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FIELD-MARSHAL

LORD KITCHENER

I ,

LORD KITCHENER AND GENERAL CRONJE'S MESSENGER:

PAARDEBERG, FEBRUARY 19, 1900

From a draiving by Wai. Paget

FIELD.-MARSHAL

LORD KITCHENER

His Life and H^or}^ for

the Empire

E. S. GREW, M.A.

Author of "A History of the War with the Boers" &c.
Contributor to "The Great World War"

AND OTHERS

VOLUME II

THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY

34-35 Southampton Street, Strand, London

1916

D. i

HSbWS11*

v^Sk

mii^. ~*

NOTE

The chapters are initialled by the several
contributors, namely: —

E. S. G. Edwin Sharpe Grew.
W. H. Wentworth Huyshe.

G. T. George Turnbull.

(VOL II)

CONTENTS

VOLUME II

CHAPTER I Page

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA i

Following up the Victory — Operations along the Blue Nile — Kitchener's
Expedition up the White Nile — His Delicate Mission to Fashoda — Story
of Marchand's Expedition — Meeting between Marchand and Kitchener
— How Kitchener's Diplomacy averted War between Britain and France
— Marchand's Narrative — Kitchener's Home-coming — Honours and Re-
wards— The Prime Minister's Eulogy — Queen Victoria and Lord Kitch-
ener of Khartoum — The Lion of the Hour — His Return to Egypt and
the Soudan.

CHAPTER II

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN - - 22

Lord Kitchener's Plan for the Khartoum College — Subscriptions and the
Public Response — Description of the College and its Work — Khartoum
and Omdurman — The New Government of the Soudan — Clearing the
Land of the Dervishes — Colonel Parsons and the Actions at Gedaref and
Rosaires — Colonel Walter Kitchener's Expedition — The Last Stand of
the Khalifa — Osman Digna's Fate — The Sirdar's Completed Work.

CHAPTER III

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITON AND BOER - - 34

Racial Incompatibility — Cecil Rhodes's Dream — The Rand and the
Uitlanders — The Jameson Raid — Sir Alfred Milner's Dispatch — Fighting
Qualities of the Boers — Their Forces in the Field.

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV Page

WHY ROBERTS AND KITCHENER WERE SENT TO

SOUTH AFRICA 42

Opening Acts of the South African War — With Sir George White at
Ladysmith — General French's War Record — First Phase of the Siege of
Ladysmith — Winston Churchill's Adventures — Sir Redvers Buller and
his Task — The "Black Week" of December, 1899 — The Disastrous
Battle of Colenso — Sir George White and the Suggestions of Surrender —
General Gatacre and Stormberg — Lord Methuen and Magersfontein —
Lessons of the " Black Week " — Lord Roberts sent to South Africa with
Lord Kitchener as Chief of Staff.

CHAPTER V

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA - 79

A German General Staff Appreciation of Lord Kitchener — The First
Aim of the Commander-in-Chief's Strategy — Reorganization of Trans-
port— The Business Manager of the Campaign — Work of the Intelli-
gence Department — Lord Roberts's Plan — Feint at Koodoos Drift —
Cronje outflanked by French — Diversion to the Eastwards — Lord
Kitchener's Action — Loss of the Supply Convoy at Waterval Drift —
French holds up Cronje before Paardeberg — Lord Kitchener sights
Cronje's Laager — The Alternatives — Lord Kitchener decides to Attack
— The Assault on Cronje's Positions at Paardeberg — De Wet's Surprise
Attack — Failure of the Action to rush Cronje — Lord Kitchener's Report
to Lord Roberts — Arrival of the Commander-in-Chief — Cronje's Surrender
— Complete Change in the Military Situation — Operations in Natal —
Lord Roberts presses on to Bloemfontein — Lord Kitchener's Control ot
the Lines of Communication — Poplar Grove and Abraham's Kraal —
Lord Roberts's Proclamation at Bloemfontein — Disasters at Sannah's Post
and Reddersburg — Wepener and the Colonials — The General Advance
Resumed — Occupation of Pretoria — De Wet's Attacks on the Railway
Line and Communications — Lord Kitchener's Counter Moves — Junction
with Buller — The Orange Free State Operations — Lord Kitchener takea
the Chief Command.

CHAPTER VI

KITCHENERS TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA - - - 114

Kitchener in Command — Tactical Position of Botha, De la Rey, and De
Wet — Lord Kitchener's First Net for the Capture of De Wet — De la Rey's

CONTENTS vii

Attack on Clements at Nooitgedacht — De Wet's Second Attempt to enter Page
Cape Colony — The feeling in the Colony — Kritzinger and Hertzog — Lord
Kitchener's Railway Counter-manoeuvres — De Wet's Failure — Lord Kit-
chener's Meeting with Louis Botha at Middelburg — The Middelburg
Offer — The Boer Forces in the Field — Botha's Rejection of the Terms-
Further Operations in Cape Colony — Lord Kitchener sends General
French to the Colony — The Situation in July, 1901.

CHAPTER VII

WEARING DOWN THE BOER RESISTANCE 136

French's "Sweeping" Movements — Plumer pursues De Wet — De la
Rey's Defeat by Babington — Assault on Dixon's Rear -guard — Boer
War Council under Difficulties — Lord Kitchener's Dispatch — Capture
of the Orange Free State "Government" at Reitz — Banishment Proclama-
tion— Refugee Camps— Botha on the Natal Border — Capture of Letter's
Commando — Limited Success of Sweeping Movements — Boer Forces still
in the Field — Kitchener develops his Blockhouse System.

CHAPTER VIII

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR - - 162

General J. C. Smuts and the Spring Campaign in Cape Colony — General
Botha's Attack on Colonel Benson — Bakenlaagte — De Wet in the Orange
River Colony — Western Transvaal — Major -General Bruce Hamilton's
Drives in the Eastern Transvaal — The Blockhouse System South of the
Vaal — Lord Kitchener's Reversing Pincers for De Wet — Northern Trans-
vaal— De la Rey's Onslaught on Lord Methuen — The Tweebosch Disaster.

CHAPTER IX

THE END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR - - 182

viii CONTENTS

Situation — The Vereeniging Meeting — Views of Botha, Smuts, De la Page
Rey, De Wet — Submission of Proposals to Kitchener and Milner — The
Crucial Preamble — A Question of Compensation — The Approved Draft
Treaty — Acceptance by the Vereeniging Delegates — Schalk Burger's
Epitaph — Lord Kitcheners Last Words: "We are good friends now".

CHAPTER X

HONOURS TO THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF — LESSONS

OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR - 207

Congratulations of British Government to Lord Kitchener — Thanks of
British Parliament and Vote of £50,000 — Mr. Balfour's Tribute — Fare-
well Banquet to Kitchener in South Africa — His Speech on the Lessons
of the War — The Last Muster in Pretoria — Kitchener's Home-coming
— Honours from King Edward VII — South Africa's Later History and
Share in the Great War.

LIST OF PLATES

VOLUME II

Page
Lord Kitchener and General Cronje's Messenger : Paardeberg,

February 19, 1900 (in colour} - - Frontispiece

Hoisting the Egyptian Flag at Fashoda - 8

Lord Kitchener as an LL.D. of Cambridge University (1898) - 18

Statue of General Gordon by Onslow Ford, R.A. - 24

British Leaders in the South African War : Sir Redvers H. Buller
— Sir John French — Sir George White — Lord Methuen —

Sir W. F. Gatacre - 44

Boer Leaders in the South African War : President Kruger — Piet

Joubert — Piet A. Cronje — Louis Botha — J. H. De la Key - 56

Field-Marshal Lord Roberts - 80

The Meeting of Lord Roberts and General Cronje - 96

Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, and Staff riding into Pretoria - 108

Lord Kitchener in South African Campaign Uniform - 116

Some of Lord Kitchener's Opponents : J. C. Smuts — Christiaan

de Wet — Kritzinger — C. F. Beyers — Ben Viljoen - 132

Lord Kitchener on the Veldt - 144

Lord Kitchener's Blockhouse System in South Africa - 162

x LIST OF PLATES

Page

Some of Lord Kitchener's "Lieutenants": Ian Hamilton — Sir
C. E. Knox— Bruce Hamilton— F. W. Kitchener— H. C. O.
Plumer - - 168

Lord Kitchener at the Peace Conference that ended the South

African War - - 204

Lord Kitchener's Home-coming from South Africa - - 218

The Banquet at St. James's Palace, July 12, 1902 - 220

MAP

Map of South Africa (Coloured} 4.8

FIELD-MARSHAL

LORD KITCHENER

VOLUME II

CHAPTER I

Khartoum and Fashoda

Following up the Victory — Operations along the Blue Nile — Kitchener's Expe-
dition up the White Nile — His Delicate Mission to Fashoda — Story of Marchand's
Expedition — Meeting between Marchand and Kitchener — How Kitchener's Diplo-
macy averted War between Britain and France — Marchand's Narrative — Kitchener's
Homecoming — Honours and Rewards — The Prime Minister's Eulogy — Queen
Victoria and Lord Kitchener of Khartoum — The Lion of the Hour — His Return
to Egypt and the Soudan.

KITCHENER'S victory at Omdurman was the decisive
but not the finishing stroke in the campaign he had
so brilliantly and forcefully conducted. The main
body of the Khalifa's army had been annihilated, and as the
result of that battle the greater part of the Soudan was restored
to peace. But the Khalifa Abdullah was still at large, and con-
siderable parties of Dervishes held out in the remoter districts.
It was imperative to follow up the victory vigilantly until the
last spark of revolt should be extinguished.

One of the most powerful supporters of the Khalifa, the
Emir Ahmed Fedil, was stationed in the district of Gedaref,

VOL. II. l 16

2 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

between the Blue Nile and the Atbara. Ahmed Fedil had
reached Rufa'a with his army of 8000 men, on the way to
assist the Khalifa, when news of the capture of Omdurman
brought him to a halt. He was uncertain now what to do.
At this stage Colonel Parsons, R.A., who was in command of
the garrison at Kassala, enters upon the scene. He too had
heard of the Sirdar's victory. He planned a coup de maln^
his objective being the village of Suk Abu Sin. Organizing
a flying column of 1400 men, Colonel Parsons started from
Kassala on yth September, 1898. His force comprised, in
addition to 450 Egyptian soldiers, a local Arab battalion which
had been taken over from the Italians in 1897, and a body of
Arab irregulars under the command of Major H. M. Lawson,
R.E. They reached the Atbara at El Fasher, and found the
river in flood. As it was 400 yards wide, the crossing pre-
sented considerable difficulty. But boats and rafts were cleverly
improvised, and the whole force passed over. On 2ist Sep-
tember the Dervish outposts were sighted, and it was then
discovered that Ahmed Fedil had left a surprisingly large
garrison, namely 3500 men. Colonel Parsons, however, de-
cided to attack without delay. The result of a severe action
was the complete defeat of the Dervishes and the capture of
Suk Abu Sin, the principal place in the Gedaref district.

Hearing news of the approach of Colonel Parsons, Ahmed
Fedil hurried back with his main army. In anticipation of his
attack the village was rapidly put into a state of defence. The
attack was delivered on 28th September, and was successfully
repulsed. From Khartoum a relieving force under Colonel
Collinson was sent to reinforce Colonel Parsons, and Ahmed
Fedil discreetly withdrew. His first intention was apparently
to cross the White Nile and join the Khalifa in southern
Kordofan. But he tarried a few weeks and then attempted
to cross the Blue Nile at Rosaires on his westward journey.
At this place, 426 miles south of Khartoum, Ahmed Fedil's

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 3

army was routed by a British force under Colonel Lewis on
26th December. More than 500 Dervishes were killed and
over 1500 taken prisoners. Three weeks later the remainder
of his force surrendered to the gunboat Metammeh on the
Blue Nile. Ahmed Fedil himself, escaping to the south, lived
to fight another day. The engagement at Rosaires was, how-
ever, the last fighting in Kitchener's 1898 campaign against the
Mahdists.

Meanwhile Kitchener himself had been making an excur-
sion to Fashoda, which was destined to result in one of the
most delicate international situations in the history of Great
Britain and France. That it did not eventuate in war was
due in large measure to Kitchener's tact, restraint, and presence
of mind. For some time past France had been credited with
designs to establish herself in the eastern Soudan. So serious
was the news regarded which reached this country of projected
French expeditions into the Nile valley that Sir E. Grey, Under
Foreign Secretary in the Rosebery Government at that time,
announced in the House of Commons, in March, 1895, that
Britain would regard such an expedition as "an unfriendly
act ". But while the Sirdar was engaged in conquering the
Soudan, a small French expedition, commanded by Major
Marchand, left the French Congo in 1896 with the object
of marching across Africa towards Abyssinia. After a long
and difficult journey it arrived at Fashoda, the port of southern
Kordofan on the White Nile, in July, 1898. The Sirdar
heard the unexpected tidings in dramatic circumstances. It
was the Wednesday after the occupation of Khartoum. A
steamer called the Tewfkieh, which had been sent up the
White Nile by the Khalifa to collect grain, returned to
Omdurman that day (yth September) and surrendered to the
Sirdar. The captain brought exciting news. He had gone
up the river in company with another of the Khalifa's steamers,
the Sofa, and they had found Fashoda occupied by a white

4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

force and been fired upon by white men. The steamers had
escaped out of range; then, landing some men near a village
to make enquiries, they learnt that a party of eight Europeans,
accompanied by black troops and assisted by the Shilluks, had
driven out the Dervish garrison and installed themselves at
Fashoda.

No one knew at this time that Marchand was at Fashoda.
The Dervish captain did not recognize the strange flag he had
seen flying on the fort at Fashoda, and although several small-
bore bullets impinged in the timbers of the Tewfikieh were
thought to be of the pattern used with the French Lebel rifle,
no hasty conclusion was drawn. But the Sirdar did not lose
a moment in putting his plans into execution. His first step
was to ensure secrecy for the movement he was about to make.
So he sent all the newspaper correspondents back to Cairo.
At six o'clock on the morning of loth September he started off
to investigate. He and his staff were in the postal steamer
Dal. A formidable force accompanied him, consisting of the
gunboats Sultan (Commander Keppel's flagship), Nazir, Fatteh^
and, later, the Abu Klea; an Egyptian field-battery, a company
of the Camerons, and the nth and I3th Soudanese battalions.
All the steamers flew the British and the Egyptian flags, and
they steamed as fast as current and weed would allow. Four
days after leaving Khartoum the flotilla encountered a number
of deserters, who were taken on board the Dal to be inter-
rogated by the Sirdar and Colonel Wingate. They revealed
the presence higher up the river of a large camp of Mahdists
under the Emir Said Sogheir, accompanied by the gunboat
Sofa. This was interesting news for Commander Keppel,
since the Sofia was the steamer sent down by Gordon in 1885
on which he had distinguished himself under Lord Charles
Beresford. The Safa was sighted next morning near the
village of Renkh. Keppel steamed on ahead and engaged her.
She returned the fire, and from the Dervish camp also came

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 5

artillery- and rifle-fire. A shell through her boiler caused an
explosion on the Sofia, and the Sultan, together with the other
gunboats which had now come up, battered the Dervish guns
on shore. This enabled a landing to be made from the Nazir
by the iith Soudanese, under Major Jackson, who soon
dispersed the Dervish riflemen in the bushes. Said Sogheir
surrendered. He told how he had been sent by the Khalifa
with 500 men and two steamers — the Sajja and the Tewfikieh
— to collect grain in the Shilluk country, and on approaching
Fashoda had a fight with some Europeans. Consequently he
had withdrawn to this camp at Dem Zeki and sent the
Tewfikieh down to Omdurman for reinforcements.

The Sirdar went on his way with increased curiosity. On
1 8th September he got further news of the European visitors.
The flotilla reached the village of Babiu, twelve miles north
of Fashoda.

" Here ", reported the Sirdar afterwards, " we were met by a large
number of Shilluks, including the uncle, brother, and son of the Irek
(chief). In answer to my enquiries regarding Europeans at Fashoda,
they informed me that they believed them to be a small body of our
Government troops that had come from the west, but as they had no
Shilluk interpreter, and did not go outside the old Egyptian Government
buildings, they knew very little about them. They were utterly aston-
ished when told they were not Government officials, and reiterated their
great desire that we should stay and administer the country. They
expressed great delight at the destruction of the Khalifa's army."

Kitchener now decided that it was time to warn the Euro-
peans of his approach. He sent by runner from Babiu a letter
written in French and directed to whoever might be the chief
of the party. Besides heralding his approach, the letter an-
nounced also the victory of Omdurman and the little fight at
Renkh. Next morning a small boat, flying a French flag and
propelled by black men dressed in red caps and jerseys and
blue knickerbockers, came out and met the Sirdar's expedition,

6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

then steaming towards Fashoda. The Dal stopped, the little
boat came alongside, and a black sergeant of Senegalese sharp-
shooters proffered a letter which proved to be a reply to the
Sirdar from the chief of the party at Fashoda — the French
officer Jean Baptiste Marchand.

"I have heard", he wrote to Kitchener, "with the greatest satisfac-
tion of the occupation of Omdurman by the Anglo-Egyptian army, the
destruction of the forces of the Khalifa, and final disappearance of
Mahdism from the valley of the Nile. I shall no doubt be the first
to offer the very sincere congratulations of a Frenchman to General
Kitchener, whose name has for so many years embodied the struggle
of civilization, to-day victorious, against the savage fanaticism of the
partisans of the Mahdi."

The letter then informed the Sirdar that, by orders of the
French Government, the writer had occupied the Bahr-el-
Ghazal, the Shilluk country, and the left, or west, bank of the
Nile as far as Fashoda, which his expedition had entered on
loth July.1 He described how he had been attacked on 25th
August at Fashoda by a Dervish expedition, consisting of two
steamers with about 1200 men on board, and artillery, the
engagement lasting from 6.40 a.m. to 5 p.m., and ending in
the flight of the steamers.

" As a sequel to this engagement, the first result of which was the
liberation of the Shilluk country, I signed on Sept. 3 a treaty with the
Sultan Kour Abd-el-Fadil, the principal chief, placing the Shilluk country
on the left bank of the White Nile under the Protectorate of France,
subject to ratification by my Government. I sent copies of the treaty
to Europe, first by way of the Sobat and Abyssinia, and then by the
Bahr-el-Ghazal and Meshra-er-Rek, where my steamer, the Faidherbe,
is at present, with orders to bring me reinforcements. These I con-
sidered necessary for the defence of Fashoda against a second attack,
stronger than the first, which I expected the Dervishes to make about
Sept. 25. Your arrival has prevented it."

1 A Franco-Abyssinian expedition had reached the junction of the Nile and Sobat on
June 22, but owing to sickness and want of provisions had to withdraw without effecting the
contemplated junction with Marchand.

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 7

In conclusion, Captain Marchand wrote that he would be
happy to welcome the Sirdar at Fashoda " in the name of
France ".

Both parties were now prepared for the meeting which
took place as soon as the Sirdar's flotilla reached Fashoda.
A boat flying the tricolour and containing Major Marchand
and his staff officer, Captain Germain, put off from the shore.
The Frenchmen, who wore white uniform, were received by
the Sirdar on the Dal. British and French were perfectly
polite to each other through all the discussion that followed.
During these somewhat delicate proceedings, Kitchener wrote
in a dispatch, "nothing could have exceeded the politeness
and courtesy of the French ofHcers ". Looking back to-day
we are inclined to say that one thing perhaps did exceed the
politeness and courtesy of Marchand, and that was the firm-
ness and the wisdom of Kitchener. There could be no pos-
sible misapprehension about 'each other's point of view in a
conversation which was at once plain and polished, and the
Marchand version of it is related with true French verve:

"'I have come to resume possession of the Khedive's dominions,'
Kitchener opened.

" < General, I am here by order of the French Government,' said
Marchand. * I must wait here for instructions.'

" ' Do you not wish to retire, after your magnificent explorations?'

" < No, General. I wait for orders.'

" i It is some time since you had news from France ? '

" c Some months; but my orders are to wait here.'

" ' 1 will put my boats at your disposal to return to Europe by the
Nile.'

" ' I thank you, but I cannot accept your offer. I await orders from
my Government.'

" l Many things have happened since you started on your journey.'

" ' General, whatever may have happened, France, who is not in the
habit of abandoning her ofHcers, will send me orders.'

" * I must hoist the Egyptian flag here,' said Kitchener then.

" * Why, I myself will help you to hoist it, over the village.'

8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

" * Over your fort/

" * No, that I shall resist/ rejoined Marchand.

" c Do you realize, Major, that this affair may set France and England
at war ? '

" Marchand bowed, without replying. Kitchener rose. He was very
pale. Marchand rose. Kitchener gazed at his 2000 ; then at Marchand's
fort, on the ramparts of which the bayonets were gleaming.

" * We are the stronger,' Kitchener observed after his leisurely survey.

" ' Only a fight can settle that/ answered Marchand.

"< Right you are/ said Kitchener; 'come along, let's have a whisky
and soda/"

A few days later Lord Salisbury was wiring from the
Foreign Office to the British representative at Cairo to inform
Kitchener that " his proceedings and language are entirely
approved by Her Majesty's Government ". How thoroughly
this approval was merited may be seen by a closer examina-
tion of his discussions with the gallant French officer. In the
first place, Kitchener told Marchand quite emphatically that
the presence of a French party at Fashoda must be considered
as a direct infringement of the rights of Egypt and of the
British Government. He protested in the strongest terms
against the occupation by Marchand and the hoisting of the
French flag in the dominions of the Khedive. Marchand
replied that he had received precise orders for the occupation
of the country and the hoisting of the French flag over the
Government buildings at Fashoda, and that if Kitchener felt
obliged to use force against him, he could only submit to the
inevitable, which would mean that he and his companions
would die at their posts. He begged, therefore, that Kitchener
would allow the question of his remaining at Fashoda to be
referred to Paris, as without the orders of his Government
he could not retire from the position nor haul down his flag.
At the same time, he said, he felt sure that in the circum-
stances the order for his retirement would not be delayed
by his Government, and that then he hoped to be able to

HOISTING THE EGYPTIAN FLAG AT FASHODA

From a drawing by Wai. Paget

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 9

avail himself of Kitchener's offer to place a gunboat at his
disposal to convey him and his expedition north. Kitchener
asked point-blank:

" Do I understand that you are authorized by the French
Government to resist Egypt in putting up its flag and re-
asserting its authority in its former possessions — such as the
Mudirieh of Fashoda?"

Marchand hesitated, and then replied that he could not
resist. Kitchener added that his instructions were to hoist
the flag, and that he intended to do so. So Colonel Wingate
and Captain Germain landed together and selected a spot
about 500 yards south of the French flag. There the Egyptian
flag was hoisted on a ruined bastion of the old Egyptian
fortifications, commanding the only route which led into the
interior from the French possessions. The troops drawn up
in line saluted the flag, and the Soudanese regimental bands
played the Khedival March.

Before leaving for the south, Kitchener handed to
Marchand a formal written protest in the name of the British
and Egyptian Governments against any occupation of any part
of the Nile valley by France. He stated that he could not
recognize the occupation by France of any part of the Nile
valley. Other measures Kitchener took were the establish-
ing of a post at Sobat, where he himself proceeded on 2oth
September; the detailing of a gunboat to patrol up the Bahr-
el-Ghazal in the direction of Meshra-er-Rek — precautions
which were probably not unconnected with certain rumours
that had been current of the presence of an Abyssinian force
in the neighbourhood. At Fashoda he left a garrison of one
Soudanese battalion, four guns, and a gunboat under the
charge of Major Jackson, whom he appointed commandant of
the Fashoda district. The British force was so posted as to
bar the retreat of Marchand and his 8 officers and 120 men.

Of course the truth is that the position of this small

io FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

French force had been untenable from the first. Kitchener
brought this fact out clearly in the course of a dispatch to
Lord Cromer.

"It is impossible", he wrote, "not to entertain the highest ad-
miration for the courage, devotion, and indomitable spirit displayed by
M. Marchand's expedition, but our general impression was one. of
astonishment that an attempt should have been made to carry out a
project of such magnitude and danger by the dispatch of so small and
ill-equipped a force, which — as their commander remarked to me — was
neither in a position to resist a second Dervish attack, nor to retire;
indeed, had our destruction of the Khalifa's power at Omdurman been
delayed for a fortnight, in all probability he and his companions would
have been massacred. The claims of M. Marchand to have occupied
the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Fashoda provinces with the force at his disposal
would be ludicrous did not the sufferings and privations his expedition
endured during their two years' arduous journey render the futility of
their efforts pathetic."

Some preserved provisions were presented to Major
Marchand from Kitchener's store. As the Sirdar passed
Fashoda on the return journey from Sobat, he notified Mar-
chand by letter that all transport of war material on the Nile
was absolutely prohibited, the country being under martial
law. He also discovered that Marchand had been under a
misapprehension in the matter of the supposed treaty with
the Shilluks. The chief of that tribe, accompanied by a large
number of followers, went to Major Jackson's camp and
entirely denied having made any treaty with the French.
They welcomed the British effusively, and expressed the
greatest delight at the defeat of the Khalifa.

With the remainder of his force Kitchener returned to
Omdurman on 25th September. From Cairo the same day
a telegram received from him was transmitted by Mr. (after-
wards Sir) Rennell Rodd to the Foreign Office in London:

"If telegraphic instructions can be at once given by the French
Government for the explorer M. Marchand and his expedition to quit

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA n

Fashoda and come down the Nile, a special steamer can now be sent
with these orders and with instructions to bring down the whole party.
In view of the unpleasant position in which M. Marchand and his officers
are at present placed, I am quite sure that no one would be more pleased
at this arrangement for their release than they would themselves be."

The Sirdar further suggested that M. Marchand's boats and
launch should be taken over at a valuation.

All this time the public at home were very imperfectly
acquainted with the affair — Kitchener had barred the door on
the correspondents, of whom he was at no time fond. But
enough was known to create a feeling of tension concerning
the outcome of the discussions between Great Britain and
France. The Foreign Office suddenly took the unusual
course of publishing a White Paper containing the corre-
spondence up to date, although the diplomatic exchanges were
still going on. This appeared in all the newspapers next
morning (roth October), and the result was twofold. First,
the already high reputation of Kitchener was enhanced among
the people. Secondly, the country was seen to be solid behind
the Government in the firm attitude it had taken up. Lord
Salisbury moved not one jot in these or the subsequent dis-
cussions from his demand that Marchand should evacuate
Fashoda unconditionally. To the French suggestion that his
withdrawal should be part of a general transaction on African
questions between the two Governments he instructed Sir
Edmund Monson to offer an uncompromising refusal. The
French Government were in an awkward predicament. M. Del-
casse affirmed that there was "no Marchand mission" — that
Marchand was an "emissary of civilization". In 1892 and
1893, he said, M. Liotard was sent to the Upper Ubangi with
instructions to secure French interests in the north-east, and
M. Marchand, who got all his orders from M. Liotard, had
been appointed one of his subordinates. M. Delcasse's state-
ment, however, could not be reconciled with the reiterated

12 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

theory of "precise orders'* which Major Marchand himself
declared he had received from the French Government.
Baron de Courcel, the French Ambassador in London, stated
that Lord Salisbury had pressed him to make proposals on
behalf of the French Government, and that thereupon the
Baron had claimed the valley of the Bahr-el-Ghazal for France,
giving her access to the Nile. Lord Salisbury, however,
followed with a different version of the conversation in
question, asserting that he had declined to discuss the claims
of France to an outlet on the Nile for the Ubangi province.
Early in these diplomatic exchanges Britain pointed out that
all the territories which had been subject to the Khalifa had
passed by right of conquest to the British and Egyptian
Governments, and that the British Government did not con-
sider this right open to discussion. To which France replied
that she had never recognized the British sphere of influence
in the Upper Nile region, and had protested at the time
against Sir Edward Grey's declaration in the House of
Commons in I895.1

In speeches by Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith, members
of the Government who had made the 1895 declaration, and
from every section of public opinion, Lord Salisbury's Govern-
ment were assured of united support in the stand they were
making. Lord Rosebery, speaking at Epsom in this sense
on nth October, imported an even larger warning — namely,
that Great Britain, not merely on this question but on others
that preceded it, had been treated "rather too much as what
the French call c a negligible quantity'. Great Britain has
been conciliatory," said Lord Rosebery, "and her conciliatory
disposition has been widely misunderstood. If the nations
of the world are under the impression that the ancient spirit

1 On loth December, 1897, Sir Edmund Monson was authorized to state to M. Hanotaux,
then Foreign Minister of the Republic, that Her Majesty's Government " must not be under-
stood to admit that any other Power than Great Britain has any claim to occupy any part of
the yalley of the Nile".

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 13

of Great Britain is dead, or that her resources are weakened
or her population less determined than it was to maintain
the rights and honour of its flag, they make a mistake which
can only end in a disastrous conflagration." Such was the
temper of the British people, and their predilections in the
Dreyfus case, which was then rendering the situation in
France more complex, did not tend to improve the prospects
of peace. Then an interesting thing occurred — Major
Marchand left Fashoda. It was semi-officially stated in Paris
that he had come away on his own responsibility, leaving
Captain Germain in command, and that his action therefore did
not involve his Government. But, on the other hand, obviously
Marchand could only return to Fashoda by the grace of the
British Government. What had happened was that his chief
staff officer, Captain Baratier, had been sent as his emissary
to Paris, and Marchand left Fashoda on 2jrd October, arrived
at Khartoum five days later, and at Cairo on 3rd November,
to await Captain Baratier's return. On the following day, in
London, at a banquet to Lord Kitchener, the Prime Minister,
in terms which are quoted further on in this chapter, announced
that France had decided to evacuate Fashoda. The crisis was
passed. Marchand spent a week in Cairo. He then went
back to Fashoda with Captain Baratier to arrange for the
evacuation. On nth December he evacuated Fashoda and
hauled down the French flag. Then resuming and completing
his journey from the Atlantic to the Red Sea coast, he finally
arrived in Paris on ist June, 1899, and was received with
immense enthusiasm.

On the same steamer which bore Kitchener from Egypt
in the midst of the Fashoda crisis travelled also Captain
Baratier, Marchand's chief officer. They arrived at Marseilles
together (26th October, 1898). Many years after, on
1 7th August, 1915, those two met again and greeted each
other warmly, within sound of the guns in north-eastern

i4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

France — Baratier now a general, Kitchener a field-marshal,
allies in the fight against a common enemy.

On disembarking at Marseilles on that October morning
in 1898 the Sirdar was gracefully included in congratulations
which the local branch of the French Geographical Society had
come down to offer as scientific men to Captain Baratier. The
latter, bearing Major Marchand's dispatches to the French
Government, travelled by the same express to Paris, where
Kitchener spent the night. A friend told him of the receptions
awaiting him at home. " I would rather face another Omdur-
man," was his comment. Crossing from Calais in the steamer
Empress, on 27th October, he was amused on board at having
his attention drawn to the first prisoner captured at Omdur-
man — a monkey which had been found by an officer of the
2ist Lancers in the first hut entered in the Dervish capital,
and which had come into the possession of a representative of
the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. Dover gave the
returning Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army a great
reception. Among those awaiting him were the Mayor, Sir
William Crundall, who presented an address ; General Sir
William Butler, commanding the South-Eastern Military Dis-
trict; the American naval and military attaches1; Mr. George
Wyndham, and Mr. Winston Churchill. A guard of honour
of the Seaforths was on the pier. Over the Lord Warden Hotel,
where he was entertained at luncheon, the Union Jack and the
Egyptian flag waved side by side. Almost the first words of
his speech were a tribute to the troops which he had com-
manded in the reconquest of the Soudan. "I sincerely hope",
he added, " that by means of education and good government

1 It is worthy of note as a further sign of American appreciation of Lord Kitchener's
achievement that on the occasion of the Mansion House banquet the one foreign diplomatist
present was Mr. White, the United States Charg£ d' Affaires. The American Colonel G. E.
Gouraud, who was presented to Lord Kitchener at Dover, subsequently published an open
letter on the hero of Khartoum. In acknowledging this, Lord Kitchener wrote on I4th
November: "I have received with great pleasure your kind letter of congratulation, which
coming from such a distinguished soldier as yourself is all the more gratifying".

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 15

we shall be able to raise the tone and conditions of life of the
inhabitants of those countries, and that in the place of oppres-
sive tyranny and fanaticism we may establish a reign of pros-
perity and peace." London was reached by special train at
seven o'clock. The occasion was unceremonial, so that Lord
Roberts and Lord Wolseley, who came to Victoria to meet
him, were in private clothes. So dense was the crowd in
Wilton Road that exit from the station had to be sought on
the other side. The hero of the hour drove through streets
of cheering people to the residence of Mr. Pandeli Ralli in
Belgrave Square.

The Sirdar had found, upon his return to Khartoum after
the expedition to Fashoda, Queen Victoria's announcement
that a peerage was to be conferred on him. One of his
earliest journeys, therefore — after visits to the War Office, the
Prince of Wales, the Foreign Office, and to the Prime Minister
at Hatfield — was taken in response to a summons from Bal-
moral. On the way thither he met in Aberdeen the Empress
Frederick, returning from the castle. In the next issue of the
London Gazette appeared the following: —

"WHITEHALL, Oct. 31, 1898.

" The Queen has been pleased to direct Letters Patent to be passed
under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire-
land granting the dignity of a baron of the said United Kingdom unto
Major-General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener, K.C.B.,K.C.M.G.,R.E.,
Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, and the heirs male of his body lawfully
begotten by the name, style, and title of Baron Kitchener of Khartoum
and of Aspall, in the county of Suffolk."

During his six weeks' sojourn in this country Lord Kit-
chener received ample testimony of his popularity. " Not
Wellington returning from the Battle of Waterloo", wrote
Mr. W. T. Stead in the Review of Reviews, " could have been
accorded more triumphal honours." As Wellington was the
Iron Duke, so Mr. Stead named Kitchener the Lord of

1 6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Chilled Steel. Yet the bronzed and sunburnt soldier had a
ready smile wherever he went. All classes paid him the
homage due to the victor. The first signal expression of it
was found in the City of London, where 3000 people assembled
in the Guildhall when he went to receive the freedom on
4th November. A superb sword of honour, sparkling with
jewels, and bearing among its emblems a figure of Britannia
and a figure of Justice, was handed to him by the Lord Mayor.
The same evening a brilliant banquet was held at the Mansion
House. The speeches bore equally upon the campaign and
upon the Fashoda affair. Regarding the outcome of the latter,
Great Britain had been taking no chances; Mr. Goschen, First
Lord of the Admiralty, had cancelled his engagement to attend
the Master Cutlers' Feast at Sheffield on account of the quiet
preparations that were going forward for possible hostilities.
The announcement of an amicable arrangement was made at
the Mansion House by the Prime Minister in proposing the
Sirdar's health.

"The Sirdar recently", said Lord Salisbury, "expressed the hope
that the difficulties which might have arisen from the presence of Major
Marchand would not transcend the powers of diplomacy to adjust. I
am glad to say that up to a certain point he has proved a true prophet.
I received from the French Ambassador this afternoon the information
that the French Government had come to the conclusion that the occu-
pation of Fashoda was of no sort of value to the French Republic, and
they thought that, under those circumstances, to persist in an occupation
which only cost them money and did them harm, merely because some
bad advisers thought it might be disagreeable to an unwelcome neigh-
bour, would not show the wisdom with which, I think, the French
Republic has been uniformly guided, and they have done what I believe
many other Governments would have done in the same position — they
have resolved that the occupation must cease."

The sequel, in the shape of an African understanding with
France, came a few months later, when an agreement was
signed (2ist March, 1899) delimiting the French and British

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 17

possessions in Central Africa. The Bahr-el-Ghazal and Darfur
were recognized as being reserved to Great Britain, France
keeping Wadai, Bagirmi, and Kanem. From the Nile to
Lake Chad and between the 5th and 1 5th parallels of latitude
the two Powers mutually conceded equality of commercial
treatment, France thus obtaining the right to establish com-
mercial relations on the Nile and its affluents. With this
agreement (which was an additional declaration to the Franco-
British Convention of I4th June, 1898) both nations were satis-
fied. At least a semi-official Note issued in Paris explained
that though France renounced that part of Bahr-el-Ghazal
which they occupied, the conditions " enable us to attain the
essential object of our policy in those regions — that is to say,
access to the Nile ".

The Prime Minister's glowing eulogy of the Sirdar at the
Mansion House echoed the thoughts of all British subjects:

"Alike in his patient and quiet forethought, lasting over three years,
in his brilliant strategy on the field of battle, in his fearless undertaking
of responsibility and his contempt of danger, and last but not least in the
kindness and consideration which he displayed for men who were for a
moment in a position of antagonism to himself, he has shown a com-
bination of the noblest qualities which distinguish the race to which he
belongs, and by the exercise of which the high position of England in
this generation, in the world, and in her great Empire has been won."

Though it was a hazardous thing to say, Lord Salisbury
was almost inclined to believe that the Sirdar was the only
General who had fought a campaign for £300,000 less than he
originally promised to do it. On another occasion the Prime
Minister described him as "a singular master in desert war-
fare", and gave more permanent shape to the British estimate
of his place in history:

" He will remain a striking figure, not only adorned by the valour
and patriotism which all successful generals can show, but with the most

extraordinary combination of calculation, of strategy, of statesmanship,
VOL. II. 17

1 8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

which it ever fell to any general in these circumstances to display. He
took exactly the time necessary for his work; he made precisely the pre-
parations which that work required; he expended upon it the time, the
resource, and the military strength precisely which it demanded, and his
victory came out with absolute accuracy, like the answer to a scientific
calculation."

A statesman by temperament less given to the Imperial
outlook, Sir William Harcourt, while humorously expressing
a fear lest the success of the Sirdar's campaign might make
war popular, characterized his interview with Marchand as
worthy of the knightly chivalry of ancient times. " If I were
to sum up all that I could say in praise of the Sirdar himself,
it would be this/' said Lord Rosebery, " that he has written
a new page of British history and that he has blotted out an
old one."

Cambridge delighted to honour him (24th November). He
received the freedom of the borough, and from the University
the honorary degree of LL.D. A new fulfilment had been
given, said Dr. Sandys in his Latin oration, to the ancient
Oracle of Jupiter Ammon declaring that all the land watered
by the Nile was Egypt; and by the unanimous voice of Britain
the world had once more realized that the valley of the Nile
was synonymous with Egypt, and ought not to be exposed to
the incursions of foreign nations. Off the mouth of the Nile,
just a century ago, a new glory had been added to the well-
omened name of Horatio Nelson, and now from the banks of
the same river fame had shone forth once more on another
Horatio — and as before an East Anglian too — and all that
bore the British name.

From the end gallery, where the last wooden spoon is wont
to dangle, the Cambridge undergraduates had suspended an
effigy of the Khalifa. The Union made Lord Kitchener an
honorary member. He enjoyed the spirit of gaiety of the
young bloods.

Scott & Wilkinson

LORD KITCHENER IN THE ROBES OF AN LL.D.
OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

November 24, 1898

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 19

" I thank the members of this society for the great honour they have
done me", he said, "in electing me an honorary member of this society.
I am sorry that owing to want of University training, and therefore not
having had a chance of exercising my eloquence in a society such as this
in my early years, I am not very good at speaking. (Laughter.) This
is the first house of the kind in which I have spoken, but I have now
been graciously placed in another House where I hope I may meet some
of you. (Laughter.) All I can say, gentlemen, is this: that this very
warm and enthusiastic welcome which you have given me shows that a
soldierly spirit and enthusiastic patriotism still exist in the young gene-
ration that is growing up to hold the old country together. I only wish
I had had some of you with me in the Soudan. (Great cheering.) I
again express my very sincere thanks to you all for the very kind recep-
tion you have given me and the honour you have done me."

When the Sirdar's carriage horses were taken out, and he
was drawn in triumph to Christ'^ College, the hind part of the
carriage collapsed, as a result of reckless " driving ". His
Cambridge host, Dr. John Peile, Master of Christ's College,
was a cousin by marriage, his wife being a Kitchener.

On the occasion of his visit to Edinburgh, on 29th Novem-
ber, he was the guest of Lord Rosebery. Snow was falling as
they drove into the Scottish capital — in a carriage-and-four
with outriders — but large crowds lined the streets to cheer
the hero of Khartoum. The first ceremony was the conferring
of the university degree of LL.D. Principal Sir William
Muir said that the Soudan regained was not merely an epic
which appealed to our Imperial instincts, but rather a drama
whose final act was the triumph of civilization over barbarism,
the vindication of order in place of chaos, the gift of light to
them that sit in darkness. On leaving the Library Hall he
was presented with an address from the students. In the fine
M'Ewan Hall, where the company around Lord Provost
Mitchell Thomson included the Duke of Montrose, the
Marquess of Lothian, the Earl of Rosebery, and Generals
Wauchope, Gatacre, and Chapman, the freedom of the city

20 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

was bestowed on the Sirdar and the Marquess of Dufferin,
"noble examples of empire-makers and empire - keepers ".
Here, as everywhere, Kitchener accepted the honours paid to
him as honours to his soldiers. " It is a special gratification
to me", he acknowledged, " to be elected a freeman of the
capital of the great country which has provided me with so
many brave soldiers during the recent campaign. It is greatly
due to the gallant deeds of those men of the Camerons and
the Seaforths that were with me at Atbara and Omdurman
that I have the honour to-day to receive this gratification at
your hands."

Cardiff vied with Edinburgh in the same worthy cause.
The presence of twenty-two Welsh Mayors in their robes gave
to the gathering in that city on 2nd December a national
significance. In his capacity of begging for ,£100,000 for the
Gordon College, Lord Kitchener told his hosts that he had
more right to be in Cardiff than in any other place, because of
the many hundreds and thousands of pounds he had paid them
for Welsh coal for the Soudan railway. After the luncheon
Lord Kitchener, having heard that a number of veterans who
served in India and elsewhere were being regaled in an adjoin-
ing room, determined to visit them. His arrival gave rise to
a scene of great enthusiasm among the old fellows. "Bedad,"
shouted one admirer, "did ye iver say a foiner Irishman?"
The presentation of the freedom followed; and Lord Kitchener,
on leaving Alderman Morel, the Mayor, said that nowhere
had Cardiff's reception of him been excelled.

He bore all the lionizing cheerfully and with a good grace.
His engagements were manifold. He was the guest of the
Prince and Princess of Wales and of Prince and Princess
Christian; he received the freedom of the Fishmongers' Com-
pany; he was entertained at a banquet by the London Society
of East Anglians, who appropriately decorated the menu with a
picture of Aspall Hall, the home of his mother; he was greeted

KHARTOUM AND FASHODA 21

by the city of Bath; the Royal Artillery at Woolwich, the
Royal Engineers at Chatham, and the Army and Navy Club
separately welcomed him; arriving at midnight at a Savage
Club "smoker" he was received with " war-whoops " ; and he
attended his brother Arthur's wedding as best man. One
function exhibited Lord Kitchener as a Freemason. The
Drury Lane Lodge, No. 2127, entertained him on ist Decem-
ber at a luncheon at Freemasons' Tavern on his way back
from the Stock Exchange and the Mansion House, where he
had been appealing for the £100,000 for the Gordon College
at Khartoum. Lord Kitchener was a founder of the lodge
when it was warranted in 1885, and he had continued a mem-
ber ever since. The Worshipful Master, Mr. Gerald Max-
well (son of " Miss Braddon ", the novelist), handed to Lord
Kitchener the jewel of a founder, and said that Lord Kitchener
had told them it was his intention to carry the influence of
Masonry into the very heart of the realm which he had re-
conquered for civilization — and when he said the influence of
Masonry he meant light. In the intervals between such social
duties as dining with Lord Lister and the Royal Society, wit-
nessing a performance of "• A Runaway Girl " at the Gaiety
Theatre (where the audience rose at him), and acting as steward
of the Cabdrivers' Benevolent Association dinner, Lord Kit-
chener was busy advancing the arrangements for the extension
of the Soudan railway to Khartoum, the construction of the
additional 1 80 miles having been decided upon.

Among the last duties of this memorable home-coming was
a visit to Netley Hospital, on the same day that Queen
Victoria went there (4th December). The Sirdar distributed
Soudan medals to 180 wounded men who had fought at
Atbara and Omdurman. On yth December he left London
and sailed in the steamer Dover from Folkestone, amid torrents
of rain, en route for Egypt to resume his work in the Soudan.

G. T.

CHAPTER II

Regenerating the Soudan

Lord Kitchener's Plan for the Khartoum College — Subscriptions and the Public
Response — Description of the College and its Work — Khartoum and Omdurman —
The New Government of the Soudan — Clearing the Land of the Dervishes — Colonel
Parsons and the Actions at Gedaref and Rosaires — Colonel Walter Kitchener's
Expedition — The Last Stand of the Khalifa — Osman Digna's Fate — The Sirdar's
Completed Work.

IN the few weeks that he was in England Lord Kitchener
disclosed a project which only those who knew him
well would have associated with him. The conqueror
of the Soudan did not wear his principles on his sleeve, but
the desire for reform, the hatred of wanton disorder or
destruction, were deeply embedded in his nature. "Those
who have conquered ", he said in one of his rare moments
of self-revelation, " are called upon to civilize." The Soudan,
which had been wrested from the degradation of the Khalifa,
must be uplifted as Gordon meant that it should be. Before
Mahdism devastated the Soudan it had a population of
8,000,000 people: when the Khalifa was cast out of it by the
Sirdar the numbers were fewer than 3,500,000. It was the
regeneration of these provinces that Kitchener believed to be
the duty and the mission of the British, and he knew no
firmer way than by giving their people the spur of education.
It was his dream to make Khartoum, where Gordon's work
had been cut short by death, the centre from which civiliza-
tion and regeneration should spread. His plan for sowing
the germ of progress bespoke the scholar and the statesman

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 23

rather than the soldier. His own words are his best inter-
preters :

" If Khartoum could be made forthwith the centre of an education
supported by British funds, and organized from Britain, there would be
secured to this country indisputably the first place in Africa as a civiliz-
ing power, and an effect would be created which would be felt for good
throughout the central regions of that continent. I accordingly propose
that at Khartoum there should be founded and maintained with British
money a college bearing the name of the Gordon Memorial College, to
be a pledge that the memory of Gordon is still alive among us, and that
his aspirations are at length to be realized."

It was a project which, endorsed by Kitchener's name,
commanded the sympathies, and even the enthusiasm, of every
class of the community. Exeter Hall and the Stock Exchange
alike subscribed to it. In his zeal for his scheme Lord Kit-
chener actually paid a visit to the Stock Exchange, to be
received there with an enthusiasm which can easily be guessed.
He responded to the loud calls for a " speech " by making
one. It was brief, even for him ; for he merely said that
he wanted a lot of money, and expected to get it — as he
immediately did. Yet, according to Mr. G. W. Smalley, for
so long the New York correspondent of the Times, he was
only with difficulty persuaded to ask the public for the money.
Mr. Smalley tells the tale of his persuasion,1 and reports
Lord Kitchener as saying that nothing less than £100,000
would be of any use; and that was a large sum: he should
not like to appeal for it and to fail.

The conversation took place at a dinner table at which
Lord Glenesk was present, and that shrewd and generous
nobleman urged that then was the precise and favourable
moment for such an appeal; delay would spoil the chance.
Lord Glenesk backed up his opinion by offering £1000 across
the dinner table; and other sums were as instantly offered.

1 Anglo-American Memories, by G. W. Smalley.

24 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Still Lord Kitchener hesitated, and still repeated: "I should not
like to fail." At last one of the company said : " Well, Lord
Kitchener, if you had doubted about your campaigns as you
do about this, you would never have got to Khartoum."
To which Lord Kitchener responded rather grimly: "Perhaps
not; but then I depended on myself: now I have to depend
on the public." But he was at last persuaded, and he re-
ceived the sympathetic help of the Press. He was determined
not to fail, and in the most enterprising of London news-
papers, which at once contributed £1000 to the fund, he
wrote an article about what his college should be and what
it should do. The system, he wrote, would need to be
gradually built up. It would begin by teaching the sons
of the leading* men, the heads of villages, and the heads
of districts, for these belonged to a race very capable of
learning, and very willing to learn. The teaching in its
early stages would be devoted to purely elementary subjects,
such as reading, writing, geography, and the English language.
Later, and after these preliminary stages had been passed, a
more advanced course would be instituted, including a train-
ing in technical subjects specially adapted to the requirements
of those who inhabit the valley of the Upper Nile. The
principal teachers in the college would be British, and the
supervision of the arrangements would be vested in the
Governor-General of the Soudan. Lord Kitchener added —
and this was a pledge to which he adhered in the spirit as
well as the letter — that there would be no interference with
the religion of the people.

The appeal was overwhelmingly successful. In a short
time £120,000 was raised, and after Lord Kitchener's return
to the Soudan the foundation-stone of the college was laid by
Lord Cromer on 5th January, 1899. The college stands to-day
one of the greatest monuments to Kitchener's practical idealism.
It is a handsome structure of red brick, built in the Moorish

STATUE, IN BRONZE, OF GENERAL CHARLES GORDON

BY ONSLOW FORD, R.A.
Erected in front of the Governor-General's Palace, Khartoum (see page 223)

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 25

style, forming two sides of a square, one of which faces on
the Nile with a tower above the entrance. Along the inside
runs a cool and airy cloister, with winding stairs leading to the
upper story. The classrooms are spaciously designed. Its
commanding position at the east end of Khartoum makes it
a conspicuous landmark for many miles around. From no
point is this so remarkable as from the hill of Sorgham, which
overlooks the battle-field of Omdurman. The college now
contains a higher elementary school, a higher school for
technical education (surveying and engineering), a training
college for schoolmasters and cadis, and a military cadet
school. Associated with it are instructional workshops and
a museum, one of the treasures of which is the manuscript
journal kept by General Gordon during the Taeping rebellion.
There are about 1 50 pupils at the college, as well as the older
men, so that it is evident that the " Hubshee " \ which is the
Indian name for the Soudanese, has taken the advice of
Kipling's Bengali schoolmaster and gone with eagerness to
"Kitchener's School"2 (Madrissa).

" Knowing that ye are forfeit by battle and have no right to live
He begs for money to give you learning — and all that the English give.
It is their treasure — it is their pleasure — thus are their hearts inclined,
For Allah created the English mad, the maddest of all mankind.

" Certainly also is Kitchener mad. But one sure thing I know —
If he who broke you be minded to teach you, to his Madrissa go!
Go and carry your shoes in your hand, and bow your head on your

breast,
For he who did not slay you in sport, he will not teach you in jest."

