ential to be
remarked is that such reverses on a small scale are always to be
expected in war, in even the most successful campaigns. This does not
mean that no blame attaches to them. Very probably in most such cases
there has been carelessness or miscalculation, for which somebody
merits either punishment or censure. But the Commander-in-Chief and
the nation concerned have to reckon upon such mishaps; and, without
affecting {p.314} indifference, or neglecting to exact responsibility,
they are to be regarded merely as the bruises and the barked limbs
that men get in any rough sport. These they are, and usually they are
nothing more. The player does not bleed to death in consequence; he
simply goes on with the game. Military men, of course, understand
this, but nations are too apt to be fretful as though some strange
thing had happened to them.

It is not by such affairs that contests are decided--on the playground
or in strategy. Lord Roberts proceeded with his preparations
undisturbed by the mosquito buzzings about his ears or on his trail.
At last, when ready, a second long leap was made. The British army,
leaving Bloemfontein on the 2nd of May, was on the 12th at Kroonstad,
over 100 miles distant. On the 24th the Vaal was crossed, and on the
31st Roberts entered Johannesburg. Five days later, on the 5th of
June, the British flag was hoisted in Pretoria, the capital of the
Transvaal, 250 miles from Bloemfontein. The sustained momentum of this
advance, achieved in very little over a month, testifies at once to
the solidity {p.315} of the preparations of the British leader, and
to the fruitlessness of such disseminated operations, by small bodies,
as were conducted by the Boers during the British halt at
Bloemfontein, and are now being carried on by Botha and De Wet.
Subsidiary to the greater plan of a campaign by massed forces, they
have their advantage; as a main dependence, they merely protract the
agony of endurance and suffering.

Sir Redvers Buller had to await in Natal the movement of the central
mass of the British force in the Orange Free State. Towards the middle
of May his advance began, directed against the positions which the
Boers had taken upon the Biggarsberg mountains, and on the 15th he
reoccupied Dundee and Glencoe. Into the detail of these movements it
is not proposed to enter. The retirement of the Boer forces before
Roberts, in the Free State, uncovered the flank and endangered the
communicatio