the Boers soon decide to end the war voluntarily, the real struggle will only begin when the Imperial forces enter the mountainous region in the north-eastern part of the Transvaal, and then General Lucas Meyer’s prophecy that the bones of one hundred thousand British soldiers will lay bleaching on the South African veld before the British are victorious may be more than realised. ”

“ Finally, the strength of the second Canadian contingent was raised to 1,300 men with six 12-pounder guns, but even so, it was far below the wishes of the people. The men who were picked were active and intelligent, accustomed to an outdoor life, sitting their horses like centaurs. They speedily showed in war that they were a full match for the Boers, man for man, in marksmanship, the art of taking cover, and stubborn courage, while they had that high spirit which preaches attack rather than defence, and which the Boers, among their many fine qualities, altogether lacked. ”

“ Against these the Transvaal alone could put into the field 40,000 or 50,000 men with 70 or 80 guns. The Orange Free State could dispose of 10,000 to 15,000 men with 30 or more guns. Thus, if the Boer forces had advanced in the third week of September, they could unquestionably have swept the British out of Natal, and have made themselves masters of the whole of northern Cape Colony. With the fighting qualities which they have since displayed, they must have surrounded and captured the diminutive British detachments which kept vigil close to the frontiers of a formidable military power. ”

“ The artillery and mounted troops were in advance of the British line. The first glimpse of the enemy was gained about 6·30 a.m., when a body of 500 mounted Boers was made out away on the right. They rode rapidly towards the enemy's left, at once drawing the cavalry and mounted men in pursuit. Then a Boer gun on the British right opened fire. So far there had been no sign of life west of the junction of the Riet and the Modder, and it was thought that the village was not held by the enemy. ”

“ Lord Methuen might at any time be cut off from his base; General Gatacre might be driven back to the sea; even General Buller, with 20,000 British troops on the line of the Tugela, might be in peril, if only the Boers were equal to their opportunities. And dangers even more terrible than these loomed upon the stormy horizon. How if the Cape burst into rebellion and the Dutch there threw in their lot with their victorious kinsmen? How if our enemies of the Continent seized upon the occasion to overthrow the Empire? Nowhere had Britain a friend. ”

“ For the moment the Horse Artillery were ordered to silence the Boer gun—a task which it achieved with the greatest expedition. Then the general boldly determined to try a new kind of strategy, which was nothing more nor less than to walk his men round the Boers, and leave them disconsolately holding their kopje against no one, and reflecting sadly upon the fact that at last the "rooineks" could move as fast as or faster than themselves. ”

“ They were ground down by an enormous taxation, towards which the Boers themselves contributed practically nothing, and the revenue drawn from them was spent in the purchase of munitions of war, artillery, and fortifications, so enormously beyond the needs of the country, that it was no secret that they were intended not only for the defence of the republic against invasion, but for a general rising of the Boer population and the establishment of Dutch supremacy throughout the whole of South Africa. ”

“ Even if every allowance be made for the strategical advantages possessed by the Boers, of fighting in their own land on interior lines in a sparsely populated country peculiarly adopted for guerilla, it is difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It certainly was overlooked in South Africa ”

“ No one who lived in Europe during the Boer war is ignorant of the immense desire of both France and Germany to intervene on behalf of the Boers, and they certainly would have intervened not only because it afforded them a good opportunity to crush England, which one of them openly and the other less openly desired to do, but because such a war would have been popular with the masses in both countries. ”

“ When the Republic of South Africa and the Orange Free State, after a conspiracy of the two Presidents, rushed their armies into what they believed a campaign of conquests, the surprise of the Boers and their allies that they gained so few and small advantages after elaborate preparations and careful openings of their opportunities in striking first, was as at as that of the British that they, indifferently provided and hastily thrust into hot places, could not march headlong in solid columns, storming fortifications, to easy victories. ”