Never was a country more absolutely and wholly illiterate
than the Soudan when Kitchener was "minded to teach it".
Writing was practically an unknown art, and reading hardly
less so. It was useless to post a Government proclamation

1 From Habashi (Abyssinian). 2 The Five Nations, by Rudyard Kipling (Methuen).

26 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

unless a competent person was stationed by it to read it out
to the passers-by; yet there flourished the most exaggerated
respect for the written document, which was regarded as a
kind of magic book. Consequently, education had to be
on^very humble lines at first; but it has progressed wonder-
fully. The college has been the parent of schools ; there
are two of these now at Khartoum and Omdurman, and that
at Omdurman was the direct offspring of the Gordon College.
It numbers over 200 pupils, and plays fierce football matches
— in the mosque square at Khartoum and in the Soudan sun!
— with the Khartoum school. In Omdurman, too, a small
training college for native sheikhs was opened at the beginning
of 1901, and though the experiment was not at first successful
— perhaps because the Arab students all belonged to the best
Arab families — it is now doing splendidly. Thus the schools
and college at Omdurman and Khartoum are turning out
yearly, men of wisdom and understanding, learned men,
artificers for the dockyard works at Wady Haifa, carpenters,
fitters, riveters — and good citizens. All that Kitchener hoped
of it has come to pass.

Stress should be laid on the work done at Omdurman.
Khartoum was the chosen capital of the new order of things,
set apart to mark the end of the misrule and slavery which
had existed in Omdurman, and Khartoum is now a great
town of 60,000 inhabitants, with its railway station, its
Governor's residence, its great mosque, its finely planned
streets. But Omdurman, which some expected to see sub-
merged in its own squalor, has changed indeed from the
wretchedness which George Steevens described with such
vigorous invective. Omdurman has been purified of its foul
labyrinth of streets; it has grown to be a real Central African
city without the African drawbacks. It was proposed to
remove its inhabitants. Instead of that, the town has grown
till it now has 45,000 inhabitants, a medley of the most

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 27

diverse races and stocks. Bantus and grotesque dwarfs from
the West Soudan, Semitic and Hamitic tribes from the desert,
such as Nuba, Baggara, Katbabish, Gowameh, and Kowahleh
Arabs, Shilluks, Nubians, and Jaalin, as well as Egyptians,
Syrians, and Greeks. There is an Egyptian garrison, and
the inspector's house; the repaired great mosque; the Govern-
ment school; the great market; the bazaar of the silversmiths;
the polo ground ; and the golf course ! It is thoroughly
cleaned, and purified, and rebuilt, one of the wonderful cities
of the world, where ancient Africa barters and trades and lives
at peace with its neighbours. To some ways of thinking it is
a greater monument to the rule of Kitchener and his country-
men than Khartoum itself.

Of Khartoum there is little to say, except in recognition of
the completeness of Kitchener's work. It is a city beautifully
set on the Nile, planned first, according to Kitchener's sugges-
tion, with streets radiating in the lines of the Union Jack,
but since then supplemented by many additions, each of them
conforming to the first plan, and each preserving the wide,
broad, shaded avenues of his design. The White Palace, the
Governor-General's official residence, is set where Gordon's
Palace was, and the old garden is now restored and beautiful.
On either side of it stretch Government offices, the courts of
justice, and neat residences, and the town is sweet with gardens
and groves of palm-trees, acacias, limes. A well-made road
runs all along the river front; the town has its tramways, its
street-lighting, its river-front embankment, and in the Wr ell-
come Research Laboratories the best equipped school for the
study of tropical diseases in the world. The great mosque, with
its lofty minarets, is one of the finest buildings in Khartoum;
it was by Kitchener's wish, and at his initiative, that it was
placed there, for he recognized, none better, that Khartoum
would be but an empty husk unless it had a shrine of pilgrim-
age for the Arab. In the grounds behind the Sirdar's Palace

28 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

is Onslow Ford's statue of Gordon on his camel. One may
believe that in due course Khartoum will have its statue of
Lord Kitchener as well; but the city is his monument. He
stamped out the tyranny that had defiled the Soudan and
brought it to ruin ; he raised the oppressed from the dust ;
he made the wheat grow again and the water-wheels turn ;
he secured the weak from the strong; he made a new kingdom
from the old.

In January, 1899, an arrangement was made between the
British and Egyptian Governments that the Soudan was to be
ruled jointly by the two Powers, and that the chief of the
executive authority was to be a governor-general appointed
by the Khedive on the recommendation of the British Govern-
ment. The first governor -general under the new regime
was Lord Kitchener, who at the same time continued to
occupy the position of Sirdar of the Egyptian army. There
was a great deal for the new Sirdar-Governor-General to do
in both of his official capacities. The work of pushing on the
railway to Khartoum had gone on in his absence ; by August,
1899, the iron railway bridge which crossed the Atbara was
opened by him. The work of reconstructing Khartoum and
clearing up Omdurman went on at high pressure ; but there
was another kind of clearing up to be done.

When the Khalifa fled from Omdurman he had travelled,
almost without halting, 300 miles to Lake Sherkeleh. Here
the remnant of his forces had joined him, together with a
small band of the faithful emirs, among them Ali Wad Helu,
who had led the Green Flags with Sheikh-ed-Din, and had
been carried wounded from the field. The Sirdar established
the 2nd Egyptian battalion, under Colonel Pink, at the half-
way house of Ed Duem to keep a watch on him. The Khalifa's
chief means of subsistence was that of raiding villages, and the
villagers who brought in reports to Colonel Pink sought his
powerful assistance; but, with the tortuous ingenuity of the

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 29

Arab mind, thought they would best get it by putting the
emirs' forces at the lowest possible figure. They reported that
he had only 700 men. These reports were sent on to the
Sirdar, as well as the news of the demolition of Ahmed Fedil
at Rosaires, and putting them together he decided on making
quick work of what was left of the Khalifa's armies. On the
29th of December, therefore, he sent for his brother, Colonel
Walter Kitchener, and entrusted him with the task of taking
a small mixed force into Kordofan, where he was to reconnoitre
the enemy's positions, and, if possible, to attack and capture the
Khalifa. Colonel Walter Kitchener was given 450 of the I4th
Soudanese battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Shekleton, 450
of the 2nd Egyptian battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Pink,
and two squadrons of cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel Mit-
ford and Major Williams. Lieutenant-Colonel Tudway went
with the column. The column had a very difficult march in
front of them, for the Khalifa's position was 125 miles from
the river, and the march was therefore bound to be harassed
by want of water. It was thought, however, that by making
use of the camel's powers of endurance — as Mr. Hilaire
Belloc says : " the camel excels in various ways : it can go
without drink for several days" — and by carrying water in
skins, it might be just possible for a force of about 1200 men
to strike out 120 odd miles into the desert, and to have three
days in which to fight the Khalifa before setting out on the
return journey. The march and the expedition are the record
of a heart-breaking struggle against the want of water. Once
the column had to turn back and start again on a new route,
because the sparse wells on the early stages of the journey had
dried up. They set out again, cutting down the horses and
mules to the lowest possible figure, and marching only by
night to reduce the thirst. They marched through a land that
was half desert, half thicket, and only once did they find a
well that was of any use. After this desperate march they

30 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

arrived within a short distance of the Khalifa's position at
Sherkeleh. They had expected to find him at Aigala, but he
had moved, having used up all the water there, to the very
spot where they had hoped to refill their skins. The Khalifa
stood between them and water. But that was only half the
disaster. Deserted Aigala had been no mere encampment of
700 men: it had evidently contained more than twenty times
that number of men, women, and children. It was probable
that the Khalifa had 7000 men with him rather than 700.
However, Colonel Kitchener's orders from his brother were to
reconnoitre and obtain accurate information. Accordingly he
moved on to within three miles of the Khalifa. Here he
formed a zareba and sent forward Lieutenant-Colonel Mitford
and Major Williams. The two officers, creeping forward, in ad-
vance of the horsemen with them, to the crest of a convenient
hill, found the enemy drawn up for a fight, and estimated that
there were no fewer than 4000 men with rifles and about 3000
spearmen. The position was, moreover, of great strength,
being surrounded by ravines and pools of precious water.

Colonel Kitchener decided, quite properly, that it would be
madness to engage the enemy. If he had won, which was
most improbable, it would only have been half a victory: the
Khalifa would still have escaped. If he had lost, he would
have been wiped out and a new flame lit in the Soudan.
Accordingly he retired, to the bitter disappointment of his
soldiers; and their disappointment was not mitigated by the
horrors and privations of the march back through the water-
less land. The Khalifa started in pursuit, and his emirs
begged him to follow up the retreating force. Fortunately he
would not, being convinced that an ambush was prepared for
him, and that Colonel Kitchener's force was but an advanced
guard. The Anglo-Egyptian column, therefore, reached Kohi
on 5th February in safety, and no doubt in the deepest dis-
gust. They had done nothing but encourage the Khalifa,

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 3.1

The story of the dispersal of the Khalifa's forces almost
overlaps a new departure in the career of Lord Kitchener; but
since it was due to his incentive, and was made possible only
by his preliminary preparations, it may be briefly told. In
the autumn of 1899 the Khalifa was at Jebel Gidir, a hill in
southern Kordofan, about eighty miles from the White Nile.
Encouraged by the absence of interference with his move-
ments, he was contemplating an advance, or was being urged
to it by his restless emirs. Unfortunately for these plans,
they coincided with others formed by Lord Kitchener, who,
having established good order in the Soudan, and swept Khar-
toum and Omdurman clean, and being also on the point of
joining up the last stretches of the railway line from the
Atbara to Khartoum, had decided that now it was the turn
of Kordofan. He therefore concentrated 8000 men at Kaka,
on the Nile, 380 miles south of Khartoum, an undertaking
recalling in its organization and forethought the concentrations
at Wady Haifa of previous years. The force moved inland
on the 20th October. When it arrived at Fongor it found
that the Khalifa had struck north, and, the cavalry and Camel
Corps having reconnoitred Jebel Gidir, there was nothing for
the expedition to do but to return to its proper base, the Nile.
Ahmed Fedil, taking courage from immunity, made an attempt
to cross the Nile at El Alub, but he found Colonel Lewis in
waiting there with gunboats, and a force only too eager to
come to grips with him. So Ahmed, for almost the last time
in his life, preferred discretion to valour, and retired to the
bush again.

Troops and transport were then concentrated at Faki Kohi,
with the object of forking the Khalifa, and Colonel Wingate
was sent with reinforcements from Khartoum to undertake
the command of the entire expedition. He was to march to
Gedid, where it was expected that the Khalifa's northern trek
would have to come to an end. By the Sirdar's directions

32 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

a flying column to intercept him and drive him into accepting
a pitched battle was organized, and Wingate himself went
with it. It comprised a squadron of cavalry, a field-battery,
machine-guns, six companies of the Camel Corps, and a
brigade of infantry. The flying column left Faki Kohi on
the 2 ist of November, and on the first day out it fell in with
the Khalifa's flying column under Ahmed Fedil. Ahmed was
driven out of Abu Badel with considerable loss in men, and,
with what was of even greater importance, the loss of a convoy
of grain which he was escorting to the Khalifa. Wingate
went into Gedid, which he reached on 23rd November. The
Khalifa, still elusive, but now almost at the end of the passage,
was found to be at Om Debreikat. Wingate made a night
march on the 24th, and at dawn was on high ground over-
looking the Khalifa's position.

The end had come. The Khalifa's emirs called on their
men, and, without waiting for Wingate to attack, drove in his
pickets. Then they came on in their last charge — their
ammunition by this time had run very low. Their assault
was broken against the Soudanese fire, and then the Soudanese
in their turn charged the Dervish camp. They carried it, and
the last stronghold of the Mahdi's successor fell in ruins on
its supporters. The Khalifa, bearing himself bravely, tried to
rally his men, but in vain. Then he gathered his chief emirs
about him, AH Wad Helu and Ahmed Fedil, and Sheik-ed-
Din, his eldest son and his elected successor, and with them
met death without flinching. A thousand men, and all the
remnant of the fighting chiefs of Darfur, Kordofan, and of
the lost empire of the Soudan fell that day, and others to the
number of 3000 surrendered.

The end, indeed, had come; the Sirdar's task in the
Soudan was over; the slate wiped clean. It was only left
for others to polish the rough edges. But hardly had the
last shot been fired, and before the first train could run into

REGENERATING THE SOUDAN 33

Khartoum,1 than other work had been found for him to do —
work 3000 miles away, at the other end of Africa, where a
little war had developed into a great one which, because of
the want of foresight and preparation at the beginning, was to
last for more than two years, and call all Lord Kitchener's
resolution and perseverance into play to finish it.

Two things remain to be added. Osman Digna survived
the Khalifa, but was caught at last, captured at Jebel Warriba,
on 1 9th January, 1900, while wandering a fugitive among the
hills beyond Tokar. The other fact is as to the cost of con-
quest. The reconquest of Dongola and Soudan and Kordofan
cost £3,354,000, which was considerably less than one day's
cost of the last war in which Lord Kitchener had a directing
hand. That covered the cost from March, 1896, to Decem-
ber, 1898, and it left the Soudan in possession of £1,100,000
worth of railways, £21,000 worth of telegraphs, £154,000
worth of gunboats, all included in the bill. Kitchener's
war, for purely military expenses, cost less than £1,000,000.

1 The first train ran through to Khartoum on loth January, 1900.

E. S. G.

VOL. II. 18

CHAPTER III

The Struggle between Briton and Boer

Racial Incompatibility — Cecil Rhodes's Dream — The Rand and the Uitlanders
— The Jameson Raid — Sir Alfred Milner's Dispatch — Fighting Qualities of the
Boers— Their Forces in the Field.

IN one of the great crises which Lord Kitchener shared
with the nation he said that he spoke as a soldier, not
as a politician, and it is desirable, in dealing with his
share in the conduct of the war against the Boer Republics, to
neglect the vexed questions in which that war took its origin,
remembering only that when the end came Lord Kitchener's
detachment from partisanship enabled him to share in laying
the foundations of a settlement based on statesmanship. The
war in South Africa was by more than one man declared to be
inevitable; and that, indeed, is no more than the truth, because
in Cape Colony and in the Transvaal and in the Orange Free
State dwelt two races, each stubborn, proud, and self-sufficient,
who had not learnt to respect one another. Sooner or later a
conflict was bound to come. It had come in the struggle
which terminated in an unfortunate and unsatisfying truce at
Majuba ; and because neither Boer nor Briton could forget
Majuba, the struggle was sure to be renewed. From the
Dutch point of view, South Africa was a Dutch colony; it
might some day be a Dutch republic with Dutchmen content
to live and die there unbound by ties with any European
country. To British people the Cape was a British possession,
no less inviolate or secure because British people at home
knew little about it or about its politics. The Cape British,

STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITON AND BOER 35

however much they might resent the Mother Country's prin-
ciple of alternating neglect of them with attempts to keep
them in leading-strings, were too confident of their inheritance
and too proud of their parentage to abate anything of their
claim to be the ruling race. Here were all the materials for
that good fight which Lord Kitchener grimly observed after
the war that both races had had.

The grounds of quarrel were enlarged during the last
decade of the nineteenth century by several considerations.
The partition of Africa fired many imaginations, none more
than that of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who saw a great and greater
South Africa spreading and stretching northwards till it was
linked through Central Africa with the Soudan, and so with
the Mediterranean. He saw also the Cape to Cairo railway
fertilizing, subduing, and civilizing the interior of the vast and
waste continent. Neither he nor those who dreamed with him
and thought like him could endure to see the great plan spoilt
by a strong and hostile neighbour on the flank of the route of
expansion. If the Cape Dutch would have worked with Cecil
Rhodes to make secure the great road, broad at its base and
endued with prosperity, then he would have joined with them
to make a Union of South African States truly democratic and
impartially representative of Dutch and British interests. He
would never have forgone his allegiance to Britain, being
before all things a great Imperialist, and knowing that under
Britain's flag is a freedom greater than under most republics.

Intruding on the dreams of an extending African dominion,
however, came a consideration which at first promised to add
only to the dominion's prosperity, but afterwards was one of
the chief sources of its disturbance. It was the discovery of
the wealth of the Rand. The pioneers from Great Britain who
had come to the Cape had sought a prosperity which coincided
with the enlargement and development of new lands. The
Boers who formed part of the Dutch population of the Cape

36 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

were even more identified with a process of separating them-
selves from industrialism and in widening or discovering new
areas of pasture and agriculture. Whatever the impulses,
political or racial, which drove the Boer farmers northwards,
they were in the real sense pioneers and cultivators of new
lands. But the new population which swept into South Africa
in the wake of the discoveries of gold and diamonds was
neither agricultural nor pastoral; its members were neither
nomads nor settlers. They were there to make money. It
would be wide of the truth to say that the Johannesburg Rand
was the fount of the conflict which broke out between Briton
and Boer, but it is fair to say that it watered the source.

From the point of view of the Boers who had trekked far
beyond the boundaries of their homes in Cape Colony to find
solitude and to establish a country of their own, who had
endured many perils and fought bravely, who had suffered
hardships in order to become a nation, the influx of strangers
on the Rand was a thing hard to bear. The Rand was grow-
ing; it had a population which despised the Boers as much
for their ignorance as the Boers despised the Johannesburgers
for not being Boers. But the Johannesburgers were making
money, and they were largely of the class which believes that
money can buy anything, and will certainly buy power. They
intended to buy out the Boers, and the Boers, who numbered
some very shrewd men, and who had added to their number
some clever young men from Holland, were quite able to see
that if the Johannesburgers were given complete electoral and
citizen rights the end of the Boer rule would be in sight,
because the Boer would be outnumbered at the ballot-box.
Consequently they maintained the position that, since the gold-
seekers had come into the country without invitation, they
must remain aliens, content with the money they could make,
and without power of any kind to alter the character of the
administration under which they lived. That is a logical way

STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITON AND BOER 37

of reasoning; but it never holds good, and never will, unless
the administration is tolerable. The Boer administration was
bad: it was tyrannical and corrupt. Men will endure the
first and make terms with the other, but they will not tolerate
both. Consequently the Uitlanders, as the Boers called the
Johannesburgers, began to complain, and then to take steps
to alter the things of which they complained. The British
Uitlanders were more numerous than all the others combined.
It was natural that they should rebel against the injustice and
corruption vigorously; and the grievance was emphasized
because many of the British were British South Africans, who
knew that the Boers in other parts of South Africa suffered
no such disabilities as they sought to impose in the Transvaal.
They knew also that Great Britain claimed to be the para-
mount power in South Africa. In short, every fibre of what
the Briton calls his notions of fair play was wrung, and the
efforts of the British Uitlander and his friends to get Great
Britain to intervene were persistent. They culminated in the
Jameson Raid of 1896.

The Jameson Raid was a melancholy blunder which was ill-
organized and ill-conducted, and which, by affording the Boers
the opportunity of an easy victory, confirmed them in their in-
tention to assert themselves and to consolidate their position.
The raid inflicted a serious blow on the prestige of Great
Britain as well as on that of Mr. Rhodes; it enabled the
Transvaal to accumulate arms "in self-defence"; it put an
end to the Reform movement, and won for the Boers the sym-
pathy of the world. The one redeeming feature of its failure
was that it evoked from the German Emperor a telegram
of congratulation to President Kruger which awakened the
British people to a comprehension of German feelings towards
themselves, and contributed lastingly — though the effect was
but slowly perceived — to the knowledge of native-born South
Africans, both Dutch and British, of the aims and possibilities

38 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

of German intervention in South African affairs. It was the
full comprehension in later years of these aims which enlisted
the greatest of Boer generals and statesmen, General Louis
Botha, on the side of Great Britain against Germany.

But the immediate consequence of the Jameson Raid
and its punishment was to exacerbate the relations between
Briton and Boer, and finally between the British Government
and President Kruger as chief of the Boer Government; and
the seriousness of the situation was at length brought home
to the British public by the dispatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the
British Commissioner in South Africa, who perceived and who
said that unless Great Britain asserted herself there could
never be any improvement of the conditions under which
British subjects lived under Boer rule. He also perceived
that the Boers and President Kruger had prepared themselves
for war, and that they were prepared not to admit British
paramountcy in South Africa, but to dispute it. They be-
lieved that though the fight might be long and severe, they
could overthrow the British power and expel the British flag.

It is not necessary to follow the course of the fruitless
negotiations. It is of importance to examine the qualities and
characteristics of the Boer forces which led them to believe in
their ability to beat the British, and enabled them to prolong
the fighting over nearly three years. The Boer farmer, by
tradition and inheritance, had worked out his powers of resist-
ance to the perils of the wilderness, into which he had wandered,
by dependence on himself in the presence of danger. This,
and the other qualities which accrue to men living in solitary
places, gave to the Boer as a fighter great self-reliance and
individuality. These are factors of great military value under
any conditions, but especially under circumstances involving
such dispersion of combatants, such distances between com-
mander and commanded, as were brought about by the con-
junction of long-range arms, an open terrain, and the clearest

STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITON AND BOER 39

atmosphere in the world. The Mauser, which could kill at
2000 yards, enabled the Boer to strike at the extreme limit of
vision, and so to keep his enemies at a distance while securing
his own line of retreat. It was all a born guerrilla, such as he
was, asked for. He was adept at taking cover; the burghers'
first care was to conceal themselves quickly and cunningly, and
every Boer, whether commander or commanded, had an eye
for position. Add to this that the Boer had good nerves and
was not to be disturbed by the shock of shells so long as he
was entrenched, and it will be seen how well fitted he was for
fighting defensive actions against forces which had neither his
scouting ability nor his individuality, and neither his ability to
take cover nor his marksmanship. To beat him as a guerrilla,
men of his own type and ability were needed, not our patient,
marching infantry; and the consequence was that we had to
evolve the right kind of soldier as the war was in progress.
But with all these fine qualities the Boer army had within it
the germs of weakness, for neither battles nor campaigns are
won by defence, but only by attack. The motto of war is
sacrifice: the procedure of war is the attack pushed home
regardless of sacrifice ; and this the Boer army, as an army,
never learnt. So that in the end it was the stolid, patient
British soldier who wore the Boer down, not the elusive,
mobile Boer guerrilla who tired the organized army out. It is
none the less an unending tribute to the Boer pertinacity,
stubbornness, and courage that the commandos were able to
keep the field against the British forces for two years after the
Boer regular armies had disappeared, and that at the end they
emerged with honour and credit.

The Boer forces which took the field in 1899 were com-
posed of two divisions: (i) The burgher commandos, (2)
the regular forces. Of the commandos the whole male popu-
lation between the ages of sixteen and sixty formed the
material. The material was good, but the system had serious

40 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

defects, of which the inequality in numbers of the commandos
was an obvious one, since no general was ever quite v sure of
the number of men he commanded. Another defect, equally
evident, was an absence of discipline for which no incentive of
patriotism or enthusiasm could ever compensate. If such were
the faults of the machine, those of the motive power were not
less glaring. No provision had been made in peace for the
training of men for the duties of the staff. The chain of
authority between commander-in-chief and private soldier was
not forged on to the Boers till war was on them, and then so
hurriedly that it could not bear the strain.

The regular forces of the Transvaal consisted of: (i) the
State Artillery, (2) the South African Republican Police (the
Z.A.R.P., shortened to " the Zarps " as a nickname), and
(3) the Swaziland Police. The State Artillery was as com-
plete and efficient a unit as any of its kind in existence. It
was divided into field-artillery, fortress-artillery, and field-tele-
graph. Its modern armament at the outbreak of war was:
6 Creusot 75-mm. quick-firers (the predecessors of the French
75's), 4 Krupp howitzers (120 mm.), 8 Krupp quick-firers,
21 Vickers- Maxim pom-poms, 4 Vickers mountain -guns,
4 Nordenfeldts, 2 Armstrongs, and 22 Maxims. There were
consequently 49 modern pieces as well as the Maxims, and
this was supplemented by fortress artillery, including 4 Creusot
6-inch guns. The Orange Free State had 14 Krupp 3-inch
and 9 other guns, besides Maxims; and the total number of
rifles at the disposal of the Boer forces was over 108,000.
During the war about 26,000 projectiles of various kinds were
manufactured in Johannesburg, and repairs were done there
and at Pretoria. Although this armament and supply of
ammunition seem so trifling when compared with those with
which the Great War has now made everyone familiar, they
endued the Boer forces with a power of effective resistance
and an ability to strike hard such as were encountered for the

STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITON AND BOER 41

first time by any British army. It is customary to speak of
the South African War as a guerrilla war, and even Lord
Halsbury referred to it at one point as a " sort of war ". It
was, in fact, the first of the modern wars, and the lessons of
it were certainly not lost by any of the foreign military attaches,
notably the Japanese and German attaches, who followed it.
It did not bring about any change in the principles of military
strategy or of effective training, but it pointed to the necessity
of new fire tactics, and it paved the way to the adoption by
all armies of heavy artillery in the field. In a week of the
Great War more shells were fired than in the whole of the
South African War, and problems in transport were solved
daily which confounded divisional staffs there for months
together; but in essentials the lessons enforced by the Boer
war were an integral canon of all military science, namely,
that it is organization which wins battles.

It is difficult to arrive at an estimate of the Boer forces,
because these differed at many times during the progress of
the war. The estimate, however, of 87,365 has been arrived
at after the collection of much independent testimony, and
may be taken as fairly accurate. It is a grand total of the
numbers of all who bore arms against the British troops at
any time whatever during the campaign. The Boer army,
regarded as such, was, numerically, the most unstable in
history, varying in strength as it varied with fortune in the
field — varying even with the weather. At its greatest it
numbered 55,000, at its least 15,000. But a burgher, whether
with the forces or on his farm, was always ready to fight again
when the opportunity offered. He was nominally a peaceful
farmer; but always under the farmer's skin was a man of war.
The Boers, despite themselves, are a military race. They arc
good men to go hunting lions with, and Great Britain was
fortunate in that, having fought with them, she afterwards had
them to fight with her — side by side. E. S. G.

CHAPTER IV

Why Roberts and Kitchener were sent to South

Africa

Opening Acts of the South African War — With Sir George White at Ladysmith
— General French's War Record — First Phase of the Siege of Ladysmith — Winston
Churchill's Adventures— Sir Redvers Buller and his Task— The "Black Week" of
December, 1899 — The Disastrous Battle of Colenso — Sir George White and the Sug-
gestions of Surrender — General Gatacre and Stormberg — Lord Methuen and Magers-
fontein — Lessons of the " Black Week " — Lord Roberts sent to South Africa with
Lord Kitchener as Chief of Staff.

ON the morning of the nth October, 1899, the Boers
of the Orange Free State seized the Natal train
which had left Ladysmith for Harrismith, and in
the afternoon also stopped the train going the other way — the
first act of war. On the next day President Kruger sent to
an American paper the famous telegram, which contained the
words: "The British Agent has been recalled; war is certain;
the Republics are determined that if they must belong to
England a price will have to be paid which will stagger
humanity". And on the same day an armoured train, under
Lieutenant Nesbitt, with fifteen men of the Protectorate
Regiment, escorting two y-pounder guns and ammunition,
on their way from Cape Town to Mafeking, was derailed and
attacked at Kraaipan, about forty miles south of Mafeking, by
a Boer raiding-party. Lieutenant Nesbitt was wounded, and
all on the train were captured except the 'engine - driver,
Flowerday, who was also wounded. These were the first
shots fired in the war.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 43

South-eastward, more than 300 miles away across the
High Veldt of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State,
the Boer commandos had already begun to gather round the
towns in the northern part of the British colony of Natal-
Newcastle, Dundee, and Ladysmith. "Talana Hill" was
fought, Sir Penn Symons killed. The Natal Field Force,
after two more efforts to stem the invasion at Elandslaagte
and Lombard's Kop, retired upon Ladysmith, and with the
garrison of that town, under Sir George White, was there
besieged. So that when Sir Redvers Buller arrived at Durban
on the last day of the month he found that Ladysmith
was cut off from the outer world. Sir George White tele-
graphed to him that he could " hold the Boers, but reinforce-
ments should be sent to Natal at once", and General Hunter
reported to Buller that "Ladysmith, lying in a hollow, was
commanded by heights too distant for the garrison to hold
and possessed by the enemy, superior in numbers, mobility,
and long-range artillery".

With Sir George White in Ladysmith was a man who had
arrived there on the day that Talana Hill battle was fought,
a cavalry general, destined to find in the South African War
the opportunity to gain the renown which in years to come
placed him in command of a British army engaged in the
greatest war in the world's history — Major- General John
Denton Pinkstone French. He had made his mark as a man
of strong will as a squadron officer of the I9th Hussars in the
Gordon Relief Expedition of 1884-5, and he had come now
to Natal to command the cavalry from Aldershot, where he
had commanded the First Cavalry Brigade. Those who knew
French best knew him to be a born leader of cavalry, but
some even of them feared he was too reckless, too enterprising.
In the manoeuvres of 1898, for instance, his tactics, though
strikingly successful, were considered decidedly risky; but
when in the following year he received the Brigade command

44 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

at Aldershot he showed himself to be, as Sir Evelyn Wood
said: "the driving force of tactical instruction in the British
army".1 General Buller, who was now Commander-in-Chief
of the army in South Africa, had seen what French could do,
for after the retirement from Abu Klea in 1885 he mentioned
French in the dispatch he sent home : " I wish expressly to
remark on the excellent work that has been done by the small
detachment of the I9th Hussars both during our occupation
of Abu Klea and during our retirement. Each man has done
the work of ten, and it is not too much to say that the force
owes much to Major French and his thirteen troopers." And
in fact, when Major-General French came to apply his know-
ledge to operations in the field as a leader of cavalry in South
Africa, the upshot was that he was the one leader who went
right through the campaign without making a mistake, in a
campaign of many and disastrous blunders.

Sir George White, who was in command in Natal, had
been Commander-in-Chief in India from 1893 to 1898, and
at the very end of his term of office there had broken his leg
in a bad fall from his horse. When he arrived in England
he went to the War Office as Quartermaster-General, having
been offered that position by Lord Lansdowne, then Secretary
of State for War. After forty-five years of service in India it
was not a congenial appointment to such a man. " He was
now to exchange the large open life of India for a house in
London, which he had always detested, and the command
of 300,000 men for an office chair. He knew soldiers and
their needs, having been a regimental officer most of his life,
and he took up his new work without serious doubts as to his
capacity to do it, but he told a friend: 'It is not congenial
work to me or what I am well up in.' Being for the time
a cripple did not make the prospect more attractive."2 He
soon formed his own opinion of the War Office as it then

1 Sir John French. C. Chisholm. 8 Life of Sir George White. Sir H. M. Durand.

BRITISH LEADERS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

LIEUT.-GEN. SIR JOHN FRENCH LIEUT.-GEN. SIR GEORGE WHITE

GENERAL THE RT. HON. SIR REDVERS H. BULLER
LIEUT.-GEN. LORD METHUEN MAJ.-GEN. SIR W. F. GATACRE

From photographs by Russell, Window & Gro*ve^ Knight (Aldershot\ and Elliott & Fry

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 45

was. " There is too great independence ", he said, " in the
several branches, and the soldiers are not sufficiently con-
trollers of military action and are not very united or strong."

In July of 1899 Lord Wolseley, then Commander-in-
Chief, offered Sir George the Governorship of Gibraltar when
it should be vacant. The offer was at once accepted, but a
whole year was to pass — an eventful year — before he was
sworn in as Governor of the Rock. In September Lord
Wolseley asked him to be ready to start almost immediately
for Natal, as it had been decided to hold that colony and the
Cape Colony against the threatened invasion of the Boers, and
to send out an army corps and a division of cavalry to South
Africa under Sir Redvers Buller. Meantime White was to
protect Natal. Lord Wolseley had doubts as to whether,
owing to his lame leg, White would be fit for this service,
and, on his so expressing himself to White, received the
answer: " My leg is good enough for anything except running
away." Wolseley doubted no longer. On i6th September
White sailed for Natal, having previously been summoned to
Osborne by the Queen with a message that she could not let
him go without saying good-bye to him,

On the nth October White was at Pietermaritzburg,
whence he wrote: "The Boers are certain to declare war to-
night and I am far from being confident in the military posi-
tion. ... I think it possible that with their great numbers
and mobility the Boers may isolate us even at Ladysmith."

White went on to Ladysmith the same day. He was soon
to realize that his words were prophetic, but before the iso-
lation was complete the " reckless " cavalry brigadier from
Aldershot had a chance to display in the open field the tactics
which had so perturbed the minds of his opponents in the
manoeuvres at home. He had to deal with an enemy worthy
of him, a mounted enemy, enterprising and mobile and swift
enough to cut off the British force at Dundee from White's

46 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

force at Ladysmith, for on the very day that Talana Hill was
fought, 2oth October, a Boer column had pushed on to
Elandslaagte, a station on the railway fifteen miles north-east of
Ladysmith, right on the line of communications, and seized
the coal-fields and railway station and a supply train which
was on its way to Dundee. The Boer leader Kock took up a
strong position on some heights near the station, and in the
evening his commando gave a smoking-concert in the hotel,
inviting to it the British prisoners captured in the train or at
the station. The "Transvaal Folk Song" and "God Save the
Queen " were sung with complete impartiality. The moment
the news reached White in Ladysmith, Major-General French,
who had arrived there that same morning (2oth October),
moved out to reconnoitre the position. He had with him the
5th Lancers, the Natal Mounted Rifles, the Natal Carbineers,
and a battery of field-artillery. An infantry brigade under
Colonel Ian Hamilton was in support. The reconnaissance
was checked before it was completed by orders from White
recalling the force, as an attack from the Free Staters at
Bester's (a station on the rail between Ladysmith and Harri-
smith in the Free State, only ten miles or so distant) was
feared. Thus the enemy was already astride both the railways
to the north and north-west of Ladysmith. White concen-
trated all his forces in the town, and rode round the fortified
lines to see that all was in order for a siege. He had to con-
sider how his field force might be turned into a garrison and
Ladysmith into a fortress.

Before sunrise'on 2ist October Major-General French was
in the saddle again, with orders to clear the neighbourhood of
Elandslaagte of the enemy and cover the reconstruction of the
railway and telegraph lines. He had with him 338 men of the
Imperial Light Horse and Natal Field-artillery. A half-battalion
(338 men) of the ist Manchester Regiment with detachments
of Royal Engineers and railway detachments followed by rail,

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 47

piloted by an armoured train manned by one company of the
Manchesters. At seven o'clock the advance-guard of cavalry
sighted the Boers, who at once retired to some kopjes about
a mile from the station. The Natal Field-battery sent a shot
from a y-pounder gun into the outbuildings of the station,
and a crowd of Boers and British prisoners rushed out, the
Boers making for the kopjes and the British for the battery.
A squadron of Imperial Light Horse now captured the station
and its Boer guard. The Boer guns on the kopjes opened fire
on the Natal battery, which found itself outclassed and out-
ranged. French fell back and sent for reinforcements. White
sent them at once, with the message that the Boers must be
beaten and driven off, and that time was of great importance.
French advanced upon the Boer position in the kopjes before
the whole of the reinforcements had arrived, so as to hold the
enemy. When the reinforcements came up, French swiftly
developed his plan of attack. White himself rode out from
Ladysmith while the advance was in progress, recognized at
once that French's plans ,were good, and, being an unselfish
man, was content to remain a looker-on, leaving to his subordi-
nate the entire control of the operations. "A jealous or fussy
man ", says Sir Mortimer Durand in his Life of Sir George
White ', " would have taken command. He had the pleasure
of seeing an admirably-planned attack carried out with entire
success, and the enemy driven away to the northward in head-
long rout with the loss of nearly half their numbers." The
Boers lost also their two guns and their commander, and their
flight opened up the line of communications and enabled
General Yule to retire upon Ladysmith from Dundee.

Soon after Elandslaagte two more battles were fought,
Rietfontein and Lombard's Kop — Rietfontein in order to
cover Yule's retreat, and Lombard's Kop to stave off, if
possible, the complete investment of Ladysmith by the Boer
commandos now converging upon it on every side. Major-

48 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

General French, incessantly reconnoitring with his cavalry, had
warned his chief that if he intended to strike before their ring
about the town was complete he must do so quickly. The
army corps coming from Britain was on the sea, and would
be at Durban in a fortnight, but White determined to strike at
the Boers, with the force he had, on the north and east of
Ladysmith. And so, on what came to be known as " Mourn-
ful Monday", the 3Oth October, were fought the actions of
Lombard's Kop and Nicholson's Nek, called collectively the
"Battle of Ladysmith". The army was divided into two
bodies; one, consisting of the ist Gloucester Regiment and
the ist Royal Irish Fusiliers and a mountain battery under
Lieutenant-Colonel Carleton, was to occupy the high ground
to the north of Ladysmith named Kainguba and Nicholson's
Nek. The cavalry brigade under French was to be on the
ridges beyond Gun Hill, south-east of the town, and between
these two wings the main infantry attack was to be delivered
by five battalions under Colonel Grimwood on Pepworth Hill,
a strongly occupied position where the Boers had already
planted their artillery — what sort of artillery was soon to be
made manifest, for when the British guns opened fire upon
Long Hill there was no reply from there; the reply came in the
shape of a 96-pound shell from Pepworth Hill, and from six
long-range 3-inch Creusot guns. Early in the morning Grim-
wood and French were fiercely attacked, and obliged to fight a
defensive instead of an offensive battle. Right away round
from Nicholson's Nek, where Carleton's force was supposed
to be, to Lombard's Kop, where French's cavalry protected the
British right, was one long-drawn semicircle of Boers. During
the fight bad news came from Carleton's force. The mules
of his mountain battery had been stampeded; the whole force
had been surrounded and compelled to surrender. And from
the town itself came word from Colonel Knox, who was in
charge of it, that the Boers on the west might at any time

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 49

rush the town from that side. White had to withdraw — and
it was done with difficulty — into Ladysmith.

The Boers had given us a great surprise when their big
Creusot 96-pounder gun opened fire on our troops and on the
town from Pepworth Hill; but before the day was over they
had themselves had a great surprise, for suddenly, at about
noon, two big guns opened fire on them — two naval 4.7 guns!
A week before, White had asked Admiral Harris, in naval
command at the Cape, to send him a heavy-gun detachment,
in view of the heavy guns which the Boer general, Joubert, was
bringing down from the Transvaal. The admiral disembarked
two 4.7 guns from the cruiser Powerful at Durban, and, with
some smaller quick-firing guns, sent them, with 16 officers and
270 men under Captain Hedworth Lambton, to Ladysmith.
The big guns were mounted on special carriages designed by
Sir Percy Scott. The guns and men detrained at Ladysmith
at the very time when the shells of the big Boer Creusot gun
— "Long Tom" it came to be called — were bursting over the
town. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle picturesquely puts it (in
The Great Boer War}\—

" That terrible Boer 96-pounder, serenely safe and out of range, was
plumping its great projectiles into the masses of retiring troops. It was
with some misgivings that the officers saw their men quicken their pace
and glance back, at the whine and screech of the shell. They were still
some miles from home and the plain was open. What could be done
to give them some relief? And at that very moment came the unex-
pected answer. That plume of engine smoke, observed in the morning,
had drawn nearer and nearer as the heavy train came puffing up the
steep inclines. Then, almost before it had drawn up at the Ladysmith
siding, there had sprung from it a crowd of merry, bearded fellows, with
ready hands and strange sea-cries, pulling and hauling to get out the
long slim guns lashed on the trucks. . . . And so it was that the weary
and dispirited British troops heard a crash, which was louder and sharper
than that of their field-guns, and saw far away upon the distant hill a
great spurt of smoke and flame to show where the shell had struck.
VOL. ii. 19

50 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Captain Hedworth Lambton and his men had saved the situation. The
masterful gun had met its own master and sank into silence."

And so, somewhat cheered by the dramatic advent of the
bluejackets and their big guns, the Lombard's Kop force, from
which such great things had been hoped, found itself back in
the town; by sunset of that "Mournful Monday" all the
tents in the camp were full once more, save only the tents of
Carleton's two battalions. They, after the loss of their mule
battery and a hopeless fight among the rocks and boulders of
Kainguba against an encircling host of Boers, had surrendered
and gone into captivity. Sir George White sent home an
official dispatch which became famous — for it revealed the
chivalrous soul of the man — and a letter to his wife, made
public since his death by his biographer, Sir Mortimer Durand.
The official message was as follows: —

"30 October.

" I have to report a disaster to a column sent by me to take a position
in the hills to guard the left flank of the troops in their operations to-day.
The Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Gloucestershire Regiment, and No. 10
Mountain Battery were surrounded in the hills, and, after heavy losses,
had to capitulate. Losses not yet ascertained in detail. A man of the
Royal Irish Fusiliers, employed as hospital orderly, came in under flag of
truce with letter from the medical officer of the column and asked for
assistance to bury dead. I fear there is no doubt of the truth of report.
I framed the plan, in carrying out which this disaster occurred, and am
alone responsible for that plan. No blame whatever attaches to the
troops> as the position was untenable."

To his wife he wrote:

"It is doubly sad that the blow of my life has fallen upon me this
day [the eve of their wedding day]. . . . The newspaper boys are now
calling in London the terrible disaster that I have only heard of two
hours ago. ... It has been a knock-down blow to me, but I felt I had
to make an effort, and thought this plan afforded a fair chance of military
success. It was my plan, and I am responsible, and I have said so to the
Secretary of State, and I must bear the consequences. I could have shut

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 51

myself up, or even dealt half-hearted blows, with perfect safety, but I
played a bold game, too bold a game, and I have lost. I believe every
move I made was reported to the Boers. They are brave and very in-
telligent, and very hard to give a decided beating to. I think after this
venture the men will lose confidence in me and that I ought to be
superseded. It is hard luck, but I have no right to complain. I have
had a very difficult time of it. I don't think I can go on soldiering. My
mind is too full of this to write about anything else. It is far into the
night, but I don't expect to sleep, though I have been up since 3 a.m."1

Three days after the battle of Lombard's Kop and the
disaster of Kainguba (Nicholson's Nek) the Boer commandos
had seized the ring of hills — thirty miles in circumference—
around Ladysmith, and the investment of the town was com-
plete. On the 2nd November Major-General French went out
to the southward with cavalry and artillery to reconnoitre,
shelled one of the Boer camps, and then, unable to do more,
went back to the town. A telegram from Sir Redvers Buller,
the Commander-in-Chief, was awaiting him. In it Sir Redvers
desired that French and his staff should be sent to the Cape.
The cavalry leader started at midday. His train was heavily
fired on all the way to Colenso, on the Tugela River, thirteen
miles south of Ladysmith, but got through safely. It was
the last train out, and immediately afterwards the rail and the
wires were cut. Next day the Boers mounted new guns on
their heights and began a heavy bombardment. The siege of
Ladysmith had begun.

It was on the day following "Mournful Monday" that
Sir Redvers Buller, the Commander-in-Chief, arrived at Cape
Town. His army corps was following in a stream of trans-
ports. Before the wires were cut outside Ladysmith a tele-
gram from Buller got through to White, suggesting that he
should entrench and wait for events, if not at Ladysmith
behind the Tugela at Colenso. White replied that Ladysmith

1 Life of Sir George White. Sir H. M. Durand.

52 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

was strongly entrenched, but that the lines were not con-
tinuous, and the perimeter was so large that the Boers could
exercise their usual tactics. " I have the greatest confidence
in holding Ladysmith for as long as necessary. I could not
now withdraw from it. ... I intend to contain as many Boers
as possible round Ladysmith, -and I believe they will not go
south without making an attempt on the town.*' To this
Buller replied: "I agree that you do best to remain at Lady-
smith, though Colenso and the line of Tugela River look
tempting. It will be at least three solid weeks before I can
attempt to reinforce you, and at present I fancy that the best
help 1 can then give you will be to take Bloemfontein. Good
luck to you! You must have had some merry fights."

Buller was destined to realize at no distant date what
"Colenso and the line of the Tugela" meant. He was to
find to his cost that White could not have held the line of the
river from the south side against the Boers on the north, for
the reason that the northern bank commands the southern.
His idea of helping White in Natal by taking Bloemfontein in
the Orange Free State was in accordance with his original plan
of assembling his army corps at the Cape, and of advancing
with it upon the Free State capital; but after consultation with
Major-General French he felt that White could not protect
Natal without assistance; and so, finding that the army corps
could not be got ready before the end of December, Buller
decided to go to Natal. It was well he did so, even though
he had to divide up his force, partly for the relief of Kimberley
and partly for the rescue of White, for, as Sir Mortimer
Durand has pointed out in his Life of Sir George Whitey " If
Buller, in December, 1899, had advanced with a single army
corps into the Free State there is little room to doubt that he
would very soon have found himself in desperate difficulties.
The advance proved no easy task even for Lord Roberts, with
his greatly increased forces, months later."

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 53

White now organized the defences of Ladysmith. To the
north, Colonel W. G. Knox and Major-General F. Howard ;
to the south, Colonel Ian Hamilton and Colonel Royston held
the lines. Outside the British lines, by permission of the
Boer leader, Joubert, the non-combatants of the garrison were
allowed to camp at Intombi; others who remained in the town
dug caves in the river bank and lived there, sheltered from the
attentions of " Long Tom " on Bulwana. South of Ladysmith
is a ridge the extremities of which were named Wagon Hill
and Caesar's Camp; and here on the Jth and 9th November
the Boers attacked the Manchester Regiment and the 6oth
Rifles, who held that position. The attack failed, and thence-
forth for some time the Boers did not venture another, though
they continued to bombard the town from their gun positions.
In the interval between the first week of the siege and the
arrival of Buller on the 25th November the Boers had their
chance for the conquest of Natal — and missed it. Had they
been content to mask Ladysmith and advance in force into the
southern part of the colony there was nothing to prevent their
capture of Durban. Almost immediately after the battle of
Lombard's Kop the Boers held a council of war to decide
whether the town should be attacked with their full strength,
or whether, leaving a detachment to contain it, the Boer army
should advance upon Maritzburg, the capital, and Durban, the
port of the colony. Louis Botha, who was at that time only
a commandant, advised the latter course. The majority came
to the conclusion that as there were 12,000 British troops in
Ladysmith their army was not strong enough to do both, but
that Ladysmith would fall to an assault. The unsuccessful
attacks of yth and 9th November were the result of this
decision. After a delay of a fortnight, however, Joubert and
Botha, with 4200 men, did seize Colenso and the north bank
of the Tugela River, and thence pushed on farther south to
Estcourt.

54 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

It was during this Boer raid into the southern part of Natal
that the other " armoured -train incident" occurred. On
1 5th November, 1899, the train, carrying a y-pounder gun,
manned by five sailors, one company of the Dublin Fusiliers,
and one of the Durban Light Infantry, was reconnoitring
along the rail northwards from Estcourt towards Colenso. At
Chieveley some Boer horsemen were seen riding southwards.
The train started to move back, but at a turn in the line came
under fire from two field-guns and a "pom-pom". The
driver went full speed down an incline and dashed into an
obstruction ; three trucks were derailed, and a stiff fight began
between the train party and a force of 300 Boers. Captain
Haldane, of the Gordon Highlanders, who was in command,
set the Durban Light Infantry company to clear the line, and
they were assisted by Mr. Winston Churchill, who had been
allowed to accompany the train as war correspondent, while the
Dublin Fusiliers fought the Boers. The y-pounder gun was
destroyed, but the British held out for an hour under heavy
fire. The train was wrecked, but the engine, with its cab full
of wounded, was able to move back to Frere station. The
troops now made an effort to cross the veldt to some houses,
but someone without orders had raised a white handkerchief.
The Boers thereupon ceased fire, galloped in on the retiring
men, and summoned them to surrender. Captain Haldane,
another officer, Mr. Churchill, and 53 men were thus captured,
but one officer and 69 men made their way back to Estcourt.
Mr. Churchill described the affair in complete detail in his
interesting book, published in 1900, Lmdon to Ladysmith, via
Pretoria. After speaking of the attempts which he and a little
band of volunteers made to link up what remained of the
shattered train, he says :

" I have had in the last four years the advantage, if it be, an advantage,
of many strange and varied experiences from which the student of reali-
ties might draw profit and instruction. But nothing was so thrilling as

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 55

this : to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes,
with the repeated explosions of the shells, the hiss as they passed in the
air, the grunting and puffing of the engine, the expectation of destruction
as a matter of course, the realization of powerlessne§s, and the alternations
of hope and despair — all this for seventy minutes by the clock."

And after his capture and arrival at Colenso :

UI could not sleep. Vexation of spirit, a cold night, and wet clothes
withheld sweet oblivion. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel, the
fortunes and chances of the war forced themselves on the mind. What
men they were, these Boers ! I thought of them as I had seen them in
the morning, riding forward through the rain — thousands of independent
riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with
skill, living as they rode without commissariat or transport or ammunition
column, moving like the wind and supported by iron constitutions and a
stem hard Old Testament God, who should surely smite the Amalekites
hip and thigh."

Encouraged by this armoured-train incident, Joubert ad-
vanced farther south in two columns, 3000 men under himself
on the west of the railway, and 1200 under his son David on the
east. Passing round Estcourt, the two commandos met on the
railway between the stations of Willow Grange and Highlands.
The strategic situation was now a strange one, for as there was
a British force at Mooi River, still farther south, the Boers,
although on the line of communications of the Estcourt force,
were themselves in between that and the Mooi River force.
Mobile as they were — a lesson in that respect to all the armies
of Europe — it was not a position in which even Boer com-
mandos could feel comfortable. "Although therefore the
Boers had cut the rail and telegraph between the two stations,
Joubert's situation, halted between two British forces, each
equal in strength to his two commandos, was audacious if not
dangerous. Moreover, in rear of Mooi River, further British
reinforcements were disembarking at Durban and being pushed
up to the front in a continuous stream."1 With their customary

1 Official History of tie W«r in South Africa. Sir J. F. Maurife,

56 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

"slimness" the Boers, therefore, proceeded to extricate them-
selves from a position of danger, but not before they had been
compelled to put up a fight. General Hildyard, who was in
command at Estcourt, sent out a force against them under
Colonel Walter Kitchener. The Boers under Louis Botha
had, as usual, seized a good position on a commanding height.
A night attack upon it was a failure, and the Boer counter-
attack at daylight next day (23rd November) caused the retire-
ment of Kitchener's brigade. The Boers were able to get
away across the Tugela, destroying the railway bridge behind
them. Thus ended the great Boer raid into southern Natal,
the result of which for them was the capture of many cattle
and horses, and the loss of the- services of their leader, Joubert,
who was Jiurt through his horse stumbling, and returned to
Pretoria, leaving Botha in command on the Tugela.

