SPION KOP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2676, 28 June 1905, Page 81

SPION KOP.

Volume 111 of the commentary on the Boer war by the German military experts deals with Spion Kop, which, as The Times, in its review of t'ho work, remarks, has hitherto been a difficult battle to understand, but now, thanks no doitbt partly to a, free use of English sources, a coherent and intelligible history is presented. And what an extraordinary story ! — tragedy heightened by a succession of almost incredible accidents, and All through an almost .farcical element of unreality. We see Buller, who seemed to treat the whole proceeding as if it were a problem in manoeuvres which it would do Wai-ren g-ood to solve for himself ; Warren honestly puzzled; and Lyttelton, the only man who saw th© way of saving the situation, ordered to withdraw the troops just when they had gained the point of vantage— these present the elements of farce. The tragedy is all-pevading ; and the accidents are such that Dumas, in his most adventurous moods, would hardly have equalled— as, for instance, Coke's ignoi*ance that Thorneycroft was in command on the top, the giving out of the oil for the flashlight at the critical moment, and the simultaneous retreat of the Boers and English from the same position But all these elements cannot conceal the teal secret of the Boecr victory and the English defeat. As the staff history truly says when speaking of the simultaneous retirement on the evening of the 24-th, "the issue of the battle on Spion Kop was the result of complete physical and morai exhaustion of the troops on both sides "j but it jioes

en to soy that "the victory ultimately rested with the Boors, because" of the more sustained energy of their commander and his overmastering will ; and this victory was an instance of the importance of ,tlie leader s personality in war. The Beers owed tho successful* result <. f the Spion Kop fight solely to Botha's qualities of command."

Dr Jono«. Inspector-general of Lunatic Asylums, who was imported from England, has reported to the Victorian Government; that £250,000 is required to modernise the existing Victorian institutions for the insane.