THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 56, 22 March 1900, Page 4

THE WAR.

OFFICIAL DESPATCHES FBOM THE i FRONT, i (Daily Telegraph, Jan. 27.) < At last the official despatches from our ' Generals in the field, -which have been ' awaited with some impatience and with no inconsiderable apprehension, have been published in the Gazette. They will form one of the saddest chapters in our military annals. They will awaken widespread feelings of disappointment, amazement, and even indignation. It is a tale of magnificent bravery and splendid chivalry, but also —in part, at least—of reckless and unscientific soldiership. The nation will be stirred by the recital of the gallantry of officers and men; it will weep to think of so many noble lives wasted through the absence of proper scouting, and of hard-won victories which were barren of result because there was no cavalry and mobile artillery to drive the blow home. These terrible despatches partially cover the story of the war in South Africa from the beginning of the campaign down to that fatal week in mid-December when news came of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Oolenso. Yet they are far from complete. We have still to wait for General Gitacre's full account of the reverse which befel him ; Lord Merhuen's series of despatches breaks of with the battle of the Modder, and leaves the lurid tale of the slaughter before the trenches of Magersfontein still untold. But there is enough and more than enough in what we have before us to make us lament lost opportunities and mistakes that no heroic endeavour of the future will fully redeem. The campaign opened with a blunder. We now know, on the authority of Sir George White himself, that he was over-persuaded by the Governor of Natal to attempt to hold Glencoe and Dundee. Here are his own words, dated November 2: " Since my arrival in the Colony I had been much impressed by the exposed situation of the garrison of Glencoe, and on the eyening of the 10th October I had an interview on the subject with his Excellency the Governor, at which I laid before him my reasons for considering it expedient, from a military point of view, to withdraw that garrison, and to concentrate all my available troops at Ladysmith. After full discussion his Excellency recorded his opinion that such a step would involve grave political results and possibilities of so si rious a nature that I determined to accept the military risk of i olding Dundee as the lesser of two evils." How great that, risk was the Battle of Glencoe clearly showed. Nothing but the mistake of one of the Boer commanders in not arriving at the prearranged moment s;ived the engagement ; nothing but their amazing

supineness enabled General Yule to bring his weary troops fate to Ladysmith. Whether Sir George Wmte himself hud any fear, after the first week of the campaign, of being entangled in Ladysmith or appreciated the numbers of the Boers who were closing in round him does not appear. His message stops short with arrival of General Yule; if he wrote at all of Nicholson's Nek—which took place on October 30—that portion of the despatch has been held back. Yet we can hardly doubt that the hero of Ladysmith—the stain of whose reverses is now effaced by the gallantry'of his long defence—must have realised when it was too late to change that the line of Tugela was the natural and scientific line to hold against a skilful and mobile invader.

However, it is when we turn to Lord Methuen's despatches describing the aetions at Belmont, Enslin, and the Modder that the full bitterness of the cup is brought home to us. All three engagaments were victories for the British arms, won at a heavy cost; a'l three were sterile of the fruits that victory should bring. As to Belmont Lord Methuen says: " A cavalry brigade and a horse artillery batterywould have made good my success. My losses are no greater than are to be expected to keep in extended order, covering an enormous front, to get to the enemy's position at daybreak, saves you in the first instance from flanking fire, and in the second from great losses in the plain. There is far too great risk of failure in making flank and front attack in the case of a position such as lay before me at Belmont; the very first element of success is to keep touch between brigades from the first. Nor is there any question of tiking the enemy in flank, as on horses he changes front in fifteen minutes, as will be shown in my next fight. Shrapnel does not kill men in these kopjes, it only frightens, and I intend to get at my enemy." Again, as to Enslin: " I found I had taken the whole Boer force in flank, and had entirely cut them off from their line of retreat. My guns played-on tho masses of horsemen, but my few cavalry, dead-beat, were powerless, and for the second time I longed for a cavalry brigade arid a horse artillery battery," The heavy losses suffered by tho Naval Brigade in that action are said to have been due to their not taking advantage enough of cover and their keeping iu too close, formation. Then camo the hard-fought day of the Modder. Lord Mothuen < : i I not expect that the passage of the rive would be contested ; he thought that the Boers had retired to iSpvfontein; the information ho had roeeived convinced him that tiie village was empty of the enemy. " We all beiieveJ," he frankly writes, "thatthe force in our front was fighting a retiring action." They were cruelly undeceived. The river banks, the islands, and the village were full of sharpshooters, and the sufferings of our dauntless troops that day wore pitiful. It was only their indomitable bravery that pulled them through, and if the Boeis had remained the night in their entrenchments the battle must have gone as hardly for us on the following day. No comment is needed on such a despatch. The reconnoitring which led the General into so grievious an error must have been of a perfunctory kind ; his informants must have played him false. On this point we cannot do better than quoto the scathing sentence penned by General Buller, in referring to a minor action at Zoutspan's Drift, on December 13, "I suppose our olliaers will ]earn the value of scouting in time, but in spite of all one can say, up to this, our men. seem to blunder