Sir Redvers Buller, the Commander-in-Chief, arrived at
Durban on 25th November, and on 6th December was at
Frere station, on the railway, a little over ten miles south of
Colenso and the Tugela. Here he concentrated the forces
intended for the relief of Ladysmith, and by 9th December
was in command of a well-equipped army of all three arms
amounting to over 19,000 officers and men, with 2 naval 4.7
guns, 12 naval 12-pounders, 30 15-pounder field-pieces, and
1 8 machine-guns. According to an estimate made by Buller's
staff, there were 6000 to 7000 Boers concentrated under
Louis Botha on the Tugela at and about Colenso, in a position
which is thus described in the Official History of the War\

" The task which the British Commander-in-Chief had decided to
undertake was not an easy one. From Potgieter's Drift, 16 miles west
of Colenso, to the junction of the Tugela with Sunday's River, 30 miles
east of Colenso, a ridge of hills, broken only by narrow kloofs and dongas,
line like a continuous parapet the northern bank of the Tugela. West-
ward the ridge is connected by the Brakfontein Nek with the spur of
the Drakensberg called the Tabanyama Range. This was destined a
month later to bar the advance of the relieving army on that side. The

BOER LEADERS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

GENERAL PIET JOUBERT GENERAL PIET A. CRONJE

PRESIDENT KRUGER
GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA GENERAL J. H. DE LA KEY

From photographs by C. F. Robertson, Grant (St. Helena), Elliott & Fry,
and Duffits Bros. (Capetown)

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 57

eastern flank was guarded by the lower slopes of the Biggarsberg parallel
to Sunday's River. The approaches to the beleaguered town from the
south were thus defended by an immense natural redoubt. Opposite to
the very centre of the front face of this redoubt lay Colenso. . . . Behind
this centre, and at right angles to the parapet, a cluster of hills ran back
to the ridge of ' Caesar's Camp' immediately to the south of Ladysmith.
Through this confused mass of broken ground so favourable to the fighting
methods of its defenders, ran the three roads which connect Colenso and
Ladysmith. . . . Along the face of this strategic fort ran the Tugela, an
admirable moat, as completely commanded by the heights on its left bank
as is the ditch of a permanent work by its parapet. West of Colenso
this moat could be crossed by guns and wagons at only five 'drifts', of
which four were difficult for loaded wagons. Eastward of Colenso the
only practicable drift was that by which the Weenen road crosses the
river. Other fords, through which single horsemen or men on foot
breast-high could wade, existed both east and west, but, with the excep-
tion of a bridle-drift near Colenso, they were not marked on the maps
in possession of the troops and could only be discovered by enquiry and
reconnaissance. The commandos assigned to Botha for the defence of
the line of the Tugela were insufficient to man the whole of this im-
mense position, but he was able to rely upon the mobility of his burghers,
and he was so situated that his assailant, in order to attack him any-
where, would have to cover greater distances than he need cover to re-
inforce either flank from the centre. Moreover, not only did the heights
he held afford a perfect view for miles over the country to the south, but
the Tugela hills are precipitous and rocky on their southern faces, while
the approaches to them from the north present as a rule easy slopes and
gentle gradients."

Such then was the enemy and such their fortress — for so it
was, a natural fortress — which the British army for the relief
of Ladysmith and its general, Sir Redvers Buller, V.C., had to
face. The quality of his army Buller himself vouched for in
his historic phrase: "The men are splendid!" His own char-
acter as a soldier is described by the man who perhaps knew
him best, his chief in many campaigns, Lord Wolseley. In
his Story of a Soldier s Life, Wolseley, when describing the Red
River Expedition of 1870, says: /

58 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

" All the officers with the Expeditionary force soon became expert
in making portages and in mending their boats, no one more so than
my very able friend and valued comrade, Redvers Buller. It was here
I first made his acquaintance, and I am proud to feel that we have been
firm friends ever since. He was a first-rate axe-man, and I think he was
the only man with us of any rank who could carry a loo-pound barrel
of pork over a portage on his back. He could mend a boat and have her
back in the water with her crew and all her stores on board while many
would have been still making up their minds what to do. Full of re-
source and personally absolutely fearless, those serving under him always
trusted him fully. He afterwards served as my Chief of the Staff in the
expedition sent too late to relieve the hero and martyr Charles Gordon
in Khartoum, and no man ever deserved better of his country than he
did upon that occasion."

And later, writing of the Ashanti War, he says;,

" I felt that ordinary men could not be good enough for the work I
had undertaken. I had taken care to surround myself with those whom
I could trust and whom I felt had a similar confidence in me. Redvers
Buller, of the Royal Rifles, was first and foremost among them, one
whose stern determination of character nothing could ruffle, whose re-
source in difficulty was not surpassed by anyone I ever knew. Endowed
with a mind fruitful in expedients, cool and calm in the face of every
danger, he inspired general confidence and thoroughly deserved it. Had
a thunderbolt burst at his feet he would merely have brushed from his
rifle-jacket the earth it had thrown upon him without any break in the
sentence he happened to be uttering at the moment. He was a thorough
soldier, a practised woodman, a skilful boatman in the most terrifying of
rapids, and a man of great physical strength and endurance."

Buller's first commission in the army was dated 23rd May,
1858, and when he finally retired from the service he had seen
forty-seven and a half years of soldiering in eleven campaigns
It was in the Zulu War that he won the Victoria Cross for his
gallant conduct at the retreat at Inhlobane on 28th March,
1879, when he saved the lives of two officers and a trooper,
who, on separate occasions, had their horses shot under them.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 59

What the Boers thought of Buller was expressed by the Boer
general, Joubert, and is quoted by Lewis Butler in his life of
Sir Redvers: "I have to tell you", he said to his commandos,
" that we now have to face the bravest and finest general in
the world, who is accompanied by an army of men who would
go through fire and water for him. To those of you who
fought in the previous struggle with the English I need not
say that I speak of General Buller."

While Sir Redvers was organizing his intended attack on
the Boer position on the Tugela, the garrison of Ladysmith
was not idle, and it was cheered and encouraged by seeing on
the clouds one evening in November flashing-signals from
Estcourt, where Buller's troops were then assembling. Later,
regular heliographic communication was established, and Buller
and White were able to talk over their plans with the aid of
the sun. One of White's greatest difficulties was the presence
of Boer spies within his lines. He himself reported that every
movement or preparation for movement in Ladysmith was at
once communicated to the Boers. On two occasions, early in
December, when detachments of infantry were sent out to
surprise outlying farms which were being used by the enemy,
the farms were found empty. A night sortie against the Boer
guns on Gun Hill was more fortunate, and a Long Tom and a
4.7-inch howitzer were destroyed by the Imperial Light Horse
and Natal Volunteers. Again, on the loth December, by
another night surprise, a 4.7-inch howitzer was destroyed, and
the Boers, who had closed in to cut off the party, were attacked
with the bayonet. Bold reconnaissances were also made, and
thus the besieging Boers were kept busy while Buller was
preparing to break through. This he proposed to do by way
of Potgieter's Drift, sixteen miles west of Colenso, and on the
extreme right flank of the Boer position. White, for his part,
arranged to sally out and meet the relieving force. On the
1 2th December Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State

60 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

in London, that, having made careful inspection by telescope
of the Boer position, he had come to the conclusion that a
direct assault upon it at Colenso would be too costly, and that
he had therefore decided to force the passage of Potgieter's
Drift.

On that same day Buller received news of the disasters to
Methuen at Magersfontein, and to Gatacre at Stormberg, both
in the Cape Colony, and was so impressed by them that he no
longer considered the flank attack on Potgieter's Drift advis-
able. That operation, he telegraphed to the Secretary of State,
would involve the complete abandonment of his communi-
cations in Natal with Maritzburg and Durban, and, should
it be unsuccessful, he might share the fate of Sir George White
and be isolated and cut off from Natal. " From my point
of view ", he said, " it will be better to lose Ladysmith alto-
gether than to throw open Natal to the enemy." He decided,
therefore, to make that direct assault which he had feared to
make before, and he heliographed to White : " Have been
forced to change my plans; am coming through via Colenso
and Onderbrook Spruit" (the valley through which one of the
two roads ran from Colenso to Ladysmith), and he further in-
formed White, in answer to White's enquiry, that he would
make the attempt "probably on the iyth December". Had
he known " what was going on on the other side of the hill ",
he would have hesitated to make the attempt to " go through
via Colenso ", and would have tried Potgieter's Drift, even at
the risk of sharing the fate of Sir George White.

For Botha, Erasmus, and Prinsloo had fortified the whole
of the natural fortress, which they were about to defend, with
elaborate care. For three weeks before the battle, and up to
the very eve of battle, trenches had been made with such
ingenuity that they were with difficulty seen, and then only in
part, from the other side of the river. The gun emplace-
ments were more numerous than the guns, so that the guns

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 61

could be shifted about. From Robinson's Farm, five miles to
the west of Colenso, to the Hill of Hlangwane, two miles to
the east, the commandos were skilfully ranged all along the
lower slopes of the position, every man of them a crack shot
with the rifle and every man having a full view of the smooth,
long slope, like the glacis of a fortress — as indeed it was —
stretching away southward beyond the river, which was as a
moat, deep, swift, and only to be crossed by the railway bridge,
a road bridge, and a ford of uncertain practicability known as
the Bridle Drift. "The details of the Boers' line of battle",
says Sir F. Maurice in the Official History of the War^ "would
have been difficult to discover even by the fullest reconnais-
sance and by the best-trained Intelligence Department."

Buller spent the morning of the- I4th December in ex-
amining the position through a telescope, but the instrument
did not reveal to him the one weak spot in it — that Hill of
Hlangwane, on the left and on his own side of the river. Ever
since the first of the month Hlangwane, known to the Boers
as the Boschkop, had been held by a commando under Dirksen;
but two days before the battle this commando, not liking the
idea of being on the other side->of the river, away from the
main position, recrossed the river in spite of Dirksen's com-
mands. Dirksen telegraphed to Kruger at Pretoria: " If we
give this kop over to the enemy then will the battle expected
at Colenso end in disaster". Kruger replied: "The kop on
the other side of the river must not be given up, for then all
hope is over. Fear not the enemy but trust in God." A
Boer war council was held, and it was decided that a new
garrison of 800 men chosen by lot should reoccupy Hlang-
wane. The new garrison did not like their job, but they
went. Hlangwane, as the Boer leaders well knew, was the
dangerous spot for them, for from it their whole line of
defences could be enfiladed.

Sir Redvers Buller, gazing through his telescope, saw that

62 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

the slopes of Hlangwane were covered with thick scrub, and
decided in his plan of attack to send against it a force of 1000
mounted men and a battery of artillery to "cover the right
flank of the general movement" and "to endeavour to take
up a position on the hill and enfilade the kopjes north of the
iron bridge". And as he turned the glass on to the main
position — the wide loop of the river at Colenso and the other
loop westward — it revealed hardly a sign of life. Those hill-
sides in front of him had remained silent all through the bom-
bardment by the naval guns on the I3th and Hth; not a shot
had been fired in reply. " So little did the Boers betray
their presence that in the British army the suspicion already
began to lurk in some men's minds that the position had been
evacuated. Even the general, who spent a good part of the
day near the naval guns, examining the enemy's positions,
was apparently, to judge by his dispositions, affected by the
peaceful silence of those harmless-looking hillocks and bare
mountain -sides."1 Bitter disillusion was to come on the
morrow 1

Four brigades of infantry under Hildyard, Hart, Lyttelton,
and Barton; a cavalry brigade under Lord Dundonald; five
batteries of field-artillery and sixteen naval guns — 21,000 men
and forty-six guns in all — were set in motion in the early
morning of the I5th December, 1899, and at 5.20 a.m. the
Naval Brigade opened fire with two 4.7 and four 12-pounder
guns upon the Boer kopjes. At six o'clock Colonel Long,
commanding the artillery, took two field-batteries to within
700 yards of the river, right into the loop of the river in
which was the village of Colenso, and had but just unlimbered
and given the order to open fire when a single signal shot
from a Boer big gun was heard. Instantly a fierce storm of
rifle-fire burst forth from the kopjes upon the doomed batteries;
officers, men, and horses went down before it. The survivors

1 The " Times" History of the War in South Africa, Vol. II, p. 433.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 63

took refuge in a donga about 100 yards to the rear. Attempts
to save the guns failed with heavy loss — young Roberts, only
son of his famous father, was among the victims. The guns
were abandoned, all save two, saved by the heroism of those
who volunteered for the service and received the Victoria
Cross — Captains Congreve, Reed, Schofield, and Roberts (after
death), Corporal Nurse and Private Ravenhill; and, for devoted
bravery in attending to the wounded under the murderous
fire, Major Baptie of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Mean-
time Dundonald's demonstration (for it was and could be no
more than that) against Hlangwane failed under the heavy fire
from the hidden and completely protected enemy. Hart's brigade
had failed to find the ford at the Bridle Drift, and came under
the same murderous fire that had destroyed Long's batteries and
checked Dundonald. The river remained uncrossed. By eleven
o'clock, the position of the British army being absolutely hope-
less, Buller gave the order to abandon the guns and withdrew
the whole force. Until four 'o'clock that afternoon the ten guns
stood unprotected on the open veldt, and behind them in the
donga crouched the few gunners and some of the Devons and
Scots Fusiliers who had formed their supporting escort. The
Boers feared a trap, and could not at first realize their good
fortune; but when the naval battery had gone they ventured
across the river, captured the guns, and made prisoners of the
party in the donga. The ten guns, with limbers and ammu-
nition-wagons and 600 rounds of shells, were taken leisurely
over the river by the Boers. This was the final scene of the
battle of Colenso and of the first attempt to relieve Ladysmith.
Buller sent off to London the report of his serious reverse,
and to White a message also telling of his failure, and asking
how many days White could hold out. He suggested that
White should fire away as much ammunition as possible, and
make the best terms he could with the Boers. Happily Sir
George was able to take a more optimistic view of the situation,

64 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

and was in a position to disregard this undoubtedly well-meant
advice. He replied: "I can make food last for much longer
than a month, and will not think of making terms till I am
forced to. ... Things may look brighter. The loss of
12,000 men here would be a heavy blow to England. "

Stormberg, in the Cape Colony, lies 150 miles due south of
Bloemfontein, and 43 miles from the Orange River, which is
the boundary between Cape Colony and the Orange Free State.
It is a junction station on the railway lines from East London
and Port Elizabeth connecting with the Central Railway of the
Free State, and was therefore an important point in the military
operations in Cape Colony. It was essential to the British to
cover both the railway lines which run from East London and
Port Elizabeth and cross the Orange River into the Free State
at Bethulie and Norval's Pont respectively, as well as the great
trunk line which runs from Cape Town to Kimberley. The
three points on these lines protected by British forces were De
Aar junction on the trunk line, Colesberg on the Port Eliza-
beth line, and Stormberg on the East London line. The Free
State Boers invaded Cape Colony in the first week of November,
1899, along the lines of the two railways, and enlisted in their
ranks many of the disaffected Boers of the colony. The
British, at Colesberg on the Port Elizabeth line, and at Storm-
berg on the East London line, fell back before the invasion.
Major-General French was in charge of the operations in the
Colesberg district ; Lieutenant-General W. F. Gatacre, who
had landed at East London on the i6th November, was
entrusted with those in the direction of Stormberg.

Since 1862, when Gatacre received his*commission in the
yyth Regiment, his military career had been a brilliant one,
personal gallantry being one of its chief characteristics. In
1 88 1 he was military secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in
India ; he was chief of staff to General M 'Queen in the Hazara
Expedition in 1888 ; next year he was a brigadier in command

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 65

at Mandalay, fighting the Dacoits and restoring tranquillity to
the Burmese districts which they had long troubled; in 1895
he was in command of a brigade in Chitral, and shared the
hardships of that campaign with his men. In 1898 he was
under Kitchener at the Atbara, and in the attack on the
Dervish zareba was the first to reach it and drag down part
of the fence, narrowly escaping death from a Dervish spear.
Kitchener, in his official dispatch after the battle, said of
Gatacre : " During the recent engagement General Gatacre
showed a fine example of gallant leading. The cordiality and
good fellowship existing between the British and Egyptian
troops, who have fought shoulder to shoulder, is to a great
extent due to the hearty co-operation of General Gatacre, and
I cannot speak too highly of the services rendered by him and
the troops under his command during the recent operations/'
Some years afterwards a writer in Blackwood's Magazine1 told
the following anecdote : —

" Kitchener was dictating his dispatch (on the Atbara battle) when
there passed in front of us a pony led by a syce (groom) and laden with
spoils selected with the praiseworthy discrimination of an art connoisseur.
Kitchener hailed the man, and, selecting the finest coat of mail and the
most beautifully finished spear, bade me take them to General Gatacre
with his warmest thanks for the splendid gallantry and good judgment
with which he had led his fine brigade. I seem now to see the pleasant
light that shone in that brave soldier's eyes as I gave him the message
word for word. What a splendid fellow ! and how willingly any of us
would have given our right hands to save him from the fate that befell
him — at the hands of his own chiefs — in South Africa."

One of the features of Gatacre's character was a stern sense
of discipline. Being a man of extraordinary energy, with an
unbounded capacity for hard work, he exacted the last ounce
of work and energy from those under his command — just the
kind of man who would appeal to Kitchener!

1 December, 1902: "Campaigning with Kitchener".
VOL. II. 20

66 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Nominally General Gatacre was in command of a division
when he arrived in South Africa, but the division had been
split up; some of it went to Buller in Natal, some to Methuen,
before Kimberley, and there was left a bare brigade — the 2nd
Irish Rifles, 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers, 250 mounted in-
fantry, and two batteries of field-artillery — under 3000 effectives
all told. On the 2nd December Gatacre telegraphed to Buller
that the military situation there required handling with extreme
care ; that the Boers were advancing south along the railway
line ; that he had only two British regiments. Buller replied :
"We have to make the best of the situation. You have a
force considerably stronger than the enemy can now bring
against you. Cannot you close with him, or else occupy a
defensive position which will obstruct his advance ? You have
an absolutely free hand to do what you think best." Given a
free hand and a suggestion to close with the enemy — this
suited a man of Gatacre's temperament exactly, and he had
already come to the opinion that a further defensive attitude
would be hurtful. "The whole of this country", he wrote on
8th December, "is seething with rebels, and as they are all
mounted and I have only a few mounted infantry on half-fed
ponies it is very difficult to cope with them. I am hoping to
move on a bit to-morrow or next day to recover some of the
country given up prior to my arrival, as I think occupation of
a position in advance of this may tend to awe the Dutch
behind me."

General Gatacre decided to make a night march on Storm-
berg, to seize the Rooi Kop Mountain, which rises immediately
south and east of Stormberg Junction and the nek over which
the railway ran, and so to drive the Boers back northward.
He concentrated his force at Molteno station, about ten miles
from Stormberg, on the 9th December, a day later than in-
tended, owing to difficulties in the supply of rolling-stock.

1 General Gatacre, his Life and Services. Lady Gatacre.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 67

The Intelligence Staff had ascertained that the Boer strength
was about 1 700, and that the southern face of the nek between
Rooi Kop and the Kissieberg Mountain, which enclosed the
Stormberg valley on the west, was entrenched. General
Gatacre thereupon decided to advance by a road which ran
west of the railway to a point (Van Zyl's house) which would
bring him directly opposite the western face of the Kissieberg,
which he would rush with the bayonet before daybreak, and
thus command with his guns the whole Stormberg valley.

The force set out on the night of 9th December at nine
o'clock, led by guides who were considered to be efficient and
trustworthy. It was one of the most unfortunate night marches
on record, as may be gathered from the following facts, stated
in the Official History of the War. The road taken had not
been previously reconnoitred by a staff officer ; the machine-
guns, Royal Engineer detachment, and field-hospital, owing to
lack of staff supervision, took the direct road to Stormberg
junction instead of the one farther west which had been
selected, and, finding that there were no troops ahead of them,
halted where they were until daylight, having been told by the
officer left in command at Molteno that he did not know by
which road the main column was advancing ; the guides leading
the main infantry column missed the direct road which led to
Van Zyl's house beneath the Kissieberg, went miles to the left,
and then struck another road which did indeed lead to it, but
over rough and stony ground ; the men were wearied ; they
had been engaged in heavy fatigue-work on the very morning
of the day ; doubt as to the manner in which the column was
being guided had spread discouragement. Finally, at the first
streak of dawn, Van Zyl's house appeared in sight, and, accord-
ing to the Official History^ if the assault had been delivered at
once the ridge might have been carried and command over the
Stormberg valley secured; for all the Boer accounts of the fight
agree in stating that Gatacre's night march was a complete

68 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

surprise to them. But either the chief guide did not fully
understand the General's intentions, or he had lost his bearings,
for he pointed out a kopje two miles farther on and said that
that was the real place.

The column went wearily on, along a road which skirted
the western face of the Kissieberg ridge, marching in fours,
with no flanking-parties out, and only eight men as an advance-
guard. They were marching in this formation right along the
front of the Boer commando ranged up along the ridge above
them ! Taken by surprise as they were when they first saw
the British column, the Boers manned the ridge while the
column was plodding along beneath it. A shot rang out from
the heights, a corporal of the leading company of the Royal
Irish Rifles fell dead, and a rapid fire burst out upon the
column, which at once formed front to the right, extended, and
attacked the ridge — a direct frontal attack by almost worn-out
men on a steep, terraced, boulder- strewn mountain -side, but
undertaken with such gallantry that three companies of the
Royal Irish struggled up close to the crest-line, and with them
three companies of the Northumberland Fusiliers. If sup-
ported they would have gained the summit, but the other five
companies of the Fusiliers had been ordered by their com-
manding officer to retire. The field -batteries, seeing this
movement, thought that the whole attacking force was retiring,
and began shelling the ridge to cover the retreat, thus by a
fatal mischance shelling their own men. Retreat was now
inevitable, and the whole force retired down the fatal slopes,
followed by the exultant Boers. The material effect of the
pursuit was not great, as the Boer shooting throughout the
day had been indifferent, but it drove a large number of the
troops into a deep donga beneath the ridge. This donga,
an eye-witness says, was too deep to be used as a line of
defence, and it was here that the trouble in the retirement
commenced.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 69

" The men rushed to this donga for cover, and on getting into it
lay down and went to sleep ; the greatest difficulty was experienced to
get them on the move again. Many were thoroughly done up and did
not appear to care what happened to them. Many still remained on the
hill, some because they had not heard the order to retire; some, utterly
weary, had sunk down asleep in the dead angle at the foot of the height."
— ^fficial History of the War.

Towards midday the British force, having lost all forma-
tion, struggled into Molteno; "the fatigue of the men had
reached its climax, and most of them could hardly keep their
feet; not a few fell down asleep before they reached the
ground". Heart-broken, General Gatacre wrote home: "The
fault was mine, as I was responsible, of course. I went rather
against my better judgment in not resting the night at Mol-
teno, but I was tempted by the shortness of the distance and
the certainty of success. It was so near being a brilliant
success." In the following April Gatacre was relieved of his
command. In 1906 his broken life came to an end. His
body was laid to rest in a far-off grave in Abyssinia. Such
was the disaster of Stormberg — the first of the three which
made the " Black Week " of the South African War.

As already stated, when Buller decided to break up the
army corps which had followed him to Cape Town he
assigned a portion of it to Lord Methuen for the relief of
Kimberley. Methuen left Cape Town by the great trunk
railway for Orange River station on the icth November, 1899,
and arrived there on the I2th. The Boers, fully alive to the
fact that a serious attempt was to be made to relieve Kim-
berley, prepared defensive positions along the railway at
Belmont and Graspan. Those at Belmont were upon a fortress-
like group of hills and kopjes, strewn with immense iron-stone
boulders, to the south-east of Belmont station. Shortly after
three o'clock on the morning of the 23rd November Methuen's
troops moved out to the attack of the Belmont position. It

70 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

was a " soldiers' battle" in the good old primeval British style,
as Conan Doyle calls it in his history of the war, a sort of
Battle of Inkerman on a small scale, but against deadlier
weapons. The Guards Brigade and the 9th Infantry Brigade
rushed the rough, craggy hills and drove the Boers off them,
but with a loss of 3 officers and 51 non-commissioned officers
killed, and 23 officers and 220 non-commissioned officers and
men wounded. The Boer loss was 80 killed and 70 prisoners.
Lord Methuen's next fight was on the 25th November,
at Graspan, seven and a half miles farther along the railway.
Here the Boers were astride the railway upon a line of isolated
kopjes, and, as at Belmont, the kopjes were carried by direct
assault. The total British loss was under 300, that of the
Boers about 100. As at Belmont, the want of cavalry and
horse artillery enabled the defeated Boers to escape without
heavy loss.

"Not only were the mounted troops at Lord Methuen's disposal
insufficient, but their horses were already worn out by heavy reconnais-
sance duty and great scarcity of water. The results of this deficiency
in mounted men were far-reaching. Not only did the enemy avoid
paying the material penalties of successive failures on the battle-field, but
his moral was stiffened by the immunity from disaster conferred by his
superior mobility." — Official History of the War.

The Boers, defeated at Graspan, retired still farther along
the line to a point where the Modder and Riet Rivers unite.
With their usual intelligence and "slimness" they had realized
that their practice hitherto of entrenching themselves upon
kopjes was not quite satisfactory, as the hills were good tar-
gets for artillery, and had at their bases dead ground which
served to protect assaulting columns. To be completely under
cover, to have a clear field in front for shooting, and to have
every facility in the rear for rapid withdrawal — that was the
ideal Boer battle-line. And De la Rey and Cronje, the Boer
leaders who opposed Methuen, found such a line on the Riet

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 71

River. They decided to fight from the banks and-the bed of
the river on each side of its junction with the Modder. The
channels of both these streams are wide and deep, a thick
growth of trees and shrubs lines their sides and hardly shows
above the level of the plain. Thus the Riet and the Modder
together formed not only a gigantic moat across the approaches
to Kimberley on the south, ^but a covered way by which the
Boers could move unseen to any part of the position taken up
in their bed. The railway crosses the Riet River just below
the junction of the Modder; at the bridge is the village known
as Modder River Village, and a mile down stream another
settlement called Rosmead. In both are farms and cottages
with strongly-built mud walls and fences of wire and prickly
cactus. These two settlements, with the river in front, formed
the Boer position, the strength of which was unknown to Lord
Methuen until after he had come up against it. He was under
the impression that the Boers at Modder River were merely an
advanced post to cover their main position at Spitfontein, some
twelve miles farther along the railway towards Kimberley.

Lord Methuen's scheme was to mask this advanced-guard
position of the Boers, and to march round by Jacobsdal and
thence northward towards Spitfontein, where he was convinced
that the Boers intended to give battle. However, the advanced
position at Modder River must be captured first, and on the
28th November he attacked it. Lord Methuen was with the
mounted troops when at 5.30 a.m. they came under fire, and
word was sent in by the reconnoitring squadron that the river
was strongly held " from the railway bridge eastward to a
clump of high poplars". So indeed it was, but no one knew
that ingeniously concealed entrenchments had been made all
along the river-bed from Rosmead, a mile west of the bridge,
and beyond the high poplars on the east. All the farms and
houses in the two villages were prepared for defence; six
field-guns were in epaulements behind the river, and several

72 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

pom-poms were cunningly hidden in the trees near those high
poplars. On the right was the commando of Prinsloo; in
the centre, through which ran the railway, was De la Rey with
Transvaal commandos ; on the left more Transvaalers under
Cronje — between 3000 and 4000 Boers in all. The ambush
was laid; De la Rey and Cronje did not trouble themselves
about their undefended flanks, for they were quite sure that
Lord Methuen would walk straight into the trap, as indeed he
did, with his entire army. Sir H. E. Colvile, who was in com-
mand of the Guards Brigade, tells us in his book, The Work
of the Ninth Division, how —

"We advanced in two columns, the Guards Brigade on the right
and Pole-Carew's Ninth Brigade on the left. At 8 o'clock I found
Lord Methuen and his Staff looking at a clump of trees some 1 500 yards
to our front which he said was on the Modder River. It had been
reported that this was held by the enemy, but he thought they had
gone. He, however, ordered me to extend for the attack. After all
our tough work on the kopjes, in which every Boer was behind a stone
ready to slate us as we climbed up painful slopes, it seemed as if we
should make short work of the enemy over this nice level ground.
'Thank God we've done with those damned kopjes!' or ' They'll never
stand against us here,' was said more than once in my hearing, and these
were, I think, fair samples of the general feeling. As we watched Arthur
Paget and his Scots Guards moving ahead to the right, Lord Methuen
said to me: 'They are not here.' 'They are sitting uncommonly tight
if they are, sir,' I answered. And as if they had heard him the Boers
answered too with a roar of musketry and a shower of lead which swept
away the Scots Guards' machine-gun detachment and did a good deal of
damage generally. Before Lord Methuen and I went off to our own
business we had time to remark the surprise of the Staff officers who had
cantered ahead to choose, a camping-ground. All day long the Guards
Brigade lay flat on the ground. Any attempt to move brought a hail of
bullets; not a Boer could be seen. There was nothing to shoot at;
there was just the bare plain, and 800 yards away a line of trees. The
artillery, suffering considerably from the gusts of bullets that swept the
plain, bombarded the Modder River village and engaged the Boer guns
beyond it. And thus the battle might have gone on all day — an artillery

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 73

duel and an infantry stalemate — had not Pole-Carew on the left of his
brigade (most of it lying flat and immovable also) sent the Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders down a donga into the river-bed and so eventu-
ally across the river. The Free Staters in that part of the Boer line
gave way, and two field-guns, brought up by Forestier- Walker, com-
pleted their discomfiture. Led by Pole-Carew and Colonel Barter
more troops of the Ninth Brigade — Lancashires, Yorkshires, Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders — crossed the river and captured the village of
Rosmead, coming thus right on to the flank of the whole Boer position.
Thus it was that when night fell the whole brigade was able to cross at
the same place. Next morning it was discovered that the Boers had
disappeared with all their guns and pom-poms. Lord Methuen and his
Staff, wondering, may be, where they would make their next stand and
gazing towards Kimberley, saw a group of hills about seven miles away
rising stark and stern out of the plain — the hills of Magersfontein."

Lord Methuen had now fought three battles in a week —
Belmont, Graspan, Modder River — at the cost of about 1000
men, one-tenth of his force, with the result that, although
Modder River was a Pyrrhic victory, he had certainly advanced
successfully along the trunk line towards Kimberley, and was
now about twenty-three miles distant from the besieged town.
Between Lord Methuen and that goal lay the Boers whom he
had just fought at Modder River, still full of fight, as he was
informed, strongly reinforced by several commandos, and in
a strong defensive position, not at Spitfontein, as he had made
sure they would be, but at those grim hills of Magersfontein,
only six miles away. Kimberley was in no immediate danger;
it was necessary to safeguard his long line of communications,
and, above all, to await reinforcements. Lord Methuen there-
fore waited until I2th December before renewing his advance.
Reinforcements duly arrived : the Highland Brigade — 2nd
Black Watch, ist Gordons, 2nd Seaforths, ist Highland Light
Infantry, under General Wauchope — the i2th Lancers, a battery
of horse artillery, and four heavy howitzers — enough, one
would say, with the men he had already, to brush aside any

74 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Boer force and to raise the siege of Kimberley within twenty-
four hours.

As the time approached for another advance, Lord Methuen
sent out a reconnaissance to ascertain what was going on at
Magersfontein. Horse artillery, one 4.7 naval gun, and the
9th Lancers went forth into the veldt to see. They bombarded
Magersfontein Hill without eliciting any reply from gun or
rifle. The force returned without having solved the mystery
of the Boer position; no one could tell Lord Methuen what
he really had to attack. He knew that the Boers, much more
numerous than when he fought them a few days before at
Modder River, had taken up an extended position right across
the railway from Langeberg Farm past Magersfontein to the
Modder River at Moss Drift, a defensive line at least eight
miles long. Yes ; but what kind of a line? It was a
question anxiously asked by Lord Methuen and his staff.
In a little book, published in 1910, entitled A Handbook of the
Boer IVar^ intended for military students and based upon
official documents, there is, at p. 58, a paragraph, tinged with
a gentle sarcasm, which answers the question: "With an un-
erring instinct which was more useful to him than most of
the knowledge he could have acquired in a European Staff
College, and with an originality which, if it had been displayed
by a young British officer in an examination for promotion,
would probably have injured that officer's prospects, De la Rey
dug his trenches, not at the foot of the hill, but in sinuous
lines some little way in advance of it, by which he gained the
power of meeting an attack with grazing or skimming fire,
and which also removed the firing-line from physical features
on which the British guns could be laid." The trenches were
three to four feet deep, very narrow, and with perpendicular
sides, dug along the waving foot-line of the hills, 150 yards
away from them ; the parapets, slightly raised above the
ground, were well concealed by bushes and stones. Such

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 75

was the position against which Methuen was about to hurl
his army and clear the road to Kimberley.

Ever since Lord Wolseley surprised Arabi's lines at Tel-
el-Kebir, in 1882, by a night march and an attack at dawn, this
method of attacking an enemy's position had become a sort of
obsession with British commanders, a classic method of frontal
attack at the War Office and at Aldershot. Lord Methuen
determined to try it on Cronje's Boers at Magersfontein, but,
strangely enough, he began by a daylight bombardment the
day before, a bombardment with the whole of his artillery,
the big naval gun, the howitzers, and the three field-batteries.
Under the hail of bursting lyddite, Magersfontein Hill looked
like a volcano ; its red earth was torn and scattered, its iron-
stone boulders rent and hurled into the air. It was the
heaviest bombardment ever known in Africa. Lord Methuen
must have believed that it inflicted heavy loss and caused
demoralization among the Boers, thus helping his proposed
night attack. What was the effect of the bombardment ?
There were three Boers wounded ; the whole Boer army
gained confidence; they gained information, namely, that the
British had not discovered the trenches 150 yards away from
the hill ; and that after such a bombardment they would
certainly make an infantry attack.

Lord Methuen selected the Highland Brigade, led by
Major-General Wauchope, for the night attack. It is well
known that Wauchope did not approve of the plan. But he
obeyed, and at half an hour after midnight on the nth
December — an intensely dark night and a tempest of rain and
thunder and lightning raging — the brigade set forth from
its bivouac over the three miles of veldt which lay between it
and the south-eastern point of Magersfontein Hill. The
brigade under such conditions marched in the only possible
formation, mass of quarter columns, that is, company behind
company in close order. Even with the precaution of

76 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

guide-ropes it was difficult to keep formation, but it was
kept.

"When the column had been for over three hours on the march
an occasional lightning-flash showed the outline of Magersfontein Hill.
But with the experience of Tel-el-Kebir probably present to his mind,
Wauchope decided to gain a few more yards before deploying. He was
still 700 yards from the foot of the hill, and the existence of the trenches
in the plain was quite unknown to him."1
\

When within 400 yards of the trenches Wauchope gave
the order to deploy. The change of formation had begun
when suddenly from front and right and left jets of fire darted
out into the darkness; amid the roar of continuous volleys of
rifle-fire gusts of bullets swept through the close ranks of the
Highlanders, caught thus in the most fatal of all formations
under fire. Wauchope was shot dead; hundreds of the men
threw themselves flat on the ground; others recoiled to the rear;
others, again, dashed forward yet nearer the trenches and there
lay prone. They lay there, unable to advance or retire, for
eight hours, saved from complete destruction only by the
artillery, which kept down the Boer fire to some extent. It
was the Modder River fight over again, but even in more
humiliating form. The battle was hopelessly lost, and in the
evening the whole force was withdrawn to its bivouac on the
veldt, and next day to the Modder River camp. Lord
Methuen hoped that the Boers, too, would withdraw in the
night. They did not. They were reinforced, and held the
whole Magersfontein position more strongly than ever. Many
a weary week was to pass before they were turned out of it.
The British loss in this disastrous affair was 948 killed,
wounded, and missing, and of this total 747 belonged to the
Highland Brigade.

Stormberg was fought and lost on loth December, 1899;

1 Life of Major-General A. G. Wauchope. Sir George Douglas.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 77

Magersfontein was fought and lost on the iith; Colenso was
fought and lost on the I5th — three defeats of the main British
army within six days. The effect of the battle of Magersfon-
tein in Britain is best summarized, perhaps, in the " Times "
History of the War: —

" The news was received with a poignant sense of anguish and dis-
appointment. Stormberg had been accepted, like Nicholson's Nek, as
one of those unfortunate incidents inseparable from warfare with a mobile
enemy. But this was very different. A British force of 13,000 men
beaten on the open field with a loss of nearly 1000 — small figures, really,
but how great they seemed to a generation that had not known serious
war! Nowhere was the feeling more intense than in Scotland, where
General Wauchope's death was felt as a personal bereavement by the
whole nation. But profound as was the national sorrow and sense of
defeat, another lesson yet was required before Britain even began to
realize the task that faced her."

That lesson came swiftly with the appalling news of
Colenso, which completed the series of disasters. Those dark
days of December, 1899, were "The Black Week", a week
which demanded all the courage and fortitude of the British
people and swift decision in its rulers. The enemies of the
Empire, especially the Germans, rejoiced at its discomfiture,
and joyfully anticipated further defeats; not a ray of hope
could be derived from any of the dispatches that came from
South Africa except from Sir George WThite, who kept the
flag flying at Ladysmith. Dark hours, indeed, but —

"There is a budding morrow in midnight".

The nation rose to the occasion, and a wave of enthusiasm for
the unflinching prosecution of the war swept over the country.
Lord Lansdowne, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour and such other
Ministers as were in London met at once. A message was
sent to Sir Redvers Buller bidding him persevere in his
attempts to relieve Ladysmith, or, if unwilling to do so, to

78 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

hand over his command to one of his subordinates and return
home; and it was decided that same day to offer the supreme
command in South Africa to Lord Roberts, with Lord
Kitchener as his Chief of Staff.

Lord Kitchener, who was still serving as Sirdar of that
famous Anglo-Egyptian army with which, but little more than
a year ago, he had shattered the power of the Khalifa and
regained the Soudan, was to meet Lord Roberts at Gibraltar.
Lord Roberts attended a meeting of the Ministers at Lans-
downe House early on Sunday the lyth December, and was
informed of the reason of his having been thus hurriedly sum-
moned. He accepted the appointment, which was published
that evening by the War Office. On the previous day the
Government had sent the following telegram to General
Buller :—

" Her Majesty's Government would regard the abandonment of
White's force and its consequent surrender as a national disaster of the
greatest magnitude. We would urge you to devise another attempt to
carry out its relief, not necessarily via Colenso, making use of the addi-
tional men now arriving if you think fit."

On this Sunday, iyth December, 1899, Buller was in-
formed of the decision of the Government in the following
message : —

" In Natal and in Cape Colony distinct operations of very great
importance are now in progress. The prosecution of the campaign in
Natal is being carried on under quite unexpected difficulties, and in the
opinion of Her Majesty's Government it will require your presence and
whole attention. It has been decided by Her Majesty's Government,
under these circumstances, to appoint Field-Marshal Lord Roberts as
Commanding- in -Chief, South Africa, his Chief of Staff being Lord
Kitchener."

W. H.

CHAPTER V

Under Roberts in South Africa

A German General Staff Appreciation of Lord Kitchener — The First Aim of
the Commander-in-Chief s Strategy — Reorganization of Transport — The Business
Manager of the Campaign — Work of the Intelligence Department — Lord Roberts's
Plan — Feint at Koodoos Drift — Cronje outflanked by French — Diversion to the
Eastwards — Lord Kitchener's Action — Loss of the Supply Convoy at Waterval Drift

— French holds up Cronje before Paardeberg1 — Lord Kitchener sights Cronje's Laager

— The Alternatives — Lord Kitchener decides to Attack — The Assault on Cronje's
Positions at Paardeberg — De Wet's Surprise Attack — Failure of the Action to rush
Cronje — Lord Kitchener's Report to Lord Roberts — Arrival of the Commander-in-
Chief— Cronje's Surrender — Complete Change in the Military Situation — Operations
in Natal — Lord Roberts presses on to Bloemfontein — Lord Kitchener's Control of the
Lines of Communication — Poplar Grove and Abraham's Kraal — Lord Roberts's
Proclamation at Bloemfontein — Disasters at Sannah's Post and Reddersburg — Wepener
and the Colonials — The General Advance Resumed — Occupation of Pretoria — De
Wet's Attacks on the Railway Line and Communications — Lord Kitchener's Counter
Moves — Junction with Buller — The Orange Free State Operations — Lord Kitchener
takes the Chief Command.

E~ ^D ROBERTS and Lord Kitchener deemed themselves
fortunate in their opportunity. Lord Roberts, in
spite of his services in India, and though he was
regarded by foreign military critics as the only great English
strategist, was, during the years immediately before the South
African War, charing under the belief that his work was over
and that he would never have an important share in that
remodelling of the British army which he thought to be so
necessary. Lord Kitchener was in something of the same
situation. He had just finished a successful war in which
organization and hard work had made victory possible, yet
in a campaign in which the application of these sinews of

8o FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

success would be more than ever necessary he found himself
relegated to the civilian task of governing a province. It was
a task which none could do better than he ; but there were
higher tasks which none could do so well. That fact was
perceived only when the British forces in South Africa were
on the brink of disaster.

The first task which confronted Lord Roberts and Lord
Kitchener in South Africa was that of remodelling the machine.
It was Lord Roberts's intention to use the military machine in
an entirely new way, and to drive it in an entirely new direc-
tion. To Lord Kitchener he entrusted the work of so alter-
ing, repairing, and adding to the machine that it would be
fitted for the effort. To that work Lord Kitchener brought
the highest mental equipment.

"The Commander-in-Chief", wrote the historian of the German
Great General Staff at Berlin, which compiled an account of the opera-
tions, " was fortunate in having the assistance of Major-General Lord
Kitchener, who although only forty-nine years old had attracted uni-
versal attention during his Egyptian campaigns,1 and had proved himself
a soldier of rare ability under extremely difficult conditions. He had
held the command in the Soudan Campaign, 1896-8, when he crushed
the Khalifa by his decisive victory at Omdurman and recovered the
Soudan from the Dervishes. He had then shown himself to be not only
a very capable general, but also an organizer of extraordinary ability. . . .
He was at this time one of the most remarkable officers in the British
army. His personality was extremely soldier-like ; he was very inde-
pendent and reserved, and disliked asking advice of others. Nevertheless
he has a deep appreciation for that which is great and lofty, and although
deliberate as a rule he can on occasion act with impulsive energy."

To this military estimate the German critic adds an ap-
preciation of Lord Roberts and of Lord Kitchener which is
confirmation from an unexpected quarter of that which their
countrymen knew of them.

1 Baron von Tiedemann, of the German General Staff, accompanied the Omdurman campaign.

Heath, Plymouth

FIELD-MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS

Commander-in-Chief, South Africa
1899-1900

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 81

" Both men ", he writes, " share the feeling of high enthusiasm for
the might and greatness of their country, for which they would sacrifice
anything. They have but one military ambition, namely to see England
progress along the path of glory and power. . . . The army was in high
spirits on learning that these two men were placed at its head: the know-
ledge that the future operations had been confided to their proved and
skilful hands strengthened to a most remarkable extent the self-confidence
of officers and men."

The "proved and skilful hands" had to alter on their arrival
a state of things in which the British forces, separated into
four groups on a front of nearly 500 miles, were everywhere
condemned to the defensive. The one aim and object of the
Commander-in-Chief was to enable his army to take the
offensive on a large scale, and to carry the war as soon as
possible into the enemy's country in order to regain the
initiative; until that was done no improvement in the mili-
tary situation could be hoped for.

To take the offensive with any prospect of success it was
necessary to organize an entirely new transport. Before Lord
Roberts and Lord Kitchener arrived at the Cape the system
of transport was nominally regimental, though the regimental
transport was only about one-eighth of the whole. That is
to say, transport was allotted to regiments or battalions, and
in addition to this there was an Army Service Corps supply
column carrying additional supplies, an auxiliary system of
transport, and a technical transport. The ramifications of this
system or systems, though familiar to staff" and regimental
officers, and, in short, sanctioned by usage, was extremely
wasteful and extravagant. It might be helpful in carrying
up the heavy baggage of the officers' mess, but it was not
ample enough to carry up the food, munitions, and forage
for an army of some 40,000 men and 15,000 horses which
the Commander-in-Chief intended to cut loose from the rail-
way at an early stage in his-'operations. The system which

VOL. II. 21

82 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

was therefore substituted under the supervision of Lord
Kitchener, aided by Major-General Sir William Nicholson,
was that of concentrating the transport under one management
and direction, and of redistributing it according to the needs
of the situation as they arose. Broadly, the transport was
placed under the Army Service Corps.

It was a change which did not make Lord Kitchener
popular. Every brigadier and colonel saw the conduct of
his transport shifted to what he regarded as a subordinate
part of the service. Regimental "comforts" were rigidly
curtailed ; the campaign was to be conducted on sparing
principles throughout ; but they were the only ones by
which the transport, short of wagons, short of teams, short
of mules, could be made to do what the Commander-in-Chief
wanted of it, and so his Chief of Staff pursued his way un-
deviatingly. One who went to see Lord Kitchener at that
time found him in the inner room of a large office where
everyone was slaving as hard as any clerk. The Chief of
Staff, Lord Roberts's " business manager ", was working as
hard as any of them. He was carrying out his chief's
orders with pen, ink, and paper, and the result of his calcula-
tions was presently to be seen on the plains of the Orange
Free State. Gradually all the supplies that were wanted were
accumulated at Orange River, De Aar, and at depots between
the Orange and Modder Rivers ; gradually, also, Kitchener
assembled his mules, his oxen, and his wagons at the points
of concentration. He had also to get the best he could out
of the Cape railways in order to bring up supplies, and on
his recommendation Colonel Sir Percy Girouard, who had
built the Soudan Desert Railway, was given the post of
director of the Cape railways in exchange for those of Egypt.
In one week in January the Western Railway took up to
Orange River 7650 men, 3535 animals, n guns with 799
tons of ammunition^ and 1184 tons of supplies,

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 83

The first stage in the realization of Lord Roberts's plan
of campaign was necessarily the transfer to the neighbourhood
of Lord Methuen's camp of the army with which it was his
purpose to manoeuvre Cronje out of Magersfontein, to relieve
Kimberley, and to strike for Bloemfontein.

From Orange River to Kimberley the boundary of the
Orange State, with the railway following it, runs in a straight
line for seventy miles. It does not run due north, but inclines
north-north-east at the angle of a coachman's whip. Fifty
miles up the shaft of the whip the Modder River and the
Riet join at Modder River station and hang from the whip
like two lashes which the coachman has shaken out. The
Riet is the lower lash hanging down, the Modder the upper
lash, flying up, and the tongue of land which lies between
the two rivers and comes to a point at Modder River station
broadens and broadens towards the east till it is sixty miles
wide, where the Orange State Railway cuts it. Bloemfontein
is on the Orange State Railway line, fifteen miles south of
Glen siding, where the railway crosses the Modder, and forty-
five miles north of Edenburg, where it crosses the Riet. At
Jacobsdal, on the Riet, ten miles east of the two river stations,
the tongue of land is about fifteen miles across. For two
months Kitchener collected horse and foot artillery and trans-
port along the railway shaft of the*whip, short of the junction
of the two rivers, spreading them out laterally at other places
to the east. It was one of the purposes of the Commander-in-
Chief to conceal his intentions from Cronje, and this, in spite
of the multiplicity of spies at Cape Town, was very skilfully
done by himself and his Chief of Staff, to whom alone Lord
Roberts's intentions were known.1 Lord Kitchener, who had
served an apprenticeship to one of the most complex of Intelli-
gence Departments, was fertile in expedients. The rumours
that a simultaneous sweeping movement through the Orange

1 kord Roberta's plans w$ re concealed even from generals of division till th.e last moment,

84 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Free State along the lines of railway was to be made by
French and Gatacre were spread with great ingenuity; and
when these had been allowed to have their effect, another
rumour, strongly supported by corroborative fact, was circu-
lated that Lord Roberts intended to outflank Cronje on the
opposite side to that which he actually took. Lord Kitchener
even stage-managed the departure of his chief and himself
to the front by sending a guard to a train by which they did
not travel, while unostentatiously setting out at another date.
The subtlety of these methods was made manifest by the fact
that Cronje was entirely surprised by the swiftness with which
Lord Roberts struck, and did not at first believe that he had
been outmanoeuvred.

Cronje was prepared for, and expected, an outflanking
move on his right by way of Jacobsdal, and to support this
belief the Highland Brigade, under Major-General Hector
Macdonald, was sent to Koodoos Drift as a feinting prelude.
But Lord Roberts had a far more comprehensive and masterful
plan than that. It was a plan so complete, so resourceful, that
persistent failures in detail were powerless to wreck it. The
plan was in two parts. The first carried the army in a great
wheel rearwards from Modder River village across the Riet
and up to the Modder at Paardevaal Drift, sucking Cronje, as
through the draught of a whirlwind, out of his Magersfontein
trenches, and leaving Kimberley without assailants. Cronje's
retreat to Bloemfontein by the direct eastwards route would
be barred as the British infantry came up in support of the
cavalry. He would presumably either have to stay bound
to his Magersfontein and Spytfontein trenches or to retreat
northwards and north-westwards round Kimberley — a path
beset with difficulties and dangers for him. If he took that
path the way to Bloemfontein would be clear for Lord
Roberts's army, which would be unopposed by any consider^
able force.

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 85

The plan suffered in details by want of co-ordination, by
delays at the fords of the rivers, by imperfect reconnaissance
— which in its turn led to failure of supplies — and by the
prodigious strain on the cavalry. The turning movement
was entrusted to General French's cavalry, and was mag-
nificently performed. But the delay in crossing the fords
did not permit the movement to take place with uninterrupted
smoothness, and a wide gap was left between French's cavalry,
when it had reached the Kimberley side of Cronje, and the
infantry divisions following in its wake. Cronje had been
incredulous of the effectiveness of the advance, though warned
of its impending nature by a messenger from De Wet, and
had exclaimed, with an oath: "Are you again possessed of
this damnable fear of the English? Come on! Shoot them
dead and capture the others when they run away!" De Wet
could do nothing with such truculent folly, and contented
himself at first with watching the fords of the rivers, about
which he hovered like a mosquito, returning when driven
off. But Cronje's obstinacy was not proof against the
indisputable fact that French, by the greatest cavalry charge
of the war, had burst through his communications both
east and north, and he arrived at a correct decision of the
course to take at once. He immediately abandoned his
trenches and marched eastwards towards Bloemfontein through
the open gap. He was thus marching across the front of
the oncoming British infantry, but he trusted to his mobility
— and to the British immobility — to get away.

The decision was forced on him, and might have been
successful but for two things. The first was that he did not
shed his wagons and his cumbrous train of women and children;
the second was that Lord Kitchener divined his intentions.
Lord Kitchener had gone with the advanced troops, and was
actually in command from I5th February, 1900, to I9th Feb-
ruary, Lord Roberts being unfortunately confined to his bed

86 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

at Jacobsdal, and having arranged that all orders coming from
Lord Kitchener should be regarded as coming from himself,
"so that no delay to the operations may arise". Conse-
quently, when at sunrise on the 1 6th vast clouds of dust lead-
ing in an easterly direction were discerned by the outposts of
Lieutenant-General Kelly-Kenny's Sixth Division, where Lord
Kitchener was, the Chief of Staff saw at once that the situation
had completely altered. The army must now be diverted
to the right in order to pursue the Boers. Lord Kitchener's
surmise was immediately afterwards confirmed by intelligence
from the mounted infantry, which had captured some Boers
who had remained behind, and exact information as to Cronje's
departure was obtained.

