nd attack would, of course, be attended with twofold risks, but if
it has no chance of success the defeat already suffered must be reckoned
a disaster. If Lord Methuen is definitely beaten, Kimberley must be set
down as lost, and the question is of the safety of Lord Methuen's
division. In that case to remain at Modder River is to court investment,
which would last for many weeks. The risk would not be justified unless
there is in the camp an ample store of supplies and ammunition, and even
then it is not clear what purpose it would serve. If, therefore, the
defeat is decisive the proper course is a retreat to a position of which
the communications can be protected, and which cannot easily be turned.
The whole situation, then, is failure in the Cape Colony on both lines,
coupled with an impending action in Natal, of which, until it is over, a
favourable result, though there is reason to hope for it, had better not
be too lightly assumed. Yet the British purpose of the war is to
establish the British power in South Africa on a firm basis: the only
way to prepare that basis being to crush the military power of the two
Republics. The British forces now in South Africa are clearly not strong
enough to do their work. What is the Nation to do in order to accomplish
the task which it has undertaken?

A nation can act only through its Government, and, as at this moment the
British Nation is united in the resolve to fight this war out, the
Government has, without looking back, to give a lead. The first thing is
for the Cabinet to convince the public that it is doing all that can be
done, and doing it in the right way. But the public does not trust its
own judgment. That much-talked-of person the man in the street does not
fancy himself a general, and is not over-fond of the military
critic--the unfortunate man whose duties have compelled him to try to
qualify himself, to form a judgment about war. There is a sound instinct
that war is a special business, and that it should be managed according
to the judgment of those who are masters of the trade; not those who
can write about it, but those who have practised it and proved their
capacity. But those men, the generals who are, believed to have a grasp
of the way to carry a war through, are all outside the Cabinet. The
Cabinet has its chosen expert adviser, the Commander-in-Chief; but
rumour or surmise hints that his advice has been by no means uniformly
followed. Surely the wisest