into the middle of the enemy* and suffer accordingly." Yet it is to be noted that Lord Methuen insists strongly that both at Belmont and the Modder a frontal attack was the only one open to him, and that a wide - detour was impossible with the force at his command. That is a question for the military experts alone to decide. Equally important, equally sad, yet equally ennobled by the dauntless daring of the British soldier, is General Buller's despatch, describing the battle of Oolenso on December 15. In it he fully details his plan of action, its faulty execution, and the causes of the disaster. He knew the difficulties confronting him—" it was a very awkward position to attack " —all the visible defences had been shelled, but without making the enemy disclose his whereabouts. His idea was to cross the Bridle Drift first—General Hart failed to find it, because the river had been dammed, and became heavily engaged. Help was sent him, and his column had been successfully extricated, and was advancing towards the right, when news came that Colonel Long had been driven from his guns. At once the General determined that the day was I lost, and the troops were soon afterwards called off, and ordered to retire. He attributes the disaster directly to I the abandoned guns. "We had closed," he says, "on the enemy's I works, our troops were in a favourable position for an assault, and had I, at the critical moment, had at my disposition the artillery I had, as I believed, arranged for, I think I should have got in." But the unexpected had (happened; the irretrievable blunder bad been made. No one will deaire to heap more blame on the officer respon[sible than is conveyed in the General's own words: " His orders we're to come into action covered by the 6th Brigade, which brigade was not, as he knew, intended to advance on Colenso. I had personally explained to him where I wished him to come into action, and with the naval guns only, as the position was not within efiective range for his field guns. Instead of this he advanced with his batteries so fast that he left both his infantry escort and his oxen-drawn naval guns behind, and came into action under Fort Wylie, a commanding trebly entrenched hill, at a range of one thousand two hundred yawls, and, I believe, within three hundred yards of the enemy's rifle pits." His impetuosity, his disobedience lost the day, and his remorse will cause him far more poignant anguish than his grievous wounds. As we have said, these despatches are most painful reading, but their publication will not cause the country to lose heart or falter for an instant in the work to which it has set its hand. The thought of the heroism of the living and the dead on these stricken fields will inspire fresh determination to see this war through to a triumphant issue. In the last three months we, as a nation, i ave learnt many lessons which Will never be forgotten, and from which wo may look for eventual profit. Advert sity has not shaken our fortitude; lisaster has not weakened our nerve. Nor should it be forgotten that wo have passed safely through crises in our history more severe than that which aow confronts us. Our recent losses ire heavy, but they are light if we lompare them with the terrible lists of cilled and wounded which staggered out did not dismay our ancestors cluing the Peninsular War. The battles )f Colenso and Magersfontein are not ;o be mentioned in the same breath vith Albuera and Badajoz, It'is the ■emorseless speed of the electric current which is apt to disquiet the weakerlerved in our midst—the consciousness Imt those whose names we see among .he dead to-day were but yesterday foil >f pride and hope. Yet the mass of mr countrymen will continue to look iteadfasily to the end, sure of themelves and their high purpose, and conident of the justice of their cause,