The South African War, IV

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. BY DR. J. M. TANNER, PRESIDENT OF THE STATE AGRICULTURAL COL- LEGE, LOGAN, UTAH.

IV. Last month word came to us that the British were crossing the Tugela. The Tugela is a river in northwestern Natal, a British province, and is located close to the foothills which lead up to a range of mountains running northeasterly through Africa, known as the Drakensberg. When General Buller reached this river he made an attempt to cross, and attacked the Boers in a front movement. He was hurled back with great loss, and his defeat created consternation throughout England. As these tactics proved entirely futile it was felt that another attempt must be made to cross the river, and at a point where an open country lies between the Kopjes and the river, so that a greater freedom could be had in manipulating the guns and marshaling the forces. The river runs from west to east, and along this river the" army took up its march, some a distance of ten, others perhaps twenty miles. Two fords were selected for crossing, one at Potgieter's drift, and another at Frichard's drift. Potgieter's drift was not so favorable for the marshaling of troops, in consequence of the low hills that lie immediately to the north of the river, but twenty miles from Colenso is Frichard's drift, where the country to the north of the river is open and the road leads directly to Acton Home. Along this road, Buller proposed to march his army to the relief of Ladysmith, It was believed that this road could be commanded by possession of a point known as Spion Kop, the summit of which General Warren was instructed to reach and locate his guns so as to command the surrounding country. To the effort of the British

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to cross the river at this point the Boers seem to have made no objection, and, indeed, did not offer any great resistance to the occupation of Spion Kop by the English. The Boers knew, if the English did not, that this hill did not constitute the commanding position of the country. The Boers were quick to understand the objective point of the English, and led their enemies into another trap more terrible than any into which the British had yet fallen. The battle, therefore, of Spion Kop will be among the most notable of the South African war. The loss was heavy and the defeat of the English complete. The censorship is so completely under the English control that it very difficult to secure any accurate information from the is

scene of war. General BuUer gave out a large list of officers who were lost, but failed to give any accurate information of the number of men. From the Transvaal, however, comes the statement that in this battle fifteen hundred English, men and officers, were killed, and one hundred and fifty taken prisoners. If one thousand five hundred were killed, then the number of the wounded must be very large. On the hills to the north of Spion Kop, the Boers had intrenched themselves. The working of their guns seemed to have been complete, and has placed the Boers in the foremost rank of the artillery fighters of the world. General Buller simply announced that was inadvisable to hold the hill; its perimeter it

was too large; there was difficulty in getting the large guns to the top, and no water was to be had there as they had been led to expect. One of the peculiarities of this war is the surprising ignorance, on the part of those conducting it, respecting the country in which the fighting was to be done. The knowledge of the country seems to have been of the most general character, and this part of The the English preparation is, to say the least, very deficient. English were forced to retreat. They crossed again to the south shore of the Tugela under the most disheartening circumstances. The Boers did not attempt to pursue their enemy and gain any advantages in this retreat. They perhaps realized the superior advantages they enjoy in their defensive position. General Buller seems to have found consolation in the fact that he was successful in conducting a retreat in which "not a single man nor a pound

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of stores was lost." As long as the Boers had the hills to fight in, and natural defenses to aid them in their efforts, it was not at all

likely that they would attack the English in the open country. General Buller in one of his dispatches says of the retreat that it "isproof that the enemy has been taught to respect our soldiers' fighting powers." People, however, at a distance are not able to appreciate just what General Buller means by an observation which, on its face, seems so ridiculous. It is not known what the loss of the Boers was at Spion Kop. We shall have to wait, no doubt, until after peace has been declared before we can get any adequate idea or satisfactory information respecting the extent and effects of this memorable battle. At this date, February 9, it is said that Buller is making headway in his efforts to relieve the garrison at Ladysmith; that he has again crossed the Tugela and is crowding the Boers step by step in spite of the stubborn resistance which they are offering to the British advance. Speculation is rife. It is not easy at this time to say just what the actual situation is. We are told that Lord Roberts is in the midst of his military activities, and a general advance all along the line is taking place. It is not even now possible to say just what the number of soldiers is in the English army, now fighting in South Africa, but it must be something like one hundred and fifty thousand. If this estimate be correct, that army, according to Winston Churchill, is still too small. Mr. Churchill, it will be remembered, was sometime ago taken a prisoner of war by the Boers, and for sometime remained under arrest at Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal. From the capital, he made bis escape, and has been in a position to give us some very interesting information respecting the Boers —their position, and the necessary effort to overcome them. Mr. Churchill says it will require two hundred and fifty thousand. Of course, it is possible

