CHRISTMAS NOTES FROM LONDON.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 41, 17 February 1900, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS NOTES FROM LONDON.

(From Our London Correspondent.)

LOXDOX, December 29

"One of the quietest Christmases on record" is, I think, the phrase most suited to the season of. "Peace and Goodwill" through which we have just. passed. The extremely unsatisfactory-* progress o£ events in South Africa seemed, to have a sobering effect on all but the youngest, and their usual hilarity .seemed less boisterous than usual. A little victory for our arms would have given zest to our festivities at Home, but the.only news coming to Hand was the latest Boer version of the Tugel'a Iliver reverse, -which was not at all pleasant reading. Our men, the Boers tell us, "rolled back like a spent wave" under their Mauser (ire, "leaving- ridges and ridges of dead and dying, our artillery horses went down in heaps," and all the damage we did to them was "thirty killed and wounded." The only comfort to be found in the Boer story of the battle are the evidences of the courage and determination of our men. The attempt to save the guns ranks with the charge of the Light Brigade. Effort after effort way- made by volunteers, but the murderous fire of. the wellconcealed Boer marksmen made the little peninsula on which Colonel Long had placed them a veritable valley .of death for man and beast. Yet, though every attempt was frustrated by Mauser and shell fire, volunteers were always ready to try again, and the attempt to save the guns only ceased when General Buller forbade further sacrifice of life.

But if we had no victory to cheer us we had at least the satisfaction of knowing- that up to the 20th Ladysmith was safe and that Mafeking 'was still giving the Boers as good an account of itself as ever. From Kimberley no news came through, bnt in this case everybody was of opinion that they conJd accept no news as good news since the bad variety we have discovered seems to travel about three • times as quick as the good from the Transvaal. On the whole, however, the news from the seat of war was of the scantiest possible description. The few telegrams that came to hand for. Christmas and Boxing' Day were almost, without exception starred to indicate delay in transmission, and some of them had obviously been rigorously censored. POSSIBLE BUT NOT HEROIC. There seems to be an idea prevalent in some quarters that one reason for

the inactivity of the opposing- forces during- Christmastide is that the festival is common to both Boer and Briton. We. have the authority of well informed South Africans that this is not so. To the vast majority of the population of the two Republics Christmas is merely an eccentric olv ■fiervrihce of Roman. Catholics and Anglicans. It has no place in the lives of the Boers, wiho are broken up into several sections of the Dutch Reformed Church, each in some point straighter than the rest, and we must therefore look for other reasons for inactivity on the enemy's side. There is a feeling- growing in London that the Boers have already commenced to note in themselves the commencement of exhaustion which is inevitable when a small State engages in war with a powerful Empire. The Boers themselves recognise that when the end comes to the end Hathi the Elephant is master of the jungle—providing Hathi means business. Hathi is the British Empire in this case, and does Aieon business. The Boers knew quite well that if the British nation once made up its mind for a fight to a finish the end would be the extinction of the Republic. They were, however, led to believe that public opinion in England was not at all favourable to war, and that if they could only keep their end up for a few weeks European intervention was assured, or that the clamours of the Peace Party in the Old Country would result in a reference of the points in dispute to arbitration. In both these hopes they have been disappointed. The British Empire has gone solid for a fight to a finish, and in spite of Continental newspaper talk and the shrieks- of that g-ood man Stead neither the German Emperor, the Czar, or the President of the French Republic has shown any strong disposition to save the S.A. Republic from the Lion's claws. The process of exhaustion in the human element on the Boer side may not be so rapid, but it is sure, and will be considerably hastened if one of our generals can but win a decisive victory, i.e., a battle in which the enemy is not only forced from "an Impregnable position,"' but flees therefrom with our cavalry and mounted infantry in effective pursuit. Such a victory would undoubtedly mean the defection of many of the enemy—probably the whole alien commandeered element—besides prisoners and dead and wounded. It would also effectually check further recruiting among the disloyal Dutch in the Cape and Natal, and might possibly induce the Free Staters to throw up the sponge, in which event the exhaustion of the Transvaal would be a speedy matter. For the war to be settled by this process of exhaustion may not seem heroic, but when all is said and done all wars are settled by it, the process differing according to circumstances. Sometimes it is men, sometimes money, and sometimes national courage which gives out. <( Lord Dtmraven in a letter to the "Times" points out neatly what has occurred to every thinking- man since the war began, the value of irregular troops, and the necessity of creating at Home and in the colonies a force of mounted riflemen, say 20,000 at Home, 10,000 each in Canada, Australasia and South Africa respectively. "Its annual training should be short, just enough drill in combined numbers to give the necessary coherence in movement, but its members should be constantly exercised in shooting. . . at moving objects. Itshould, in fact, be a rifle club of first rate horsemen, with sufficient drill to enable them to move about, supported, of course, on active service with a little over half their complement of regular field artillery. Half of the force would be available for foreign service at a week's notice." lie also asks, as we have been all asking* why we are not availing- ourselves of the splendid material in Cape Colony and Natal. 10,000 British, African born, should be raised, equipped and mounted, attached to different commands and under the officer commanding, but left entirely free to carry out his instructions in their own way. "Harass the Boers in unexpected directions, cut off their convoys, stampede their horses, threaten their principal laagers, and the Boers would soon find themselves very uncomfortably placed. Had 5000 or even half that number of detached mounted men made a raid upon the main laager dui*ing Lord Methuen's last attack, the result would have been very diff.erenf. Though the main attack might ha\"e failed, as it did, the Boers would not liave waited for another. The Free Staters, at any rate, on the very verge of rupture, would have gone home." These be words of obvious wisdom, and we shall see whether our generals will now pursue the tactics suggested and consider, as the American attache is said to have sug-gested after the battle of the Tngela, "Is there no way round." ' The tactics Lord Dunraven suggests are not new ones, nor have they occurred only to South Africans. Last September," in Scotland, before the war had broken out, a general of long experience on the Afghan frontier, and likely to again fill an important post there, said, to me, chatting over the then probable campaign, "of course we shant pursue, the same tactics as in the days of Majuba. march up to the Boers and let them shoot us down. We. shall work round behind them, and cut off their horses, when they will be at our mercy."