ined in native
and acquired qualities in the same relative {p.118} positions of
individual superiority and inferiority that they had somewhat
prematurely assumed.

It was a natural result of such prepossessions that, instead of
concentrating to hold in mass some decisive position by which to
prolong the war, or to destroy or capture some important
detachment--such as that at Ladysmith--they should settle themselves
down to sieges, to a war of posts. In 1881, of several posts they had
in the same manner leisurely invested, one surrendered. They probably
believed that the others would have done so, had not the British
Government of that day yielded and made peace. Whatever the reasoning,
it was to the method of 1881 that the Boers resorted. After the
preliminary battles in Natal, already narrated, in each of which the
British attacked, they settled down with facile indolence to an
investment of Ladysmith.

The dissemination of the enemy on the Free State frontier, so
graphically summarized by Steevens, could not induce them to crush,
with the concentrated force permitted by their imposing superiority of
numbers, any one {p.119} of the small detachments thus fatally
exposed. The place, not the force within, had military value in their
eyes. To the general result contributed no doubt the tendency of local
interest to dominate general considerations in a rural and loosely
organised population. It was noted at the time that the principle of
local operation decided not only that the Transvaal should operate
chiefly in Natal, and the Orange Free State toward Cape Colony, but
also determined the course of action within each state. "There has
been very little moving about of burghers from one part of the
Transvaal or Free State to the other.... In the latter, the eastern
commandos have gone to Natal, the western ones to Kimberley, and to
the southern ones, numbering probably less than 4,000 men altogether,
have been left the double task of invading Cape Colony and keeping off
the Basutos; and as the ordinary Free State burgher is much more
anxious about his own farm than about turning our colony upside down,
the result is that practically nothing has been done to attack the
most vulnerable point in our defence."

The {p.120} same correspondent, writing from Cape Town, October 25,
said that there were not 3,000 men of regular troops, and no
artillery, in Cape Colony when the war broke out. His means of
information were doubtl