The Press. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1901. BLOCKHOUSES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11154, 21 December 1901, Page 6

The Press. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1901. BLOCKHOUSES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Prominent among the methods-adopted by i the British military authorities foV plear- , ing districts of the enemy is the construction of blockhouses, and. tlhe increasing rramber of references an our war cables 'to these buildings shows how. greatly; they assist the troops. It is to the adoption of i this system of dividing the country into areas by lines of these little forte that the. capture of that notable raider Kruit&inger is dtie, and as time goes on. they may be expected to play a still more important part' in .the pacification of tihe conquered re' publics. The ordinary one-storey block-' (houses which -were adopted to guard the railway line, instead of the former method of protectdng it by earth works, were the invention of Captain Rice, of the Royali Engineers, who was in (Ladysmith during the siege. They are described by. "The Times/ which is a great believer in the blockhouse, and strongly advocates the ex- ' tension of the system, as merely hexagonal erections in corrugated iron,- with double • walls four inches apart, tihe intervening space being filled with graveL This simple .protection has been found to be bul-let-proof, though it could not resist pom-! pom shells, and still less the projectiles of field guns. Each blockhouse has a garrison of ten or fifteen men, sufficient to beat off the attacks of train-wrecking parties.

The Boexs, after giving the forts a wide berth for a time, adopted the dating plan of creeping up to them and tbrustlng their rifles through the loopholes, when they had the garrison at their mercy. The ingennity of the sappers waa, however, equal to the occasion, and barbed wire entanglements, of exceeding complexity and so ■woven together as to be difficult ,to cnt, now keep attackers at a safe distance. For the protection of the railway line tibese blockhouses, distant some 3000 yards from each other, -frere, , thought jto te sufficient, but important bridges and fords were guarded by stronger buildings, cost-ing £600 each, mode o£ masonry, more than one storey high, and only to be entered by means of a ladder. In process of time the system was extended. Pretoria and Johannesburg, with their spbarba, were #ur» rounded by blockhouse*, and we were told the

other day that as the result .of tJieir erection the country for & hundred miles round Johannesburg was now pjertectiy sale. The oorih-e&sterio .portion oi the.'Orange Colony was split from the part by, a line of irom BWenaiont&ia to Ladybrand, and this was subsequently extended along the Modder River to Jacobs* dal, 'while another line was to run down to Fauresmitib. But it is in the Transvaal that Lord Kitcbener ihas made most use of the - blockhouses. The clearing of districts has tteen accompanied by the building of at least four parallel line? of forts, which remained to prevent, or at least render difficult and dangerous, the reooempation by. the enemy of the cleared areas. A message the other day spoke of the construction of a railway from Mochadedorp to Ermelo, in tlie Eastern Transvaal, being accompanied by the simultaneous construction of a line of blockhouaes, and it is probable that the work has been tarried on ia other areas. In many places the iines have been strengthened by the erection of additional forts. It will have been noticed that "The Times" is agitating for the distance 'between the blockhouses being reduced to 600 yards, -with, connecting wire entanglements. 'The expense of ihaa would not only be very great, but so far as one can see, quite unnecessary. Something less than 3000 yards may ba advisable, though the radius of 1500 yards to be covered by each is easily within the range of the modern rifle. It must also be remembered that the garrisons of many, if not all, .of these blockhouses comprise some mounted men who patrol the intervening space day and night. The suggestion, therefore, that tihe forts should be only 600 yards apart, and should be connected with a perfect chevaux-de-fvise of barbed wire, strikes us as extravagant. It should surely not be necessary to partition the Transvaal and Orange Colonies into paddocks to ensure the final extinction of. the embers of "the war.