reacted
most disastrously upon the enteric which was already decimating the
troops.

The effect of the Sanna's Post defeat was increased by the fact that
only four days later (on April 4th) a second even more deplorable
disaster befell our troops. This was the surrender of five companies
of infantry, two of them mounted, at Reddersberg. So many surrenders of
small bodies of troops had occurred during the course of the war that
the public, remembering how seldom the word 'surrender' had ever been
heard in our endless succession of European wars, had become very
restive upon the subject, and were sometimes inclined to question
whether this new and humiliating fact did not imply some deterioration
of our spirit. The fear was natural, and yet nothing could be more
unjust to this the most splendid army which has ever marched under the
red-crossed flag. The fact was new because the conditions were new, and
it was inherent in those conditions. In that country of huge distances
small bodies must be detached, for the amount of space covered by
the large bodies was not sufficient for all military purposes. In
reconnoitring, in distributing proclamations, in collecting arms, in
overawing outlying districts, weak columns must be used. Very often
these columns must contain infantry soldiers, as the demands upon the
cavalry were excessive. Such bodies, moving through a hilly country with
which they were unfamiliar, were always liable to be surrounded by a
mobile enemy. Once surrounded the length of their resistance was limited
by three things: their cartridges, their water, and their food. When
they had all three, as at Wepener or Mafeking, they could hold out
indefinitely. When one or other was wanting, as at Reddersberg or
Nicholson's Nek, their position was impossible. They could not break
away, for how can men on foot break away from horsemen? Hence those
repeated humiliations, which did little or nothing to impede the
course of the war, and which were really to be accepted as one of the
inevitable prices which we had to pay for the conditions under which
the war was fought. Numbers, discipline, and resources were with us.
Mobility, distances, nature of the country, insecurity of supplies, were
with them. We need not take it to heart therefore if it happened, with
all these forces acting against them, that our soldiers found themselves
sometimes in a position whence neither wisdom nor valour could rescue
them. To travel through