ich though they prove its valour can lead to no
decisive results, except at the cost of quite disproportionate losses.

It is possible, and indeed we all hope that the Boer forces, at first
under-estimated, may now be over-estimated, and that Sir Kedvers Buller,
whose advance is probably now beginning, will not have to deal with
superior numbers. In that case his blows will shatter the Boer army in
Natal, so that by the time he has joined hands with Sir George White the
enemy will feel himself overmastered, will lose the initiative, and
begin to shrink from the British attacks. That state of things in Natal
would lighten Lord Methuen's work. But it would be rash to assume such
favourable conditions. We must be prepared for the spectacle of hard and
prolonged fighting in Natal, and for the heavy losses that accompany it.
The better our troops come out of their trials the more are we bound to
ask ourselves how it came about that they were set to fight under
difficulties, usually against superior numbers, though the British force
devoted to the war was larger than the whole Boer army? The cause of
this is that a small force was sent out on September 8th, and nothing
more ordered until October 7th, and the cause of that arrangement was
that the Government, as Mr. Balfour has naively told us, never believed
that there would be a war, or that the Free State would join the
Transvaal, until the forces of both States were on the move. Our
statesmen negotiated through June, July, and August, talked in July of
"putting their hands to the plough," and yet took no step to meet the
possibility that the Boers would prove in earnest and attack the British
colonies until the Boer riflemen were assembling at Standerton and
patrolling into Natal. Does not this argue a defect in the training of
our public men, a defect which may be described as ignorance of the
nature of war and of the way in which it should be provided for? Mr.
Balfour admits that his eyes have been opened, but does not that imply
that they had been shut when they ought to have been open? If the
members of the Government failed to take the situation seriously in
June, what is to be thought of the members of the Opposition, some of
whom even now cannot see that the choice was between abandoning Empire
and coercing the Boers? The moral is that we should, if possible,
strengthen the Government by sending to Parliament representatives of
the younger school, which is National a