f a force, for every officer,
from Commandant-General to corporal, carried and used a rifle in every
battle.

When the officers had their men on the field, and desired to make a
forward movement or an attack on the enemy, it was necessary to hold a
Krijgsraad, or council of war, and this was conducted in such a novel way
that the most unmilitary burgher's voice bore almost as much weight as
that of the Commandant-General. Every officer, from corporal to
Commandant-General, was a member of the Krijgsraad, and when a plan was
favoured by the majority of those present at the council it became a law.
The result of a Krijgsraad meeting did not necessarily imply that it was
the plan favoured by the best military minds at the council, for it was
possible and legal for the opinions of sixteen corporals to be adopted
although fifteen generals and commandants opposed the plan with all their
might. That there ever was such a result is problematical, but there were
many Krijgsraads at which the opinion of the best and most experienced
officers were cast aside by the votes of field-cornets and corporals. It
undoubtedly was a representative way of adopting the will of the people,
but it frequently was exceedingly costly. At the Krijgsraad in Natal which
determined to abandon the positions along the Tugela, and retire north of
Ladysmith the project was bitterly opposed by the generals who had done
the bravest and best fighting in the colony, but the votes of the
corporals, field-cornets, and commandants outnumbered theirs, and there
was nothing for the generals to do but to retire and allow Ladysmith to be
relieved. At Mafeking scores of Krijgsraad were held for the purpose of
arriving at a determination to storm the town, but invariably the
field-cornets and corporals out-voted the commandants and generals and
refused to risk the lives of their men in such a hazardous attack. Even
the oft-repeated commands of the Commandant-General to storm Mafeking were
treated with contempt by the majority of the Krijgsraad who constituted
the highest military authority in the country so far as they and their
actions were concerned. When there happened to be a deadlock in the
balloting at a Krijgsraad it was more than once the case that the vote of
the Commandant-General counted for less than the voice of a burgher. In
one of the minor Krijgsraads in Natal there was a tie in the voting, which
was ended when an old burgher called his corporal aside a