THE PRESENT WAR.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 3913, 18 October 1899, Page 2

THE PRESENT WAR.

■ ♦ AN EASY PROPHESY.. ("W BITTEN FOR THE BaY OF Plenty Times.) I venture to supplement my few notes in Monday's issue with one or two more definite observations on possible developments in the South African campaign. It would be as well to make up one's mind to the fact that there will be a period of at least a fortnight before any move will be made in the British side. Neither Sir Fo/estier Walker, (who commands in Gape Colony), nor Sir George White, in Natal, would move before the arrival of Sir Redvers Buller, which cannot be sooner than tbe 30th Oct, Of course if the Boers force an engagement, either of these commandera, (both men with previous experience in the country), would act on the well-known military rule of counter-attack. But in the meantime there is nothing to gaiu by precipitate action. The Transvaal and Orange Free State are completely surrounded, and >!elay only hurts the Boers. The atnoint of food in the country is notat, alllikelytobevery abundant, and no fresh supplies would be obtainable, except by breaking through the British lines. It is not too much to say that the Transvaal could be reduced to surrender without a shot beiDg fired. It has no resources in itself, and when the food supply is exhausted, it would be a question of eLher fighting an engagement on the Free State frontier, on ground chosen by the British ; or a similar battle oh the Natal frontier under like disadvantages. In our previous tussles with the Boers, they were in a position to make every man carry his own provisions. . Now they are putting an army of twenty thousand men inthe field without the most remote idea of how to feed it. As General Wolseley says, 'An army marches on its stomach.' Every day's delay means the further crippling of the inadequate Boers' commissariat. ' One cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.' One cannot reconquer the Transvaal without the expenditure of useful lives. -There will most probably be frontier skirmishes with trifling successes on both sidea for the next month. They will not affect the issue one way or another. Then will come the British advance. Kitchener taught us the method on the Nile. It will be slow but absolutely irresistible. The iron ring will close round the Boer Eepublics as certain and silent as the classical ring of Qyges, There will be no escape from that iron grip. It will be a jhßci^iiued army against a disorderly mob. It will be a style of fightiug which must eliminate every factor that can possibly make the well known Boer tactics feasible. Our large force will advance' through the Grange Free State, via Bloerafontein and Kronstad. Two smaller ones from 'Mafeking on the west and Buluwayo on the north Sir Gre<>rgo White and twenty thousand men over the Natal border, — in snort a combined attack on all four sides. It would require a npw Frederic the sreat, or another General Lee, at ;he least, to hold back such a host. But evan they could not do so with >ueh undisciplined levies as General Joubert will have at his comnand. Gopd shooting means a rreat deal in modern warfare but t Ho** uot mean e vet y thing. We are told by a great but mknown genius not to prophesy tefore we know. I have all a ■Mirnaliste be ief in «he possibilities of the unexpected. Never lit*le*a I will venture a prophet . 'l»e British flag will be floating ietoriously in Pretoria and Bloem intein in six mouths time, am], unless Mr Gladstone rises from is honoured tomb to pull it down ito the gutter again), it wiJl go a floating, W. P. Haxiszok.