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for nothing? What's the good of going straight if them as does badly gets no more than I do? He thought it would be a 'district,' and he got C.B." After Koorn Spruit, if a "simple farmer" or a "loyal Dutchman," one or two of them, had been planted in front of their own door and shot dead with one of the Mausers hidden away inside, it would have put the drag on that gay raid from which they had just sneaked

back.

On the 13th March Lord Roberts found himself at Bloemfontein with the wreck of an army and a single, narrow-gauge line of railway between himself and his base, upwards of 700 miles distant. It was very soon known in Boer headquarters at Kroonstad that he could not move beyond Bloemfontein for some weeks. The triumphal march of Generals Gatacre and Clements through the recently captured territory, accepting submissions, hoisting unionjacks, and picking up rifles of antique date, afforded much amusement to the Boers, who saw their opportunity and streamed down in large numbers on the small British posts which were scattered east and south of the railway. Wepener was laid siege to, a convoy was captured at Koorn Spruit, half a regiment was made prisoners near Reddersburg, the waterworks were seized and the Bloemfontein water-supply cut off, Ladybrand was reoccupied, and Olivier, with a commando some 4000 strong, came up from Cape Colony where we

were sanguine enough to think he had been thoroughly crushed. This incursion into territory we had settled, as we thought, had to be met, and the reorganisation of the wreck with Lord Roberts was hindered.

Troops on the way up were diverted, and some of the force recuperating at Bloemfontein had again to take the field. Brabant's division, with Hart's brigade, which had come across by sea from Natal, was brought up in front of Wepener, to be joined by General Chermside's division from Reddersburg, and General Rundle's from Dewetsdorp. Another under General Pole - Carew was pushed out south-east to Leeuw Kop; the mounted infantry under General Ian Hamilton retook the waterworks, and Maxwell's brigade stormed the kopjes commanding the Modder at Krantz Kraal; the 9th Division under General Colvile, and the cavalry division with General French in support of Ian Hamilton. Thus nearly five infantry and two cavalry divisions were diverted to undo the mischief which our kindness had developed. Still it was hoped that so large a force would be able to surround the Boers, or at all events to capture their guns and waggons. But the raiding bodies moved without waggons, carrying eight days' "biltong" on their ponies, supplemented with food, forage, and rifles supplied by the inhabitants who were able to take an active share in the fighting, return to their farms, and reduce themselves to the "simple farmer once more. So their assistance, the absence of transport, and an intimate knowledge

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The mobility of an army depends on this last consideration. It moves, as has been said, on its belly, at a rate calculated by that of the slowest waggon; and it was the organisation of the transport sufficient to ensure the mobility of 100,000 men that was trusted to Lord Kitchener as soon as Lord Roberts set foot in Bloemfontein. He found a vast amount scattered widely, in large and small groups over the country, all of which, and whatever else could be raised from every end of Cape Colony, he swept together. All distinctions of transport, regimental, departmental, ammunition, or ambulance, were done away with and swamped in a single general corps-a gigantic undertaking, only to be attempted by a man of the most unswerving determination. In an army each unit is allowed by regulation its own transport: regiments, staff, departments are allotted waggons "by scale," laid down in many red books, which is pertinaciously stuck to by those to whom it applies. For example, the waggons told off to a battalion are arrived at as follows: the colonel, the adjutant, and orderly room get a tent each, every three officers have another,

VOL. CLXVII.—NO. MXVI.

and

fourteen men cram into one more; staff-sergeants, bat-men, and other details have claims to more; mounted officers are allowed 80 lb. baggage, smaller fry 40 lb., each company puts in another 80 lb. for cooking pots, giving a transport allowance, roughly speaking, of 15 waggons-a brigade asking for 70 and a division for perhaps 180 so that an army of 100,000 men would be entitled, for combatants only, to about 2000 waggons, with 30,000 oxen and 4000 native drivers, and would occupy road-space for each division of nearly six miles.