Lord Kitchener at once diverted the infantry to the pursuit
of Cronje's force. The mounted infantry (Knox's brigade)
and the artillery of the division -which was holding the easterly
drift were sent after the Boers to attack them and bring them
to action. He himself followed with Kelly-Kenny's Sixth
Division, and telegraphed the news of the Boer retreat to
Lord Roberts, suggesting that the Ninth Division (Colvile's)
should be at once stopped from its northward march and sent
on to the Klip Kraal Drift at a tangent to the original course,
while French's cavalry should be turned back to close the
pincers from the north. There was some delay in complying
with both of these recommendations, but they were put into
execution, and thus the two movements, cavalry riding east
by south, and infantry marching east, converged from the base
angles of a triangle to an apex at Paardeberg on the Modder.
Thus reviewing Lord Roberts's plan as a whole, it will be seen
that though the first part of it miscarried — in that no opening
should have been left for the Boers to slip through — yet so
supple was its strategical construction that its errors in execution
were unable to render it inoperative and enabled it to with-
stand the crucial test of modification.

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 87

Kitchener, besides notifying head-quarters, had informed
General French of the change in the situation by means of an
officers' patrol, and requested him to march that night with
the cavalry division in order to place himself in front of the
retreating Boers at Koodoos Rand Drift, and it was fortunate
that he did so, for the telegram sent from head-quarters to
French with the same orders miscarried. Had it not been
for Lord Kitchener's duplication of the information, French's
cavalry division could not have taken part in the pursuit of
Cronje, who would then probably have succeeded in escaping.

Cronje pursued his eastwards flight along the Modder,
clinging to the river for the sake of the water. French was
hurrying on the north of the Modder to catch him up and
pass him; Kitchener and Kelly-Kenny, followed by the Ninth
and the Seventh Divisions, were hurrying on the south of the
Modder through the almost waterless veldt to reduce the lead
which Cronje had taken. Knox's brigade, with the mounted
infantry, managed to come up to Cronje's heels first; but the
Boers fought a very fine rear-guard action, and Knox, though
hampering them, could not hold them, and suffered what were,
in the circumstances, considerable losses, especially among the
horses. The question of the horses was now becoming a very
serious one, as, indeed, it continued to be for very many
months of the war. French's cavalry, after reaching Kimberley,
were as much reduced in horses as if their charge had been a
Balaclava instead of one of the least costly operations of the
war in men; and a new misfortune was threatening both horses
and men. This was the loss of a supply column, escorted by
troops from the Ninth Division, at Waterval Drift. The
column was captured by the same party of Boers, under the
leadership of De Wet, which had harassed the crossing some
days before, and had been driven off. The forces which had
driven them off had neglected to keep in touch with them,
and, owing to this bad blunder, they were able to return and

88 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

to do what was most serious damage, though the effect of it
was spoken lightly of at the time. The capture resulted in the
loss of 200,000 rations and 48,000 portions of forage, besides
invaluable transport; and the loss, which the German military
attache1 bluntly attributes to neglect on the part of the staff of
the Ninth Division, reacted in a very marked manner on the
subsequent operations. Lord Roberts's plan was not spoilt by
this misfortune, and he himself received it with an equanimity
which merits the highest admiration. But apart from the
hardships inflicted on infantry put on half-rations, the delay
to operations may be gauged from the fact that the horses
received only little more than half their allowance of oats, in
spite of the exceptional exertions required of them. This
point is worthy of attention because of the extent to which
the success of the operation is thereby shown to be dependent
on the organization of supply.

The skilful rear-guard action which the Boers fought re-
tarded but could not stop the steam roller which Lord Roberts
and Lord Kitchener had set in motion against them. As night
fell on the delaying action one of the brigades (Stephenson's)
recrossed the river at Klip Drift, and was directed to march
off at three o'clock on Saturday (lyth February) on the south
side of the river, in order, if possible, to head off Cronje
at Paardeberg or Koodoos Rand Drift, which is farther east.
They were joined by Knox's brigade, and the mounted-infantry
sections were pushed forward. As soon as the day cooled the
remainder of the joint brigades set out for a night march to
Paardeberg. By a lucky accident they missed their direction
slightly and overshot Paardeberg Drift, encamping on rising
ground two miles beyond it. The effect of this accident was
to bring the infantry almost to the place where Cronje in-
tended to cross the river from the north to the south bank.
He had been pushing along the north bank all day, shedding

» German Official Account of the War in South Africa, Vol. I, p. 152. (John Murray.)

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 89

wagons as he went, and had passed Paardeberg Drift. Then
he learnt that French, turned back from Kimberley, had out-
raced him, and was nearer than himself to Bloemfontein. To
General French fell the chief share, and the most daring action,
in stopping Cronje. With a force greatly depleted, owing
to the exhaustion of his horses, French left Kimberley before
dawn on the I7th, ignored a Boer column under Ferreira,
which sniped his troopers but did not attack them, as it
ought to have done, and he first caught sight of Cronje's
dust at eight in the morning. At ten French had a clear
idea of Cronje's situation. Cronje was on the north bank at
Vendutie Drift, and was preparing to cross. He sent forward
an advance-guard to seize protecting positions at Koodoos Rand
Drift, and French found himself in rather a serious situation,
for he had but 1300 men,1 and was outnumbered four to one
by Cronje. He did not hesitate; he knew that the column
from Kimberley was coming up behind him, and, riding for-
ward himself to reconnoitre, he discovered a good artillery
position commanding Vendutie Drift, and at once sent forward
Colonel Davidson with the artillery to occupy it. Fire was
at once opened on the Boers, and Cronje, unable at first to
believe that it was French's cavalry, concluded that it was
Kelly-Kenny's infantry division which had outstripped him.
He never seriously attempted, as he might have done, to
break through French, who sent Colonel Broadwood forward
to seize the kopjes by Koodoos Rand Drift, and by this bold
front held up Cronje for a day.

Cronje might have broken away to the south-east, and
appeared to have had some such intention; but in the night
he learned that mounted infantry had reached Paardeberg, and
next morning that a force of infantry — two brigades under
Knox and Stephenson — had reached a point two miles south of
his premeditated crossing-place. Cronje should have marched

1 British Official History of the War, Vol. II, p. 100. (Hurst & Blackett.)

9o FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

in the night, and was begged to do so by some of those with
him, as well as by Ferreira, who sent a message urging him
to break away north. But the habits of a lifetime were too
strong for him and for his burghers, who could not abandon
their belongings, and the opportunity, not seized, had vanished
by next day.

Lord Kitchener bivouacked with the mounted infantry on
the south bank near Paardeberg Drift. Before sunrise he
rode with General Kelly-Kenny to a hill situated to the left
front of the division, which afforded a view towards Modder
River. When day began to break he suddenly perceived, to
his astonishment, first indistinctly and then more clearly as the
light became brighter, a large Boer laager gleaming in the sun-
light a few thousand yards in front of him. The great exertions
which he had demanded from the troops had been rewarded ;
he had succeeded in overtaking Cronje, and his division was to
the south, and not far from the laager.

The Modder, between Paardeberg and Koodoos Rand Drift,
flows along the bottom of a deep cutting, thirty feet from the
river level to the top of the banks, and from thirty to a hundred
yards wide. The sides and edges are thickly grown with willow
and mimosa. On both sides of the river, but especially on the
south side, are many deep and long cuts in the banks (dongas),
which give excellent shelter against an enemy advancing towards
the river or along it. On the south bank these dongas serrate
a smooth grassy plain, about a mile and a half wide, running
down the river, and on either side of the plain the ground
rises, and is studded with kopjes. On the north bank of the
river there is a plain like that on the south, but rather more
shelving and broken by bumps. Several kopjes are scattered
along the edge of the plain two or three miles back from the
river. Into this position Cronje sank, and began to dig himself
in. In the words of one of his burghers, "they dug themselves
in with their cleaning-rods and their fingers". By the morning

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 91

they were well protected from fire by pits sunk into the soft
earth of the river bank, and had made trenches running all
along the top of the right bank, the higher of the two for
about a mile and a half. The dongas and the brush were lined
with riflemen. Thus the Boer position, though encircled and
commanded by higher ground, formed a closed redoubt of con-
siderable strength.

Two courses were open to Lord Kitchener. He could
invest the enemy's position closely and shell him into sur-
render. Or he could assault the river fortress at once. Lord
Kitchener decided to attack, and there is no military critic
to-day who does not admit that he was right. Quite apart
from the knowledge that was gained afterwards of the value
which a few days saved would have been, and of the lamentable
cost in sickness which the loss of them actually caused, there
was the immediate danger that a resolute relieving-force might
break through the thin cordon and join Cronje. Moreover, an
immediate attack, even if it failed to carry the laager, would
cripple its mobility and chain it to the river-bed; if it succeeded,
a blow would be struck which would be the nearest approach
to a decision that the war had reached. Unfortunately for the
carrying out of Lord Kitchener's design much was wanting.
He was nominally the acting Commander -in -Chief; Lord
Roberts's letter to Lieutenant-General Kelly-Kenny had placed
him in that position. But though General Kelly-Kenny obeyed
Lord Roberts's instructions in the letter and the spirit, the
machinery for carrying out the movements of the forces as a
whole were lacking to Lord Kitchener. An attacking army is
a living organism which can carry out the orders of the com-
manding brain only if all the nerve communications are
co-ordinated and instinctively obedient. The nerve communi-
cations were here lacking. Lord Kitchener had only his aide-
de-camp with him. Thus, though Generals Kelly-Kenny and
Colvile had the necessary staff for working their own commands,

92 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Lord Kitchener, in charge of the whole force, was unsupplied
with the staff machinery necessary for the organization and
direction of combined movements. Therefore, though the
chief commander, with a most prompt grasp of the situation,
had realized that it was worth any risk to capture Cronje's force
without delay, he could not skilfully drive his forces into action
because he had not the proper reins.

His orders were given at once, and Kelly-Kenny's division
was ordered to attack immediately. The batteries opened fire
at half-past six. The infantry deployed under cover of this
fire, and at seven o'clock five battalions advanced to make a
frontal attack on the Boers. We marvel to-day at the thought
of a frontal attack after half an hour's artillery preparation ; and
it would be futile to deny that the advance was made, and was
most erroneously made, before the proper steps had been taken
to subdue the enemy's fire. The Boers opened fire at a range
of about 2 200 yards, and the men by successive rushes got up
to within 750 yards. The West Ridings and Yorkshires suc-
ceeded in getting within less than a quarter of a mile of the
Boers, who, well hidden and well entrenched, poured in a
devastating rifle-fire on the attackers. The attack could not
get on, though the Highland Brigade of the Ninth Division
came into action to reinforce it, and the artillery support in-
creased. The artillery silenced the few Boer guns ; it could
not keep down the Boer rifle-fire. The determined efforts of
the Argyll and Sutherlands and the Seaforths were wasted,
and General Macdonald, calling for reinforcements, could not
get enough. An accident of negligence in the afternoon con-
tributed to the confusion of Kelly-Kenny's Sixth Division.
While under the impression that a kopje to its right flank and
rear was held by some mounted infantry (Kitchener's Horse)
it suddenly found a hot fire poured in on it from the kopje.
The detachment of Kitchener's Horse had ridden off without
orders to water their horses at the moment that De Wet with

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 93

his mosquito burghers appeared on the scene. The kopjes
and the detachment of horse were both captured, and this
incident, which allowed De Wet to continue to assail the right
of the division with a galling fire, completed the dislocation of
the attack on this side. At the moment when the whole atten-
tion of Lord Kitchener and Lieutenant-General Kelly-Kenny
and the staff was necessary for the development of an increas-
ing attack on Cronje, this interruption occurred. But for De
Wet's swoop the whole history of the battle might have been
altered.

On the other bank of the river things had gone no better.
The 1 9th Brigade, belonging to the Ninth Division, accom-
panied by the 82nd Field Battery, had crossed the river,
and by a skilful turning movement, unnoticed by the Boers,
had got into a good position for attack. But, owing to
precisely the same causes as on the southern bank, namely,
that the fire support of the brigade was neither heavy enough
nor continuous enough to subdue the fire of the Boers, this
attack also came to a complete standstill about half-past two
in the afternoon. It was then about 700 yards away. Lord
Kitchener, from his post with the artillery on the south bank,
had gained the impression that a resolute bayonet charge
would be sufficient to drive the enemy from their positions,
and sent orders to Colvile that it should be made. Colvile
thought that a charge might succeed, but that the loss would
be heavy. He therefore informed Lord Kitchener that in his
view it was not necessary to storm the Boer position on that
day, but merely to surround Cronje. Kitchener insisted that
his order should be obeyed, but his determination met with an
obedience that was rather in the letter than in the spirit. Only
a half-battalion of the 2nd Corn walls was sent by Colvile to
reinforce the attack, and it came into action very slowly. It
made a very gallant effort, and in its charge lost its command-
ing officer, Colonel Aldworth, and a fifth of its men. After

94 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

that the attempt weakened, and no further attempt could be
made to rush the Boer trenches. There was yet another
indecisive sectional action — that of the mounted infantry and
of the 1 8th Brigade in the river valley to the east of the
Boer laager. The mounted infantry, under Colonel Hannay,
responded to an urgent order from Lord Kitchener to attempt
to rush the laager between 1.30 and 2, at the time when the
attack of the Sixth Division was being held up. The two
battalions of the i8th Brigade (Welsh and Essex) which ought
to have been there to support the mounted infantry became
entangled in the action which resulted from the occupation by
De Wet of the kopjes vacated by Kitchener's Horse.

The foregoing statement of what happened at Paardeberg,
in which the British official account is correlated with that
published by the German Head-quarters Staff, shows quite
clearly why the action at Paardeberg failed. It failed because
Lord Kitchener had no staff of his own, and because, with the
exception of the staff of General Kelly-Kenny, he had no staff
on which he could depend. General Colvile of the Ninth
Division was at no pains to second Lord Kitchener's deter-
mination, or even to comply readily with his orders. The
staff work of the Sixth Division must either have been very
bad, or the commander of Kitchener's Horse extremely irre-
sponsible, and it is indisputable that the reconnaissance work
of the division was as bad as it could be. The intervention of
De Wet (with guns as well as rifles) should have been im-
possible. It was allowed to occur, and it spoilt the last chance
of success on the southern bank. On the northern bank it
cannot escape attention that General French, usually so alert,
retired completely into the background. The position from
the official point of view was anomalous. Lord Kitchener was
junior in rank to the divisional generals over whom he was
placed, and, with one exception, they did not respond to his
orders with alacrity or generosity. But: th£ causes of failure

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 95

were deeper than that. There was nobody in the British
army of the home command who had any experience of hand-
ling troops in larger bodies than a division. Paardeberg was
one of the bills which had to be paid for the absence of
adequate army manoeuvres, added to the incurable habit of
not treating manoeuvres as a test of general commanders who
took part in them. While on the one hand the divisional
generals at Paardeberg were without enthusiasm in carrying
out Lord Kitchener's orders, the conduct of their own functions
was hesitating and faulty, both as regards artillery and re-
connaissance.

The cost of Paardeberg was spoken of as heavy, but it
does not seem so by comparison with the battles which have
taken place since. The total British losses were 1270, of
whom 24 officers and 279 men were killed. It would have
been a very small price to pay had the attack been successful.
Victory would have been purchased cheaply at -a very much
higher cost, for it would have saved the delay of days, it
would have prevented a great deal of loss of life through
enteric fever, and it would have disorganized to the point
of destruction the cohesion of the other Boer forces hurrying
through the Orange Free State. Lord Kitchener's final
report to Lord Roberts was :

"We did not succeed in getting into the enemy's convoy, though
we drove back the Boers- a considerable distance along the river-bed.
The troops are maintaining their position, and I hope to-morrow we
shall be able to do something more definite. Late this afternoon the
Boers developed an attack on our right which is still going on, but is
kept under control by our artillery. Our casualties have, I fear, been
severe."

Lord Roberts replied that " we must not let Cronje escape
now or be able to hold out until reinforcements reach him ",
and added that he was bringing up reinforcements. He sent
Lieutenant-General Tucker with the Seventh Division and the

96 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

naval guns up with all speed, and himself arrived at ten o'clock
on Monday morning. It was then believed that Cronje was
about to surrender, a belief induced by the mistaken reading
of the Boer leader's request for an armistice. Cronje sullenly
dissipated these expectations, and Lord Roberts took immediate
steps to invest him closely. He decided to make no further
attack, but to shell Cronje into submission. At this period of
the war, and subsequently, there was a desire to conduct opera-
tions with as little bloodshed as possible, and to-day one may
perhaps rejoice in that desire and the decisions to which it gave
rise, because the relations between Briton and Boer were never
embittered by ruthlessness of warfare. Nevertheless it cannot
be denied that the policy contributed to the prolongation of the
war, it led to many indecisive actions, and it swelled the loss of
life through disease. In the South African War from begin-
ning to end there were twice as many deaths from sickness and
disease as from the bullet.1 The action against Cronje does
not, however, come under the category of indecisive results,
for it was on the whole quickly decided, and it had a very
great moral effect. Lord Roberts's first step, after bringing
the guns to bear on the laager at midday, was to deal with the
Boers who had occupied Kitchener's Kopje. An immediate
demonstration was made against them, but they were not dis-
lodged until the morning of 2ist February, when General
French was sent to encircle them with the cavalry. But as
soon as the encirclement began the Boers evacuated the posi-
tion without allowing themselves to be drawn into a fight, and
the Yorkshires occupied the hill. With that occupation
Cronje's retreat from his position by breaking through became
finally impossible. The bombardment continued, and the line
of investment began to creep nearer with the help of the spade.
The evacuation of Kitchener's Kopje by the Boers holding

1The figures were approximately 14,000 deaths from sickness, of which 8000 were enteric,
»nd 7000 from shell- and bullet-fire*

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 97

it had been a grave tactical mistake, and De Wet, aided by
Philip Botha, made an attempt to recapture it. When the
attempt failed, the surrender of Cronje was only a question of
days. On the 2yth — the anniversary of Majuba — an assault
by the Ninth Division was projected, and the Canadians led it
gallantly. The action had scarcely begun when, in the firing-
line of the Canadians, somebody, whose identity has never been
discovered, shouted out the command that the line was to
retire, and this retirement was actually begun. It was, how-
ever, arrested before much damage was done, and at six o'clock
in the morning the Boers opposite the Canadians threw down
their rifles and threw up their hands. Shortly afterwards
a large white flag appeared over the Boer laager, and under
cover of a flag of truce General Cronje sent in his surrender.
He would himself have held out to the last cartridge, but his
authority could not compel the burghers to his wishes, and
the conditions in the pestiferous laager had grown intolerable.
The number of prisoners who surrendered totalled 3919 fight-
ing-men, of whom 2592 were Transvaalers. To this must
be added the number of the men who had dribbled into
the British lines during the investment. During the ten
days' fighting Cronje's Boers lost 74 men killed and 195
wounded. Cronje's surrender had been inevitable after his
hesitation at the drift on the I7th; but his grim determina-
tion, and not least the way in which he had enforced his will
on his yielding burghers, merited to the full Lord Roberts's
first greeting to him: "You have made a gallant defence, sir".
The Commander-in-Chief had ample reason to be generous.
Sound strategy and remarkable organization, combined with
the energy and endurance of the troops, had in less than three
weeks completely changed the whole aspect of the campaign.
Cronje's capture was followed by the relief of Ladysmith
within a week. The whole of the enemy's plan of campaign
was destroyed, and the prizes for which the Boers had fought

VOL. IL 22

98 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

for five months were wrested from their grasp. A few days
later not only was Cape Colony clear of the main body of its
invaders, but the southern half of the Orange Free State lay
open to Lord Roberts. Though the struggle was to last for
another two years, the hoisting of the white flag on Cronje's
laager marked the disappearance of the power of President
Kruger and President Steyn to take the offensive, and ensured
the final triumph, however long it might be delayed, of the
British forces. Henceforth the only design open to Boer
strategy was that of so prolonging the struggle as to obtain
terms of independence; but the idea of a Boer South Africa
had vanished.

It is not necessary to follow in detail here the history
of the campaign in Natal. The failure at Colenso had been
followed by several attempts to outflank the Boer lines, and
so to work round to Ladysmith. Of these attempts, that
which is known as Spion Kop is the most famous, and came
nearest to success; it was also the most exasperating example
of the failure of generals educated in British manoeuvres at
home to grasp the essential; and if this criticism should be
deemed too severe, justification for it will be found in the
observations made by Lord Roberts in presenting a report
to the Secretary for War of the whole course of operations
on the Tugela (i7th-24th January, 1900). The failure of
Spion Kop was followed by that of Vaalkranz. Lord Roberts
was convinced, and soundly convinced, that the pressure he
was about to bring to bear in the Free State would relieve
Ladysmith automatically by the end of February by drawing
away the Boers who were investing it. Sir Redvers Buller
doubted this anticipation, and believed he had better act for
himself.1 He obtained Lord Roberts's permission to try; at
any rate the Commander-in-Chief authorized his proposition;
and on the 4th February the Vaalkrantz movement began.

1 Sir Redvers Buller's message to Sir George White, z8th January, 1900.

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 99

The operations did not justify General Buller's optimism.
The forward movement was discontinued on 8th February,
after casualties amounting to something under 400, sustained
chiefly by the Durham Light Infantry. Finally, on the lyth,
1 8th, and I9th of February, 1900, when the Boer forces on
the Tugela were dwindling owing to the imperative call for
them to redress the balance upset by Lord Roberts's incursion
into the Free State, the third and last attempt of General
Buller's troops to force the Tugela line met with more promise
of success. The operations were conducted with vigour by
individual commanders, notably by General Lyttelton and
General Barton, but the want of co-ordination did not dis-
appear, and there was a great deal of hard fighting between
the Tugela and Ladysmith. On the 2yth, when Barton's
troops were crossing the Tugela, they received the news of
Cronje's surrender. It put heart into them for the assault
on Pieter's Hill, the last tough fight in Natal. Early on the
28th General Botha began to withdraw his troops. But General
Joubert had already ordered the siege of Ladysmith to be
raised, and what should have been an orderly retreat of
Botha's men became something that was like a flight, and
ought to have been converted into a rout. The Ladysmith
garrison was too exhausted by its privations to pursue ; but
on the first day of March, 1900, General Buller was able to
march triumphantly into the beleaguered town.

Much as had been achieved by the capture of Cronje and
by its effect on distant theatres of action, it had not disposed
of a tenth of the number of Boers who were in the field.
It was urgently necessary to push home the victory, and to
derive every possible advantage from it before the other Boer
forces should have time to recover. Having taken the offen-
sive, the British commander must keep it. But Lord Roberts
was keenly aware of the difficulties in the way. Despite the
urgency of pressing on to Bloemfontein, the troops could not

ioo FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

be moved till the communications were safe and till continuous
supplies of food and forage could be secured. De Wet's raid
on the convoy had not merely cut off from the army supplies
the loss of which was very severely felt, but this exploit, added
to the attack on Kitchener's Hill by the same raider, had
warned Lord Roberts of the dangers to which he was exposed.
In Great Britain at that time the masterly way in which Lord
Roberts had so quickly turned the tables on the Boers had
converted anxiety into exultation, and had set up quite a false
estimate of the situation — in which a British steam roller was
imagined as trundling without impediment to Bloemfontein,
and the loss of a convoy and the capture of Kitchener's Hill
were regarded as inexplicable and unfortunate accidents. Only
a few understood that to the end of the campaign we never
had enough horses, and that at this stage of the operations
the artillery were seriously underhorsed and the horses of the
cavalry overworked and underfed. While that disadvantage
was present the Boer could always raid us. Lord Roberts
could not get on to Bloemfontein for a week. He would
not have been able to get on then had it not been that he
had sent Lord Kitchener back to Naauwpoort and De Aar to
make certain that there were no further interruptions. All the
troops belonging to the lines of communication which were
already there, and were being reinforced by others from home,
were placed under Lord Kitchener's orders, and he remained
responsible for them and for food and munitions along these
avenues of supply till Pretoria was occupied.

It was because this part of the organization was so unfail-
ing that by the beginning of May the army, reinforced and
remounted, furnished with abundance of supplies and com-
missariat, was able to take the field again and march from
Bloemfontein and Pretoria. The large movements of the
Field-Marshal's army were made possible by the vigour and
hard work of his Chief of Staff. Whatever interruptions and

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 101

raids took place, Kitchener's supplies came up unfailingly,
and the great main line to Kimberley remained working.
Kitchener's first step on arriving at De Aar was to arrange
with Brigadier-General Settle, commanding the section of the
line of communications to the south of Orange River, for the
dispatch westwards of three small flying columns (General
Settle, Colonel Sir Charles Parsons, and Colonel Adye) to
deal with the hostile bands assembling in the direction of
Prieska and Van Wyks Vlei. Colonel Adye's column sus-
tained a slight check, and on 8th March Lord Roberts dis-
patched Lord Kitchener to superintend the operations per-
sonally. The dispersion of these bands, which, in the popular
estimate, seemed at the time an operation of comparatively
small military importance, had the invaluable result of com-
pletely protecting at that time and thenceforward the western
flank of Lord Roberts's army. It also cleared a region which
teemed with waverers whom any Boer success would imme-
diately have converted into enemies.

After the rest and replenishment at Paardeberg the army,
reorganized and its brigade units redistributed, resumed the
march to Bloemfontein. De Wet had in the meantime not
been inactive, and the stupefaction which had overtaken many
of the Boers in hearing that Cronje had surrendered had not
affected him. He saw quite clearly what a blow to the Boer
plans the surrender involved, and had he been in Cronje's
place would surely have not suffered the reverse while he had
power or time to break through. He had, indeed, pressed
Cronje to abandon his wagons and retreat while there was
time, though when later he wrote his book on the war he
had excuses to offer for Cronje's disastrous tenacity. At the
time, however, he was concerned only to utilize the time
which had been spent in overcoming Cronje's resistance by
organizing, within sight of Lord Roberts's outposts, new de-
fences to bar the British advance. He was seconded in his

io2 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

efforts by President Steyn, and they collected about 9000 men
at Poplar Grove, a position of which the vital point was the
river drift of that name. His forces were not animated by his
own spirit. Colonel de Villebois Mareuil,1 a French officer who
was then attached to De Wet's staff, wrote that desertion was
rife and that demoralization had set in. De Wet's lines had
been chosen with his usual eye for position; but it had been
very thoroughly surveyed by the British cavalry, and the Intel-
ligence Staff, aided by Mr. F. R. Burnham, an American scout,
had presented Lord Roberts with an accurate delineation of
the Boer dispositions. Lord Roberts was therefore able to
devise a means of manoeuvring De Wet out of Poplar Grove
with an excellent prospect of cutting off a large portion of his
forces. Briefly described, the plan was to hold and hammer
De Wet by a frontal attack while General French, making
a wide circuit, got round his flank and threatened the Boer
communications with Bloemfontein. The plan failed in its
principal object, and when afterwards Lord Roberts gave
evidence before the War Commission he was at no pains to
conceal his disappointment.

The chief cause of the failure was that French, with his
emaciated horses, could not get round the enemy in time, and
when he should have been driving m their flank was, in fact,
only in a position to pursue them — an enterprise which, since
the Boers were much better mounted than his troopers, was
more fruitless than the outflanking movement, and was akin
to throwing good money after bad. But it was also due to the
fact that the infantry attack in front was not pressed with
sufficient vigour or sufficient disregard of losses. The capture
at Paardeberg had not obliterated the memory of the reverses
at Magersfontein and in Natal, or the check at Paardeberg
itself, and there was a disposition on the part of divisional

1 Afterwards killed in a skirmish with Lord Methuen's forces. His funeral was a military
one, and was attended by Lord Methuen in person.

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 103

generals to spare their men and avoid losses. The losses were
avoided, but complete victories also eluded us. In this battle
the capture of a large portion of De Wet's forces might have
ended the war; among the captives might have been President
Kruger. Kruger had, in fact, reached the Boer head-quarters
at Poplar Grove with a tired team of horses at dawn, about
the time that French's cavalry division, after a halt, had
resumed the advance that was to arrive too late. Threatening
the fugitive Boers with his heavy stick, President Kruger did
his utmost to stem the flight ; but, fortunately for himself,
unfortunately for Lord Roberts's plans, he failed to stay the
bulk of the burghers. He at last gave up the attempt in
despair and returned to Bloemfontein.

De Wet retired disappointed but not discomfited to a
position at Abraham's Kraal; and here, his resolution to stay
Lord Roberts's advance if he could, still unaltered, he rallied
what burghers he could. Lord Roberts's plan was to move
against the position which De Wet was taking up, in three
strong parallel columns, so that if the Boers held up, or were
held by, any one, the others would automatically outflank
them. The manoeuvre was effectual in clearing the Boers out
of the way; but it was not effectual in capturing any but a
very small number of them. The co-operation of the cavalry
was again ineffective; but the engagement of Abraham's Kraal,
or Driefontein, removed the last obstacle to Lord Roberts's
march on Bloemfontein, which was entered by General French
on i jth March, 1900. De Wet's burghers had fallen back
after Driefontein, in De Wet's own words, " a disorderly
crowd of terrified men blindly flying before the enemy"; and
French, with right instinct for the feeling of the enemy, had
boldly pushed forward to encircle the Free State capital.
About midday of the I3th the mayor drove out to make a
formal surrender to Lord Roberts, and early in the afternoon
the Union Jack was hoisted over the President's house, while

io4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

General French threw out a cordon of outposts to protect the
town.

To all appearance the military situation at this moment was
completely satisfactory. Lord Roberts was half-way across the
Orange Free State, Lord Kitchener's columns had the situation
in the rebellious west well in hand, and from the southern
half of the Free State the Boers were rapidly disappearing.
General Clements, General Gatacre, and General Brabant, the
South African brigadier whom Lord Roberts had appointed
to the command of the troops raised in the colony, were
advancing north in three columns, west to east in the order
named, with the Boer generals — Olivier, Grobler, and Lemmer
— retreating before them. But the appearance of the Boer
collapse was illusory. The burghers were taking the oath of
allegiance, in response to the proclamation of Lord Roberts
inviting them to lay down their arms, but the arms they
delivered up were Martinis, not Mausers, and these dubious
guarantees of good faith were typical of the attitude of the
country. Moreover, Lord Roberts's army as it reached
Bloemfontein was urgently in need of rest and recuperation.
The dash for Kimberley, the pursuit of Cronje, the vain effort
of Poplar Grove, and the final gallop which brought General
French to the gates of Bloemfontein had exhausted the cavalry;
and the experience had been little less trying to the mounted
infantry and transport. Enteric began to appear among the
soldiers, and soon an epidemic was filling the hospitals.
Enteric was extremely common in the Free State; the con-
ditions of an exhausted army and the absence of proper sani-
tary precautions were alone needed to convert it into a scourge.
It was spread by flies, and soon the disease began to lay a
heavy toll on the camps. That was one reason for the long
pause at Bloemfontein.

There were others. As Generals Clements, Gatacre, and
Brabant pushed up from the south, securing a new main line

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 105

of railway communication as they did so, it seemed a feasible
and obvious project to catch the Boer commandos retreating
before the advancing British by pushing out an arm from
Bloemfontein to the Basutoland border. The distance is ninety
miles east. Ladybrand, the town of the Orange State nearest
to the frontier along this line, is about eighty miles from
Bloemfontein, and Thaba N'chu is half-way between them.
General French sent General Broadwood's cavalry brigade on
to Thaba N'chu, and the district between this place and the
Free State capital was supposed to be in effective occupation
by us. It was an important district, because it comprised the
Bloemfontein Waterworks on the Modder, half-way between
the two places. From Thaba N'chu a force under Colonel
Pilcher pushed on to Ladybrand, and the leader very quickly
realized that he was in a hornets' nest. He fell back promptly
and without loss on Thaba N'chu, and Broad wood, in face of
the growing numbers of the Boers, began, in his turn, to fall
back slowly to Bloemfontein, sending word of his movements
to head-quarters. Colonel Martyn's mounted infantry, fol-
lowed by General Colvile's division, was sent out to the water-
works to meet him. This was the beginning of the movements
which ended in the wasted gallantry of the encounter at Koorn
Spruit or Sannah's Post, where the daring of De Wet captured
7 guns, 1 8 officers and 408 men, besides inflicting casualties
amounting to some 150 more. The apportionment of blame
was difficult ; there were so many contributory causes that
Lord Roberts spent some weeks in investigating them : but
they appeared to be reducible to unsound Intelligence work on
the one hand, and to the absence of a proper staff system on
the other. The disaster of Reddersburg followed quickly on
the heels of Sannah's Post, and here De Wet compelled the
surrender of a detached body of 500 men of the Royal Irish
Rifles (3rd April). The Irish fought well for twenty-four hours;
but they had no guns, whereas De Wet had six, including

106 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

some captured at Sannah's Post, and outnumbered by nearly
five to one they had no chance. This disaster was due to the
military blunder of sending out rifles unsupported by artillery.

These disasters were not unrelieved by successes. The
saving of Bethulie Bridge, the seizure of Springfontein (where
the main line from Bloemfontein branches into two, reaching
Bethulie and Stormberg on the eastern branch, and Norvals
Pont and Naauwpoort on the western branch), and the defence
of Wepener against De Wet by an advance-guard of General
Brabant's Colonial division, which had pushed forward under
Colonel Dalgety, were examples of how things might be done
and should be done. The Colonial defenders of Wepener
stopped the rot which seemed to have set in when Reddersburg
followed Sannah's Post, and among the many things which the
Empire owed to its younger sons, this check administered to
De Wet ranked high. The previous disasters and the unsettled
state of the country pointed two lessons which had yet to be
learnt at greater cost, that the Boer resistance would last a
long time, and that the task of protecting the communications
of the main army was one which would tax all the resource and
pertinacity of Lord Kitchener.

General Brabant's force quickly moved up to Wepener,
and this fine division did some of the most useful work of the
war in helping to clear up the south-eastern corner of the
Orange Free State in preparation for Lord Roberts's advance
from Bloemfontein. General Brabant had with him, in addition
to his volunteers from Cape Colony, a backing from every
British dominion. It had the New Zealand Roughriders. The
Border Horse, which constituted part of it, had Australians,
Canadians, Americans, men from India and Ceylon, English-
men, Scots, and Irishmen who had come out to fight, some
working their passage and some in the first-class saloon. It
had Rand millionaires and Texas cowboys — with one qualifica-
tion common to all — that of being first-class fighting-men.

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 107

The forces which had been set in motion by Lord Roberts
while the Boers were besieging Wepener continued their
movements after its relief, and the most northerly of these
operations, General Ian Hamilton's march towards Koorn-
spruit, became the first step in the grand advance from Bloem-
fontein. General Ian Hamilton began by seizing the water-
works again, and, having done so with unexpected swiftness,
marched on to Thaba N'chu, where again the British flag was
hoisted. General French and General Leslie Rundle followed
him, and from this moment the grand advance dated, Ian
Hamilton, supported by Bruce Hamilton (with Broadwood
and Smith-Dorrien), marching on the right flank.

The general advance of the whole line began on 3rd May.
General Pole-Carew on the left, General Tucker in the centre,
General Ian Hamilton on the right, General French following
and closing round. They pushed the enemy in front of them,
and the Boer threat, or promise, to make one great stand and
fight to the last seceded with their retirement. The Boers
destroyed the bridges as they went, but the army was accom-
panied by an extremely competent railway engineering staff,
commanded by Lord Kitchener's right-hand railwayman,
Colonel Percy Girouard, R.E. The record of the army's
advance became from this point geographical rather than
military, for it rolled northward with hardly a check except
that which was caused by the diversion of railway lines past
the destroyed bridges. On loth May, at Smaldeel, the Boers
occupied a thinly extended position over twenty miles of the
Sand River line. It was turned according to rule by French
on one wing and Bruce Hamilton on the other; but the Boer
line was so thin that at no point could it offer effective resis-
tance. Nor, on the other hand, could it be disastrously broken,
because there was so little to break. But the Sand River was
the strongest position the Boers had to defend, and other points
on the way to Johannesburg and Pretoria were occupied with

io8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

the barest show of resistance. On I2th May Lord Roberts
was at Kronstadt, and before he left it on the 2oth the consoli-
dation of the conquered territory was being quickly accom-
plished. In Natal, where Sir Redvers Buller was advancing
at last, and having occupied Dundee (i5th) and Newcastle
(i8th) was at Laing's Nek, the consolidation was permanent,
but in the west Lord Methuen was at Hoopstad, and in the
east General Hunter entered Ladybrand on 2ist May. Lord
Roberts moved from Kroonstad on the 22nd, his lieutenants,
French and Hamilton, keeping wide on his flanks, and on the
26th and 27th the Vaal River was crossed and the semi-
subjugated Orange Colony left behind. The advance went
on with another long leap, and there was little or no fighting
till Doornkop, where the Boers, with memories of a very
different occasion in their minds, lay outside Johannesburg.
There were various reasons, financial and other, why Johannes-
burg should be quickly seized, and though the financial reasons
did not interest the soldiers, the capture was neatly and
expeditiously done by Colonel Henry's prompt capture of the
railway on the east of the town. Johannesburg was entered on
3 ist May, 1900, without loss of life or destruction to property,
and as soon as supplies could be brought up the last step to
Pretoria was taken.

French went round in a wide sweep to the westward, so as
to get behind the railway north from Pretoria, and by 4th June
was north of the capital. The main army followed him.
General Louis Botha made a stand in front of Pretoria while
goods and valuables were removed from the capital, but the
engagement he fought was no more than a rear-guard action.
On 5th June, 1900, Lord Roberts was established in Pre-
toria, into which he rode with Lord Kitchener, his Chief of
Staff, and the foreign attaches, at the head of the Guards
Division.

The military7 situation at the time of the occupation of

Q =C

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 109

Pretoria was brilliant, but it was not without weaknesses.
Lord Roberts had launched himself on the enemy's capital
with an army of 30,000 men, but had left behind him a long
and vulnerable line of communications. On the flank of this
line in the eastern Free State was an energetic force of uncon-
quered Free Staters who knew very little of defeat and a good
deal of success. They were some 10,000 in number, and had
first-rate leaders — De Wet, Prinsloo, and Olivier — for a
guerrilla activity. It was held in check by Rundle and Bra-
bant's Colonial Division, both of which did well in the east ;
but Colvile and Methuen, who had not the right kind of
troops, were unable to cope with the commandos when they
crossed to the west of the railway line.

Lord Roberts's strategy and his appreciation of the powers
of his enemy were faultless. He proved quite right in dis-
regarding the threat to his communications, and his objective
was reached before De Wet had time to become ineffective.
But Pretoria was a capital, not a stronghold, and though Louis
Botha was aware that in the political sense the aims of the Boer
Republics could never be attained, and dallied with proposals
of surrender, he was aware that in the undefeated commandos
the Boers possessed many strongholds. De Wet's blows at
Lord Roberts's communications came too late to affect the
certainty of the result, but not too late to persuade Louis
Botha that the result might be indefinitely postponed. A brief
summary of De Wet's successes in attacking the army's com-
munications on the eve of and during the first three weeks of
June, 1900 (after the occupation of Pretoria), will show the
vulnerability of the lines and the magnitude of the task which
Lord Kitchener was instructed to undertake in making them
safe.

On 3 ist May De Wet captured the I3th Battalion of
Imperial Yeomanry, under Colonel Spragge. The disaster
occurred at Lindley, which the Yeomanry had occupied in the

no FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

belief that they would there come into touch with General
Colvile. Eighty killed and wounded out of 470.

On 4th June De Wet took a convoy of 55 wagons with an
escort of 100 men, who were taking stores to the Highland
Brigade at Heilbron.

On 5th June one of his detached parties demolished Roode-
val Bridge; and, having decided, after an unsuccessful attack,
that a party at railhead under Major Douglas Haig had better
be left alone, went on south till, on 7th June, he surprised and
captured the post at the Rhenoster, which was guarded by a
troop of the Derbyshire Militia. One hundred and forty
killed and wounded, after a hopeless fight without artillery,
and Rhenoster Bridge destroyed.

Lord Kitchener by this time was on his way south, and on
loth June a force under Methuen from Heilbron converged,
together with that of the Chief of Staff, on Roodeval. Lord
Methuen arrived first, and at once attacked De Wet. De Wet
pursued his usual tactics — moved eastwards, avoided action —
and the British force displayed its usual inability to keep in
touch with him. Contact having been lost, De Wet doubled
back again and made an attack at Rhenoster, where Colonel
Girouard with his railway staff was working hard to repair the
ruined bridge, and where Lord Kitchener was also present
surveying and hastening the work. This time Lord Kitchener's
force, which included Shropshires, South Wales Borderers, and
a battery, beat the raiders off; but the suddenness of the attack
enabled De Wet to do some damage, and had he been able to
press the attack home he might even have captured Lord
Kitchener himself.

Another attempt at this time was made by a commando,
not directly associated with De Wet's raids, on a bridge to the
south of Kroonstad, but it was beaten off by the Loyal Lan-
casters and the Railway Pioneers. The last attempt at this
period of De Wet's activity was made at Honing Spruit station

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA in

on 2 ist June, midway between Kroonstad and Roodeval; but
Colonel Bullock, of the Devons, held on till reinforcements
and guns came up, and the attempt was beaten off. Gradually
Lord Kitchener resumed control of the communications, and
the first round between him and De Wet ended with the Boer
guerrilla's retirement.

The effect of these successes on General Louis Botha was
evident. He had withdrawn east of Pretoria, and negotiations
for peace had almost been begun, when, on 8th June, he broke
them off, and prepared to defend what was left to him of the
Transvaal. Henceforth the campaign under Lord Roberts
divided itself into two parts. In the Transvaal Botha was
gradually pressed back to the border at Komati Poort. South
of the Vaal there were the operations ceaselessly zigzagging,
radiating, and converging, by which Lord Kitchener and the
divisional brigade commanders endeavoured first to break up,
and then to capture, the forces still at large under Prinsloo,
Olivier, and De Wet. To this was added a new campaign to
the west of Pretoria led by De la Rey.

In the north, Buller, coming up through Natal, had at last
joined hands with the main army, and so had constricted still
further the area in which Louis Botha could operate with a
Boer army; and the end to this campaign came after the last
considerable battle of Diamond Hill and the last noteworthy
engagements at Lydenburg. On ist September Lord Roberts
showed his sense of the decisive nature of the main army's
operations by publishing the proclamation (issued as early as
4th July) by which the Transvaal became a portion of the
British Empire; and on nth September, 1900, President
Kruger left the Transvaal and arrived a fugitive at Louren^o
Marquez. He was no friend to Britain; we think that he
was an ill friend to the country from which he had fled; but
we need not grudge a backward glance of pity for his ruined
hopes and ambitions.

ii2 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

In the eastern Free State the operations in which Lord
Kitchener took a directing share, and in which he actively par-
ticipated, for the dispersion of the Free Staters, resulted in
splitting up the enemy's forces into smaller and smaller bands;
and finally Prinsloo surrendered near the Basuto border to
General Hunter on 29th— joth July. It was the most con-
siderable surrender since Paardeberg, for more than 4000
Boers were taken prisoners. Olivier, who was with Prinsloo,
broke away and escaped, and was not captured till some time
later (28th August), when he was ambushed by a handful of
Queenstown Volunteers near Winburg. De Wet still re-
mained at large, the net always being of too wide a mesh;
and in the western Transvaal De la Rey was beginning to
emulate his exploits. One of the most determined of his
attempts, notable, however, for the resistance which it met,
was that in which he besieged a garrison of Australians at
Elands River. The garrison was 500 in number — Victorians,
New South Wales men, and Queenslanders, with a few
Rhodesians, and commanded by Colonel Hore. They were
surrounded by 2500 Boers and shelled by six guns. The
river was half a mile off. But they dug themselves in, refused
to surrender, despite their heavy losses and the jamming of
their one gun, and grimly sat it out from the beginning of
August till the i6th, when they were relieved by a force under
Lord Kitchener. Britain does not forget Elands River, and
the Australians did not forget Lord Kitchener.

Though De Wet and De la Rey were still at large, the
clearance of the Transvaal as far as the eastern border, the
dispersal of all the main Boer armies, and the departure of
President Kruger for Europe signalized the end of the main
operations of the war. That was the view taken by the
Imperial Government and endorsed by Lord Roberts, who
returned home in November as Commander-in-Chief of the
British army, relinquishing the command in South Africa to

UNDER ROBERTS IN SOUTH AFRICA 113

his "right-hand man during the campaign", Lord Kitchener.
The words quoted were used by Lord Roberts on his return
to Great Britain in a speech at Southampton, in which he took
the opportunity to express his appreciation of his lieutenant:

"As Chief of the Staff of the army in South Africa Lord Kitchener
has been my right-hand man during the campaign, and I am glad of this
opportunity of expressing publicly how much I owe to his wise counsels
and ever-ready help. No one could have laboured more incessantly, or
in a more self-effacing manner, than Lord Kitchener has done, and no
one could have assisted me more loyally, without a thought of self-
aggrandizement."

E. S. G.

VOL. II. 23

CHAPTER VI

Kitchener's Task in South Africa

Kitchener in Command — Tactical Position of Botha, De la Rey, and De Wet —
Lord Kitchener's First Net for the Capture of De Wet — De la Key's Attack on Clements
at Nooitgedacht — De Wet's Second Attempt to enter Cape Colony — The feeling in the
Colony — Kritzinger and Hertzog — Lord Kitchener's Railway Counter-manoeuvres —
De Wet's Failure — Lord Kitchener's Meeting with Louis Botha at Middelburg — The
Middelburg Offer — The Boer Forces in the Field — Botha's Rejection of the Terms —
Further Operations in Cape Colony — Lord Kitchener sends General French to the
Colony — The Situation in July, 1901.

IN the Army Order in which Lord Roberts took leave of
the Army of South Africa, and gave up the command, in
his own generous words, " into the able hands of Lord
Kitchener of Khartoum", he parted from his soldiers in the
clear expectation that the longest part of the task was over.
" I should like to remain with the army till it is completely
broken up," he said simply, "but I have come to the conclu-
sion that, as Lord Kitchener has consented to take over the
command, my presence is no longer required in South Africa."
It was true that Lord Roberts had left behind him a campaign
of certain issue, but it was of uncertain duration. The cause
was in no danger, but we may not doubt that Lord Roberts
had a shrewd idea that the task of dealing with the desperate
and scattered fragments of the Boer forces^ would be one which
would tax all his successor's perseverance and patience. And
so, indeed, it proved. Louis Botha, after the last rally at
Bergendal, had retired north of the British cordon, extending
from Pretoria to Komati Poort, to rally his discomfited and

114

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 115

discouraged forces; he was supposed to be in the Pietersburg
district, and, unmolested there, he succeeded in evolving a
scheme of attack and the forces with which to carry it into
execution. De la Rey in the west was elaborating the flying
column which for many months was to be a harassment and a
danger to Lord Methuen, General Clements, and the other
commanders there; and in the south De Wet was irrepressible.
About him ever rallied those who, encouraged by transitory
successes, and blind to the wastefulness and uselessness of
resistance, were ready to have one more shot at the enemy.
Botha was well aware of the true situation, though he was
willing to aid his burghers in prolonging the war in the hope
of better terms; but those who followed the star of De Wet
placed their hopes high, and were lured by the will o' the wisp
of a successful rising in Cape Colony.

In the early months of Lord Kitchener's assumption of the
chief command De Wet occupied so large a share of the opera-
tions that they almost resolved themselves into a conflict
between the British Commander-in-Chief and the Boer guer-
rilla. Lord Kitchener spread the net, De Wet endeavoured
to break through it, and the simile of the retiarius and the
Samnite is not so inapt as it seems, for though De Wet rode so
light he struck hard at those who endeavoured to hold him.

But his earliest essays against Lord Kitchener were not
entirely triumphal marches. In the third week of November,
1900, he had run the gauntlet of the line of blockhouses which
Lord Kitchener had established between Bloemfontein and
Thaba N'chu and thence to Ladybrand, and with about 1700
men and two guns invested a force of Gloucestershires and
Highland Light Infantry under Major W. G. Massy at De
Wet's Dorp. He compelled their surrender just in time
(2jrd November), and marched off with his prisoners, evading
Colonel Pilcher and General Knox. With them at his heels
he set off with the evident intention of invading Cape Colony,

n6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

gathering on his way all the commandos on the Orange River,
and impressing or recruiting farmers who had taken the oath.
British columns were moved out to stop him from the bridge
crossings — from Norval's Pont to Orange River, and from
Bethulie to Aliwal North. De Wet was then joined by
Hertzog, and it was arranged between them that Hertzog
should try to cross on the west while De Wet made a dash
through the eastern river crossings. They might have done
it, but the weather changed, the Orange River rose, and De
Wet's Boers found themselves in an awkward angle between
the two flooded rivers, the Orange and the Caledon, and
columns under Herbert and Pilcher, with Colonel Long in
command, looking for him. On 6th December Lord Kitchener
came down to superintend, and sent Colonel Long to bar De
Wet's way across the Orange at Odendaal Stroom, where alone
the river was fordable. Finding thus his last hope gone, De
Wet was forced to abandon this, his first attempt to invade
Cape Colony, and bend all his energies to saving his com-
mando.

The columns set moving by Knox and Long combed the
country for him, and De Wet, searching the banks of the
Caledon for a crossing, left everywhere a trail of dead horses
behind him, and, finally, his Krupp gun and ammunition.
Then fortune suddenly changed for him. The rain ceased,
the Caledon fell, and De Wet was across like a flash. He had
failed, but his miraculous escape increased rather than lessened
his reputation. Wherever he moved he brought large bodies
of British troops after him, and he kept under arms many a
burgher whose spirit of resistance was drawn from him.. His
influence, losing nothing by report of his deeds, spread to the
most distant parts, and had its effect not merely on the
burghers, who were ready to join him whenever he elected to
try again, but on Botha and on De la Rey.

De la Rey was able to derive encouragement from his own

LORD KITCHENER IN SOUTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN UNIFORM

Kitchener served first as Chief of Staff and afterwards as Commander-in-Chief

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 117

exploits. He was known to be waiting in the west for suit-
able opportunities to fall on the convoys that went along
the Rustenburg-Pretoria road and had grown careless from
immunity. General Clements was sent up to this district to
aid General Broadwood in clearing it, but it was not till
De la Rey had signified his activity by seizing one of the
convoys on its return journey from Rustenburg to Pretoria1
that combined operations against him in any sense began.
The operations were, in truth, lacking in combination at the
end of November; the only co-ordination was with the enemy,
Beyers being sent by Botha to join De la Rey in making a
joint attack on Clements, who was ensconced in a bad tactical
position at Nooitgedacht, under the shadow of the Magalies-
berg range. The action at Nooitgedacht, where Clements
was assailed on I3th December, 1900, by the combined fofces
of De la Rey's westerners and the northerners from beyond
Pretoria and from the Krokodil River, was redeemed by the
effort which the British general made to save it from complete
disaster. He lost 74 killed, 186 wounded, and 386 prisoners.
The disaster ought never to have been incurred; that it was
not complete was due to the ability which Clements showed
in collecting a broken force and leading it from the very
midst of ten times its number. The situation was eventually
cleared up by French, who, by the last day of December,
1900, had driven the enemy back and out, and had disposed
Clements and Alderson in tactically defensive positions on
the Magaliesberg, drawing a line of columns from Olifant's
Nek through Ventersdorp to Klerksdorp.

