ow be at
Naauwport or De Aar. Total, say, 4,100 infantry, of whom 600 mounted;
no cavalry, no field guns. The Boer force available against these
isolated positions might be very reasonably put at 12,000 mounted
infantry, with perhaps a score of guns.... It is dangerous--and yet
nobody cares. There is nothing to do but wait--for the Army Corps that
has not yet left England. Tiny forces, half {p.105} a battalion in
front, and no support behind--nothing but long lines of railway with
ungarrisoned posts hundreds of miles at the far end of them. It is
very dangerous. No supports at this moment nearer than England."[8]

[Footnote 8: "From Cape Town to Ladysmith," pp.
16-20.]

In this brief and pregnant summary the reader will note outlined the
elements characteristic of all strategic situations: the bases, the
seaports; the communications, the railway lines; the front of
operations, the frontier of the Orange Free State, or rather, perhaps,
in this defensive--or defenceless--stage, the railroad line parallel
to it, which joins De Aar, Naauwport and Stormberg.

Dangerous, sure enough; how much so needs only a glance at the map to
show. Before reinforcements could arrive Sir George White was shut up
in Ladysmith by forces double his own. These he held there, it is
true; and the fatal delay of the Boers before his lines, reflected in
their no less fatal inactivity on the frontier of the Cape Colony,
whence Steevens wrote the words quoted, doubtless threw away the game;
but we are now speaking, as he was then writing, of the time {p.106}
when the cards had only been dealt and the hand was yet to play. Put
your marks on each of the places named--Mafeking, Kimberley, De Aar,
Naauwport, Stormberg--note their individual and relative importance,
the distances severing them from one another, the small bodies of men
scattered among them, incapable through weakness and remoteness of
supporting each other, and with no common supports behind. Mafeking is
from Kimberley 223 miles; Kimberley from De Aar, 146; De Aar from
Naauwport, 69; Naauwport from Stormberg 80, as the crow flies over a
difficult country, at least 130 by rail. All three junctions with
their intervening lines of rail, bridges, culverts and all, are little
over fifty miles from the Orange River, which hereabout forms the
boundary separating Cape Colony from the Free State. And White is
about to be invested in Ladysmith, and the Army C