evacuated at the same time as Naauwport, the
troops falling back upon Queenstown, fifty miles distant by rail. This
abandonment of the two junctions severed from each other the right and
left flanks of the general front, which extended from Stormberg to De
Aar, depriving them of mutual support; a condition of disadvantage
{p.127} that was not wholly removed until after the occupation of
Bloemfontein. This gain to the Boers, however, was due to no
well-combined active operations on their side, but to the mere fact
that their opponents were everywhere so hopelessly weaker in numbers
that it was insanity any longer to risk these small detachments in
places where they ought to have been captured days before.

From these withdrawals it resulted that the British movements in
either quarter were of no assistance to those in the other by direct
co-operation, but only by diversion--by occupying in front of either
flank a certain proportion of the enemy. The latter attempted no
serious movement of attack, but simply waited. Their plan, alike in
the strategy of the campaign and in the tactics of the battlefield,
was to abide attack, with the advantages, usual to the defensive, of a
carefully chosen position diligently improved. So placed and secured,
they hoped to repel and to hold fast; but at the worst to inflict loss
greater than they received and then to slip away successfully,
avoiding capture, to another similar position in the rear of the
first, {p.128} there to repeat again the same tactic. For such
retreat provision of horse mounts was always carefully made, and to
its success their superiority in horseflesh, their habit of isolated
movement, their knowledge of the country, and the friendliness of the
inhabitants, greatly contributed. The student of naval history will
easily recognise in these methods an analogy to the battle tactics
plausibly ascribed to the French by Clerk in his celebrated treatise.
It was often successful on the ground, but it did not win campaigns.
The mastery of the sea remained with the British, whose blindly
headlong attacks with their ships resembled in much the free and often
foolish exposure of their troops in the beginning of the present war.
Nevertheless, the temper is one which wins, nor is there any necessary
incompatibility between a vigorous initiative and reasonable caution.

There is much to be said for such a plan as suited to the force
numerically inferior, and especially when, as w