De Wet, after his first failure to enter Cape Colony,
prepared to renew the attempt on a larger scale. His reputa-
tion and his force had suffered no damage that was not quickly
repaired; burghers came to join him as soon as he was over

1 De la Rey captured 126 wagons and 1862 cattle, besides inflicting 118 casualties on the
escort.

n8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

the Caledon, and it was not long before he had 5000 men
again. He was not allowed to recuperate without hindrance;
for though he had escaped the Caledon floods, General C. E.
Knox's columns were behind him, pushing him into the midst
of another circle of British troops and forts. Farthest behind
him were Long, Pilcher, and Grenfell; nearest were Barker,
Williams, and W. L. White. Sir C. Parsons was on the
left at Reddersburg. Thorney croft and the Hon. J. Byng
had been brought down by Lord Kitchener from the north
to shepherd De Wet on the right, the eastern border. General
Knox tried first to drive De Wet to the left into the arms
of Sir C. Parsons, but De Wet, kept well informed by his
scouts, edged away to his right. On I3th December he
was only ten miles from the nearest of his pursuers. He
was perfectly well aware of the situations of his various op-
ponents, of the line of troops and blockhouses barring his
front, and of the exact distance of his pursuers. His haven
was only to be gained by good fortune, whereas failure would
mean ruin; but he took the risk. Here, as elsewhere, he was,
in the words of the sober, official historian of the War Office,
the "inspired gambler". For three weeks he dodged and
doubled, and, in a series of intricate twists and turnings,
evaded all the forces placed on the field against him, as if
the pursuit had been a game of reversed blind-man's-buff,
in which De Wet was the only player with his eyes open.
Lord Kitchener kept in remarkably close touch with his
obscure movements during the mid three weeks of December,
— in closer touch, indeed, than his subordinates on the spot,
who had a less efficient Intelligence service; and, gradually
introducing new columns and new dispositions into the field,
the Commander-in-Chief made preparations to ensnare De
Wet in the new complication of his second projected invasion
of Cape Colony.

The pro-Boer feeling had not been quenched in Cape

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 119

Colony, though its expression had receded with the downfall
of the Boer hopes. Lenient treatment of the Prieska rebels
had not been without its mollifying effect ; for, though the
individual might not be reconciled, public opinion had swung
away from an open rising. But disaffection, in spite of all
opiates, is a light sleeper, and the Boer leaders, in December,
1900, and January, 1901, had good hopes that their reveille
would wake it. The Colony was lightly garrisoned ; pacific
"congresses", which were really meetings of conspirators,
had been permitted to take place at Graaf Reinet and Wor-
cester. At the same time that hundreds of burghers who had
surrendered were finding their rifles again, the contingents of
Colonials (who were really the best kind of troops the British
forces could have for the work in hand) were being disbanded.
With these favouring circumstances, and with the Boer habit
of pertinacity, it was not to be expected that the first failure
to enter Cape Colony would prevent a second attempt from
being made. So it proved.

Two of De Wet's lieutenants, Commandants Kritzinger and
Hertzog, less closely watched than their leader, dashed across
the Orange River on I5th and i6th December, and provoked
a disturbance of the colony which was to extend to its seaboard.
Their forces were small. Kritzinger had but 700 men, Hertzog
some 1 200. They rode light, with neither artillery nor trans-
port, depending for provender on the innumerable friendly
farms. They were in a sense merely marauding bands ; but
their inroad was serious because they were the spark to set the
powder-magazine alight, although the powder of the Cape
Colony was damp and reluctant to explode. The incursion
placed the raiders behind the only regular troops in the colony
—part of the Brigade of Guards at Norval's Pont — but there
were many small bodies of militia and volunteers dispersed
along the railway lines as guards ; and none knew better than
the Commander-in-Chief how to wage warfare on the rails.

120 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Within a week of the violation of the frontier of Cape Colony
no fewer than sixteen bodies of troops had been sent by Lord
Kitchener within the border and organized for the field. All
these were placed under the general command of Major-
General Settle, who delimitated the areas by taking himself
the western area (De Aar), giving Inigo Jones the central
(Naauwpoort), and Hector Macdonald the eastern (Burghers-
dorp).

It would be an endless task to describe in detail the efforts
to find and engage in a vast territory bands who were bent on
nothing so much as avoiding battle. The task of pursuing
them was a tedious and trying one because, apart from the
danger to Cape Colony, it was becoming evident that Kritzinger
and Hertzog were purposely drawing the British troops aside
to east and west so as to leave a clear course down the middle
of the Colony for the expected rush of De Wet. The problem
was of a moral as well as a material seriousness, because, should
either the preliminary or the subsequent movements of the
raiders succeed in fanning smouldering disaffection into active
rebellion, and rouse even temporarily a serious struggle in Cape
Colony, the whole campaign might be transformed. But the
infection furnished its own antidote. Within three weeks
10,000 loyal volunteers were enrolled in the Colony, and were
dispatched in detachments to hold the towns and villages which
stood in the way of the commandos. Major -General
Settle's columns could not keep pace with Hertzog, but the
railway could, and by 2ist January Hertzog found himself
shut off by an impenetrable fence of columns from Cape Town.
He checked his advance on the Doom River, and Settle,
whose chief anxiety up till then had been to save the Colony
from being overrun, saw that the raider had reached the end
of his rope, and immediately assumed the offensive. But
Hertzog also knew that he had gone as far as he could,
and began to retire northward again. He had done his

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 121

part in preparing the way for De Wet and making the path
easier.

Kritzinger on the other side of the Colony had met similar
experiences. He was pursued by Colonel Douglas Haig, but
on 1 8th January had outdistanced him, and, dividing his com-
mando into two parts, one of which was entrusted to Scheepers,
threatened to reach even Mossel Bay on the coast. That was
the limit of Kritzinger's success. From that time henceforward
Haig had him in difficulties, and first split him up in the
Bavian's Kloof Mountains, and, but for a blunder of some
Yeomanry, might have captured Scheepers. But both Krit-
zinger and Scheepers were turned north, and fled in apprehen-
sion. But on iyth February the pursuit eased. Haig called
off some of his columns; and Haig himself was wanted else-
where. Hertzog had known why; Kritzinger and Scheepers
could guess. De Wet had crossed the Orange River; he had
already been a week within the Colony, and the time had come
for the consummation of the campaign in front of which Hert-
zog, Kritzinger, and Scheepers had scouted down to the sea-
board.

The Boers were looking towards De Wet as the new
prophet — the Mahdi — the expected. Kritzinger had written
to him two months earlier that the Cape farmers were only
waiting for the event to rise in a body. General J. C. Smuts
had promised to come with 2000 men to aid the enterprise,
and in his letter to De Wet looked forward to a general revolu-
tion of Cape Colony. But General Smuts, nothing if not a
good soldier, would have been less hopeful had he known that
De Wet had lost his best weapon — that of surprise. Lord
Kitchener had suspected and fully prepared for his design from
its earliest initiation in the interior of Orange River Colony.
The probability of an effort to wipe out the memory of the
rebuff on the Caledon River had always been recognized. The
unrest in the Smithfield and Rouxville districts and the bold

122 FIELD-^MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

perseverance of Hertzog and Kritzinger in Cape Colony tended
to confirm the cloud of rumours which invariably arose when-
ever the invasion of British soil was in the air.

On 22nd January Lord Kitchener was warned that De
Wet was on his way to pick up his commandos, which had
been " resting " at Doornberg. Next day De Wet and
President Steyn crossed the railway and were traced towards
the rendezvous. Bruce Hamilton and C. E. Knox were
ordered by Lord Kitchener to close on him before he could
organize his men and start south. But De Wet was quicker
than they. They arranged to attack on the 28th. De Wet
slipped between them on the 2yth, and moved full speed
southward with his 2000 horsemen and 3 guns. Knox
turned to pursue him at once. Bruce Hamilton hoped to
outrun him by train before he could reach the Orange.
De Wet travelled at a great pace, driving before him flocks
and herds as his food-supplies. In order to give them a
start he turned to fight a rear-guard action with Knox's
pursuing columns (Pilcher and Crewe), and his men (and
his guns) fought it with their usual ability. He knocked his
pursuers about quite as much as they damaged him, and he
kept the road open to the south. He outpaced Knox and
forestalled Bruce Hamilton on the railway. There was
nothing between him and the border ; he raced towards it
and disappeared.

Lord Kitchener saw that direct pursuit was fruitless, and
that De Wet could be outstripped by the railway, and by
nothing less speedy. Ordering wellnigh every body of troops
in Cape Colony to the strategic points, and summoning Paget
and Plumer from the north, he called off Knox and Bruce
Hamilton and put them in the train for Cape Colony, with
their base at Bethulie. He withdrew all the garrisons in
the Smithfield and Rouxville districts, and transferred the
troops which had been acting there to the left bank of the

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 123

Orange. He concentrated a new mobile force, cavalry, at
Naauwpoort (Bethune), and formed a new mounted-infantry
column (Colonel Hickman). General Lyttelton had command
of all the columns. While all these measures were being
prepared against him, De Wet imagined that his chief op-
ponent was asleep. He therefore pulled up short of the
Orange, and was in sight of Norval's Pont no earlier than
4th February. He could not cross there, and so turned
westwards — the old British fault on the part of our scouting
allowing touch to be lost with" him when it was most valuable.
He cleverly confused Lyttelton as to where he intended to
cross, and on loth February, while Head-quarters were tele-
graphing to Lyttelton that, "according to information received",
De Wet would cross between Bethulie and Aliwal, he took his
whole force over the Orange at Sand Drift.

But the British columns were now warming to their work.
Pilcher and Bruce Hamilton struck south to intercept him.
Plumer came up with his advance-guard, a reconnoitring
squadron of Imperial Light Horse (Captain Bridges) first
establishing touch. Plumer, ably seconded by Bridges, did
exactly the right thing. They stuck to De Wet and deflected
him, till, another force coming up, he was obliged to turn
from his direct path and move westward. De Wet now
began to have misgivings. The preparedness of his ad-
versaries and the quick way they had recovered from the
false scent about the Orange River crossing took him by
surprise. He had intended to have penetrated the Colony
in three separate divisions, but his forced marches had told
on him. He was 600 men short ; others went on foot ;
there were hostile columns in front and behind. He could
not get south. There might be some advantage, neverthe-
less, in his enforced westerly march, because Hertzog was
pressing forward to meet him with 1500 horses raised from
the farms of the west. So westwards he moved, hopefully,

i24 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

and not less hopefully Plumer followed, sticking to his heels.
Heavy rain and thunderstorms now added a new factor to
the pursuit. It occasionally put Plumer out of touch, but it
was washing away the Boer supplies by bogging their wagons;
and meanwhile Knox and Bruce Hamilton were making use
of the railway to get closer and closer. De Wet now knew,
and his burghers knew, that the invasion was an invasion no
longer. It had become reduced to an effort to avoid capture
or starvation. On the iyth of February De Wet fled north-
ward, intending to strike for Prieska by one of the lower drifts
of the Brak River.

Plumer did not lose touch with him — his Intelligence officer
kept on the trail for 300 miles of tortuous riding — and he
pursued till De Wet's force began to disintegrate into smaller
bands. But meanwhile Plumer ran out of supplies : his men
were almost starving when Crabbe and Henniker came up to
share biscuits and the pursuit. De Wet gathered a few fresh
horses and doubled south-west along the Brak. Here Knox
intercepted his movement on the upper waters and forced him
lower down, to where the Brak (in flood) was, in De Wet's
own words, " roaring like a tempestuous sea ". De Wet had
only one chance left. It was to double back eastwards and try
to get across the Orange. In a black night of rain he made
the first move successfully, and got to the Orange to search for
a drift. As he went he dropped more and more men, his
guns were captured by some Victorian Imperial Bushmen and
Dragoon Guards (Henniker and Marker), and for more than
a week he and his burghers scoured the river bank looking for
a crossing of the flooded river. Bosjesmann's Drift, Visser's
Drift, Lemoenfontein Drift were all tried, and tried in vain,
and columns under Thorneycroft, Hickman, Byng, Williams,
and Lowe were all being put afresh into the hunt. With the
Boers every hope rested on Sand Drift, the gateway by which
they had entered the Colony. But here, too, the water covered

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 125

man and horse, and the two burghers who tested the crossing
for the rest nearly lost their lives.

As De Wet, his hopes nearly extinguished, turned again
up-stream he was at last joined by Hertzog with burghers
and fresh horses, and rejoined by Fourie. The junction,
with British columns all round, was a wonderful feat, but it
was useless. It might add to what Lord Kitchener in those
days was in the habit of calling his " bag ", but it could not
save the situation. The British rope began to tighten ; but
imperfect signalling, delays on the railway, marching impeded
by the heavy rains, all contributed to the incompleteness of the
cordon. On the last night but one of February, 1901, a long
night march carried De Wet across the front of the columns
and on to the bank of the Orange at Leliefontein close to Coles-
berg Bridge. Here was a drift; it was the fifteenth he had
tried in his efforts to escape, but one which was little known
and used. A few men tried it. The stream washed the
saddles of the horses, but it was just shallow enough; the
horses floundered over, and in a few minutes the Orange was
black from bank to bank with thankful burghers. They had
got out with their skins, their rifles, and the horses they rode;
but their campaign had been a flight and a failure, its track
marked by abandoned horses, transport, and guns. De Wet's
reputation survived the disaster, and on the Cape side of the
Orange his misfortunes were not his fault. But he had mis-
judged the energy of Lord Kitchener and underrated his pene-
tration. Lord Kitchener had seen in the dispatch in advance
of Hertzog and Kritzinger that these two were intended to
pave the way for the superior leader and the larger force, and
had been quick to take advantage of De Wet's dilatory march
to follow them. Not for one moment had Cape Colony been
in danger; and if the exertions of the British columns in pur-
suit of him had been almost superhuman, it was rather in the
fervent hope of capturing him than in the necessity of foiling

126 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

his campaign, which Lord Kitchener's measures had made
futile from the first.

On the very day that De Wet escaped from the personal
consequences of his ill-fated invasion of Cape Colony, Lord
Kitchener met Commandant-General Louis Botha at Middel-
burg. The meeting had been brought about largely by the
influence of Mrs. Botha, and much was hoped from it. But
Botha declared that it was doubtful if he could bring about a
cessation of hostilities unless national independence, which was
what the Boers were fighting for, was conceded as the first
condition. That condition Lord Kitchener declined even to
discuss. But the interview was not wholly useless, for the
British Government learned through Lord Kitchener what
other things the Boers wanted before they would submit; and
what terms, if their first condition of national independence
could be proved to them to be unattainable, they would per-
haps be prepared to accept in substitution. Such terms were:
The inauguration of representative government; equal rights
for the Dutch language; postponement of the franchise for
Kaffirs; integrity of Dutch Church property; the assumption
by Great Britain of the debts of the Republics, especially of
notes commandeering requisitions and other liabilities incurred
during the war; no war- tax to be imposed on the farmers;
financial assistance to ruined farmers; amnesty to all at the
conclusion of the war; speedy return of prisoners; retention of
rifles by those liable to danger from natives.

A week after this interview Lord Kitchener, having cabled
to the Government and received their replies, sent the follow-
ing letter to General Botha : —

"PRETORIA, March jth, 1901.

"YouR HONOUR,

"With reference to our conversation at Middelburg on the
28th of February. I have the honour to inform you that in the event
of a general and complete cessation of hostilities, and the surrender of
all rifles, ammunition, cannon, and other munitions of war in the hands

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 127

of the burghers, or in Government depots or elsewhere, His Majesty's
Government is prepared to adopt the following measures.

" His Majesty's Government will at once grant an amnesty on the
Transvaal and Orange River Colony for all bona fide acts of war com-
mitted during the recent hostilities. British subjects belonging to Cape
Colony and Natal, while they will not be compelled to return to these
colonies will, if they do so, be liable to be dealt with by the laws of
those colonies specially passed to meet the circumstances arising out of
the present war. As you are doubtless aware the special law in the
Cape Colony has greatly mitigated the ordinary penalties for High
Treason in the present case. [The mitigation took the form in some
cases of mere deprivation of civil rights for a term of years.]

"All prisoners of war now in St. Helena, Ceylon, or elsewhere,
being burghers or colonists, will on the completion of the surrender be
brought back to their country as quickly as arrangements can be made
for their transport.

"At the earliest practicable date military administration will cease,
and will be replaced by civil administration in the form of Crown
Colony Government. There will therefore be, in the first instance, in
each of the new colonies a Governor and an Executive Council, com-
posed of the principal officials, with a Legislative Council consisting of
a certain number of official members to whom a nominated unofficial
element will be added. But it is the desire of His Majesty's Govern-
ment, as soon as circumstances permit, to introduce a representative
element, and ultimately to concede to the new colonies the privilege
of self-government. Moreover, on the cessation of hostilities, a High
Court will be established in each of the new colonies to administer the
laws of the land, and this Court will be independent of the Executive.

" Church property, public trusts, and orphan funds will be respected.

"Both the English and the Dutch languages will be used and taught
in public schools when the parents of the children desire, and allowed in
Courts of Law.

"As regards the debts of the late Republican Governments His
Majesty's Government cannot undertake any liability. It is, however,
proposed as an act of grace to set aside a sum not exceeding one million
pounds sterling to repay inhabitants of the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony for goods requisitioned from them by the late Republican Govern-
ments, or subsequent to annexation, by Commandants in the field being

128 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

in a position to enforce such requisitions. But such claims will have to
be established to the satisfaction of a judge or a Judicial Commission
appointed by the Government to investigate and assess them, and if
exceeding in the aggregate one million pounds they will be liable to
reduction pro rata.

"I also beg to inform Your Honour that the new Government will
take into immediate consideration the possibility of assisting by loan the
occupants of farms who will take the oath of allegiance, to repair any
injuries sustained by destruction of buildings or loss of stock during the
war, and that no special war tax will be imposed on farms to defray the
expenses of the war.

"When burghers require the protection of fire-arms, such will be
allowed to them by licence, and on due registration, provided they take
the oath of allegiance.

" As regards the extension of the franchise to Kaffirs in the Trans-
vaal and Orange River Colony, it is not the intention of His Majesty's
Government to give such franchise before representative government is
granted to those colonies, and if then given it will be so limited as to
secure the just predominance of the white race. The legal position of
coloured persons will, however, be similar to that which they hold in
Cape Colony.

" In conclusion I might inform Your Honour that if these terms are
not accepted after a reasonable delay for consideration they must be
regarded as cancelled.

"KITCHENER, General,
Commander-in-Chief, British Forces,
South Africa." _

It was too soon for peace. The Boer forces were becoming
hardened by war. The hesitating, the pacifists, had been dis-
carded. Those who were left, if they did not love fighting
for its own sake, were at any rate engaged in the kind of
fighting that appealed to them, both in its conduct and in its
aims. The Boer generals were worse off than ever Kitchener
had been at Paardeberg for the staff to handle armies; they
had neither the complicated organization nor the disciplined
machinery, nor yet the time or opportunity to improvise them.
A Boer army had been a paradox from the beginning; but a

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 129

Boer commando, properly led by men with a supreme aptitude
for fighting, was one of the ablest and most efficient units in
the world. It was far superior to any equal number of men
which a British general could form to meet it. If there had
been a way to bring the war to a speedy conclusion it would
have been sought in equipping and horsing bodies of men who
were individually the equal of the Boers as shots, riders, scouts,
and horsemasters. That way was not practicable, because we
neither had the horses, nor the men who knew as well as the
Boers how to get the best out of them; and we taught and
trained the men only in warfare. But at the time when Lord
Kitchener sent his letter to General Botha the Boers were our
teachers. There were still nearly 50,000 burghers in the field.
De la Rey was in the act of organizing the strong " flying com-
mando " of which he wrote to Botha in mid-March, and which
was for so long to dominate the western veldt; Kritzinger,
Fouche, Scheepers, and Malan, undeterred by De Wet's
expulsion, were returning like horse-flies to Cape Colony; and
Botha and his burghers knew that General French had not
been able to clear them out of the eastern Transvaal. Botha
knew quite well the spirit of his burghers; he had himself
enough of that unbending pride which will never give way
except at the instance of a greater call and need than its own.
So he joined himself with his burghers in refusing Lord
Kitchener's terms, and sealed his refusal by the following
address to his comrades-in-arms : —

"DEAR BROTHERS,

" The spirit of Lord Kitchener's letter makes it very plain
to you all that the British Government desires nothing else but the
destruction of our Afrikander people ; and acceptance of the terms
contained therein is absolutely out of the question. Virtually the letter
contains nothing more, but rather less, than what the British Govern-
ment will be obliged to do should our cause go wrong. Notice that
they will give us a Legislative Council consisting of their own officials
VOL II. 24

130 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

and members nominated by themselves. The voice of the people is
thus totally unrecognized. It is also proposed, and this as a favour, to
place only one million pounds disposable for covering our State Debts,
whereas, should the cause unexpectedly go wrong with us, the British
Government must bear the responsibility of all the State Debts, and not
simply walk away with the State's assets.

" Our burghers have fought heavily, but how can it be otherwise
when the existence of our nation is unlawfully threatened. The blood
and tears that this war has cost us has been hard, but giving up our
country will be doubly hard.

" I feel from the bottom of my heart for those burghers whose
families have been removed. Do not let this make anyone desperate,
because he who becomes iesperate and gives up the struggle, does not
only an injustice to his people, but also loses all trust in himself.

" The more we are aggrieved by the enemy the more steadfastly we
ought to stand for our goods and lawful rights.

" Let us, as Daniel in the lions' den, place our trust in God alone,
for in His time and in His way he will certainly give us deliverance."

"Louis BOTHA,
Commandant General."
"ERMELO, March i$tfi, 1901.

It was certainly not with the burghers in this mood that peace
could or would be made; and in their view the prolongation of
the war might tire out Great Britain or last till she became
involved in some European difficulty. President Kruger's
mission in Europe was connected with the formation of such
difficulties, and it was because his efforts so forlornly failed that
the Boers' confidence in Germany was broken, and that none
but the irreconcilable ever again put faith in Germany's good-
will or intentions. But General Botha's position at this time
was full of difficulties, and the way in which he surmounted
them is the all-sufficing explanation of his unshaken power and
influence in South Africa long after this war had been almost
forgotten in Great Britain, in the presence of trial and stress
not unlike that which Botha and his followers endured in 1901.

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 131

Hardly had he sent his answer to Lord Kitchener than he
learned at Ermelo of the failure of De Wet's descent upon
Cape Colony. A month earlier the raid had been reported to
him as a triumphal march — a letter from Badenhorst told him
that De Wet had got almost to Cape Town. On 29th March
Botha rode to Vrede to learn the truth from De Wet.

De Wet, as he had done after his first rebuff from Cape
Colony in December, had sought safety in dispersion, splitting
his force into no fewer than twenty units, each of which, under
its own field -cornet, repaired towards its local rendezvous,
exchanging rifle-shots with any enemy it met — a method which
was bewildering to the columns driving northward, which con-
tinually encountered phantom De Wets in places where that
leader by all accounts could not possibly be. Lord Kitchener
had a truer idea of what had happened, and gradually called in
his columns in order to redistribute them in new commands
over the Orange River Colony. The columns, first radiating
and then converging, had captured an immense amount of stock,
but not very many prisoners. By Lord Kitchener's orders
they cleared the country as they marched through it; and often
a commander, when in not too promising pursuit of some body
of the enemy, found himself in doubt whether he should not
turn from the possibly fruitless chase to the certain acquisition
of flocks and herds. The failures resulting from the effort to
compass both ends were seen too often during the campaign in
South Africa to be omitted from its history. The greatest
need, however, at this time was that of a definite object, for De
Wet's widespread dissemination of his army had paralysed the
initiative of the columns, and it became necessary for Lord
Kitchener to devise some new implement for combing out the
commandos.

Botha's visit to De Wet argued an attempt to arrive at
some definite plan on the other side, and his task was one
which, from the moral side, was harder than that of his great

132 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

opponent. Lord Kitchener could at any rate reckon on the
unalterable loyalty of his soldiers. General Botha had to deal
with plottings against his own authority, against whispers of
mistrust, and against the irresolution of waverers who were
inclined to believe that there was no use in fighting further.
" All human help ", wrote Acting-President Schalk Burger to
President Steyn (2ist March, 1901), "upon which we have
hitherto relied has proved a broken reed. Europe is silent,
and the enemy proceeds to destroy our people with his great
force. The question is, may we, can we, continue the struggle
further ?" 1 The dejection which falls on armies had descended
on the harried forces of the Transvaal, and the weaker spirits
had yielded to it. But General Botha — who might have said
to Lord Kitchener in a nobler rendering of the rejoinder
which Mahmoud the Khalifa's emir had once made, that he, too,
fought for his country and for that alone — had to struggle with
an enemy in his own camps as well as against the foe with-
out. None except he could have tided over this most critical
period in his country's campaign. For he knew by communion
with his own indomitable spirit how fine was the material and
the temper of the younger men who had grown up with him-
self. They and he looked defeat in the face, and were not
dismayed, highly resolving to derive from it victory. Be sure
that Lord Kitchener recognized and admired his opponent's
resolution and tenacity, and that Botha was conscious of his
recognition. These two strong men knew one another's
strength ; and in after years Botha was able to say smilingly
to one who knew him that he was " Kitchener's man ".

On ist April Botha returned from the interview with
De Wet to his own camp at Rietspruit. Two decisions had
resulted from the interview: one, that small-arm ammunition
should be husbanded till supplies could be captured, and,
therefore, that attacks in the open should be superseded for

1 Official Hittory of the War, Vol. IV, p. 124.

SOME OF LORD KITCHENER'S OPPONENTS

GENERAL CHRISTIAAN DE WET GENERAL KRITZINGER

GENERAL J. C. SMUTS
GENERAL C. F. BEYERS GENERAL BEN VILJOEN

From photographs by Fane (Bloemfontein), Duff us Bros., and Elliott & Fry

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 133

the present by attacks on railways; the other, that the repre-
sentatives of the Orange State and the Transvaal should meet.
The meeting took place; the railways were incessantly raided;
and the chapter of events of this period was suitably rounded
off by the continued efforts of the commandos and com-
mandants who had been left in Cape Colony in the backwash
of De Wet's invasion. De Wet's expulsion had left the
colony in a condition which, if not alarming, was, at any rate,
exasperating and inconvenient. Any minor leader who could
raise a following to take the field could stoke the ashes of
rebellion. Only trivial outbreaks arose; yet they persisted so
long, they spread over so wide a country, that for the rest
of the war Cape Colony needed 50,000 troops — British and
Colonial — to keep it in order, and was a never-ceasing worry
to the Commander-in-Chief. Kritzinger, who had gone in
with Hertzog in advance of De Wet, and had temporarily
faded away, was for some time the outstanding figure. With
him were associated Fouche and Scheepers. Kritzinger was a
De Wet on a small scale — equally self-confident, equally ready
to allow opponents to surround him as long as they left a
possible loophole. De Wet's retreat left him unmoved, and
he continued the game of leading the columns of Gorringe
and Herbert a chase from Dassiefontein to Twist Kraal (appro-
priate name!), and thence to Dwars Vlei Siding, all the time
that his nominal leader was being chased back and forth along
the fords of the Orange River. He was joined by Malan;
and meanwhile Scheepers had been similarly dragging Grenfell
and Sir Charles Parsons about the Klaarstroom district. When
De Wet had gone, with General Lyttelton's command after him,
a new team of columns, under the direction of Major-General
Settle, took up the pursuit in Cape Colony. The Colony now
became the field of kaleidoscopic operations in which Krit-
zinger, Fouche, Scheepers, and Malan — sometimes united in
various combinations, sometimes separate, sometimes joined

i34 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

by new apparitions — were on the one side; and on the other
were some fifteen to twenty British columns, the names of
whose leaders are at this time of day more interesting than
their movements and a vast deal more comprehensible. Major-
General Settle went home before the operations were ended,
passing on the command in the midland area to Colonel (after-
wards Sir) Douglas Haig, subsequently. Commander-in-Chief
in France. Major-General Hector Macdonald went home too,
but among the leaders of columns in the chase, which lasted
well into June before Kritzinger's forces had been whittled
into ineffectiveness, were Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. Gorringe
(afterwards in Mesopotamia), Lieutenant- Colonel Crabbe,
Lieutenant -Colonel Henniker, Lieutenant -Colonel Grenfell,
Lieutenant -Colonel Colenbrander, Colonel Sir C. Parsons,
Lieutenant -Colonel H. B. De Lisle, Colonel A. E. Codring-
ton, and Colonel S. C. N. Monro.

In the larger and more spectacular operations of the
war the difficulty which Lord Kitchener had in bringing to
rest the commandos in perpetual motion in Cape Colony has
been too often lost sight of. His lieutenants, Lieutenant-
General Forestier- Walker, >and after him Major-General A.
S. Wynne, who were in command in Cape Colony, were
hampered by the anomaly that there was no general martial
law in a country which was infected with rebellion. Martial
law was proclaimed from time to time in many districts, but
it stopped short at the seaports. His officers looked on
powerless while munitions of war, or what were reported as
such, and mail-bags containing matter little less encouraging
to the enemy, were landed at the dockyards and delivered at
their destinations. His Intelligence Department knew the
spies and the agents, but he could not lay them by the heels.
It was not till the following October that Lord Kitchener
succeeded in reducing this handicap by obtaining the proclama-
tion of martial law in Cape Town and all the other ports, and

KITCHENER'S TASK IN SOUTH AFRICA 135

thus removed a source of serious weakness in the conduct of
the campaign. But in the interval Kritzinger had returned
to Cape Colony, and S. G. Maritz and Scheepers had been
followed by other leaders. Ultimately they were succeeded by
General J. C. Smuts, the one man who, had he been suffi-
ciently supported, could have united the incessant gyrations of
the marauding bands into a coherent and effective campaign
of offence.

General J. C. Smuts — afterwards commander of the British
forces in East Africa — had the patriotism, the keen observa-
tion, the tactical opportunism, the mingled daring and caution,
of the best of the Boer leaders. But, like General Botha, his
observation was enlarged by a certain statesmanship and pre-
science which marked him out from those whose vision was
bounded by the line of kopjes. Sharing the inextinguishable
hope and bitter resolve of his fellow-countrymen, his animosity
against his country's enemies was ennobled ever by soldier-like
chivalry. He was an opponent of whom it is one of the
greatest of British triumphs to have made a friend.

E. S. G.

CHAPTER VII

Wearing down the Boer Resistance

French's "Sweeping" Movements — Plumer pursues De Wet — De la Key's
Defeat by Babington — Assault on Dixon's Rear-guard — Boer War Council under
Difficulties — Lord Kitchener's Dispatch — Capture of the Orange Free State "Govern-
ment" at Reitz — Banishment Proclamation — Refugee Camps — Botha on the Natal
Border — Capture of Letter's Commando — Limited Success of Sweeping Movements
— Boer Forces still in the Field — Kitchener develops his Blockhouse System.

THE failure of his efforts for peace at Middelburg was
accepted by Lord Kitchener as a challenge to re-
double his energy in pursuing the military campaign.
He went to work with characteristic thoroughness in order to
bring home to the Boers the hopelessness of their gallant
struggle against the might of the Empire. As it turned out,
the British forces had a long task yet to convince the Boers of
that fact, but through the whole chapter of varying fortune
Lord Kitchener's persistence never flagged, nor did the people
at home waver for an instant in their faith in him. The name
of Kitchener was a synonym for success. He determined,
among other things, to press the advance northwards to
Pietersburg and the country to the north of the Delagoa Bay
line, which had not so far been visited by British troops. His
appeal for mounted men had met with ready response. Rein-
forcements had arrived, and more were to come. From the
Colonies 5000 horsemen were dispatched; from home 20,000
cavalry, mounted infantry, and yeomanry were sent; while
Baden -Powell's constabulary force had recruited 10,000
mounted men in Great Britain, South Africa, and Canada.
Altogether the reinforcements of horsemen which reached

186

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 137

South Africa before the end of April, 1901, numbered over
35,000, and raised the force of cavalry under Lord Kitchener's
command to the prodigious figure of between 50,000 and
60,000.

Before all the fresh troops had arrived, Lord Kitchener was
busy weakening the enemy. The chief blow was delivered by
the drive down the eastern Transvaal, carried out by eight
columns under command of General French. French had
moved eastward on 28th January, 1901, with a view to dealing
with the Transvaal Boers who were concentrated in the triangle
formed by the Delagoa railway, the Natal railway, and the
Swaziland and Zululand frontiers. The columns started their
drive from different points of the Delagoa and Natal railway
lines. The troops endured considerable hardships, enhanced in
the case of the four southern columns by the failure of supplies,
which obliged them to live on the country for more than a
fortnight. Owing to incessant rain, the ground was one great
quagmire. But the operations, though rendered slow and
difficult, went forward. On i6th March French abandoned
the Luneberg-Utrecht line of communications and trusted to
a new line via Volksrust and Wakkerstroom, and to Vryheid,
which was well filled with supplies. He arrived at Vryheid
on 25th March, and engaged in telegraphic exchanges with
Lord Kitchener across 320 miles of wire. Two days later the
last beat of the drive was started, and on 4th April French was
able to announce the capture of the last piece of artillery in
that district. To be completely successful the operations should
have included the capture of Commandant -General Louis
Botha, who escaped with nearly 3000 of his following. But a
blow had been delivered from which the Boers never recovered.
Botha's intended invasion of Natal was completely frustrated.
Botha, Meyer, and Viljoen had evaded capture, but Boer con^
centration was broken up. General French entrained at
Dundee, and on 2oth April was back in Johannesburg.

138 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Meanwhile Lord Kitchener had arranged a similar scheme
of operations to be worked out to the northward of the
Pretoria -Delagoa Bay railway. Brigadier -General Plumer
was brought up from the pursuit of De Wet in Orange River
Colony and left Pretoria on 26th March for Pietersburg, which
was occupied almost without fighting on 8th April. Plumer
had with him a mounted force of 1200 Australian and New
Zealand troops and eight guns. Remaining at Pietersburg
six days, he left a garrison and proceeded to seize the Oliphant
River drifts. Lieutenant-General Sir Bindon Blood operated
from the south and east with six columns, moving from
Lydenburg, Witklip, Belfast, and Middelburg. Early in May
no fewer than thirteen columns were prepared to resume
operations in the south-eastern Transvaal, where bands of the
enemy were again gathering. Lord Kitchener directed forces
under Brigadier-General G. M. Bullock and Colonel M. R
Rimington on Ermelo, where Botha and B. Viljoen were in
company.

In the Orange River Colony Plumer had been on the
heels of De Wet, but never quite within striking distance
of that elusive quarry. Late on the ist of March, for
instance, the British general was in Springfontein, and thence
hurried across to Philippolis, only to learn that De Wet
had already passed on his way to Fauresmith. By forced
marches Plumer arrived at Fauresmith on 5th March, but
the mobile De Wet was twenty hours ahead of him. Plumer
continued the pursuit as far as Brandfort, where, on I2th
March, his progress was halted by torrential rains. Two
days earlier a combined movement began to clear the country
east of the railway from the Orange River to the Bloemfontein-
Thaba N'chu-Basutoland line. This was held by Boer forces
under Vice-Chief-Commandant Piet Fourie, but the British
columns under Lieutenant - General Lyttelton (afterwards
succeeded by Major-General Bruce Hamilton), commanded by

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 139

Colonels Thorneycroft, T. E. Hickman, Haig (afterwards Sir
Douglas), and Bethune, swept them north and captured large
numbers of horses and stock and some prisoners. The
country to the east and south-east of Heilbron was cleared by
Lieutenant-Colonel Williams's column at the end of March.
In April Lord Kitchener ordered Sir Leslie Rundle to conduct
a reconnaissance, on the results of which future action would
be decided. The town of Fouriesberg, which was entered
on 2nd May, was for the next month Sir Leslie Rundle's
base for raids in all directions.

Natal in April was continually threatened from Botha's
Pass and the west, but the chief irruption of the enemy was
in the Nkandhla and Mahlabitini districts of Zululand. A
small column under Major A. J. Chapman of the Royal
Dublin Fusiliers temporarily dislodged them from the former
by a sharp attack at Babanango on 26th April. Two days
later the Boers attacked the magistracy at Mahlabitini and
were repulsed with loss by the Natal Police. The Police
were in very inferior numbers, and lost seven out of the
twenty men forming the garrison.

Meanwhile De la Rey's contemplated invasion of Cape
Colony was abandoned, owing partly to scarcity of Boer
remounts. This Boer leader also had his work cut out in
his own country to escape destruction at the hands of General
Babington, whose columns were operating in the western
Transvaal with great vigour. De la Rey attacked the Lichten-
burg garrison on 3rd March, and was beaten off with loss.
Babington marched on Lichtenburg from Naauwpoort, and
followed De la Rey towards Klerksdorp. On 22nd March
De la Rey cut up a British scouting-party, but two days later,
when De la Rey was imagining he had surprised the British, he
himself was surprised. General Babington, coming upon him
to the south-west of Ventersdorp, drove his force before him
in disorder after De la Rey had lost no small proportion of

1 40 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

his fighting force. Another smart piece of work resulted in
the capture of Smuts's main laager on i4th April by Colonel
Sir H. Rawlinson's column.

But if De la Rey had been headed off Cape Colony, there
were others. The Cape was kept in a state of uneasiness
during April and May by those continued depredations of
Scheepers, Kritzinger, Lotta, Fouch£, and Smuts, of which
mention was made in the preceding chapter. These bands not
only captured some British troops in Cape Colony, but inter-
fered with the railways and trade. On 9th June General French
took command in Cape Colony, and at once set to work to
expel the invaders, but several months were to elapse before
the task could be completed.

A regular army in pursuit of skilled guerrilla warriors—
that was the condition the campaign more and more presented
as time went on. In the eastern Transvaal the month of
March, 1901, was marked by a succession of blown-up trains.
But if it was guerrilla warfare, the Boers nevertheless became
alert to the necessity of discipline. A certain change was
observed about this time in their system. Instead of each
small commando operating in its own district, they tried to
concentrate into larger units, with gradation of ranks and a
code of discipline after the British model. Nothing, however,
could alter the mode of fighting which the character of the
country and their own equipment, and even temperament,
imposed upon them. Hence for the British the elementary
and yet the great difficulty was to find the enemy, to confront
him in a position to offer battle. British generals were de-
lighted when they got this opportunity; but the Boers, riding
light, excelled in mobility, and were occasionally able on this
account to get in a surprise blow. On 29th May such an
attack was delivered by De la Rey's forces. A small column
under General Dixon was sent into the Magaliesberg region
to search for buried guns and ammunition on farms at Vlak-

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 141

hoek and Waterval. The approaches to these places from
Vlakfontein consisted of two parallel ridges with a valley
between. Dixon himself was in the valley; Lieutenant-Colonel
C. E. Duff marched along the right-hand ridge and Major H.
Chance on the left. After searching the farms in vain —
though on Watervaal he found the spot from which the buried
guns had been removed — Dixon ordered a general retirement.
Throughout the march Boers had been seen to the west. On
the return march towards Vlakfontein, Chance was rear-guard,
his force consisting of 250 Imperial Yeomanry, 100 Derby-
shires, and two guns. Dixon was nearing camp when he
became aware that shrapnel from Chance's ridge was bursting
among the tents. The Boers were under Kemp, a dashing
leader who was now generally placed in charge by De la Rey
when there was fighting to be done. When Dixon had made
for a camping-ground at Vlakfontein, a few weeks previously,
he encountered Kemp's parties, but he never suspected that
Kemp had begun collecting a force at Tafel Kop as soon as he
disappeared from that place.

Kemp, in fact, had now 3000 men under him. They set
fire to the dry veldt grass, and, under cover of the smoke and
flame, came to close quarters with the British rear-guard, and
for a time succeeded in getting possession of two guns.
Chance managed to dispatch a message before the end of the
struggle round the guns. Dixon at once delivered a vigorous
counter-attack, and the burghers turned the fire of the cap-
tured guns upon the British. Our infantry showed desperate
courage, which was rewarded. In face of their impetuous
rush the Boers mounted hastily and galloped away. A big
British disaster was averted, and the two guns were retaken.
In his dispatch describing this action Lord Kitchener wrote :

" The rear-guard retired for about a mile along the ridge leading to
the camp and formed up again to cover the main body, which had
diverged slightly to the north. A large body of the enemy had mean-

I ?;

/'• > ; I * «

142 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

while assembled in the valley to the south of the ridge on which the
rear-guard was posted. These advanced rapidly against the left of the
position, and, appearing suddenly through the smoke of the grass fire,
shot down the gunners and gun-teams at short range, and inflicted heavy
loss on the infantry and yeomanry. The rear-guard was forced to retire,
and as, owing to the loss of the horses, the guns could not be removed,
they fell temporarily into the enemy's hands. General Dixon, however,
had at once gone to the assistance of his rear-guard, and on his arrival
with reinforcements the Boers were driven out of the position they had
seized and the guns recaptured."

We now turn to examine a little the comings and goings
among the Boer leaders and the political staffs of the late
Republican Governments. After his attack on Smith-Dorrien
on 6th February, 1901, at the north end of Lake Chrissie,
Botha had joined the Transvaal Government at Roos Senekal.
His interview with Lord Kitchener, described in the preceding
chapter, took place on 28th February at Middelburg, and on
1 6th March he had refused the terms of peace which Lord
Kitchener h"ad offered. At this time he returned from Roos
Senekal to Ermelo, establishing his head-quarters outside the
town, at Rietspruit. There he had received news of the failure
of De Wet's descent upon Cape Colony, and had decided on
that renewal of attacks on the British lines of communications
to which reference has already been made.

Another result of the interview was seen presently in the
holding of a conference between the Governments of the two
States. Botha escorted Mr. Schalk Burger to Vrede, and was
back at Reitspruit on i6th April. Again there creeps in the
suggestion of terminating the fight. " The war must now be
brought to an end," declared General B. Viljoen to his colleagues
on 28th April. Viljoen had perhaps better reason than some
others to realize the hopelessness of the struggle. He had just
emerged from a desperately tight place after Colonel Benson's
success at Klipspruit. Hemmed in, as it seemed, beyond

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 143

escape, he burnt all his transport; about 100 of his burghers
surrendered to Benson at Blinkwater; and with his depleted
force Viljoen had just managed to evade capture by stealing
away in the darkness on the night of 22nd April, crossing the
Steelpoort at Lagersdrift, and thence making north-westward
towards the banks of the Oliphant, which he reached before
dawn.

Mr. Kruger was at The Hague, and several months had
passed since the German Emperor, by declining to receive
him, had set the seal of doom upon any hopes that may have
been entertained of his mission to Europe on behalf of the
two republics. On loth May General Botha asked permission
of Lord Kitchener to send two envoys to Mr. Kruger to lay
the state of affairs before him. Mrs. Botha was allowed by
Lord Kitchener to leave for Europe on what proved to be
a futile peace mission to Mr. Kruger, and leave was given to
send a private cablegram. The next occurrence of importance
in this series was the Council of War held on 2oth June. It
was not brought off without a good deal of manoeuvring and
adventure, for all those who took part in it had been and were
the objects daily of a relentless hunt on the part of the British
army. On 2oth June, at Hartebeestspruit, Sir Bindon Blood
received news that Botha and the members of the Transvaal
Government were close to the westward. He lost no time in
sending a flying column under Babington towards Kaffirstad.
On the 2 ist news arrived from Babington that the enemy
was moving up the Oliphant River. This intelligence proved
to be belated, Botha and the "government" having passed that
way escorted by Viljoen two days before. But in order to get
westward to the place of meeting from the Amsterdam district
the Transvaalers had had to abandon every vehicle. Conducted
by Viljoen, they wormed their way successfully almost through
the midst of the British columns. Meanwhile Steyn and his
companions, on their part, riding from Vrede, had no sooner

i44 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

escaped from a blockhouse south of Platrand and dashed
across the railway than a dynamite mine exploded just behind
them. How narrowly they missed being blown up was
apparent to the British next morning, when two horses, some
burnt clothing, and a rifle were found there. Arriving at
Blauw Kop, on the Vaal, Steyn and De Wet spent three days
waiting for the Transvaal contingent. The council of war
then opened on 2oth June at Branddrift, on the Waterval
River, and was continued, for reasons of safety, on the follow-
ing day on the farm Witbank, twenty -six miles east of
Heidelberg. Besides those already named, there were present
State-Secretary Reitz, Generals Hertzog, Spruyt, De la Rey,
Smuts, Muller, Lucas Meyer, and others. In their midst was
a silken banner which had been worked by Boer ladies in
Pretoria.

The upshot of the deliberations was expressed in the
following resolution, in which the hand and mind of Mr.
Steyn can be clearly traced: —

w The Governments of the South African Republic and Orange
Free State, with the advice of the ;said chief officers, and taking into
consideration the satisfactory report of His Honour State-President
Kruger and the Deputation in the foreign country, and considering the
good progress of our cause in the Colonies, where our brothers oppose
the cruel injustice done to the Republics more and more in depriving
them of their independence, considering further the invaluable personal
and material sacrifices they have made for our cause, which would all
be worthless and vain with a peace whereby the independence of the
Republics is given up, and further considering the certainty that the
losing of our independence after the destruction already done and losses
suffered will drag with it the national and material annihilation of the
entire people, and especially considering the spirit of unbending per-
sistence with which the great majority of our men, women, and children
are still possessed, and in which we see with thankful acknowledgment
the hand of the Almighty Protector, resolve: that no peace will be made
and no peace conditions accepted by which our independence and national
existence, or the interests of our Colonial brethren, shall be price paid,

LORD KITCHENER ON THE VELDT

shortly before peace was signed on May 31, 1902

From a drawing by H. W. Koekkoek

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 145

and that the war will be vigorously prosecuted by taking all measures
necessary for maintenance of independence and interests."

Less official accounts of the proceedings, however, attributed
to the conference a certain amount of dissatisfaction with Mr.
Kruger, and disappointment at the poor results of his
European mission. A cablegram from Mr. Kruger was de-
livered to General Botha through Major- General F. W.
Kitchener on 5th July. It ran as follows: —

" Botha, De Wet, De la Key, Steyn.

" Continue fighting. Alleviation will be sent when needed.
Enough for the present."

Lord Kitchener went doggedly on with his task. Slowly
but surely he was wearing down the tenacious enemy. A few
examples will show the nature of the widespread activities on
both sides. As a rule the records of the operations are not
very interesting, but every now and then in the tireless pursuit
an incident would occur which displayed the initiative of the
British soldier at his best. On the other hand, instances are
recorded of surprise blows which the Boers were still capable of
delivering during these operations.

As another illustration of the work that was going on, a
notable feat accomplished by our transport service at this period
is cited in proof of British efficiency. Major-General E. L.
Elliot's five columns, on reaching Glen in April after prolonged
operations, telegraphed to the Staff Officer for Transport at
Bloemfontein that their transport required overhauling and
repairing. Within forty-eight hours the columns were refitted
by the Assistant Adjutant-General for Transport and his re-
pairing staff; 96 unserviceable vehicles were exchanged; 124
were repaired ; over 500 unserviceable wheels were replaced ;
all harness was repaired or exchanged ; 300 mules were issued
to replace casualties, and 200 mules were exchanged.1 Finally,

1 History of the War in South Africa, M, H. Grant, 1910.
VOL. II. 25

146 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

as typical of the combined military operations, take that which
was begun in the eastern Transvaal on loth June under the
direction of Brigadier-General Spens, with the object of thor-
oughly searching a mountainous region. General Spens and
Colonel Park operated northwards from Nelspruit ; Colonels
Benson and Douglas moved north-east from Machadodorp.
By the end of June the area had been thoroughly cleared.

In the South African mid-winter Lord Kitchener penned a
long dispatch (8th July) analysing the general effect of all such
operations as having been a gradual weakening of the enemy's
power of offence. He described the situation that had now
been reached in the war. During May and June, he said, the
Boer losses had undoubtedly been very heavy, and in the con-
stant small fights and skirmishes there must have been many
unreported casualties. He also noted that, while the Boers had
an apparently inexhaustible supply of meat and mealies, they
were short of ammunition. Though still able, in case of
emergency, to concentrate a considerable number of men, they
were now, in his opinion, unable to undertake any large scheme
of operations.

" I consider ", Lord Kitchener added, " that throughout the Trans-
vaal, Orange River Colony, and Cape Colony there are now not more
than 13,500 Boers in the field, but with long lines of railway to hold,
every yard of which has to be defended, both to secure our own military
and civil supplies, and, what is more important, to prevent the enemy
from obtaining necessaries by the capture of our trains, the employment
of a large number of troops continues to be a necessity. Mobile columns
are also required to. operate against the scattered bands of the enemy and
complete the, exhaustion of his resources."

At the very moment of Lord Kitchener's dispatch summing
up the crude facts of the situation, a dramatic coup was being
prepared against the Orange Free State Government. Elliot
on 9th July, 1901, ordered a night raid on Reitz. Broadwood
received the order too late to put it into execution that night,

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 147

Next night he shared in a general advance as far as Reitgat,
and then suddenly wheeled round with 400 mounted men
under cover of darkness and passed behind the brigades of the
centre. His design was to surround Reitz at dawn on the
iith, but the straying of one of his connecting files delayed
this plan, so that daybreak found him still three miles distant
from Reitz. At a gallop his men bore down upon the sleep-
ing township. Broadwood had a pleasant surprise. He had
expected to find only a small commando, instead of which
Steyn and all his military and political staff lay in Reitz.
Little opposition was offered. All Steyn's correspondence
and his treasury, containing j£ii,ooo; in Orange Free State
notes, were captured. The whole staff was taken, including
Mr. Steyn's brother (Field -Cornet Steyn), also Generals
A. P. Cronje and J. B. Wessels, Commandant O. Dowel,
T. Brain (the ex-President's private secretary), and twenty-
four other officials. Mr. Steyn himself alone escaped.
Without coat or boots he galloped off across the veldt before
his absence was discovered. An officer and a sergeant saw
him go, and, though unaware of his identity, pursued him and
gained upon him. Then their horses, which had done a long
night ride, stopped dead-beat. The sergeant leapt to the
ground and made to fire at the solitary fleeing Boer, who
was only eighty yards off, but the night's frost had disabled
the action of the bolt of his rifle, so that repeated attempts
failed to get a shot. To this lucky chance Steyn owed his
escape. Broadwood's exploit earned the commendation of
Lord Kitchener, who pronounced it "a fine piece of work,
admirably conceived and carried out".

