ls" was communicated to the Transvaal
Government.[187] It was then calculated that three months must elapse
before this force could be equipped, transported, and placed in the
field in South Africa.

[Footnote 186: Cd. 1,789. But the Official History gives the
British total at the outbreak of war as 27,054 men (as
against over 50,000 burghers); of whom 15,811 (including
2,781 local troops) were in Natal, 5,221 regulars and 4,574
local troops were in the Cape Colony, and 1,448 men, raised
locally by Col. Baden-Powell, were in Mafeking and Southern
Rhodesia.]

[Footnote 187: But the Admiralty were given details of the
offensive force on September 20th. (_Official History._)]

[Sidenote: No political gain.]

Before recording the disastrous effects of the postponement of
effective military preparations, from June to September, it remains to
consider whether any political gains, sufficient to compensate for the
loss of military strength, were secured. The policy of relying upon
Afrikander advice failed; since, as we have seen, the admonitions of
Sir Henry de Villiers and Mr. Hofmeyr came too late to turn President
Krueger from an obduracy founded upon long years of military
preparation. The over-sea British had made up their minds in June; and
nothing occurred in the subsequent negotiations to deepen their
conviction of the essential justice of the British cause. India was
unmoved; indeed, the Hindu masses were slightly sympathetic, while the
feudatory princes came forward with offers of men and treasure to the
Government of the Queen-Empress. The attitude of the respective
governments of France, Germany, and Russia was correct. But what
secured this result was not any perception of the moderation of the
British demands, or any recognition of the genuine reluctance of the
British Government to make war, but the sight of the British Navy
everywhere holding the seas, the rapidity and ease with which large
bodies of troops were transported from every quarter of the British
world, and the manner in which each reverse was met by a display of
new and unexpected reserves of military strength.

If the British Government thought that it would win the peoples of
Continental Europe to its side by a show of hesitation to make war
upon a weak state, the sequel proved that it had gravely misunderstood
the conditions under which international respect is