It was to cut down this that Lord Kitchener set to work. Each unit was tackled separately the regiments, as the most tractable, coming first, to be told, probably, that instead of the regulation fifteen waggons they must do with ten. Then came staff and departments, supply, transport, medical, pay, and what not, each of them being liberally supplied on paper "by regulation," according to the relative rank of the members, bristling with field-officers, every one of them most tenacious about the substantial rights which his unsubstantial rank allows him to demand. And it is here that the difficulty of "cutting down" becomes acute: the transport department, which is in possession, has to be delicately handled; the quantity of forage, stores, extra wheels, and so on, to be carried is not easy to check; supply-well, the troops must be fed, and "bully beef" when ticked off in tins, the numbers rippling off the supply 3 L

officer's tongue in thousands, requires calculation. Staff are men of position, and can always bring in the general, who "will have things comfortable"; while the doctors, who exact their rights to the last ounce, can always shelter their demands under reference to the sick, and to the pills and other hospital comforts which must accompany them.

No wonder that with all these discordant elements, each one determined to fight reduction to the bitter end, Lord Kitchener received full measure of abuse from regimental officers, from artillery officers, and from the doctors. But he was not a man to be thwarted by rank, although relative, nor by regulations, although approved by a Secretary of State and the entire staff of the War Office; and so we are told that he effected a great economy in the number of waggons employed, without which the march to Bloemfontein and the farther advance on Pretoria might never have succeeded. He was fortunate in being assisted by Colonel Richardson, in charge of the supply and transport branch -a most efficient officer, with a long and varied experience in South African methods.

Transport arranged, there remained a redistribution of commands, the consolidating of units into bodies capable of combined action; fresh generals to be appointed, others to be got rid of. General Warren was put in civil charge of Griqualand West; General Nicholson took charge of the transport, where a strong

man was wanted; General Chermside assumed command of the Third Division, in place of General Gatacre, ordered home; General Hunter, with Barton's brigade, was brought over from Natal; Generals Pole-Carew, Rundle, and Colvile got divisions; and, most important of all, the Mounted Infantry was collected together in one division of some 11,000 men, under General Ian Hamilton. This division was split into two brigades, each of four corps, with batteries of horse artillery attached. It is hoped that this concentration will put a stop to using small fractions of mounted infantry as cavalry, to be frittered away in patrols, scouts, and advanced guards.1 To ask them to do so is to lose good infantry and to turn out inferior cavalry. Cavalry has its special functions

reconnoitring, the charge, and pursuit: mounted infantry can ride rapidly to a distance in advance of the army, anticipating the enemy there, holding him to his ground till their infantry support marches up to complete his defeat. Ponies are given to infantry instead of carts, for facility of transportnothing more. As long as the men are in the saddle they cannot fight; out of it they are good infantry, who can fight with the best of their kind. But they must be taught to "stick on," not, as Colonel on,"-not, Albrecht says of them, "to be all the time holding on their hats."

But it was in the lower ranks that the winnowing process was most needed. There are men

1 Vide supra, p. 767, "Concerning our Cavalry."

who flock to South Africa during a war on the chance of picking up something; they are furnished with introductions, and are resplendent in gold-lace and trappings, like military Christmas-trees. Soldiers call them aasvogels. They come to pick up what is left of the carcass, like the vultures. I was making a road between two camps when an aasvogel rode up: we wore the clothes we had been standing in and had slept in since we landed, and our rags made him haughty. The road was not to his liking, the gradients were wrong, the metalling-oh! there was no metalling; he would show me how to do it. He talked for a long time, then I dismissed him; he talked to the general afterwards, and he dismissed him too, and we heard no more of him. Is it any wonder that men who have lived on the veldt inside one suit of clothes for months, and know how to do it, should dislike aasvogels, who don't? There were flocks of them in South Africa, some provided with snug billets as soon as landed; others drifting, everywhere found wanting, nowhere of any use: some were shifted, others sliding downwards were glad to bring up anywhere, many to retire to the shady glades of Pall Mall. The vultures had to look elsewhere for a carcass.