After De Wet had been compelled to recross the Orange
River, Lord Milner travelled north to confer with Lord
Kitchener, and in May left for England for a rest. His stay
at home lasted till loth August, and during this period an
important act of policy was decided upon with a view to

i48 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

bringing the war to an end. The suggestion for a banish-
ment proclamation was wired to Mr. Chamberlain in London
by the Natal Government on 24th July. It was substantially
adopted by the Colonial Secretary, who wired instructions to
Lord Kitchener on joth July, but asked him before issuing
it to communicate its terms to the governors of Cape Colony
and Natal in order to ascertain whether those Governments
agreed to them. Mr. Chamberlain stated that in the opinion
of His Majesty's Government the terms " seem to be fully
warranted by the existing situation, and calculated to have
a good effect in bringing about a more rapid termination of
hostilities*'. The proclamation was accordingly issued by
Lord Kitchener, on yth August, in these terms : —

" Whereas the late Orange Free State and the late South African
Republic have been annexed to His Majesty's dominions; and whereas
His Majesty's forces are, and have for some considerable time been, in
complete possession of the seats of government of both the aforesaid
territories, with their public offices and the whole machinery of adminis-
tration, as well as of all the principal towns and the whole of the railway
lines; and whereas the great majority of the burghers of the two late
Republics, to the number of 35,000, exclusive of those who have fallen
in the war, are now either prisoners or have submitted to His Majesty's
Government and are living peaceably in towns or camps under the
control of His Majesty's forces; and whereas the burghers of the late
Republics still in arms against His Majesty are not only few in numbers
but have lost almost all their guns and munitions of war, and are devoid
of regular military organization, and are therefore unable to carry on
regular warfare or to offer any organized resistance to His Majesty's
forces in any part of the country; and whereas those burghers who are
still in arms, though unable to carry on regular warfare, continue to
make isolated attacks upon small posts and detachments of His Majesty's
forces, to plunder or destroy property, and to damage the railway and
telegraph lines, both in the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal
and in other portions of His Majesty's South African dominions; and
whereas the country is thus kept in a state of disturbance, checking the
resumption of agricultural and industrial pursuits; and whereas His

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 149

Majesty's Government is determined to put an end to a state of things
which is aimlessly prolonging bloodshed and destruction and inflicting
ruin upon the great majority of the inhabitants, who are anxious to live
in peace and to earn a livelihood for themselves and families; and whereas
it is just to proceed against those still resisting, and especially against
those persons who, being in a position of authority, are responsible for
the continuance of the present state of lawlessness, and are instigating
their fellow -burghers to continue their hopeless resistance to His
Majesty's Government: Now therefore I, Lord Kitchener, under instruc-
tions from His Majesty's Government, proclaim and make known as
follows: All commandants, field-cornets, and leaders of armed bands,
being burghers of the late Republics, still engaged in resisting His
Majesty's forces, whether in the Orange River Colony and the Trans-
vaal or in any other portion of His Majesty's South African dominions,
and all members of the Governments of the late Orange Free State and
the late South African Republic, shall, unless they surrender before the
1 5th of September next, be permanently banished from South Africa;
the cost of the maintenance of the families of all burghers in the field
who shall not have surrendered by I5th September shall be recoverable
from such burghers and shall be a charge upon their property, movable
and immovable, in the two Colonies."

Very soon this proclamation was criticized by a number
of Liberals in the House of Commons (25th August), includ-
ing Sir William Harcourt. His attitude was not on all fours
with that of his colleague in the Opposition, Mr. Asquith.
Harcourt questioned whether we were justified in depriving
the Boers of the privileges of belligerents. Mr. Asquith,
on the other hand, held that no question of international law
was involved. The persons in arms against us were de jure
and de facto His Majesty's subjects, and the proclamation was
a warning to them that unless they surrendered by a particular
date they would be liable to banishment and expulsion. But
both speakers regarded with scepticism the probable effect of
the proclamation. It would exasperate our opponents and
would not aid us to subdue them, said Sir William Harcourt.
We must bring the war to a conclusion, said Mr. Asquith;

150 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

we must take steps to prevent the possibility of a recurrence
of the dangers from which it originated, and we must lay the
first stones of an enduring fabric of liberty and justice.

The proclamation of yth August belonged in fact to the
class of policies which are only justified by the success that
attends them. It was not a success. Lord Kitchener, of
course, did his best with it. In sending a copy to Botha he
wrote:

"Your Honour is, I am sure, fully aware that I have consistently
endeavoured to bring the war to an end with due consideration for your
burghers. The continuance of a futile guerrilla warfare, however, has
produced an abnormal and unprecedented situation, more than three-
quarters of the total Burgher population of the Transvaal and Orange
River Colony being now maintained by us in idleness awaiting the ter-
mination of hostilities. Besides the 35,000 men mentioned in the pro-
clamation 74,589 women and children are in our camps. I trust that
Your Honour will seriously consider the present and prospective con-
dition of the Burghers. As Your Honour is aware from Mr. Kruger's
telegram, ' Intervention by a foreign Power is at present hopeless*. Your
military resources and ammunition are almost exhausted, and one day an
end must come; continued resistance by the Burghers in the present
hostilities can therefore lead to no other result save that the people of
this country will be in a worse condition both morally and materially by
delaying the inevitable termination. There is still time for those leaders
who have in all sincerity the welfare of their people at heart to prevent
further waste of life and property by acknowledging that the time has
now come for a peaceful solution and thus enabling both races to settle
down harmoniously together under the new regime, mutually working
for the restoration of the prosperity of the country, and towards wiping
out the traces of the terrible vicissitudes through which it has recently
passed."

Botha acknowledged Lord Kitchener's letter on
August, but the gist of his reply was that his commandos
were now as well, if not better, organized than in the
beginning of the war. He protested against the proclamation,
as did Steyn and De Wet, and all declared they would go on

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 151

fighting. Steyn argued about the origins of the war, but
Lord Kitchener replied to him on 25th August that "although
I am always willing to do my utmost to end the present war,
I cannot meet your honour to discuss any possible future
independence of the late Republics". De la Rey met the pro-
clamation with a counter-proclamation to all burghers of the
western district of the South African Republic, warning them
"not to allow themselves to be misled". Briefly, the British
proclamation of yth August failed of its intended effect. On
the day following it, Commandant De Villiers and two field-
cornets surrendered at Warmbaths. Two days later Com-
mandant Wolmarans, ex-chairman of the First Volksraad, was
captured. But the totals surrendered were far from enough.
The proclamation was followed on 29th September by another
providing for the sale of the properties of Boers still in the
field. But no real attempt was made to levy upon the re-
calcitrant burghers' property.

Large refugee camps had been established in the Transvaal,
the Orange River Colony, Natal, and Cape Colony. In July,
1901, the number of persons in them was 93,940, apart from
24,457 coloured refugees in camps ; and in August the number
increased to 1 10,723, composed of 16,829 men> 38,568 women,
and 55,326 children. Owing in great measure to the fact that
campaigning and hardships had ruined many constitutions, the
death-rate in May was as high as 1 16.76 per 1000, and in June
109.1 per 1000. There was much criticism in Great Britain
of the condition of the concentration camps, especially as the
result of a description published by Miss Hobhouse of her
visit to them. A commission of ladies, headed by Mrs.
Fawcett, which was appointed in July, visited twenty-one of
the camps during the next three months, and, working in con-
junction with the local authorities, made various recommen-
dations, all of which Lord Kitchener was able to inform the
Secretary of State for War had been adopted where the circum-

1 52 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

stances permitted. The refugees included those who entered
the camps with their herds for protection, and were self-
supporting, those who surrendered but were not self-sup-
porting, and those whose husbands were on commando and
who were brought into camp for military reasons or for their
own protection against natives. Free intercourse among them-
selves was allowed to the refugees, and they had permission
to visit the town adjacent to the camps. The camp staffs
included superintendents, store-keepers, medical officers, dis-
pensers, and assistants. Experts in the treatment of plague
and famine conditions in India were brought out in order that
no precaution should be neglected. For many of their ills the
refugees themselves were responsible. Too often they showed
no disposition to follow the doctor's orders, preferring to abide
by local habits and remedies. On top of a severe measles
epidemic in several camps pneumonia supervened in bitterly
cold weather with deplorable results. The brighter side of
the picture was the contentment of a large proportion of the
refugees. Wherever possible, education was carried on with
good results.

The complaints of the inevitable hardships in these con-
centration camps sound strangely in ears which have listened
to the way in which war has been conducted by some of the
belligerents in the world conflict of 1914 and the years that
followed it. Wood and iron buildings were erected ; over-
crowding was prevented ; clothing was given free ; bedding,
plates, knives, were supplied if needed at Government expense;
baths and washhouses were provided; the food was on a
scale of great liberality; there were camp inspectors, hospitals,
nurses, clergymen — in short what could be done to make
tolerable a measure which Lord Kitchener had described as
repugnant to himself was done.

The Colonial Secretary was called upon to answer criticism
of the concentration camps by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 153

in the House of Commons on 2nd August, 1901. Mr.
Chamberlain defended the policy on the ground that it would
be inhuman to leave the women and children on the desert
veldt. Although there had been a lamentable mortality in some
of the camps, the mortality would have been still greater if the
camps had not existed. Thousands of Boers came into the
camps voluntarily. Regarding the policy of devastation of
the country, which was matter of parliamentary controversy at
the same time, Mr. Chamberlain urged its necessity where it
was carried out in order to prevent supplies from falling into
the hands of the Boer forces.

From the desolation of their own veldt the Boers turned
once more with longing eyes to the fertile districts of Natal.
The British prepared in great strength to render an incursion
impossible. On 4th September Lieutenant-General the Hon.
N. G. Lyttelton assumed command in Natal ; and during the
next six weeks there were dispatched by train to repel the
threatened invasion of the colony 882 officers, 23,536 men, 45
guns, and 32,836 animals. Correspondence published subse-
quently went to show that Botha informed Viljoen of his
intention to be near Glencoe about the middle of September.
The Boer Commandant-General, who was doubtless seeking by
a bold stroke to preoccupy those of his followers who were
brooding over the Kitchener proclamation, seems indeed to
have been confident that he could sweep into Natal. In the
second week of September he was in the Ermelo district. On
iyth September a force under Colonel H. de la P. Gough was
making a reconnaissance from Dundee — three companies of
mounted infantry with two guns of the 69th Royal Field Artil-
lery. Finding a small body of the enemy, he engaged them at
once, but was led on until two large bodies, each consisting of
500 men, fell upon him from the flank and rear at Scheeper's
Nek. The fight lasted only twenty minutes. Surrounded by
many hundreds of Botha's riflemen in a difficult country, the

154 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

British force was overwhelmed. One officer and 19 men were
killed; 5 officers and 19 men wounded; 6 officers and 235 men
were taken prisoner; while Gough himself and a few others man-
aged to escape. The Boer tactics on this occasion were the same
as they had employed at Vlakfontein — a large number of men
riding swiftly in open order among the British and firing from
the saddle. A few days after this success Botha moved to the
Zulu border. Nine British columns of all arms were ready to
block his path to Natal. His plans, however, were completely
upset on 26th September as a result of an attack upon two
small posts which guarded the British frontier and were part
of a chain erected at the time of the old Zulu War. These
were Fort Prospect and Itala, situated fifteen miles apart. At
the former the garrison, under Captain C. A. Rowley of the
2nd Dorsets, numbered 86 men; while the defender of Itala
was Major A. J. Chapman of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, with
300 men and 2 guns. The attack on Fort Prospect was de-
livered by Grobelaar, with several hundred burghers. Botha's
men were beaten off after a long day's severe fighting, which
began at 2 a.m. against Chapman, and at 4.30 a.m. against
Rowley. The Boers, although in overwhelmingly superior
numbers, were disheartened by the extraordinary vigour of the
resistance offered by the determined garrisons ; and Botha, who
directed the attack by signal from a neighbouring height, could
not ignore the fact that many British columns were on his flank
and rear. The water of the garrison of Itala was cut off early
in the attack, and by the evening their ammunition had run
low. Chapman, when the Boer fire died away at 7.30, there-
fore prepared to withdraw his men and his guns to Nkandhla,
where the survivors received the special thanks of Lord
Kitchener. At Fort Prospect a Durham company of militia
artillery distinguished itself, and the garrison greatly admired
the arrival of a body of Zululand Native Police, who, having
heard the firing, broke through the Boers to help the gallant

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 155

defenders. Shortly after 6 p.m. the exhausted attackers retired.
A cordon was then drawn round the enemy, and Botha
narrowly escaped being cut off by Major -General F. W.
Kitchener and Lieutenant -Colonel Colvile, a brisk engage-
ment with his rear-guard taking place on 6th October. Botha
blamed bad weather and false information for the failure of his
raid on Natal. On 8th October he was heard of at Amsterdam.
Colonel M. F. Rimington, making a night march, came so near
to success in surrounding the Boer head-quarters that he actually
captured some of Botha's papers and personal property.

Cape Colony was still in a disturbed state. The Cape
Legislature complained at the continuance of insecurity within
their borders. Lord Kitchener's visit to General French at
Middelburg on i6th July, about the time that Scheepers was
escaping from the cordon in the Camdeboo area, indicated the
seriousness of the position. Lord Kitchener had recently been
occupied with the question of giving greater mobility to his
forces generally, and had formed a small number of special
columns. To these he gave a free hand regarding their move-
ments, and they were guided by special intelligence which they
themselves collected, in addition to any information that might
be sent to them. Under energetic commanders like Riming-
ton and Benson, such columns roamed about the country and
made a feature of raids by night. In August Lord Kitchener
developed this policy.

" The enemy", he said, "are now so reduced in numbers and
dispersed that greater mobility is required to deal with them. Each
column should therefore organize within itself well-mounted and lightly-
equipped bodies of picked officers and men prepared to go long distances
with a minimum of transport. The rate of captures can only be main-
tained by the more extended action of extremely mobile troops freed
of all encumbrances, whilst the remainder of the column clears the
country and escorts transport."

Following Lord Kitchener's visit to him in Cape Colony,

156 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

General French on joth July introduced a new departure in
tactics. With the object of pushing the Boer commandos
across the Orange River, he organized a combined drive, the
first stage in which consisted of manoeuvring troops to a
position southward of the enemy. He disposed eight columns
on a line Victoria West -Richmond -Middleburg- Schombie-
Sterkstroom, and the columns in marching south left wide
gaps between the flanks in order that the Boers should issue
through in the way French desired they should go. The
movement was partly successful. Early in September the
Cape rebel Letter was captured. Three officers — Colonel
H. J. Scobell, Lieutenant - Colonel B. J. C. Doran, and
Lieutenant- Colonel J. R. MacAndrew — shared the credit of
what Lord Kitchener described as "a brilliant success". Scobell
began on ist September by feigning to march to Bethesda,
really moving to Koude Heuvel. MacAndrew and his local
force went southward of Water Kloof, where Letter lay.
Doran blocked the eastern exits. Letter tried in vain to get
out in two opposite directions. His commando then re-united,
and by fighting a rear-guard action escaped into the country
east of Pietersburg. But Scobell, marching without baggage,
covered an enormous distance in one night, outmarching
Letter and taking him completely by surprise. Scobell located
him in a farm near Groen Kloof, and at i a.m. on a cold, wet
morning led his men out. Exhausted as they were, the
British rallied magnificently for this " one pulse more of firm
endeavour ". At dawn they got within striking distance of
the laager. The Boers offered fierce resistance; but they were
at the mercy of the Cape Mounted Riflemen, led by Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Lukin and Captains Purcell and Goldsworthy;
and two squadrons of the 9th Lancers under Captains Lord
D. Compton and E. Gordon. Five burghers dashed from the
farm-house and were killed; eight were killed in the kraals.
After half an hour's fighting a white flag went up — Lotter and

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 157

his commando (120 men) surrendered. The British casualties
were 9 killed and 9 wounded; Boer, 46 wounded. Two
hundred ponies and 30,000 rounds of ammunition were among
the booty that fell into Scobell's hands. Assistant Commandant-
General Smuts, by a remarkable feat, led a force across the
Orange River on 3rd September, and, hotly pursued southward,
had a success over British cavalry in a severe action at Modder-
fontein on iyth September, which supplied him with ammuni-
tion and remounts. Two days later, in the middle of the night,
Kritzinger, with 400 men, successfully attacked the post at
Quaggafontein, in defence of which Lieutenant-Colonel the
Hon. A. Murray met an heroic end. The same evening Krit-
zinger was found towards Vecht Kop by Thorneycroft, who re-
covered the gun he had taken from Murray and scattered his
commando. The Boers also suffered greatly in their Cape
Colony enterprise by the loss of Scheepers, who, having con-
tracted fever, was found in Wolve Hoek Farm on i ith October
by the loth Hussars. "From my heart I hope it is not true,"
wrote Steyn on hearing the news, "because he is nearly indis-
pensable to our cause." On the same day that brought
disaster to Scheepers, Maritz (who two months before had
captured the town of Van Rhyns Dorp and twenty-nine of
the Western Province Mounted Rifles) occupied Hopefield,
within three days' ride of Cape Town. The capital was now
under martial law. In the Boer scheme Maritz was to move
on Cape Town and Smuts on Port Elizabeth.

Events elsewhere call for brief mention. Two guns of
the 2 ist Battery Royal Horse Artillery, which went out with
1 60 mounted infantry, were lost in an affair at Sannah's Post
in the Orange River Colony on I9th September, but were re-
covered shortly afterwards. In the western Transvaal, Colonel
Kekewich's column was attacked by De la Rey and Kemp in
the half-dark of the morning of 3oth September at Moedwil.
The Boers were driven off, but both sides suffered heavily.

158 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

In spite of its troubles, due to the presence of the raiding-
parties, who were aided by sympathetic friends in the rural
districts, Cape Colony maintained its trade very well. A
great reception was given, alike in Natal and at the Cape, to
the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall (the present King and
Queen), who were on their Empire tour. Lord Kitchener
saw their Royal Highnesses in Maritzburg, when the Prince
presented Victoria Crosses and Distinguished Service medals,
and Zulu chiefs paid homage to their future Sovereign. He
accompanied the royal tourists out on the tender to their
yacht, the Ophir, where he bade them adieu. On i9th August
the Duke and Duchess made a triumphal progress from Simon's
Town to Cape Town.

" The fact that during the last two years you have been passing
through such troublous times," said the Duke in acknowledging the
presentation of addresses, " and that in addition to your other trials the
Colony has suffered from an outbreak of plague, from which it is not yet
entirely free,1 might well have detracted from the warmth of your
greeting; but in despite of all your trials and sufferings you have offered
us a welcome the warmth and cordiality of which we shall never forget."

Lord Kitchener wired to the Cape expressing regret at not
having been able to be personally in attendance upon their
Royal Highnesses during the visit, and on behalf of the army,
wishing them a pleasant voyage and all prosperity, to which
the Duke replied, sincerely thanking him and all ranks of the
army, stating that " the loyalty and good will displayed towards
us here is most gratifying", and adding that "it would have
been an additional pleasure to us had your presence here been
possible".

In proportion to the expenditure of effort the sweeping
movements which went on during the period under review in

1 Rinderpest made its appearance in July, and rendered necessary the inoculation of all
cattle. As the process throws them out of work for a fortnight or more, the efficiency of the
ox-transport service was affected.

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 159

this chapter met with only limited success. The Boer forces
were being subjected to a monthly reduction of 2000 by an
army of 200,000 effectives, the largest which Britain had
ever brought into the field. Intimate knowledge of the
country was an incalculable advantage to the Boers, trained as
they had been almost from their childhood to handle a rifle.
Speed and craft were the Boer instruments. They fought
without guns, which, when they captured them, were by way
of being only an encumbrance to them in that swiftness of
movement upon which their successful evasion of the British
columns depended. And the apparent ease with which, after
an area had been cleared, a roving band of Boers would come
in, prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that arose,
was tantalizing to the British regulars. During September
and October, in spite of sixty-four mobile British columns
being in the field, the total Boer casualties amounted only to
3851. In other words, each column killed, wounded, took
captive, or received the surrender of Boers at an average rate
of rather less than one per day over a period of sixty-one days.
Such a result clearly pointed to the fact that mu«h of the
marching, while it imposed great strain on the British troops,
was ineffectual, and that Boer commandos were in large
measure merely being pushed from one district to another.
Such a warfare as they carried on was only possible where
a country of such vast distances formed the theatre of opera-
tions. The tableland of South Africa is some 1,360,000
square miles in extent. The main theatre of war was the
central plateau which embraces northern Cape Colony, Basuto-
land, the Orange River Colony, northern Natal, and the
greater part of the Transvaal. Its greatest length from
Sutherland in Cape Colony to Lydenburg in the eastern
Transvaal was nearly 850 miles, and width, from Pietermaritz-
burg on the east to Kimberley on the west, over 300 miles.
The area of the Transvaal alone is nearly the same as that of

160 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Southern and Central Germany, together with Alsace-Lorraine.
In that land of broad distances guerrilla warfare could be main-
tained indefinitely unless very special measures were taken.

Meantime the system that was to lead to the final triumph
of the large British army over the comparatively small force
of Boers was being still further developed. Up to June the
blockhouse system was confined to railways. One fact alone
will suffice to demonstrate the success of the blockhouses,
erected at mile intervals or less, in making the railway traffic
secure. Whereas there were thirty instances of derailment
of trains in the last month of Lord Roberts's command, the
months of September and October, 1901, contributed only
two such cases. Armoured trains worked in conjunction with
the chain of blockhouses. About the middle of this year the
idea of throwing blockhouse lines across the country took
definite shape. The posts across the Orange River Colony
from Jacobsdal to Ladybrand had proved to be a considerable
obstacle to the enemy bands. In June a cross-country block-
house line was constructed from Groot Oliphant's River
station on the Komati Poort line to Vaal station on the Natal
line. A battalion of infantry was detailed as escort and to
assist in the work of erection. In the following month Lord
Kitchener ordered the Royal Engineer parties (who built the
circular blockhouse with gable roof, of the pattern devised
by Major S. R. Rice, for £16) to go west and run a line
up the Mooi River to its source, and thence across to
Naauwport. This line comprised thirty-seven blockhouses
in forty-four miles. Another line, the construction of which
was ordered by Lord Kitchener early in October, was to run
in the first instance from Heilbron to Frankfort. Those lines
of blockhouses in all directions divided the tract of territory
to be swept by the columns. They were composed of chains
of small forts, each of which held a garrison of from seven to
fifteen men, who were connected by telephone with the nearest

WEARING DOWN BOER RESISTANCE 161

point at which a mobile force was stationed. The cross-
country blockhouses, which incidentally afforded protection
for the mines in the Transvaal, were a necessary part of the
drives ; they created smaller areas in which the commandos
could be dealt with separately, and kept them off the lines
of communication and the towns. In some cases the forts
were connected for miles by barbed-wire fences, which could
not be cut without making a noise and giving the alarm.
Since the blockhouse lines invariably followed roads, in the
event of the railways being congested the wagon transport
could pass along those lines to convey supplies for the civil
populations of captured South African towns. Thus the twin
functions of Lord Kitchener as great military commander and
civil administrator in a difficult country went forward. The
system of blockhouses was to be continued until finally they
numbered over 8000, covering a total distance of about 3700
miles, and costing, with entanglements, nearly one million
sterling.

G. T.

VOL. II. 26

CHAPTER VIII

Last Phase of the Boer War

General J. C. Smuts and the Spring Campaign in Cape Colony — General Botha's
Attack on Colonel Benson — Bakenlaagte — De Wet in the Orange River Colony —
Western Transvaal — Major-General Bruce Hamilton's Drives in the Eastern Trans-
vaal— The Blockhouse System South of the Vaal — Lord Kitchener's Reversing
Pincers for De Wet — Northern Transvaal — De la Rey's Onslaught on Lord Methuen
— The Tweebosch Disaster.

WHEN the South African spring succeeded winter,
it was soon evident that neither threats nor
attrition had yet convinced the Boers that further
resistance would be unprofitable. In Cape Colony, despite
the continuous work of General French and his columns,
a new Boer plan of campaign developed under General Smuts,
and owed its origin to his fertile brain. While Smuts himself
descended on Port Elizabeth, Maritz, strengthened on his
inner flank by Scheepers, Theron, and the other midland-
country group, would move upon Cape Town. The idea pre-
supposed that Smuts would fare triumphantly where De Wet
had failed, and that the scheme would develop unnoticed by
Lord Kitchener and Sir John French. No such good fortune
attended the Boers. French repeated his policy of so harry-
ing the commandos that they were but remnants when they
coalesced, and Lord Kitchener's demand that his hands should
be strengthened by the proclamation of martial law in Cape
Town and all the seaport towns was conceded on 9th October,
1901. Martial law ought to have been proclaimed long
before ; if it had been, some of the detestable necessities of
the campaign against treason in Cape Colony would have

162

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 163

been avoided. The first of these was the trial of Scheepers,
who had been captured, for several breaches of the laws of
war, including the murder of several natives. He was con-
demned and executed. Much sympathy was felt for him,
but our word was pledged to protect the natives, and if he
who had killed them had escaped, all confidence would have
been lost in our promises and in our justice. In December
the trial of a more dangerous enemy than Scheepers was
held. This was Kritzinger, who re-entered Cape Colony on
1 4th December with no men, and who was wounded and
captured by the Guards of Inigo Jones's brigade in an attempt
to cross the railway line. But in the trial it was clearly shown
that Kritzinger had done what he could to keep his subordi-
nates within the rules of warfare, and he was acquitted by
the military court. Kritzinger's disappearance from the Cape
Colony operations was a serious blow to Smuts's plans, even
as his delay in appearing had retarded them, and it needed
all the Boer general's buoyancy to believe, as he did, that the
year 1902 would redress the disappointments of 1901.

In the east of the main theatre of war Commandant-
General Botha, in the west De la Rey, and in the Orange
River Colony De Wet continued to expend in brilliant but
fruitless feats of arms men whose presence in Cape Colony at
that time might have kindled a fresh struggle, the end of
which no man *could have foreseen. Botha's columns had
been foiled in an attempt on Natal, but the failure, which
the Boer general excused to his government on the score of
bad weather and false information, had by no means put a
stop to his offensive in the northern section of the eastern
Transvaal. Sir Bindon Blood on his side was no less active,
and one of his ablest columns was that commanded by
Lieutenant-Colonel E. G. Benson, who harried the Boers
in a manner flatteringly imitative of De Wet. Commandant
General Botha, pausing gloomily at Ermelo with the officials

1 64 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

of the Transvaal Government whom he could not move,
sent peremptory orders to Opperman to keep his commandos
together and "attack with all their force whenever possible".
The veldt must be rid of Benson's "restless column". Benson
himself, admirably as he had been informed throughout by
his Intelligence Officer, Colonel Wools-Sampson, was fully
aware of the increasing number and the changing temper of
the enemy in his neighbourhood. His column was alone
in the district ; it was not of the best material, for while
resting at Middelburg he had unwillingly exchanged his well-
tried horse and foot for blockhouse soldiers and new mounted
infantry. Both he and Wools -Sampson were thoroughly
uneasy at the end of October, and rightly suspicious that
the Boers were preparing a trap for him. The trap was
set at Bakenlaagte Farm in ground of gently rolling veldt,
which offered few situations for defence, but good oppor-
tunities for attack of a weak column by superior numbers.
The opportunity was seized by Botha, who conducted the
attack in person and launched on Benson's rear-guard an
attack in crescent form of 1200 horsemen. The rear-guard
was driven in and overwhelmed, and the Boer attack, rein-
forced by other of Botha's units, streamed onwards to where
Benson, with the guns and 280 men, faced the catastrophe.
Flight was possible, but no man stirred from his place. So
fast and steadily did the men shoot, that the Boer charge
wavered and drew rein, and the Boers flung themselves from
the saddle into a dip 200 yards from Benson's ridge. For
a few minutes the attack trembled in the balance. But the
Boers on the veldt, with their rifles in their hands, were more
dangerous than when charging. Extending rapidly, they
began to crawl in, pouring their marksman's fire on the target
afforded by Benson's soldiers. The foremost Boers gained
ground rapidly, covered by a fire which laid low all the
British gunners and mowed half the defenders from the ridge.

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 165

Major Guinness, in command of the guns, was shot dead
amidst his men and horses; Captain Lloyd, Benson's assistant
staff officer, was shot down in bringing up assistance ; and
resistance was crushed only when there were no more to
offer it. Of the 280 officers and men on the ridge, 66 lay
dead and 165 were wounded before the Boers finally rushed
the position. Benson's last act was to send orders to
the other part of his force, which had gone on with guns
to the selected camp, that the ridge where he lay wounded
should be shelled by our own guns. The order was fulfilled;
the men on the ridge sacrificed themselves, and though
Benson's last wish that his guns should be saved was not
realized, the Boers did not attempt to carry the camp.
Bakenlaagte was a day filled with heroic deeds; they were
the sole compensation for the loss of brave men and one of
the best of our column leaders. " In every capacity ", said
Lord Kitchener, in writing Colonel Benson's epitaph, " he
had shown soldierly qualities of a high order, and had in-
variably led his column with marked success and judg-
ment." Help was sent to the column, which was extricated
from its immediate difficulties by Colonel Wools -Sampson,
and regained the Delagoa Bay railway at Brugspruit.

In the Orange River Colony October and November, 1901,
were marked chiefly by another faithful failure to round up
De Wet. At this period no news was more gladly received
by Lord Kitchener than that a tangible enemy had appeared
between the Orange and the Vaal, and when his Intelligence
Department informed him that De Wet had summoned the
commandos of Vrede, Bethlehem, Heilbron, Ladybrand, and
Kroonstadt to meet on the Liebensberg River, the Com-
mander-in-Chief at once prepared elaborate measures for taking
the opportunity to welcome such an occurrence. On all sides
of De Wet's rendezvous Lord Kitchener disposed a cordon
of columns. Unlimited ingenuity and thought were lavished

1 66 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

on the scheme. It was to be carried out in six marches.
On 6th November the operation began, and the columns
advanced from the circumference of a circle of a diameter
150 miles in length. Six days later they drew up face to
face at the appointed spot, having neither seen nor heard
of De Wet's concentration, and having accumulated no more
than 100 prisoners among them. Yet no one was to blame.
" The results ", observed Lord Kitchener, who was not too
disappointed to give credit where it was due, <c were less
than the excellence of the work performed by officers and
men deserved, and this was in a great measure due to
accident." The accident was that De Wet had never con-
centrated, but, finding supplies insufficient, had ordered a
dispersal, and the dispersed bodies had simply wandered
through the gaps in the cordon without knowing that a
cordon was closing in. De Wet did eventually concentrate
at the end of November, but his concentration had no such
damaging effect on an isolated British column as had resulted
from Botha's attack on Benson at Bakenlaagte, though he
attempted to close in similarly on Rimington's column.
Rimington, however, warned by Benson's fate, decided that
for once he would adopt the only portion of De Wet's tactics
in which he had not already excelled, namely, that of evasion.
He marched all night, not to Lindley as the Boers had
expected, but northwards towards Heilbron, leaving De Wet
to marvel at his disappearance at dawn on ist December.

In the western Transvaal Lord Methuen and Kekewich
continued to comb the country back and forth, bringing in
much gain of material. This method of warfare, dictated by
Lord Kitchener, was slowly but surely having its effect, for
the time was drawing nigh when the whole Boer nation,
though unsubdued in spirit, was to feel the drain of supplies.
At the end of 1901 the campaign in this region was in a state
of suspended animation. The enemy, shouldered away by

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 167

lines of blockhouses, harried out of the best tactical positions
by the incessant steam-roller of the columns, was little to be
heard of or perceived. He was not mastered. Somewhere in
the western veldt were always leaders who might carry the fiery
cross again. In spite of the lull, Lord Kitchener was well
aware that scarce one of his columns, garrisons, or outposts
between Rustenburg and Klerksdorp, Vryburg and Mafeking,
but was in daily risk. Though the general situation was safe,
the telephone might any day ring him up with an unpleasant
surprise: the one surprise that was impossible was that the
enemy could achieve a success that would affect the result of
the war.

It was, however, in that eastern Transvaal where the
mishap to Benson had taken place that by the close of 1901
the end of the war was most clearly in sight. During the first
half of November there was a comparative lull while Lord
Kitchener pushed his lines of blockhouses along the Wilge
River and across the southern angle from Wakkerstroom to
the Swazi border. A few small gains were made by the
columns, but it was plain that the main hostile bodies had to
be sought once more on the high veldt. On that vast tract,
and on others like it, the Boers could long fend off utter
defeat or starvation. The process of wearing them down
seemed likely to prove interminable and enormously expen-
sive. Lord Kitchener had long been occupied, and was now
well advanced, in the schemes of wliich the map and the
measure alone can suggest the magnitude; he aimed at nothing
less than the fencing in of whole provinces with blockhouses
and entrenched posts, which, constantly contracting towards
a common centre, would eventually choke each area in their
grip, as in Edgar Allan Poe's story, where the walls closed in
on the prisoner. His projected lines of blockhouses would
gridiron the high veldt into areas of manageable size. To
protect the newer lines of posts, as they were pushed forward,

1 68 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Major-General Bruce Hamilton was given six columns; and
when the blockhouses were finished he was sent forward by
the Commander-in-Chief on a drive, west to east, along a
hundred miles of front from Middelburg to the Vaal. The
line steadily pushed forward during the early days of De-
cember, and immediately began to meet with success. The
Boers quickly perceived the line of khaki stretched against
them, and with one accord began to press through the inter-
stices between the columns, threading their way into the
country which the columns had just left. But the movement
of these was limited by the line of constabulary blockhouses
which barred their way westwards; and Bruce Hamilton, with
a line more elastic, and scouting and intelligence work sharp-
ened by long experience, was soon aware of the Boer move-
ment, and was quick to strike. Moving in the centre, and
aware that a commando had slipped between him and Major-
General Spens's column, he made a long and successful night
march in pursuit of them. Led by Colonel Wools-Sampson,
whom he had taken over from Benson's column, Bruce
Hamilton descended on the Boer laager at dawn. Nearly a
hundred prisoners were taken, besides ammunition -and tele-
graphing and signalling a'pparatus. Bruce Hamilton returned
to Ermelo to reorganize the drive, which was not half finished.
To the east were Boers nervous of being pushed against the
Swaziland border; behind were commandos which had slipped
through and were beating themselves against the constabulary
posts that stretched from Middelburg to Waterval.

At Ermelo he learnt that another considerable body of the
enemy had slipped through. Again he turned, calling up four
columns to converge on the elusive commando. To these he
added two more, and the whole force marched at night towards
Trigaardsfontein, a village to which he suspected the Boers
were trekking. The surmise was right, and at dawn of the
loth of December another laager was rushed, with a net result

SOME OF LORD KITCHENER'S "LIEUTENANTS"

MAJ.-GEN. SIR C. E. KNOX MAJ.-GEN. BRUCE HAMILTON

LIEUT.-GEN. IAN HAMILTON
MAJ.-GEN. F. W. KITCHENER BRIG.-GEN. H. C. O. PLUMER

From photographs by Elliott & Fry, Duffus Bros., Bassano, and Stewart (Poona)

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 169

of 130 Boers captured, in addition to a valuable Boer convoy.
Bruce Hamilton marched with his booty back to Bethel, there
to learn that the commando he had just dispersed and shorn
had rallied to Ben Viljoen's command at a point only twenty-
five miles north. Instead of continuing his march from Bethel
to Ermelo, he, therefore, made another long night march with
his column from Bethel and dealt yet another blow in the
early dawn on the rallying Boers. He took another seventy
prisoners, and recovered one of the guns which had been lost
in Benson's fight at Bakenlaagte. After this the victors went
into Ermelo to refit, and a week later pursued the eastwards
drive towards Swaziland. The effect of these captures on
Boers who had hitherto been masters at the game, and were
now finding men who played it as well as themselves, was very
great; and in the new year (1902) Bruce Hamilton's opera-
tions among the Boers, who moved uneasily in the narrowing
space between the British columns and the Swaziland border,
continued to show that at last we had learnt all that the Boers
had to teach us. On the night of the 2nd of January Bruce
Hamilton, with Simpson's and Scott's columns, followed by
circuitous bridle-paths the tracks of a commando led by
General Erasmus. The Boers were hemmed in, fifty prisoners
were taken, a remnant of what had once been the Pretoria
commando. Again Bruce Hamilton returned to Ermelo;
again he left it before the Boers expected him, and his first
prize was a laager in which were three of the best Boer artil-
lery officers — the two Wolmarans and Lieutenant Malan of the
Staats Artillery — and a large quantity of ammunition.

The district was rapidly becoming untenable for the Boers.
Lord Kitchener remarks in his dispatches that the continual
night surprises to which they were being subjected made them
reluctant to bivouac within even forty miles of our troops —
and this naturally added to our difficulty in surprising them.
Nor was it easy for them to escape from the district in which

170 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

they were being so persistently harried. To the south of
Bruce Hamilton's columns, General Plumer, Colonel Pulteney,
and Lieutenant-Colonel A. E. W. Colvile barred the way to
the south, and eagerly snapped up any commando which
exposed itself in the area enclosed by the Vaal, the Swaziland
border, and the line of blockhouses running from Wakker-
stroom to Piet Retief. A commando was broken in this way
by a daybreak surprise on the 25th of January, 1902, and the
number of prisoners was increased by others jammed against
the blockhouses. To the north of Bruce Hamilton Colonel
Mackenzie was echeloned to guard any escape past Lake
Chrissie, or to watch any attempt of Viljoen to come south to
reinforce Botha's men. Viljoen, as a matter of record, showed
little disposition to move south or to stretch out a hand to
Botha, and just at the time when he was reported to be
meditating some such junction, and to be riding south to make
arrangements, he was very cleverly captured. On the night of
25th January he was ambushed near Kruger's Post, Boer
fashion, by some men of the Royal Irish Regiment under
Major Orr, and after his aide-de-camp had been shot had
no alternative but to surrender.

So incessant was the pressure brought to bear on the dis-
integrated commandos that on the I3th of February General
Louis Botha found it necessary to quit the district altogether.
He moved south with a considerable following, and, passing
through Swaziland, north of the Wakkerstroom line of block-
houses, made straight for Vryheid. His motive for this move
was perhaps twofold. It may have been prompted by a desire
to rouse fresh unrest in Natal, but was more likely the out-
come of an urgent need for temporarily disengaging his harassed
men from the close and unceasing pursuit to which they had
been for so long subjected. He left some trouble behind him,
and some work for Plumer, Pulteney, and Wing to do, in
searching for the commandos to the far south-east which had

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 171

not been able to join Botha's new trek. But he was himself
promptly followed up by Bruce Hamilton with columns under
Spens, Mackenzie, Allenby, and Stewart, and by the first week
in March the pursuers were again in contact with him.

In the Orange River Colony Kitchener's blockhouse system
operated to the discomfiture of the Boers in a way distinct
from its effect in the eastern Transvaal. It forced them to
fight, and though they fought fiercely and well, action of any
kind was bound to lead to the reduction of their numbers to
a point where they could not fight at all. De Wet, finding
that the wide dispersion of his forces into small parties led to
a steady decrease in their numbers as they were hunted out by
the mobile columns, and perceiving that evasive tactics could
end only in being hemmed in by the increasing reticulations of
the spider's-web of blockhouses, decided to concentrate into
larger bodies. These Boer " columns ", while still avoiding
contact with considerable bodies of British troops, would watch
for opportunities of falling suddenly on isolated detachments
or on the working-parties at the line-heads of the blockhouses
in construction. The first indication which Lord Kitchener
had of De Wet's change of policy was the comparative failure
of a drive which was entrusted to General Elliot, in the second
week of December, with columns under Colonels Rimington,
Byng, Damant, and Wilson. The hint was presently enlarged.
Lord Kitchener received information that Boers were concen-
trating in large numbers near Kaffir Kop, twenty miles north-
west of Bethlehem, and therefore within striking distance of his
new line of blockhouses between Harrismith and Bethlehem.
He took steps to deal with this concentration. General Elliot
was ordered to move from Kroonstad, General Dartnell from
Eland's River Bridge, and Colonel Barker from Winburg —
each column concealing its movements and intentions, and
moving as swiftly as it could. The big commando got wind
of the pursuers, and was not caught. It dispersed, but dis-

172 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

persed only to meet at another rendezvous. For, as Dartnell
turned back to his base at Eland's River Bridge, he was fiercely
assailed by a large force of Boers under De Wet. Dartnell's
Imperial Light Horse held off the attack a whole day, and
heliographed up General Campbell from Bethlehem.

De Wet did not wait for him, but turned swiftly away to
seek other game. He found it at the head of the line of
blockhouses which was extending between Harrismith and
Bethlehem, and which had reached Tweefontein, where four
squadrons of Imperial Yeomanry were protecting the engineers.
A little distance to the east of them was a small column under
Rundle. The proximity of Rundle may have induced a feeling
of false security in the temporary commander of the Light
Horse squadrons. At any rate, the preparations which had
been made on Christmas Eve, 1901, to guard against attack
were not elaborate — Lord Kitchener observed in his dispatch
that they seemed to be most defective — and at two o'clock on
the morning of Christmas Day De Wet's men shot down the
sentries and carried the camp with a rush. Its commander
and five other officers and fifty men were killed, and De Wet
carried off the two guns.

Lord Kitchener responded to the new De Wet method by
organizing Elliot's division into two larger columns — one under
De Lisle, another under Fanshawe — and these endeavoured to
close on the Boer leader at Reitz. But De Wet, who never
moved without advance, flanking, and rear-guards thrown out
at distances of six to eight miles, easily avoided this trap,
though the threat of Elliot's columns edged him towards the
south-east, where Rimington and Rankin lay in wait for him.
Thus the first move of the Commander-in-Chief led the way
to the second, in which Elliot's columns were to put into
operation one of the new drives with the lines of blockhouses
as blockading forces. By the ist of February Elliot's columns,
still pressing east, had reached the Eland's River line. Another

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 173

column (Barker's) was at Bethlehem. Lord Kitchener had
devised a twofold plan. Should De Wet continue his march
to the south or east, the advancing columns would press him
on to one of two lines of blockhouses. But should he break
back, as it most likely seemed that he would, then the columns,
acting by prearrangement, and having passed him, would swiftly
form up behind him and reverse the drive. They hoped thus
by maintaining close contact by night and day to drive De Wet
into the strongly-held angle formed by two of the western
blockhouse lines, one of them a railway line. The second part
of Kitchener's plan was, in fact, the main part of it. To make
it more complete, a column under Byng remained behind the
first or eastward drive to watch for De Wet's anticipated break
back.

Lord Kitchener's device succeeded. The detail of Colonel
Byng's detachment from the main drive proved to be especially
fortunate. On the night of 2nd February Colonel Byng,
stationed west of Reitz, learnt that a Boer force was march-
ing rapidly north at no great distance from him. He started
promptly in pursuit, and fifteen miles away came upon a con-
voy not too strongly guarded by a portion of the De Wet
commando. Byng's New Zealanders and Queenslanders at
once charged the enemy's rear-guard, and the South African
Light Horse got home in the centre with equal bravery and
resolution. The enemy was forced to retire, leaving in Byng's
hands three guns besides ammunition and prisoners. This
dashing little success gave the signal for the return westward
drive, which was immediately set going. Lord Kitchener's
dispatch summarizes the results :—

"At dawn on the 8th of February our line closed into the railway
and completed the movement, when it was found that the total loss sus-
tained by the Boers amounted to 285. Large numbers of their tired
horses were picked up, and a considerable quantity of cattle were driven
in to the line."

174 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

The moment when the enemy in Orange River Colony were
shaken by this blow was rightly judged by Lord Kitchener to
be the one for striking another. In the brief rest of Elliot's
columns preparations were made for setting in motion an
operation on a yet larger scale to sweep the country where the
bigger forces were still uncaptured. The scheme was again
divided into two parts. The first part consisted of two
parallel and simultaneous movements eastwards. One was to
move like a ruler between the Heidelberg to Standerton rail-
way and the Wolvehoek-Tafelkop line of blockhouses. A
parallel ruler travelling farther to the south would move on a
line from Kroonstad to Doornberg to the Lindley-Bethlehem
blockhouses. But the second part of the movement involved
a more complex geometrical figure. When the northern ruler
stood in the line Standerton-Frankfort it was to wheel clock-
wise to the right till it came to the line of blockhouses Frank-
fort-Botha's Pass. The southern ruler was meanwhile to push
north-east till it came to the Wilge River line. The two
rulers would then be a pair of compasses with an apex at
Frankfort. Lastly, with the southern leg of the compasses
holding fast to the line of the Wilge River the northern leg of
the compasses was to shut down. The Boers could not escape
eastwards into Natal because the Drakensberg passes would be
held against them. Lord Kitchener's dispatch tells in the
briefest possible way how the plan fared: —

" On the night of the 3rd of February, at the close of the first day's
march, a most determined effort to break out was made by De Wet,
Steyn, and some 700 followers, who had been driven east by Major-
General Elliot's advance to the Wilge River into the net of our ap-
proaching columns. The attack was made under cover of darkness at
the point where the right of one column was in touch with the left of
another. Here again, as on the occasion of his previous escape, De Wet
adopted the plan of advancing under cover of a large mob of cattle which
were rapidly driven up by natives to the point where the rush through
was to be attempted. The expedient met with a part of the desired

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 175

success, for there is little doubt that De Wet, Steyn, and a number of
their men managed to break out of the toils. As a whole, however, the
Boer force was very severely punished by the New Zealanders of Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Garratt's column, who displayed great gallantry and reso-
lution at the critical moment in resisting and in part repelling the attack.
The conduct of the New Zealanders on this occasion reflects the highest
credit on all ranks of the contingent and on the Colony to which it
belongs. [Lord Kitchener took the first opportunity of addressing
Garratt's column and of complimenting the New Zealanders in person.]
. . . Yet another attempt to break through was made on the night of the
26th, when Colonel Nixon successfully repulsed an attack by the enemy
on the line of the Cornelius River."

After another three days* rest a new movement was set in
motion from the Harrismith line of blockhouses; but its
operations disclosed that the big Boer commandos had been
disintegrated by the first compass-leg scheme, and only about
145 prisoners were taken. The disintegration was all but
final. Elliot's columns were employed on but one more sweep
before the peace negotiations rendered captures unnecessary,
except to convince irreconcilables.

In the northern Transvaal the operations of columns,
though co-ordinated by Lord Kitchener as far as possible, were
spread over so great an area, and were so complicated by the
freedom with which the Boers could move about in this
rugged, roadless country, that they never became reducible to
a common plan. Concerted action ceased with Sir Bindon
Blood's drives north of the Delagoa Railway line; and after
General Plumer had left Pietersburg Colonel Grenfell was left
to deal with those of Beyers's1 men who roamed disjointedly
to the west of the railway line between Pretoria and Pieters-
burg. Few Boers were captured, and the struggle between
commanders without sufficient sense of responsibility, and com-
mandos which were irregular, not merely in name, degenerated

1 Afterwards associated with trie rebellion of 1914-5 in conjunction with the Germans in
South- West Africa.

176 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

and produced more than one deplorable incident. The faults
were not confined to one side; but Lord Kitchener sternly
punished offences against the rules of war by our side, and,
having ordered five officers of the Bushveldt Carbineers to be
court martialled, confirmed the sentence of death on two of
them. The Boer resistance was gradually worn down in the
closing months of 1901, chiefly by the efforts of the column
under Colonels Dawkins and Colenbrander, whose crowning
achievement was the destruction of BadenhorsPs commando.
The last pursuit of Badenhorst began on 27 th November,
1901. After an exhausting chase through an almost waterless
region, Colenbrander burst on the commando on the morning
of 3rd December. The Boers scattered, leaving prisoners and
their wagons. Some of the flying fragments of the commando
were snapped up by Kitchener's Scouts, or fell into the hands
of Colonel Dawkins's mounted infantry. The moral effect was
valuable, because in this mountainous district Badenhorst had
felt himself safe. The final demonstration to him of his mis-
take took place on I2th December, when, in trying to avoid
Colenbrander, he rushed into the ready arms of Dawkins. The
useful combination of these two commanders came to an end
at Christmas, when Lord Kitchener sent Colonel Dawkins to
the Orange River Colony, and Colonel Colenbrander was left
to operate alone. The traditions of success remained with
him nevertheless, and to the end of the war he continued to
harass the enemy with uninterrupted success.

Many districts had been speculatively considered as those
in which resistance could last longest, and the western Trans-
vaal had been named among them. It had never been so
thoroughly swept as the eastern Transvaal, where the pressure
on Botha had been so unceasing ; or as the Orange River
Colony, where the Kitchener system of blockhouse was so
effective. Its supplies had never been so systematically reduced;
indeed, one of the Boer leaders (Kemp) declared that though

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 177

the eastern Transvaal had been exhausted, there were supplies
in the western Transvaal for two years to come. Kemp was
himself a capable lieutenant, but he had in De la Rey a leader
whose ability was second to that of no Boer general. He had
long resisted all attempts of the columns under Colonel Keke-
wich and Lord Methuen to drive him out; he alternated his
successes with theirs; but there was something in the steady
drives of the British columns, almost as regular as those of an
omnibus route, which appeared to preclude any great surprises,
certainly to make any reversal of the conditions impossible.

In October Colonel Hickie's column superintended the con-
struction of a new line of blockhouses. Colonel Kekewich
(having captured Klopper's commando) and Methuen re-
sumed their regular patrol along the Rustenburg-Zeerust road,
or from Zeerust onwards. The December marches of
Methuen and Kekewich were more productive. On his
customary circular tour from Zeerust, Lord Methuen sighted
a Boer convoy at Kraaipan on the I3th. His mounted in-
fantry captured it after a chase of seven miles, and, three days
later, surprised and captured Potgieter's laager. Kekewich's
part in these operations had been that of blocking the roads to
the north and effectually occupying the attention of commandos
who otherwise might have reversed the position and have held
on to Methuen till the laager and the convoy could be re-
moved. There were one or two more minor successes before
December ended, and at the beginning of the year Kekewich
was harrying Potgieter's commando west of the Klerksdorp-
Ventersdorp blockhouses, and the new line of blockhouses
from Ventersdorp had reached Tafelkop. " The occupation
of Tafelkop", remarked Lord Kitchener on the 8th of January,
1 902, " marks another step in the effective occupation of this
part of the country."

Lord Kitchener's sanguine expectation had not reckoned
on De la Rey. For three months De la Rey had done

VOL. II. 27

178 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

nothing ; the continued succession of small captures of Boers
had induced not suspicion, but a belief, that their power of
resistance was weakening. It was not weak enough to neglect
a good opening. This was provided by Colonel von Donop,
temporarily in charge of Methuen's mobile troops. Von
Donop sent an empty convoy to Klerksdorp for supplies on
2jrd February. Two days after the convoy had started, and
when it was ©nly ten miles south of its destination at Klerks-
dorp, it was attacked.