for the English to raise the number, and, eventually, by a process of hammering and starvation, beat the Boers back from their strongholds. Some parts of Mr. Churchill's communications are extremely interesting. Among other things, he refers to the country as the "land of lies." This clearly indicates that the questions under dispute for a number of years are not by any means established facts. We on the outside have been misled.

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Conditions are not as represented. It it is not too much to say that the Boers have surprised even those who looked upon them most favorably. He gives us a description of these people, and these are his words:

What men they were, these Boers! I have thought of them as I had seen them in the morning riding forward through the rain thou- — sands of independent riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with skill, living as they rode without commissariat, or transport or ammunition, moving like the wind and supported by iron constitutions and a stern, hard. Old Testament God who should surely smite the Amalekites and Hittites. And then, above the rain and storm that beat loudly on the corrugated iron, I heard the sound of a chant. The Boers were singing their evening psalm and the menacing notes — — more full of indignant war than love and mercy struck a chill into my heart so that I thought after all that the war was unjust, that the Boers were better men than we, that heaven was against us, that Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley would fall, that the Estcourt garrison would perish, that foreign powers would intervene, that we should lose South Africa, and that that would be the beginning of the end. So for the first time I despaired of the empire; nor was it till the morning sun — the brighter after the rain storms, the warmer after the all all

chills —struck through the windows that things reassumed in true their colors and proportions.

Of this, Mr. Stead says: ''Nous verrons!" (We shall see.) "But unless we repent, I should back Mr. Churchill's evening meditations against his morning reflections." Something like five months of this war have passed. It would

almost seem as if all South Africa were one Ladysmith —prisoner to the Boers. Whatever we may think of the Boer cause, its

justice, the natural equity of things, it is certain that events have all conspired to the advantage of the Transvaalers. As an instance of the favorable advantage which they have enjoyed from the beginning, take the situation at Ladysmith. Ladysmith is located in the northwestern part of Natal in a mountainous country. The garrison selected for the British soldiers at this place was such that it could be hemmed in and obstructed completely in its effort

to make any escape. Once locked up at Ladysmith, it was impossible for the English to break their way out. Ten thousand soldiers are now in that garrison and have been shut up ever since

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the begiiyiing of the war. Northwest of Ladysmith, the hills and country leading up to the Drakensberg mountains are of such a character that the Boers enjoy every advantage of fortifying themselves and making their defensive position almost impregnable. The first thought on the part of the English was to relieve Ladysmith. There the greatest part of their army was concentrated ; there they put forth their most heroic efforts. There are men who do not now hesitate to say that this was perhaps the most serious blunder of the British. Rather than meet the Boers on such ground, it would have been cheaper to abandon Ladysmith entirely at the outset of the war. The contour of the country is somewhat peculiar. What the British wanted most of all was an opportunity to fight in the open country. They should have selected some place in which they could, with comparative safety and ease, have penetrated the Drakensberg mountains and have brought themselves from the low valley lying on the southeast of South Africa above the mountain tops, and thrown themselves out into the open country either of the Orange Free State or the Transvaal. After the Drakensberg mountains are crossed, the country is comparatively level. At any rate the opportunities of defense are not so favorable as they are where the British have now actually concentrated their forces, and it would almost seem that it was a mistake to undertake to do the fighting in a mountainous country. The Boers estimated that in consequence of their position, the relative value of the soldiers was as five to one in favor of the Boers. This statement early in the war was ridiculed, but it would seem to be now entirely correct. How long the Boers are prepared to withstand the siege is, of course, a matter of some speculation, though their friends claim that they have a sufficient quantity of provisions to last them for a period of two years. On the other hand, it is thought that the English will make an effort to cut off all supplies that reach the Transvaal through the Portugese harbor at Delagoa Bay, whence they are carried to Pretoria. It is difficult to see how the English can support their attitude towards the Germans, and even the Americans, in cutting off food destined for a neutral port. The Americans remember very distinctly the Trent affair, and how ready we were to give up ambassadors of the confederate states

