es can put into the field as a mobile army
available for attack as well as for defence. I think thirty-five
thousand men a safer estimate than twenty-five thousand. The Boers are
fighting for their political existence, which to their minds is
identical with their monopoly of political rights, and therefore their
States will and must exert themselves to the uttermost. This view is
confirmed by the action of the British military authorities, who
estimate the British force necessary to disarm the Boer States at over
seventy thousand men, a number which would seem disproportionate to a
Boer field force of only twenty-five thousand. The British forces now in
South Africa are in two separate groups. In Natal Sir George White has
some ten thousand regular troops and two thousand volunteers, the
regulars being eight or nine infantry battalions, four regiments of
cavalry, six field batteries, and a mounted battery. He appears to have
no horse artillery. In the Cape Colony there are seven British
battalions and, either landed or on passage, three field batteries. A
part of this force is scattered in small garrisons of half a battalion
each at points on the railways leading to the Free State--Burghersdrop,
Naauwpoort, and Kimberley. At Mafeking Colonel Baden-Powell has raised a
local force and has fortified the place as well as its resources
permit. A force of Rhodesian volunteers is moving from Buluwayo towards
Tuli, on the northern border of the Transvaal. There are volunteer corps
in the Cape Colony with a total of some seven thousand men, but it is
not clear whether the Schreiner Ministry, whose sympathies with the
Boers are undisguised, has not prevented the effective arming of these
corps.

The reports of the distribution of the Boer forces on the frontiers must
be taken with caution. Apparently there are preparations for the attack
of Mafeking and of Kimberley, and it is open for the Boers to bring
against either or both of these places forces largely outnumbering their
defenders. Both places are prepared for defence against ordinary field
forces. The actions at these places cannot very greatly affect the
general result. Their nearness to the frontier makes it likely that the
first engagements will take place on this border. On the other side of
the theatre of war the Boers may be expected to invade Natal and to
attack Sir George White, whose forces a few days ago were divided
between positions near Ladysmith and Glencoe, p