The most of the convoy was composed of Imperial
Yeomanry, three companies of Northumberland Fusiliers, two
guns, and a pom-pom. The convoy was moving off from
its bivouac at daylight when its advance-guard was attacked.
Its guns came into action as soon as could be, but the Kaffir
drivers of the wagons stampeded and they broke in on the
rear-guard. While the confusion was at its height, another
party of Boers opened a heavy fire on the rear and the flank.
Colonel Anderson, finding that he was being encircled, gave
orders that the convoy was to move on while he collected
his forces to fight a rear-guard action. The task was too
heavy, the difficulties too many. The force could not be
extricated. The rear-guard and his guns were enveloped by
a force the numbers of which were sufficient to show that the
convoy had been shadowed since it started. Kemp and De la
Rey had combined and had waited till enough followers had
been called up to assure their success. They pressed on with
increasing vigour, and, after cutting off the rear-guard, assailed
the advance-guard and the convoy as it laboriously toiled across
a spruit. Three officers and about a hundred men fought
their way to Klerksdorp ; the rest were captured or killed.

When the survivors reached Klerksdorp with this news
for Head - quarters, Lord Kitchener called up Colonels
Kelcewich and Grenfell and sent on Colonel Sir R. Colleton
from Bothaville to support Von Donop or to search for the

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 179

commandos. The pursuit was taken in hand with vigour,
but the Boers were more than a match for it, because they
misled it and dispersed, only to concentrate where they
were not expected. As Kekewich followed the Boers they
retired to the north-west, and, rinding pursuit hopeless, he
returned to Klerksdorp. While there he was ordered to send
Grenfell up to meet Lord Methuen, who was advancing from
Vryburg, and would strike across country in a north-easterly
direction about twenty miles south of Lichtenburg. Here
Grenfell was to meet him about the 8th of March, and the
combined forces would be a match for any likely combination
of Boer commandos.

Kemp and De la Rey were aware of these movements,
through their scouts and spies, perceived the intention, and
took steps to defeat it. As they had done with Von Donop's
convoy, they shadowed Lord Methuen's march unperceived
till the last moment before his column could reach safety,
and thus induced a feeling of safety in the pursued, while
themselves accumulating numbers. The British force had
reached a bivouac between Tweebosch and Palmietknuill, and,
as had happened with the convoy under Colonel Anderson,
were just moving off at*. dawn when the Boers poured in a
heavy fire on three sides. The force was ill adapted to bear
the brunt of such an attack. Numerically it was strong.
It had 300 steady infantry, Northumberland Fusiliers and
Loyal North Lancashires, and about 200 men of Major Paris's
column from Kimberley, with four guns. This force was
quite strong enough to deal with any attack such as Lord
Methuen's experience of the preceding three or four months
could have led him to anticipate. But it was far from being
able to deal with the picked force of Boer horsemen which
two of the ablest Boer leaders were commanding. The
men of Paris's column, for example, were far from being
seasoned warriors, and were of very heterogeneous com-

i8o FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

position, comprising men of six separate units, and under
stress of a converging attack by 1500 Boers they broke.
Some fought to the last, and their bravery shines brighter
by contrast.

The first attack of the Boers fell on the rear-guard. Lord
Methuen was a mile ahead with the convoy, and as soon
as he was aware of the attack sent back guns, mounted
supports, and infantry to stem the rush. The moment of
disaster came when Paris's rear-guard broke and fell back
pell-mell on the infuriated infantry who were trying to help
them. Infantry and horsemen were both swept back in that
panic-stricken m£lee, and the two guns of the 38th Battery
were left alone. Their men stood by them till the last man
and the last officer— Lieutenant Nesham, who, refusing to
surrender, was killed.

The major portion of the column was thus destroyed.
Lord Methuen, with 200 Northumberland Fusiliers and two
guns, found himself isolated. He held on for three hours, the
casualties growing, the ammunition dwindling to the vanishing-
point. Major Paris, with forty faithful of the Cape Mounted
Police and what were left of the Loyal North Lancashires, were
similarly isolated near the wagons, and also held on, repulsing
attack after attack. But about half-past nine, Lord Methuen's
thigh having been broken by a bullet, and resistance becoming
more hopeless every minute, the officer next in command sur-
rendered the force, and the Boers then turned two guns and a
pom-pom on the smaller party in the kraal. There was no way
out; half an hour afterwards this little band had to surrender
too, and the Boers bore down the resistance of a few other
scattered parties of the fth Imperial Yeomanry and Cape
Police, who also had held out to the last. Soon after, De
la Rey rode up to the convoy where Lord Methuen lay
wounded, and in this manner did the British general meet
the Boer leader whom he and others had sought with such

LAST PHASE OF THE BOER WAR 181

assiduity. De la Rey, ever the most chivalrous of foemen,
after treating his prisoner with the utmost kindness, permitted
him to be conveyed in his own wagon to Klerksdorp.

Tweebosch was the most complete disaster since guerrilla
warfare had been begun in the Transvaal, surpassing the
destruction by Botha of Benson's column at Bakenlaagte.
The column had been destroyed in a five hours' fight, with
nothing left of it except the men who had succeeded in run-
ning away. It sent the star of De la Rey, which had been
obscured for some months, up to the zenith, and placed the
western Transvaal in danger, if not of being reconquered by
the Boers, at least of being uninhabitable for the conquerors.
Yet, in order that no misapprehension should be entertained of
the state of the war at this period, it cannot be too strongly
pointed out that De la Rey, with all his successes, had scarcely
checked the movements which were flattening out his country.
His feats, like those of Botha at Bakenlaagte, or De Wet in
Orange River Colony, or those of Smuts in Cape Colony,
inflicted nothing more than local damage, capable of immediate
repair, prolonging but never altering the inevitable end of
the campaign. They resembled what Lord Kitchener once said
to a friend in India of the Boer efforts to destroy the railway.
"There is nothing", he said, "so indestructible as a railway.
Ln the South African War the Boers had all the dynamite of
the Rand at their disposal, and we used to watch them retreat-
ing and blowing up the railway as they went, and next day my
men would come along and build it up again." The state-
ment might metaphorically describe all the Boer efforts against

Lord Kitchener's indestructible lines. r? c r-

rL. o. Lr.

CHAPTER IX

The End of the South African War

First Boer Advances towards Peace — Situation and Operations against De la
Rey in the Western Transvaal — The First Drive — Lieutenant-General Ian Hamilton
in the West — The Decisive Action of Roodeval — Baron Gericke's Communication
to Lord Lansdowne — Arrival of the Boer Leaders at Klerksdorp — Letter from Schalk
Burger and Steyn to Lord Kitchener — Lord Kitchener's Meeting with the Boer
Delegates at Pretoria — The First Boer Proposal and the British Reply — Lord
Kitchener's Compromise with the Boer Leaders concerning an Armistice — Con-
ferences in the Field — Operations of Ian Hamilton and Bruce Hamilton — Lord
Kitchener's Estimate, Military and Political, of the Situation — The Vereeniging
Meeting — Views of Botha, Smuts, De la Rey, De Wet — Submission of Proposals to
Kitchener and Milner — The Crucial Preamble — A Question of Compensation — The
Approved Draft Treaty — Acceptance by the Vereeniging Delegates — Schalk Burger's
Epitaph — Lord Kitchener's Last Words: "We are good friends now".

EVEN if General De la Key's triumph in the western
Transvaal had been less in contrast with the tide of
affairs in other parts of the wide area of disturbance,
it could not have altered, though it might have delayed, the
end of the war. But in the eastern Transvaal, in the Orange
River Colony, in Cape Colony, the prospect of any renaissance
of success was becoming daily more remote; and the most
responsible of the Boer leaders, General Louis Botha, was
well aware of it. De Wet was not equally convinced, but
that was because at the side of De Wet was ex -President
Steyn, shattered by illness but irreconcilable to the last.
Smuts believed that there was still something to be done
with Cape Colony, but at the back of the minds of all these
determined fighters was the knowledge that they could not

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 183

win, and that the advantages of putting off the evil day of
admitting it were diminishing.

The first movement towards peace in 1902 came from the
Transvaal. General Botha could not but admit to himself
the progressive efficacy of Bruce Hamilton's endeavours to
disintegrate the Boer concentration. Botha had removed his
own commando, but Bruce Hamilton found plenty of work
with the residuum of Boers. His four-column drive in March
captured the Boer general Emmett in the Ngothi Basin on
the 1 5th of that month; and this was, it seemed, almost the
last straw, for a week later, on the 22nd, the first step was
taken towards peace by the Transvaal Government, consisting
of Mr. Schalk Burger, Mr. Reitz, and Commandants Lucas
Meyer and Krogh, who arrived in Pretoria by appointment
and by special train for a conference with Lord Kitchener.

But before this first step towards peace could be followed
by more decisive ones not a few operations of war were needed
to accelerate the decision. In the eastern Transvaal, for
example, Bruce Hamilton swept the country to Standerton
during the first half of April ; and afterwards, co-operating
with new movements in the Orange River Colony, moved
south from the Heidelberg-Standerton line across the Vaal.
In the Orange River Colony the last drive of Elliot's troops
was undertaken less as a compulsory measure of protection
than as a means of influencing the peace negotiations by the
capture of irreconcilables. In the western Transvaal Lord
Kitchener took measures to turn the tables on De la Rey.
When these measures proved effectual the reverse had con-
siderable influence on the peace negotiations then in progress.

Tentative warfare and the earlier phases of the peace
negotiations were pursued simultaneously; but the operations
against De la Rey were the only ones which were of a magni-
tude to sway the balance of Boer opinion. Lord Kitchener
cpulc} less now than at any other time allow D§ Ja Rev to

1 84 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

remain master of the local situation. Calling Lieutenant-
Colonel Wools-Sampson from his work in the eastern Trans-
vaal to act as Intelligence Officer in the west, he ordered
General F. W. Kitchener and Colonel Sir H. Rawlinson
to bring their columns to Klerksdorp; and Colonel Rochfort's
column, which consisted of seven miniature columns, was
strung along the line of the Vaal. Under Colonel Kekewich
were placed two flying columns commanded by Von Donop
and Grenfell; the garrison of Lichtenburg was reinforced; and
on 1 9th March Lord Kitchener himself hurried down to
Klerksdorp to superintend an effort on a large scale to come
to grips with De la Rey.

On the 22nd Kekewich concentrated his twin forces at
Vaalbank, and the next evening the whole of the troops that
have just been enumerated moved westwards in light order
without guns. De la Rey had not been blind to the pre-
parations : he was aware that the railway was every day
bringing the big battalions in line against him, and took his
measures accordingly. He distributed his burghers in strong
commandos well to the west — too far to be struck at from
Klerksdorp — and kept them near enough to one another to
concentrate when needful, by connections of small parties of
scouts and patrols. There were not many lines of block-
houses in this region, and he could not well be driven against
the blockhoused railway line far to the west. How was he to
be driven east? Lord Kitchener had hit on the bold plan of
marching his westward-pointing columns right past the Boer
commandos as if unaware of them; and then, when west of
them and behind them, of lengthening out these columns until
they touched. Then his extended line could face about and
drive the Boers towards the eastern lines of blockhouses. It
was an ingenious plan, and under the impulse of a heartening
message from Lord Kitchener it was carried out brilliantly —
up to a certain point. The columns started on their way

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 185

without wheels and with only the provisions each man could
carry.

They set out at dusk, on 2jrd March, from Commando
Drift on the Vaal, from Klerksdorp, and from Vaalburg on
the Lichtenburg blockhouse line. Moving swiftly through the
night, they reached the assigned position. The northern end
of their arc-shaped line was formed by General Kekewich; the
southern curve of the arc by Lord Basing and Colonel Roch-
fort ; the middle by Colonel Rawlinson and General F. W.
Kitchener. But there was a flaw. The columns were in
position, but between F. W. Kitchener's force and that of
Rawlinson was a gap left by Colonel Cookson, whose column
had not been properly equipped with guides. The Boers were
not long in scenting this opening. Dawn had not broken
before a band of 300 Boers slipped through the opening and
escaped to the west. But this was not the only hole in the
net, which, besides being of too wide a mesh, was too short.
Other Boers escaped by skirting the extreme right flank of the
net ; others split up and got through after fighting. Here
a hostile band was turned and broken, there another missed
and lost. Kemp and Lichtenburg slipped through ; De la
Rey was never in the net. When the worn-out troops were
stopped, after twenty-six hours' incessant movement, on the
24th they had accounted for 170 of the enemy, and had re-
captured four of our own guns. It was rather small interest
for the capital expenditure of energy.

General F. W. Kitchener and Colonel Cookson had some
consolation for the disappointment caused by the gap in the
line. On jist March Lord Kitchener sent Cookson and Keir
to reconnoitre towards Hart River. They soon were on the
track of guns — which at this period were of more embarrass-
ment to the side which carried them than they were worth —
and pursuing the trail for eight miles, carrying on a fight with
a Boer rear-guard. When at last they emerged from the bush

1 86 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

on to the plain at Boschbult they came against the not unusual
Boer reinforcements, and the parts of attacked and attacker
were reversed. But Cookson's and Keir's men were of very
different experience and training from the raw levies of Paris's
command at Tweebosch. The British force hastily entrenched
itself and awaited the Boer attack. The Boers were not slow
to make it, and they attacked the position with great bravery
and a new impetuosity, coming on at a slow gallop and firing
from the saddle. But Cookson's men stood firm, piled up
sacks and dead horses to heighten their hastily made parapets,
and by the afternoon were safe. The Boers attacked time
after time on all sides, but could make no impression, and
they finally cleared off towards evening. The Boer losses
could not have been much smaller than those they had in-
flicted, and the resolute conduct of Cookson's men had shown
that small columns were not a certain prey even when partially
trapped by the strongest and best-led force of Transvaalers still
in the field.

That, however, was not the kind of negative lesson which
at this juncture Lord Kitchener desired to teach. It was
necessary to show that De la Rey was something less than
a dangerous adversary, or one who could be met on equal
terms. The Commander-in-Chief therefore decided to give
unity to the operations by sending his own Chief of Staff,
Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Hamilton,1 to take charge of them,
even as eighteen months before Lord Kitchener himself had
been delegated by Lord Roberts to command in the field in
his absence. It was almost the sole transition from the system
of intense centralization which had hitherto marked Lord
Kitchener's administration. Lieutenant-General Ian Hamilton
arrived at Klerksdorp with a staff officer and a buggy on yth
April, and at Kekewich's head - quarters next day. In a few

1 Lieutenant-General Ian Hamilton had returned to South Africa a$ I<orcj Kitchener's Ch?ef
pf Staff, and had occupied the post for some four months.

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 187

hours a plan was formed. On the 9th the execution of it
was begun, and on the iith one of the critical actions of
the war was fought.

To the columns of Kekewich, F. W. Kitchener, and
Rawlinson, which Ian Hamilton was to command, a fourth
under Thorneycroft had been added. Ian Hamilton ma-
noeuvred these for a drive south from Hartebeestfontein.
General Kekewich was to demonstrate far out on the right,
Rawlinson and Kitchener to move south, and finally the whole
force was to face back, so as to march towards Klerksdorp.
Colonel Thorneycroft, with 2000 Australians and New Zea-
landers, was to emerge from the railway line to prevent a
breaking away towards the right as the end of the drive
approached.

On the night of the loth General Kekewich was the last
to get into position on the right of the line. The Boer leader
Kemp (not De la Rey, who was with his brother leaders in the
council-chamber) had marked Kekewich's isolated movement
and determined to fall on him in force next morning. They
reconnoitred by night, and believed his thin advance screen
(under von Donop) to be his force in extended formation.
Strong Boer reinforcements made a night march from Wol-
maranstad, others came from the north-west, and everything
was prepared for his discomfiture. But Kekewich's orders
had been to advance, not as a thin, open driving line, but in
battle formation of columns, with a protective screen in front;
and early on nth April Rawlinson's column was moving up
towards him.

At half-past seven in the morning, von Donop, in charge
of the mounted screen, sighted a strong body approaching and
supposed it must be the reinforcements. When about a mile
away the larger portion of the approaching mass of horsemen,
who were 1700 in all, broke into a gentle trot and came on,
not in a thin line, but in a compact if slow charge, two? three,

i88 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

or four deep, firing as they came. Even then the infantry
behind the screen, of which the nearest was Grenfell's com-
mand, were unaware of the danger, till an officer, galloping in
at full speed from the south-west, shouted the news to Grenfell.
Grenfell got his companies into position just in time. Hardly
had the last of his men rushed into his place than the hostile
force had come within 600 yards. The Boers still ambled
slowly forward, a ragged wall of horsemen apparently lost to
all sense of tactics or fear. In front cantered Kemp in com-
mand, Van Zyl von Tender, and Commandant Potgieter. The
volleys and the rounds of case from the guns neither slowed
them nor quickened them, and up to 200 yards they pursued
their intention of enveloping the force opposed to them by the
curving horns of their wings. They came on still farther — to
within 100 yards. Then their plans, not their courage, failed.
The British mass had not moved, it had not weakened, and to
rush it was therefore madness. By a common impulse the
Boer line turned and galloped away, and in that moment the
spirit which had sustained them snapped under the impulse of
flight. They had shot their bolt.

Grenfell could not pursue: his horses had been stampeded,
many shot, and while he was collecting them Sir Ian Hamilton
came up. The Boers had by that time rallied, and were collect-
ing themselves under the shelter of a hollow. Ian Hamilton
seized the moment. Horsemen of Rawlinson's column were
coming on the field. Taking the whole conduct of affairs in
his own hands, Ian Hamilton immediately ordered a counter-
attack down the Hartz River valley by all his available force,
at the same time telegraphing to F. W. Kitchener to try to
throw his men across the enemy's line of retreat. . . . From
Kekewich's lines some 2000 troopers, spread wide, rode out
towards the place where Kemp's men had rallied. For a few
moments the enemy faced the advancing lines. But Ian
Hamilton had been right: their offensive spirit had evaporated

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 189

at the failure of their charge, and the only man who could
have won it back, De la Rey, was not with them. In his
absence the fine instrument which he had constructed broke,
and its fragments did not wait for the counter-attack, but
galloped away southward. The chase itself brought in few
captives — the Boers were better horsemen and better horsed —
but the force which had been that of an unbeaten and confident
enemy was now scattered and fugitive. Kemp's rash onset at
Roodeval, or Rooiwal, had gambled away the last striking force
left to De la Rey and to De la Rey's side in the field.

The end of the war was at hand, though there were many
who continued to struggle, some out of undying hostility to
the British, some in th"e hope of plucking some advantage out
of resistance by imparting to it an aspect of permanence. But
the best of the fighting-men knew that the dissolution had
come, and sought only to persuade their fellows that peace
could be ensued with honour. The defeat in the western
Transvaal was the mortal blow, though, true to the last to its
yea and nay character, the conflict continued through a great
part of the peace negotiations. The official origin of these was
not in South Africa, but in Europe, where, towards the end
of January, 1902, the Marquess of Lansdowne received from
Baron Gericke, the Netherlands ambassador in London, a com-
munication proposing the good offices of the Dutch Govern-
ment in the cause of peace. The document was in the form of
an aide-memoire^ and one of its proposals was that the Boer
delegates in Europe should be permitted to travel to South
Africa to confer with the Boer leaders in the field — the Dutch
Government being willing to sound the delegates in Europe
with regard to this proposal. To this the Marquess of Lans-
downe replied that the British Government could not well
assent to a proposition which was not, in fact, before them;
and that if negotiations for peace were to be entered upon they
must take place in South Africa. But the aide-memoire was

1 90 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

immediately forwarded to Lord Kitchener for distribution to
Mr. Schalk Burger, the acting President of the Transvaal, and
his colleagues.

Mr. Schalk Burger thereupon wrote to Lord Kitchener
(loth March, 1902) expressing himself as "desirous and pre-
pared to make peace proposals" when he should have con-
sulted Mr. Steyn. There was some delay in rinding where
Mr. Steyn was. He lay ill, in fact, in De la Rey's laager; but
at last Mr. Schalk Burger and Mr. Steyn were brought together
at Klerksdorp on 9th April,1 Generals De Wet and De la Rey
also coming into the conference. The next two days were
spent in discussion: the state of the campaign in every district
was reviewed, and a decision to make proposals was arrived at.
A letter, signed by Burger and Steyn, was then sent to Lord
Kitchener asking for a meeting: —

" His Excellency Lord Kitchener be requested to meet these Govern-
ments personally, time and place to be appointed by him, in order to lay
directly before him peace proposals which we are prepared to make, by
which we shall be enabled to settle all questions which may arise, at
once, by direct conversation and parley with him, thereby making
certain that this meeting will bear the desired fruit." (April loth.)

In the morning of I2th April the British Commander-in-
Chief received the delegates in a room of his house at Pretoria.
Lord Kitchener met them without any political officer. It was
a meeting between soldiers alone. Lord Kitchener welcomed
his guests sympathetically, and Mr. Schalk Burger solemnly
read, article by article, the proposals which the Boers had
drafted at Klerksdorp. The Republics wished to lay before
the British Government, said Mr. Schalk Burger, that they
had an earnest desire for peace, and consequently had decided
to ask them to end hostilities " and to enter into an agreement
by which in their opinion all future war between them and the
British Government in South Africa will be prevented". They

1 The day on which General Ian Hamilton's drive began its preliminary operations.

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 191

considered the object would be attained by providing for the
following points: (i) Franchise for all; (2) equal rights for
Dutch and English languages in the schools ; (3) Customs,
Post, Telegraphs, and Railways Union; (4) arbitration in case
of future differences ; (5) dismantling of forts ; (6) mutual
amnesty. Mr. Burger sat down; Mr. Steyn, obviously very
ill, rose to explain that the proposals were made because the
delegates wished to secure a lasting peace. Their one purpose
was "to attain the object for which the people had fought".

Lord Kitchener, raising his hand in astonishment, inter-
rupted him: " Must I understand from what you say that you
wish to retain your independence?" Steyn replied: "Yes; the
people must not lose their self-respect ". Kitchener's disap-
pointment was manifest, but he would not let the chance of
coming to an understanding slip; he had always regretted that
his meeting with Botha a year before had not borne fruit. He
urged submission, repeated his promise of future self-govern-
ment, and entreated the delegates to banish all thought of inde-
pendence and negotiate in a sensible spirit. But Schalk Burger
joined Steyn in declaring that they had no power to make any
proposal which sacrificed independence. At last Lord Kitchener
agreed, as a matter of form, to cable the Boer proposals to
England, though he said plainly that there was no doubt
what the answer would be. There was not. The British
Government replied five hours later with emphasis that "it
could not entertain any proposals based on the continued
independence of the former Republics which have been form-
ally annexed to the British Crown ".

The Home Government enjoined that Lord Kitchener should
be joined by Lord Milner in making this clear to the Boer re-
presentatives, and should encourage them to put forward fresh
proposals on that understanding. The conference was resumed
on 1 6th April (Roodeval had taken place in the interval). The
Home Government's reply was read, upon which the Boer

1 92 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

delegates said that further discussion was impossible. Never-
theless further discussion went on. That was the most en-
couraging sign of the conference — the leaders did not break it
off, but remained to bargain. They reproduced in the council-
chamber some of the elusiveness they had shown in the field,
and began by proposing that one of the delegates from Europe
should be sent for in order that the views of President Kruger
might be ascertained. An armistice might also be granted
meanwhile. Lord Kitchener promptly and unhesitatingly ob-
jected to the armistice. Lord Milner added that the depu-
tation in Europe had resigned its executive power, and with it,
he thought, a good deal of its influence over the burghers.
Kitchener and Milner both had no doubt that the leaders in
Europe would be quite prepared to advise the others to keep
on fighting. Lord Kitchener, however, agreed to send a tele-
gram to England stating the Boer leaders' doubts and hesi-
tations about independence and to ask the British Government
to state what terms (if the Boers would surrender their inde-
pendence) they were prepared to grant. The Boer leaders did
not pledge themselves to give up independence; still, they
would like to know what they would receive if they did. Lord
Kitchener contrived to compress this dubious situation into a
remarkably terse telegram, and while a reply was awaited the
conference adjourned. Before it met again on the iyth April
the defeat of Roodeval had become known.

The reply of the Government addressed to Lord Kitchener,
and preserving the character of a military instruction, author-
ized him to refer the Boer leaders to the terms which he had
offered General Botha at the Middelburg conference a year
before. A copy of Kitchener's letter to Botha was, at Botha's
request, handed to each of the delegates. On this occasion his
fellow-leaders repeated that they could not accept it without
reference to the people — could they have an armistice? and
could they have a European delegate? Lord Kitchener

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 193

patiently rejoined by asking what profit it could be to have
with them men who had not fought and who therefore knew
nothing of the situation ? As for an armistice, his duty to
his own soldiers forbade it. Up to that moment there was
nothing to show him that the Boer leaders seriously meant
peace. A profitless truce would operate to his own disad-
vantage as a general, and his Government had supported him
in not granting it. But, added Lord Kitchener, he would
meet them half-way. Without stopping operations, he would
give them every opportunity of putting the case to their
burghers. Let them meet their commandos, each on a day
appointed and protected by a local truce for that day. They
could then take votes, and return to the conference with full
powers. After Lord Kitchener Lord Milner spoke, urging
the leaders to avoid delay.

Finally, Lord Kitchener arranged with them the details of
the* strange and unprecedented armistice, and they separated for
a term of four weeks, during which the talking and the voting
in the laagers was to be carried out. On the evening of i8th
April the Boer leaders left Pretoria. Mr. Steyn, daily growing
worse in health, went to Wolmaranstad, and took no further
part in the discussions. The others, furnished with Kitchener's
safe-conducts, dispersed all over the theatre of the war.

Never was there in warfare a situation quite like this.
Lord Kitchener loyally carried out his undertaking. Com-
mandos were allowed to assemble and confer unmolested ;
commandants and messengers travelled with free passes over
the railways, receiving a good deal of hospitality on their way
through our lines, and once or twice being accidentally cap-
tured, only to be released on production of their passports.
De Wet surpassed his own record for mobility, travelling all
over the Orange River Colony, addressing eight meetings, and
— it is to be noted — urging them not to surrender their inde-
pendence. The Transvaal leaders were no less active; it is

VOL. ii. 28

i94 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

not likely that their advice was of the same tenor. In theory
every leader and every burgher was opposed to the surrender
of independence, but the positions in the Transvaal and in the
Orange State were not identical. However long the Orange
State v/ent on, it could not lose much more than had gone
already ; peace would restore its property, and could not
at the worst do more than take away its independence. But
in the Transvaal there was something more to lose. If the
recalcitrant fighters stayed in the field too long it was they
who would become the Uitlanders, a minority with lessening
influence and fewer votes than those who had accepted the
terms of the British and had "come in". General Louis
Botha was statesman enough to see that this might be the
opportunity, and the only opportunity, to return to Pretoria
with sufficient prestige to unite a national Boer party strong
enough to hold its own and to take a preponderant share in
shaping the destinies of the Transvaal of the future. Events
have shown that he was right ; but there were not many
among the Boer fighters at that time with his foresight.

There was another strong man whose prescience saw that
future and did not fear it — Lord Kitchener. The Commander-
in-Chief did not relax his efforts, though he loyally kept the
armistice. Outside his compact he prosecuted the war with
ruthless energy, and the two large forces in existence, Bruce
Hamilton's in the eastern Transvaal, Ian Hamilton's in the
western Transvaal, were supplemented. Following a drive
by Elliot in the Orange River Colony, Bruce Hamilton was
sent there; and Ian Hamilton undertook a system of driving
on a rather different plan towards the Vryburg-Mafeking line.
The first of these drives lasted from ist May to loth May;
the second from yth May to nth May; and but for the
smouldering activity of Smuts in Cape Colony, and its military
consequences, these were the last operations of the war. Lord
Kitchener ordered them as a military precaution, and also

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 195

because he was certain that any sign of weakening resolution
on his part would be misinterpreted. That he was anxious
to lead the Boers into peace, and if not to lead them to
drive them into it, is certain.

He always had said he was a soldier and not a politician;
but he could not help being a statesman, and from that point
of view he was eager to clinch a bargain which would give his
country what it was fighting for — and not to grudge the Boers
the best of terms for conceding it. As a soldier he saw no
advantage either to his own country or to the Boers in going
on. His military position was immensely strong — he could
always reckon that it would become more and more unassail-
able— but was it worth the lives and the money to continue a
war that would be always difficult while the Boers had a car-
tridge? Kitchener was one of those men who have a born
hatred of waste, and his natural bent had been cultivated by
the necessity for economy in Egypt and the Soudan. In this
campaign, where nothing was grudged, it irked him that such
portentous expenditure should be continually and endlessly
incurred if there was a possible way of ending it. It revolted
his sense of reasonableness and that British common sense
of which he had so large a share. There were two personal
considerations which moved him. One was that he had, as
most British soldiers acquired during the war, a great respect
for the courage and fighting qualities of the Boers, and a great
esteem for some of their leaders, particularly for Louis Botha.
There were many incidents regretted by both sides during the
war, but there was little bitterness against the Boers among the
British soldiers who went through the campaign. One, at
least, of the official historians of the struggle has said that it
was the most "good-humoured" war ever fought.

Such bitterness as prevailed was softened with time; it had
not disappeared in April and May, 1902, when the Boers were
faced with the certainty that, struggle as they might, and vote

196 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

as they would, their independence was slipping from them.
The majority, especially in the Orange State, stood firm for
independence, but this attitude represented their wish rather
than their expectation. No other decision was to be expected
of brave men still in the field ; but with such an electorate the
yearning for a return of peace was as inevitable as the vote for
continued resistance. Peace meant political subjugation, but
war only prolonged that end with hardships and miseries added
in the interval. If, then, to the honour of the fighting Boers,
the demand still went up for war, there was at the back of it a
reluctance that led one of the delegates at the final conference
to tell his fellow-burghers: "You may say what you will, resolve
what you will, but whatever you do here in this meeting is
the end of the war".

At the Vereeniging meeting on the I5th of May sixty dele-
gates from the commandos, as well as the members of the two
Governments, met to decide the issue. Influenced by Lord
Kitchener's promise of immunity to those commandos who
sent their leaders to the conference, the burghers had chosen
all their most prominent leaders. With De Wet were his six
" assistant chief-commandants ". The Transvaal had sent De
la Rey, Kemp, Liebenberg, Du Tort, and Celliers from the
west; Beyers from the far north; and the leaders from Louis
Botha's command; Smuts left the investment of Ookiep in
Cape Colony to come; Chris Botha came from the Swaziland
border. After a formal meeting in the morning, at which
General Beyers was elected chairman, the convention met in
the afternoon, and De Wet and his assistant chief-commandants
began by declaring that they were bound to vote against any
surrender of independence. Louis Botha, having been called
upon by Schalk Burger, took the bull by the horns. Were
the delegates, he asked, irrevocably pledged by their mandate;
if so there could be no united action. It was a critical moment.
Hertzog rose to save the situation. It was a principle in law.

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 197

he said, that a delegate could not be a mere mouthpiece, but
must be a plenipotentiary to vote as he thought best. Smuts
concurred. The first step towards considering the terms had
beeli taken.

A melancholy two days followed. Speech after speech was
delivered far into the night. The cleavage of opinion was
unmistakable, and it soon became apparent that the desire for
peace on the part of each speaker was in exact proportion to the
damage sustained by his command. General Louis Botha alone
gave a wider survey. He drew a most gloomy picture of the
east and south-east Transvaal. In the whole of the Transvaal
he estimated there were 1 1,000 burghers in the field, of whom
a third had no horses. General Smuts declared that he had
3000 men in arms, but he frankly told the meeting that he
had no hope whatever of a general rebellion in Cape Colony.
Kemp for the western Transvaal made two bellicose speeches,
in the first of which he said there was no scarcity in that part
of the Transvaal, and in the second that he was determined
to fight on till he died. Towards the end of the second day
there was a call that the great leaders should speak again —
Botha, De la Rey, and De Wet. General Botha expanded
what he had said already, but he added to the military survey
the consideration that weighed most with him: " If we con-
tinue the war it may be that the Afrikanders against us will
outnumber our own men ". The fatal thing would be to secure
no terms at all and yet be forced to surrender. "We are slip-
ping back — we must save the nation."

At this tense moment De la Rey spoke, and he, the un-
defeated leader, gave his word for peace. He could fight, he
said, but the countries as a whole could not. Starvation and
misery faced them; intervention was a dream. Fight to the
bitter end ? The bitter end had come. . . . The effect of De
la Rey's speech was decisive, though De Wet raged against it.
De Wet's negative prevented the immediate acceptance of the

198 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

terms of surrender which had been offered, but the compromise
which was suggested was the half-way house. In this compro-
mise it was proposed that (i) foreign relations and embassies
should be given up, (2) a British protectorate accepted, (3) a
certain portion of territory surrendered, and (4) that a defensive
alliance with Great Britain should be concluded. Smuts and
Hertzog drew up the proposal, Botha, De la Rey, and De Wet
went to Pretoria to negotiate it: and three of these at any rate
were probably aware that it would not do. Nevertheless, when
they met Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner in the council-
chamber at Pretoria they prepared to argue it with undi-
minished assurance. There was a long and tedious discussion,
but the Boers had before them two men hard to convince that
black (or grey) was white. Smuts and Hertzog said that there
was no difference between these proposals and the terms Lord
Kitchener had offered at Middelburg. Then, said Lord Milner
smoothly, if there were no inconsistency between the two it
would be better to base the discussion on Lord Kitchener's
terms, which were older and clearer and more detailed. Smuts
tried hard to escape from that quandary, and urged that at any
rate the new proposals might be referred to the Home Govern-
ment. But here Lord Kitchener put his foot down. It was
useless, he said: "Grant your proposals and before a year is
over we shall be at war again ".

There was an adjournment for two hours. General Smuts
was sent across to sound Lord Kitchener informally, and as
the result Lord Milner drafted an article which was to be
regarded as the necessary preamble to the terms of peace as
set forth in Lord Kitchener's Middelburg offer. It read :—

"The burgher forces in the field will forthwith lay down their arms,
handing over all guns, rifles, and munitions of war in their possession or
under their control, and desist from any further resistance to the autho-
rity of His Majesty King Edward VII, whom they recognize as their
lawful sovereign.

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 199

" The manner and details of this surrender will be arranged between
Lord Kitchener and Commandant -General Botha, Assistant Com-
mandant-General De la Rey, and Chief Commandant De Wet."

The italicized phrase in this article bespoke the surrender
of independence. When it was presented to the Boer Com-
mission, General Botha asked if that was what it meant. Lord
Milner said that it was. General Botha made a passionate
appeal for better terms. But no better terms were possible;
all that could be promised was that some details of the Middel-
burg document might be altered in favour of the Boers. Lord
Kitchener suggested that a sub-committee might be appointed
to frame the details of -a revised Middelburg offer; the Boer
Commission could consider the details before pledging them-
selves to accept the preamble. By this means, though
" absolute surrender " was shelved for the moment, time was
gained in which the more obstinate Boers might become
familiar with the idea. The second corner was turned. For
two days Generals Hertzog and Smuts on the one hand, and
Lord Milner and Sir Richard Solomon on the other, wrestled
over a satisfactory document, the two Boer lawyers struggling
keenly for the best possible terms. More important than that,
however, the document was drawn up in a form which made a
concession to Boer dignity by the assumption that it was a treaty
and not a submission, and that the Boer leaders were acting
as representatives of their respective Governments. Thus : —

" General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Commanding-in-Chief,
and his Excellency Lord Milner, High Commissioner, on behalf of the
British Government, and Messrs. S. W. Burger, F. W. Reitz, Louis
Botha, J. H. De la Rey, L. J. Meyer, and J. C. Krogh, acting as the
Government of the South African Republic; and Messrs. M. T. Steyn,
W. J. C. Brebner, C. R. de Wet, J. B. M. Hertzog, and C. H. Olivier,
acting as the Government of the Orange Free State, acting on behalf
of their respective burghers, desirous to terminate the present hostilities,
agree on the following articles."

200 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

The form was resolutely conciliatory. The articles, with
the preamble quoted above inserted, were rather more generous
than those which had been offered by Lord Kitchener a year
before. But now a rather curious situation arose. The domi-
nant consideration of the surrender of independence was
neglected; all the criticism and objections of the Boer Com-
missioners were directed against the clause regarding the pay-
ment of the debts, receipts, and war losses of the republics.
At Middelburg Kitchener and Botha had discussed this ques-
tion, and Kitchener, though an economist, had been business-
like enough to see that a million given was a good deal more
than a million gained, if by that means the war could be
ended. So, though he was a little staggered by the proposal,
he had recommended the British Government to offer a million
pounds as compensation for all losses, though commandeer
receipts and notes were to be demanded as evidence of such
losses. It was a remarkable concession, for evidently the
British Government was thus promising to pay the costs of
the enemy in fighting us. But Kitchener was not disposed
to haggle about the price of a concession if it was what he
wanted, and what also he thought was worth the money to
the Empire.

The Boer point of view was different; but it was not
incomprehensible. Much more than a million pounds had
been spent by them in requisitions and commandeered goods.
Somebody had to pay. They were giving up their indepen-
dence, a thing of immeasurably greater value than money;
why then should they sacrifice money as well and start the
two new colonies under a load of debt ? Let those who had
annexed the colonies take over the debts. It may also be
assumed that the Boer Commissioners, knowing how un-
palatable was the pill they were offering to their fellow-
burghers, wished to gild it as handsomely as possible. Lord
Milner argued that to make the British Government liable for

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 201

" notes " given by the Boer commandants in exchange for
everything they had seen fit to commandeer (which was in
short what the Boer Commissioners asked) was equivalent to
making Great Britain pay the full cost of Boer resistance.
It was. But Botha, displaying an unexpected reverence for
the Middelburg conditions, replied that a withdrawal from
what Lord Kitchener had in principle offered then ought
not to be permitted now. Lord Milner rejoined that Lord
Kitchener had defined the million offered then as "an act
of grace"; but that definition could not alter the fact that
the Boers did not think a million sufficient. Lord Kitchener
bluntly interposed. How much ? Would two or three
millions be enough ? Botha and the other leaders consulted
in private, and finally put forward three millions as the price
of peace. Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner regarded this
proposal from different standpoints. Kitchener did not mind
how the Boers arrived at the sum to be paid for compensation
so long as they would state definitely what the sum was.
Milner was no more disposed to haggle than Kitchener, but
he clung to the idea of the "act of grace*', because he thought
that otherwise there would be endless claims and wrangles to
shares in the compensation as a matter of right; and also that
to concede payment as a right would be to compensate the
republics for having made war upon Great Britain. The
difference in outlook between the soldier and the statesman
was that Kitchener had been fighting the Boers, while Milner
had been fighting sedition.

Lord Kitchener explained to General Botha and the other
leaders that the sanction of the British Government must be
obtained for the completed proposals, Lord Milner adding
a warning that they were now complete and precise and could
not again be altered; and the Boers, on their part, agreed that,
sanction having been obtained, the proposals should be laid
before their people for a direct " yes " or " no ".

202 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

For a week the British Government considered the pro-
posals, with many interchanges of question and answer with
Lords Kitchener and Milner, and with the authorities in Cape
Town and in Natal, and on the 28th May the Boer leaders
met again at Lord Kitchener's house to hear the draft of the
treaty as approved. It ran as follows: —

" General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Commander-in-Chief, and
his Excellency Lord Milner, High Commissioner, on behalf of the
British Government.

« Messrs. S. W. Burger, F. W. Reitz, Louis Botha, J. H. De la Rey,
L. J. Meyer, and J. C. Krogh, on behalf of the Government of the
South African Republic and its burghers; Messrs. M. T. Steyn, W. J. C.
Brebner, C. R. de Wet, J. B. M. Hertzog, and C. H. Olivier, on behalf
of the Government of the Orange Free State and its burghers, being
anxious to put an end to the existing hostilities, agree on the following
points: —

" Firstly, the burgher forces now in the veldt shall at once lay down
their arms, and surrender all the guns, small arms, and war stores in
their actual possession, or of which they have cognizance, and shall
abstain from any further opposition to the authority of His Majesty
King Edward VII, whom they acknowledge as their lawful sovereign.

"The manner and details of their surrender shall be arranged by
Lord Kitchener, Commandant-General Botha, Assistant Commandant-
General De la Rey, and Commandant-in-Chief De Wet.

" Secondly, burghers in the veldt beyond the frontiers of the Trans-
vaal and the Orange River Colony, and all prisoners of war who are out
of South Africa, who are burghers, shallj on their declaration that they
accept the status of subjects of His Majesty King Edward VII, be
brought back to their homes as soon as transport and means of existence
can be secured.

"Thirdly, the burghers who thus surrender, or who thus return,
shall lose neither their personal freedom nor their property.

" Fourthly, no judicial proceedings, civil or criminal, shall be taken
against any of the burghers who thus return for any action in connection
with the carrying on of the war. The benefit of this clause shall not,
however, extend to certain deeds antagonistic to the usages of warfare,
which have been communicated by the Commander-in-Chief to the

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 203

Boer generals, arid which shall be heard before a court martial imme-
diately after the cessation of hostilities.

" Fifthly, the Dutch language shall be taught in the public schools
of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony when the parents
of the children demand it: and shall be admitted in the Courts of Justice
whenever this is required for the better and more effective administration
of justice.

" Sixthly, the possession of rifles shall, on taking out a licence in
accordance with the law, be permitted in the Transvaal and the Orange
River Colony to persons who require them for their protection.

"Seventhly, military administration in the Transvaal and in the
Orange River Colony shall, as soon as it is possible, be followed by civil
government: and, as soon as circumstances permit, a representative
principle tending towards autonomy shall be introduced.

"Eighthly, the question of -granting a franchise to the natives shall
not be decided until a representative constitution has been granted.

"Ninthly, no special tax shall be laid on landed property in the
Transvaal and Orange River Colony to meet the expenses of the war.

" Tenthly, as soon as circumstances permit, there shall be appointed
in each district in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony a
Commission, in which the inhabitants of that district shall be repre-
sented, under the chairmanship of a magistrate or other official, with a
view to assist in the bringing back of the people to their farms, and in
procuring for those who, on account of the war, are unable to provide
for themselves food, shelter, and such quantities of seed, cattle, imple-
ments, &c., as are necessary for the resumption of their previous callings.

" His Majesty's Government shall place at the disposal of these
Commissioners the sum of £3,000,000 for the aforementioned purposes,
and shall allow that all notes issued in conformity with Law I, 1900,
of the Government of the South African Republic, and all receipts given
by the officers in the veldt of the late Republics, or by their order, may
be presented to the said Commission, and in case such notes and receipts
are found by the said Commission to have been duly issued for considera-
tion in value then they shall be accepted by the said Commission as
proof of war losses, suffered by the persons to whom they had been
originally given. In addition to the above-named free gift of £3,000,000
His Majesty's Government will be prepared to grant advances in the
form of loans, for the same ends, free of interest for two years, and after-

204 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

wards repayable over a term of years with 3 per cent interest. No
foreigners or rebel shall be entitled to benefit by this clause/'

It will be perceived that the British Government held fast
by the principle that the £3,000,000 was a free gift, " without
prejudice", as the lawyers say, but in nearly all other clauses
the terms were better than those which Lord Kitchener had
offered at Middelburg. In fact, as well as in theory, the
Colonies, if they were to become British, would start on a
sound financial footing, guaranteed by the British Government
even to the length of lending money on easy terms. The
vexed question of the Kaffir franchise was evidently to be left
to the Boers themselves to decide, and there were clear indica-
tions that if the Boer people wanted to become as other British
dominions are, " Daughter in my mother's house, mistress in
my own" — the opportunity was theirs for the taking. But
Lord Milner explained that the document was absolutely final,
it could not be altered in any way; and with this knowledge
the Boer leaders left Pretoria for Vereeniging to meet the
delegates.

The Commissioners first saw Mr. Steyn, who fiercely
denounced the treaty, and, resigning the Presidency, nominated
De Wet to act for him1 (29th May). They then went on to
the tent where the delegates were assembled, and the treaty
was read out. A discussion followed, long drawn out, as it
must have been when those who took part in it had to consider
the sacrifice of the great thing they had fought for, receiving in
exchange conditions and concessions which, at the best, must
seem to them no more than the scriptural mess of pottage as
the price of their birthright. De Wet and the Free Staters
continued to argue against the surrender; Botha and Smuts
urged peace for the sake of national existence. When the
meeting adjourned late on the evening of 3Oth May it was

1 Mr. Steyn was extremely ill, and was taken to a British hospital. He remained irrecon-
cilable even to the outbreak of the war of 1914 and beyond it.

END OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 205

apparent that there was a majority in favour of peace. Never-
theless, on 3 ist May the morning session revealed that there
were still opposed parties. Nieuwhoudt moved the rejection
of the British terms, P. R. Viljoen their acceptance. Then,
to his great honour, De Wet interposed. Earlier in the morn-
ing a strong personal appeal had been made to him by Botha
and De la Rey to use his influence in favour of peace. He
proposed an adjournment, and held a meeting in his own tent
of the hostile minority. He persuaded all but a few to accept
the inevitable, and when the meeting was resumed the resolu-
tion to do so was taken. It was accepted by the delegates
in a statement drawn up by Hertzog and Smuts, which made
it clear that the acceptance was under protest, and due to the
hopelessness of continuing the struggle. The statement re-
asserted the belief that the country of those who signed it
had a well-founded claim for independence ; it recapitulated
the reasons which made them yield their claims to superior
force; it ended with the hope that, since they had accepted
it, their country's present circumstances would be " speedily
ameliorated in such a way that our nation will be placed in
a position to enjoy the privileges to which they think they
have a just claim, on the ground not only of their past
sacrifices but also of those made in this war ".

The acceptance of the conditions couched in these terms
was carried with only six dissentients out of sixty. Mr. Schalk
Burger ended the meeting with a few sentences which were
a noble epitaph on the fight the Boer people had waged.1

" We are standing here at the grave of the two Republics. Much
remains to be done, although we shall not be able to do it in the official
capacities we have formerly occupied. Let us not draw our hands back
from the work which it is our duty to accomplish. Let us ask God
to guide us, and to show us how we are enabled to keep our nation

1 The " Times" History of the War in South Africa^ quoted from Mr. Kestell, the Boer official
historian of the war.

206 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

together. We must be ready to forget and forgive whenever we meet
our brethren."

General Botha, General Smuts, General De la Rey, General
de Wet, Mr. Schalk Burger, and the other commissioners
travelled back to Pretoria that evening, and an hour before
midnight met Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner, and the
treaty was signed. Lord Kitchener gravely shook hands with
each of the men who had fought with him. " We are good
friends now," he said. It was a prescient saying which the
years have shown to be true. Its realization was due to the
way in which he had made peace as well as waged war.

E. S. G.

CHAPTER X

Honours to the Commander-in-Chief — Lessons
of the South African War

Congratulations of British Government to Lord Kitchener — Thanks of British
Parliament and Vote of £50,000 — Mr. Balfour's Tribute — Farewell Banquet to
Kitchener in South Africa — His Speech on the Lessons of the War— The Last
Muster in Pretoria — Kitchener's Home-coming — Honours from King Edward VII
— South Africa's Later History and Share in the Great War.

THE feelings of public relief at the ending of the war
found natural expression in messages of congratula-
tion and thanks to Lord Kitchener. First to send
him " heartiest congratulations " was King Edward. A cable-
gram from the Secretary of State for War (4th June, 1902)
offered him, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, "their
most sincere congratulations on the energy, skill, and patience
with which you have conducted this prolonged campaign", and
wished him to communicate to the troops under his command
the Government's " profound sense of the spirit and endurance
with which they have met every call made upon them, of their
bravery in action, of the excellent discipline preserved, and of
the humanity shown by them throughout this trying period".
Lord Kitchener replied from Pretoria on the following day:
" Sincere thanks for the message of congratulation you have
sent me from His Majesty's Government, which I am com-
municating to troops, and which I am sure they will receive
with greatest satisfaction ".

From the morning papers early in June the British people

207

208 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

learnt with full appreciation of three marks of honour for the
Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's forces in South Africa.
The first was that King Edward had been pleased to confer the
dignity of a Viscounty upon Lord Kitchener; the second that
the King had been pleased to approve the promotion of the
Lieutenant-General to the rank of General. The third took
the form of an item of Parliamentary intelligence. The House
of Lords had met specially to receive a message from the King
with reference to a grant to Lord Kitchener in recognition of
his services. Here is the message which the Peers came down
in large numbers to hear the Marquis of Salisbury read: —

" His Majesty, taking into consideration the eminent services ren-
dered by Lieutenant-General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, G.C.B.,
G.C.M.G., Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Forces in South
Africa, and being desirous in recognition of such services to confer upon
him some signal mark of his favour, recommends to the House of Lords
that they should concur in granting Lord Kitchener the sum of
^50,000."

In the Commons Mr. Balfour announced the receipt of the
King's Message. The proceedings in both Houses to give
effect to this proposal took place next day (June 5). A series of
resolutions was moved, recording grateful appreciation of the
gallantry, energy, discipline, and good conduct of all ranks of
all the services employed — naval and military, home, Indian
and colonial; noting the cordial good feeling by which they
had all been animated; expressing admiration for the devoted
valour of those who had fallen, and deep sympathy with their
relatives and friends; and thanking also the members of all the
militia corps which had been embodied in the United Kingdom
during the war for their zealous and meritorious services at
home and abroad. In the Upper House Lord Salisbury
observed, in moving the resolutions, that forces varying from
200,000 to 260,000 had been kept in a distant land, 6000
miles off, in order to repel an attack which was in no way

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 209

provoked, and to show that such attacks could not be made
with impunity. Our troops had shown even more than usual
energy in contending with difficulties of no ordinary kind. In
his belief the result of the war was that in the eyes of all the
world we were much stronger than ever before. Earl Spencer,
in seconding the motion, said that by his skill Lord Kitchener
overcame the great difficulties of the campaign, that he had
shown a most marvellous power of organization, and that
Parliament and the country would bear the greatest gratitude
to him for what he had done in bringing about peace.

In moving the grant of £50,000 in the Commons, Mr.
Balfour pointed out that had we been fighting a highly-organ-
ized industrial community the war would have come to an end
with Lord Roberts's success. The difficulties thrown in the
way of his successor were of a novel and most formidable char-
acter. Lord Kitchener had to deal at the same time with no
fewer than ninety small mobile columns scattered over an area
greater than that of large European States, and those columns
were not hampered by the military necessities of defending
great commercial or national interests. One further difference
which greatly added to Lord Kitchener's difficulties, and which,
so far as he knew, was absolutely new in the history even of
guerrilla warfare, was that we were, while fighting our enemies,
supporting the whole civil population. In the course of his
operations against this mobile foe Lord Kitchener created no
less than 4000 miles of lines defended by blockhouses — a
distance greater than the whole distance which separated the
Atlantic from the Pacific in North America, greater than
that which separated Khartoum from Cape Town. The mag-
nitude of this gigantic task showed a fertile brain, and its
success showed boundless courage, boundless energy, and
boundless resolution. It was to those great qualities we owed
the fortunate termination of active hostilities in South Africa.
"In the brilliant roll of British generals few indeed have had

VOL. II. 29

210 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

greater difficulties to contend with, few have come out of those
difficulties in a more absolutely triumphant manner."

