r.[B] The
Government expected the Boers to attack as soon as they should hear of
the calling out of the Reserves, that being the reason why the Reserves
were not called out earlier. Therefore Sir George White's campaign was
timed to last from October 9th to November 15th (December 15th). I
conclude that the force to be given to Sir George White was fixed by
Lord Lansdowne at haphazard, and that the calculations of the military
department were put on one side, this unbusinesslike way of playing with
National affairs and with soldier's lives being veiled from the
Secretary of State's mind by the phrase, "political reasons." But the
"political reason" for exposing a Nation's troops to unreasonable risks
and to needless loss must be bad reason and bad policy. Mr. Wyndham has
had the courage to assert that there was no haphazard, that his chief
knew quite well what he was doing, and that "the policy which the
Government adopted was deliberately adopted with the fullest knowledge
of possible consequences." If these words in Mr. Wyndham's speech of
October 20th mean anything, they mean that Lord Lansdowne and Mr.
Wyndham intended Sir George White to be left for a month to fight
against double his number of Boers; that they looked calmly forward to
the terrible losses and all the risks inseparable from such conditions.
That being the case, it seems to me that it is Mr. Wyndham's duty, and
if he fails, Lord Lansdowne's duty, to tell the country plainly whether
in that deliberate resolve Lord Wolseley was a partner or an overruled
protester. Ministers have a higher duty than that to their party. The
Nation has as much confidence in Lord Rosebery as in Lord Salisbury and
the difference in principle between the two men is a vanishing quantity.
A change of ministry would be an inconvenience, but no more. But if the
public comes to believe, what I am sure is untrue, that the military
department at the War Office has blundered, the consequences will be so
grave that I hardly care to use the word which would describe them.

I accept the maxim that it is no use crying over spilt milk or even over
spilt blood, but the maxim does not hold when the men whose decision
seems inexplicable are in a position to repeat it on a grander scale.
The temper of the Boers as early as June left no doubt in any South
African mind that if equality of rights and British supremacy were to
be secured it would have to be by the sword. The Government alone amon