ith the Boers, it is
composed of men untutored in the military formations and manoeuvres
essential to successful movement in battle. Defence of the character
{p.129} indicated requires little change after the primary
dispositions have been made; the men for the most part stand fast when
placed, and do not incur the risk of confusion from which the
well-practised only can extricate themselves.

The mistake of the Boers was in failing to recognise that a nation
compelled to such a mode of action by its conditions of inferiority,
in numbers and in drill, is doomed to ultimate defeat, unless at the
very beginning, while the enemy has not yet developed or concentrated
his powers, such an advantage is gained by a vigorous initiative as
shall either prevent his obtaining the necessary initial positions, or
shall at least postpone his doing so long enough to affect materially
the course of the war, and give room for the chapter of accidents--for
the intervention of the unforeseen. The Boers, having surprised their
enemy at unawares, had the opportunity so to act. It may be that, had
they done so, ultimate success would not certainly have followed--the
odds were very great; but it is safe to say that only so, by rushing
the campaign at the beginning, had they any chance of final {p.130}
victory. "Desperate conditions," said Nelson, "require desperate
remedies." The Boers' position was desperate from the first, to be
saved only by the most vigorous handling of numbers which for a brief
and critical period were largely superior.

Thus it was that these opening weeks decided the character and issue
of the war, beyond chance of subsequent reversal. By the Boers' own
choice, interest was fixed not upon one or two, but upon several
quarters, and these--save Ladysmith--determined not by their inherent,
and therefore lasting and decisive, strategic importance, but by
questions of commercial value and of the somewhat accidental presence
in them of very small bodies of regular troops. At two places,
Mafeking and Kimberley, the assailants were, as an English journal
justly put it, "foiled by colonial forces hastily organised, and
stiffened by small regular detachments which have shown far more
enterprise on the offensive than their besiegers have done."

Such a situation, under the existing conditions of the general
campaign, should have been met, not by protracted investment in
force, {p.131} but by assault; or, if that were inexpedien