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman followed Mr. Balfour in
a very cordial tribute to Lord Kitchener. Partial and im-
perfect as our knowledge of the details of military organization
were, he said, we saw enough to be aware that the supreme part
was played by that silent, modest, simple, almost stern figure of
the Commander-in-Chief himself. In an unusual degree the
Vote meant an appreciation of Lord Kitchener's individual
character and services. "Lord Kitchener has shown himself
a great soldier, but he has shown himself more than that — a
great administrator, a master of the art of organization, a tact-
ful negotiator, and a large-minded man. He is of the very
best type of character which, with our pardonable partiality, we
are wont to attribute to the British name. He is strenuous
and pertinacious. He is straight and direct in his action, and
he thinks of his duty and never thinks of himself."

The only jarring note in the Commons was the attitude of
the Nationalists. Two Radicals opposed on principle, but with
good taste. One was Mr. Cremer, member for Haggerston,
who had never voted sixpence towards the war, and intended
to be consistent. The other, Mr. Labouchere, member for
Northampton, was opposed on principle to grants of money to
successful generals, but he did not refrain from expressing
admiration for Lord Kitchener, saying he had done his work
well as a military man, particularly because as a general he had
always recognized that the object of war was peace. The
greatest tribute to Lord Kitchener was the confidence of the
Boers in his word. This was the extent of the opposition
offered by the proprietor of Truth.

An incident which took place early in June in South Africa
afforded Mr. Morley an opportunity for paying, in face of a
Scottish audience, one of the finest compliments that could
come from him to Lord Kitchener. The Commander-in-Chief

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 211

was visiting the Boer delegates who had so recently been in the
field against the British, and had remarked that had he been
one of them himself he would have been proud to do as they
had done. Mr. Morley, referring to the incident in a speech
to Liberals in the Empire Palace Theatre, Edinburgh, said
he would vote Lord Kitchener £50,000 to-morrow for saying
that and nothing else. Mr. Morley was still at this period
one of the " Little Britain " school of thinkers, and he had
certainly been among the severest critics of the course of
British diplomacy which preceded the war. His Edinburgh
observation must be read as evidence of how Lord Kitchener's
chivalrous conduct towards his late enemies in battle appealed
to the hearts and imaginations of the British people. A South
African counterpart was the tribute of Mr. Schalk Burger, who
said to an interviewer of the Natal Mercury that " the Boers
thoroughly admired Lord Kitchener".

The Commander-in-Chief himself was now finishing up at
Pretoria preparatory to returning home. In accordance with
the old custom, by which a distinguished officer is chosen to
carry home dispatches announcing an important victory, his
military secretary, Lieutenant -Colonel Hamilton, left Cape
Town on 4th June, bearing Lord Kitchener's dispatches con-
taining the original documents of the Peace Treaty. On the
following Sunday (8th June) in Pretoria a solemn thanksgiving
was held for the return of peace simultaneously with the service
held at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. This was an impres-
sive ceremony which answered to the emotions now filling
every breast, British and Dutch alike. The morning was un-
usually warm and bright for South African winter, and Pretoria
wore a settled and peaceful aspect to which it had been a
stranger during two years and a half. Troops to the number
of 9500 lined up, forming a horseshoe on the three sides of
Church Square fronting the Government Buildings. From
the latter temporary platforms, covered with red cloth and

212 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

packed with the leading people of the Transvaal, jutted out
into the centre of the square. Another platform was reserved
for the Commander-in-Chief and his staff. Palms and ferns,
flags and bunting, were part of a picturesque scene, in which
no building and no yard of standing-space in the square was
without its quota of the populace.

Punctually at ten o'clock Lord Kitchener came on to the
dais in front of the reserve platform. Of the generals who
figured at the occupation of Pretoria about two years before
only General Ian Hamilton and General Kelly, in addition to
Lord Kitchener himself, took part in the ceremony of 8th June.
The first event was the presenting of decorations by Lord
Kitchener. Colonel Congreve read out the record of the man's
.deed as each recipient came up, and Lord Kitchener looked his
happiest in discharging a duty which aroused much enthusi-
asm among the onlookers. Several officers and men received
the Victoria Cross, and Red Crosses were bestowed upon some
hospital nurses. Lord Kitchener and his staff next descended
into the square and faced the platform, which was then occupied
by the officiating clergy, among whom were the majority of the
army chaplains, headed by Archbishop Jones of Cape Town,
Bishop Carter of Zululand, and Bishop Chandler of Bloem-
fontein. Choirs from Pretoria and Bloemfontein led the sing-
ing, accompanied by the military bands. An undenominational
form of service had been ordered by Lord Kitchener, who was
always firm for bringing in all the churches on national
occasions. The Archbishop of Cape Town preached a short
sermon, expressing gratitude for the restoration of peace, and
emphasizing the urgent necessity of lasting peace between
the peoples lately at war. The closing hymn, sung to the
familiar Old Hundredth, understood by Dutch and British
alike, was deeply affecting. Then the National Anthem was
sung to the accompaniment of the massed bands. Dutch
and British in unison took off their hats. The service ended

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 213

with Kipling's "Recessional", the choir of 200 walking round
solemnly and impressively. A short pause, then Lord Kitchener
and his staff ascended the dais. Facing the crowd, he lifted his
hat and called: "Three cheers for the King!" The soldiers
and the people responded heartily: enthusiastic cheering of
the two races joined in common Sovereignty filled the square.
When this demonstration subsided General Barton, from the
bandmaster's stand, called for three cheers for Lord Kitchener,
which were given with fervour.

On the eve of his departure from South Africa a great
banquet was given in his honour at the Wanderers' Hall,
Johannesburg, on tyth June, by the Town Council, the
Chambers of Mines, Commerce, and Trade, and the Stock
Exchange. Over 400 persons were present. The occasion
was marked by a fine eulogy and analysis of the hero of the
evening delivered by Lord Milner.

" The stupendous difficulties of his task ", said the High Com-
missioner, "are realized in this country. Nothing but a will of steel
and untiring energy could be successful in grappling day by day with a
mass of complicated details which have seldom been grouped into any
human brain; only persistent stoical courage could have brought him
through it to this present perfect success. Men of this temper are
commonly supposed to be less sensitive to the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune than others, but no man has felt more than Lord
Kitchener the loss of the many gallant officers and men. But all the
more honour is due to him that he never let the acuteness of his sorrows
and disappointments deflect the steady unswerving pursuit of his aim.
Lord Kitchener's name will go down to history as the foremost of our
men of action, while he leaves the scene of his greatest achievements
esteemed, almost beloved, by the men whom he fought and conquered."

Lord Kitchener received a magnificent ovation when he
rose to reply. He appreciated the good spirit and the un-
complaining manner in which the people of Johannesburg had
borne the regulations imposed by martial law; and he made

2i4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

an earnest appeal to mine-owners to afford lucrative employ-
ment to members of the irregular corps about to be disbanded,
who had borne the heat and burden of the day. But his most
interesting theme lay in the lessons of the war. Some of
them, he said, had learnt to ride and shoot. All had learnt
discipline, to be stanch and steadfast in the hour of danger, to
attack with vigour, to hold what they had gained. They could
never forget the true friends and comrades by whose side they
had stood in a hundred fights. Even the hardships which
they had so cheerfully endured would, in remembrance, be
only pleasures. " Keep up the glorious records and organiza-
tions of those distinguished regiments. Teach the youths that
come after you what you have learnt. Keep your horses and
rifles ready and your bodies physically fit, so that you may be
prepared at any time to take your due part in the great Empire
which unites us all." What had we learnt about our enemies?
We had been told that the Boers would run away. But we
found that they always came back. They subordinated them-
selves to their leaders and worked with discipline through a
long and protracted war. They were courageous in attack,
and had shown marked ability in retreat, which was a lesson
to all. Another characteristic of the Boers, which, if we were
true to the traditions of our forefathers, we ought to be most
capable of fully appreciating, was their wonderful tenacity of
purpose and disinclination to know when they were beaten.
There were many among them whose characteristics and
methods we did not like and did not approve; but, judging
them as a whole, they were a virile race and an asset of con-
siderable importance in the Empire. Lord Kitchener bade
his audience remember that the advent of the happy time of
complete reconciliation greatly depended on the way in which
the Boers were treated. An example had been shown, and a
great lesson learnt, from the war, namely, the meaning of the
words "British Empire", and "standing shoulder to shoulder"

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 215

in the struggle. If others came to assist us we were ready to
go to them in case of need.

A few days later Lord Kitchener arrived at Cape Town,
where he was received with great honour, and the guns of the
fort fired a salute. From the station, where he was awaited
by Sir H. H. Settle and Lady Settle and staff, Colonel Cooper,
Base Commandant, Mr. Graham, Acting-Premier, Mr. Frost,
Secretary for Agriculture, and Major Deane, representing the
Governor, he drove to the Town House through streets lined
with troops and amid the acclamations of crowds of people.
General French was already at the Town House, at the
entrance of which a large stand had been erected. The Mayor
and Town Councillors in their robes received Lord Kitchener,
and the Mayor presented an address, adding that the town
would also present a sword of honour, which, however, had
not yet been delivered. An address was also presented by the
Irish Society.

"It is very gratifying to me", said Lord Kitchener, in a general
reply, " to receive an address from Cape Town on my first visit since
I left this place early in 1900. I must apologize for not coming more
frequently, but I have as my excuse, the justice of which all will allow,
that I have had a great deal of important work to do, and when I could
tear myself away from head-quarters it was to hurry to some place which
was giving me trouble. I therefore did not come to Cape Town.
(Laughter.) I take the Irish address as a compliment to the country in
which I was born ; and I am sure all will rejoice with me at the noble
manner in which the Irish regiments have maintained the honour and
glory of the Old Country and have proved once more that Irishmen are
loyal to their King and country."

Renewed enthusiasm greeted him as he drove to the
Castle. He was entertained to luncheon by the Mayor, his
health being proposed by the Governor, Sir W. Hely-Hutchin-
son. His reply on this occasion was more interesting from
the fact that during the war all had not been smooth sailing

2i 6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

between him and the Cape authorities on the subject of martial
law. To his relief, he said now to his audience, he found
that Cape Colonists did not denounce martial law, for which
he was primarily responsible. Without it the farmers of the
colony would have been either actually or politically dead.
The farmers had been fed with lies, not always told them
in Dutch, until they thought the British people were a nation
of monsters. Martial law had then stepped in and prevented
people from taking a fatal step. It had also been effective in
preventing munitions of war from reaching the enemy. Now
that peace had come he asked them all to put aside racial
feeling, and also to put aside " leagues " and " bonds ", and
to strive for the welfare of their common colony. Briton and
Boer had had a good fight, and they were now shaking hands
after it. It was a happy augury for the future that the people
of Cape Colony had not dealt in a vindictive spirit with the
question of the rebels. Lastly, he expressed the hope that all
the colonists would soon become again a happy and united
family, as Providence meant them to be.

A highly unusual experience befell Lord Kitchener on this
occasion. After the speeches a young lady slipped into the
room, behind the chairs of the guests, and tapped him on the
shoulder. He turned round, and the enthusiastic admirer
kissed him ! Immediately steps were taken to have her re-
moved, but she had brought with her a lovely bouquet of
Cape flowers, and presented it to Lord Kitchener. At the
same time she asked him to write his name in her birthday
book. Lord Kitchener turned and asked for a pen, which
someone handed to him. He then signed his name, and the
young lady, the daughter of a well-known Dutch doctor in
Cape Town, went away.1

Lord Kitchener and General French subsequently sailed
for Britain in the Orotava. His farewell address to the troops

1 South Africa. I7th June, 1916.

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 217

before leaving South Africa is characteristic of Lord Kitchener's
gift of saying the essential in the most direct language. More,
it is a piece of self-revelation. In the case of one who revealed
himself so little, we look to such messages to find the man,
and this message from a great commander at the close of
an arduous campaign is instinct with humanity, sympathy, and
vision.

" The General Officer Commanding-in-Chief wishes to express his
best thanks to all general officers, officers, non-commissioned officers, and
men for the excellent service they have rendered since he first took the
command eighteen months ago. The period in question offered few
opportunities for those decisive engagements which keep up the spirit of
an army and add brilliance and interest to its operations. On the other
hand, officers and men have been called upon for increasing and ever-
increasing exertions, in the face of great hardships and other difficulties,
against dangerous and elusive antagonists. The conduct of the troops
under these trying circumstances has been beyond all praise. Never
has there been the smallest sign of slackness or impatience. It seems to
Lord Kitchener that the qualities of endurance and resolution they have
displayed are much more valuable to»a commander than any dashing or
short-lived effort whereby some hard-fought actions may be won in a
campaign of ordinary duration. The Commander-in-Chief also has
special pleasure in congratulating the Army on the kindly and humane
spirit by which all ranks have been animated during this long struggle-
Fortunately for the future of South Africa, the truth in this matter is
known to our late enemy as well as to ourselves ; and no misrepresen-
tations from outside can prevail in the long run against the actual fact
that no war has ever yet been waged in which the combatants and non-
combatants on either side have shown so much consideration and kind-
ness to one another.

"This message would be incomplete if reference were not made to
the soldierly qualities displayed throughout the campaign by our quon-
dam enemies, and to the admirable spirit displayed by them in carrying
out the surrender of their arms. Many Boer leaders who at an earlier
date recognized the futility of carrying on the devastating conflict beyond
a certain point have already for some time served with us in the field,
and the help which they rendered us will not be forgotten. Many also

218 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

of those who continued to struggle to the end have expressed the hope
that on some future occasion they may have an opportunity of serving
side by side with H.M. forces, from whom Lord Kitchener can assure
them they will receive a very hearty welcome. In bidding the Army
of South Africa farewell, it only remains for Lord Kitchener to wish
every individual serving in it all happiness and prosperity for the future."

An incident of the voyage home was receipt of news
(communicated by the Inyati on 3rd July) of King Edward's
illness and the postponement of the Coronation. At Las
Palmas Lord Kitchener received official visits from the Gover-
nor's aide-de-camp and from two Spanish naval officers and
two British Consular officers; while a deputation of British
residents presented an illuminated address.

He was received as the conquering hero on arriving at
Southampton on I2th July. A case of smallpox, of which the
victim was a member of Lord Kitchener's personal staff, was
hardly permitted to delay the proceedings of landing. The
usual ceremony of being admitted to the freedom of the
borough was part of the welcome. After signing the roll,
Lord Kitchener addressed the company, congratulating the
mayor and the people of Southampton upon the very efficient
manner in which that splendid port had fulfilled all the military
requirements for putting an army in the field some 7000 miles
away. On the journey to London Lord Kitchener alighted at
Basingstoke for a few minutes to enable the Mayor to read an
address from the Corporation. His arrival in London was the
occasion of a grand demonstration of royal and public wekome.
Meeting him at Paddington were King George, then Prince of
Wales, the Duke of Connaught, the Duke of Cambridge, Lord
Roberts, and the head-quarters staff. Sir John Aird was
present, as Mayor of Paddington, to present an address from
that borough, and Lord Kitchener took his mind off the
splendid scene before him for a moment in order to enquire
of Sir John how the Assuan dam was getting on. He then

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 219

changed his staff cap for the more characteristic helmet, and
began the drive through great cheering crowds of Londoners
— it was Saturday and brilliant weather. At Victoria Gate a
halt was made to allow the Mayor (Lieutenant - Colonel
Probyn) and Corporation of Westminster to present an
address. Then the procession went on along a route kept by
the Indian and colonial troops who had come to Britain at
this time for the Coronation. Constitution Hill was lined by
a brilliant gathering of ladies, ensconced on Government stands,
eager to see one who not only bore the reputation of a military
genius, but was commonly regarded by the fair sex with awe as
one who " disliked women ".

His destination was St. James's Palace, where he was
entertained by the Prince of Wales. The distinguished com-
pany present to meet him included the Duke of Connaught,
the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Arthur of Connaught, Lord
Roberts, the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Lansdowne,
Mr. Brodrick, Mr. Balfour (who on this same day became
Prime Minister on the retirement of the Marquis of Salisbury),
Sir Ian Hamilton, Sir Michael Hicks - Beach, and Lord
Chesham. In congratulating Lord Kitchener on behalf of
King Edward, the Prince of Wales at the luncheon said: —

" I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to carry out the wishes
of the King, to offer you the heartiest welcome on your return safe and
sound and to congratulate you on the able and highly successful manner
in which you have terminated the long and arduous campaign in which
you have been so actively engaged during the last two and a half years.
I feel confident that these sentiments of your Sovereign are fully shared
by your fellow-subjects throughout the Empire. We have watched
with the greatest admiration the patience, tenacity, and skill which
you have shown in coping with the enormous difficulties that con-
fronted you, and which example seemed to have inspired your whole
army. Gentlemen, I will now ask you to drink the health of Lord
Kitchener, and I know you will join with me in giving him a most
hearty welcome."

220 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Replying to the toast, Lord Kitchener said : —

"Your Royal Highness, I feel deeply grateful for the very kind way
in which you have expressed the gracious message of His Majesty the
King to me on my return from South Africa. The Army in South Africa
will feel highly honoured by Your Royal Highness's gracious words, and
by the magnificent reception which has been accorded to me as its
representative. The length and severity of the campaign have called
forth qualities of rare endurance and perseverance on the part of all
ranks. As a result I think I may answer Your Royal Highness that the
Army has never been in a fitter condition than at present to take the
field whenever it may be called upon to serve its King and country."

From St. James's Palace Lord Kitchener passed on quietly
to Buckingham Palace, where King Edward personally pre-
sented the Order of Merit to him. Queen Alexandra also
received him. Then he made the short journey to Belgrave
Square, where — as on the occasion of his visit home after Om-
durman — he became the guest of Mr. Pandeli Ralli. In the
evening London was illuminated in his honour. A particularly
happy device at the Canadian Coronation Arch in Whitehall
described him as " hero in peace and war ".

During subsequent weeks Lord Kitchener was in great
demand everywhere, and, although he never cared for func-
tions or fuss, he submitted himself most agreeably to the
wishes of his countrymen. On 3ist July there was a South
African dinner at the Hotel Metropole, when occasion was
taken to present the sword of honour from the Corporation
of Cape Town, which has been referred to. The Lord Mayor
of London presided, and, in handing over the sword to Lord
Kitchener, associated the whole Empire with the unanimous
enthusiasm of Cape Town in regard to him. British -Boer
and Boer-Briton alike owed to Lord Kitchener, under Divine
providence, the inestimable blessing that they were now one.

"We have watched, my Lord, your inflexibility of purpose, your
unwearied ardour, your steady application, and above all your absolute

THE BANQUET AT ST. JAMES'S PALACE, JULY 12, 1902

Lord Kitchener replying to the toast of his health

From a drawing by S. Begg

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 221

justice. You stand out before your fellow-countrymen as a model
Englishman, and that, I venture to say, will be to you a higher title
than any decoration or any rank that can be conferred upon you. No
wonder that an appreciative country desires to hand to you emblems
and tokens of gratitude. I am quite sure, my Lord, that this sword,
in the hands of a British soldier, will never be unsheathed in an un-
righteous cause, and that it will never be re-sheathed in its scabbard, if
the cause is righteous, until justice, mercy, and liberty have been upheld
and maintained."

After expressing, in reply, the confident hope that in South
Africa at any rate the sword would not again be drawn from its
scabbard, Lord Kitchener turned the thoughts of his enthusi-
astic audience to the man — his friend — who had been left at
the helm in that country.

"We all have confidence in Lord Milner," he said. "We all
realize the difficult work that is left before him, and we all wish, with
confidence as well as with sympathy, that he may have every success
in accomplishing the anxious task that lies before, him in that country.
It is nearly three years now that I have worked in close communion
with the High Commissioner, and I may say that our old friendship,
which existed prior to my going to South Africa, has only been
strengthened and increased by the days of stress that we have passed
through together. Although events immediately prior to the war may
have, in some degree, influenced the full appreciation of Lord Milner by
a certain class of our new subjects in South Africa, I am convinced that
the better he is known the more his great and high qualities and great
ability will be appreciated by every section of those who now recognize
him as their ruler. Nothing could more greatly assist Lord Milner in
his task of reconciliation and re-creation of prosperity than the rapid
development of the country, which I am sure you know is full of
natural resources, and has every description of potential wealth. Gold,
iron, and coal are very good assets, and when you add to them the
development of agriculture and the introduction by assisted immigration
of fresh blood into the country, I think you may assure yourselves that
you have nothing less than the making of a new America in the South
African hemisphere. The question of who will supply the energy, the
brains, and the money that are required to carry out this great develop-

222 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

ment is one more for you than for me ; but when, as in South Africa,
patriotism is joined to self-interest, I am not afraid that you will fail to
sow the seed and reap the harvest for which I hope we have prepared
the soil."

One of Lord Kitchener's first engagements was at St.
Martin's Church when a replica of the Onslow Ford statue of
Gordon, designed for Chatham, was unveiled by the Duke of
Cambridge preparatory to its being sent to Khartoum. "I am
very glad", said Lord Kitchener, "that this monument is to
be set up on the banks of the Nile, where it will be a lesson
alike to the European and the native of a man of blameless
life who put duty before himself and died for his country."

In company with Mr. Chamberlain, on ist August, he went
to the city to receive the freedom of the Grocers' Company and
to be entertained at dinner. He then went off as the guest of
the Duke and Duchess of Portland to Welbeck, where he spoke
at the annual show of the tenants' agricultural society. It was
an auspicious moment when, on 6th August, he and Lord
Roberts went together to the Guildhall. King Edward was
back in London, and the public anxiety on account of his health
was changed to rejoicing. In such an atmosphere the citizens
of London imparted even greater warmth than usual into their
reception of the two most popular soldiers of the time. The
address to Lord Kitchener was in these terms: —

"We, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of
London, in Common Council assembled, desire to offer you a hearty
welcome on your return from the long and arduous campaign in South
Africa, and to tender to you our thanks for the splendid services rendered
by you, and by the gallant troops under your command, in bringing the
war to a successful conclusion. In common with all your fellow-courN
trymen we recognize your military skill, and the tenacity, endurance,
and resolution shown by your Lordship, and by the army under your
command, in overcoming not only the military difficulties but also those
of a physical character presented by the vastness of the territory in which

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 223

the war was waged. You have shown yourself to be equally distin-
guished as statesman, as diplomatist, and as an illustrious commander.
We especially desire to express our admiration of the ability displayed
in the conduct of the negotiations which resulted in the surrender of the
Boer forces in the field. We would also bear witness to the humanity
shown by your Lordship and the Imperial troops during the course of
the war, and to the efforts which you made on the termination of hos-
tilities to induce our former enemies to become loyal subjects of His
Majesty the King. We would once again recognize the distinguished
services you have rendered your country in Egypt and the Soudan by
annihilating the power of the Mahdi and the Khalifa, and giving to that
ancient land the blessings of peace and of a just and settled government.
We are proud to claim you as one of the freemen of this ancient city,
to again offer you our warmest welcome on your homecoming, and to
express the earnest hope that you may long be spared to devote your
conspicuous talents to the service of His Majesty the King and to the
upholding of this world-wide Empire."

Like the reply of Lord Roberts, that of Lord Kitchener
paid the sincerest compliments to the army which he com-
manded during the final phases of the war.

" It was an Imperial army," he said, -" drawn from all quarters of
the globe, and as a fighting-machine it was hard to beat. We had also
with us those brave Colonial comrades whose fine spirit and loyalty led
them to sacrifice their private interests to share with us the hardships of
a long and arduous campaign. As long as that spirit exists we as a
people have the qualification of Empire, only requiring that our leaders
and rulers should so mould and direct that spirit as to ensure that it shall
be efficiently used for the common benefit of the whole British race."

Lord Kitchener was of course an important figure in the
coronation procession on 9th August. In the words of one
who was to sit in the War Cabinet with him twelve years later,
Mr. Augustine Birrell, "his presence and demeanour more
than satisfied all his countless admirers ".

Now there was an interesting little South African interlude.
The Boer Generals Botha, De la Rey, and De Wet arrived at

224 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

Southampton in the Saxon on i6th August. They at once
visited the Nigeria, which was lying close by (and in which Mr.
Chamberlain was about to take a party to see the assembled
fleet at Spithead). Here they were received by Lord Kitchener
and presented to Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Roberts. They
were invited to attend the Coronation review of the fleet, but
declined on the ground that family reasons demanded their
presence in London. At Southampton and in London they
were enthusiastically welcomed. Next day they were received
by the King on board the Victoria and Albert in the Solent, Lord
Roberts and Lord Kitchener being present, and were taken for
a trip round the fleet at Spithead. On 5th September Lord
Kitchener attended an official interview given by Mr. Chamber-
lain to the Boer generals at the Colonial Office, at which
amnesty and other questions were discussed.

To return to the order of Lord Kitchener's visits, on
Saturday, 23rd August, he attended the annual agricultural
show of the tenants of Lord Londonderry's estate at Wynyard
Park, Stockton-on-Tees. At the luncheon he referred to the
returning troops and their want of employment. Having
merited the approbation of their countrymen by their services
in South Africa, it was not too much to ask that some direct
step should be taken in great public centres and amongst large
employers of labour to find them good, permanent, wage-
earning positions. From here Lord Kitchener went on to
spend a few days with the Duke and Duchess of Portland
at Langwell Lodge, Caithness. On 3rd September he reached
Welshpool on a visit to the Earl and Countess of Powis at
Powis Castle. Summoned to London to the Boer Conference
at the Colonial Office, he returned on the night of 5th Sep-
tember to Powis Castle, and on the following day attended
a parade of the Montgomeryshire Imperial Yeomanry in Powis
Castle Park. Here Lord Kitchener, who had been accorded
a great popular welcome, presented the South Africa medal to

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 225

members of the 88th and 89th Companies of the Yeomanry,
and made an interesting little speech on national training.

"The Yeomanry", his lesson ran, "have had some experience of
what it means to be more or less untrained in war, and how greatly a
man, whatever his spirit and pluck may be, is handicapped by want of
training in a fight. You therefore will realize how essential it is that
the young men of the country should join the military forces and be-
come trained by those who have reaped experience during this war,
so that they may be ready if the necessity should arise to take their
place as trained men in the ranks. You must not forget that we shall
not always have, nor do we wish to have, a war that lasts long enough
to train our men during the campaign. It is therefore, I think, of vital
importance that every one, whether in this country or in that Greater
Britain beyond the seas, should realize that it is the bounden duty and
high privilege of every British able-bodied man to defend and maintain
that great Empire the citizenship of which we have inherited, and the
honour and glory of which the men of the Empire are determined shall,
as far as lies in their power, be handed on untarnished to those that
follow us."

At Ipswich on 22nd September Lord Kitchener was in his
family homeland, and had the distinction of being the first
admission to the burgess roll since, in 1821, the Iron Duke
visited the town. Marlborough in 1709 and Nelson in 1798
were other burgesses. Lord Kitchener had very little doubt
that it was as an East Anglian that he was welcomed. He
was glad to tell Suffolk that she was very well represented by
the men who were sent out to South Africa, and had every
reason to be proud of them. It was true that at the first
start-off, on a pitch-dark night, the Boers were able, by unex-
pected magazine-fire, to disturb somewhat the equanimity of
the Suffolk Regiment; but the men quickly learnt the lesson,
and on many occasions afterwards, by vigorous attacks, both
by day and night, disturbed in a far more serious manner the
equanimity of the Boers. Referring to the distinguished
names on the burgess roll of Ipswich, Lord Kitchener said

VOL. II. 30

226 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

it added greatly to the lustre of the privilege which had been
conferred on him to be associated with names so glorious in
the military annals of the country. " To few indeed is it
given to rival the illustrious services and genius of these
great men, but I hope the events of the past few years have
shown that the spirit of devotion to duty and country burns
in all ranks now with as pure and steady a flame as it ever
did in the brave days of old." From a dais erected in front
of the Town Hall he distributed 100 war-medals to reservists
of the Suffolk Regiment, to Yeomanry, Volunteers, and mobi-
lized men. To himself the presentation was made of a Past-
Master's jewel of the British Union Lodge, Ipswich, No. 114,
of Freemasons, in honour of his eminence in the craft as Past
District Grand Master of Egypt and the Soudan and Past
Grand Warden of England. The W.M. of the British Union
Lodge, Mr. G. W. Horsfield, handed the jewel to Lord Kit-
chener, who, in acknowledging it, expressed regret that his
stay was so short as to prevent his spending more time with
the Freemasons of Suffolk. He afterwards drove to Aspall,
the home of the Chevalliers, attended by the cheers of an
enthusiastic country-side. Next day, 23rd September, was
spent in a tour through mid-Suffolk. He received an address
from Hoxne Rural District Council which was encircled in
a silver ring. In the history of ancient and modern times,
said the Rev. F. French in presenting this, there was no
example of greater humanity, greater kindness, and greater
generosity than had been displayed by Lord Kitchener and
his brave army in South Africa. Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Cheval-
lier, of Aspall, and Miss Chevallier, of Norwich, accompanied
Lord Kitchener to Mendlesham, the rail-head of the Mid-
Suffolk Light Railway. On the way he inspected the boys
of Kerrison Reformatory School at Thornden, forty of whose
old boys had served with the army in South Africa; and he
also spoke to the scholars of Eye Grammar School. The first

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 227

passenger-train journey of the rail from Mendlesham to Haugh-
ley was then undertaken. At Haughley the party changed to
motor-cars, and proceeded to Stowmarket railway station. In
Stowmarket Lord Kitchener received a very cordial welcome,
and addresses were presented by local bodies. Then, entering
the train, he left for Newmarket, where he was met by Colonel
Frank Rhodes, and proceeded as his guest to Dalham Hall till
the following day.

On 3Oth September, when he was presented with the
honorary freedom of the city of Sheffield, the compliment was
accompanied by a silver dinner service and a small case of
Sheffield cutlery, which Lord Kitchener said would be of great
practical value to him in his new position as Commander-in-
Chief in India. Before making a tour of the principal works
he recalled that some years ago, when the advance into the
Soudan was decided upon, he had to procure the very best guns
to re-arm the Egyptian forces. After careful study in this
country and on the Continent, he was able to place an order
with the great firm that was now established in Sheffield.
Those guns were supplied to him with the least possible delay.
They were fully tested at the battles of Atbara and Omdurman
with the most satisfactory results, materially assisting his men
in winning the day with the small losses that they incurred on
those occasions.

At Sheffield Lord Kitchener was the fourth honorary free-
man; on 4th October, when he visited Chatham, he was made
the first freeman of the borough. In his speech at the
luncheon, he observed that every sapper felt as he did when
he came back to Chatham — he was returning to the home of
his youth. He told how well the Royal Engineers did in the
war, and that if the lines of railway they had worked were
stretched out they would extend from Cape Town to Cairo. It
was a Royal Engineer who invented the approved pattern
blockhouse; and to the energy and efficiency of that corps

228 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

they owed it that the blockhouses were so efficient a protection.
After leaving the Town Hall Lord Kitchener proceeded to
the Royal Engineer Barracks. He was presented with an
address by Gillingham District Council. At the barracks he
presented a number of war-medals, and that evening he dined
with Major -General Sir Thomas Fraser, commanding the
Thames District, and Royal Engineer officers at their mess.

Meanwhile a number of gifts which Lord Kitchener
brought from South Africa had been distributed. To the
King he presented a hybrid zebra, or quagga, which was
provided with a home in the Royal Zoological Gardens.
To the City of London he gave the ox-wagon which was said
to have belonged formerly to Mr. Kruger, and the re-
mains of a big gun which the Boers rendered useless when
they adopted guerrilla tactics, in which guns were an encum-
brance. To the corps of Royal Engineers at Chatham, for
preservation in the museum, he gave the four statues of
" typical Boers " which had been presented to him by Mr.
Samuel Marks, who had intended having them erected in
Pretoria before the war.

Here for the moment we leave him and return to the
thread of events in South Africa. For Lord Kitchener kept
up his interest in the country, and he was destined to be
interested in it from a military standpoint in 1914 very
different in character from that of 1900-02. South Africa
after the peace spent years of distraction. On 29th July,
1902, Mr. Chamberlain, in replying to Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman in the House of Commons, had said that the
Government would establish self-government as quickly as
possible. Shortly afterwards Mr. Chamberlain went to South
Africa to see things for himself. One of the incidents of his
visit was a rather sharp altercation with De Wet during an
interview in which Boer grievances were discussed — for Mr.
Chamberlain did not possess the grand manner- of patience

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 229

of Lord Kitchener. Botha, De la Rey, and Smuts all re-
jected Lord Milner's overtures to join the new Legislative
Council in the Transvaal. The trend of opinion is shown by
a remark of General Beyers in 1905, that if the Imperial
Government mistrusted the Boers by refusing responsible rule,
the Boers were justified in mistrusting the Imperial Govern-
ment. Events at home moved rapidly after Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman was returned to power with a great
Liberal majority early in 1906. He insisted on establishing
without delay full responsible government in Transvaal and
Orange River Colony, and on revoking the Tory plan for
modified representative government, which had been provided
for by letters patent in 1905. Meanwhile Lord Milner had
retired (April, 1905) and Lord Selborne been appointed High
Commissioner. The Government sent a committee, headed
by Sir West Ridgeway, to South Africa to enquire into the
basis of a constitution, and out of this came the grant of a
constitution to the Transvaal in December, 1906.

General Botha was Premier and Mr. Smuts Colonial
Secretary in the new ministry. The former declared that
British interests would be absolutely safe in the hands of the
new Cabinet. They in the Transvaal were actuated by feelings
of deep gratitude to the King and the British Government for
having entrusted the Transvaal in a manner unequalled in
history with the grant of a free constitution. It was impossible
for the Boers to forget that generosity. Directly responsible
government was granted to the Orange River Colony they
would begin to work towards a united South Africa. On ist
July, 1 907, the new Constitution for the Orange River Colony
was formally promulgated at Bloemfontein.

Federation or unification in South Africa was the next ideal.
Lord Selborne, in a dispatch dated yth January, 1907, set forth
the case for closer union in the most convincing fashion. In
May of the following year an Inter-colonial Conference, which

230 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

was held to consider the questions of tariff and railway rates,
unanimously resolved: "That the best interests and the perma-
nent prosperity of South Africa can only be secured by an early
union, under the Crown of Great Britain, of the several self-
governing Colonies". Arising from this conference a National
Convention to consider the question of union met at Durban
in October, 1908. The members included Sir Henry de
Villiers, ex -President Steyn, Generals Botha, De Wet, and
De la Rey, Messrs. Schalk Burger, Smuts, and Merriman, Dr.
Jameson, Sir George Farrar, and Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. At
Cape Town the convention was continued, and by February,
1909, it had concluded a draft Constitution. A delegation
carried the draft Act to London, where, with little alteration,
it was embodied in the form of a Bill and passed into law. By
this, the South Africa Act, 1909, a new State — the Union of
South Africa — came into being. Cape Colony, Natal, the
Transvaal, and Orange River Colony were united under one
Government in a legislative union under the British Crown on
3 ist May, 1910. The Union Parliament was given full power
to make laws for the whole of the Union, while to Provincial
Councils was delegated the immediate control of affairs relating
solely to the provinces. Lord Gladstone, first Governor-
General of the Union, called upon General Botha to form a
ministry, and on 4th November, 1910, the first session of the
Union Parliament was opened at Cape Town by the Duke of
Connaught. So began the building up of what Lord Kitchener
eight years before had in mind when he spoke of "a new
America in the South African hemisphere".

On the outbreak of the great European War in 1914 it fell
to Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of State for War, to review the
whole field. The Union of South Africa was asked to undertake
operations against German South-West Africa. This was the
ground or excuse for a fresh outbreak of unrest from the Boer
side, which broke itself against the loyal and granite-like fidelity

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 231

of Botha and Smuts to the British cause, which was truly also
the South African cause. By a strange mischance General De
la Rey was accidentally shot dead near Johannesburg on i6th
September, 1914. The police were on the look-out for a gang
of desperadoes who had escaped in a motor-car; and the car in
which General De la Rey and General Beyers were motoring
home to De la Rey's farm was of a similar description. The
police had orders to stop and examine all motor-cars and to fire
if their challenge was ignored. Unhappily the driver of General
De la Rey's car ignored the repeated challenge, and the car was
fired upon, with the tragic result stated. The following month
South Africa was to hear that the Germans had plotted to
seduce the Boers from their allegiance. The first evidence of
this lay against Lieutenant-Colonel S. G. Maritz, commanding
the force in the north-west of Cape Province, who on 8th
October, 1914, was relieved of his command and ordered by
his successor, Colonel Conrad Britz, to come in and report.
He replied that all he wanted was his discharge, and Colonel
Britz must come himself and take over his command. Colonel
Britz sent Major Ben Bouwer to take charge, but Bouwer and
his companions were made prisoners. Maritz then sent
Bouwer back alone with an ultimatum stating that unless the
Union Government guaranteed to him that, before eleven
o'clock on iith October, they would allow Generals Hertzog,
De Wet, Beyers, Kemp, and Muller to meet him in order that
he might receive instructions from them, he would forthwith
make an attack on Colonel Britz's forces and proceed further to
invade the Union. Maritz had German guns and a German
force with his command, and he had sent as prisoners into
German South- West Africa all the Union officers and men
who refused to betray their oath. General Botha took in hand
personally to suppress the rebellion, and the bulk of the Dutch
population rallied to his side. On I5th September General
Beyers, Commandant-General of the Union Defence Forces,

232 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

had resigned on the ostensible ground of objection to the
decision of the Union Government, at the request of the im-
perial authorities, to occupy for strategic reasons certain parts
of German South-West Africa. On 26th October Maritz was
completely defeated at Kakamas, and escaped wounded into
German territory. Rebellion then broke out in the Orange
River Colony under De Wet, and in the western Transvaal
under General Beyers. On i2th November General Botha
defeated De Wet's 2000 rebels, who also lost 255 prisoners,
including Muller. Fighting and skirmishing continued. De
Wet crossed the Vaal as a fugitive on 2ist November, and was
pursued by motor-cars. On 2nd December Colonel Britz
reported that De Wet had surrendered to him at a farm at
Wartenburg, 100 miles east of Mafeking. Beyers lost severely
in an engagement to the south of the Vaal River, east of
Bloemhof, on yth December. He and others tried to cross
the Vaal, and were fired on. He was seen to fall from his
horse, but managed to grasp another by the tail. Next, he was
seen drifting down-stream, shouting for help which never came.
His body was recovered. Kemp had joined the Germans;
Wessel Wessels, three members of the Union Parliament, and
members of the Provincial Councils were among the 7000
rebels who were captured or had surrendered. Except for
some expiring flickers the revolt was over.

" Our sacrifices in blood, treasure, and losses of population have been
considerable," said General Botha in a statement on December 9, " but
I believe they are not out of proportion to the great results already
achieved or which will accrue to South Africa in coming years. For
this and much more let us be reverently thankful to Providence, which
has once more guided our country through the gravest perils, and let that
spirit of gratitude drive from our minds all bitterness caused by the
wrongs suffered and the loss and anguish which have been caused by this
senseless rebellion."

While recognizing the necessity of just and fair punish-

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 233

ment, General Botha asked the community to remember also
that now more than ever it was for the people of South Africa
to practise the wise policy of " forgive and forget". De Wet
was let off lightly on account of his age and condition.
Sentenced in July, 1915, to six years' imprisonment and a
fine of £2000, he was liberated before the end of December.
Botha had turned the thoughts of the people to the next
duty, namely, to make it impossible for German South-West
Africa to be again used as a base from which to threaten the
peace and liberties of the Union. " I hope and trust the
people will deal with this danger as energetically as they have
done with the internal rebellion," declared South Africa's great
statesman-soldier and one-time antagonist of Lord Kitchener.

While the Great War was yet at an early stage, Colonel
Sir Aubrey Wools-Sampson, who had distinguished himself in
the South African War, and was now a member of the Union
Parliament, came to London accompanied by Major Pickburn,
in order to take counsel with the South African colony in the
Metropolis, with a view to organizing a possible contingent
from South Africa to fight on the battle-fields of Europe.
He returned to South Africa on 24th October, 1914, bearing
this message from Lord Kitchener to General Botha: —

" Wools-Sampson has asked me what he can do to help the cause of
the Empire and how South Africans can do most. I said that in my
view every man in the Union ought to go at once for the Germans in
South-West Africa and see that matter through properly. After this is
completed I will see that those who have fought there, Afrikander and
Briton, shall be represented here if the war is still in progress, and I
hope that all will serve the Empire loyally. If you care to publish this
expression of my opinion as being likely in any way to help you — and
that is its only object — please do so. On my advice Wools-Sampson is
going back to South Africa at once."

Lord Kitchener's injunction to "see that matter through
properly " corresponded exactly to the mind of South Africans

234 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

themselves. The temper in which General Botha and General
Smuts were making history for South Africa and the Empire
at this period may be judged by a public statement of the
former at the close of the rebellion. He paid a warm tribute
to General Smuts, saying that his " brilliant intellect, calm
judgment, amazing energy, and undaunted courage have been
assets of inestimable value to the Union in her hour of trial ".
And of the task they had just accomplished, and the one of
greater magnitude that lay before them. General Botha said
this : —

"In suppressing the rebellion the Government have had the most
hearty co-operation of both races. Let us have the same co-operation
in German South-West Africa. The undertaking before us is difficult,
but if we all do our duty it will be carried to a successful conclusion.
Now that German territory has become a refuge for Maritz and the
other rebels, it is more than ever necessary that we should persist in our
operations there. We cannot tolerate the existence of a nest of outlaws
on our frontier, a menace to the peace of the Union."

That there might be nothing wanting to ensure the success
of the enterprise, the Union Government, about a fortnight
after these words were uttered (3ist December, 1914), put in
force the provisions of the Defence Act empowering them to
commandeer men for military service. In this respect South
Africa forestalled Great Britain. Many things were yet to
happen in the Mother Country before the official admission
that dependence on voluntary service was inadequate in view
of the German menace.

Cruelly disappointing as the Boer rising must have proved
to the German masters of the rebels, it had at least served
them by delaying those operations against German South-West
Africa which Botha had undertaken on behalf of the King.
The British War Office had intimated that the occupation of
such parts of the German colony as would give them command
of the powerful wireless station at Windhuk (completed just

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 235

before the war) would be a great Imperial service; and in
making this request of the home Government known to the
Union Ministry the Colonial Secretary had added: "You
will, however, realize that any territory now occupied must be
at the disposal of the Imperial Government for purposes of an
Imperial settlement at the conclusion of the war. Other
Dominions are acting in a similar way on the same under-
standing." That communication was dated 7th August, 1914,
and in September troops of the Union Defence Force were
sent to Luderitzbucht to begin the work. Then ensued the
rebellion, with the result that for many weeks the internal
situation distracted the energies of the Union leaders to the
detriment of the main enterprise to which they had set their
hands.

How formidable the undertaking was will be realized when
we remember that the German colony had the reputation of
being an overseas replica of Prussian militarism, and in a region
larger than the whole of Germany itself. But a message from
Viscount Buxton, Governor-General of the Union, which was
read at the Imperial patriotic meeting at the Guildhall, in
London, on I5th May, 1915, gave the British people an insight
into Botha's bold grasp of the situation. A force of some
30,000 men, with guns, horses, medical stores, ambulance, and
transport, had been conveyed oversea 500 and 700 miles, in
addition to the land force destined to operate on the border.
Every pound of provisions for the men and every ton of forage
for the horses and mules had to be brought from Cape Town;
likewise all railway material for rapid construction inland and
along the coast. Men, horses, guns, supplies, and materials had
to be landed at Luderitzbucht and Walnsh, neither of which
ports possessed disembarkation facilities in any way adequate
for such a purpose. Clearly the performance reflected the
highest possible credit upon South African genius for organiza-
tion. It is not too much to compare the driving force of

236 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

General Botha or General Smuts with that of Lord Kitchener
himself. General Smuts superintended the organization of
the entire expedition; and the whole of these operations were
carried out without the aid of Imperial troops by the Union
Defence Force and Defence Department, which was created
only two years before. " South Africa ", as the Hon. W. P.
Schreiner, her High Commissioner in London, said at the
Guildhall meeting, "stood solidly by the Empire very largely
because of the great gift of self-government given to her".

General Botha had the Kitchener gift of not underesti-
mating the task on which he was engaged. He knew that in
German South-West Africa there had been built up, not only
an admirable system of strategical railways, but very large
accumulations of munitions and stores. The enemy's righting
force, including regulars and armed civilians, was variously
estimated at from 10,000 to 14,000 officers and men, assisted
by the remnants of South African rebels who escaped into the
German colony. Early in the war the Germans had occupied
Walfish Bay, the isolated strip of British territory just to the
south of Swakopmund, but, finding this perhaps too near the
coast to be healthy, they retired not long afterwards over the
desert to the hills to the east. So when the northern force,
which Botha was soon to join in supreme command, effected
its landing in the fine harbour of Walfish Bay on the first
Christmas Day of the Great War there was no one to oppose
it. The Germans had also deserted the splendid town of
Swakopmund, which was occupied by the South Africans on
1 4th January, 1915, and became a military base in preparation
for the advance along the railway to the German capital.

General Botha landed at Liideritzbucht early in February,
and before going north reviewed the troops under Sir Duncan
Mackenzie — including the ist Battalion of the Transvaal Scot-
tish— which were operating from that point along the railway
into the heart of the German colony. This was one of three

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 237

southern columns, the others being that of Colonel Berrange,
starting from Kimberley and entering German territory at
Hasuur, on the opposite side of the colony, and that of
Colonel Dirk Van de Venter, operating from the Orange River
in the south-east. Fighting had taken place on the 3Oth
December on the southern position at Schuit Drift, where
Maritz and Kemp made their last attack on Cape Colony, only
to be decisively beaten at Upington, on the banks of the
Orange River, on 24th January, 1915. Attacking Kakamas
on jrd February the Germans were heavily repulsed, and soon
they retreated within their own borders. In General Botha's
plan of campaign the northern army, which he commanded,
was to advance along the line to Windhuk, while the three
columns already mentioned — afterwards to form the southern
army and converge on the capital under General Smuts — were
to round up the Germans in the south.

Windhuk, the enemy capital, fell to Botha's army on I2th
May. The Burgomaster met the Commander-in-Chief as he
approached from Karibib, and announced that the town would
be handed over without resistance. In a long and imposing
cavalcade the victorious army entered the capital. The Union
Jack was hoisted at the Rathaus, and a proclamation read
declaring martial law to be in force throughout the conquered
territory. With General Botha on the day of occupation were
Brigadier-General Myburgh and Colonels Mentz and Alberts —
all Dutch members of the South African Parliament who fought
against the British in the South African War. Among others
who distinguished themselves in the campaign were Brigadier-
General Lukin and Brigadier-General Brits; in Colonel Alberts's
brigade of burghers one column was under Commandant Piet
Botha of Heidelberg, another under Colonel Collins, and the
third under Colonel Classens; while attached to General Botha's
staff was his son, Lieutenant Jantjie Botha, who, at seventeen,
was said to be the youngest staff officer in the world. So

238 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

British and Boer went from triumph to triumph together. It
is true that the Germans, instead of putting up the stiff fight
that was expected of them, relied on the safer policy of retreat,
and left the offensive for the most part to hidden explosives
and poisoned wells (the latter a crime which was acknowledged
by Lieutenant-Colonel Franke, the commander of the German
forces) ; but the campaign of the invaders was none the less
arduous and trying. In the words of General Botha: "The
marches performed by one and all deserve to rank highly as
military achievements, while the spirit and endurance of the
men who have done the work should cause the Union justifi-
able pride in its soldiers ".

News of the surrender of Windhuk was received with great
satisfaction in South Africa and at home. " The ability dis-
played by General Botha ", said Lord Kitchener in the House
of Lords, " has been of a very high order, and has confirmed
the admiration felt for him as a commander and leader of men."
"You, General," wrote Lord Buxton to the Commander-in-
Chief, " must be proud to command such a splendid body of
men — Boers and British alike patriotic and loyal. This force —
entirely South African — has enabled the Union and Rhodesia
to undertake an allotted and effective part in the great struggle
forced upon the Empire and the world by the militarism and
overweening ambition of Germany." The fall of Tsumeb, the
northern terminus of the railway, on 8th July, 1915, was fol-
lowed at two o'clock next morning by the unconditional sur-
render of Dr. Seitz, the German governor, with all the
remaining German troops in the colony. In this culminating
success at Grootfontein 204 German officers and 3293 men fell
into General Botha's hands — "a fitting conclusion", com-
mented Lord Kitchener, " to a brief and brilliant campaign ".
His cablegram of congratulation to General Botha on loth July
was couched in terms of unusual warmth: —

" I am anxious to express to you on behalf of the army our sincere

HONOURS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR 239

admiration of the masterly conduct by you of the campaign in German
South-West Africa, and to offer you and your force our cordial con-
gratulations on your brilliant victory. We shall warmly welcome any
South Africans who can come over to join us."1

To which General Botha replied next day: —

" Most cordially thank you for your kind congratulations, which are
highly appreciated by all. I hope that soon many of my men here will
take their share in the greater task in Europe."

To recall Lord Kitchener's words to Wools-Sampson, South
Africans had "gone for" the Germans in South-West Africa,
and had "seen that matter through properly". The question
of their fighting in Europe was now timely. As a matter of
fact, some days before the final surrender in South-West Africa,
General Smuts announced that the Union had already made an
offer to the Imperial Government to organize and equip a South
African contingent of volunteers for Europe, as well as a force
of heavy artillery. In due course the men of the South African
Regiment (General Lukin, Divisional Commander), after distin-
guishing themselves in Egypt during the Senussi campaign,
covered themselves with glory in the fighting in Delville Wood
during the great Allied offensive on the Somme beginning in
July, 1916.

Meanwhile, General Smuts had other work on hand in the
African continent. Towards the end of 1915 General Smith-
Dorrien was appointed to command operations against German
East Africa; but he resigned in a short time owing to ill-health.
His successor was General Smuts, " in whom ", said Lord
Kitchener on I5th February, 1916, "we can have the utmost
confidence in view of his varied military experience". Five
weeks later, after an important victory on 2ist March, Lord
Kitchener wired to General Smuts as follows: —

1 It is curious to note that in the version of Lord Kitchener's message which was cabled by
Reuter from Pretoria, and published a day ahead of the War Office version, the concluding
sentence was rendered: "We shall warmly welcome you and the South Africans", &c.

24o FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER

" The Secretary of State for War wishes to congratulate you and all
ranks under your command on your brilliant success and on the dash and
energy with which your operations have been conducted in a country
with the difficulties of which he is acquainted from personal experience".

Thus in Kitchener's lifetime General Botha conquered
South-West Africa, and General Smuts took the lead in the
campaign which in due time was to conquer German East
Africa. None were more moved than those former redoubt-
able foes and later firm and honoured friends of Lord
Kitchener when the tidings of his death flashed across the
ocean to the scenes of his trials and triumphs in South Africa.

G. T.

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