een warned to
go out of her course after leaving Las Palmas, to avoid a suspicious
vessel. But Methuen's first engagements seemed to him to be Pyrrhic
victories. It was "the old story of charging positions from which the
enemy simply clears, after having shot a lot of our men." On December
5th "alarming rumours came pouring in from all over the Colony," and
two days later Lord Milner telegraphed to warn the Secretary of State
that the war was now aggravated by rebellion. On Saturday, December
16th, the day after Colenso, he wrote: "This has been a week of
disasters, to-day being the worst of all. News was received this
morning that Buller had been severely defeated yesterday in attempting
to force the passage of the Tugela."

It was a time when he was receiving the panic outcry for the immediate
relief of Kimberley, in which Rhodes vented his rage at the military
impotence to which for the moment England had allowed herself to be
reduced in South Africa; when his councils with his ministers were
"gloomy functions," and his Prime Minister's arguments against the
measures which he deemed necessary for the defence of the Colony and
the protection of the native territories had become not merely
wearisome but embittered. His main resource lay in his intense
activity. It was his custom, during this critical period, to begin the
day by seeing Mr. Eliot and Mr. Price, the heads of the railways, and
Mr. French, the Postmaster-General. In this way he received
information of every movement of any significance that had occurred
within the range of the railway and post-office systems during the
preceding twenty-four hours--information which was of the highest
utility both to him and to the military authorities. Then followed an
endless succession of visitors, from the Prime Minister to the most
recent newspaper correspondent out from home, and a long afternoon
and evening of concentrated and unbroken labour upon despatches,
proclamations, minutes, and other official documents. A short ride or
walk was sometimes interpolated, but his days were a dead round of
continuous occupation. "One day is so like another--crowded with work;
all hateful, but with no very special feature," he wrote. But of
another he says: "Worked very hard all day; the usual interviews. It
was very difficult to take one's mind off the absorbing subject of the
ill success of our military operations."

Mr. Balfour called the insolence of the ultimatum "madness."