vy
price we had paid.

On the evening after Buller's victorious army had entered the town I
went to see Sir George White, and was so fortunate as to find him alone
and disengaged. The General received me in a room the windows of which
gave a wide view of the defences. Bulwana, Caesar's Camp, Waggon Hill
lay before us, and beneath--for the house stood on high ground--spread
the blue roofs of Ladysmith. From the conversation that followed, and
from my own knowledge of events, I shall endeavour to explain so far as
is at present possible the course of the campaign in Natal; and I will
ask the reader to observe that only the remarks actually quoted should
be attributed to the various officers.

Sir George White told me how he had reached Natal less than a week
before the declaration of war. He found certain arrangements in progress
to meet a swiftly approaching emergency, and he had to choose between
upsetting all these plans and entirely reconstructing the scheme of
defence, or of accepting what was already done as the groundwork of his
operations.

Sir Penn Symons, who had been commanding in the Colony, and who was
presumably best qualified to form an opinion on the military
necessities, extravagantly underrated the Boer fighting power. Some of
his calculations of the force necessary to hold various places seem
incredible in the light of recent events. But everyone was wrong about
the Boers, and the more they knew the worse they erred. Symons laughed
at the Boer military strength, and laboured to impress his opinions on
Sir George White, who having Hamilton's South African experience to fall
back on, however, took a much more serious view of the situation, and
was particularly disturbed at the advanced position of the troops at
Dundee. He wanted to withdraw them. Symons urged the opposite
considerations vehemently. He was a man of great personal force, and his
manner carried people with him. 'Besides,' said the General, with a
kindling eye and extraordinary emphasis, 'he was a good, brave fighting
man, and you know how much that is worth in war.'

In spite of Symons's confidence and enthusiasm White hated to leave
troops at Dundee, and Sir Archibald Hunter, his chief of staff, agreed
with him. But not to occupy a place is one thing: to abandon it after it
has been occupied another.

They decided to ask Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson what consequences would
in his opinion follow a withdrawal. They visited him at ten o'cl