But Lord
Milner knew that it was no madness, but an assured belief in victory;
a confidence founded upon long years of earnest preparation for war;
upon the blood-ties of the most tenacious of European peoples; upon a
Nature that spread her wings over the rough children of the veld and
menaced their enemies with the heat and glamour of her sun, with
famine and drought and weariness, with all the hidden dangers that
lurked in her glittering plains and rock-strewn uplands.

[Sidenote: Aspects of the war.]

It is not proposed to give any detailed account of the military
operations which led, first, to the annexation of the Boer Republics,
and then to the actual disarmament of the entire Dutch population of
South Africa. The most that the plan of this work permits of is to
present the broad outlines of the war in such a manner that the
several phases of the military conflict may be seen in true
perspective, and the relationship between them and the administrative
efforts of Lord Milner be correctly indicated. But it will not be
found inconsistent with this restricted treatment to refer to certain
conspicuous features of the war upon which contemporary discussion has
chiefly centred, and in respect of which opinions have been pronounced
that do not seem likely to harmonise in all cases with the results of
a more mature judgment and a less interested inquiry.

The test by which the success or failure of any given military effort
is to be measured is, of course, the test of results. But the
application of this test must not be embarrassed by the assumption,
which seems to have vitiated so much otherwise admirable criticism on
the conduct of the war in South Africa, that every action in which a
properly equipped and wisely directed force is engaged must
necessarily be successful: or that, if it be not successful, it
follows, as a matter of course, that the officer in command, or one of
his subordinates, must have committed some open and ascertainable
violation of the principles of military science. So far is this from
being the case, that military history is full of examples in which the
highest merit and resolution of a commander have been nullified or
cheated by the wanton interferences of physical nature, or by acts on
the part of subordinates admittedly beyond the control of any human
skill or foresight.[183]

[Footnote 183: This chapter was in type some weeks before
Vol. I. of the Official History of