On the 23rd April, after some six weeks' rest, Lord Roberts found his army sufficiently mobile to advance. His communications in rear were cleared with the exception of some scattered bands in the east,

which could be dealt with by the troops forming the right of his line, which stretched from Warrenton and Boshof on the west to Ladybrand on the east, distant apart about 160 miles, on which for attack perhaps 70,000 men were available. The country he must pass over, on his left and centre, is fairly easy, that on the right broken and difficult. The high veldt is reached about 100 miles north of Bloemfontein—a great, sandy plain covered with coarse grass, small kopjes here and there, with little or no water except after a thunderstorm, when it lies in the pans and vleis for a short time. South of this are many low hills and stony ridges, intersected by numerous water-courses, at this season mostly dry; the drifts heavy with deep sand, the principal obstacle the Zand river, a little south of Kroonstad. On the right the country is mountainous, the mass of Thabanchu rising out of the western slopes of the great Platberg, an extremely strong position overlooking Ladybrand, from which the road to Ficksburg crosses a hilly country till it gains the high veldt on which Harrismith, the terminus of the railway to Natal, is situate. The troops advancing on this line are, roughly on the left, at Fourteen Streams, Hunter's division, with Barton's brigade; Lord Methuen at Boshof, with about 1000 mounted men and two infantry brigades, in reserve, at Kimberley; at the centre with Lord Roberts, following the railway, French with the cavalry division, Ian Hamilton with the mounted infantry, and

four infantry divisions with the Guards' brigade; on the right, Brabant's mounted Colonial division and two infantry divisions.

The general idea was to drive a wedge into the centre of the enemy's line, the apex of the wedge consisting of infantry under the personal command of Lord Roberts, a mounted division on either flank; the infantry in the centre to be thrust out against any Boer position found across its road, when the mounted troops would ride round one or both flanks, aiming at the enemy's rear-a manœuvre which would be likely at once to put the enemy to flight and leave the central infantry to occupy the position without firing a shot.

On the 3rd May Lord Roberts pushed out to Brandfort, which was taken easily, the mounted troops moving on twenty miles to the Vet river, on the north bank of which the Boers were strongly posted in considerable numbers. A fierce artillery duel followed until sunset, ending in a turning movement, when the mounted Colonials made a dash at a kopje occupied by the Boers, and took it with the bayonet, the entire Boer force flying during the night. Our infantry bivouacked three miles south of the river, and moved on next day to Smaldeel, the junction of the branch line to Winburg. All along the Boers in retreat had considerably damaged the railway, the bridge over the Vet hopelessly so; while, not content with blowing up bridges, great and small, they had placed charges of explosives at intervals of

every hundred yards, fortunately discovered by a Colonial trooper. The repairs were rapidly completed by the engineers, in order that the forward movement should not be delayed by the want of stores. A halt of two days was called at Smaldeel, to allow the cavalry from Thabanchu to rejoin and to complete the repairs to the railway. So closely did the mounted troops follow up the Boers, that they were at Winburg before their transport was clear. Winburg was occupied on the 7th May by the Highland Brigade, which found there large quantities of grain and ammunition; General Ian Hamilton pushing on to the Zand river, where the enemy were found ready to dispute the passage.

All this time a great quarrel was proceeding between the Free Staters and Transvaalers, large numbers of the former coming in with their horses and Mausers, notwithstanding the frantic endeavours of Mr Steyn to spread reports of the invasion of England by the Russians after she had been made to grant peace and independence to the Republics, owing to the pressure of France and Russia.

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Anticipating resistance the Zand river, Lord Roberts on the 9th inst. concentrated at Welgelegen most of the mounted force, four brigades of heavy naval and garrison artillery guns, and three infantry fantry divisions. The 2nd Cheshire Regiment pushed on to the drift, where they crossed, and intrenched themselves, followed in the early morning by

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