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in order to reconcile the hostile spirit of England, as it was manifested at that time toward the people of the North. Sometime ago,France was at war with China. The English then claimed that rice was not a contraband of war, and it is difficult to see why flour should be a contraband when it is against the interest of the English to ship it into the country, when rice was not, at a time when it was favorable to carry on the business of shipping rice to the Chinese. Perhaps one of the most striking, if not the most striking, features of the war has been its surprises. Indeed, this has been a century of surprises, at any rate in Those surprises warfare. began on a large scale in 1866 when the Prussians beat down with lightning rapidity the Austrians, and later carried their victorious arms to the gates of Paris. The unexpected happened. The war between the Japanese and Chinese gave us another surprise. We were surprised when we saw the Turks put under an excellent system of mobilization a vast modern army to beat back the inroads made in Thessaly by the Greeks. But the Boer war is perhaps the greatest surprise of all, greatest because the reader will remember that in 1896, in early January, an effort was made to overthrow the Transvaal republic. Preparations for that revolt consisted of five hundred men, led by Dr. Jameson, and a few thousand Uitlanders at Johannesburg who were preparing to join Dr. Jameson's troops in the great fiasco which was intended, or hoped, to be a successful revolution. When we think of a small body of five hundred men with some very indefinite assurances of some trifling support from the citizen soldiers of Johannesburg, undertaking to overthrow the republic of the Transvaal, and that the Dutch today are holding at bay one hundred and fifty thousand English soldiers, we marvel at the credulity of those who entered into the conspiracy resulting in the Jameson raid. We marvel because those people were on the spot. They were familiar with the Transvaal. They were supposed to know the Dutch people from long and familiar association, and yet had no better conception of the enemy they had aroused than to put into the field the trifling army of five hundred men. It will be interesting to know, when the war is over, how

many foreigners joined the Boers, and what their nationality was.

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If the English were boastful at the outset, the Boers were not entirely free from the same charge. Some Boers, who were most enthusiastic in their ability to combat the English army, had freely predicted that the English would be swept out of the country, even down to Table Rock at the Cape, and that the Boers would possess the entire land. This prediction must have been made with the thought that all the Boers of the Cape would join in the general armament against Great Britain. However boastful some of them may have been, it is evident that the military authorities of the Transvaal republic contemplate nothing further than a defensive warfare. Their entire preparations and all their move-

ments indicated, so far as they were concerned, simply and purely a war of defense. In this, up to date, they have been most suc- cessful, and have covered themselves with glory. If Winston Churchill's estimate that it is necessary for the British to amass an army of 250,000 is correct, it is certain that the war will result in rivers of blood, and in a peace that will be less favorable to the English or the Uitlanders than has been heretofore imagined. I say it will be unfavorable to them because it is not unlikely that the Boers will be permitted to enjoy home-rule. If they are, it will not be long before they are able to outvote foreigners, though they may not do this in the Transvaal. They are very likely to receive home-rule, because the war in England will be looked upon with such disfavor, for some years to come, that it is very likely that the conservatives will be swept from power, and that the liberals will deal with the people of South Africa in a more generous spirit, because the conservative party has felt more strongly the resistance which the Boers offered to their efforts of conquest. As the war goes on, the interest becomes more universal. No one ever supposed that it would last five months.The preparations of the Boers have been a complete surprise even to those who looked most favorably upon the predictions of those sturdy Dutch warriors. No one questions the end. If foreign interference is averted, the Boers must eventually succumb. But they have made a magnificent defense; and, in the annals of warfare and history, they will stand out superb warriors and patriotic defenders of their country.